Susan Cain
The New York Times
We’d all be better off spending more time working alone, said Susan Cain. Our workplaces have been taken over by New Groupthink, in which teamwork, collaboration, and open-plan offices have displaced solitude, independence, and privacy. “Anyone who has ever needed noise-canceling headphones in her own office” knows what I’m talking about. This trend is bad for business, because “people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Some 70 percent of U.S. employees now work in open-plan offices, and nearly all spend time working in teams. That may help us exchange ideas, but it also stifles creativity, lowers productivity, and even makes us sicker. Studies show workers in open-plan offices are more “hostile, insecure, and distracted,” and more likely to suffer from high blood pressure and the flu. Brainstorming sessions have been shown to be “one of the worst possible ways to stimulate creativity,” and the bigger the group, the worse the performance. Teamwork has its place. But it’s often in quiet, private moments that our best work is done.
-
Should you add your child to your credit card?The Explainer You can make them an authorized user on your account in order to help them build credit
-
Cracker Barrel crackup: How the culture wars are upending corporate brandingIn the Spotlight Is it 'woke' to leave nostalgia behind?
-
'It's hard to discern what it actually means'Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Issue of the week: Do high-speed traders rig the market?feature Wall Street is abuzz over high-frequency trading.
-
Issue of the week: How Yellen spooked the markets
feature At her first press conference, the new Federal Reserve chair made the mistake of indicating when the Fed would raise interest rates.
-
Stop calling women ‘bossy’
feature Let’s ban “She’s bossy.” Instead, let’s try, “She has executive leadership skills.”
-
Issue of the week: GM’s recall disaster
feature Mary Barra is facing “her first big test” since she took over as GM’s new CEO in January: a recall of more than 1.6 million vehicles.
-
Issue of the week: Who gets Fannie’s and Freddie’s profits?
feature Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s shareholders want their money back.
-
Issue of the week: Comcast buying Time Warner Cable
feature Has Comcast won the cable wars?
-
Issue of the week: AOL’s million-dollar babies
feature AOL’s “gaffe-prone” CEO, Tim Armstrong, “got in some hot water” last week.
-
Issue of the week: Why Google unloaded Motorola
feature Three years after shelling out $12.5 billion for Motorola, Google announced its sale to Lenovo Group for $2.9 billion.