Industrial Artifacts - Physical Space

As many of you know, I'm obsessed with organizational learning and innovation. I've been ranting for a while now on how artifacts of the Industrial Revolution serve as barriers to these ends. I thought it might be worth jotting a few down. For this post, I'll focus on physical space. In particular, my contention is that modern office design has numerous vestiges of the factories that came to symbolize the industrial era. I came across a great quote recently that nicely captures a belief I've held for some time now:

"Workspace design can convey, more clearly than we might desire, just what we value. The physical cues of the office send environmental messages ... We pay attention to physical cues precisely because they seem less consciously controlled than verbal expressions such as a mission statement or corporate values statement."

In other words, actions speak louder than words and how we manage physical office space is an action more telling than any spoken pronouncement. Here are a two dated notions that I think are implicitly embraced in how we design and manage our offices (and by association reflect how we think about "work"):

* Hierarchy and status. With tenure comes rank. With rank comes privilege. Real estate is a privilege. Is it really the case that senior people have a greater need for space and privacy? Perhaps to some extent, but certainly not to the degree we accord. Hierarchy was critical to managing industrial processes where human "resources" truly could be thought of as cogs in a machine. We all recognize the importance of being flat to thrive in the knowledge era, but we don't manage our space accordingly.

* Personal productivity. We tend to think of work as putting our heads down and focusing. This certainly is one aspect, but increasingly diminishing in relative importance. We will always need time for thoughtful reflection and focused individual effort, but thriving learning organizations are highly interactive. Innovation flourishes in team-oriented, collaborative environments. Instead of building team-focused space, we build up walls on cubicles and define personal territory. Knowledge work is all about learning and learning is an inherently social process. While personal productivity remains important, the pre-eminence it commanded on the assembly line has diminished. I'm fascinated by innovations at companies like IDEO where space is designed around activities, not individual real estate.

More on other artifacts and innovation barriers to come...