Some people find their best work in the energy of a shared workspace, others in the quiet of home or the fresh perspective of travel. Most of us need different settings for different kinds of work: concentration, collaboration, teaching, writing, recovery. A single prescribed location serves none of them perfectly.
Trusting people to choose the environment in which they are most effective brings more focus, more creativity and more loyalty to the work. It also signals something leaders often forget to say aloud: that they judge colleagues by what they contribute, not by whether they can be seen contributing it.
Flexibility is not the absence of structure. It works when expectations are clear, when teams agree how and when they will be together, and when the shared spaces are worth coming to. The office then becomes a hub for connection and collaboration, a place people want to go rather than one they are required to be. In a university, that matters doubly, because the informal encounters that seed research and mentor students happen in shared space.
There are real risks. Early career staff can miss the learning that comes from proximity, and teams can drift apart if no one designs the moments of togetherness. Those risks are reasons to lead flexibility well, not reasons to abandon it.
My own test is simple. I measure success by the value created, not the hours spent in one place, and I try to build the conditions in which people can create that value wherever they do their best work.
Context
The note reflects his approach as a senior academic leader, first as Head of Built Environment Engineering and from 2026 as Head of a School of more than 100 academic and professional staff. It belongs with a companion note on the quiet architecture of meaningful leadership, written the same week.