Leaders and professionals know that our human compulsion to acquire and defend territory is little different from that of mockingbirds and finches defending their hedges. Robert Ardrey eloquently wrote about this in his foundational 1961 book, The Territorial Imperative. We've fought for larger offices for years and years. And then Covid happened, and we were all thrust out of our defended hedges to work from home.

In my workplace's most recent research project, completed last month, we set out to explore what this new world of work will look like regarding four important vectors, namely culture, workspace design, technology, and the pandemic itself.

One of the more interesting cross-vector insights was this rise of the "New Territorial Imperative"-- the shift of values in how hybrid workers feel about their "primary work territory."

Today, roughly a quarter of U.S workers work from home five days a week, with another third or so defined as hybrid workers who work from one to three days a week in a traditional office. The remaining 40 percent or so work four to five days a week in a traditional office. In the U.K, this number is skewed slightly toward work-from-home, as almost a third work from home full time and just over a third work from a traditional office four or five days a week, with the remaining third working in a hybrid model.