Offices of the Future – Green or (Depressingly) Blue

I have been asked to present on Offices of the Future at the Sustainable Futures event hosted by Carbon Smart. This blog represents what I intend to say.

First of all I am not a futurologist, I am a psychologist. I can no more predict the future than I can read your mind. But I can give you my views on the future of offices based on current workplace trends. You might even accuse me of wishful thinking as my views represent the way I hope offices evolve.

 

Soc Med 4 Biz Innit

I recently chaired the Social Media for Business conference, aka Soc Med 4 Biz if you want to get down with the kids. As well as chairing I joined in with the live tweeting (#sm4bconf) and captured the tweets and presentations in Storify; I donned my “googles” and spent the day fully immersed in social media. The conference was well received by the audience of wide-eyed (rabbit in the headlights) construction industry professionals, all wondering what this soc med stuff is all about and if it is of any use in business or just another bandwagon. So much so that the organisers are planning a second conference this autumn.

The aim here is for me to blog, what our American cousins call, the takeaways. What were the practical and most useful outcomes of the conference that I can just get on with. I do not profess to being a social media expert, rather an enthusiastic user, so what I spout here is simple regurgitation of things that the speakers said that made good sense to me and that I can remember.

My Short Stay at Stormont

I spent Tuesday morning at Stormont in Belfast, a formidable parliamentary building with a chequered history. I note that most tweets about Stormont use the hash tag #onthehill and you can see why from my photograph. I was acting as a “witness” and giving “evidence” to the Northern Ireland Assembly Committee for Finance and Personnel as part of their Inquiry into Flexible Working in the Public Sector in Northern Ireland. The briefing sounded so official and the setting so formal that I wasn’t sure what to expect and a tad apprehensive.

 

But I have to say that my hosts greeted me warmly and even the panel made attempts to be friendly and put me at ease. In my introduction I mentioned that I used to be a researcher within the Civil Service to which the Chair replied “we will not hold that against you”. Later, when discussing new workplaces, one of the committee members mentioned “there is the one from Morgan Stanley where one of its employees said that she enjoyed being in the office so much, she did not want to go home” to which another member replied “that says more about her home” and another “you wonder what kind of home she comes from” until they were told “you cannot go there”. It seems Civil Servants are human and humane.

 

Seven Cs of Change

If you dont have the energy to read this blog then listen to it on YouTube.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent ... It is the one that is the most adaptable to change”.

This is one of my favourite quotes on change, from the legendry Charles Darwin of course. The literature is littered with quotes on change such that Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, in circa 500 BC postulated that:

 

“The only thing that is constant is change”.

The aim of this blog is to briefly introduce you to change management. I will start with a little theory and then move onto my own change management process. A process I developed a few years ago when with AMA, derived from Kotter and others. I call it The Seven Cs of Change.

Why is there resistance to agile working?

Tomorrow I have been asked to make a five minute introductory speech on: "Why is there resistance to agile working? Trends during recession and the issue of productivity”. This is what I intend to say.

 
I remember the days before the recession. I had been implementing new ways of working, that’s what we called agile working then, for around 12 years. I had become despondent that agile working had been hijacked by the property and FM industry as a more devious means of reducing the cost base. I’ve always maintained that if you simply want to save money on property costs then there are easier ways to do it than go through the heartache and mental strain required to implement agile working - for example cram all your people into a cattle shed in the north.

Is there Space for Standards?

I recently drafted some space standards for a new client of mine.  I realised I hadn’t created space standards for a while and wondered if they had gone out of vogue or are just not required anymore in the modern office. Whenever I mention space standards to my workplace peers there is much scoffing and dismissal. But, I have to confess that I do like a good space standard.

We tend to think of space standards in term of the amount (number and size) of spaces provided. But standards refer to:

• a level of quality or attainment; 
• something used as a measure or model in comparative evaluations;  
• the accepted normal or average.

I like space standards because they provide end-users (individuals and business) with an idea of the amount and quality of space they are entitled to and will be working in.

Personality & Communication

I recently read an interesting article in the Toastmasters Magazine on the Power of Introverts by Susan Cain. The article prompted me to share some of my own thoughts on personality theory and communication. These ideas informed my research into The Psychology of Collaboration, carried out on behalf of Herman Miller, which I hope to be published soon. Hopefully you will find my review useful in you day-to-day lives and at work.

 

Eysenck's super-trait personality model

So what is personality? Well“Persona” is Latin for "mask", so it suggests personality is the mask we present to the world. But interestingly there does not appear to be any agreed definition of personality amongst psychologists. My own mash-up of definitions is: “Personality is an individual’s unique set of traits and consistent pattern of thinking and behaviour that persists over time and across situations”. Personality is stable but not absolutely fixed. It is a proclivity for certain traits (or characteristics) that in turn affect our behaviour.