CIOs are being asked, “When are we going back to the office?” but futurist Bob Johansen argues that this is actually the sixth question, not the first. The starting point is, “Why do we go to the office in the first place?” In a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment, the office can no longer be treated as just a physical location where work happens. It needs a clear purpose that connects to both business outcomes and human needs. Johansen highlights research from the Blue Zones project: - Purpose-driven people are happier, healthier, and live up to 7 years longer. - Purpose-driven people who work for purpose-driven organizations are happier, healthier, and live up to 14 years longer, and those companies perform better. For CIOs, this means the office should be designed as a purposeful environment that: - Supports meaningful collaboration and human connection. - Reinforces both individual purpose and a shared community or social purpose. - Uses technology to enable new ways of working and create real impact. By clarifying the “why” first, CIOs can make better decisions about the “where,” “when,” and “how” of work, and avoid simply recreating a pre-COVID office model that no longer fits how people live and work.

Bob Johansen and the Institute for the Future (IFTF) suggest a structured set of seven questions to guide how CIOs think about the office of the future. Instead of starting with return dates and floor plans, they recommend thinking “future back” — looking 10 years out and then working backward. The seven questions are: 1. **Why do you want to go to the office at all?** Define the purpose of the office in terms of human connection, collaboration, learning, and impact, not just space utilization. 2. **What outcomes are you aiming to achieve by officing?** Go beyond shareholder value to include social and community value. Be explicit about the business, employee, and societal outcomes you expect from your office strategy. 3. **What impacts will your office have, especially on climate?** It is no longer enough to aim for “zero impact.” The question becomes: *Is your office regenerative?* Over the next decade, pressure will grow for offices to contribute positively to environmental and community health. 4. **How will you extend or augment the intelligence of your office?** Looking ahead, we will all be augmented by digital tools. HR and IT will blend into “human-computing resources,” where the focus is on what humans do best and what computers do best. CIOs need a roadmap for how digital augmentation, AI, and data will shape everyday work. 5. **With whom do you want to office?** This is essentially the future of diversity, inclusion, and belonging. Offices will be extremely diverse. The challenge is to be *purposely different*—intentionally building diverse teams—and to create a real sense of inclusion and belonging, which is the harder part. 6. **Where and when will officing happen?** The spectrum runs from physical offices to the metaverse. Johansen describes a “meta, meta metaverse” — a nested network of networks with increasingly blended reality. Younger generations will be more fluent in this environment. CIOs need to plan for hybrid, distributed, and immersive work patterns. 7. **How will you design an agile and resilient office?** Offices must be flexible and able to adapt to ongoing disruption. This includes shape-shifting organizations, porous boundaries, and the ability to move between physical and virtual modes as conditions change. Using these questions, CIOs can frame their office strategy as a readiness and learning journey, rather than a one-time return-to-office decision.

Johansen describes the future office as a flexible, shape-shifting environment where humans and computers work together as “super minds.” To lead in that context, CIOs need to develop specific skills, literacies, and mindsets. Three capabilities stand out: 1. **Clarity without certainty** In a VUCA world, leaders cannot be certain, but they must be clear. Johansen puts it this way: *“The future will reward clarity but punish certainty.”* For CIOs, this means: - Being clear about direction and desired outcomes. - Staying flexible about execution as conditions change. - Using “future back” thinking to find common ground and reduce polarization inside the organization. 2. **Full-spectrum thinking and dilemma flipping** Full-spectrum thinking is the ability to think across gradients of possibility instead of defaulting to simple labels or binary choices. This is critical when designing hybrid work models, digital experiences, and talent strategies. Johansen also emphasizes “dilemma flipping”: treating many leadership challenges as dilemmas that cannot be fully solved but can be improved. For C‑suite leaders: - Most issues around remote vs. in-office work, automation vs. human work, and cost vs. experience are dilemmas, not one-time problems. - Assuming you are dealing with a dilemma helps you design better, more adaptive responses. 3. **Readiness through practice, simulation, and gaming** Johansen frames the future as a readiness game: you cannot predict precisely, but you can practice. He points out that the risk of a pandemic was visible if you looked future back, but organizations were still unprepared. For CIOs, this suggests: - Using simulation, scenario planning, and even gaming to rehearse responses to disruption in low-risk environments. - Treating digital tools, AI, and immersive technologies as learning platforms, not just productivity tools. - Partnering with HR to evolve toward “human-computing resources,” where every HR leader is deeply digital and comfortable with gaming and simulation as core learning media. When these capabilities come together, the office becomes: - **Flexible:** able to shift structures, locations, and modes of collaboration as needed. - **Deeply digital:** where augmentation, AI, and data are embedded in everyday work. - **Human-centered:** using purpose, inclusion, and trust-building (especially in-person for onboarding and renewal) to make technology-enhanced work sustainable. CIOs who build these skills and mindsets are better positioned to reimagine their offices as environments where super minds—humans and computers together—can do work that neither could do alone.