We’ve all been to that one meeting that should have been an email. We’ve witnessed a shouting match over some detail that could’ve been worked out in mere minutes. We’ve had that big project stuck in the pipeline because of so much unknowable delay. Miscommunication is a pain in the bum, and for something so common in the workplace, it remains incredibly frustrating and hair-pulling simply because it shouldn’t be so difficult to talk in the first place.

I’ve been around the corporate block a few times, in a couple of different companies. That kind of experience comes with a certain misery when it comes to adapting to whatever internal chat tool a company decides to use. I’ve seen everything from serious enterprise-grade solutions that demand a fully locked-up laptop with TPM, to unsecured Viber group chats that had like a hundred people in them. It’d be great if everyone used the same thing, but the reality is that every company has its own needs and use cases.

The Information Age has allowed workforces to collaborate at a scale that’s never been seen in the workplace. Some actually describe it as a “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” a testament to the monumental productivity increase that was made possible by all this connectivity. It’s even shaped the way we look at the future of the workplace - in their report,The Future of Jobs, Switzerland-based World Economic Forum has asserted collaboration as one of the skills that students should have to prepare them for 21st-century success.

Workplace management is hard enough as it is in person. You attend to people, you oversee projects, you contact clients, you manage finances – this fact was true then and remains true now, perhaps made even more complex with the advent of digital advancements that have slowly become integral to our working lives. COVID-19 hasn’t been kind either, because truly, any and all office problems have been made a wee bit worse by the fact that we now have to live in and adjust to an arrangement largely unfamiliar to many in the labour force: Remote work.

The fictional Nine-Nine is a wild place, I think we can all agree on that, but if there’s anything brilliant to be said about Jake Peralta’s home base (other than the presence of the Great Gina Linetti, Human Form of the 100 Emoji), it’s that they have the makings of a great office and an even more amazing team. So even if the Nine-Nine doesn’t always get the award for best police precinct in New York, you can damn well be sure that it’s one of the best offices you could ever hope to work for and take inspiration from.

A long, long time ago, in an office far, far away, you heard about this magic juice called collaboration, and you realised you definitely want a sip. Unsurprising, considering how so much good in the world was brought to us by collaborators: Artistic endeavours, scientific developments, technological advancement – name any field, and you’ll find it’s had more than one breakthrough that’s the result of two or more people putting their heads together to figure stuff out.