Monthly Archives: June 2009

Fuller ideas

June 20, 2009

Reviewing older links tonight, I came across this report on the Buckminster Fuller Challenge 2009 winners. It reminded me of a serendipitous event from my student days, and the realization that I have not yet caught up with the challenge presented then.

In 1970, one of my architecture professors at Washington University in St. Louis was Jim Fitzgibbon. Jim was a very interesting guy with a great outlook (his dream – to every morning be faced with a decision to build), and a former partner of Buckminster Fuller. Jim would periodically have these marvelous evening gatherings at his house, inviting a cluster of students and a professional guest or two to spend the evening chatting. His home was an urban St. Louis classic and a place where, as you glanced about, your eye would catch in corners, behind doors, somewhere on a shelf, these groupings of stones with faces that Jim and his wife, his mirror image, would paint and place.

Bucky came in a couple of times. He had been working on a concept for a dome-covered East St. Louis, across the Mississippi in Illinois, called Old Man River’s City. As many as 125,000 people would live in a crater-shaped city, terracing both inward and out and covered by a one mile diameter geodesic dome. (Note to self – research how it is that a very challenged city came to have leadership who would engage a visionary and see themselves in one of the most extraordinarily imagined cities of our time.)

We’d been prepped for a Bucky “conversation.” Jim had suggested that we all provision ourselves before we gathered for the discussion. I recall that there was one question asked, maybe about 8 o’clock, and about midnight people began filtering out as Bucky was still answering that first question.

As I look back on that simple event of almost 40 years ago, I feel a certain embarrassment – I was in a defining context for the profession, but I was imagining architecture as aesthetic form not as critical regionalism. Bucky went long that night talking about the competition for resources on the face of the earth, and offering ideas that would provide global balance, freedom from war and conflict, and global and local sustainability. I remember impressions of awe, and skepticism. I realize now, however, that the evening was a “shaping” event, where extraordinary consideration and thought about the way in which access to resources affects peace or causes war, and the way in which architects and planners affect that competition with every decision to build.

Walking around

June 19, 2009

Design strategy, urban

Google and GM – too big to innovate? Can the form of the workplace help?

June 18, 2009

Design strategy, Strategy design, workplace design

1 Comment

In a fascinating coincidence of attention today, the business press is mentioning GM and Google in the same breath. What’s the subject? – How to achieve the organizational agility that delivers innovation speed.

GM’s Fritz Henderson, quoted in the Automotive News and other places, suggests that both organizational simplicity and cultural transformation are on the agenda as essential components for its success in the “new GM.” Most of GM’s critics focus on the company’s product quality and innovation lag, so it is interesting to note this shift from the Bob Lutz “cars that people want to drive” to the Henderson “we need to be able to make decisions faster.” Inherent in the difference is, apparently, the assumption that good product ideas and potential for manufacturing quality exist there, but an organizational design hampers the ability to take it all to market.

“As part of the General Motors moving forward, you don’t normally think of us as speedy or fast, and that’s what we should be. But when you’re fast you do make mistakes. My view is if you’re slow you make more mistakes you just don’t notice it.”

Across a very wide gap in apparent organizational culture and success, is the fabled Google. Long the model of organizational agility and product innovation, the company is now afraid that its size, culture, and management style are impeding its speed and competitive differentiation. There apparently is a growing turnover at the company as the pace of product innovation hits management roadblocks and people leave to get into a faster, more agile, and committed environment, and one that delivers the satisfaction of success.

Mr. Knapp said Google managers offered him the chance to start the project within the company, but he declined. He worried he wouldn’t feel the same pressure to succeed. “If you’re really aggressive, you want that sink or swim environment,” he said.

The article on Google has some interesting indicators of certain factors for success. An emerging Google product getting a lot of attention these days is Google Wave. It was developed by an Australian team with a grant of talent and other resources and the option of isolating itself from the core, and mass, of Google operations. Some of the factors for success –

The ability to focus on the task
The benefits of energy and commitment that came from internal project promotion
Visibility to, and attention from, senior executive leadership
Control and ownership of the project

This subject attracted me today because only earlier this week, in another confluence of news, I read articles on tours of the the headquarters (hmmm..there’s another subject, for another time) of Microsoft, Google and Facebook. In each case, developers from other companies were at these headquarters to collaborate or to pitch product ideas. As I read through the tour notes and looked at photographs, I naturally thought about the influences of form, culture, organizational design, process design, place, speed, agility, innovation – and performance – on each other.

Being a form follows function guy, I also naturally believe also in the inverse. I also believe that for form to perform in service to function, function has to defined and expressed in the language of performance – what are we trying to achieve here and why, and what do we need to do to get there.

So, what might be some concepts shaping workplace form and organizational performance to review for their effectiveness by both Google and GM as they try to restore their individual leadership in the development and marketing of innovative, desirable and valluable products? Here are a few –

Openness – This is a well studied and understood component of innovation and creativity, but is not an absolute, and is not simple to achieve. A well-developed open environment also has volume, distance, acoustical and thermal tuning, and a hierarchy of formal language to provide the right working environment, visual orientation and comprehension of parts as components of the whole. Openness is an attribute contributing to speed – exposure to information, ease of response – but not executed well may also defeat speed – interruption, loss of focus, misunderstanding of role. While “openness” may be a factor in the merging value of “transparency” it should not mean “invisibility.”

Differentiation and identity – Orienting a team, developing focus, getting attention, understanding contributed value are all dependent, in part, on the visible and visual differentiation of the team and its work. As a member of a team, I have pride of place, focus on the task, clarity of purpose, and recognition in the organization. A key component for success is the comparative identity and differentiation of the team and its work. This is very hard to develop in a high rise and may, in any form of building, be defeated by “standards.”

Choice – The workplace is not “open” or “closed,” and is not “offices” or “cubes” or “conference room.” The entire lexicon of the workplace has to substantially change to achieve the right kind of envirnment to fit the DNA of the innovative organization. This type of work is dynamic. People working creatively and delivering innovation are constantly shifting tasks, roles, workmodes, place and schedule, and there is very little in a conventional workplace design that is supportive (much may be destructive) of this work. A key factor in having access to the right resources to perform well is to provide choice in the workplace environment, and this means a much richer set of alternative settings than implied in the conventional lexicon.

Comprehensibility – This is an important attribute of openness developed well. As I scan my eye across a place and can see the formal architecture of its organization and operation, its products and its processes, I can immediately “get” the organization and its purpose and values. If I am en employee, I know what to do and where to go; if I am a visitor, I may need no further presentation. There is much made in the study of creative environments of the art and artifacts of these places. I acknowledge and encourage this also as part of the expression of the organization, yet I fel that the best art and artifacts are in the visual display of the work – the processes and products and people – that makes the company different. Similar to “identity,” comprehensibility requires visual difference – understanding the pieces as parts of the whole.

Lightness – This may be a better way of expressing all of the above. The sense of agility and being free of barriers may be the most important single factor in organization performance. I think you can measure organizational lightness by light, which is both seeing and feeling daylight, and having the sense of airiness delivered by spatial volume. Being light also means being untethered, which means that equipment proliferation, wirelessness, and network access are essential components. And lightness means access as well, by which I mean freedom from the necessity to schedule a resource off the track of creative workflow.

Adaptability – Another factor of lightness, and an essential factor of agility and speed, is adaptability. The rapidly shifting workmodes of product deveopment processes are best enabled by an indivual’s or team’s ability to shape the environment to meet the needs of the moment. This is about the introduction of unconventional equipment and furniture resources into the workspace, and also about the reduction or elimination of physical infrastructure that carries the burden of cost and time in its modification.

Google’s openness has apparently cost it visibility. GM’s closedness has cost it focus. Interesting ironies, and indicators that it’s time for an workplace design tune-up.

© Jim Meredith, 2009

workplace, workplace design, organizational design, organizational performance, innovation, google, facebook, gm

People versus place, chicken or egg – how and whether to restore America’s “older and colder” cities

June 16, 2009

Design strategy, Detroit, Strategy design, urban

1 Comment

Related to my post yesterday on the repurpose agenda, I found a bit of give and take in the blogs today with Richard Florida at The Atlantic and Ed Glaeser at the New York Times. People versus place as the focus of restorative investment seems to be the subject; chicken or egg seems to be the challenge.

Ed Glaeser, a Harvard economics professor, writes in the Economix column of the New York Times that the bulldozing of shrinking cities would be a pretty good idea. I may agree with him, but there is something in his spirit, as well, that does not feel right. Glaeser recalls the history of settlement of the Midwest since the 1900′s and more specifically their emptying later in the century. He refers to the outmigration as a “move to sun and sprawl” as if climate and pavement were the choice. I seem to recall other motivators, like highly competitive tax breaks to corporations and strong anti-union cultures, being the catalyst for those who provided the jobs to move, causing those who needed the jobs to follow. This was not a climate seeking move but a political and economic one. Rather than arguing against benefits to the emptied cities of the North, Glaeser might want to try supporting some more sustainable incentives that might keep people where the infrastructure is, rather than building new infrastructure in the rural south where no demand existed before.

Richard Florida’s commentary on the subject of shrinking cities, and more specifically on the notion of bulldozing portions of some American cities, also carries some mixed spirit and a bit of false optimism. He agrees with Glaeser that a good policy is to encourage and enable mobility so that people can get to the places where they want to be. We are in a tremendous economic crisis right now because of financial manipulations that have devalued properties, cities, and personal nest eggs. Mobility is in most cases, I suspect, not a matter of education and talent, but of being stuck at the wrong place at the wrong time, having believed in the sustainability of corporations and the trust of financial institutions. To be in New York or California or Toronto and say to the General Motors worker in Michigan or Ohio, “c’mon, get a move on,” seems to suggest Florida’s agenda is to reinforce his migration data but make superficial his consideration of both current and historical underlying forces.

I appreciate booth Glaeser’s and Florida’s focus on people, but I am not ready to give that primacy over place. The “benign” or other neglect of shrinking cities no doubt makes less desirable places, reduces the social and economic diversity of a place, and reinforces both further outmigration and abandonment of infrastructure as well as otherwise unnecessary, consumptive, and perhaps overbuilding of new infrastructure in other places. That is, which is chicken, which is egg.

With them, however, I’d be very interested in exploring the potentials and benefits in forward-looking policies, practices and planning that would make Glaeser’s “older and colder” places more sustainable physically and, therefore, economically and socially supportive. I expect that encouraging growth by transplants to other places (moving Lake Michigan to Arizona?) may eventually generate shrinking cities in other places as mobility makes money nomadic.

The repurpose agenda – more on participation agreements

June 15, 2009

Strategy design, urban

5 Comments

: Photo : Getty via telegraph.co.uk

Rob Walker’s article in the New York Times Magazine today (the Infrastructure issue, also called the Architecture issue other places in the Times) on the glut of retail properties in the country was a good reminder to get back to part two of a post I’d begun earlier.

The catalyst of that earlier thinking was reading about a concept of “participation agreements” that evoked a sense of community sustainability. The source was GM’s announcement that it was going to require participation agreements of its dealers in the “new GM.” They were intended to address matters of business, but also upgrades to the quality of the dealer properties and facilities. I thought that was a good idea, not only for GM and the communities of its dealers, but for communities in general. My earlier post was on the dealership in the community. But let’s expand the concept.

The idea that anybody with property, in any community that cares, might become bound by a commitment to its originally expressed ownership and development intentions seems like a great concept for durable quality and development sustainability. The implications of the content of those agreements, their methods of enforcement, potential resources for support, and other inherent factors seems to suggest a method to commit to long term care of property and development and to build new only with well examined need and considered intention.

I expect that almost anybody reading this lives in a city where retail development has come to almost dominate the landscape. The overbuilding, resulting in a glut of vacant or abandoned properties is, as he notes, both a factor of a down economy as well as a robust one. Retailers in good times expanded operations leaving behind the buildings and communities that were in the last path of expansion. In this economy, they are leaving even those behind, with vacancies from Madison Avenue to the Mall of America.

We are still learning the lessons from the financial crisis and are seeking regulatory response to a system that had gone out of control. As our cities now bear the compounding burden of excess real estate development – the costs and other impacts go well beyond the storefront – what might be appropriate responses to the emerging lessons to the retail bubble? Here is some speculation – 15 emerging concepts to test to avoid further over-retailing of our communities.

1 Participation agreements Communities are complex ecosystems where the quality, character and development of the physical environment also affects the social, financial, and infrastructural health of the community. Shouldn’t there be more asked of those who come to do business with the members of that community? Could communities become strong enough to be able to ask for sustainability commitments as part of a retailer’s “participation” in the system of the community?

2 Certificates of need I pointed to this concept from health care in an earlier post seeking solutions in a similar way in the housing domain. Health care in many states is controlled by a mechanism that requires hospitals to prove the demand for new facilities and equipment before being granted permission to build. Could a more rigorous examination of need be developed by communities to require retailers to demonstrate a differential, durable and sustainable market there before granting the building permit? How could diversity and choice be assured in a system like this?

3 Exit taxes Do I recall that certain states have the right to assess a penalty against corporations leaving a state and causing a resultant unemployment? Is there applicability to retail and other uses? Could communities levy a “tax” on retailers who exit the community and leave behind a property that has no new tenant? Note in Rob Walker’s article that some retailers have contract conditions denying the ability of competing retailers to occupy abandoned stores.

4 Exit strategies Exit strategies are typically weak studies intended to project the costs of leaving a community for a corporation, or the marketability of a property for different users by a developer. They are intended to inform the initial decision to build and the character of what is built. Is there a way to develop a more rigorous discipline of the costs and burdens of exit that might generate more easily recycled properties?

5 Regional trades In a recent competition to become the home of the headquarters for the New GM between Detroit, its current home, and one of its suburbs, someone suggested a trade – You can have GM if Detroit gets another corporation from the county to fill the GM headquarters. Sort of a regional zero sum game, but interesting in the implications for the avoidance of excess real estate. Would this also tend to reduce the tendency of communities to preyon each other with incentives attracting a business to the detriment of the neighboring community?

6 Zoning standards Planned Unit Developments are a means to enter into a contract for the quality and character of a development. Typically the PUD takes a broader and more creative view of property development than otherwise granted by the underlying zoning. Could this device be expanded, and could an even broader context for consideration – the entire community – come into play? Could a better balance be achieved by this means rather than the softness and ambiguity of the master plan on the community scale and the zoning regulations on a property scale?

7 Sustainability banks Sustainability is growing as a community value and it seems that both the origins as well as the ends of building could become more critically reviewed. What about the idea that some portion of the taxes paid by retailers is retained to develop a bank that could provide resources and act in creative ways to assure rapid repurposing of retail properties if a retailer were to move? Perhaps a little less of a disincentive than an exit tax?

8 Integrated financial and real estate databases I get a sense that much of what happens in real estate and finance, while perhaps ultimately linked in syndication devices, happens as if in separate worlds. Would a system that provided an integrated analysis of a community so that leasing and building decisions became essentially district, neighborhood or community based, would there be less of a tendency to move up the street to build the next big box?

9 Reverse mitigation In some places, if you built in an area where there was a wetland, you’d have to find another property and build a new wetland of larger scale to mitigate the environmental impact of your development. Could there be a similar policy applied to the built environment, perhaps in reverse? To build a new store, you would have to first make sure that the old store had sustainable tenancy.

10 Loose fit versus tailored In most of my work, we have sought to assure a developer or tenant that the floorplate of the building we were proposing would yield a high level of usable area compared to the gross area of the building. This meant making sure that construction materials, systems and furniture standards were all considered and impose planning measurements and metrics on the new property tailored to that tenant’s utilization efficiency goals. Of course, we also then were part of alternative property evaluations for others and recommending against buildings designed as tailored fits for others but just not the right fit for our client. Is there a way to assure adaptability and flexibility without sacrificing efficiency and embedding years of cost on a tenant?

11 Volume Maybe it’s time to rethink spatial paradigms. In most of the site searches i have been part of, in which the client is interested in exploring building reuse, the properties that rise to the top are those with high volume, like many retail, industrial and warehouse properties. While this is good news for retail property reuse, what about the growing obsolescence of office properties? Should we get away from the 8-foot ceiling? Would higher volumes everywhere assure greater potentials in reuse? Are high volume properties more

12 Site search parameters Clients in interested in LEED certification have a small incentive to consider existing properties for reuse before developing new properties. What if communities, as part of the permitting process required retailers to develop a report and assess the potentials of reuse? This could cause increased awareness on the part of retailers, assure certain due diligence by their real estate brokers, and perhaps even cause some creativity and imagination to enter the process earlier.

13 Utilization metrics Corporations are waking up to the fact, given new utilization measurement tools, that their office real estate is characteristically occupied less than 60% of the work day. This is leading to increased agility and mobility solutions and leading to an entirely new kind of workplace. I can begin to imagine similar metrics generated for retail that might influence perceptions about the amount of space demanded by current planning standards.

14 District planning Urban district councils provide a coordination of planning, but mostly on a promotional basis. Most of the location decisions that retailers make are still on the basis of individual properties. Is there a way to assure a district-wide consideration and balance in every location decision? Is there a way to bundle, for example, a retailer’s location decision with a corporation’s and a residential developer’s so that planning, and sustainability, move outside of a single property transaction?

15 Zoning business plans How many community master plans and zoning (an antique concept when you seek urban textural and use diversity?) ordinances have business plans integrated with them? Is there a way to bring scenario planning into the planning process more effectively to assure that changing future contexts have responses in planing policy and regulation to assure community sustainability?

I guess the common ingredient in these concepts is the attempt to find a self reinforcement mechanism to reduce the mobility of retailers and the demand for new space fueled by artificial financial instruments rather than a long view of sustainability in all of its factors.

The day after The New York Times article on retail overbuilding, there was this article in the Telegraph of London (with hundreds of comments) on the demolition of American cities due to general overbuilding. Seems like a global discussion is emerging.

I’d be happy to have your own ideas and comments.

Form, function, use, and choice

June 11, 2009

Design strategy, Strategy design

1 Comment

I am continuously fascinated by my random and serendipitous reading of articles that appear as “discussions” taking place in the almost simultaneous, but usually independent, publication of commentaries on a common subject. The reduction in the differential design of objects, traditionally or conventionally visually expressive of their function and methods of use, seems to be a growing concern not only for consumers, but for designers as well.

Alice Rawthorn in the Design column of the New York Times wrote recently about “The Demise of ‘Form Follows Function.’” She expresses a concern about problems of operation, that objects no longer carry visual formal clues to guide the user in how to use them. She cites the iPod Shuffle, which takes on the form of a sophisticated decorative clothing clip and signals nothing of its function as a music device. She points to the progressive miniaturization of technology as a source of the divorce of form and function. “The appearance of most digital objects,” she says, “bear no relation to what they do.”

Tom Dair seems to be agreeing in some way with Alice, but also offers a way to understand their function. He implies that in digital devices, the only real formgiver is the circuit board, and concludes that the “expression of function no longer resides in these forms but in the way we use them.” In his Fast Company column, “Form Follows Function, Right? Not So Fast,” he suggests that the form of function is actually external to the product itself – it is the gesture of the user that illuminates the purpose of the otherwise anonymous device.

This function and feature anonymity seems also to be a significant irritant for Matt Buchanan over at Gizmodo. His concern, however, is not so much about understanding usability but the perceptions form bestows on ownership. In reviewing the recent releases from Apple, he observes that “When Pro doesn’t mean Pro anymore” there is a democratization of design with a corresponding loss of social meaning. The designation “pro” had until now represented a differentiation of content also signaled by a differentiation in case. When one model of iPhone looks exactly like another, or one model of a MacBook no longer carryies a distinctive mark of its more expensive content, then the status the product bestows on the user – the “affectation of elitism” – is lost and also, perhaps, the status of the object.

Ryan Jacoby in his blog, do_matic, asks his colleague, “Hey Colin: Is it the end of “Good Better Best?” I think his concern is about loss of choice. He does not express a concern about the form associated with qualities or features, but questions the loss of underlying concepts of margin and perceptions of choice – a marketer’s challenge more than a customer’s perception, apparently. He does, however, reference Starbucks dual price structure and its duelling messages of both less expensive than you thought, and worth the price.

In response, Colin Raney in his C-Notes blog challenges the sustainability of the concept of “laddering” of offerings and says, “Hey Ryan: I am so over GoodBetterBest.” Criticizing the PC industry as the worst of the bunch in confusing its customers over content, he observes, like Buchanan, that computer models look the same but act differently. His issue is not the status that differentiation affords, but the perception of value in use. He offers a bit of a solution – the context consumption provides the context for design differentiating around experience.

Swirling in the midst of all this is reference to Barry Schwartz. Without specifically referencing form, it seems that much of what he cites aligns with issues of confusion and disorientation in undifferentiated abundance. In his book, The Paradox of Choice, he implies that too many options cause unhappiness. Rather than considering the opportunities in choice, we consider the missed opportunities in making the wrong choice.

In this discussion, the words of Devo, in their song “Freedom of Choice” come to mind –

In ancient Rome
There was a poem
About a dog
Who found two bones
He picked at one
He licked the other
He went in circles
He dropped dead

Freedom of choice
Is what you got
Freedom from choice
Is what you want

news, design, strategy, form, function, UI, user, user experience, user interface

GM’s participation agreements could have great power beyond the dealerships

June 3, 2009

Design strategy, Detroit, Strategy design

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I was stopped today by a news article that suggested that GM would require its surviving dealerships to sign "participation agreements" governing the quality and character of their stores. The concept is provocative on a number of fronts, including other businesses and even communities.

These agreements seem possible when conditions of demand are present, but totally surprising in times of desperation. I assume, however, that the active ingredient in the mix here is that of government intervention, but in a catalytic sense. Indeed, in much of the commentary of opposition to the bailout, who would have expected that the company receiving the funds would put restrictive policies in place for the next level beneficiaries of the funds, rather than the lender, itself.

I thought I’d explore the idea from a couple of viewpoints. Once, certainly, within the industry itself, with the belief that the concept of participation agreements could be beneficial and influential well beeyond the scope of the dealership itself. This also then evokes another viewpoint, about how communities could use participation agreements for their own sustainability and could be a great device especially in areas hard hit by the mortgage crisis.

Here’s a beginning, on the potential influence of the company through its dealers.

"Participation agreements" have emerged as a term of business for the continuity and sustainability of GM dealerships in the "new GM." Apparently intended as a tactic to get dealerships to pay attention to the quality of their facilities, it will require sanctioned upgrades and other improvements as part of the dealership franchise when GM emerges from bankruptcy.

We have not yet seen what is or will be in these agreements, but the potential power and influence of the concept seem so great that I thought I’d make a couple of suggestions to extend their terms beyond where I expect GM currently is. At the core of my musings are two considerations.

First, the "new GM" should begin to emerge with new values. The government has already signaled that it believes that the future of the industry, whether by market demand or corporate integrity, has got to be with new technologies and new propulsion systems delivering new levels of fuel efficiency and vehicle performance. Responsibility and sustainability should become mainstream business values and, I hope, defining characteristics of the new company’s products and services.

Second, although the dealer may be an important part of his community, the dealership is, for the most part, a blight. GM, as other manufacturers, use "image" programs to incentivize dealers to periodically update their properties through facade and signage improvements. But these are not intended to be transformational and seem instead to perpetuate a minimum and short-lived response.

I think that the success of the new GM will be in the consistency and authenticity of its "values" message – that is, not price but purpose. Environmental responsibility in product design and technologies, as it becomes a core value of the company, should not stop at the gas cap or the tail pipe. There is a very broad spectrum of responses that the company can make throughout its portfolio of properties, and the dealership can be a key representative communicator of these values.

There have been a number of technologies and tools developed and presented to dealers over the past few years to make their operations more efficient and help them achieve LEED certification. These, however, accept much of the status quo of the business model, and seek only to address certain components of facilities and sites. There’s a lot more room for improvement.

I’d suggest to GM that there is great interest in its survival and success, and that good will puts what many think of as a weak company into a position of significant influence. GM should not squander the opportunity to leverage its own intentions in combination with this good will, and use sustainability principles to bring a transformed image and transformational role to the communities where it does business.

"Participation agreements" should be a culmination of research into best practices in every aspect of operations, planning and design. Here’s a beginning set of suggested terms and considerations. Let me now your ideas.

Streamline the supply chain – Assuming that the reorganization brought by bankruptcy does a good job of rebalancing demand production and supply, there should be a reduced need for massive paved inventory lots and a better just-in-time delivery system for new vehicles. Dealerships have been zoned to the perimeters of our towns, and are otherwise not integrated with our communities because of the size of these lots and their visual dissonance, light pollution, and other disharmonious characteristics.

Consider eliminating the lot – Research shows that most car buyers are actively avoiding the dealership until the last minute. At the beginning of new car consideration, almost all consumer research and selection is done over the internet. It is not until the last few days, when the choice has been narrowed to two choices, or one with options, that the consumer goes to the dealership to make a final selection and do the deal. Consider reducing the construction, maintenance and environmental cost of the lot. Instead, invest in a well-designed showroom where representative selection, and technology-enabled options illustrations might do as well as the lot to attract and inform the consumer, and might even reverse the consumer’s "threshold resistance." Eliminating the lot could also enable the dealership to be located in some of the other vacant retail real estate in our downtowns and malls, and gaining the benefitss of integration and alignment with other retail operations.

Design for durability – Image programs are generated with almost the same frequency as car models. The more that they have become style, so they have lost substance. A dealership is now a box with a clip-on facade composed of a "portal" and some signage. In other countries and cultures, the auto company is seen as an extension of the society’s values, and the dealership as the place where those values become expressed. The architectural expression of a dealership should align with GM’s emerging technical and environmental values, and its appreciation for the contribution of its communities to its survival. As "planned obsolescence" dies as a product concept, it should not be part of a dealership image program.

Plan collaboratively– The owners of dealerships have long been considered community assets. The duration of their businesses, the relationships with customers, the sponsorship of the little league, and other engagements are valued in many communities. As GM now moves to a profile of environmental responsibility, and also imposes conditions of quality on dealership facilities, it might also consider the collaborative synergy it could have with a community that wants the dealership. That is, why not, to advance the values of the new GM and demonstrate care and concern for the community health and well-being, ask the community to develop and enforce standards for other properties in the community. If GM is wanted in a community, it should not look for concessions but instead seek to inform and influence in ways that will increase the value and quality of all properties there.

Separate sales and service – I have the sense that an individual focus on each of these might generate efficiency and effectiveness not achievable in the combination. If service becomes services, and is separated from sales, the entire priority of information, engagement, entertainment, and responsiveness gets attention. The overlay of the Goodwrench brand, has in any case, liberated service from brand. That is, if Goodwrench (again, not sure about that wrench part) is the brand for service that is already not differentiated for Cadillac or Chevrolet, then why not have my car services in the place where all GM brands are serviced? And if separated from the retail sales operations, the dealership could be liberated to occupy or develop in places in our communities that are more integrated.

There are a couple of other great opportunities that emerge in these reconfigurations, as well. GM might consider these, too –

Turn "service" into "services" – I think the dealership is inside out, even in the best of cases. That is, the dealership invests in a momentary event, the sale, but does little for the relationship, the years of service I need for my vehicle. Oh, in some cases the dealership has brought in coffee shops, Internet services and other distractors to cool my heels when I am in for service, but these are in the showroom as an attraction to browse for something new, not as a real consideration for me as a relationship. If "service" were part of a concept called "services," the entry for me in my car would not be at the backside of the dealership, might not be branded with the concept of a wrench, and might engage me as an extension of attributes derived from the car rather than from downtown.

Turn "accessories" into "apps"– In the quest for additional revenue, dealerships have turned to brand-focused merchandise – logo-bearing clothing, accessories, etc., to extend the brand influence. One of the best performers in this regard seems to be Apple. I am surprised with how the initial equipment purchase I make for an iPod or iPhone can be a fraction of the value of the content I eventually load on to it. The notion of 10,000 99-cent songs on a $300 iPod, or a continuously refreshed plethora of "apps" on my iPhone gives lie to the old automotive formula of planned obsolescence. The idea that I could buy a spare, but very cool platform, and then customize to my interests, cladding it with personality and individuality is a provocative notion for an industry that for years have promised the pleasures of mass customization and but never delivered it. The promise for the dealership, of course, is that it becomes the "app store" and, I expect, there’s a lot more to be made in a piece of vehicle or technology customization than there is in a jacket with a GMC logo on it.

So this is a draft of some emerging considerations about the influence GM might have on the quality and character of our communities, as well as the sustainability of its own dealerships, through "participation agreements." How else might these work for the benefit of the industry and our communities?

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Corporate leadership – form follows function

June 1, 2009

Strategy design

—archizoo

The blog of MEREDITH Strategy & Design

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Fuller ideas

Walking around

Google and GM – too big to innovate? Can the form of the workplace help?

People versus place, chicken or egg – how and whether to restore America’s “older and colder” cities

The repurpose agenda – more on participation agreements

Form, function, use, and choice

GM’s participation agreements could have great power beyond the dealerships

Corporate leadership – form follows function

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