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Big Data

By Laurie Aznavoorian

In preparation for your next cocktail party I advise you bone up on ‘Big Data’, it is definitely the topic of the day. If you have not formulated an opinion as to whether it is good or bad, or worse have no idea what Big Data is, you had better educate yourself quick smart. Otherwise you will be the loser at the party left out in the cold, unable to communicate and labelled a Luddite. You’ll be sipping your beer in solitude, wondering whether you should have skipped the bean burrito at lunch. It will be pathetic.  

Around you others will be deeply embroiled in conversations that follow what is now a well-travelled trajectory. It begins with an account of the marvels of technology followed by comparisons of smart phone applications. In time the conversation takes a turn toward the melancholy as party goers broach the inevitable topic of the loss of privacy that goes hand in hand with Big Data and then face the sickening realisation they have already given more information to the internet than they are comfortable with.

Over the past few months I have attended a number of workplace conferences in various countries and cities and not a single event excluded the topic of ‘Big Data’. Organisations like Johnson Controls, Unwired, IBM, Ripple Effect and Teecom are all offering advice, clever strategies and services to tap into the bottomless well of data organisations have at their fingertips, or are providing new tracking devices to collect a specific genre of data specific to the workplace e.g. information on our movement and use of the environment. The obvious intention there is improvements in workplace efficiency.

Beginning with Worktech 13 in Melbourne, the obligatory presentation from Phillip Ross at Unwired highlighted the new technologies that will change the way we work. In particular he noted advancements in near field communications, RFID tracking and BNS ‘building nervous systems’ that track real time performance of both the buildings we occupy and the people in them. These are all poised to make significant impacts to workplace effectiveness using Big Data.

Andrew Marshal of Johnson Controls has been on the conference circuit too, presenting their concept of ‘predictive analytics’. Marshal suggests that by using heat maps, studying workstyles and capturing data through meeting room, desk and personal sensors we will not only have the knowledge to dispel common workplace myths such as: spaces are used all the time, we are working in new ways – not just in different styles and that workplace design is a gimmick, but that we will also be able to derive real benefits by capturing a snapshot in time. Once this data is linked back to the buildings we occupy our workplaces will be more proactive and responsive to us as users.

Similarly David Marks from Teecom began his presentation at KA Connect 2013 in San Francisco by outlining five trends to take note of.

1. Everything is connected
2. Pervasive social media
3. Big data is key
4. New user interfaces
5. Location or context

Marks was not the only one referring to ‘context’ at KA Connect, clearly this is a hot ticket item for the future. Incorporating context is touted to be a key feature in the next generation of the web evolution, providing greater meaning to the data we search for.  He pointed out 70% of mobile phone use occurs indoors and if we capture that data it will allow us to create ‘social buildings’ that have the ability to deliver personalised information based on user context. Teecom’s product ‘Guide Dog’ is a start, by using existing tools such as e mail space users can find, reserve and navigate the workspace. Guide Dog will also collect data on how the space gets used in real time.

At yet another conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (not one I attended), principal research scientist Andrew McAfee at the M.I.T. Centre for Digital Business, said Big Data was “the next big chapter of our business history” and that it will “relace ideas, paradigms, organisations and ways of thinking about the world.” This is a big claim, because we know that data on its own is not inherently meaningful, it takes clever people to derive meaning.

One of the problems with mining Big Data results from a type of modelling that originates in the sciences; it can lead to over simplification. We look for predictable behaviours in hopes they will repeat themselves according to the laws of physics, but many Big Data applications attempt to attach mathematical modelling to human behaviour, interests and preferences and one thing we know about humans is they are far from predictable.

This problem was highlighted recently in the US when all of the Web-browsing trails, sensor signals, GPS tracking and social networking messages, predictive algorithms, artificial intelligence software and data troves couldn’t  keep the stock market from going into a tail spin when a hoax tweet claimed the white house was attacked and Obama injured. The computers made trades based on key words and phrases instigating a sell off.

On the other hand it was through similar Big Data mining that the Boston Marathon bombing suspects were caught. Using pictures from cell phones, portable video recorders, TV and surveillance cameras in public places investigators observed the crowd and identified the key suspects. Unfortunately the social news and entertainment website Reddit at the same time was using registered users content in the form of links or text to wrongly identified innocent people as potential suspects.

This highlights the limits and short comings of Big Data, it is not always right and not always used appropriately. While some like Craig Mundie, senior adviser at Microsoft and co-author of a position paper for The World Economic Forum believes “There’s no bad data, only bad uses of data” others like David Vladeck the former director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission doesn’t buy the argument that data is innocuous until it is used improperly.

To demonstrate his point, a person may spend time searching online for deep fat fryers; they may be looking for a gift or researching a report for cooking school. But to a data miner tracking every click stream in the hunt could be read as an indication of an unhealthy eating habit. Using a data-based prediction this information could be later used to reject the person for health insurance or influence a potential employer.

Another challenge is models do not just predict, they create what scientist call a behavioural loop. We feed data in, it is collected by an algorithm that presents us with choices and those choices steer our behaviour.

With knowledge comes power and with power comes responsibility. How we use the data we collect will be an interesting topic for all of us in the future. For those of us in the workplace game consider the question posed by Gervais Tompkin at KA Connect 2013. Studies have shown that sitting all day is as unhealthy for us as smoking; therefore, what are we as workplace designers going to do about it. What is our moral responsibility?

Put that one in your pipe and smoke it.

Sources.

KA Connect 2013 Conference, San Francisco – Presentations by David Marks Teecom and Gervais Tompkin Gensler.

Worktech 2013 Melbourne presentations by Andrew Marshall Johnson Controls

Big Op-Ed: Shifting Opinions On Surveillance Cameras. National Public Radio, Talk of the Nation – April 22, 2013

Lohr, Steve; Sure, Big Data Is Great. But So Is Intuition. The New York Times, December 29, 2012

Lohr, Steve; Big Data Is Opening Doors, but Maybe Too Many; The New York Times, March 23, 2013

Futures Rambling #66

Finding Happiness at Work and in Life

I caught up with a number of old friends over the holidays and noticed a disturbing, but not totally surprising trend; quite a few aren’t happy campers. They are dissatisfied with a host of life’s conditions such as their partnes dirty undies on the floor, children requesting money, neighbours dog’s poop on the nature strip, ATM fees you name it. They dream of happiness, but it eludes them, lost in a quagmire of mortgages, school tuition payments and dealing with elderly parents.

It is an interesting juxtaposition to what I learned late year at the Fast Company Uncensored conference in San Francisco.  Jennifer Aaker from Stanford University and author of “the Happiness Paradox’, delivered a presentation suggesting that even though many of us are driven towards happiness, we find that achieving it is not all it’s cracked up to be. She warns our tendency is to pursue the wrong paths, we follow our true beliefs.

We believe we know what makes us happy, but we don’t and we have very poor memories when it comes to accurate reflections of the real cause of our happiness. If we are lucky enough to achieve our notion of true happiness, it fades forcing us to start all over again with the bar being raised higher.  Emanuel Kant noted “The concept of happiness is such an indeterminate one that even though everyone wishes to attain happiness, he can never say definitely and consistently what it is that he really wishes and wills.”

Some of the confusion is the result of there being two types of happiness: the exciting rah rah version and the more insightful, fundamental content version of happiness. Research done at Stanford by Aaker, Kamvar and Mogilner in 2009 focus on these types of happiness and suggest that when we are younger we associate with the first type, but gravitate to the latter as we age. Age is not the only influence; depending on gender and culture we have very different interpretations of what it means to be happy.

This explains why those in their fleeting youth are happy to frequent doof doof bars, dance till all hours and slurp overpriced cocktails; whereas others like me, are happy watching episodes of The Walking Dead in their jammies. Another example is that of Jacintha Saldanha, the nurse in the UK whose cultural background prohibited her from finding the call from Australian DJs pretending to be the Queen and Prince Charles very funny.

The experience of happiness steadily shifts over the course of a life to become associated more with a feeling of peace and connectedness to others. Research undertaken by the spiritually minded physician and scientist Dr Deepak Chopra into what makes us happy found only 10% of happiness is gained from our living conditions, the amount of money we have and the assumed comfort of our lifestyle. 40% of our happiness comes through fulfilment of personal pleasure including hobbies.

Similarly Aker’s research at Stanford is similar and finds sustainable happiness results from events that are meaningful, cause us to make connections and feel a part of something bigger. An important aspect of happiness is the perception that we can control our time, freedom to choose and perform meaningful work with higher purpose is a key ingredient. This explains why so many feel such inspiration from volunteering.

Our own Tina Murray would concur; she spent three weeks in Ghana with Center Of Refuge Ministry working with children rescued from slavery. Surprisingly, this gave her a far deeper sense of happiness than she receives donning a black outfit and coming to work at Geyer! Her only reservations came from not being there long enough to see tangible results; it’s not like here where the job is done when the defects are completed.

We are very lucky, within each of us there is the ability to redefine our notions of happiness; it is a benefit to being human. Unlike other species, man has evolved over the past two million years, and it isn’t just learning to walk upright and possessing opposable thumbs that evolved. Our brains tripled in size and changed in their structure. We now have a frontal lobe, in particular a prefrontal cortex that works as an experience simulator. This gives man the ability to imagine what an experience will before it actually happens. And this is where many of us go wrong, scientist refer to it as an ‘impact bias’, we think something will be better, but it really isn’t.

Studies done by Dan Gilbert, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University demonstrate that when people are given a choice of either becoming paraplegics or winning the lottery they naturally choose the latter believing the impact on our life of winning lotto will be superior to losing the use of our legs. Interestingly, it was the paraplegics who were happier a year on. Why? It is due to our ability to simulate happiness and change our view of the world.

We make adjustments to cope with the events of our life, simulated happiness – putting on rose coloured glasses helps us to cope with life. I experienced this first hand when my husband rode his bike off a 3 meter cliff. I was happy because he wasn’t dead, the shattered clavicle, 7 broken ribs and a collapsed lung became minor annoyances in the grand scheme of things.

Chopra talks about this differently, but his results are equally hopeful, their research found that 50% of our happiness is found through what they call a “set point” developed in childhood and influenced by the positive and negative things that happen to us. It is possible to adjust this set point through meditation and mindfulness, effectively changing your attitude. Of course many are not willing to take this path and look for quick fixes with gurus, therapists, Prozac and purchasing far too many pairs of shoes.

Despite these attempts, happiness is still highly elusive, especially when it comes to our jobs. The US research firm Conference Board has been studying employee satisfaction and engagement for 25 years and their work shows happiness has fallen every year since they began. A decade of research proves the single greatest advantage in the modern economy is a happy and engaged workforce and happiness raises nearly every business and educational outcome: sales by 37%, productivity by 31%, and accuracy on tasks by 19%. Therefore, how can we afford to not pay attention to worker happiness and importantly what can we do to improve it?

Not surprising, the research suggests a significant change in leadership practice is required to improve happiness scores. Employees care whether their managers are interested in their wellbeing and today only 40% of those surveyed in the US believe they are. In Australia this year’s Randstad World of Work Report identified workforce productivity as our biggest human capital challenge. Given productivity is directly related to employee motivation and a significant portion of Aussies believe their current manager is neither motivating nor inspiring, our situation is no better.

It is recommended that leaders begin advocating for people and providing meaningful work as this plays a critical role in their happiness at work, as does recognizing and appreciating efforts and achievements. If a leader does that and something as simple as telling people they care, they can make a big difference according to the research. Of course it is not only leadership, each of us also plays a role in our own happiness.

Whether we simulate happiness, eg put on rose coloured glasses as Dan Gilbert recommends or follow Deepak Chopra and meditate we have the ability to retrain our brain, research into neuroplasticity indicates it is possible to teach old dogs new tricks! As a start here are five activities recommended that correlate with positive change, if you choose one to do over a three week period it can have a lasting effect.

1. Jot down three things you are grateful for.
2. Write a positive message to someone in your social support network.
3. Meditate at your desk for two minutes.
4. Exercise for 10 minutes.
5. Take two minutes to describe in a journal the most meaningful experience of the past 24 hours.

We have a long way to go in our research and understanding of how to create and sustain a positive and engaged workforce. What we do know is companies can influence happiness with short interventions and low investment of resources, but the effects last,  even in tough times such as those we faced in 2012: The  apocopolise, if you’re a Mayan, or hurling over the fiscal cliff, if you’re a yank.

Sources:

Aaker, Jennifer Mogilner Cassie, Kamvar Sep; The Meaning(s) of Happiness; Research Paper No. 2026 Research Paper Series Stanford Graduate School of Business, May 2009

Achor, Shawn; The Happiness Dividend; The Harvard Business Review, June 23, 2011

Achor, Shawn; Positive Intelligence; The Harvard Business Review, January & February 2010

Christensen, Clayton; How to Find Work That you Love; Fast Company Expert Blog 05 – 14-2012

Crowley, Mark C; The Sharp Drop-Off In Worker Happiness–And What Your Company Can Do About It

Fast Company Expert Blog 04-30-2012

Gilbert, Dan; TED talk http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html

Ranstad World of Work Report 2011/12

Schwartz Ariel; How to Find Meaningful Work; Fast Company, March 26, 2012

Future’s Rambling # 65

Hand Made

At a recent internal workshop one of our designers shared photos from a recent trip to Italy and Amsterdam. It wasn’t a vacation, but you would have a hard time convincing anyone of that after seeing the inspirational snapshots and hearing recollections of the pasta and red wine consumed.

The trip offered a unique opportunity for a group of Australian designers to visit the studios of a number of furniture manufacturer’s studios, ranging from very small providers like Maxalo, Cartel and Living Divani to the larger B & B Italia.  Of the stories shared, one that really struck a chord involved a visit to the furniture maker Edra. This company was described as ‘courtier’, where the others they visited were the ‘ready to wear’ variety.  For those unfamiliar with clothing and design jargon the best way to explain this is to note every piece of Edra furniture is made by hand.

One of their pieces, the Vermelha rope chair, is particularly special because there is a guy at Edra who weaves the rope to form this chair by hand, apparently he is the only one at Edra who knows how to do this! You can’t get much more bespoke than that and in a world where so many things are mass produced how refreshing and wonderful is it to hear that something is actually made by hand!

It’s wonderful! But is it? On the surface it’s a good news story, but digging deeper we learn Mr. Chair Gepetto is in his mid- seventies and has no successor which means not only is there is no succession plan in place for Edra but also chair extinction at stake. This guy better start weaving lessons for the younger employees without delay or the Vermelha will be gone faster than the Dodo, the Tasmanian Wolf, Quagga and the Caspian Tiger.

The loss of master craftspeople is an issue many companies who rely on bespoke products face. An example close to home is the Sydney custom shoemaker who has been making handmade shoes from his Paddington studio for years. His business relies on a diminishing number of older European men who make components for his shoes and there are fewer and fewer of them around. Obviously he wants to sustain his business, but that is not going to happen by staying the course. Consequently, he has elected to manufacture more components himself. This compromises the uniqueness, but ensures the business will be sustainable.

Another organisation coming to terms with the challenges of making product by hand is Apple. It might surprise you to know that an estimated 90% of an iPhone is made in a place called Foxconn City in Shenzhen China, where thousands of workers assemble the phones – by hand! Over 200 million iPhones have been assembled there. Foxconn is owned by Taiwan’s Hon Hai Group and is one of the world’s biggest contract manufacturers, their clients include Apple, Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

For fun if you ask Siri, the private personal assistant that responds to voice commands featured in the iPhone 4s, where she came from she will politely reply the Apple Corporation in Cupertino California. If you get tricker and ask where she was manufactured the response takes a slight tone of belligerence, she claims she can’t answer that question.

Touchy!

The fact that iPhones are made overseas aggravates many people including The President of the United States. It puts his POTUS boxers in twist that almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other Apple products are made overseas. It rubs salt in the deep wounds of painful US unemployment figures.  Obama challenged Steve Jobs, the late founder and CEO of Apple to bring the jobs back to America. He said no thanks.

One reason Apple likes working with Foxconn is their ability to respond to last minute design changes, such as the switch of the iPhone screen material only weeks before the device was to ship. Foxconn mobilised 8000 workers to respond to this change, which is slightly easier for them given many employees live in dormitories on site. They can shake them out of bed and get them to the factory floor fitting new glass into the bevelled iPhone frames before they’ve rubbed the sleep from their eyes. It took the Chinese an impressive 96 hours to make the design shift!

Another reason Apple and several other tech companies use Foxconn, stems from the access they have to a massive talent pool, 430,000 employees at the ready. It only took 15 days to find 8700 industrial engineers to oversee and guide the 200,000 people on the assembly line required to make the change to the iPhone glass. It would take months to find, interview and hire new people let alone make changes to the assembly process in most developed countries.

You could say it is the hand-made aspect of the Apple product that has afforded their designers the flexibility to make last minute changes that have resulted in what those in the ‘cult of Apple’ consider to be product perfection. There is no doubt, Apple products are beautiful – never mind how they work.

Of course for every glass half full story, there is an opposite glass half empty saga. One little nagging thorn in our side that accompanies the love of beautiful handmade objects results from the inherent knowledge we have that some poor schmo put their heart and soul into making them and did not get paid fairly for their efforts. We don’t care. Whether it’s a hand knit scarf, an oriental rug or an iPad, we enjoy beautiful handmade objects, but enjoy them even more when we don’t have to pay full price for them.

We are blissfully ignorant or in denial of the conditions some objects are made in. A visit to Foxconn would highlight a number of stark contrasts to the indulgent workplaces we drool over in the glossy pages of Indesign magazine. Beyond the dormitories and massive quantities of food prepared on site, there are 20 cafeterias that serve three tons of pork and 13 tons of rice a day, there are rumoured armed guards at the factory gates controlling the orderly entry and exit of the 430,000 employees.

Stories have surfaced of a dozen Foxconn employees committing suicide, overcome with the stress of maintaining aggressive production schedules. When making products by hand, the process can only move as fast as the slowest worker; therefore, peer pressure is very intense as you might imagine. To combat further employee leaps into the hereafter, Foxconn have installed large nets around the factory building perimeter in a caring effort to prevent any further impulsive suicides.

Just when you thought the stories of unpleasant conditions could get no worse there are stories of the chemicals used in the assembly line process. One, called N – Hexane, is used to wipe of the glass surface of the iPhone and iPad screens and is a potent neurotoxin. Prolonged exposure to N-Hexane caused workers to shake uncontrollably so they have had to go back to using alcohol, which takes longer to evaporate and slows the assembly line down.

It is important to point out that Apple are not the bad guys in this particular situation, as mentioned  Foxconn make electronics for Dell, Nokia, Samsung and HP, a third of all electronics products made come from Shenzhen. Of that group Apple were the only ones who cared enough to investigate. They sent their chief operating officer Tim Cook to China to review operations and following his visit they made a series of recommendations including hiring psychological counsellors and establishing a 24 hour care centre. You can read about their commitment to social responsibility by reading the Apple Supplier Responsibility 2011 Progress Report.

This leads us to an important question, should we feel badly about our iPhone 4s, our Tabriz oriental rug or the inexpensive bricks we used for our house that were made by kidnapped children in the brick kilns of Shanxi Province?

Paul Krugman the New York Times columnist and winner of the Nobel prize for economic says we shouldn’t. His rational is to highlight changes that have occurred in Indonesia where factories are far worse than those in China. They have raised the economy and improved the overall quality of life and that is a good thing. His conclusion the “indirect and unintended result of the actions of soulless multinationals and repugnatious entrepreneurs” result in moving hundreds of thousands of people from abject poverty to something that is still awful, but significantly better.

But hey, just because he won a Nobel prize does not mean he is right.

Sources:

Barboza, David; A Night at the Electronics Factory; The New York Times, June 19, 2010

Chicago Public Media, This American Life #454 – Mike Daisey and the Apple Factory

Duhigg, Charles and Bradsher, Keith; US Can’t Crack Apple’s Glass Ceiling; The Australian Financial Review, January 24, 2012

French, Howard F, Child Slave Labor Revelations Sweeping China; The New York Times, June 15, 2007

Helft, Miguel; Apple Says Chinese Supplier Made Changes After Suicides; The New York Times, February 15, 2011

Isaccson Walter, Steve Jobs Autobiography; Doubleday 2011

Chicago Public Media, This American Life #454 – Mike Daisey and the Apple Factory

Futures Rambling – Issue 64

By Laurie Aznavoorian – Geyer Workplace Sector Leader

An old friend and past colleague suggested I write an article titled “Where Have All the Innovative Workplaces Gone?” Before knickers get in knots, I should explain my pal Dale lives in the US; a place preoccupied with Occupy, killing terrorists and digging itself out of debt. It would be safe to say innovative workplace design is not their current priority.  Dale’s suggestion was also somewhat ironic in that he is a project manager and knows damn well why workplace designers are having a tough time being innovative.

Dale… Seriously?

It’s shocking I know, but bland design is fostered by many links in the design cycle. Why workplace design hasn’t progressed at the pace some expect is a complex problem that warrants exploration of the design supply chain from client to project manager, to designers and on to a whole host of others who contribute to the inception, implementation and execution of a project. Face it, producing anything more than pabulum in design has always required vision, passion, persistence and cajonies. The state of the present economy has simply exacerbated what has always been an exercise that is not for the faint of heart.

Looking at the clients, it should be noted there are always exceptions; the bulk of clients are not scaredy pants, risk adverse weenies, looking for the easy and cheap path. On the other hand, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the few organisations with an appetite for risk taking could be counted on one hand. This is somewhat understandable, the public sector that we dabble in has been hit with debt and decreased tax revenues. Tertiary education is suffering from a drop in enrolment and the pressure to produce more research, which in turn attracts more students. Research costs money and places greater demands on time poor lecturers, it’s a catch 22. These pressures have forced Sydney University to eliminate 340 staff positions, 150 academic and 190 general staff.

The private sector fairs no better; desperate for higher profits and shareholder returns, companies are implementing aggressive cost cutting measures like holding off on capital expenditure. Few are planning large-scale expansions and when they do, costs are scrutinised. For projects that get the go ahead, schedules and budgets are tight and this leads to lower professional fees. Since those of us providing professional services are not philanthropies, we have no choice but to examine where corners can be cut and unfortunately this is generally in the area of innovation. As the old saying goes, time is money and when you don’t have any it can impact the time you dedicate to the ‘hunch state’ where ideas incubate and are co- mingled and swapped with others.

The really stinky part of this is some companies are so risk averse that even when they have money they opt to sit on it rather than invest in growth opportunities, innovation or R&D. A host of companies including Pfizer, Hewlett-Packard and Campbell Soup have cut research budgets and layed off employees, but managed to somehow scrape together enough cash to buy back millions in stock. Good news for shareholders, bad news for economic growth and jobs.

We know that civilization is not static; progress implies movement from the present. This is in sharp contrast to what many companies practice today when it comes to their workplace. Too many complacently sit on their duffs, feeling safe knowing they are not exposing themselves to failure. The Achilles heel is they also block their exposure to progress. Where the heck are we going to be in ten years if we don’t seek out new ideas, try new things and make mistakes today? There is a saying that if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing wrong. If we are too scared to give something a go, engage in a process of trial and elimination, maybe what we are doing isn’t worth doing so why bother?

Einstein said “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”. If you believe this, you would be forced to question where the corner cutting and risk aversion is taking us. I fear we’re headed to a more dangerous place than what is implied when we relegate a large portion of the population to work environments that do little to inspire or delight. I may be being melodramatic, but suggest there is a hell of a lot more at stake.

In the book “Adapt, Why Success Always Starts with Failure” author Tim Harford talks about the difficulty of pinpointing the catalyst for success or failure in an increasingly complex world, where all things are highly interconnected. He asks why success is not insurance against subsequent failure and concludes that the level of complexity and change we are experiencing today creates new conditions that people and organisations need to adapt to. Adapt or die is the message. Unfortunately, the problems is organisations are so risk adverse they are willing to adopt, adapt or reject based on what others have already done, not a thorough questioning of alternatives and rationale. They do what is safe.

You would need to be living on Mars to not recognise our professional and corporate worlds are in a state of constant flux, what we feel is ok today may not be so tomorrow and this is the crux of the problem. Adapting blindly to practices, habits, cultures and workplaces we see around us without questioning their relevance is a compromise of commitments and beliefs. Of course this implies an organisation and their designers have taken the time to explore what their commitments and beliefs are.

Looking back at the past institutional failures around the world, one might conclude they are the result of this kind of blind adaption. Following others without thinking, whether it made good business or moral sense. As a teenager I did many things my mother didn’t approve of, my rational for doing these like most teenagers was everyone else was doing it. My Mother used to say, just because all of your friends are stupid enough to jump off a cliff does that mean you should too?

Another problem with taking the path most travelled is the loss of differentiation this signals. In his book That Used to Be Us, New York Times columnist Thomas Freedman identifies the dangers of being average in a hyper-connected world where people in other places and smart machines can do above average work.  He goes on to say that what was average ten years ago is below average today; therefore, we need to raise our game just to stay in place. Never mind what it takes to leapfrog the others.

The world is overflowing with products and services that are all pretty much the same, few stand out. We are translators of company vision, brand and culture and this gives us the opportunity to create a manifestation of what is truly different and amazing about a company. I don’t need to tell you, this is easier said than done. We don’t make companies, we translate them and if we are honest taking a mainstream organisation and transform it to something that is unique and compelling can be quite a challenge; particularly if the company doesn’t want to be great, but is happy to be no worse than their competition.

This takes us back to the beginning, workplace designers and all of the others involved in the process of creating place cannot do something wonderful if there is contentment with the status quo or a reluctance to stray from the pack. That takes courage. Robert Wennett had this when he bought a seven story parking garage in Miami Beach Florida. He decided to turn what was run of the mill repositories for cars, rats, beer cans and old Macca’s bags into an amazing place by designing the top two floors of the garage for both cars and functions. Those floors now rent for $15,000 a night as a venue for charity events, wine tastings and weddings.

Bob was prepared to take a risk, he had cajones.

I hope more of us will. There is promising news from the latest quarterly survey of CFOs by Deloittes that indicates many believe now is a good time for Australian companies, beyond those in the resources sector,  to take more risk and invest more. At the same time there is a greater appreciation by senior managers that space is strategic and that smart design can and should contribute to the bottom line.

Hallalulah

Sources:

Heskett, Jim, So We Adapt. What’s the Downside? Harvard Business Review, July 7, 2011

Pascoe, Michael, Have an Iced VoVo, an Investment Boom’s on the Way, The Sydney Morning Herald, April 17, 2011

Rosenberg, Jay, Angry Academics Question Real Reason Behind Cost Cuts, The Sydney Morning Herald, November 23, 2011

Schwartz, Nelson D, As Layoffs Rise. Stock Buybacks Consume Cash, The New York Times, November 21, 2011

Taylor, Bill, Average is Over. What’s Your Extra? Harvard Business Review Blog Network, December 19, 2011

Futures Rambling – Issue 63

By Laurie Aznavoorian – Geyer Workplace Sector Leader

Last month I made a sojourn to the United States. The purpose was primarily R&R sandwiched around business, the launch of a book I have been working on with a number of other authors around the world. The book’s topic is workplace strategy and there is no question that with a scintillating theme like that, it will be hitting the best seller list soon. You’ll find it in the sleep aid section.

Jokes aside, the book and the conference it was launched at were outstanding events, but the highlight of my trip and the part I want to share with you is about baseball.  As luck would have it, I was in the US during The World Series, the annual championship of Major League Baseball. Despite the misleading name, the competition has nothing to do with the world; as a matter of fact if Australia had a team they wouldn’t be allowed to play, primarily because to Americans, America is the world.

The most memorable game of the seven game series was the 6^th, it went for a cliff- hanging eleven innings when typically a game only lasts nine. Game 3 wasn’t too shabby either, The St. Louis Cardinal’s Albert Pujols joined Reggie Jackson and Babe Ruth as the only players in the history of baseball to hit three home runs in a series game. No doubt it was the head trip, the bad ju ju created by homeruns that encouraged the team managers to make what fair weather fans like myself would consider questionable strategic decisions.

Those unfamiliar with baseball would not be aware of the high levels of strategy, statistics and science contributing to the game. I only became aware of this a few years ago when I read “Moneyball” by Michael Lewis about Billy Beane, the manager of the Oakland Athletics. Beane is credited for using a unique form of statistical analysis and strategy that re-evaluated what caused wins on the field. He turned what many considered to be a team of losers, misfits and utility players into champions. More impressive is the Athletics had approximately $41 million in salary, but were competing with teams like the New York Yankees who spent over $125 million in payroll.

Beane had what many thought was no talent and no money, he simply found players that were undervalued by the market and put them together in a new way. People like me go to baseball games to drink beer and eat hotdogs, there are true enthusiasts who actually watch the game, recording every play. It was this fan data, collected from baseball watching software engineers, physicists and derivatives traders, that Beane developed his approach.

Others have tried to copy Beane without success; the method was even featured in an episode of ‘The Simpsons’ when Lisa used mathematical analysis to improve Bart’s team. Being a traditionalist, Bart had no appreciation for what he felt took the fun out of the game.  “What happened to stealing bases, the suicide squeeze, throwing a little chin music. This isn’t the game I grew up with the game played in the misty ballparks of Enron field, or Pac Bell Park, then SBC and now AT&T Park”.

Bart concludes that from now on he is going to play the game his way, he was going to play “dummy ball”

Reading the book Moneyball, now a movie featuring Brad Pitt,  one has to admire Billy Beane’s guts and the wisdom he demonstrated in reinventing his team.  By realising that just because everyone does something one way, does not mean it is the right way; Beane was open to identifying attributes in players often overlooked by other coaches. He used and realigned those unique strengths and attributes to create a winning team.

This is not the first time bucking the trend has had paid off, in fact some of the world’s greatest innovations are the result of challenging the norm. For example, mathematician Frank Nelson Cole rocked up to a mathematics conference in 1903 and on a chalk board in front of a room of onlookers proceeded to multiply a nine digit number by a twelve digit number. The product was a 21 digit number equal to 2 ^{67 _} 1. This was remarkable, in fact it was so exciting it warranted the first and only round of applause at a mathematics conference, because it was a Mersenne number. Named after a French monk, Marin Mersenne, a Mersenne number is better known as a Mersenne prime, or prime number.

Prime numbers are of course indivisable, it took Cole three years of Sundays, dividing 2 ^{67 _} 1 by every possible number to discover that Mersenne’s 250 year old formula was wrong, that is 156 Sundays. This goes to show that bucking the trends often requires courage, persistence and patience.

Another revelation I came to from reading Moneyball was that despite the glamour, talent and money, professional ballplayers are commodities.  It’s not unusual for a player to be told to take off his uniform minutes before the start of the game because he has been traded to another team. Being swapped and shifted, sold like cattle with little concern for one’s personal life is a part of being a professional ballplayer.

Whether you’re playing baseball, or are a part of an organisation that has provided loyal service to a client for years; getting replaced with a cheaper, younger or faster model is no walk in the park. No one wants to be a commodity.

Commoditization, defined as a virulent form of hypercompetition, is believed by many to be inevitable in competitive markets regardless of what prohibitive measures a business takes, or how innovative they are. They maintain all goods and services will eventually become commodities. Others believe the best way to combat commoditization is through differentiation, but what becomes painfully apparent is the expense of creating and maintaining a unique point of difference.  It can also be a futile effort. In today’s fast paced connected world unique traits or ideas can be copied in a heartbeat.

In the book Beating the Commodity Trap author Richard D’Aveni  provides an appreciation of how companies become commodities. He maintains there are three traps, the first is Deterioration – the result of a low end firm entering a market with a low cost / low benefit offer, this is what companies like Geico and Zara have done. To combat Deterioration D’Aveni suggests adopting strategies to marginalise or contain the market power these low end entrants have.

Proliferation is the second type of commoditization and it occurs when companies develop combinations of price and unique benefits that attack an incumbent’s market. An example is the impact of Japanese motorcycles on Harley-Davidson’s market.  Finally, Escalation is when an organisation squeezes everyone’s margins by offering more, or the same benefits, at a lower price.

It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see all three of these types of commoditization happening in the design industry.  Product types, design look and feel and specific services that were unique or associated with a particular firm have been adopted by others. Looking at design firms today it is often difficult to distinguish one from another.  Unfortunately, it used to take a generation for a business to devolve from the top of the heap to a low – price commodity, but in this day and age it can happen in a year.

Economist believe every industry will eventually mature into a commodity environment.

Somehow I don’t see designers going down that easy, if for no other reason than to prove an economist wrong. We’re problem solvers and surely if we have the courage to resist status quo we have the opportunity to reinvent ourselves the same way Billy Bean reinvented the Oakland A’s in 1997.

To get the creative juices flowing here are 8 tips offered by strategist, author and innovation expert Kaihan Krippendorff, while most appear to be irrelevant on the surface, each is good food for thought. Perhaps if designers adopt one or two we can get ourselves back into the game of Moneyball and out of playing Dummy Ball.

1. Bring back the dead:  With clever marketing, what is old can become new.  Record companies are reissuing vinyl albums and even releasing new albums in the old format

2. Create new occasions:  What new uses can we create for our product/service?  One type of baking soda is indistinguishable from another, but Arm & Hammer pulled itself out of a low-price, commodity battle by creating new uses and occasions for its product.

3. Become the ingredient:  Borrow other people’s roads into your home. Today you find Arm & Hammer in toothpaste (whiter teeth!), detergent (cleaner clothes!), and deodorant (fresher smell…!). The beauty of becoming an ingredient is that customers become less price sensitive.

4. Move the action:  Aussie Post is not in the letter business, you go to the Post Office to send a letter and come home with a DVD and set of free weights .

5. Shift the basis of competition:  In commodity games everyone competes on the same basis, might we distinguish ourself by choosing a completely different dimension? Can we compete on something entirely different?

6. Attach a business:  Thomson Travel in the U.K. sells cheap airline tickets and tours. It can afford to because it does not depend on these sales for profits, but relies on funnelling customers into Thomson Travel Charter Airlines airplanes. What related high-margin business could we attach to our core?

7. Rapid-fire innovation:  Trying to run faster than our competition is not a strategy, only if we really are swifter can it work. If we identify the most important factors that drive our client’s decision making and then unleashed a stream of innovative strategies to address each we would be cooking with gas as my Mother used to say.

8. Change the basis of pricing: Fill in the blanks: “My competition charges $_____ per ______” Then replace the blanks with something different. :  Xerox grew to dominate the copying business not just by offering great technology, but because at a time when the competition was pricing per machine, Xerox was offering a service priced per copy.

Sources:

Christensen, Clayton M, Raynor, Michael E.  How to Avoid Commoditization; The Harvard Business Press; September 2, 2003

D’Aveni, Richard A; Beating the Commodity Trap: How to Maximise your Competitive Position and Increase Your Pricing Power; Harvard Business Press Books; January 12, 2010

Lewis, Michael; Moneyball, W.W. Norton & Company Inc. Publication date: 2003

NPR Fresh Air; ‘Moneyball’: Tracking Down How Stats Win Games; September 23, 2011

NPR Talk of the Nation; College Sport;

Denialism Issue 62

Looking to other industries is generally a good source of inspiration. At the very least, it encourages us to view our own industry and its challenges through a different lens, providing new perspectives and if we’re lucky, innovative breakthroughs.

Unfortunately, inspiration, creativity and innovation are bit like toned abdominal muscles, it doesn’t just miraculously happen; you must work at it and sometimes that means connecting dots where you don’t believe they should connect. This may well be the case with an attempt in this Ramblings to draw a connection between the design industry and an inspiring article I read in last months New Yorker.

The article was titled “Test Tube Burgers – How long will it be before you can eat meat that was made in a lab?” the author, staff writer Michael Specter, describes research being clandestinely conducted in hundreds of anonymous unmarked laboratories in universities around the world. Their ultimate goal is to create the same volume of meat in a lab that would have been provided by a million animals.

The research brings together the collaborative efforts of stem-cell biologists, tissue engineers, animal-rights activist and environmentalist; together they have now proven it is possible to grow meat outside of a body. It goes without saying that for some this is not exciting news, but a moral and ethical issue and that is why you will not find names on the doors of these laboratories.

The process sounds simple, but of course isn’t. Stem cells are placed on a biodegradable scaffold and are fed a nutrient rich mixture that encourages the cells to proliferate. Since meat is muscle and muscle that doesn’t move is fat, the cells get a bit of exercise with a jolt of electricity every now and then, which keeps the muscle toned.

Who would eat that you say! Ask the billion people in the world who go to bed hungry every night, or the people who have no choice but to dine on insects and rodents. Face it, we are pretty damn lucky in the developed world, it is hard for us to imagine going without food and we are quite oblivious to the evidence that our pattern of meat consumption is not sustainable. Besides being responsible for 20% of greenhouse – gas emission, cattle consume 10% of the world’s freshwater resources and 80% of all farmland is devoted to the production of meat. And we have not even begun to broach the inhumane practices in abattoirs

It is very sad, despite the fact that science will be able to produce a nice rump roast, people will reject the idea, say it can’t or shouldn’t be done and millions of people will still be hungry. Unfortunately, people tend to reject scientific fact in favour of personal assumptions that are based on nothing more than deep held beliefs.

The same author who wrote the article in the New Yorker addresses this topic in his book “Denialism – How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives”. My favorite story from the book is from Washington where I used to live. It is about the families living on Vashon Island who refuse to vaccinate their kids, preferring not to take a one in 1,000 chance that their kid will get a t disease like smallpox, measles or polio to a one in 10 million chance that the vaccine could hurt the kid.

Makes no sense to me, but I am sure in my own way I practice denialism, which is why I like to dress like I’m 22. We all do it, smoke or drink knowing it is not good for us, reject new technologies because we can’t be bothered to learn them, developing rationalizations for why the old way is better.

Specter thinks it’s fine if we believe irrational things, but says there is a big problem with people acting on those beliefs instead of acting on facts, particularly at a societal or organisational scale. This behaviour he says is a war on progress and he suggests it is important to embrace new technologies, acknowledging their limitations and threats, because the alternative is to slink back into “magical thinking” and that is not where we want to be.

We experience denialism to some degree with almost every project we work on. As missionaries of workplace change we bring new environments and with them come new technologies and often a requirement that users adopt new behaviours, attitudes and skills.

It is not uncommon to work with an organisation, provide data and anecdotal evidence supporting change, only to have it rejected in favour of sticking to long held beliefs that may be very individual and uninformed. You could argue it is an organisation’s or person’s choice to do what they want. This is true; however, when these views impact the success of the business as a whole it may be worth questioning.

For example, returning to Vashon Island, we could say fair go you hippies, don’t vaccinate your kid. Unfortunately, unvaccinated children are a threat to the ”herd immunity” that keeps epidemics at bay, shelters fetuses, infants too young to be immunised, old people with weakened immune systems and anyone who has been vaccinated because no vaccine is 100 percent effective. Suddenly denialism on a personal level becomes an issue for us all, and this is why it is wise to consider an issue from many different perspectives.

At the Property Council Congress in Darwin, KPMG partner Bernard Salt gave a presentation on the rise of negativism over positvism, which if you squint can be correlated to denialism. He is disappointed that Australian’s are not prepared to put a positive spin on growth, claiming we had all gone BANANAS in our attitudes towards development and choose to (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody). We are overlooking the positive aspects of urban growth and property development, choosing instead to believe any development defiles the planet and only serves to make developers rich.

We can sympathise with the bananas, there is no shortage of tragic developments, but there are also plenty of exciting developments being proposed which promise to make our cities much better places and Salt is understandable disappointed that so few business leaders are prepared to support property developments and fight the negativism with fact, reason and logic. He says no one wants the flak, but goes on to warn that every time misinformation, unfairness and economic illiteracy is unchecked it fans the flames of negativity that influence public opinion. The real enemy he says is unreasonable or plain wrong statements about planned growth and development instead of fair, reasonable, measured responses.

Our industry is by far not immune to denialism, plenty of architects and designers have their head in the sand when it comes to acknowledging and responding to changes taking place. Unfortunately, when companies ignore change it only makes them more vulnerable because they are unprepared. In our industry the fee base has eroded and competition is fierce, those are pretty big changes to contend with.

By choosing to deny, rather than formulate new responses we are selecting imminent failure. If we hope to survive we need to appreciate change has occurred and adjust accordingly by exploring new ways of marketing, communicating our design outcomes, collaborating with others and preparing documents; we need to reinvent the business of design.

This is what Sony Pictures Entertainment did when they launched their energy management training. Sony recognised their people were battling change in the market by working more, trying to get more done in less time. They also recognised time is finite, but energy is not; therefore they developed a program to maximise people’s energy to deliver the best outcomes.

By encouraging employees to establish rituals, like shutting down e–mail or taking a walk they began to shift behaviours in the business. Having senior leaders in the organisation willing to lead by example ensured the program was a success. Employees are now more focused and productive, 90% say it helps them be more energetic at work, 84% feel better able to manage their jobs.

Another industry we could look to is health care, as a whole the industry is being forced to reevaluate service and cost. Society can no longer afford to spend the kind of money it does on an inefficient health system, so are demanding new levels of accountability. One challenge with health care is they have existed in an internal bubble, most sectors have had to stream line process and have an idea of what they should measure and what their outcomes should be.

In health care they haven’t done this. When something isn’t measured, it is challenging to manage or improve. Providers can’t link costs to process improvements or outcomes, therefore, they are unable to make systemic cost reductions, the only place they can cut costs is with people and what they are paid.

The industry will argue that it can’t be held to a level of accountability, or initiate ideas applied in other sectors, because they are unique and cost cutting will only result in poor health care. Robert S. Kaplan, Harvard Business School professor and coauthor of the HBR article How to Solve the Cost Crisis in Health Care disagrees. In his article he suggests the industry must review and simplify. For instance today patients move from specialty to specialty and with each shift medical history and vital signs are taken, this duplication causes delays and can lead to bad hand offs and wasteful duplication. If hospitals organise according to patient flow they would minimise handoff and reduce redundancy and also improve medical outcomes.

According to Kaplan this takes time and requires dedicated resources, but it’s not rocket science, more like plucking low hanging fruit. The system called Activity Based Costing is currently being trialed in four hospitals. So why wouldn’t everyone be doing this if it lowers costs, eliminates duplication and will deliver better service? One reason is it reflects a change in how health care professionals do what they do, with technological and accounting improvements there will be better outcomes with fewer resources. People would lose their jobs. They are also in denial, over the need to change, the unsustainability of the system and a backward attitude about the specialness of what they do.

It is easier to pick out denialism in other industries, as opposed to our own. If you squint a bit you ought to be able to see a few similarities that can become food for thought. We maintain that what we do is unique and there are many people in our profession who have done what they do for a very long time. There are also associated risks in our industry that make us fearful of changing our processes. However, if we don’t change our processes we simply won’t be able to compete in today’s marketplace.

We cannot imagine doing design differently, but we must. It is important to keep an open mind to new ideas and innovations that may make a difference, even the ones that at first seem distasteful and unimaginable, like test tube burgers. A future where we are doing what we choose, in a different way is far preferable to a future where we have no choice, or are completely obsolete.

Sources:
Kaplin, Robert S; What Health Care Really Costs – Activity Based Costing and the Balanced Scorecard – How to Solve the Cost Crisis, Harvard Business Review Idea Cast # 261, August 18, 2011
McNeil, Donald G. Jr,; When Parents Say No To Child Vaccinations, The New York Times, November 30, 2002
Salt, Bernard; The Forces of Negativity in the Trenches, The Australian, July 07, 2011
Schwartz, Tony; The Productivity Paradox: How Sony Pictures Gets More Out of People by Demanding less, Harvard Business Review, June 1, 2010
Specter, Michael; Test Tube Burgeers – How long will it be before you can eat meat that was made in a lab?, The New Yorker, September 2011
Specter, Michael, Denialism – How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives. Amazon.com

One (insert company name here) Issue 61

In a recent meeting with one of our clients, I was surprised to hear the company planned to reverse a decision that they considered to be a key business driver, integral to their future success. Moving the goal post didn’t surprise me, after all clients are not unlike designers; sometimes they change their minds especially once they truly understand the manifestation of their goals in the physical environment. What surprised me was the particular goal they chose to abandon. Like many companies we work with, they hope to act as ‘One (insert company name here)’ and now before their new space is even occupied, they’ve elected to revert back to a regionally focused approach.

When questioned why, they explained that when the company, which is both large and global, views itself as ‘one’ they lose accountability at the local level. Regions that under perform have greater opportunity and propensity to hide under a one (insert company name here) umbrella. This attitude seemed very counter intuitive, but then I thought about it in the context of Europe; to be precise I considered Greece. It would be safe to say, Greece would not win a popularity contest with other countries in the European Union at the moment. In fact, I would wager the rest of the EU would be regretting the day they made the decision to become a part of ‘One Europe’ now that countries like Greece, Portugal and Ireland are neck deep in debt.

Given Greece’s track record of borrowing too much and being unable to pay its debts it should not have taken anyone by surprise. Over the past 179 years the country has been in default 50% of the time and Greece is not likely to reverse that trend any time soon; they have an uncompetitive economy that cannot generate growth. Their labour is expensive and unlike Australia there is nothing useful for them to dig out of the ground and sell to other countries. When it comes to economic leaders, Greece isn’t one of them.

If you are drawing a parallel between those European countries and the current state of the USA, acknowledge these facts: the US is still one of the world’s most competitive economies and despite its credit rating being dropped (touch wood) they have never defaulted on their debts. You might draw a very long bow and applaud the US for a stellar demonstration of acting as one, even though they only acted this way for a brief moment and literally came to consensus at the last possible moment. Everyone with half a brain knew that not agreeing to raise the debt ceiling would have lead to cataclysmic global disaster and even the US is not that stupid or self–centered. Having a country like the US default on its debt is a wildcard (low – probability high-impact event) that smart people wouldn’t care to mess with.

Unfortunately, neither political party felt good about the compromises they had to make to spring America from the financial pickle they’re in nor the likelihood that ramifications of their choices will most likely drive the country into an even deeper, darker place than it already is. Still given the polarisation, the political landscape and difficulties associated with this particular decision; one has to hand it to Barak Obama for his ability to negotiate with various members of congress and succeed in ultimately encouraging them to behave as one. The word is they bonded over Chinese food and some not too subtle encouragement from Obama “Voters may have chosen divided government,” “but they sure didn’t vote for dysfunctional government.”

In his book about evolution “The Selfish Gene” Richard Dawkins contends people are at their core selfish and primarily motivated by self advancement, even to the detriment of others. If you buy Dawkin’s argument, the fact that the US came to any agreement is quite miraculous, it also explains why it is so hard for us to collaborate – even when we know it is for the best. Of course, no one said collaborating was supposed to be easy, in fact the word collaborate is derived from the Latin word collaborare – made up of com which means with and labore which means work; the meaning of the word is to labour together. Work is not play, as is made abundantly clear in Bruce Mau’s description in “Incomplete Manifesto for Growth” where he aptly described it as being filled with conflict, friction and strife.

Most organisations believe working together as one (insert company name here) is a strategic business objective critical to their business success. Unfortunately, saying you’re ‘one’ and acting as ‘one’ can often be two different things. Despite how banally common the goal is, few organisations ever really achieve it. Part of the challenge they have in reaching collaboration nirvana is determining what will motivate their people to work together. Yochai Benkler, professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard University suggests there are seven mechanisms an organisation can employ to motivate people to collaborate, these are as follows:
1. Foster communication between team members. This is the biggest (and most experimentally-grounded) factor in getting people to cooperate.
2. Frame the business context appropriately because it plays a strong role in our motivation to cooperate. For example people are more apt to cooperate on a ‘community project ‘than a ‘Wall Street project’.
3. Create empathy and solidarity- caring about the people we work with has an enormous impact on our motivation to cooperate with them.
4. Be fair and moral. Treat people appropriately for a business context and focus on doing the ‘right thing.’
5. Reward – but not necessarily with money, find elements of fulfillment that are valued by team members.
6. Use reputation -people value their public status, so make it visible.
7. Offer diverse mechanisms to motivate people to cooperate – different people are motivated by different things.
Point seven is tricky. How can an organisation know what will motivate each of its individual members? A number of clues were offered at this year’s Enterprise 2.0 Conference held in Boston (20-23 June). Sara Roberts, one of the conference’s key note speakers, suggests each person is primarily motivated by one of the following: competition, personal achievement, exploration or socialisation. For example, she says that by ‘Game-ifying’ business initiatives an organisation can encourage participation by playing on our competitive nature. We can publicise personal goals to address our need to achieve and give people the opportunity to learn or research new things e.g. allowing them to explore. Finally, given we are social beings, being part of a community or team is a powerful motivator for many.

Finding the right blend to motivate a whole team is not an easy task and inspiring people to work together requires the skills of a talented ‘collaborative leader’. This term applies to people who have the ability to engage others, inspire them and encourage them to work toward a common goal. Beyond simply motivating others, collaborative leaders play the role of connector, bringing together people within and also outside of the organisation. This is what Beth Comstock; the chief marketing officer of GE did when she shared what she learned about the company with internal managers via her ‘Blackberry Beth’ blog. The blog goes to thousands of sales, marketing and technology leaders so effectively closes the connectivity gap between internal people and those in the outside world.

Research shows connecting people with different backgrounds, disciplines, cultures and generations produces better business results. One of the mistakes companies make is attracting people with different views or perspective, only to stifle their creativity by micromanaging or forcing them to follow homogenous processes. In doing this research I discovered companies that spend a fortune on interpreters at their annual meetings simply to allow executives, who are not native English speakers, to deliver presentations in their native tongue. The result is those who are less articulate in English are not handicapped, barriers are broken down and the company looks a heck of a lot more attractive to potential talent who may not speak perfect English.

Great collaboration starts at the very top of the organisation, the boss sets the tone. Sometimes collaboration is accepted at the middle or bottom ranks, but sabotaged by political games and turf battles that occur in the upper echelons. A famous example is Microsoft who apparently had a viable tablet computer that could have given Apple a run for their money. The project became collateral damage in a turf battle between divisions in the company. Sometimes it is best to remind ourselves where the real war is being fought; all too often we waste precious energy focusing on internal battles. By the time we have a run at the external competition, we’re exhausted.

We look to leaders for examples of how to behave, but in the case of leadership teams they often don’t operate as teams, so are perhaps are not the ones to mimic. A leadership team consists of the CEO and his or her direct reports and those leaders may be so concerned with their own team’s short term performance, they lose sight of company goals. Psychologists explain that when performance goals dominate, people expend considerable energy convincing others that they have unique skills such as intelligence, leadership abilities or being a great thinker, as opposed to really evolving or innovating. When a team is motivated by learning, as opposed to performing, their focus is on developing attributes which will benefit the company in the long run. Performance goals lead to a focus on tasks, team members will gravitate to what will make them look good, as opposed to what will help them grow and the company to evolve.

The down side of collaboration is a bit like red wine; a little makes life look wonderful and rosy, too much gives you a headache. We can all appreciate the reverse effect of situations were there is too much collaboration: endless meetings, debating ideas, covering old ground and yack yack yacking till we’re blue in the face, never reaching a consensus. This is the down side of collaboration and once again is where the ‘collaborative leader’ can help by calling an end to the debate. A strong collaborative leader has the ability to direct teams and maintain agility by forming and disbanding the team as required.

Collaboration is most definitely the flavor of the decade, it is a powerful business enabler and with downsising, outsourcing and the increase of the virtual organisations businesses will want to get the most out of their people by tapping into their collective power. The good news is there is evidence of human predisposition to cooperate! Still those who aspire to be one (insert company name here) will need to pay close attention to motivating and training people to shift their focus between long and short term goals, remembering both are important to the company’s success.

One trick I’ve discovered to keep sight of long term goals, while focusing on individual or short term goals is to do what my eye doctor advised. She suggests wearing a contact lens in the right eye suitable to see clearly into the distance, in the left wear a lens to see up close with complete accuracy. Simultaneously you can perceive the world from both near and far, it’s quite a special thing and harkens back to university days, where good eyesight went hand and hand with the occasional urge to throw up. Then it was due to drinking grain alcohol in slushy fruit drinks, now it is from wearing two different strength contacts. At the end of the day it’s a small price to pay for altered perception.

Sources:

Ibarra, Herminia and Hansen, Morten T. Are You a Collaborative Leader? Harvard Business Review, July 4, 2011

Kahan, Seth. Revolution At Work, Fast Company Blog, May 12, 2011

Krugman, Paul. The President Surrenders, The New York Times, July 31, 2011

Lavenda, David. Social Business Leaders Speak Up: 9 Suggestions for Enterprise 2.0; Fast Company Blog, June 10, 2011

Lavenda, David. Why Do We Cooperate? Some Evolutionary Thoughts About What Motivates Us. Fast Company Blog, June 24, 2011

Zakaria, Fareed. The Post-American World: Release 2.0, W.W Norton & Co. 2011

Zakaria, Fareed. Debt Woes Could America Go the Way of Greece, Time Magazine, June 30, 2011

Dealing with Change Issue 60

All of us have a tough time dealing with change; transitioning from the old ways of being to new behaviours and attitudes typically elicits seven distinct emotional responses from an individual: denial, resistance, confusion, release, envisioning, enactment and finally commitment. Organisations are similar, except they generally only go through three stages of experience when change is introduced: Ending – which produces feelings of anxiety, fear and loss; The Gap – when we feel paralysed to let go or begin anew; finally the New Beginning – where we begin to enact the first steps toward a new way of being.

Managing the emotions and behaviours that result in each stage of a change process is a significant challenge for individuals and businesses, but you would know this first hand if you’re in the Sydney studio. There are so many changes! One is the eminent transition from the task chairs purchased in many years ago to a new model to be selected upon completion of an involved evaluation process orchestrated by one of our designers Pablo. 4 chairs, 40 people, 6 questions, at least 120 personalities on any given day; it is not a job for the faint of heart.

One reason getting new chairs confronts us is that it comes on the heels of another change to our environment, new toilets. The new toilets are an improvement, never the less, improvement or not, it is a change and demonstrates how a good communication plan can help. Sure they told us about the new toilets, but did they mention the new vanity lighting would highlight every grey hair on your head and remind us of the inevitable aging process we prefer to ignore? Did they tell us they were switching to bidets? Okay I know they’re just normal toilets with an over zealous flushing function, still communicating the need to jump back when you flush would have been helpful.

We should take some comfort in knowing we are not alone, all humans have a degree of difficulty adapting to new things, even if they are for the better. But adapt we must, because by all indications we are in for a long string of changes, particularly in how we work. For example, those of you who always shut off Facebook when someone over 30 walks by can rejoice, it is no longer taboo to be on Facebook at work. In fact the average Australian spends 30 to 60 minutes of their work day on line, checking the news, weather and travel websites; sports and on line shopping are growing too and tools like Facebook are now considered a normal part of office life.

You know social media has hit the main stream when those pillars of progressiveness, the law firms, are on to it. Only a few short years ago we were laughed at by clients when we suggested social media as an upcoming and effective means of communication and community building. How times have changed. Many organisations now have their own Facebook page, generally used for recruiting. In fact one of the larger legal practices in Australia is working with Steve Jobs to develop an application aimed at new recruits. Some companies like Accenture source 80% of their new hires through LinkedIn and that’s nothing to laugh about, it has saved them more than a million dollars in recruitment fees over a two year period. Not chump change.

Businesses entrust their employees with sensitive information every day and demand a high level of professional responsibility; therefore to believe the employee can demonstrate responsible use of social media at work should not be a stretch. It is also virtually impossible to control the use of tablets, laptops and smart phones in the work place. The leash employers have on employees is gradually being let out: Activity based working, flexible working hours, Facebook and Twitter in the office all point away from the command and control model adopted in the past. Today many organisations believe that if people are engaged in the work they do, they will not spend their time on unproductive activities.

The infusion of social media into our work life is not the only change we must wrap our heads around. Although to be honest, many of the other changes that other are experiencing in the workplace are already the status quo for Geyer employees. Losing ones office appears to be the change that elicits the most emotional upheaval for some, but to us it appears to be an over reaction since we have never had, nor wanted an enclosed office to work in. Nevertheless, this single change is the one that really knocks some people for a loop.

Another big change is the lack of space to store useless junk and files, this too creates great angst for people. Most of us can understand why, of course you wouldn’t want to detach yourself from useful information you have been stowing away like a chipmunk for decades. This change hits emotional buttons and is much more about distrust of electronic media, or our ability to properly use it. In some cases it is a crutch for generally sloppy work practice and for other they just like to touch and sniff paper. The point is, these changes are often about more than what they seem.

Workplaces today are definitely less hierarchal and contain new types of spaces that are both more relaxed and casual. To take full advantage of the benefits these environments might yield, leadership must embrace the evolved work attitudes of their employees. In some instances this may lead to the development of new management techniques that favour goal setting and clear deadlines. Managing by walking around no longer fits with the way many people work and insistence on performing tasks in a particular place may block creative outcomes.

Today you don’t hear a lot of yes sir, and no sir in the work environment with the exception of hotel concierges, most will address you by your first name. People wear what they want to work, they show up and leave when it suits and for many organisations as long as the work gets done they care little whether an employee chooses to listen to music, eat, drink and in some cases take a little kip if it helps them do their job better.

Employees are encouraged to render an opinion, regardless of their position or rank in the company. It is through a blending of attitudes, experiences and unusual encounters that we provoke innovative thought. Since innovation, creativity and knowledge are the currency of our times, we have greater respect for someone because of what they know, think and how they behave, than their job title. For instance, someone like Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former IMF chief arrested in New York this May for sexually assaulting a hotel maid, would have more than likely been able to buy or talk his way out of charges in the past. Of course he did talk his way into a cushy house arrest in a luxury Manhattan apartment that many of us would consider a holiday. I know the case has taken a turn, still he lost his job and the fact that anyone gave the hotel maid airtime suggests a title no longer ensures a person is right, or good.

As we respond to global issues, Geyer will continue to create new work environments that will contain new technologies and suggest new ways of using space. We will find ourselves playing a significant role in helping our clients develop work place etiquette and protocols that make those environments successful. Often overcoming the fear of change is as simple as communicating the four P’s: the Purpose of the change, the Picture of what it will look like, the Part you want people to play, and the Plan of when things are going to happen.

It is a pity more companies don’t communicate these basics, it’s really quite simple; for example, if we were to apply the four P’s to the Labour government’s carbon scheme it might look like this:
Purpose – To reduce Australia’s emissions by 5% of the 2000 levels = 160 million tonnes by 2020
Picture – Ice sheets don’t melt, ocean maintains the right acid level, summers not so hot, bananas don’t cost $13 a kilo, fewer floods, fires and drought – overall it is pretty good as long as your job is not in the cement or aluminium industries. Plan – Big emitters pay a $23 a tonne tax for carbon emissions, increasing to $100 a tonne over time. Big emitters pass those costs to us, an estimated 0.7 percent to consumer prices. Hey wait that’s not fair! Correct, it’s not and that’s why there is $8 billion dollars worth of tax cuts planned. Part – It depends who you are. 4 million households will be over compensated due to the tax cuts planned so they can go blow that money, 2 million will not be any worse off and three million will go backward. It all gets a bit confusing, perhaps it is easiest to focus on Julia’s summation “There’s no money tree, there’s no endeavour here to try and pretend that everybody’s better off”.

Making changes is not easy, and developing a plan that works for everyone is complicated. Maybe they should call in Pablo.

Sources.

IDEO, Your Company Needs Gen Y Values (Really!); Fast Company – Pattern series 2010

Smith, Fiona; Social Media is no Workplace Time Waster; The Australian Financial Review, June 7, 2011

Smith, Fiona; Miss Manners Moves Out; The Australian Financial Review, June 7, 2011

Taylor, Lenore; A Clean Start; The Sydney Morning Herald; July 11, 2011

Whitbourn Michaela, Parkinson Emily; Facebook’s firm friends; The Australian Financial Review, June 7, 2011