To go to the office or not to go to the office?  Back in the stone ages when I got my first job “working from home” was a polite way of saying someone was cheating by taking time off without burning vacation or sick time.  The expression drew instant knowing looks from everyone in the office.  Back then it was simple.  All of the materials and equipment most of us needed to do our work were at work, so we needed to be there, too.  Then came the home computers, the internet, the cloud and all the other innovations brought to us by Silicon Valley propeller heads.  Suddenly, we could work from anywhere.  We never had to go into the office at all.  It was magical.  

This week Marissa Mayer, new CEO of Yahoo, stirred up a nest of cranky hornets by deciding that her team needs to give up telecommuting and spend their days in the office.  Stats about the productiveness of home workers are being thrown around, as are alternate figures about how proximity breeds innovation.  There are a lot of good arguments for working remotely, whether at home, in the park, or at Starbucks like I do.  Companies can save loads of money if they don’t have to maintain office space for everyone, employees don’t have to make stressful rush hour commutes.  It’s all great – as long as you don’t want your team to be a team.

Technology is fantastic.  I love my laptop, I use Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin daily.  I’ve even managed to make acquaintances through them.  I haven’t forged relationships, though.  For relationships you need face time.  Always have, always will.

Tech lovers probably won’t get that.  They think banging out messages on their computers or phones and throwing in the occasional actual call do the trick.  They’re also the ones who don’t realize what walls they put up when they walk around, earbuds inserted, heads down, focused only on their iPhones.  They’re also the ones who think they can text away on those phones and listen to whoever’s talking to with equal respect.  They’re the ones who think they’re good at multi-tasking.  They don’t understand that they have to look someone in the eye to connect with them.  Being able to recite their every word back to them is a parlor trick, not a connection.

Look, we’ve made some amazing improvements in our communications over the past twenty years and I’m all for them.  Trouble is no one can bond with an avatar or a disembodied voice or an image on a video screen.  Anyone who thinks he can is either delusional or an android (a robot, not a phone).  You can’t have a casual conversation over media.  You can’t pick up on physical cues that could lead to personal conversations that might bring you closer.

I worked in one startup that instituted regular play days for the team because we didn’t believe simply working side-by-side was enough.  We were right.  Once a month or so we’d take an afternoon to go bowling or do some other activity that everyone could be a part of and that would allow us to know each other beyond our professional facades.  Seriously, once you’ve seen that guy you thought was a standoffish jerk throw four gutterballs in a row and laugh about it, you can’t help but warm up to him a little, can you?

I’m not necessarily in full support of Ms. Mayer.  I’ve worked in a place where telecommuting was absolutely banned, which seems ridiculous in the millennium.   As with most things, the middle ground is where it’s at.  But no matter what the situation is, if you want a team rather than a network, you’ve got to get your people together regularly and for significant amounts of time – sometimes even outside the office.

Take ‘em bowling, for God’s sake.