Comstock's magazine 0919 - September 2019 | Page 27

UNAVOIDABLE DISTRACTIONS — SUCH AS LISTENING TO A NEIGHBOR’S “HALF-A-LOGUE”
(HALF OF A PHONE CONVERSATION, WHICH IS HARDER FOR MANY TO IGNORE THAN A FULL
DIALOGUE) OR THE SUDDEN DISTRACTION WHEN A NEIGHBOR POPS UP AND LOOKS OVER THE
CUBICLE WALL (WHIMSICALLY CALLED “PRAIRIE-DOGGING”) — COMPETE WITH OUR ABILITY
TO FOCUS ON THE TASK AT HAND.
(whimsically called “prairie-dogging”)
— compete with our ability to focus on
the task at hand.
For a 2018 study, “The Impact of the
‘Open’ Workspace on Human Collabo-
ration,” two researchers from Harvard
Business School studied two Fortune
500 companies that had recently adopt-
ed an open floor plan. They found that
face-to-face interactions subsequently
dropped by 70 percent. Employees sim-
ply emailed and instant messaged each
other more — 56 percent more — in an
effort to turn down the volume and re-
claim a sense of lost privacy.
Kerstin Sailor from the Bartlett
School of Architecture in London stud-
ied the effect of spatial design on people
and social behaviors. She points out that
just because corner power offices dis-
appear does not mean the power does.
Power becomes less about offices and
more about surveillance — seeing and
being seen. As a result, workers become
less creative and less productive and
more focused on seeing and being seen.
In the beginning, the open-space
office was designed to foster “collabora-
tion.” The assumption was that collabo-
ration would lead to new and creative
ideas. Wouldn’t two heads — or three or
10 or 20 — be better than one? Unfor-
tunately, that’s not the case. With more
ears listening in, the depth of discus-
sion changed between colleagues. Con-
versations became more surface level.
That leads to a reduction in trust and,
ironically, less proactive collaboration at
work.
To foster the team’s best effort there
must be some pressure put on each em-
ployee to think for themselves and to
contribute freely. But that doesn’t always
happen, according to John Maeda, the
global head of computational design and
inclusion for Automattic, best known as
the creator of WordPress.com. In any
group-think situation, Maeda says on
the BBC podcast, there are some who
simply sit back. These are the so-called
“free riders” who let others speak first. A
more polite term might be “introverts.”
Then there are the people who tend
to speak up first and loudly. They are the
extroverts, the narcissists and the people
in power. There’s nothing wrong with
that; sometimes even narcissists have
good ideas. But because they speak first,
they sway the discussion and set uncon-
scious parameters the free riders follow.
The problem is that up to 50 percent of
the population are introverts, according
to Susan Cain, the author of “Quiet: The
Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t
Stop Talking.” And they’re not given the
space and time to process, then share, in
the fast-paced corporate environment.
In an open-space office, intro-
verts often are silenced or diminished,
when the goal is to encourage inclu-
sivity and creativity. Think of the ge-
niuses — such as Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Wolfgang Mozart, Virginia Woolf and
Albert Einstein — who thrive on pri-
vacy and focused time alone in their
study, at their pianos, or in their soli-
tary, metaphorical world. Think, too,
of the half of the population who are
not being supported and encouraged.
Then try to think how best to harness
their power and give them the time,
silence and opportunity to contribute to
a congenial workplace environment.
One solution is more flexibility for
employees to work from home, a cof-
fee shop, the doctor’s office, the park or
even their car. Working from home has
now become workplacelessness. Given
the distractions at home, more and more
virtual employees are finding other plac-
es to get their work done. I sit in McKin-
ley Park in East Sacramento as I write
these words. Corporate America is now
starting to embrace that people don’t
necessarily go to work, they just start to
do the work.
True collaboration is not achieved by
throwing everyone in a room and seeing
what develops. There is an art to it, and
time and effort needs to be invested to
do it well. And sometimes the best thing
for collaboration is solitude for process-
ing and preparation. n
Jessica Kriegel, Ph.D., is an organizational
development consultant and an expert on
generational issues. For more, visit www.
jessicakriegel.com.
Tell us about your open-space
work environment.
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