Stop the madness for constant groupwork

Stop the madness for constant groupwork. Just stop it. And I want to be clear about what I’m saying: because I deeply believe our offices should be encouraging casual, chatty, cafe-style types of interactions. You know: the kind where people come together and serendipitously have an exchange of ideas. That is great. That is great for introverts and it’s great for extroverts. But we need much more privacy, much more freedom, much more autonomy at work.
School – same thing: we need to be teaching kids to work together, for sure. But we also need to be teaching them how to work on their own. This is especially important for extroverted children, too. They need to work on their own, because that is where deep thought comes from, in part.

Susan Cain, “The Power of Introverts”, TED (Long Beach, CA: 28 February 2012) [Video posted at http://youtu.be/c0KYU2j0TM4?t=16m47s on 2 March 2012].