I would probably say that 95% of my creative problem solving type work happened in unstructured conversations like hallway conversations. A lot of value was definitely lost there.
Some of my best ideas that ended up being company changing started as a conversation walking to lunch with colleagues.
Initially these ideas were just undeveloped thoughts and I would never dream about booking a meeting to present them. Having a chance to develop them in a casual conversation might have been the difference between successfully building the thing and not doing it at all.
I love working from home but miss the unstructured collaboration.
> Initially these ideas were just undeveloped thoughts and I would never dream about booking a meeting to present them.
Your company doesn't have informal communications channels for this sort of thing? Team/Slack/whatever? In every place I've worked for the last 15-20 years (it was different before that), such informal "watercooler" talks have never happened in person, whether everyone was in the office or not. It was always over electronic communications.
The reason for this is that it's less disruptive to other productive work.
