Tag Archives: Design strategy

Lego Flying Car by katimar via flickr.com

There has been a lot of conversation in recent days about the form of the office and how to design it for those who work in it. This is enormously interesting to me because this conversation, like many others in culture, politics and business, is an exciting signal of the search for real innovation and of a desire for a revolution in the way we provide the places and spaces where we do the things we do.

Argument and revolution

The “conversation” that I reference is the point and counterpoint in recent debates about which way is best – the old comfortable way or a recent newly proposed and tested way. A round of confirming and contradicting commentary was recently evoked by Susan Cain’s article in the New York Times. While trying to make a case for consideration of the closeting needs of introverts, she broadly bashed the new, open workplace as a product of “groupthink” in its pejorative connotation. Using the same term in almost the same week, Jonah Lehrer referenced the incredible volume of creative product emerging from the famous Building 20 at MIT, “one of the most creative environments of all time,” generally credited to the informal interactions happening between people of different backgrounds and interests. And Alison Arlieff weighed in with the groupthink that collaborative spaces aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Closed office vs. open office.

The “revolution” that I reference is my belief that a third form with a new language will emerge. This third form will have immediate credibility in the forehead-slapping “of course” mode and will make both of the currently debated forms artifacts in a rapidly receding history.

Getting out of groupthink – New forms will be generated from a new lexicon

I propose that the current arguments are nostalgic and a bit arrogant. They are arguments of an estate that recognizes it has lost its case but does not yet know where to turn. And they are arguments of a self-appointed enlightened who believe that the right way is the way they proposed to counter the old way but is now being uncovered as having had insufficient rigor, and that now has piles of data bias making a great case against it.

I think that the core issue we are now confronting arises from the loss of meaning of familiar terms like “office” and “workplace” and, even, “work.” “Office” is a term left over in the slow evolution from industrialization and carried the implications of production and supervision in its form. Attendance, for example, was a key characteristic of its managerial mode. “Workplace” implied a single setting, the place where work was done, the place that was separate from the other stuff we did, the place that was defined by time, location and character. “Work” was something separate from “life” and disregarded the reality that, even in the old mold, one defined the quality of the other.

In almost every meaningful, productive, and rewarding context now, these terms are antique.

“Work” certainly has changed dramatically from the dreary and dreaded stuff we did for “the man.” Most of what we call work, the valuable stuff, is creative in some form. Most of what we do is self-defined or collaboratively determined with a team oriented to a goal that is more frequently something defined by them and not by a manager.

There is no single “workplace” any more because we do what we do in multiple physical settings and multiple virtual settings, as well. Time, also, is no longer a limiter in what we do. We carry huge amounts of information on tiny devices everywhere we go, and we connect with our networks anywhere we are. In an odd inversion, we may find solitude and focus sitting with our headphones on in a public cafe and, when we are ready for socializing our ideas and learning from others, we go to the office.

The office best serves as a place for connecting with a network of knowledge and resources to get purposeful stuff done. The productive social buzz and innovative activity that now takes place there is called “distraction” and blamed on an “open” office by those who claim a value of “focus” to name whatever it is that they do behind their six-foot tall cubicle walls. They are missing the reality that entitled square footage for playing computerized solitaire never had, and now certainly no longer has, value. They miss that the work that is valuable is not the consumption of time but the generation of new ideas and approaches with a team of other highly motivated people. Those people, when they need focus, find a place for focus. Otherwise, the buzz of collaborative activity is the visible manifestation of the generation of value for the world.

Pursuing opportunities

Arguing about which of the existing ways of designing a workplace is wasteful. It is a form of the groupthink that the debaters debate. Work is no longer done in one place, and the office is no longer one thing.

Reflecting on what we do, and how we really do it, and then generating, testing and developing new environments for the activities and behaviors of work is productive and valuable.

As Kevin Kelly says, “Don’t solve problems; pursue opportunities.”

The office as an App, redux

February 4, 2012

architecture, Design strategy, Houses, innovation, social design, Strategy design, sustainability, workplace design

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use case study house via davidgalbraith.org

David Galbraith offers an interesting vision for the transformation of thinking about and designing houses. My interest is less in the specifics of his design, but more in the consideration of this approach to almost any space where we live or work.

We continuously accept a lexicon of form – “living room,” “dining room,” “office” – that no longer appropriately serves the way that we live. We accept these forms and functions because they may be the only choices the market makes available to us, or because of social norms that we feel we cannot challenge or do not know how to challenge, or because they are imposed upon us by another authority.

Considering how what we do would be expressed in a web app offers a context for insights into how work and life could flow better and satisfy more.

The web apps we select to download or use are those that are well designed both in visual and functional character. We appreciate mostly those that are agile in character, that reduce complexity, that are light in system demands, that have a simple logic at points of decision, that flow well. We appreciate those that provide, when we want or need it, a link to augmenting or amplifying information or features. We choose the ones we like because of the quality of the experiences we have with them, which are mostly engaging and efficient.

I don’t recall that we’ve had a client who has approached us with an initial and core request to provide a better experience. Most typically, the language that accompanies the commission is an oblique goal metric like reduced square feet per person that occludes the real goal of the organization to become more engaging for the people who do its work and more effective in achieving its purpose.

Many of the tools and techniques our profession has attempted to use to move our client’s language into experiential considerations work only where experience is the business – in retail and hospitality contexts, for example. Clients in corporate, scientific, or institutional domains typically squirm at the imprecision of an experiential parameter.

Why do people who carefully choose and use web apps use an entirely different language and criteria when commissioning the places and spaces where they live and work? Why is more thinking and emotion invested in an app that costs next to nothing, but nothing of similar critical thinking applied to the experiences in the spaces that cost millions? Could the use of the Web App metaphor be a more effective tool in transforming thinking, perceptions and investments?

Ghost innovation

January 10, 2012

architecture, Design strategy, innovation, social design, Strategy design, workplace design

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Ghost innovation

This is part of a map plotting various planned but unbuilt subway lines in New York City. Reading it unveils an understanding of past strategies, plans, and objectives that became abandoned due to budget constraints, maintenance priorities and other demands that diverted and then buried the vision. Reading it inspires an imagination of the world that could have been, of a society that might have developed differently, of connections that might have had value but were lost through an inability to efficiently and effectively connect.

Stranded innovation

It reminded me of a recent client, a major consumer products manufacturer and marketer who held what they called a “stranded innovation fair.” It was their belief that, regardless of the circumstances for the loss of attention to or development of these innovations with our application, they might have real value in other contexts, times, combinations or applications. The more that people in the company were aware of these ghost innovations and technologies, the greater would be the potential of their eventual application and productivity.

Hidden talent

In a similar context, some companies are experimenting with rich profiles of the people in their organizations and utilizing certain social media applications to promote those profiles to others in the enterprise. There are people in most organizations with valuable skills and capabilities that are overlooked in the usual day-to-day of operations, or who may have some special skill buried deeper in a resume and unexploited in their current job description or project assignments. By circulating those profiles or using other means to communicate them, these organizations are better able to match the right people with the right projects, achieve goals more efficiently, and gain competitive advantage through otherwise overlooked internal skills and talents.

How can the design of the workspace contribute?

Imagine the potential that lies inside of an organization that is for many reasons consistently overlooked. More interestingly, imagine the power of an organization that has the insight to look back, or look deeper, or promote ghost innovations differently.

Technology may be the more powerful tool for uncovering and developing ghost innovation, but imagine the potential of a more social workplace, as well. How much of knowledge and potential, of skills and innovations, are lost each day due to the inability of people to connect efficiently, to observe others, to understand weak signals, to join a conversation with others.

In their book on the organization and architecture of innovation, Allen and Henn point to the power of work spaces designed in way to support our awareness of others and to increase the potential for our connections with each other.

We think this is the defining challenge for our time.

How can the design of the workspace contribute?

Think big – Grand visions are connected visions. They illustrate for others a path to future development and value, and tend to garner greater support. Even if the final accomplishment falls short, the grand vision leaves “remnants of foresight” that provide others a way to interpret and extend intentions and uncover latent value at the appropriate times.

Redesign the organization before redesigning the workspace – The traditional lexicon of the corporation – organizational charts and individual job descriptions – do not describe the way that work is really done today. If you believe that teamwork and collaboration are the key to higher organizational performance (and they are) then design the organization around those attributes. That redesign will generate a new lexicon of organizational form that the planners and designers of the workspace can leverage for high performance through great work experiences.

Make visible the artifacts and activities of network connections and collaboration – As with the organization, the workspace has to speak to teamwork if collaborative cultures are to flourish. The traditional lexicon of the workspace, like that of org charts and job descriptions, perpetuates forms that are about individuals and managerial controls. The creative workspace is an open and networked space, where team activity and process flows are visible, and adaptable and agile to the dynamics of projects.

If there is any single rule that guides our work for organizations seeking enhanced performance and higher levels of innovation, it is this – Make it visible.

Things we’ve noticed

January 7, 2012

architecture, Design strategy, Strategy design, workplace design

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How. And why. Not what.

This is a very nice piece on enjoying the “how” and “why” in the process of answering a challenging question rather than rushing to the “what,” the answer.

The process of answering a question should be a voyage of discovery, a journey during which you learn something, and one where you enjoy yourself in the process.

The essay made me think about the invisible processes in business, and also how the places of businesses are not designed around the how and why. If the design and planning of workspaces made clearer the purposes of the enterprise, and if the processes people and teams used to get to the what were more transparent and observable, would an organization learn more, create more valuable knowledge, and achieve more?

What innovators share

Somewhat related to the above is this review in the Ottawa Business Journal of a recent book on the “innovator’s DNA.” The review reflects on the power of “the five whys” while also noting the five distinguishing characteristics of successful innovators.

associating, observing, questioning, experimenting and networking

We’d found our way this week, in the midst of our own annual strategic planning, to a discussion about the uniqueness of the places and spaces where innovation seems most successful. As I carry the images of those spaces, I’m making a resolution to shape our design mission – our client’s “program” or “design brief” for their corporate workspace – into a form that links workspace concepts to these 5 attributes.

That is, since most of our clients are engaged in a search for how to generate and support a more entrepreneurial culture, I intend to test a change of the lexicon of workplace design from conventional descriptors of corporate organization and function (“accounting”) and conventional workplace form (“conference room”) to new terms reflecting these innovation behavior attributes.

I expect that radical transformations in design processes and concepts will emerge.

Augmented reality

There are many things to enjoy and reflect on in this proposal of trends for 2012 from the Smithsonian here and here.

I expect I’ll come back to the list for further exploration and comment, since I stopped almost immediately at the first subject, augmented reality.

In a recent project, we found transformative approaches to design through our slogan of “augment, amplify, activate.” A client had a new workspace designed by others, but then found it experientially flat. It satisfied the organizations, functions and facility metrics of the enterprise, but did nothing to change their culture and performance, which was the purpose of the project in the first place. Our slogan was a motivator to the occupiers and the designers to explore conceptual modifications to support behavioral change and development.

This sense of “augmentation” seems like a rich territory for exploration in design. A while back I had speculated on “the autoupdating workspace.” And more recently, a colleague raised a question about augmented reality which made me think in entirely different terms about the “productivity” of both the principal artifact of our service, digital “drawings,” and the activities that take place in the spaces and places we design. I’ve become increasingly interested in how to build layers on top of our digital design information and capture digital information from the physical spaces we design.

The Race Against the Machine

Related to the above, I’ve just finished reading Race Against the Machine, and am now both tremendously excited as well as terribly frightened.

The motivation for me is to begin to imagine the role of the workspace in assuring the race with the machine. Finding a strengthening signal in the requests we are getting from clients, there is an accelerating realization that space supports enterprise sustainability, but this is increasingly tied to the changes in the way we work together because of the extraordinary acceleration of technology.

We are now attracted to, and attractive to, clients whose enterprise is shaped around technologies that, yes, automate creativity. These enterprises are now, or soon will be, seeking spatial solutions well beyond the most advanced corporate real estate solutions.

The Singularity

And, of course, this.

Focus groups

I am not sure about this, but can’t stop thinking about it. That is, is Facebook a relevant a valuable data source for workspace design? It seems so logical to “crowdsource” criteria and concepts for a satisfying and uniquely productive work environment…how do we best do it?

…and, in case you were wondering

Why humans have chins

Makers of virtual meeting spaces make them in face-to-face space

November 21, 2011

architecture, Design strategy, Strategy design, workplace design

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Photo by Citrix via Adam Richardson

Perhaps relevant to our last post is this delightful interview by Adam Richardson that I found in a guest blog at the Harvard Business Review. Citrix, the makers of GoToMeeting, have a new collaboration space where the leading work in their innovation process is done. It is fascinating how the makers of virtual work spaces develop their process in carefully considered face-to-face space.

It is not a “crappy” space, and this is how they describe its benefits:

Opening the design collaboration space was a big milestone on our design thinking journey. It’s already played a key role in fostering a more collaborative culture that involves less over-the-wall processes, fewer silos, more and earlier collaboration, and better integration of design into the product development process.

We needed to create a shift in behaviors, and realized this would be best achieved by having people live the change, not just being told about it. The space facilitates this.

Perhaps most significantly, it seems to lie at that upper quadrant of my not-yet-finished diagram in our last post. That upper quadrant is where I speculate that “signature” form but “occupy the workplace” space can generate high performance and engagement.

The interior design is quite minimal. The “beauty” of the space comes from the work that happens inside it: sketches, flow charts, Post-Its full of blue-sky ideas, new product concepts from raw idea to real formation. The space was intentionally left not-too-perfect, so people are encouraged to manipulate it, not be precious about it. It’s intended to serve as a canvas for creative thinking. It’s also very flexible and can quickly change from working studio to lecture room.

It seems also to fit some speculation we were developing about “auto-updating” space.

Like all good design, iteration is part of the process. We have discovered that we do need a better system for engaging remote participants and better ways for capturing brainstorming and meeting notes in real time, so that others can see them later. This is something we are investigating for our next “release” in 2012.

Richardson’s interview is packed with information. I found at least 10 principles for a workplace designed for innovation –

Align the design with your mission – with the “why” and not just the “what” of your business
Relevance to all disciplines supports multidisciplinary work better
Recognize that space shapes the behaviors you want
Your space is an indicator of the authenticity of your purpose
Agile and adaptable space is more valuable than CRE-regulated space
Anytime space supports creativity better than assigned and scheduled space
Casual space supports sharing and trust better
Authentic space recruits
Learn from others and engage users on your design team
Good design strategy reinforces good strategy design

Let me know your thoughts on the article, and your own experience.

Why the “office” no longer matters

August 25, 2011

Design strategy, Strategy design, workplace design

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photo via WLCAdultGrad on flickr.com

Metropolis mag had this article today on Going Paperless in med schools. The Yale School of Medicine is giving each of its student an iPad to use in classroom and clinic. They will simultaneously eliminate all paper materials, which have burdened the institution with cost of more than $100,000 per year.

The article reflected on the potential impact on the traditional image of the bookbag toting student. I think the real impact of moves like this will not, however, be on the campus but on the workplace.

After huge numbers of university students spend the next couple of years without paper class materials, they will emerge into and finally fully transform the workplace. Their methods of working, communicating, collaborating and achieving will mean that they will approach the conventional workspace with a look of critical curiosity, wondering what this strange construct called the “modern” office is all about.

What I find especially significant here is that every day major investments are being made by corporations and institutions in workspaces that are losing value at an increasing rate. Designed for individuals processing paperwork, they are already irrelevant to how work is done today.

Those misplaced investments remove employees from access to the resources that really matter, and rob the people who work there of potential to grow their capabilities and contribute greater value to the purpose and achievements of their organizations.

It is shocking that corporate leaders do not recognize and kill this waste, especially in an economy that needs sustainable resource utilization.

It is shocking that everything about work has changed but very little of the workplace has.

How can criteria for ranking the world’s 10 most livable cities inform other places?

July 27, 2011

architecture, Design strategy, Strategy design, urban, workplace design

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Greg Colson - Stick Maps - Cleveland (1991)

Monocle magazine periodically publishes city rankings. Reflecting on the way to developing a list of the world’s 10 most livable cities, Tyler Brule came up with an unexpected list of criteria (presented here). The introduction to his column in the Financial Times offers the context –

Sometime between writing last week’s column and settling down to tap out today’s I had a slight change of heart about the essential ingredients regarding quality of life. While cities get high marks if they have low crime rates, good public schools, smooth-running buses, trams and subways, and if they offer a healthy climate for starting up a small business, my daily holiday regime on the coast of Tuscany had me questioning whether there should be simpler measures to judge whether a city is delightfully liveable.

On Brule’s “simple measures” list are things such as sufficient water pressure to get a good blast in the shower, great orange juice, public seating, and good windows.

It is very rare, it seems, that we reflect on the simple things that can improve our own environments and those we design for others. Most frequently, the dominant criteria are abstract metrics imposed by the providers of space rather than the experiential metrics of those who live and work in the spaces we design.

Consider Brule’s point of view, your daily regime when in your favorite vacation spot – How can these experiences overcome your typical demands of the workplace and influence a different approach to its design?

10 ideas for better design competitions that inform better projects, too

July 24, 2011

architecture, Design strategy, Strategy design, workplace design

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Situationist Drawing Device Exploded Diagram by Ji Soo Han

The go-nogo debate, when considering responding to a Request for Proposal, includes an assessment of the capacity of the firm to respond to the context of the request. That is, do we have the ability to respond with sufficient ideational and representational robustness to deliver what the client seeks? Can we get what they want done done in the time they want it done?

The RFP we were considering had at least one member of our team saying no. I think the measure of his response was based on a conventional method of developing a project and the sequences of development, presentation and approval.

I took a different tack, and thought that the time frame demanded an approach similar to developing a submission to a design competition. Competitions, never sufficiently resourced, demand an energy and focus that is distinct from normal project processes. We produce creative and innovative ideas and use critical and spare methods to present them in a very compressed time.

It made me wonder, also, why we do not use such effective processes in the normal course of our work.

Coincidentally, writing in the Design Observer, John Thackara reflected on his experience as a juror in design competitions. He observed ten faults in the way competitions are staged, and offered ten suggestions for improvement.

I offer a link to them here, because I think that his suggestions to improve the process also inform the way we do our work in other contexts. In a quick companion to Thackara’s list, here are some rough starter thoughts of our own:

Consider the client’s design brief, his program, as a challenge. If we haven’t written the program, it is probable that it does not contain much of an articulation of what the client is trying to do and why. Nor will it contain much about how the client sees themselves and their project in a larger context of business, society, culture and history. We, however, have been brought into our profession with a rich background that places architecture and its practice in that larger context. We are also critical, in a thoughtful way, about how much of the world around us could be improved. Why not approach our client’s project in this way?
Take the opportunity to develop a rich set of internal connections, seeing the project not just for production, but also for development. The time and fees that set the context for project design and delivery are immediately limiting and compromising. They force us to focus on deliberate and efficient processes, and the team is set to produce. Projects, however, offer the opportunity for rich connections between people and great opportunities to develop and improve skills and aptitudes. There is no compromise to the project and, indeed, great probable benefit to it by paying attention to individual and team development opportunities as the project progresses.
Identify something in the project brief that evokes attention and commitment to meaningfully advance the quality of daily life. Every day, millions of people do things in the buildings we design. Make thoughts about how their lives are enriched or improved by designing the life of the building after occupancy, and not just the processes that put it on the earth.
Invite other disciplines as co-designers, not just as consultants. We tend to parcel out tasks to consultants whom we’ve invited to the project for their own perceptions, knowledge and reflection. Using them as co-designers, however, enriches what we do and what we can achieve by drawing them to a great intimacy with the purpose and mission of the project.
Consider the project beyond its footprint. Every building exists in, is influenced by and, in turn, influences a broader context of connections over time. Consider the building as a tool and understand how, beyond occupancy, it can assist what others are trying to do , as well.
Research the real world. If we engage in research before designing, we tend to look at typologies, styles and solutions. But the projects we look at have themselves been commissioned to do certain things and, as we know, have influenced other moves that may not have been initially intended. Seeing them and learning from them in this real world context can contribute considerations for a much more robust design solution.
Make stories about life in the building, not just about the development of form. We can improve the performance of our clients, the return on their resources and their own development as patrons by imagining the life that people will live in these environment, and telling stories that inform why certain design decisions were made with those stories in consideration.
Discuss the criteria for success with the client. Help him develop his own critical mindset about a more meaningful future in the process.
Engage others. We once invited friends of our designers to come to a presentation of our work and offered them the opportunity to comment on it. I do not know why we do not do this more. We engage the support of others on our Boards. why not engage generous outsiders to perform a similar role of adviser or commentator on what we do?
Engage project management as stewardship. Beyond the management, application and control of ours and our clients resources on projects (on time, on budget) consider the longer life, role and importance of the building and act as stewards of its success.

As always, I’ll appreciate hearing your thoughts. What can we learn from our experience with design competitions to inform how we approach projects in daily work?

The Meredith Workplace Attraction Curve

July 13, 2011

Design strategy, Strategy design, workplace design

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I propose that a significant increase in the performance of people and value in corporate real estate could be captured and delivered through a more customizable workplace.

There are many models around to illustrate how personal activation, amplification or augmentation of provided platforms yields high levels of satisfaction and performance enhancements. Simple examples include the phone in your pocket. Over time, you have explored and tested various “apps” to get your device to be just right for you and what you want to achieve. The device not only looks the way you want it to, but has functionality and features that you selected and the data that use use more frequently. The apps you chose also enhance the way you interact with other people, other systems, and the physical world. Your device, through its customization, is more useful, attractive and valuable to you.

The place where you work probably has very little of these benefits. The workplace is a place of constraint, not of augmentation. Standards and benchmarks for the planning of the workplace define generalized patterns related to positions rather than roles, and to organizations rather than activities. My workstation is a compromise of size, configuration, technology, location, comfort, etc. I have a sense that if I were provided less, but then able to pull up certain physical and technological “apps,” I’d be more satisfied and effective.

Hence, this graph, the Meredith Workplace Attraction Curve, as a representation of a theory and opportunity for exploration and development. I propose that the workplace defined by others has rapidly diminishing return. A workplace that is designed by its users can deliver accelerating returns to people and place.

Push platforms and diminishing returns

“Push platforms” are the kinds of workplaces as designed and delivered conventionally, typically by Corporate Real Estate. One of the defining characteristics of this type of workplace is its diminishing acceptance as more and more people participate in it.

“Distraction” is the almost universal claim representing an underlying fault in the design and delivery of this kind of workplace. The demand for freedom from distraction comes from the inadequacy of the physical workplace to support effectiveness, and is a claim that begs separation – walls, doors, mobility.

At a certain point, the internal separation reduces the meaning and purpose of being in a workplace. Where alternatives are available, people will choose them as preferable to their purposes, and bail out of the provided workplace. This selection is the manifestation and fulfillment of policy that values space reduction over worker potential.

Pull platforms and increasing returns

“Pull platforms” are new types of workplaces we’ve referenced before and have these characteristics –

A “plug-and-play” nature designed for the convenience of its users, rather than its providers
Modularity, that is, with components that are both self sustaining and compatible for connection with others
Flexibility, able to respond to otherwise unanticipated needs of its users and participants
Agility and adaptability, with features that allow it to support and capture increasing returns
Evolutionary with the potential for its value to be enhanced by the improvisation, experimentation and improvements generated by its users
Environmental richness, providing intrinsic rewards to those who are committed to its use and contribute to its value

This type of workplace, inherently attractive to those who seek higher levels of contribution and performance, has an increasing value curve. The more that customization to purpose satisfies personal and organizational effectiveness, the more people are attracted to it. The more people who are attracted to it, the greater the points of connection of the social network of work and the higher probability of growth in personal and organizational potential as a result.

The tipping points

Distraction in the push platforms is a function of scale and proportion – too many people in a space reduces its effectiveness and causes “evaporative cooling.”

However, “distraction” in pull platforms occurs when there are too few people engaged. The intentional collaboration and synergies cannot take place until a critical mass catalyzes an energy and a corresponding acceleration in value as more people connect to the network and in the working space.

Quote from Chris Hood in the July 2011 issue of Buildings magazine

The power and potential of platforms and pathways in workspace design

May 2, 2011

architecture, Design strategy, Strategy design, workplace design

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We’ve made great strides in workplace design over the past decade.

Informed by increasingly enlightened management practices, augmented by mobile technology, supported by new developments in furniture and equipment design, and shaped by the significantly different workstyles and working relationships of a new generation, the workspace became more relevant to the emerging world of work.

The complexity and layers of facility standards were reduced, the workplace became more open, and the social nature of work advanced from the cafes and foosball tables of the dot.com model to more sophisticated understanding of the informal networks that are essential for good team work. Employee dread with the assumed characteristics of concepts like “free addressing” was replaced by comfort with the discovered benefits from agility and flexibility in working and organizing dynamically.

The best-in-class office now exhibits a significant shift of resources toward team work from the hierarchical management model of a generation before.
Despite these advances, and with the impacts and influences of the economic pressures and strategies of the past couple of years combining with the rapid and continuing evolution in the nature of work, many of us are yearning for more.

What is that’s missing now? Where is the value of the workplace shifting? What’s next?

Time has become more precious making the effectiveness of place more important

A key factor in our discontent may be the quality of the contexts in which we work.

Time has become more precious. That is, as information, context, and opportunity grab more of our attention and time, we have come to place more value in the nature and quality of our experiences.

The tools we now use are beautiful objects and also perform very well, yet we also expect a sustaining relationship with them. We customize them, augment them with personally selected apps, and embed them with more and more of the information that enrich the quality of our lives and the performance of our work.

As our time working in and out of conventional office environments has become more fragmented, and the management of the relationships, networks and information we use has become more complex, we now seek a relationship with place, as we have with our tools, that augments and amplifies our identify, our image and our effectiveness.

Said another way, the preciousness of time increases our attention to purpose, and this attention, this measure of effectiveness makes the experiences of working – the unique and valuable experiences of working – more important.

What matters is no longer how much time we put in at the office, but how effective the time is that we do spend there. What makes that time more valuable are the experiences we have while we are there.

The “performance” movement aimed inaccurately

“Performance,” the consistently referenced metric of the effectiveness of the knowledge worker began to be a focus for workplace design. The “high performance workplace” was a goal to be reached through new approaches to office design.

But over the past decade, a key measure of workplace “performance” became, instead, the cost of its real estate. The less space dedicated per person in a corporate space supposedly meant increasing performance for the organization.

Mobility programs, for example, had the potential of increasing individual and team performance by introducing more flexibility and choice into the workplace. These programs rapidly lost authenticity as they became a real estate tool rather than a human resources and creative management tool. “Mobility” became a program used to push people out of the office to find their own workplaces as a means to reduce the cost burden of corporate real estate.

This unintended yet driving “performance” metric was, of course, one with diminishing returns. Not only was there a finite limit to the amount and cost of space that could be cut, but signs also emerged of a resulting reduction in the creative or productive output of organizations.

A key issue was the experience of working. That is, as space decreased, so interactions, the engine of innovation and of engagement, also decreased.

The office went from a place where people came to work together to a place where nobody wanted to work. As long as the workplace is measured as real estate it will be perceived as a cost, as well.

The emerging world of work demands a radically different approach to workspace planning and design

I think that the emerging world of work demands a radically different approach to workplace planning and design.

Let’s turn to a survey, of sorts, of projections for what the emerging world of work might look like. Why, in other words, do I believe that it is time for a shift?

There has been a significant body of research and analysis done in recent years to comprehend and understand the “information age,” “knowledge work” and the characteristics of the “knowledge worker.”

Similarly, the change in generations, or more specifically, the rather radical shift in the characteristics of the first generation emerging from and influenced by the technological embeds of the “Information Age,” has shaped a new body of thinking about what work is and looks like to this emerging generation and also the influence their workstyles may have on what work looks like for everyone else.

Here are just a few of the projected characteristics of the emerging world of work –

An individual’s social networks and their ability to capitalize on them mean that companies will hire those with higher  “reputation capital”
Increasing developments in mobile technology change everything about work, both where and how it is done
The increasing importance of teaming, the power of social networks and the potentials in communications technology enable the formation of “work swarms” – connected individuals forming teams quickly to capitalize on opportunity
A generation immersed in gaming may use some of its organizational principles, like the formation of guilds, to form high performing teams and leading companies to hire not individuals but entire teams
Successful individuals will have a different mind-set characterized by global thinking and cross-cultural power, social participation, openness to continuous and contextual learning, and speedy movement on identified opportunities
The continuing merging of work and life will be accepted as a new normal, and the value of flexibility will replace the values of separation or balance
Non-routine skills become more important, work becomes more informal and spontaneous, and skills in charrettes or sketch-ups become increasingly valuable

What seems significant and characteristic in these projections is the importance of time, a focus on purpose, the value of flexibility, the accommodation of the non-routine, the power in new but temporary operational forms, and the rising influence of externally-connected individuals and teams over internally managed organizations.

What seems significant, in other words, is the increasing value of experiential design – the qualities and characteristics places and spaces that will be sought by self-defined and ad-hoc teams to support speed and effectiveness in their quest to capitalize on emerging opportunity.

We are at a point where neither the centrally-provided and regulated workplace of the past nor the anonymous and commercial “third place” workplace of the mobile worker satisfies. What guides our thinking for the next workplace?

The shift in value toward tacit knowledge

As the value of knowledge has shifted from that which we hold unto ourselves to that which we share with others drawing them to participate, our attention is drawn more to the power an potential in tacit knowledge.

Organizational evolution and development takes place through a continuous interchange between two forms of knowledge.

Explicit knowledge is formally codified and transferred, and is transmitted in easily accessible forms such as words, numbers, and formulas.

Tacit knowledge is expressed in more than words and frequently without words, and involves both cognitive and technical skills – beliefs, images, intuition, craft, know-how.

Tacit knowledge is difficult to develop and uncover, yet it is the most valuable form of knowledge for the evolution and sustainability organizations. It is subjective and experiential, and is frequently context-specific.

In an economy in which explicit knowledge is more easily and rapidly transferred, it carries the threat of diminishing value. Tacit knowledge, the unique and differentiated knowledge of people and organizations, carries increasing and potentially accelerating value in this economy.

Tacit knowledge, however, has been called “sticky” knowledge. It is best transferred between individuals through socialization, and this requires a context of shared experiences and direct interactions.

It is becoming clear that the surviving and thriving organizations of the future will be the ones who can uncover, access, augment and accelerate the flows of knowledge.

The importance of socialization and experience

Uncovering and unleashing the power of tacit knowledge, which requires social interaction, moves our attention from the attractiveness of place to the attraction of great experiences.

The relatively nascent discipline of “experiential design” as applied in the workplace has moved us from a closed, process-oriented workplace to a more open collaborative place of creativity and innovation.

The principle tools of this wave of design were developed and used to illuminate the social nature of work and enhance the potential to capture its undefined but anticipated benefits.
This initial focus on the social has aimed inaccurately. While supporting the kind of interaction that contributes to cultural development, this first wave of workplace innovation brought socializing spaces – the Starbucks model – into the workplace.

However, it missed the more powerful purpose of socialization – to move tacit knowledge through an organization. That is, the innovators of workplace design focused on the thing rather the purpose.

After a decade of embedding “social” spaces in organizations, we are learning more of what this term socialization really means. We have learned that Increasing the value of the experience means moving the organization from measuring the performance of place to measuring the potential of people. It means moving from you measuring them to them measuring you.

It means moving from measuring things to measuring interactions.

This is why it is time for a new shift in what we’ve called “experiential design.” How do you add value to the experience of working when the places of that experience are exhausted?

Platforms and pathways

I’ve become influenced recently by the work of John Hagel and John Seely Brown, leaders of the Deloitte Center for the Edge. Although their most recent book, The Power of Pull, mainly addresses the domain of technology innovation, I’ve found many of its principles – how small moves, smartly made, can set big things in motion – to be relevant to the way I think about the role of the workspace.

Hagel calls the power of pull “the ability to draw out people and resources as needed to address opportunities and challenges…unleashing forces of attraction, influence and serendipity.”

This “drawing out” means moving from the measurement of the performance of place and people, a diminishing return, to the potential of people supported by the right kinds of spaces, an increasing return.

A key tool in capturing this potential is experiential design. Hagel defines two environments to consider for the value of the experiences they host – platforms and pathways.
Platforms are teaming environments designed to attract and support “diverse providers and users of resources.” The are the foundations that provide the experiences that enable teams to be effective, to spawn new teams, and to create and capitalize on rich connections between them.

Pathways are the channels through which people participate in and contribute to flows of knowledge. Pathways include the networks we communicate with and through, and the relationships with people and resources where we find the information and experiences that enable us to learn, grow, develop and evolve.

Let’s imagine the look and feel, the experiential quality, of a workspace designed as a “pull platform” –

It has a “plug-and-play” nature designed for the convenience of its users, rather than its providers. It is modular, and both self sustaining as well as compatible for connection with others.
It is flexible, able to respond to otherwise unanticipated needs of its users and participants.
It is dynamic and adaptable, with features that allow it to support and capture increasing returns.
It is evolutionary and its value is enhanced by the improvisation, experimentation and improvements generated by its users.
It is a rich environment, providing intrinsic rewards to its users who are committed to its use and contribute to its value.

This concept, using the workspace and the tools and principles of experiential design, is, I believe, the next focus for leading workplaces. Planning in this way can yield sustained attention and increasing interactions to uncover latent individual potential and drive organizational learning and improvement.

I believe we need to start a new discussion around the experience of work and how to generate tangible value from the workplace. We have to help companies see that “workplace strategy” is no longer about real estate but is instead about generating new business opportunity.

The old institutions are dying

Old institutions are dying and we are now at the front edge of a great social revolution. The technologies we use, the global ecosystem we share with others, and the ethos that informs our behaviors all influence a seismic shift in the ways that work is done.

New organizational and operational forms are emerging in response, and what we called “work” is now different in all of its dimensions.

It is shocking that everything about work has changed, but very little of the workplace has.

The leading organizations of the future will be the ones where a highly motivated, innovative, and focused workforce discovers to be the most effective places for them to achieve, learn, build networks, uncover opportunity, and build businesses.

I therefore believe that the leading organizations of the future will be the ones who “get” the experiences of working. They will be organizations who understand that the emerging metric of performance, leadership and success is the growth in people’s potential driven by the effectiveness of the environments providing the experiences people seek and through which their organizations thrive.

I’ll be pleased to have your comments.

—archizoo

The blog of MEREDITH Strategy & Design

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