Who Moved My Cube

Who Moved My Cube?

HBR, Jul-Aug 2011

Managers once discouraged casual interaction among employees, viewing it as a distraction from “real work.” Today we know that chance encounters on the job promote cooperation and innovation, and companies craft their floor plans and cultures with this in mind. So why do their careful, well-intentioned efforts often go awry?

Work spaces inspire informal encounters only if they properly balance three factors that have both physical and social aspects:

Proximity. Spaces should naturally bring people together.

Privacy. People must be able to control access to their conversations and themselves.

Permission. The social purpose of the space needs to be evident, and the organizational culture should signal that nonwork interactions are not just sanctioned but encouraged.

Creating the right conditions is challenging enough in the physical world; doing it in a virtual environment is even harder. But asking employees to set Skype, IM, and other applications to indicate their availability can replicate a sense of proximity online. Setting clear policies governing access to electronic communications helps convey reassurance that privacy is protected. And leaving video links and virtual offices open promotes the feeling that geographically disparate groups are welcome to engage with one another casually, just as they might in a real-world common space.

There’s no simple formula for balancing proximity, privacy, and permission in either the physical or virtual spheres. Managers who grasp the fundamentals and design spaces with balance in mind, however, will be better equipped to understand and predict the effects of different spaces on interactions, and to learn from their successes and inevitable mistakes.

The concept of “affordances,” developed by the psychologist James Gibson, explains how an object or an environment communicates its purpose and offers possibilities for action. Handles afford grasping; doors afford entry and exit; paths afford locomotion. Gibson argues that when we look at an object or an environment, we perceive its affordances for action even before we notice qualities such as shape and color—although we might ignore or misinterpret the affordances or, when they are especially subtle, fail to see them at all until a change to the environment alters or eliminates them. In the context of our research, workspaces afford—or don’t afford—proximity, privacy, and permission.

Affordance theory helps us understand how the design of an object might affect the ways people use it. An object generally gets its intended use only when the design exposes its purpose. There are myriad examples of bad designs that obscure affordances, from door handles whose shape gives no indication whether they should be pushed or pulled to aesthetically impressive control panels consisting of identical knobs symmetrically arrayed, without any visual clues as to what the various knobs do. In such cases conscious thought, and sometimes even training, is needed before people can understand and make use of an object’s functions.

Putting Principles into Practice

Understanding the three P’s required for informal interaction is just the beginning. How do you actually design for them? Start by being attuned to the balance between them; having only one or two usually isn’t enough, and over- or under-emphasizing any of the three can backfire. Build flexibility into your design so that you can test permutations, and measure the design’s effects. In our experience, companies rarely do either. Be aware that seemingly small changes can have an outsize effect and that unintended consequences are common.

Although few managers would want their employees to loiter all afternoon in the coffee room, neither should they want them to cut casual conversations short. People need time to engage if a light conversation is to evolve into something more substantial. We often observed that conversations started next to the coffee machine continued in front of a cubicle or in an office doorway—“accidental alcoves” of the modern workplace. Too often proximity is the only design consideration for coffee rooms and other informal spaces. If you don’t also build in privacy (for example, by creating real alcoves) and convey adequate permission, you will probably end up with a space that triggers ephemeral interactions bearing little fruit.

Finally, it’s important to remember that permission can take many forms. Managers’ reactions to employee behavior, along with their own role modeling, can have a bigger impact than mere expressions of permission. We’ve found that many managers say they value informal interactions but in fact crush them by making negative comments when they witness them—in some cases conveying powerful disapproval through body language alone. To encourage the encounters that fuel collaboration, align what you say and do. (For guidance on how to balance the three P’s, see the sidebar “Designs That Inspire Interaction.”)

Promoting informal interactions in the physical world is challenging enough; nurturing them in virtual settings is harder still. We have decades of research on physical workspaces to draw on, but we’re just starting to understand the nature of informal interactions in virtual workspaces and how to design for them. Our research suggests that the three affordances are just as relevant online as off, but their virtual permutations are distinct from their real-world ones and can be more difficult to define and control. What does proximity mean in a virtual environment? How do you provide privacy in a teleconference? What constitutes permission on a company blog?

=======Business Leaders Digest======

Information You Can Use. Knowledge You Can Trust

This summary is taken from Business Leaders Digest monthly(www.busleadersdigest.com)

The objective of BLD is to offer strategic insights, how-to articles, thought leadership pieces and other information to help you become more effective at the workplace.

Summaries from global top 100 business & management magazines, newspapers, websites & reports are published monthly in Business Leaders Digest which can be subscribed at a modest annual subscription of Rs1500 for corporates and Rs.900 for individuals in India or US$50 overseas. To subscribe or receive a sample issue, email at busleadersdigest@gmail.com

===========INTRO SUBSCRIPTION========

Business Leaders Digest-Summaries from 100 resources

We are pleased to attach the latest issue of our publication Business Leaders Digest.The objective of BLD is to introduce you to global literature on strategic insights, how-to articles, thought leadership pieces and other information to help you and your colleagues become more effective at workplace.

Summaries of selected literature from global top 100 business & management magazines, newspapers, websites & reports are published monthly in Business Leaders Digest which can be subscribed at a modest annual subscription. More information is given on last page.

Please circulate to your friends and colleagues.

Best Regards

S.Abidi

Mob: 9324053831

http://busleadersdigest.blogspot.com

Information You Can Use. Knowledge You Can Trust