Category: Uncategorized

A New Job

Futures Rambling #81
By Laurie Aznavoorian

After ten and a half years, I have left my job at Geyer. In planning the next chapter of my career journey I have paused to research new cool jobs I might aspire to, this is of course solely as a back-up position in the event my next chosen career as a romance novelist does not take off at an acceptable pace to keep me in beer and skittles. My confidence has been seriously shaken after missing the evident trend, I wrote about Activity Based Work in my article Shades of Gray article when E. L. James made a fortune writing about Fifty Shades of Gray. Go figure.

Apparently we’ll make seven career changes in our lifetimes, how job researchers came up with this number is unclear. It is no surprise changes are more common in younger workers and it is probably younger cohorts that muddy the statistics. As a teen my son worked at: Hoyts, McDonalds, GoLo and Bagel House, all in a two year period, but that could hardly be considered job hopping; never the less, the 15 – 19 age bracket does contribute to statistical results.

My children, both Millennials (born between 1977- 1997) believe I’m insane for staying at a job for ten and a half years. If they are like others in their age group, they will not stay at a job for longer than three years, which equate to 15 – 20 changes in a lifetime. The reason, identified in the Future Workplace “Multiple Generations @ Work” survey is Millennials are looking for job fulfilment; which is apparently more important to younger workers than we older ones who are still paying off said Millennial’s college tuition.

Personally I beg to differ and know more than a few old coots out there who also care about fulfilment, of course what fulfils a 25 year old may not do the same for someone 45, 55 or 65. Age, family situation and life circumstances all play a role in what will make us happy at work, but what we can be assured of, is the necessity to make tradeoffs between the other dimensions of our lives and work e.g. family, social and community, spiritual, physical, material, and hobbies.

We live in an era when employee engagement is a concern for most organisations, as opposed to the days when the prevailing attitude was to be shown the door if you didn’t like your job. Despite this shift in focus, we haven’t got a great track record of making workers happy, a 2013 Gallup report that found 70% of workers are not engaged!

Perhaps you are one of them and like me are thinking of your next gig, if so you may be interested in one of the following new ‘rad jobs’ I’ve been considering:

1. Urban Farmer – This involves farming on rooftops and in underground bunkers. I am going to rule this out as a future career option for me based on the dismal performance of the avocado plant on my deck and the fact that I did nothing – nada – to help with the office rooftop garden.

2. Alternative Reality Architect – Not a bad option given my training in architecture, research, writing and design. Applying this to virtual augmentations, or environments that ‘glassholes’ (people wearing google glass) might inhabit could be very exhilarating.

3. Personality Programmer – Experts suggest well grow tired of Siri’s voice, aren’t we already, which will create a demand for people to program and test different personalities for inanimate objects that talk to us. Options for moonlighting as a new voice abound with this choice you never know when an American accent that sounds like Marge Simpson’s will be all the rage.

4. Organ Agent – As advancements in science make organ donation more common, we’ll require specialist to seek out organ donors. Given past poor performance in convincing co-workers to purchase raffle tickets I believe this option is far from optimal for me.

5. Remote Drone Pilot – New industries will be developing around drone dispatching; people with multi tasking ability might be in high demand! This might be the career for me, multi tasking is my middle name and while I’ve not personally applied myself, the ability to run a game controller is clearly in my genetic makeup if my kids are any indication. The way things are going in Iraq, this could be a sought after skill too providing job protection.

6. Garbage Miner – I though this is what small children did in third world countries? I just thrown out the contents of three containers from the rear of my refrigerator and the miasma nearly made me vomit so I’m disregarding this option.

7. Weather Coordinator – They predict we’ll have the ability to influence and control the weather on Earth, to me is a bit overly futuristic. Despite the amazing advancements in health I don’t see this happening in my lifetime.

8. Organ Farmer – When we begin growing human organs from scratch we will need skilled workers to monitor sterile environment to propagate: hearts, lungs and eyes. Again the failure of my past gardening forays suggests this career might not be working to my strengths.

9. Memory Manipulator – Instead of travelling we will opt to have memories implanted in our brains in the future, saving the planet and avoiding long lines at the airport. This is another future career I am dubious of, why would anyone want to compete with a good old scotch and dry?

You see, there are plenty of options out there all you will need is an open mind and a willingness to consider the advice of experts who suggest the following:

_Forget about security, compensation and location, fulfilment doesn’t come from extrinsic, but intrinsic qualities of the work.
_Visualise your dream job, identify what makes your pulse race.
_Forget about status, it will kill you. A 2002 study of monkeys found those higher in the pecking order died first.
_Don’t think your job will fix something that is wrong with you, the best reason to do something is for the difference you make through it, not because of what it does to you.
_Find a job that’s not a struggle, of course work isn’t easy, but it also doesn’t need to be hard. Play to your natural strengths and talents which will allow you to do your best work.
Finally they urge you make time for exploration and make a choice, take a stand and even though that might be scary or uncomfortable; if it doesn’t work out there’s always a new choice to be made.

Sources:
Kaplan Robert Steven; Reaching Your Potential; HBR Articles July 1, 2008
Moran, Gwen; 4 Reasons Why You Hate Your Job and How To Fix It; Fast Company.com; June 17, 2014
Meister, Jeanne; Job Hopping Is the ‘New Normal’ for Millennials: Three Ways to Prevent a Human Resource Nightmare; Forbes August 14, 2002
The Muse; The Foolproof Guide To Finding True Career Fulfilment; Forbes; August 1, 2013
Woods, David; Top Jobs of the Future; Manolith; June 24, 2013

The Future of Lighting

Futures Rambling #80
By Laurie Aznavoorian

Next week I will be giving a presentation at the Illumni Future of Lighting Summit in Sydney. I’m playing the role of ‘Workplace Contextualiser’ tasked with providing delegates a view of what’s happening in the world of workplace and relating that to a broader context. Then I am going to suggest roles lighting might play.

I’m aware that jumping from world events to light bulbs represents a significant leap, but as obtuse as it may be, there is a link and acknowledging and incorporating social, economic, cultural and business context is a critical first step in creating powerful workplaces. I’ve grown very weary of briefs that ignore this and read like the posters on the wall at my yoga studio. You know the ones, with rainbows and unicorns espousing aspirations and hopes with no mention of the big mean world. Those briefs will deliver a space, but will it be a space that makes a difference to a business?

One benefit of exploring context is the greater likelihood that the problems we are solving will be the right ones. In addition, our understanding of both problem and solution becomes the subtext to the narrative we’ll use to describe why we’ve done what we’ve done. This is critical for getting people on board. When we only provide a small part of the picture, it’s difficult to eliminate subjectivity, we run the risk of people following their natural tendency to fill in gaps and that could result in a very different story than what we intended.

Every night I watch the American news back to back with the Australian news, it’s a bit depressing, but provides a snapshot of rotten things happening on both sides of the globe that we must consider. There are a number of trending topics, three of which I plan to address. Coincidentally, these three topics often emerge when talking to organisations about their workplaces. Each demands unique actions and those actions can be supported, encouraged and enhanced through the physical environment and the environments can be enhanced through lighting.

Abstruse Problems
Watching the news it is impossible to ignore catastrophic natural disasters happening around the world: floods in the Balkans, mudslide to the Northwest of Seattle and fires in Valparaiso Chile to name a few. There’s an environmental story, but the focus here will be on the fact that these represent abstruse problems: enigmatic, difficult to understand and impossible for a single country to solve on their own.

Similarly, organisations face increasingly complex problems that force them to draw on expertise from a wider group of problem solvers including external partners. In both cases the action demanded is to be enterprising, like Bill Gates applying his knowledge (and considerable wealth) to the problems of vaccinations and malaria.

Workplace designs have response to the need to enterprise; this is most clearly evidenced in the rise of co-working spaces that allow people from multiple organisations to interact in a club type atmosphere. Within organisation’s workplaces we will continue to see investment in architectural elements like stairs and atriums, transparent workplaces and spaces dedicated to socialising and learning that encourage mixing, blending and inviting ‘outsiders in.

The challenge with these workplaces, and where lighting can help, is in the critical issue of way-finding. Unfortunately, this has been all but ignored in many of today’s contemporary workplaces that resemble furniture showrooms with little sense of direction or zoning. Employing lighting to define main circulation paths, passive and active work zones and signifying key destinations would improve our workplaces dramatically.

Polarisation
Polarisation is evident in the numerous schisms we see from the redshirt movement in Thailand, Boko Haram kidnapping school girls in Nigeria and in politics in just about any country. In organisations we see a similar disconnects, but fortunately not nearly as dangerous. Businesses generally referred to this as being ‘siloed’ and list ‘breaking down silos’ as a key objective when there is conflict in the organisation.

The action required to bridge the gaps is negotiation, which demands dialogue, knowledge transfer and an opportunity to share points of view and values. Negotiation is an easier pill to swallow when we aren’t forced to abandon our individuality and beliefs, and are given choice. Today’s workplaces have recognised this and many have responded by providing a far greater variety of places to go within the workplace.

By offering choice, we don’t need to close gaps, just bridge them through understanding and accepting that there is more than one way to skin a cat. However, it’s important to remember that once choice is offered, it will be exercised; therefore, workplaces must be compelling and have a sense of character and meaning that will attract and hold worker’s attention. Calling on our skills as architects we must make full use of colour, volume, texture and pattern and use lighting to create drama.

The environment also plays a role in knowledge transfer and here lighting can partner with the symbolism of a space to tell stories, overt or through subtler symbolic means. There is no greater communicator of brand and culture than the buildings we occupy and the workplaces within them, those messages must be carefully considered.

Economic Uncertainty
The final theme, economic uncertainty is familiar to us all. We concern ourselves with a possible downturn in the Chinese economy, the US sliding back into recession, not to mention worries about the new budget Tony and Joe have proposed. Organisations naturally worry about this uncertainty and volatility and many have responded in the same way as nations, with austerity measures and an aversion to risk.

Organisations carefully review their environments today, and are right sizing them by aligning their space to contemporary work practices and eliminating waste. If a job function does not require a large space, it is no longer automatically provided. There is recognition and acceptance that one size does not fit all. Another popular tactic is the use of clever design to squeeze the most out of space by dual, triple or quadruple purposing.

The action being demand is innovation. We must encourage people to think differently about their environments, change their mindset and help them develop new approaches to using space. This is not unlike what Pope Francis has done to the Catholic Church, or ABW’s redefinition of the workstyle many practiced in university.

As we move into the future the most significant innovations in workplaces will come from emerging technologies that promise to change the way we use and experience space. While technology is not technically space, it is part of the ‘workplace ecology’ and cannot be separated from people and space. Together they create what we think of as workplace, and have a co-dependent relationship on each other making it impossible to isolate one.

Lighting is the aggregate of the workplace ecology. It is the glue that binds the parts together and through its careful consideration, makes spaces function efficiently. But lighting does much more than that, it makes space come alive and provides the drama and punctuation we crave. Without light we wouldn’t be hard pressed to see the rainbows and unicorns we all dream about.

The Courage to be You?

Futures Rambling # 79
by Laurie Aznavoorian

The Human Research and Ethic committee overlooking a current research endeavour has once again not disappointed in making our research team jump through hoops to gain ethics approval for the upcoming data collection phase of our next research initiative. Historically, I’ve poked fun at the committee for holding projects like ours to the same standards as those that could have far more serious consequences than determining whether a desk is occupied or not.

In this case it’s warranted, our research participants will be wearing Sociometric badges and there is an understandable concern the electrical pulse from the sensor might mess with pacemakers. However, that was not the question that flummoxed us it was another, which I am embarrassed to admit we hadn’t even considered. It was about the benefit of involvement in the research to the participant.

Pretty lame given we tout ourselves as professionals who care about occupant’s experiences in the workplace! Surprisingly, or perhaps no so much, we had only articulate the benefits of the research to our clients and ourselves and hadn’t given two minutes thought to what might be in it for the guinea pig. Surely there would be something.

Fortunately a compelling answer surfaced without too much mental duress. When you think about it, it’s quite simple, who wouldn’t want to know more about the effectiveness of interactions they have with co-workers? After all, information is power, and understanding the nuances of how we interact with one another will help lay the foundation for more meaningful and productive collaborations.

The Sociometric readers we are using will provide a great amount of valuable data, but unfortunately, it will not lead to knowledge that will break the back of many serious maladies that plague the typical workplace. To be more specific, to some extent they will measure variables that will allow us to monitor behaviour, since they do not record speech, we will never really know when a colleague is being a jerk and talking behind another’s back or trashing someone in the corridor.

Shocked? That doesn’t happen in your office, not true if you subscribe to Robert Kegan’s ideas about being yourself in the workplace, he’s a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of education who believes most interactions in a ‘normal job’ have nothing to do with the real work we perform and have much more to do with a second job we have that is arse covering, looking good and hiding shortcomings.

I concur. I’ve met several people who’ve spent their entire career dedicated to this exact endeavour! Kegan maintains that even though we know covering our weaknesses, inadequacies and uncertainties is counter productive; we do it anyway and it is typical in the ‘normal’ organisation where people feel compelled to hide their less developed parts, or true self.

It makes no sense if you think about it logically, our employers hire us not because we’re perfect, but to realise the potential they see in us. After all we are human and therefore imperfect. In reality, we are not logical, so we spend enormous amounts of time everyday trying to be something, or someone were not, by putting on airs and covering our shortcomings and errors. Unfortunately, this makes us more likely to continue making the same kinds of mistakes hampering growth for each of us personally and for the companies we work for.

Patrick Lencioni lists these same exact attributes in his book “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team”, suggesting that hiding weaknesses and covering mistakes, amongst a number of others, are indicative of organisations that lack trust, not to mention one that is standing still because it’s too timid to evolve. Lencioni supports what our Trust Research, and many others, concludes and that is a lack of trust in an organisation impacts productivity and profit, and it makes people feel downright miserable.

Our sociometric readers are not going to remedy this completely; they will record signals that will provide insight into the authenticity, honesty or sincerity of co-workers interactions. But they can’t really tell us when one employee behaves like a complete tool, in an unproductive or unprofessional manner. What they will tell us is how people interact with one another during various phases of the collaborative process and from this we can bridge the gap to infer how the environment helps or hinders it.

We will most definitely succeed in capturing insights that will inform designers and clients on the spatial attributes that support phases of the collaborative process, but going back to the Ethics Committee question, what’s is this research doing for the people? How do we help them achieve richer interactions and encourage them to be their complete self in the workplace by boldly exhibiting their passions, enthusiasm, wacky ideas and warts? How can we create a company culture, because this is not about a workplace, where employees are not ashamed to be who they are?

That is the $60,000 question, and one that is important to understanding, what Keagan describes as, our ‘new economy’. In the new economy employees seek benefits beyond a paycheck, of the old economy of salary and benefits will continue to be important, but in the ‘new economy’ employees will seek incomes that address “the psychological person”. These incomes support happiness, not in smiley face kind of way, but rather a state of happiness as an evolutionary process that comes from the Aristotelian concept of unfolding, growing and developing as a person.

This probably sounds familiar to many I’ve spoken to recently who are searching for fulfilment and happiness and not finding it at work. Undoubtedly there are a host of reasons for worker dissatisfaction, but one could be not working for a DDO, a deliberately developmental organisation. These are companies that walk the talk and go out of their way to draw employees into a process that helps them grow and become better versions of themselves.

Sign you up to work in a DDO you say? Well maybe think twice, because for most the level of openness required to promote personal growth is a little too scary a proposition. It is true, being in a workplace where there are no secrets and every conversation is an open one can lead to discomfort. Kegan gives an example of an organisation in Connecticut that records every meeting. An extreme example, but one it gives a taste of what true transparency is.

You might rightly surmise, it is not everyone’s idea of fun, but for those that do preserve, working in a DDO can be exhilarating. Some see it as an illustration of the organisation’s generosity with time and a willingness to make an investment in their future. They believe the organisation really cares about them as a person and do not see them as just a means to an end. They thrive in the organisation, would not consider working for ‘normal organisation and the company benefits from excellent results.

For others it’s too confronting and this is why many DDO’s have high turnover rates, and face it not everyone wants their co-workers to know who they really are, you never know they may be in the witness protection program or they want everyone to think they are better than what they are. Those that feel that way have many organisations to choose from that are ‘normal’

I imagine if we had wanted to record this type of information in our research we would not have been given ethics approval, because we could easily delve into people’s psychological well being, and find ourselves outside of our pay grades. Both researcher and participants could find out things they prefer not to know. Like that famous line from A Few Good Men, we think we want the truth but we can’t handle it.

Sources:
Are You the “Real You” in the Office? HBR IdeaCast 5:45 PM March 27, 2014

Russell, Joyce E.A., The importance of trusting co-workers; Australian Financial Review, April 17, 2014

Everyone’s an architect

Futures Rambling #78
By Laurie Aznavoorian

At a writing workshop I attended a few weeks ago the facilitator made a surprising statement; ‘Everyone thinks they are a writer’. Her comment was not directed at the ten people in the room who had toiled for years producing manuscripts, some published and others not, but to countless others who make absurd statements over glasses of Zinfandel about how they were thinking about maybe someday writing a book. The point being, there is a difference between intentions and actually doing the hard yards.

Participants of the workshop came from a number of industries: architecture, IT, public service, gambling and the sex trade (no kidding) and could relate to the comment. Because they knew watching episodes of ER or House does not qualify one to diagnoses illness, viewing CSI NY, Miami and Las Vegas provides no real knowledge of how to solve crime, and my personal favourite, selecting a paint colour or living through a kitchen remodel does not make you an architect.

There is a difference between the professional and hobbyist, that difference is that design professionals: architects, interior designers, communications, graphics and experience designers etc. do not just create something that looks good, they create designs that provide value to the end user and that is a very different outcome. Unfortunately, design professionals do a poor job of articulating what that value is in a language that is meaningful to their client and therefore deal with the negative ramifications of this shortcoming on a daily basis.

Add to this the influence of new technologies and procurement models for design services: open source, crowdsourcing, contests and competitions that take the best ideas and only pay the winner or no one at all. For most designers this is far from a sustainable business model because the time spent on the work has nothing to do with compensation. Winning or succeeding is more a factor of luck, whim of judges, or the personal preferences of people who may have questionable qualifications, or lack the experience and know how to identify a superior design solution.

Crowdsourcing is not something we come up against in architecture and interior design; never the less assuming it won’t creep into our lexicon would be at our own peril. Speak to a graphic designer and mention crowdsourced logo competitions and you’ll receive a litany of reasons why this is bad. Crowdsourcing should not be confused with outsourcing, where jobs are moved from higher to lower paying regions; the practice guarantees an equal quality of work for lower cost. Crowdsourcing combines ideas from people all over the world, qualified or not, and follows a pay on satisfaction model. It does not guarantee a similar quality of outcome.

Most industries would consider such a situation ludicrous, whether or not you like what your doctor, lawyer or accountant did, they would still be expected compensation. However, the question of payment is the least of the problems with these models, the real issues arise from the inability for the designer to capture a competent brief, interact and educate the client about the pros and cons of one solution over another. Since the average person does not really understand graphics, digital communications, interior design or the technicalities of architecture, having a professional navigate the decision making process is critical.

All good relationships are built on trust and those between client and designer are no different. Ideally, communication would be constant throughout the project and in the end the outcome would be the result of discourse and collaboration. Forgoing this opportunity for interaction is the main problem with many of the new methods for procuring design services popular today.

When we whine about the insurgence of design competitions being used to award commissions we are singing an old tune. 140 years ago The Royal Institute of British Architects began a debate on the value of design contests, and as far as I am aware, it continues to this day. On one hand it can be argued design competitions devalue the work and create a host of problems for the profession as a whole.

A number of these were identified in a 2013 exhibition at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York that addressed the hidden stories and politics behind architectural competitions. Noted were tricky ways architects broke anonymity rules and the unlikely chance of a poorly named entry proposal being a successful winner. They labelled competitions as ‘breeding grounds for clichés in architectural representation, and finally identified the real quandary, hours and hours of unpaid work generally done by interns barely earning the minimum wage if they earn a wage at all. For years the profession turned a blind eye to interns providing services for free for the opportunity to work with an internationally famous architect. Unfortunately, Obama’s executive order on the minimum wage will not change that situation in America if it still exists; it only applies to the public sector.

Considering the other side of the coin, competitions alter the course of design by bringing new movements to the fore. International competitions, in particular have broadened our notions of what is possible by calling on the creativity of architects around the globe. We would not have our own Sydney Opera House if it wasn’t for an international competition won by an outsider, and relatively unknown architect, Jorn Utzon. And moore recently if it hadn’t been for an international competition Thomas Noakes from Australia would have never won the Doritos ad competition and millions of Americans would have been denied a taste of Aussie sophistication. See for yourself it will make you proud, particularly if you’re an Aussie. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugo7Y2lRsxc

This highlights another benefit of the competition process, it allows new players to compete regardless of their prior experience in the region or project type. We saw this in the recent Flinders Street Station competition where the people’s choice award went to a team of Melbourne Uni grads: Eduardo Velasquez, Manuel Pineda and Santiago Medina. Although they didn’t win the competition, their entry got us all thinking and talking.

Of course thinking and talking does not pay the mortgage. In researching this piece I read one blog that suggested the last thing you wanted to do was win a competition, because it would signify the end of self-indulgent fantasies and force the architect to listen to clients, local politicians, health & safety certifiers and fire regulators.

The blogger was having a go at Zaha Hadid, who didn’t get a paying commission for 25 years, he claimed her reputation was “based on images, not real-life.” While it may be true that it took a long time for Hadid to warm up, something she could only have done with rich parents or some kind of supporter behind her, it’s hard to see how her work did not become more refined, some might say palatable, from the many international competitions she entered.

Hadid is the recipient of, and only woman to win The Pritzker Prize; her life’s work has been on display in the Guggenheim and she runs a practice of 350 people in London. She is 69th on the Forbes list of “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women” and was named by Time as an influential thinker in the 2010 TIME 100 issue. If that is not enough, she was listed as one of the fifty best-dressed over 50s by the Guardian in 2013! Architectural competitions have been very, very, good for Zaha, and prove that when it comes to architects it’s all about flash, not cash.

Sources:
Doyle, John; “Did We Just Overlook the Next Opera House?”; The Age; January 24, 2014
Dunn, Zach; “The Real Problem With Design Contests”; The Blog of One Mighty Roar; posted January 16, 2009
Kubey, Karen; “The Competitive Hypothesis” Domusweb; posted February 13, 2013
Stevens, Gary; “How to Become a Famous Architect Without Building Anything”; Dr. Garry’s Place http://www.archsoc.com
http://www.ethicsingraphicdesign.org; Contests—who wins?; Posted on Jan 23, 2013
McKiernan, Patricia; Creative Professionals and Ethics; Graphic Artists Guild; August 7, 201

Highlights of Worktech 2014

Future’s Rambling #77

This year’s Worktech 14 conference in Melbourne offered a marked improvement over the previous year’s ‘sponsor fest’. Despite a speaking roster that was still heavily weighted to organisations willing to fork out money to support Phillip and Ungroup, this year’s sponsors at least had the good sense to offer engaging talks that provided new perspectives on the workplace story. In particular kudos to NAB for Michaela Healy sharing the people strategy behind the 700 Bourke Street move and Peter Holmes for a titillating view of the future of retail banking.

Reflecting on the day’s events, three themes emerged that were supported by the sixteen speakers. These were the concept of enterprise, experience and self-regulation

en•ter•prise
A project or activity that involves many people and that is often difficult / a business organisation / the ability or desire to do dangerous or difficult things or to solve problems in new ways.

Speakers at Worktech mentioned enterprise in the context of leadership, banking and education. Amanda Martin from the Melbourne Business School suggested leaders today must be enterprise focused, steering away from the individual’s goals and KPIs. Martin says great leaders today must have the ability to adapt to a changing world, and respond to today’s leadership context which she defines with the acronym VUCA: volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. These new conditions demand greater innovation and a changed perspective, but most of all good leaders today recognise building culture is very much a part of their role.

Peter Holmes from NAB suggested the bank would engage customers by converging the digital and physical environment with people, creating an ‘enterprise footprint’ to encourage working together, rather than in isolation. Spaces like NAB’s ‘co- working hub environments’ e.g. The Village at 700 Bourke, are a physical manifestation of the enterprise footprint that offers opportunities for cross channel exchange between customers.

Julian Waters-Lynch encouraged us to be ‘enterprising’ by creating the business that would put us out of business. To do this we need great ideas which he maintains are the result of networks. Flow of knowledge is the new metaphor of an organisation, it is a living / learning system that delivers great creativity when it brings together three key elements: density (people being together) + diversity (different kinds of people) + a safe place (a culture that allows mistakes).

ex•pe•ri•ence
The process of doing and seeing things and of having things happen to you.

We are used to describing physical environments as experiential, but often use the word when referencing retail and entertainment spaces, Worktech presenters expanded this to the workplace lexicon.
Frank Rexach from Haworth spoke of the creation of a collaborative experience that encourages people to talk across boundaries. This is the theme behind the co-working club lounge space at 1 O’Connell in Sydney, a new joint venture between Haworth and Lend Lease.

Frank was not the only co working advocate. Julian Waters-Lynch, a PHD student from RMIT and the Holios group, asked why Kodak didn’t see Instagram coming. Suggesting part of the ‘innovator’s dilemma’ comes not from the things we know we don’t know, but from things we don’t know we don’t know, Waters – Lynch uses this to trump co-working spaces as places to provide valuable insight from other organisations that offer a glimpse beyond to a ‘different game’. This is critical he says, because innovation cannot come from inside an organisation.

Another advocate for creating a unique experience was Peter Holmes from NAB. His description of the bank of the future: highly interactive, having smart technologies, and offering face to face customer service incorporating gamification to help customers learn to use new technologies were key ingredients of a space that is less about transaction and more around creating a customer experience.

Co-working spaces are the logical next steps for the students of MLC School in Sydney who are learning in an environment that performs similarly. Principal Denice Scala believes teachers play a role in co- constructing an experience with their students that is non-hierarchal, allows collaboration, reflection, connection and relationships.
Scala’s idea of an effective learning environment is its ability to be: flexible, active, exploratory, multi-sensory, immersive and experimental. Interestingly, like Waters-Lynch, she links innovation to environments that are physically and psychologically safe e.g. you’re not labelled a ‘dope’ for trying something.

reg•u•la•tion
An official rule or law that says how something should be done.

This often repeated phrase at the conference related to self-regulation, but Hayden Perkin’s case study of Google’s New York office gave insights into both. Google’s global guidelines speak to regulation, while the company’s culture encourages each location to manipulate those guidelines effectively supporting self-regulation.

Working in facilities for a company like Google with a culture of giving people what they want would not be for the faint of heart. Describing the environment as “controlled chaos”, Perkins explained each “googler” was given an erector set type kit of parts manufactured by Haworth that they could use to create the workplace of their dreams. As long as they didn’t encroach on the carpet denoting the fire egress and mandatory exits, they were free to let their imaginations run wild.

Despite unfettered freedom, Perkins learned some workers didn’t want to make their own workplace and suggested that was his job. Fair go. He also learned that despite all the hype, not everyone likes chaos. Google’s approach posed a stark contrast to the defined approach taken by NAB who maintains the bank has clarity of direction in their fitout, unlike Google it is not a democracy and saying no was sometimes required to maintain focus.

No Worktech would be complete without Phillip Ross telling us about the future. This year he, and Gordon Graylish from Intel, provided a glimpse to the future of new technologies that will definitely impact the way we work and challenge our notions of the status quo. Graylish summed up the changes using another acronym that he says is new paradigm for IT – SMAC = social, mobile, analytical and cloud.

Our personal productivity will be improved by creating a ‘proactive context’ using data from our phones and NFC, near field communication, readers. These are emerging technologies that will tag and track our movements; similar to indoor positioning systems like the iBeacon, they are a new class of low-powered, low cost transmitters that are location-aware, context-aware, pervasive, small wireless sensors that pinpoint location and they are coming to a workplace near you.

Also on the horizon is the sociometric badge! Well la de da, we already have them; I’ve been wearing one around my neck for a week. The device developed by the MIT Media Lab is a wearable sensing device that records human behaviour and social interactions.

Pretty spiffy, but Gaylish warns us not to consider technology our saviour. Those wireless charging and docking stations, seamless sharing, wireless syncing, voice activation and secure file transfer will not transform our work lives on their own! Gaylish says it is only in combination with HR and space that technologies will open doors for new ways of working, proving once again that great minds think alike!

The Power of Belief

Futures Rambling # 76

The debate over immigration continues to rage: on this side of the globe Abbot is turning back boats and on the other Obama is encouraging cooperation, hoping The House of Representatives will pass immigration reform this year – good luck! Being an immigrant myself, I feel deep empathy for those who board leaky boats in hope of a better life. My family boarded a United Airlines 767, perhaps equally dismal, and we were immigrating for the salubrious reason of a new job; never the less it was still a stressful ordeal many are not prepared to embrace.

The topic of immigration surfaced at an Australia Day barbeque with friends. My pal Bob is considering a move to Ecuador and the rest of us felt compelled to debate his logic and the likelihood of his success in a new country. He concocted the idea to move following a meeting with his financial planner who informed him he had saved more than enough for a comfortable retirement, but when Bob said he planned to live to 120, the planner revised his thumbs up status to thumbs down and recommended a ‘retirement haven’. Bob’s uncle is 100 and his father is 99, so it’s not the outlandish stretch you might imagine.

What was interesting was how opinions divided neatly amongst friends: some felt it was a great idea and had great confidence Bob would adapt beautifully, while others were negative, wary of the enormous risk and possible pitfalls. While it was hardly an astounding epiphany, the afternoon clearly demonstrated some people have what researchers call a ‘fixed (or entity) theory’ and others have a ‘malleable (or incremental) theory’ that allows them to be more open to learning, willing to confront changes and difficult tasks and bounce back from failures.

As influential as whether our theories are fixed or malleable is a person’s beliefs. Beliefs reflect how we feel about important issues, impact our goals, dictate how we construe experiences and influence the habitual patterns and responses we apply to our experiences. They not only define us, but are the foundations of our personalities.

Understanding how beliefs influence decision making is by no means a simple science. However an amusing interpretation can be found in the (Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) MMORPG, Haven & Hearth. The game aims “to provide players an interactive, affectable and mutable game world, which can be permanently and fundamentally changed and affected through actions undertaken by the player.” Six dualisms: tradition and change, martial and peaceful, nature and industry, barbarism and civilization, night and day, and life and death are dealt with throughout the game, but players can affect the outcome by changing their attitude.

Sadly, real life is not like an on line game; don’t tell this to my son and his flatmates who play MMORPG frequently in their lounge room they have labelled ‘the nerdatorium’. In real life changing attitudes, beliefs, or personality, is far more complex – just look at the struggle of politicians who try to reinvent themselves. Hard as he tried K.Rudd couldn’t help being K.Rudd. The good news is that research suggests our personality is flexible and dynamic, and while is not easy to alter our beliefs, understanding them gives us an idea of where to begin.

Stanford University has studied beliefs; of particular interest to Bob and organisations that struggle with integrating new people into a team, some from different cultures, and ensure they function effectively, is the research done into acceptance. They learned belief plays a critical role in whether or not people believe they are accepted and suggest it is a better judge in how we function than the attributes we typically use to define personality e.g. our temperament, the consistent patterns we follow and how we perceive ourselves, others and our environment.

Beliefs, they maintain, are a better gauge of our ability to function well, grow, learn and achieve in school and careers. Going back to Bob, whether he successfully resettles in Ecuador will be more a factor of his belief in his ability, than his history of moving, or whether he has an outgoing temperament.

This leads to the question, if believing is so critical to success, what can we do to make people believe? Don’t yawn, or laugh when you hear this, but some research suggest it all has to do with innovation. There’s that word again, it’s the Holy Grail and it also makes julienne fries! Joking aside, it makes sense; companies or individuals that are more innovative are open to new ideas, processes and people. They’re malleable and that leads to better performance in the face of challenges such as moving to Ecuador.

At Stanford University there has been some interesting investigation into the link between people’s beliefs, and the levels of innovation present in the companies they work for. They use the term ‘innovation self-efficacy’ in reference to motivation borne of beliefs in one’s ability. If we don’t believe, we will not act; if we don’t try, we don’t innovate. The two are mutually reinforcing, if we act and receive positive feedback, it builds our belief, leading to more innovation and acceptance.

The psychologist Albert Bandura proposes innovation self – efficacy develops in three ways: Social persuasion – we are told we can, Vicarious learning – watching others and Mastery experiences – doing it. Designers from Stanford’s d school and Northwestern’s Segal Design Institute have identified ways our environments foster innovation self –efficacy. These do not address the physical environment, that never the less offer food for thought.

  1. Structure learning for small wins and small failures to take advantage of sustained effort, rather than focusing only on the end goal.
  2. Reframe failed attempts as learning opportunities.
  3. Reframe uncertainty as curiosity, rather than not knowing.
  4. Scope projects for ongoing authentic feedback rather than evaluation.
  5. Broadcast success immediately.
  6. Articulate a routine process for innovation.

Companies that train employees to apply knowledge to solve problems that have known answers foster a fear of complexity and failure, because reward and praise comes from getting things right. Rather than building self-esteem, the result is challenge avoidance and vulnerability, the situations produce what is referred to as ‘Innovation Distrust’ or a disbelief in our ability to create innovative solutions. Innovation distrust’ and routine actions are mutually reinforcing.

So if we follow the same pattern day in and day out and always follow the rules, we build an aversion to innovation. Taking this a step further, one could argue we become less malleable by following the status quo, which is no doubt where the phrases ‘being set in one’s way’ or ‘can’t teach an old dog new tricks’ come from.

Adding to the complexity is the concept of relationship beliefs. Fifty years ago researchers used the ‘strange situation’ paradigm to test relationships between infants and their mothers. In these studies mothers and infants were separated and later reunited. This tested whether the infant used the mother as a secure base in times of stress. Infants were labelled securely or insecurely attached. This test can be done with architects and bottles of scotch as well – just messing with you.

Securely or insecurely attached infants have different expectations about whether their caretaker will respond to their needs. The way this theory applies to adults, is that people who expect a negative response (insecurely attached) have fragile relationships and see rejection in ordinary behaviour, they also respond to conflict in ways that undermine relationships.

Again there is good news. Even though researchers learned expectations predict how people will function, they learned they are also malleable and changing people’s expectation of acceptance is key to their ability to succeed in a new environment. None of this is necessary in Bob’s case, he believes he can easily move to Ecuador, make friends and learn Spanish and therefore he will.

Just think if every employee in every Australian company had such belief in their abilities and the companies they worked for nurtured and supported their actions. It might not stop the endless debate on immigration, but it could put an end to the drivel about productivity and innovation in Australian workplaces.

Sources:

Bleby, Michael; We Came by Boat: How Refugees Changed Australian Business; BRW, August 29, 2013

Gerber, Liz; Innovation Self-Efficacy: Fostering Beliefs in Our Ability Through and By Design; core jr post, October 24, 2011

Dweck, Carol S; Can Personality Be Changed? The Role of Beliefs in Personality and Change; Association for Psychological Science, Stanford University

Dweck, Carol; Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

Healthandhearth.wikia.com

Bad Posture

Futures Rambling # 75

By Laurie Aznavoorian

I am sitting at my desk in the ‘turtle’ posture. As many of you know, I’m a big fan of yoga, so enamoured with the practice that I forwarded an e mail to everyone at work from The Healthy Living Lounge featuring the best office chair yoga exercises. The, ‘turtle posture’ was not one of those suggested; it is not a yoga asana.

Many of us who practice yoga, as well as those who wouldn’t know a Bhujangasana from a corned beef sandwich practice the turtle posture daily. We do it while standing or sitting, crunched over our keyboards, telephones or another technology we cannot separate ourselves from.  Professor Alan Hedge from Cornell University provided an excellent introduction to the turtle at a presentation he gave last month in the Schiavello showroom.

The picture Hedge paints for those of us who practice turtle is not pretty. This posture can cause serious issues later in life. For that matter, doing yoga in five caster swivel chairs is also potentially hazardous, and is probably not what the Living Lounge had in mind when they issued the e mail. This could be the inspiration for yet another rendition of the ‘Dumb ways to Die’ video put out by Metro Trains.

The data Professor Hedge referenced in his presentation on the dangers of hunching over, watching television and sitting for over 55 minutes at one time was sobering. Did you know that for every hour you watch television, your life expectancy reduces by 20 minutes? Every cigarette smoked reduces your life by 11 minutes. Imagine if you sit, smoke and watch television!

Unfortunately, the average office worker easily sits for over 55 minutes a day without moving. Studies have proven this kind of sedentary work style increases the chance of getting cardio vascular disease, diabetes, circulatory problems like DVT, and some forms of cancer.  Add that to the host of possible muscle skeletal conditions, particularly those to the shoulder and neck that workers may develop due to poor postures, and we can anticipate a very bright future for physio therapists and heart surgeons.  

Luckily, the furniture manufactures are on to this.  Steelcase recently conducted an 11 country survey observing  postures and discovered nine new ones they have coined: the draw, the multi-device, the text, the cacoon, the swipe, the smart lean, the trance, the take it in and the strunch, which looks a lot like Professor Hedge’s turtle. These new work postures are driven by how the human body interacts with the technologies we work with and how our body moves as we shift from device to device.

Not surprisingly, most of these are not good for your body. The industry has responded with new range of super flexible chairs that react to changing postures. For example, Steelcase’s Gesture recently launched in Australia is designed to support our body as it interacts with technology. Other products like Axia Smart Chair take a punitive approach to poor posture by installing sensors that vibrate when we slump, reminding us to sit straight.

As workplace designers who advise and create contemporary workplaces for major organisations, it is important that each of us considers the implications of these research findings. What is the duty of care for designers or the companies that commission them?

We believe we are doing the right thing by designing workspaces that support variety and encourage movement, but Professor Hedge would argue there is more to it than that. He promotes ‘everywhere ergonomics’ suggesting anywhere we sit in a workplace should have proper ergonomics, including the trendy loose furniture pieces we use. He is an ergonomist so we would expect this advice. He also maintains it’s critical to educate employees about posture and ergonomics, to help them understand how not to injure themselves.

To further complicate the topic and move beyond the physical to the behavioural, posture also impacts behaviour. Charles Darwin started this idea in 1872 when he wrote The Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals. The essay suggests the way we express ourselves on the outside, our gestures and posture, can intensify the emotions we have on the inside.

Studies conducted at MIT have taken this idea one step further and to some degree proven there is an impact on our emotions when we assume particular stances or postures. The MIT researchers were interested in stances associated with power, and concluded posture is shaped by environment. If we sit or stand a particular way we will behave differently.  

In one of the experiments study participants were asked to take a quiz, their answers were carbon copied. Afterward they were instructed to arrange a series of articles on work surfaces: staplers, pens and pencils and pads of paper. Not all participants were given the same size desk and this caused some of the desk tops to be cluttered, while others swam in space.  

The hypothesis was that those with larger work surface, who had to reach and stretch for an item, would be forced by the environment to assume a posture of power. They had no choice but to be expansive. The participants with smaller work settings adopted more contracted weaker postures as a physical manifestation of their environment.

The researchers then handed out the answers to the quiz participants had taken earlier. Surprisingly, they found participants sitting in the larger desks, the ones forced to assume power postures, were more likely to go back change their answers if they got them wrong. They cheated!

A similar experiment was conducted with car simulators. Researchers found participants seated in more spacious simulators were more likely to ‘hit and run’, even though the study rules stipulated they should stop after a crash. Participants in larger car simulators were also more likely to double park.  The research team concluded environment influences our behaviour, and should therefore inform ergonomic design.

They did not conclude, as I would, that people who drive big cars are jerks. It does bring to the surface interesting observations on the audacity of people in power. Would any of you actually even try to hand in an expense report for a hooker or an overseas trip to a friend’s wedding as our Aussie politicians have?

The researchers suggest we proceed with caution as we interpret these findings. There isn’t enough known about how postures change our psychology, it’s too early to rush off and make desks or car seats smaller to prohibit people from behaving like bozos. But the studies confirm what we have intuitively known for a long time, space does influence human behaviours.

With new found knowledge opportunities arise, combining what we have learned from the MIT and other ergonomic studies, we have more than enough to think about. Remember the first reports on the links between cigarette smoking and cancer emerged in the 1950s, and it wasn’t until the late 1990s that plaintiffs began to have success suing tobacco companies. There’s plenty of time, never say never, we don’t want to be the next Philip Morris.

 

Sources:

Hedge, Professor Alan – Cornell University, presentation at Schiavello

Jaffe, Eric; How Everyday Ergonomics Shape Your Behavior; Fast Company Co.Design; October 21, 2013

Jaffe, Eric; Is Google Maps Changing Our Behavior? The Atlantic Cities; March 29 2013

NOLO website; Tobacco Litigation: History & Recent Developments

Steelcase; Steelcase Global Study Uncovers New Postures Driven By Mobile Technology; March 12, 2013

 

Breaking Habits

Futures Rambling # 74

By Laurie Aznavoorian

 

Recently I had dinner with a group of colleagues who all travel frequently for work. Perhaps it was due to my overnight bag parked adjacent to our table that our conversation drifted to amusing tips and tricks each of us had to make being a road warrior a bit more manageable. Most of these fell into the George Clooney ‘Flying High’ category ranging from knowing which shoes set off the X ray machines, outfits that require no ironing, to the times and airlines that are best to fly on.

The banter highlighted a number of odd habits we had each formed, such as wearing glasses in the shower. I do this after having a rather unfortunate experience of washing my hair with body lotion because I can’t see the print on the tiny bottles hotels provide and I never wear contact lenses to bed. Another frequent traveler brings her own pillow case; she also always puts her suit case on the bed, unpacks and hangs up her clothing in the closet on every trip, she repeats the process when she arrives home.

This is a bad habit – why? Once, and only once, she decided to stay at a cheaper hotel, put her bag on the bed as she always does and Kiwi bedbugs from the Auckland hotel hitched a ride to her home in Sydney. By the time she got done tossing out her bed linen, washing and fumigating the house, it cost her thousands of dollars to be rid of her new friends. DON’T PUT YOUR LUGGAGE ON ANY HOTEL BEDS, it is suggested you put it in the shower, seriously.

Offering advice on how you should just stop doing something that is a habit reminds me of former US President Regan’s wife Nancy. When she was the first lady her response to drug addiction was to “just say no”, as if breaking an addiction was as easy as choosing red or white wine. Most people, particularly addicts, paid no attention to her because she wore a twin set and string of pearls that went with her bouffant hairdo.

It is a bit of an oxymoron to say habits are very hard to break, we have all suffered through the pain of attempting to stop something that has become routine: drinking coffee, grog, smoking, watching too many episodes of The League in one sitting. One of the reasons it is so hard for us to break a habit has to do with how our brains work.

Before we get snarky with our grey matter, it should be noted that if our brains didn’t behave in the way they do, we would be incapable of functioning. Every minute of the day we reflect, ponder and choose, it’s what makes us human, but with much information to process and decisions to make, we would be incapacitated if we had to think about them all.

Lucky for us our brains assist by allowing us to go on auto pilot; we perform more mundane activities in life like putting toothpaste on the toothbrush, or for boys putting the Y in your undies in front, with little or no consciousness. This unshackles us to think about other more pressing issues such as why Senator Ted Cruz, a republican from Texas (go figure) spent 21 hours talking about Dr. Seuss and Duck Dynasty. His goal was to persuade members of Congress to vote for defunding Obama’s Affordable Care Act. What a travesty of ‘Green Eggs and Ham”, didn’t he realise the book is about trying new things.

The interesting and very challenging aspect of habits and brains is the part of the brain that accounts for habit formation, the basal ganglia, is buried smack dab in the middle of your head. It is so deep inside that you could get hit over the head with a shovel and damage an exterior section of your brain causing you to  forget who and where you are, but you would continue to chew your finger nails.

There are different types of habits we form, we cannot attribute all to the structure of our brain. Repetition forces us into habits and engrains them in our brains like grooves in old vinyl records.  This type of habit is hard to change because it is so well worn in our minds; we need to practice to allow new grooves to form in our brains. Other habits involve dependence and require a different tactic for change, in these instances we must replace one activity with another that is equally rewarding.  A third type of habit begins by obeying social norms, like wearing your seat belt.

There is another type of habitual behaviour that involves cognitive activity, this is the trickiest because it involves our interpretations of a situation according to what it means to us and fits into stories we tell ourselves. These behaviours become habitual because people develop a chronic way of interpreting the world that is repeated. Only through learning new stories can we shift their mindset. 

This one is the one we must take note of as work place designers, because we mess with people’s interpretations of their notions of work and themselves.  Our environments require occupants to change deeply engrained habits and behaviors they have built up over decades on the job. I for one am guilty of pulling a Nancy Regan and with a glib self-righteousness suggest workers get rid of their stupid little desk chachkies , their snack drawer and their cat photos, and join the ranks of evolved contemporary workers.

So where does this leave our poor clients, and indeed all of us who wrestle with annoying habits? In the book “The Power Of Habit – Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business” author Charles Duhigg is very optimistic. He maintains once we understand our habits we can change them. To do this we must understand the nature of habits that will not only help us unload our own personal bad habits, but can also influence group behavour. This is critical for turning around companies that do dumb things just because they always have.

Duhigg cites multiple studies that have shown the only way to break a habit is to replace it with another activity that will respond to the same environmental cues that instigate the ‘habit loop’ and provide the same reward at the end. In other words, your brain will allow you to change the middle part of the loop, but not the beginning and end.  

Additional good news on breaking habits can be found in a new study from MIT where neuroscientists have found that a small region of the brain’s prefrontal cortex, the infralimbic (IL) cortex, is responsible for moment by moment control. The IL cortex therefore has the ability to determine which habits are switched on at any given time.

What is very cool about this research is the MIT crowd discovered they can force the brain to break the signal from the IL cortex using light. The technique, known as optogenetics, could pave the way to help us stop smoking, drinking, over eating and in my case acting like a jerk. The only problem is that today optogenetics is only available to you if you are a lab rat. 

Sources:

Duhigg, Charles; The Power Of Habit – Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, Random House

Kearney Christine; The Brain Controls Our Ability To Stop Habits; Medical News Today; November 1, 2012

Trafton, Anne; How the Brain Controls our Habits; MIT News Office; October 29, 2012

VanSonnenberg, Emily;  This is Your Brain on Habits; Positive Psychology News Daily; February 1, 2011

 

 

 

 

 

Changing of the Guard

Futures Ramblings # 73

By Laurie Aznavoorian

 

It is an interesting time for Australians, following the election this weekend we have a new Prime Minister. The result will be a different middle aged white man plodding around Kirribilli House and The Lodge in Canberra in their bathrobe and Ugg boots. For most of us, a new political party at the helm signals little real, or rapid change; however, for the poor folks who service the Prime Minister it could be another story all together. 

Consider the coffee guy at Kirribilli house. You’ve finally perfected KRudds double strength, no fat, soy latte and suddenly you are responsible for producing decaffeinated soy cappuccinos with low fat chocolate sprinkles on top. It could be hair splittingly tense with great potential for disappointment. There is significant possibility it might end in tears, as is so often the case when leadership changes.

The website ‘AskMen’ targeted to the ‘better man’ with the by-line Power & Money, offers tips for people like the coffee guy who not only need to ensure they are on the ball when times change, but also have a plan for making first impressions on a new boss. The suggestions are:

  • Don’t choose sides.
  • Wait till the storm has cleared.
  • Resist brown nosing.
  • Volunteer for small tasks, because it takes time to build trust.
  • Don’t be a know it all.
  • Use the opportunity to rebuild your professional image.

 

As designers it is not unusual to be in this same unpleasant predicament. Not because leadership in our company has changed, but in our client’s. The experience can be quite traumatic, for example take Arthur Andersen. Although it’s not technically a changing of the guard, more a spontaneous combustion, the mere mention of those words in our office still has the ability to ashen faces. At the end of the day the result was the same; an amazing design up in smoke along with Enron and Andersen – sati style.

The last time I dealt with a client’s leadership transition the impact was amazingly painless. It occurred on the Telecom New Zealand project when Theresa Gattung announced her departure and handed over the reins to Dr Paul Reynolds from BT. The shift could have spelled disaster for us, but the work we did in building our accommodation and property strategy on business principles and clearly articulating our recommendations and the reasons for them, gave the strategy sticking power that lasted well after Theresa left.

We are not always so lucky. Take the saga of the CEO with strong opinions who was very involved in defining every element of the space we were designing from its look and feel down to the policies for behaviours in the new environment. When he left his successor sent us back to the drawing board. Compounding the pain of the redesign was a sneaky gut feeling the changes would result in dissolution of policies and a half measure implementation because the agreed solutions didn’t necessarily resonate with the new leader.

But let’s not focus on sad stories, there are plenty of positive anecdotes where the relationship we have with our client has helped soften the pain of the changing of the guard. One of these is Westpac; we have been working with the organisation since the mid nineties and undergone three leadership changes. I asked Peter McCamley, who has worked with them for nearly two decades what it was that held the integrity of our designs together through leadership change.

The catalyst of our success he says, comes from doing what we do; not only in a design capacity, but in our insatiable quest to dig deep and gain real understanding of the client’s business. In doing this we become the custodian of their business knowledge. For some clients, we may be their only link to history when their own people move on. We become a key part of the succession plan, the transferrers of knowledge, and the only ones who know the story of why the workplace is the way it is.  

Our success also comes from a willingness to accept there will be change with a new leader, not to mention the natural and logical evolution as the organisation responds to the times. As designers we must have a preparedness to evolve our thinking to align with a new leader’s intentions and ideas.

With Westpac we have not only weathered multiple leadership changes, but have also stood by them through the acquisition of new companies. When this occurs the organisation evolves by virtue of the influence each entity has on the other, which can also impact the work we do and the relations we have with them.

Organisations like Westpac recognise the role designers play and have accepted our offers to induct their new leaders. We communicated project time lines, explained why things are the way they are, and apprised them of the drivers for their accommodation solutions. They gained a greater understanding of the property portfolio and could then avoid making subjective judgements. Their credibility was reinforced due to a stronger connection to company history.

Often of greater impact to us is a change in the property team, particularly when we wear the organisation’s badge and play the role of chief historian. Property people have a tendency to move on when projects complete, frequently leaving us to communicate the project rationale to their successor. On the upside, together we collectively develop process, policy, standards and an approach to the effective execution of a project and that is highly transferable.

The most challenging situations can result from an intermediary shift; this is often more difficult because they are anxious to prove their own value and sometimes demonstrate that by putting us to the test, or returning the job to the market. The strength of our relationship with the client is often stronger, never the less; intermediaries are often in a position to make judgement calls on the value we bring. Since their measurements deal with cost, as opposed to adding value through effectiveness and efficiency, we frequently find our status in jeopardy. 

So what advice do we have for keeping our client relationships alive and strong enough to endure a changing of the guards? First, develop multi layered relationships within the business that extend beyond the top leaders. Hopefully some people will remain through a transition and think highly enough of us to step forward to sing our praises to the new boss. Having an insider attest to our passion, determination and value carries much more weight than self-pontificating.

We must also remember relationships are not about projects, but clients. We live and breathe them, and through our relationships, establish a very deep understanding of what makes them tick. You could say, ‘nobody’s going to love you the way we do’. On the flip side it is critical to continually demonstrate freshness by exposing our long standing clients to new ideas that might be important to them and to other projects we are working on.

It’s very dangerous to assume a client knows everything about us.  I am repeatedly flabbergasted when I chat with clients we have worked with for a long time who say “I didn’t know Geyer did strategy, or worked in tertiary education or had the capacity to do change management. Worse is when they learn this after they have given a project to someone else because they didn’t know we could help them.

Real risks to our relationships come from doing more of the same, assuming our clients are comfortable with the status quo. There is always the danger of projects gaining such momentum that we focus on the technical aspects of doing a job, rather than adding value. To remedy this we need to establish dialogues outside of the project to create a vehicle for the flow of information about what is happening in world of design and in their industry.

Similarly, we need to spice up life for our own people by considering succession. Designers get bored when they’re forced to repeat the same exercise over and over, it causes them to drink heavily and spend too much time shopping on line for shoes and skin care products that fight the advanced signs of ageing.

Try as we might, there is often little we can do once a decision has been made to throw out the baby with the bathwater. This is why we can’t wait to establish the right perceptions with a new leader. Going back to Kirribilli House, the new Prime Minister doesn’t know the coffee guy from a bar of soap. He is unaware of his ability to make a mean mocha or chai latte and may have prejudged him as a pedestrian latte flogger.

It is therefore up to Mr. Coffee to demonstrate his capability. In addition, every now and again, for good measure, he should pull out whatever the sexy lingerie equivalent is to coffee service, and surprise the PM with something new: a slice of banana bread, a chocolate raspberry muffin. Otherwise he may get passed over with the PM believing his only claim to fame is decaf latte.

Sources:

Hui, Samuel; Dealing With a New Boss; au.askmen.com

McCamley Peter, an enlightening conversation about the history of Geyer and Westpac.

Montague, Ty; If Your Leader Departs, Preserve the Company’s Story First; HBR Blog; August 7, 2013

Taylor, Bill; Are You Learning as Fast as the World Is Changing?; HBR Blog; January 26, 2012

Ageism in Design

Futures Rambling # 71

By Laurie Aznavoorian

We have changed Prime Ministers outside of an election – again. It makes Australian’s appear indecisive at the very least, and by comparison makes the partisan bickering of the US congress look like model lawmaking. In the media coverage of the events that led to, and followed the change, it was astounding to see many aspects of the Gilliard’s government record ignored, and her gender the focus of post mortems.

You might find it surprising that despite our pastime of having a go at Julia Gillard for her hair and outfit choices, gender does not top the list of our favourite form of discrimination in this country. It’s not race either, as many would suspect, but age! One would need to be dumb, deaf and blind to not know Australians are no strangers to discrimination. We can compete with the best of the world’s judgement passers at cutting people off at the knees for what they are or aren’t.

This is precisely why Susan Ryan, the Australian age discrimination commissioner, says we need to ‘crackdown’ on ageism because it is the biggest obstacle facing seniors who want to work in the country. If we succeed we could inject $33 billion into the Australian economy by adding 750,000 more people to workforce. This would address skills shortages and other problems we have with the national economy.

Australia is not alone, in McKinsey’s discussion paper Help wanted: The future of work in advanced economies the authors note 40 million workers across advanced economies are unemployed, but many of those countries claim to be unable to find the workers they need. Most could fill their skill gap by employing the high percentage of workers who are 55 to 64 years of age.

It is a large pool to draw from. In 1990, about 10% of the global workforce was over 55; by 2010 that share had risen to 14% and has reached 18% in some advanced economies. By 2030, the proportion of older workers in the global labour force is expected to reach 22%. In places like Japan the percentage of older workers is as high as 70%.

The paper identified five trends influencing employment levels and shaping how work is done. One is the growing pool of untapped talent, to be specific older workers. Another source of labour not tapped is females; while the participation rate has grown and in most advanced economies is equal, female participation still lags that of males in some countries.  They propose this is symptomatic of structural changes in the nature of work, a shift many institutions and policies have not kept up with.

We’re quite familiar with the struggles organisations have in understanding the impact of such changes on office design, but how much attention do we pay to the impact of this on the sustainability of our own profession? Unlike the practice of architecture, where many of the ‘greats’ didn’t even land their first real commissions till they were in their 50’s (Louis Kahn) and often practice well in to old age (Oscar Niemeyer just died at the age of 104 and designed the Oscar Niemeyer Museum in 2002 when he was 94, he designed the Serpentine Gallery at age 96).  We tend to focus on youth.

To be fair, in both architecture and interiors, like many professional industries, our ability to make money is rooted in a model based on many Indians and few chiefs. Still our industry has exacerbated issues around ageism by responding to a challenging economy by sacking older workers and replacing them with juniors who cost less.  This is not a new trick and it hasn’t served organisations that employ it any better now than it has in the past.

Not only are they failing to benefit from the experience and insight of older workers, some have tarnished their reputations from continually undercutting fees. Often the result is little or no time on projects for employees with experience to grace the design or documentation process and when it comes to design that can be disastrous.

Two additional realities plague our industry and make age discrimination particularly challenging, the typical employee in a design firm is not only female, but young to boot. The careers of most women, and some men, tend to not follow the typical lineal career and life path. Woman start and stop their career and go through stages at different times, they may only just be hitting their stride by the time they hit 50.

When design companies discard older designers they don’t just die and go away; they still need to earn a living to keep them in wrinkle cream and black outfits, and being older many career choices are now unsuitable: ice skater, pole dancer! With their skill base and sound relationships, many find employment by crossing the line to work with the clients they once served. The reversal of roles provides a unique perspective on the state of the design industry.

I know several who have done this and while they may be a bit jaded, only remembering  the good part of the ‘good old days’ and forgetting the rest, it is interesting how many comment on what they perceive as a downturn in quality across the industry.  They say this is manifested in superficial design solutions that lack substance and connection to their needs, unbuildable details and shocking documentation packages.

Their hypothesis, which may be self-serving, is that this is due to a lack of experience on project. By example, one knew the project director knew his stuff and hired him because he was highly skilled and more than capable of executing the project. When it came to delivery, he lacked a skilled back up team and was personally unable to allocate the time required to do what he knew needed to be done, the project suffered. More than one person has confided they had no choice but to return drawings back to the designer to be redone.

You could argue design oversight is still being done, just undertaken by experienced practitioners on the ‘client side’ of the project equation. In other cases external consultants like my friend Craig play this role. He is engaged in half hour intervals at a very high fee to review details for constructability and represents several different organisations in difficult meetings that require a person with greater experience representing them.

Some say throw young talented designers in the deep end to sink or swim, cut loose the old farts who piddle about, checking work, clipping wings and cramping style. They argue that is the way they learned. My memories were different, I recall arriving to work in the morning to find a role of trace over what I was working on the night before. The boss would leave sketches and notes, generally illegible, from midnight strolls he took through the studio.  With everything in a computer today, this is no longer possible; the flaw with this logic is that it is a different time.

We have access to abundant data which had led to the tendency to subjectively draw immediate connections between words, images and ideas. This is particularly prevalent with younger designers who apply a social media process of observing and interpreting information quickly: liking, retweeting, sharing or pining to the design process. It leaves no room for the process of design which is one that solves problems and requires contemplation.

No doubt our industry could benefit from a few adjustments to the design and documentation process, to better align it to changing economic conditions, while maintaining the guts of what is good about our trade. It is true, there are plenty of superfluous steps that we could abandon or improve with new technologies available to us; thinking isn’t one of them.

This issue isn’t limited to design, most industries suffer from the same compression of time and budget, but not all industries compound it with an underlying attitude about age, or as impacted by  gender. For instance technology is similarly bedazzled by youth too, but dominated by men who do not bear children so perhaps are in a better place. They too have learned from their mistakes during the tech boom and bust cycles and are not as cavalier as they once were.

Reviewing the success stories from entrepreneurs and investors that made it big in that industry, there are a few lessons they learned that now, later in life, they wished they had known earlier. Perhaps we can learn from them?

  • Tim Westergren, the founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Pandora, said if he could offer his younger self one piece of advice, it would be to realise from an early age that it’s far more haunting to live with the regret of having not followed your instincts–even when those instincts required a diversion from the beaten path–than to have followed your gut and failed.
  • Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia– –said the advice he would share with the younger generation is to be strategic and thoughtful with expenses at an early age so that you can afford to pursue your passions.
  • Bill Ready, the CEO of Braintree–the mobile payments platform for online and mobile commerce says to surround yourself with great people and be fearless in pursuit of game-changing ideas.
  • Alexander Ljung, the cofounder and CEO of SoundCloud–the popular audio platform shared the importance of learning the power of simplicity in today’s complex world. He references a T. S. Eliot quote as a guide. “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter”

Sources:

22 Perspektive 2025—Fachkräfte für Deutschland (Perspective 2025—Skilled Workers for Germany), Federal Labor Agency, Nuremberg, 2010.

APP; Urgent Action Needed on Ageism: Ryan; The Australian, May 17, 2013

Cutcher, Leanne; Women are Still Being Held Back at Work by Ageism and Sexism; The Australian; March 23, 2013

Heick, Terry; How 21st Century Thinking Is Just Different; www.opencolleges.edu.au; May 10, 2012

Nasri, Grace; Successful Entrepreneurs Give Their Younger Selves Lessons They Wish They’d Known Then; www.fastcompany.com; May 9, 2013

National Seniors Australia Productive Ageing Centre; The Elephant in the Room, age Discrimination in Employment; April 2011