Hello friends,
If you’ve ever wondered who actually thinks deeply about why offices feel the way they do, Corinne J. Murray is one of those people.
Corinne is a work futurist and workplace strategist based in Long Island, New York, with a career spanning WeWork, American Express, Gensler, CBRE and RXR. She is also co-author of ‘‘Work Then Place: Navigating Modern Work & Where it Happens’’, a newly released book she wrote alongside Sara Escobar that offers a practical framework for navigating workplace transformation. I caught up with Corinne around the time of the book launch, and the conversation that followed covered everything from the right amount of elevator friction to what a hybrid workforce actually means when AI agents are in the mix.
What stood out
Socializing deserves a seat at the table alongside the serious stuff : Corinne laid out a four-part framework for knowledge work: individual focus, synchronous collaboration, asynchronous collaboration, and socializing. Most organizations invest in the first three. The fourth tends to get dismissed as a nice-to-have.
“That socializing piece is the connective tissue that makes sure we are all moving in lock step with one another. Otherwise, you might have the same initiative running in four different parts of your organization because no one talked to one another.”
Good friction versus bad friction : One of the sharpest ideas in this episode. Corinne described a scenario where a slightly slow elevator meant two colleagues ended up in the lobby at the same time and went to lunch together. Design that elevator to arrive in five seconds every time and that conversation never happens. The real design challenge is knowing which friction to keep and which to strip out.
Offices are staying — their function is what evolves : Corinne was clear - offices are not going away. We are communal beings. But the case for coming in cannot rest on heads-down work that people do perfectly well from home. The office earns its place as the environment for connection, collaboration and the kind of serendipitous interaction that does not survive a calendar invite.
What Corinne actually learned at WeWork: She was quick to separate her experience there from the broader narrative. Her team used the headquarters as genuine lab space, testing how far people would go from their home base to access an amenity, what noise levels made open-plan one-on-ones feel safe, and how much density was too much. She called it a Goldilocks experimentation process. That framing stuck.
On AI and the workplace of 2028: Corinne and Sarah made a deliberate choice in the book: acknowledge AI as the instigator of transformation without trying to predict exactly where it lands. The bigger conversation, she said, is about the blended workforce of humans and AI agents, and the socioeconomic shifts around labor, compensation and social safety nets that nobody inside a single organization can control. Worth being aware of. Not something any one company can solve.
One thing I’ll keep thinking about
Corinne’s advice at the close of the episode was simple: think of change as a snowball. Start smaller than feels comfortable, stick with it, and build gradually. In a moment where most organizations are trying to do too much with too little, the instinct to transform overnight is exactly the wrong move.
One percent at a time. Exactly!
Enjoyed this episode? Pick up a copy of ‘Work Then Place: Navigating Modern Work & Where it Happens’ by Sara Escobar and Corinne Murray, subscribe to ‘Fika Friday at the Office’, and share it with someone who thinks socializing at work is a waste of time.
Connect with us here on LinkedIn
Corinne Murray : https://www.linkedin.com/in/corinnejmurray/
Ram Puranam : https://www.linkedin.com/in/puranamram/
Cheers
