Presenteeism

An article in the January/February issue of Harvard Business Review, The Third Wave of Virtual Work, by Lynda Gratton, outlines the three waves of change that technology created in patterns of workplace relationships and collaboration. The first wave began with easily accessible personal computers and email capability, and allowed entrepreneurs and free spirits to work from home. Mobile technology created the second wave, as corporate employees, enabled to work from anywhere and at anytime, moved out of the physical spaces that used to be required to house bulky and expensive equipment. According to Gratton, it is predicted that more than 1.3 billion people will be working remotely within a few years.

But working remotely can feel like working alone. The friendly familiarity, collaboration and water cooler connecting that used to be possible when people shared the same physical spaces aren't naturally occurring in our new virtual workplace environments.

The third wave, happening now, is a response to isolation. A new dynamic is emerging, creating "urban hubs"- physical spaces that remote workers can share. Urban hubs give remote workers a place to go, (instead of the local coffee shop), for well-designed workspaces, meeting areas and current technology. What's different about this than the old office building model? It's down the street from your home and you're not necessarily sharing space with people from your company.

It can be argued, and it has been, that productivity wasn't guaranteed when people were expected to show up to work in offices together. The term, "presenteeism," was coined at first to describe the phenomenon of people coming to work sick just to be counted as present. The word has expanded to mean the erroneous expectation that showing up for eight hours to an office space with your colleagues will guarantee that something meaningful will emerge.

Urban hubs offer a new take on the rationale for workers inhabiting a physical space. Rather than grouping people according to their corporate affiliation, a work space becomes the hub of activity based on shared interests and objectives. Gratton describes a membership-based Tech Shop in California that provides space for novice inventors, with shared tools and equipment, populated by local creative people supporting one another. She predicts outcomes from the more than 2,000 - and growing - co-working spaces around the globe:

When hubs serve particular communities, they tend to take on distinct cultures, which can translate into varying terms of use. They can also become hotbeds of talent where techniques, contacts and passions are shared, just as they were in the medieval guilds - and as they are today in massively multi-player online gaming guilds. Where visionaries have built these hubs, and people have come in search of productivity, fellowship and mentorship, we are beginning to see talent clusters emerge.

Companies whose remote workers find one another in urban hubs aren't threatened by the connections their workers make with people from other companies. Instead, the sparks created by fellowship and discovery fuel energy and initiatives.

Take out the HBR corporate language of productivity and what does this sound like? It is the ongoing conversation we're having in the Jewish community about how to re-imagine the use of our synagogue buildings.

We built physical spaces throughout the twentieth century with a "presenteeism" understanding of Jewish community. It went like this: If people just come into the building and are present for services, school and programs, something meaningful will emerge.

We have found that this logic has not held up. I hear it from synagogue leaders who ask, "What are the newest, most creative program ideas that get people in the door?" "What can we do to get young people to come to services?" "How do we make our services more interesting?"  They're watching the numbers in the sanctuary decrease and imagine that changes to what goes on in the sanctuary will bring those numbers back up.

The expectation of "presenteeism" misses the point. It is true that Judaism is best experienced and practiced in community, but defining our community and the quality of experience by how many people show up in the spaces we built is what we need to change.

This is more than merging two or three congregations into one building. We do need to accept the fact that more mergers are going to happen in the next ten years because of changing demographics. This also isn't about offering space in your current building to a chavurah or emerging kehilla.

This is about re-thinking hubs of activity and relationships. What are some examples in our kehillot?

• The leaders of three congregations in one community are exploring a vision of locating their joint religious school based on educational function, rather than choosing one synagogue location. This means looking at options that might place classes for the children in a site other than the synagogue buildings, and creating shared family experiences in all of the synagogues throughout the calendar year.
• The moving minyan: two or more kehillot collaborate and rotate minyan to various sites, rather than trying to get everyone to one synagogue building twice a day.
• Snowbird and Sunbird services: Rabbis and lay leaders travel in the winter to hold special Shabbat services for their members who spend the season in warmer cities. Or they co-sponsor summertime services in vacation areas with the synagogues in the resort areas. 
• Sharing the two-year communal adult education program, Context, sponsored by the Jewish Theological Seminary. Collaborative partners of Context become the hub for high level, intellectually rigorous study using local scholars and resources. The Conservative kehillot in Hartford, CT, Greater Washington, DC, Middlesex County, NJ, and many others in New York, Long Island, Brooklyn, and Queens are just the beginning.
• Congregational schools are beginning to use Shalom Learning, an online platform, for their learning curriculum and family engagement.
• The adult education program on Conservative Judaism at Beth Judah in Ventnor, NJ, connected speakers from the Conservative movement, including USCJ's CEO, Rabbi Steven Wernick, by webinar to their congregants who either watched at home or viewed the recording later.

The suggestions in the Harvard Business Review article about how companies can make changes also apply to our kehillot:

• Focus on collaboration. 
• Reconceive physical space.
• Tap remote talent.
• Invest in intuitive technology.
• Recognize idiosyncracy.

In a nutshell, where can we start? 

Move out of the mindset that only sees people in terms of membership and participation numbers. Both are tied to the bottom line of maintaining our buildings. Look, instead, at relationships and action. Is there a group you just wish would stop wanting their own services in their homes and come to Kabbalat Shabbat in your chapel? Is there a person who has all kinds of crazy ideas about adult education? Recognize their idiosyncracies and energy. Help them take one step towards their dreams. There might be others who want to join them. Don't get in the way.

Where can people collaborate? Where are points of energy in your community, regardless of location? What kinds of technology that people use at work (Webex, Go-to-Meeting) can bring resources to your community instead of trying to bring people or speakers to your building? 

No one expects anyone to sell off synagogue buildings in the next five years in favor of an online homeschooling chavurah-type Judaism. Let's recognize, though, that the presenteeism of the 20th Century doesn't work anymore, and the world is already giving us clues about where and how people want to naturally find each other in the future.

A Roomful of Conversation

If you were planning to host a party with the goal of having as many people as possible talk to each other about as many topics as possible, how would you design the seating? One long table or several small ones?

But think about it - why make them sit at all? What if there are no seats so people can mingle at will? Must it be inside, then? Whoa - stay with me - why can't you give them an outside trail to follow so they find each other on the path!

How would you plan the conversations? Let's go back to the idea of tables: Is there someone at the head of the table you'll assign to lead a discussion or will people naturally find the topics of mutual interest if you just give them the chance to sit near each other? If there will be leaders, how do you decide on the topics? Do you choose topics based on what the leaders would like to talk about? Or do you pick the broadest categories possible, have the leaders start the conversation, and trust that each person in the room will have some life experience to shape what follows?

How many conversations? How many choices? Won't it get overwhelming if there are too many? Will people not bother to come at all if there are too few?

These kinds of questions, and the exciting, (sometimes meandering), trails that creative thinking takes us on, have been the feverish focus behind the scenes at United Synagogue since late last summer as we embarked on planning our Centennial Celebration in October.

It's the Conversation of the Century. That's a whopper of a claim.

So how did we decide to approach this party with the goal of as many conversations as possible?

SEATING: We chose "All of the above." With an expectation of more than 1,000 people coming over a five day period that includes a Shabbaton, we're creating every possible combination of putting people together. There will be one "table," (ok, a huge auditorium), with one speaker to start the conversation, and choices to continue at other "tables," (aka conference rooms). We're setting aside spaces for reuniting with old friends, finding people who share your interest or your challenges, (Calling all synagogue presidents!). Want to walk around and mingle? A Centennial Square will help you find food, services, entertainment and your friends. There will be paths to follow through historic Jewish Baltimore, and service opportunities to leave behind something that will help others.

CONVERSATIONS: We chose eight big topics.

The Spiritual Conversation

The Global Conversation

The Personal Conversation

The Eternal Conversation

The Interfaith Conversation

The Israel Conversation

The Communal Conversation

The Future Conversation

Thought leaders, (some who will surprise you), will start the conversations.

Two examples: Clive Lawton, the founder of Limmud, will start the Global Conversation, based on his 20 years of experience spreading Jewish learning around the world. The Interfaith Conversation will get a start from Dr. Amy Jill Levine, Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University. Her insight into the similarities and differences between Christian and Jewish theology has drawn thousands to her speaking engagements.

A variety of other people will pick up the ball and continue the conversations in what we're calling "Follow the Conversation" workshops. You are invited to be one of those people. This is where we move from one table to many. But here is where we also want to diverge from just hosting a party with lots of conversations to convening a gathering where conversation leads to action.

Our Follow the Conversation workshops are expected to give people information, tools and resources where they can take next steps. Because what's the point of conversation if it doesn't help us to grow?

So come to the party. Stay for the conversation. Go home stronger than before.

See you there!

Life and Death

Did you know that there were no deaths of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan last week?

I learned this on Friday night, before the recitation of the Mourners' Kaddish during Shabbat services at Beth El Temple in Harrisburg, PA. I didn't see it in newspapers, although this morning I found references from the Associated Press to January's casualties being the lowest monthly number since 2008, with an explanation that it is related to troop withdrawal. If PBS's News Hour reported it with their weekly list of the troops lost in the war, I missed it (because I was in shul).

I was powerfully struck by the announcement. Instantaneously, I had an image of how for one week, no parent of an American soldier got the dreaded knock on the door about their child losing his or her life. Regardless of the political or tactical reasons that would account for the number, at that moment when our prayer service instructs us to think of death, there was one place where I realized that death did not reach this week.

Our liturgy is filled with ways to not only help us pass through suffering, but also opportunities to regularly be thankful for peacefulness and wholeness. I view the morning prayer, Asher Yatzar, thanking God for the inner workings of our bodies, as well as prayers for healing and mourners kaddish, as brilliant reminders for us to notice the gift of each moment.

Rabbi Eric Cytryn has included the names of the soldiers who died that week during Beth El's Shabbat services since 2003, when he began his tenure. Rabbi Cytryn said that it's possible that some people thought that it was a political statement, but he always considered it the role of a religious community to create awareness of matters of life and death. That is the power that is possible in a religious community of practice. For me, it was a beautiful example of how our communal practice of prayer can help us connect with matters that transcend politics, and continually give us opportunities to reflect on the gift of life.