The Chinese New Year of the Metal Rabbit

One of the most powerful tools in creating effective work spaces is knowing how to identify your personal directions. People have preferences, and personality types are drawn to face specific directions. You see this all the time whenever you set us a room where people can sit facing a wide variety of directions. sometimes it looks like they planned it, as if each team chose to sit together.

It has taken many years of study and experience to learn and codify this, and we love having this tool handy because it is remarkably important to enhancing personal performance. In the course of this process we became, without realizing it, Futurists. In other words, people who pull together a wide variety of information and forecast what is going to happen in a specific field.

The thing about forecasting is that you have to start the forecast somewhere, so we use the Chinese New Year, for a number of good reasons, not the least of which is that it is the most celebrated festival in the world, and it is based on a specific astronomical alignment, the New Moon in Tropical Aquarius. For our forecast we use a combination of cyclic research and some tools from traditional Western Astrology, all combined with an intense attention to global politics and economics in several language. For the past fifteen years we have been doing a location specific, global forecast that we publish on our website.

We don’t charge for the forecast. Instead we offer it as a traditional Chinese New Year gift to our family, friends, students and clients, hoping that it will provide some helpful insight as they navigate the year ahead.

You can read it on screen or as a PDF at  www.SpaceAndTime.com.

Ralph & Lahni de Amicis

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.

Father’s Day Designs

In the Victorian period men designed and built houses and women decorated them. There was a clear polarity between the sexes and the places where they met were pretty well defined. It made for very wooden, structured buildings, filled to the brim with puffy, feminine furniture, but somehow it worked, because balance is everything in design.

These days with office tools and impersonal communication the design polarities are less defined. When you aim for the middle it is easy to tilt the design in a weird direction. I think that people need to recognize that they have multiple facets to their personalities and they need to allow their home and work place designs to be distinctly different.

Some of the saddest people we have met are architects living in houses that they designed for themselves. The buildings became an intellectual exercise, but homes are all about emotions and practicalities.

Unless your personal look is rather androgynous, then aim for very different design styles in your work and home environments. This is not a generic choice. Some people work well in a beautiful environment while others need something crustier to feel motivated.

The secret is to recognize your motivational design, the combination of arrangements and materials that make you shine in the workplace. Don’t try to bring that into your home. Because it will energize the part of your life that likes to work, and when you are home you need to chill a bit, and let the ‘turned on’ you ‘turn off’ for a while.

Now, if you have a home office, make sure that your work area is quite different from the rest of the house. Place a sign on the door that marks the territory as ‘work’. Otherwise you’ll drag your home life in there, and it will take you longer to get up and going each day.

Of course this is more of a problem for men than women. The ladies have had a lot more programing that allows them to work from their home productively. For many men though, home is place to relax, and getting themselves going without going out the door requires special triggers. That’s where the ‘work at home office’ design becomes so important.

Read more about Ralph and Lahni de Amicis, speakers on Highly Motivated Design at http://www.spaceandtime.com.

Copia Redux

One of the great advantages of being an author and tour guide is the great gossip that one picks up. The latest talk in Napa is that the currently closed Copia center for food and wine may be used as a convention space. This fits in perfectly with my previous post talking about how Napa is increasingly becoming a convention town.

As much as I respect Robert Mondavi’s vision for Copia as an educational center for wine, the place fell victim to the ethnocentric nature of wine country, where they forget that not everyone is consumed with the subject. Even though the three most popular subjects here are food, wine and the weather, the population is quite small, and visitor’s interests are more varied.

Add to that the serious design flaws in the building and it not surprising that the venture spiraled into debt. The entrances and traffic flow for that building are completely confusing and obscured. The doorways were in the wrong places and their orientation wasn’t supported by the interior spaces. Part of the designer’s challenge was the unique nature of the building’s purpose, a museum of food and wine. They would have done better if they had designed it  as a variation of  a restaurant and banquet space. It would have created a pattern that was familiar, and that fit in with the sights and sounds of food.

Instead the message that it sent was very impersonal, not very nurturing and turned food into a cerebral experience, when for most people, it is a sensory and belly occurrence. As a convention space it will probably work well. The impersonal spaces can be easily converted to any message and that works well for a symposium, conference, or trade show.

It can provide overflow spaces for the many new hotels in the area. Even though they have their own space, the Copia building can expand their capabilities. It may be that the original purpose of the building may add a particular flavor to its future use, and if the conferences there are more tasty than the average, so much the better.

We’ve learned a huge amount about convention spaces in our years as professional speakers. To learn more visit www.spaceandtime.com

Napa Convention Buildings

Even though construction has ground to a halt throughout America here in Napa hotels and winery buildings continue to rise. In downtown Napa the new Westin has barely had a chance to get the wrinkles out and there is a new hotel under construction on first street downtown. Right across from the Westin they’re breaking ground on some kind of project, right next door to the depot for the Wine Train.

In Yountville, the food capitol of Napa, the new Bardesono is still getting their staff on board and there is a new hotel being framed a short walk away. It was only a couple of years ago that the new hotel resort Solage opened in Calistoga, Meritage opened in on the edge of the Carneros district, and they are adding rooms and convention space as I write this, and the Carneros Inn is also quite new.

Right along the river in downtown Napa is a beautiful new complex of condos and store, and right across from the aforementioned new hotel are more stores. The aging of America, the increasing love of wine, and the convenience of the area to the San Francisco, Oakland and Sacramento airports is turning Napa into a major convention center.

Because of the areas agricultural traditions and the North Bay location these are some of the greenest and most appealing hotels and resorts that we have seen in years of traveling. A big part of our careers has been as professional speakers. That means seeing the insides of a lot of hotels and resorts. The combination of location, ethics and finances in Napa is producing a wonderful place for organizations to bring their people, because in its creation, it offers a good example of how a consciousness of a global future when planning can produce wonderful results.

The Power of 8

Numbers have always been important symbolically in society, but in an age where we all have multiple phone numbers, bank accounts, passwords and lets not forget about the all important addresses, home, web, email, blog and Twitter, how important are they in a social-psychic sense?

The first day of the Chinese hosted Olympics was the 8th day of the 8th month of the 8th year of the new millenium at 8 o’clock at night. No matter what tradition you look at the number 8 has always been considered a heavy hitter. The Chinese are great believers in the power of numbers, but look at this from a global perspective.

The Chinese chose this date based on the western calendar. They have their own, more ancient system, but by using the western calendar they sent a message. They are carrying their symbolism with them into the global society, that has been set up to western standards. They are playing by some else’s rules, but with out giving up their natural advantages.

When you visit Bejing tour guides love to tell you about the Feng Shui priniciples that were involved in the shaping of the city from ancient times. They made no secret about how those principles were also incorporated into the creation of the Olympic buildings.

Their main stadium had no sharp external angles and was called the bird’s nest. What is a bird’s nest? A place where new ideas are hatched and nurtured up high, safely away from the ground.

Chinese philosophy is all about the difference between creatures of the sky, Dragons, and creatures of the earth, horses. Horses were traditionally animals used for war, but Dragons are the bringers of inspriration and opportunity. They are proclaiming their historic place and perspective in the global society and it was all in their numbers and their buildings.

Read more about the philosphy of building at our webiste book store Cuore Libre Publishing.

Re-designed Tasting Room at Beringer Winery

When they first renovated the Beringer mansion which is used for the reserve tasting I was worried that they might lose some of the charm, but they added outdoor tables on the patio that greatly expand the usability of the site. However, I have to say that when they are busy it is a bit of a madhouse, the layout seems to make navigation difficult with some bottlenecks by the door that make people have to turn sideways to slip through. But, when things are less than crazy it should work alright.

Would I have designed it that way? Not really, the outer doorways enter at the sides of the tasting bars, right at the employees entrance, it is an uncomfortable and confusing experience for the folks entering and the people working at the bar. It might have better to use a U shape coming off of one wall like the new bar at Rutherford Hill. They would have gotten more bar space and less confusion.

They could have used the exterior walls more effectively, either for display, or by placing some small, circular standing tables, to take the pressure off of the main bar during high traffic times. On the other hand one big improvement was the re-opening of the main front door to the mansion, which had been blocked and ignored for so long. That is a very nice change, and shows a shift towards greater visibility and brand determination. Nicely done!

Read about our design books.

Which is Your Best Direction?

One of the interesting design features that we have noticed is that people tend to have favorite directions that they like to face. By directions I don’t mean towards the door or the window, I mean North, south east west. For a little mental exercise think back to your favorite desks, and figure out which direction you were facing, Google Maps is a big help in that. You’ll notice a pattern. Usually you will be facing one of two directions. Why it works that way? That’s considerably more complicated to explain. Try it first. We explain it in detail in our book Prosperity Lessons, which you can read about on our site. www.spaceandtime.com .

Freezing the Oval Office in Time by R de Amicis

Until FDR created the Oval office the man arriving as President could arrange the room pretty much as they pleased. This might seem a minor thing, but anyone who has worked with chief executives knows that they love to rearrange the furniture. ‘Bosses’ have a strong sense of their positioning, and they are very clear about what they like in their environment; who do they face, what is at hand, which way do they move when they up from their desk?

By creating the Oval office FDR committed the same mistake that many modern architects do with bedrooms, they design the room so that the bed only fits in one place, whether or not that works well for the future occupants. In the oval office every President who has followed FDR has had as much choice as canary does when they are put in their cage.

Maybe that is part of what Truman meant when he inherited the Oval from FDR. He described it as the crown jewel of the American penal society. Of course he was tricky, during his tenure he and his family lived and worked outside of the Whitehouse for an extended period of time while the foundations were redone.

Some Presidents very much liked the Oval office, Clinton obviously felt at home there. Others stated their displeasure, George W. Bush made that very clear. That makes a pretty clear statement about how much the connection with the room reflects the performance of their administration. W spent more time away from the Oval office, much of it on vacation, than any other President and his administration reflected that.

When FDR froze the design of the Oval office like a bee stuck in amber he made the room about the ‘office’ more than the office holder. Did the Presidency loose some humanity in the process, some flexibility, some creativity? Probably! In this new global community is an Oval office the correct shape? Maybe! Possibly we just need to rearrange the furniture!

Ralph de Amicis is an author and professional speaker one the subject of Motivated Design whose books and topics can be found at www.spaceandtime.com.

Is it time to re-design the Oval office? By Ralph de Amicis

Up until Franklin Delano Roosevelt the President of the United States worked in a rectangular office. Now, for all of the acclaim showered on FDR, remember that he was the President that dragged America through the great depression. He didn’t cause it, but he didn’t do much to fix it either. Then he slammed into WWII, and it was only when the USA was called upon to make weapons for the world did the depression really end.

Then he presided over one of America’s costliest wars in resources and lives, had himself elected for the third time (no one else had the gall to do that before). He also changed the date when the new President was inaugurated, putting it deeper into the winter. Since then every President has a bigger chance of freezing on one of the biggest days of their lives.

This was the same man who ripped out the walls and made the oval office. Who also has an oval office? Mayor Bloomberg. When he took over he gave up the traditional rectangular location and moved his office into the central oval usually used for meetings. Then he arrayed his staff around him in circles so that he could see everybody.

This is the same man who worked with the council to change the city charter so that he could run for a third time. Are we seeing a theme here? Makes you think! In my next blog I’ll explain how FDR’s transformation of the most important office in the land changed the signature of the ‘office of President’ for many years to come, and how it affected the men who followed him for good and bad.

Ralph de Amicis is an author and professional speaker one the subject of Motivated Design whose books and topics can be found at www.spaceandtime.com.