Following Signposts takes us through trails that expose us to unique ways of viewing work, the workplace, and ourselves. However, the process can be overwhelming, and that worried Frank too:

An organisation can only make so many changes at once, right? So, if there are 34 things that they need to do, they’re going to be overwhelmed. Organisations should choose just two or three signposts, the ones which would have the most impact, and take it from there.

However, these signposts are not individual directives on workplace improvements. A confusion which comes from assuming they will take us to 34 different places. Yet, if these markers are to deliver on their promise, they would have to converge in a single destination: a better place to work, Fig. 36.1. Consequently, it is not necessary to follow them all.

Fig. 36.1
figure 1

Convergence of Signposts

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Figure 36.1 also illustrates the crisscrossing of paths as we travel towards their shared destination. The vertical watermark shows, if only conceptually, how far this guide has taken us.

FormalPara Signposts Converging

2020 marked Beethoven’s 250 birthday; orchestras around the world paid tribute to his work which is still regarded as imaginative, uncompromising, and unprecedented [129].

Arthur Brooks, a trained musician and professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, tells us that as the hearing of the classical composer deteriorated, he was influenced less by the prevailing compositional fashions and more by the musical structures forming inside his own head [130]. Beethoven “no longer had society’s soundtrack in his ears”, Brooks writes. Then, as Beethoven’s condition worsened, he avoided frequencies he could not hear [131].

Applying our signposts to Beethoven’s situation, was it the isolation that led to his unique style (Signpost 1), or was this due to adversity from losing his hearing (Signpost 4)? Perhaps he was following Signpost 2 and had broken with the rules of composition.

The example illustrates how signposts might converge at the destination rendering them undistinguishable from each other.

Since I’m yet to arrive at the signposts’ destination, I can only speculate about what happens there. So, I will briefly indulge in such pleasure and say that it might not be boring, uncomfortable, absurd, inefficient, and isolated – as some signpost may lead us to believe. At least not for long periods at a time. To explain, let’s take a leaf out of the book of the sit-to-stand inquiries into the optimal posture to work.

After labelling sitting “the new smoking” [132], it turned out that similar to the risks of prolonged sitting, so too should prolonged standing be avoided [133]. The optimal posture to work is neither sitting nor standing, but ‘the next one’ – alternating between the two.

In a similar way, places of work should alternate between opposite sides of the coin to avoid the downsides of prolonged exposure to just one side and benefit from the advantages of the other: absurd/rational, stimulating/boring, adverse/comfortable, connected/isolated, and so on.