Strategic Workplace Planning

 

Concept of Work

Organizational leaders today face a major challenge in creating work settings that promote creativity and innovation…. A key ingredient is changing the entrenched ideas about “teamwork”. In the past, efficiency was defined as focusing direct on the task, whatever it was: typing, telephoning, writing a report, reading a memo, or participating in a scheduled meeting. The implication is that individuals are the key ingredient to productivity, rather than the team or group. However, problems in today’s world are much more complex, such as computers and automobiles, as a result, the expertise needed to resolve them is more divers. Thus, solving these complex problems requires expertise and experience that cross disciplinary and departmental boundaries. In this context, teamwork, communication, are fundamental building blocks to organizational effectiveness. So, the old concept of work can no longer be applied to the new complex business world.

----Franklin Becker & Fritz Steele, Workplace by Design, p. 67

 

 

Relay-Race Model Versus Rugby Model

This change of working patter can be illustrated by the Relay-Race Model and Rugby Model. In a relay-race model each function or discipline does its work and then tosses it over to the next group who is supposed to run with their part of the development process until it is finished, at which point they toss their output to the next group until the finished product comes out the door. Unfortunately, what goes over the fence has a tendency to be thrown back, as work in later stages reveals problems with choices made in earlier stages. But this process is not a friendly process because it is like a neighbor whose yard serves as the outfield for the kids next door, it tends to create hard feelings and harsh words between neighbors. It creates the same problem among different sectors in a company.

 

 

On the other hand, the rugby model brings all the plays in the process together as a team at the project’s inception. Different players may take a stronger lead at different points in the process, and the ball will move all over the field, sometimes going backward or laterally to move forward, as the team moves it toward the goal. In this process, the whole team is in the game all the time so that decisions in different phases are known and tested for consistency and compatibility as they occur. And the glue that holds the team together constant communication. Communication in the rugby model is on the fly, in the halls, on the stairs, at lunch, in the locker room. In other words, communication occurs anywhere in rugby model. But in the relay-race model, communication only happens in the conference room which is planned, scheduled, predetermined.

----Franklin Becker & Fritz Steele, Workplace by Design, p. 7

How to increase the communication between people?

.........breaking down the barriers among different sectors. It is important to make people realize that while another group may think and behave differently from them, there is value to the differences and that diversity is needed to generate good ideas and innovative products. So, the goal was not “homogenizing” the organization, but helping different groups accept and respect these different ways of thinking and working.

....... realizing the functional diversity. Functional diversity means that even within disciplines there can be great differences in personal work style; that is, in how, where, and when people work best. So when planning the physical setting of the workplace, environmental equity concept should be considered. Environmental equity means giving employees access to those physical resources ( such as work space and surfaces, privacy, storage, display, and so forth) they need to work effectively, not in giving everyone exactly the same thing.

 

Physical Settings and Teamwork

Changes in business process and new corporate values and philosophies should be reinforced and supported by the physical ecology of the workplace. This means that the value or thought changes in a company can be naturally reinforced by the arrangement of physical settings. Physical design, by itself, will not change behavior patterns and guarantee teamwork. It can make some activities more likely than others, and when it is in tune with the social system, it can create the kind of lively, interactive setting that supports teamwork and collaboration.

----(Franklin Becker & Fritz Steele, Workplace by Design, p. 77)

 

 

Using physical settings to enhance working efficiency

Considering the different working habits of the employees. One guiding principle for office physical settings design is that as an individual’s work varies over time(day, week, year), so the optimal setting for accomplishing that work should vary as well. People do not cook, eat, sleep, and entertain in the same room in their home, then why should workers always discuss a project, type a report, or read a technical article in the same workplace? As a result, the concept of employee mobility is encouraged by providing many different work areas for employees to work in, each with a different character and purpose: small individual work stations used in conjunction with a shared commons area, dedicated project rooms, conference rooms, break areas, etc.. By giving a variety of physical settings for the workers, it is easier for them to achieve their optimal efficiency

 

 

Mixed Neighborhoods

The conventional wisdom of adjacency analysis, in which every in the same function located together, was largely abandoned in favor of “mixed neighborhood” in which people from different disciplines (product engineers, marketers, and designers) share an area. The intent is not only to foster informal communication across disciplines, but to create working relationship through increased trust and greater tolerance for diversity in working styles and personal styles.

 

Rules of Thumb to increase communication and teamwork

Of course, these rules of thumb make no sense unless you start from the assumption that it is a good thing for people to communicate informally.

 

Our thoughts

Again, we find out that the cultural difference might cause some problem when applying “real work” concept to my country, Taiwan. For example, we feel ashamed if we take too much time doing something which is not relevant to our job because we feel it is a symbol of selfishness. And we think that all the employees should adjust themselves to the office hour of the company. It is the employees that should get used to working in the office at the designated period of time. This contradicts to the concept of “real work” which emphasizes the individual’s difference and let the employees decide when and where to work. The difference might be that we emphasize “collectivism” in our society so everybody is encouraged to adjust himself or herself for the whole organizatoin. This is our sense of “teamwork”. As people’s attitudes are gradually influenced by western values, the thought of a more “relaxed” type of working environment might be able to be accepted in Taiwan in the future, but it takes some time!