About a year ago I started renting a garage near home. This was for various complicated reasons involving a dinghy, some classic car speculation, and various mountain bikes in states of disrepair.
As it happened the boat never materialised and the car was sold to fund something rather boring.
So, logically, I should have let the garage go. Instead, I've been working out ways to fill it with other things, none of which I really need.
We expand to fill the space that is available.
And it gets worse. The bikes that now luxuriate in their own dry space, carefully stacked and surrounded by just-in-case tools, are sometimes treated to new bits: special tyres for tackling mud, or better brake pads.
This is because I am a sucker for a good bike shop, and surely the way to improve my PB for ascending the North Downs, or tackling that awkward berm on the common is by buying better equipment? Nothing whatsoever to do with my own ability, naturally.
We focus on products to solve problems, rather than behaviour change.
In the office we are going through a Ways of Working review: identifying the things that might better contribute to efficiency, productivity and well being in the workplace. Having recently worked my way through Culture Shock and Peopleware, I am more interested in these ideas than ever.
However, I've noticed that unlike the values from these books, people tend to get a bit hung up on the visible changes and 'design' of these new ideas. Open plan meeting spaces, bring-your-own-device and mobile phones instead of desk phones are seen as the catalyst for improvement.
My worry is that, like my surplus garage and the shiny bits on my bike, none of the changes above really get to the crux of typical workplace problems like prioritisation, inefficient meetings or general workloads. In fact, if my use of cloud tools is anything to go by, it's all too easy to get suckered into handling even more information and losing focus.
What most workplaces need to do is get to the heart of what causes inefficiency and resulting unhappiness or stress. And it's not about hardware or the way in which space is designed. It's how this stuff is used or abused in the first place.
So, instead of testing and deploying new furniture and equipment I'd like to see:
1. Email accounts restricted by memory size. Let's say 5MB tops.
2. The ability to send emails restricted to just two 30-minute windows every 24 hours
3. Much less closed meeting spaces, to get people out of the habit of holding meetings, that don't really need to be so formal in the first place
4. Knock down the surplus meeting rooms and use left over furniture – the less of it the better. That way we stand and focus on what needs solving, not the colour of the fabric
5. Cut out messaging around the building that doesn't specifically and directly link with the organisation's priorities
6. Give managers the freedom to structure teams and projects in a way that audiences will understand, and that delivers results, not just replicating historical structures
Some of these are quite basic, and others more fundamental, but it would be a start. Know anywhere that has done this already? Do tell me.
In the meantime I'm off to clear the garage and get fit.
I’m never convinced by the email stuff – people will always find ways around it (I certainly would) – now teaching people to write better emails would be a great help and to get them to only CC in people who 100% need to read them that would also be a day to celebrate!
I love the ideas around the physical office space though – anything to discourage and shorten meetings is a win. When I was at Jisc lots of work was done around rethinking ‘learning spaces’ http://www.jisc.ac.uk/eli_learningspaces.html and I think its time offices learned from that.
As for the ability to structure teams that suit the current needs not the decades old structure – that would just be nirvana
Oh by the way you have just cost me 15 quid in Kindle costs
Posted by Jukesie | March 11, 2013, 19:50Thanks for the link – the videos look particularly useful. Enjoy the books!
Posted by Tim Lloyd | March 11, 2013, 19:55I’m with you meetings and email. I do try and pick up the phone these days and TALK instead of relying on email.
BUT…what I would do is actually somewhat reverse to what you suggest. I’d make private offices or work space. I really don’t agree with the whole idea that open plan/open spaces make for more productivity. For me they are often distracting, irritating and counterproductive to getting work done, especially work that involves a lot of thinking. I don’t advocate offices for all, but some area for private/quiet temporary work space would be helpful.
I also like point 6. A lot.
Posted by Ann Kempster | March 11, 2013, 20:18I think I’m with you on having quiet spaces for individual work, but I would like to move away from too many meeting rooms. Meeting rooms + agendas = filling time to make it a ‘proper’ meeting
Posted by Tim Lloyd | March 11, 2013, 20:32Make people stand at meetings. They’ll soon stop scheduling them.
Posted by Ann Kempster | March 11, 2013, 20:33+1 for Jukesie’s comments: email’s OK, it’s the meetings that need dealing with (*especially* in a certain glass building at the end of Victoria St). The Yahoo dilemma is an interesting one, that came up again for me today in the context of GDS: having your people co-located builds team and face-to-face collaboration, but feels wrong in a digital world of thriving Automattics, 37signals and so on. How do public sector organisations build team, collaborate efficiently at scale, and benefit from distributed working?
I remember hearing about a digital agency who left a Skype window open all day so home workers could listen into the buzz of the office (and occasionally be asked questions by co-workers passing the webcam). Could be fun.
Posted by Steph Gray | March 11, 2013, 22:38