Future@work: Getting your office in shape for peak performance requires new exer

Future@work: Getting your office in shape for peak performance requires new exercises

By ANDREA VANECKO
Callison Architecture

Do you think the office is a place for you to work?

Think again. The office is a place that works for you. If it isn't, you're losing an opportunity akin to losing a sale, a client, or a valuable employee: more than your loss, it is also your competitors' gain.

It used to be you could ask yourself "How many square feet per person do I want?" and then extend the math. The most complicated questions were more political than economic. Who gets an office? Who gets a work station? Who gets the view? The corner office? The answers were usually based on rank or seniority, occasionally on function.

However, if these are the kinds of questions you're asking today as you face the prospect of new construction or lease renewal, you run the risk of creating a lot of short-lived costs, at the expense of long-term, strategic investments.

You need to ask new questions.

Finding the right answers depends on your business strategy. Because there are so many ways to leverage office space -- to attract good people, to boost productivity, to reduce overhead, to foster creativity, to promote collaboration, to communicate culture -- only by scrutinizing your company's business plan and goals will you be able to shape your office for peak performance. That means digging deep to determine what you do best and how, so that your office can be fined-tuned to enhance your position. Those companies that do will have the edge.

The Future@Work

Future@Work, "A collaborative exhibit to improve workplace performance," is a joint venture by AT&T Wireless Services, Axis Technologies, Callison Architecture, Columbia Seafirst Center and the furniture consortium of Barclay Dean Interiors, Metro and Steelcase.
A year and a half ago, I helped initiate a collaboration of companies to study productivity, technology, workplace sociology and office design. Our intent was to provoke questions and find answers for companies confronting office real-estate decisions in the face of major changes in virtually every aspect of the workplace.

Core members of the group include AT&T Wireless, Axis Technologies, Callison Architecture and the furniture consortium of Barclay Dean Interiors, Metro and Steelcase, Inc. Sparling and Turner Construction have also been instrumental in pulling the project together. The result of our research is the Future@Work, an exhibit and resource center located on the 28th floor of Seattle's Columbia Seafirst Center.

The 5,000-square-foot "office" is divided into 1997 and 2007 spaces and shows how a blend of leading-edge design, furnishings, technology and telecommunications can improve business operations. In helping companies understand their office situation now relative to how the workplace will look and function ten years from now, Future@Work suggests how companies might transition at their own pace.

In creating this exhibit, we have not invented the office solution of the future. Instead, we've shown that there are many approaches, different for each company. To me this is exciting because the methods we use to arrive at integrated office solutions will ultimately make better companies -- a far better answer than invoking the latest management trend or applying the next hot technology.

To determine office needs, determine what's critical to your company's success. For example, maybe you're a software company, where product-to-market cycle time is critical. As many companies know, moving from a linear development process to an integrated team effort may be the single most effective way to assure that innovation is brought to market at a competitive pace. What they may not know is how much the office can contribute to making that process more potent.

A work environment that promotes and supports self-directed project teams is vastly different from the traditional combination of private offices, cubicles and conference rooms that uphold a more hierarchical management structure.

Team members should be able to assemble and disperse quickly. They need ready access to meeting areas, which are adequately equipped with appropriate resources, technology and communication tools. They need opportunities for "random connect," the face-to-face encounters that spark innovation. And, they need private space in order to process information and develop ideas.

On the other hand, let's say you're a professional consulting firm. Maybe teaming is less important to your business than access to good information, and the ability to interpret it well. Today's business world provides plenty of information -- to the point of sometimes stressful distraction. At the same time, technology has put us all into an immediate response mode which, while allowing greater opportunity, is also challenging our ability to assimilate information.

With the right tools, information can be funneled and packaged to provide focus instead of adding confusion. Perhaps "editors" who are specialists in strategic areas of the company become a valuable position for companies to introduce. With sophisticated technology that allows multiple, split-screen displays of the most influential industry data, these editors could provide focused information on an intranet system as well as developing an "enterprise screen" in a prominent, central area of the office.

And to deal with all the information, or escape from its distraction, secluded areas allow for decisions that are not only timely, but strategic and insightful. For example, small niches of space that might have housed extra file cabinets in the past can be converted to media-proof "think tanks" for free, uninterrupted thought and assimilation. (The storage space can be easily made up, by taking better advantage of vertical surfaces, for example.)

One more example might be a company which relies heavily on today's self-managed, self-motivated knowledge workers, the "work anywhere, anytime" people whose tasks and work styles differ from person to person, and from hour to hour. Some might produce most effectively sitting with a laptop in a comfortable lounge chair from 7 to 10 in the evening. Others might be most productive while drinking coffee, perched on a bar stool from noon to 3 p.m. Still others are at their best sitting at a desk in the early morning hours.

Attracting and keeping these people requires office space that supports their personal best -- whatever that might be -- and keeps them from leaving the office. Whether that means a more comfortable chair, special software, designated quiet space or better lighting, they need a work environment designed for inspiration and learning, not monitoring and training.

More thought, less hassle

These kinds of solutions don't take more space or more money, they just take more thought. In re-thinking office space in terms of your business plan, knowing what questions to ask is half the battle. That's why the Future@Work collaboration is also important to note as a business strategy. Our focus for the past year has been on figuring out the questions. By analyzing the issues from a variety of perspectives simultaneously, we could achieve the integration that makes the office work like a synchronized machine.

By finding partners who have honed their core competencies to the same degree that we have -- in disciplines such as telecommunications, workplace behavior, lighting, furniture, etc. -- we deliver a cohesive, integrated end-product. Not a pre-packaged product, which implies a formula, but one where each element is the best it can be, and has already been considered in terms of its relationship with other elements.

The most important part of analyzing your business (and office space) is having the time to think through the questions. In disposing with the hassles of trying to understand and coordinate each of these issues separately, and by creating a "real" office environment you can experience, the Future@Work team has essentially provided that thinking time up front, leaving more time to find answers specifically tailored to your company.

Andrea Vanecko is a principal and interior design director with Callison Architecture.

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