In Sight, It Must Be Right…Or Maybe Not
I love the constant frenzy of activity at 1871’s front door. With more than a thousand people a day regularly passing through that portal, things are always poppin’ as our new Governor would say. So it’s a cool and very energizing sight for all of our visitors and for all of the other “civilians” who stop by for a press conference or to join a special guest who’s visiting or who come simply to attend a class, lecture or luncheon.
And it’s great to see that our hundreds of generous professional mentors who drop in for scheduled office hours or workshops with the member companies also love the buzz and the contagious enthusiasm of so many entrepreneurs of all ages who are actively engaged in inventing the future. I’m sure they’re all hoping that some of that special start-up sauce will rub off on them.
But for our full-time members who regard 1871 as their day-to-day (and plenty of nights as well) place of business, it’s increasingly a somewhat different story and reaction. After the buzz wears off a bit, they’re much more concerned with taking care of business and it turns out that that’s not as easy to do as you might think in the middle of an entrepreneurial petting zoo.
So we’re cutting way back on the “show and tell” at 1871 and we’ve restricted the scope, duration, size and volume of the constant tours in order to respect our members’ desire to reduce the traffic and the distractions which are the somewhat inevitable result of being one of the most popular places to visit on the planet. Failure is often an orphan, but successes have plenty of parents and others happy to share in the reflected glory and the associated bragging rights so 1871 can sometimes feel like a non-stop circus.
But all of this is pretty straightforward and manageable and probably doesn’t have much to do (you might think) with the issues in your own business. However, as we’ve listened to our own “customers”, we’ve begun to discover in their conversations and, more importantly, in their own actions and behaviors that there’s a bigger issue at work here (no pun intended) and it’s applicable to millions of businesses which have moved – over the last ten years or so – with the encouragement of architects and designers looking for the next new thing and also at the urging of social scientists seeking equality and democratization around every corner - to building floor plans and office configurations that are increasingly free-form, socially-structured and wide open in large parts of their operations.
What we’ve discovered in our own inquiries and conversations with our members is simple. Open is over. The theory that wide-open spaces would do a world of good for improved multi-level communication, dramatically increase serendipity, and promote the sharing of just about everything - not to mention having the additional appeal of reducing the costs of constructing tons of private offices – turns out to be just the latest triumph of form over function and the continual search for novelty and differentiation. What we’re finding is that a workplace where you can’t get any serious work done isn’t a workplace – it’s a bad joke. Call me a curmudgeon, but I don’t really want to hear every morning – immediately upon their staggered arrivals – a report for the “group” from each of my co-workers about their nightly clubbing, consumption and conquests – even if I cared. But, as often as not, I don’t have a choice.
Anyone with the slightest powers of observation can see that it’s a fool’s game to try to have a private conversation or conduct any serious business when you’re sitting in a place that sounds like a supermarket on Saturday morning or Chuck E. Cheese at Christmas. Headphones may help, but they’re their own source of fiddling and distraction and they put an end to any pretense that there’s gonna be more communication between seatmates when the whole world is individually wrapped up in their own little audio wonderlands.
The fact is that we’re watching more and more pilgrimages where our people pick up their work and their laptops and wander – wasting precious time - because they’re looking for a respite from the roar and a place where they can hunker down and get something done. These sad sojourns for solace and silent spaces are actually pretty clear statements (people voting with their feet) that we need to rethink the latest spatial strategies and – at a minimum – start thinking in all our offices and businesses about segmenting and segregating spaces (think “no cellphone” zones) where we effectively will be heading back to the future. There’s something frightening productive about a little peace and privacy that we’ve seemingly lost sight of.
And we should also put to rest this utter canard that our younger team members have some mystical multi-tasking power that permits them to shut out all the noise and other distractions and yet still lets them benefit from the joys of sharing and constant community. Multi-tasking is a fiction foisted upon folks who just don’t know any better. It’s doing a mediocre job at a multitude of things rather than doing a deep and productive (and focused) dive into something that you actually need to get done and done well.
It may be that part of the multi-tasking confusion comes from the fact that the newer people have never known any other way of operating and that they are less insistent on the levels of productivity and results that we have always expected and have even taken for granted. But if that’s the case, it’s on us to fix it before things get worse and we start settling too often for getting something done when the goal should be getting what needs to get done done – when it needs to get done –and as well as it can be done – all the time.
We can’t blame all of these concerns on our spaces or any other simplistic explanation, but removing and repairing what we can address and change is a good start. I appreciate that there are probably appropriate common areas where it still makes sense to encourage interaction and random activity – intersections and interchanges where potentially additive and informative encounters are encouraged – and even places (within places) where you can move to temporarily and thereby opt into the congestion, conversation and community if you wish.
But no business today can afford to be Times Square everywhere all the time. Open is over.
PS: “You Get What You Work for, Not What You Wish for”
