Television Sets tell it All

Television marketing messages appeal to emotions. People buy for emotional reasons and justify it later intellectually. Watch a TV commercial depicting any work place and look carefully at the set and you’ll notice that there is nothing random in their choices. When Ditech wanted to express ‘ no hidden fees in their loans’ they showed the woman answering your call in a transparent cubicle; no secrets there.

Mercury Insurance depicted offices with ridiculously low ceilings, desks and doorways with hunched over workers ‘inspired’ to lower prices. It was thoroughly silly but got your attention and delivered the message. The ‘doctor’ selling you drugs sits in an office set, the older the product’s target demographic, the more conservative the furniture.

 

Set designers know viewers are easy to pitch to because they know the visual language of TV which is similar but neater than life, reality has more random factors. That profusion of ‘doctor’ shows have transformed medical offices everywhere until they all look like TV sets. When you walk into a business or work space you read it the same way that you read a commercial, or situation comedy, or crime drama. Keep that in mind when you design your space and use that to your benefit.

The Task Specific Space

Because computers do many different tasks work spaces are design specific. The marketing team uses the same hardware as the art department and bookkeeping and there aren’t any drawing boards or ledgers in sight. The software is different but the ergonomics similar. When you move into an office who knows if the previous occupant was doing the same job? With the popularity of cooperative ventures, contracting and consulting who knows if they worked for the same company? Don’t assume the office design was fine-tuned to do your job; tune it up yourself.

 

Additional work brings additional benefits; your work space isn’t carved in stone and you can shape it to your own style and talents. This is a huge advantage! In most countries culture and family history limit innovation and genius by funneling efforts into narrow cultural parameters. Being able to create technology and enterprise without a suffocating history made the United States an economic power. Being able to shape your own work space is like having a clean sheet of paper and a big box of crayons, the possibilities abound.

 

Ralph & Lahni de Amicis conduct their Ergo Dynamic Work Space Quiz for groups throughout the Bay area. They are authors of numerous books on environmental design and well being and have consulted for thousands of clients internationally in multiple languages. For more information visit www.SpaceAndTime.com and to arrange a talk and get a speaker’s package email Ralph@spaceandtime.com or call 707-235-2364.

Tear Your Cubicles Down and Turn your Desks Around.

When people say they like their cubicles and communicating electronically we know they are pursuing non company interests on company time on the World Wide Web a significant amount of time. We also know they are avoiding conflict of the most productive kind. What happened to their sense of mission? Why are they are afraid of their team; are they lacking in the social skills and emotional maturity necessary to interact in an effective way? Do they know how to handle rejection?

A compliment sent cubicle to cubicle via email doesn’t compare with the emotional power of a wave and smile from across the room. Physical presence is important; people like being around other people because it makes them feel safe, supported and competitive and thus more productive.

 

Before automated telephone systems operators sat shoulder to shoulder at switch boards patching calls through by hand without cubicles or computers, just headsets and hands.  They were tremendously productive and yet had running conversations between themselves as they handled streams of calls. They were able to do that because physical proximity and shared tasks generate energy. Pulling your weight with the group is emotionally important to you. E-Motion Moves people to accomplish tasks and ignore their difficulties and discomfort. If you want your team to act like a team tear those cubicles down and turn your desks around.

Ancient Office Design Principles Still Work

Ergonomics includes several approaches that go beyond simply providing a better handle for your tennis racket or snow shovel. It includes arranging spaces to support how people move, feel and think and that’s where we focus in our work. When a manager plans out a work space they are using the same principles that Julius Caesar used when he installed scribes and clerks in the Dominus Publica in the Roman Forum. He burned the midnight oil drafting a profusion of laws transforming the way Rome operated the first time he became consul. He was a famous engineer and handy around the house so I would love to know how he set up his offices.

Foremost among management design principles then and now is, ‘Watch your team and make sure they see you’. Even with electronic communication and monitoring when people are separated by more than 100 feet communication drops by 50%. Half of your instructions and influence evaporate with distance. A core component of team positioning is visual connection. In a primary office avoid sight line blocking cubicles and opaque wall offices to get the best results. Let the confidential meeting space be the exception not the rule. When your team is spread out planning ways to be face to face is essential, that’s why conventions are so popular, it’s not just the gift bags.

Ralph & Lahni de Amicis conduct their Ergo Dynamic Work Space Quiz for groups throughout the Bay area. They are authors of numerous books on environmental design and well being and have consulted for thousands of clients internationally in multiple languages. For more information visit www.SpaceAndTime.com and to arrange a talk and get a speaker’s package email Ralph@spaceandtime.com or call 707-235-2364.

Who Invented the Office?

Who invented the office; who can we thank for this work place that we enjoy and also, who can we blame for this environment that entraps us on a daily basis? Was it the Chinese, the Romans, the Greeks, the Sumerians or the Egyptians that invented the desk? They all had offices and bookkeeping, cuneiform, wax blocks, scrolls and marble tablets for inscribing laws. Technology has certainly changed; sometimes it’s hard to find a number 3 pencil anymore. Yet, on the human side we still use eyes and hands, feet and backsides that sit in chairs, and sometimes those eyes get tired and those backsides get flat and we decide to do something about that.

That’s why thousands of generations of managers and craftsmen have strived to create efficient and effective work places on two levels. On the intimate level people have fit the tools and the human body together as effortlessly as possible. This is what most people think of as ergonomics, that’s the keyboard that allows you to type without kinking your wrists, the chair with good lumbar support and armrests to divert weight from the spine and the door handles (instead of a knob) because they can be opened with your arms full of boxes, or slippery hands or arthritis of the fingers.

While the practice goes back thousands of years the past fifty years has seen an explosion of ergonomic development. The industrial age provided the greatest need for this design approach as production lines pushed the body into highly demanding repetitive motions. Before production lines craftsmen made their own personalized tools that evolved over a lifetime. Until the advent of the computer the need for intimate ergonomics aimed at the furniture/body connection was almost unknown in the office. Why? Because people didn’t sit for such long periods of time!

Ralph & Lahni de Amicis conduct their Ergo Dynamic Work Space Quiz for groups throughout the Bay area. They are authors of numerous books on environmental design and well being and have consulted for thousands of clients internationally in multiple languages. For more information visit www.SpaceAndTime.com and to arrange a talk and get a speaker’s package email Ralph@spaceandtime.com or call 707-235-2364.

Before desk top computers when you needed a folder you got up and walked across the room to the file cabinet; you didn’t click the mouse. When you needed to talk with someone in your office you walked to where they were; you didn’t send an email. Office workers did a much wider variety of tasks making them more physically fit. Modern tools have made workers potentially more productive while providing more distractions. How many people plan their vacations online or do their shopping on company time? Years ago they would spend that time flirting at the water cooler standing up.

Sharing Sunlight

Before electricity was introduced into the workplace teams would sit at their stations facing the same direction to take maximum advantage of sun light to illuminate their tasks. This is significant for design because the human body is programmed to react automatically to light sources and magnetic directions. For example geese navigate long distances using magnetic nodes in their skulls. South sea islanders prize their traditional navigators for their ability to feel the direction of the islands over the horizon.

The GPS in our phones and Google maps that we use to plot our journeys speaks to our conscious frontal brains. But the primal brain where emotions and the fight or flight reactions live knows the cardinal directions. It times the body’s cycles using the motions of the Sun and Moon with their powerful electromagnetic fields, and it leans the body against the rivers of magnetic particles flowing from the North Pole to the South.

When you have your whole team face the same direction you create a shared sense of mission and responsibility. Look at the most popular team sports which emerged from this ancient tradition, the team lines up side by side facing the other team aiming in the opposite direction. This contributed to companies in the past being more cohesive with a greater sense of loyalty resulting in employment longevity. These are qualities that Japanese businesses still embody where meetings normally take place with everyone on the same side of the table.

Individuals have preferences for specific directions; for example natural sales people often do best facing east and philosophers like facing north. Work spaces are generally oriented in a dominant direction based on the main entrance. Traditionally the boss faces that same direction. Because of their personal programming certain people within an organization will benefit from that orientation more than others due to their personal programming.

Before electric lighting became wide spread people had a more personal experience of sunlight and the night sky, the phases of the Moon and the constellations were both illumination and guide posts for night time journeys along unlit pathways.

Recall that primordial sense of the cardinal directions when you plot the direction that you want your business to travel. Would it be helpful at times to have your whole crew face the same direction so that they navigate by the same star, and what direction would that be?

Look at your Team as a Leader

Even if you are not the official leader of your team think like a leader and step back and take a look at your team. How well do they work together? Are there many disagreements and feuds or do they act like friends who work together? Do people go out of their way to help each other when time is of the essence? Are they willing to talk with each other or do they hide behind closed doors and emails? Do they generally like coming to work? How are they positioned relative to each other and how does that affect their interaction?

Positioning matters in terms of cooperation and emotional support. For an example consider that Japanese business people often conduct meetings with everyone sitting on the same side of the table and not looking at each other’s faces.

 

Think about what that body language says. First of all it’s hard to be confrontational when you’re sitting side by side. When you all face the same direction you are all subject to the same light sources, you cast the similar shadows and your nervous systems are pushed the same directions by the electromagnetic currents, both natural and manufactured. You are influenced by the same images on the walls and scenes outside the windows. With so many physical and emotional impressions in common you are encouraged to reach an accord.

 

How does this play in the way the businesses operate? Japanese businesses are famous for their ability to cooperate successfully on long-term projects and their shared dedication to a project. Is facing the same direction their way of getting everyone on the same page? Now imagine discussing of new project with your team while sitting side by side. It makes it easier to be more concerned about we than about me.

 

Now consider a meeting with all of you facing the same direction, not arrayed around a conference table. This is the formation used by the police and military and it is conducive to taking directions or orders. If you face your audience you challenge them with your position. But when you do a presentation, using a projection screen and slides, if you face the screen along with your audience it is much easier to get them onto your side of the proposal. Not only does your body language say ‘I’m on your side’, but you are aligned with the same direction and that is something you should not underestimate.

 

Ralph & Lahni de Amicis conduct their Ergo Dynamic Work Space Quiz for groups throughout the Bay area and internationally virtually. They are authors of numerous books on environmental design and well being and have consulted for thousands of clients internationally in multiple languages. For more information visit www.SpaceAndTime.com and to arrange a talk and get a speaker’s package email Ralph@spaceandtime.com or call 707-235-2364.

Where does God Advertise for Help?

There is an old story where God decides that he or she wants to retire so they review resumes from the celestial internet. Lo and behold who should come up as the candidate with the best experience for the job? That guy they fired who went off and started his own operation, Satan. Now, they’re an equal opportunity employer and to forgive is divine so they give him the job. Now old Nick is thinking, ‘They’re letting the fox guard the hen house’, but when he puts his name plate on that desk he finds out that he has to start acting like God just to do the job at all.

The Correct Personality for the Job

Certain positions require certain personality types. We are not universal in our talents; each person has their own genius, or set of geniuses. Work places, like all man-made environments have a personality and project a message. Ideally the message of the workplace speaks honestly about the mission of the workers. The secret of success in environmental design is recognizing what work space arrangement best supports that personality type and then supplying it whole heartedly.

When you put your assistant at your desk and they do well there it’s a sign that their personality fits the task.

I (Ralph) grew up working in my family’s factory and I remember my Father telling me that he would never be able to sit at a production machine all day, year after year, although we had plenty of people who did that for a lifetime. He was an engineer and mechanic and an entrepreneurial personality who had the big view, but still got his hands dirty. He was teaching me that finding people who were truly suited to their positions was important for the stability of our large and tremendously complex company which he ran for more than sixty five years. Experience counts!

Ralph & Lahni de Amicis conduct their Ergo Dynamic Work Space Quiz for groups throughout the Bay area. They are authors of numerous books on environmental design and well being and have consulted for thousands of clients internationally in multiple languages. For more information visit www.SpaceAndTime.com and to arrange a talk and get a speaker’s package email Ralph@spaceandtime.com or call 707-235-2364.

The Office B.E. = Before Electronics

One of the advantages of the pre-electronic work environment was that they were like hand me down clothes, broken in but generally pretty comfortable. When you moved into an office that came with a title everything worked the way it was supposed to in order to do the job. It was like buying used textbooks, the important parts were already highlighted. The succession of previous occupants had worked out the bugs. With some personal adjustments your office or work space would function like a well-tuned production line.

What were the personal adjustments? They included putting your name plate on the desk facing out, shifting the phone to your non-dominant hand side and placing a picture of your family on a bookcase behind you! Pretty quickly you would be up and running. At that time the difference between work spaces was fairly obvious; at a glance you could tell between the accounting department, the art department and the office of the CEO, from the drawing tables, the stacks of ledges and the wall filled with photos and awards.

Today’s work spaces are often androgynous and require additional images to reinforce the individual missions of each work space, otherwise you run the risk of having your team structure dissolve into an amorphous blob because workers lose track of their roles within the whole.

Of course, before electronics took over the workspace people were groomed for a position, not simply selected from Monster.com. They came up through the ranks like good soldiers and managers chose and trained their own replacements. They would look for someone who had skills and talents similar to their own and then give them tasks where they could refine those tools.

There’s nothing like having your assistant work at your desk while you’re away to gauge whether or not they’re going to be able to handle the job when you move upstairs. That’s because management styles and personality types have strong correlations that play out in office arrangement preferences. When a person can work well at your desk there’s a good chance they could work well at your job because they share personality traits with you.

When a troubleshooter is brought in to take over from a failing manager they can tell at a glance where their predecessor was lacking in focus and control. It is right there in the chaotic nature of the work space that they’ve left behind. The best thing they can do is dramatically change the arrangement of the space to fit their management style and to send a message that there is a new Sheriff in town.

Ralph & Lahni de Amicis conduct their Ergo Dynamic Work Space Quiz for groups throughout the Bay area. They are authors of numerous books on environmental design and well being and have consulted for thousands of clients internationally in multiple languages. For more information visit www.SpaceAndTime.com and to arrange a talk and get a speaker’s package email Ralph@spaceandtime.com or call 707-235-2364.

Musical Work Spaces

Work spaces are different from the time before computers. In the past when you left school and started a serious ‘job’ you would find yourself locked into a work space until you worked your way out of it, through promotion or termination. But today technology is portable so you can have multiple work spaces depending on the time of day or week. Being able to bring your laptop from your office, to a meeting, to a local café, to your home office entails making a string of positioning decisions that affect your performance.

If you make those decisions well your performance booms and they promote you to a different office, closer to the boss. More decisions! Now thanks to your promotion you can telecommute three days a week, but telecommute from where? Any place with a chair, a table and wireless! A cup of coffee would be nice!

 

This increasingly rapid succession of work spaces is something that many people are experiencing and having to cope with. At one time most people could count all of the places they had worked on one hand with fingers left over, now most people would need both hands and some toes. This high speed game of musical offices is a function of dramatic technological changes in the tools that we consider essential.

 

Because computers can do so many different tasks work spaces are less task specific. The sales team is using the same hardware as the art department, which is essentially the same as the bookkeepers, not that there are any books in sight. When you move into that new office there is no reason to think that the previous occupant was doing the same job as you. Due to changes in business models, cooperative partnerships, time sharing and consulting contracts they may not have been working for the same company. So, unlike the past, you can’t assume that the office has been fine-tuned to fulfill the task that you’re responsible for. You have to know how to do that for yourself.

 

But with additional work comes additional benefits. Since the work space isn’t carved in stone and the space is more fluid you can shape it around your personal needs and talents. That is a huge advantage. That ability to build something without a suffocating history is part of what has made the United States such an economic power. In most other places in the world the culture and family history limit innovation and personal genius funneling it into fairly narrow cultural parameters. Being able to shape your own work spaced is like having a clean piece of paper and a bog box of crayons, the possibilities abound.

 

Ralph & Lahni de Amicis conduct their Ergo Dynamic Work Space Quiz for groups throughout the Bay area. They are authors of numerous books on environmental design and well being and have consulted for thousands of clients internationally in multiple languages. For more information visit www.SpaceAndTime.com and to arrange a talk and get a speaker’s package email Ralph@spaceandtime.com or call 707-235-2364.