Do You Need A Third Space

Monocle The Chiefs

Last week I was lucky enough to attend Monocle’s The Chiefs conference.

I’ve already summarised my learnings on LinkedIn but wanted to further explore the idea that InnHub La Pont aims to offer of a third space for people of all types to gain that much needed time and space for perspective.

You can read more about it here – they have Lord Norman Foster on board which is quite amazing in itself for a tiny village in the mountains.

This need for time and space, and learning from other people’s experiences, is so important for business in this moment.  We’ve stepped out of the tunnel vision of our 9 – 5 (HA) office existence and we’re staring down the barrel of a whole new way of working.

I won’t say new norm. No one needs that after today.

But I do think that we have an opportunity to really make the most of this period of change. I worked from Italy and St Moritz last week and it didn’t affect my ability to deliver for my clients but I did try and make the most of the event and switch off from the day to day noise of slack, email, Twitter, Whatsapp etc and really immerse myself in what I was hearing.

Now many of us work at home and live at home and we only see our colleagues on Zoom when we do get together it’s so important that we make the most of this time.

We deliver workshops for brands and businesses to help them create the clarity they need to plan or solve problems. We are able to deliver these workshops virtually thanks to tools like Mural but we like to try and meet IRL when we can.  This time together as a team to discuss ideas and drill down on strategy and priorities is even more important than ever.

If we can find this third space outside of home and office where we can switch off and focus we always see better results.  This is why we try to encourage clients to dedicate as much time as possible to a workshop with no devices or meetings to distract them.

We also suggest that we take the time somewhere interesting and inspiring. My current favourite location is Another Place a hotel in the Lake District. Stand up paddle boarding in the lake, gourmet food and mountains to scramble up never fail to inspire. Sound like something you need to take time for?