Going Dutch

I was recently tweeted a link to How Culture Shapes the Office, a paper by Christine Congdon and Catherine Gall published in the Harvard Business Review. I saw Catherine present the paper at last year’s WorkplaceTrends. I was impressed with the content and found it a sensible model with practical applications in workplace design. However, other conference participants unjustly criticised Catherine of cultural stereotyping.

The presentation and paper got me thinking about my own experiences of cultural differences. There are too many to mention in one blog. I touched on my experiences in japan in a previous blog on Vernacular Design,Climate, Culture and Teapots. In this blog I will focus on my views on the Dutch culture.  Rather than just state my findings, with the holiday season coming up, I have phrased them as travel tips for visiting the Netherlands.

So to begin with, did you notice that I wrote Netherlands rather than Holland? Tip #1 is to never say you are going to Holland to a Dutch person. They will think you are ignorant or stupid or both ignorant and stupid. Saying you are going to Holland rather than the Netherlands is like saying you are going to the Norfolk Broads rather than the UK. As a child I thought that the Netherlands was where Peter Pan and Tinkerbell lived, but apparently not.

Utilisation Studies: Science or Sorcery?

I have recenty l guest blogged on the i-FM site. Here is a transcritpion if you do not want to log on to their site. 

We have all sat through a workplace consultant’s presentation in which they report that the benchmark workstation utilisation is around 50%. Most organisations that conduct utilisation, or occupancy, studies and benchmark their data report such a figure. This means that typically only half of the office workstations are in use at any one time during the working week, which is wasteful of resources. But what is interesting about this finding is that no two utilisation studies appear to be conducted, analysed or reported in exactly the same way. Are we falling into the trap of comparing apples with bananas?

The WCO Guide to:Utilisation and Occupancy Studies, the most recent publication of the Workplace Consulting Organisation, intends to demystify utilisation studies. The guide helps companies to understand when and how to use such studies, plus how to interpret the results to determine the number of workstations actually required in the office and thus reduce wasted space.

 

I'm a workplace consultant ... Get me out of here!

I have been meaning to blog for some time on what we can learn in the workplace arena from reality TV. The post by @NickWAllen on “What crazy chef – Gordon Ramsay – has taught me about online marketing” finally persuaded me to put pen to paper (or more accurately put fingers to keypad).

So we might as well start with the ineffable (or is it f’in-able) Gordon Ramsay. His Kitchen Nightmares programme has been relegated from UK restaurants to those struggling in the USA. Regular viewers will spot the tried and tested formula of these shows. Chef Ramsay visits a dysfunctional restaurant run by a dysfunctional family, he dislikes the food and the décor regardless, he gets the owners to admit blame, and then he rewards them with a restaurant makeover, new menu and free publicity.

Toastmasters - Red Coat or Red Herring

I was recently invited to guest blog on why I like Toastmasters. So here it is.

When I was first asked if I was interested in joining Toastmasters I instantly imagined formidable and pompous gentlemen in red tuxedos toasting the queen and her realms and territories. But my vision was far from reality, the red coat is a red herring.

My inaugural visit to Berkhamsted Toastmasters was to the “humorous speaking contest” – an evening of pre-prepared, often amusing and often just weird, presentations on a wide variety of subjects. One of the speeches that I still clearly recall detailed what happens after the coffin goes beyond the curtains at a crematorium. The speaker regaled us with how the coffin is re-used and the poor departed repays society as the latest bio-fuel. This is black humour by any standards, and I’m an avid fan of “the league of gentlemen”.

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.