The 'Go To' Office Became the 'Go To Guy' Even with the mobility of today’s communication devices, most businesses are still dependent on stable locations for part of their operations, because people have to be someplace. Although we once dreamed of a paperless office, storage companies still make lots of money keeping old records dry. Most workers still need flat surfaces to work on, filing cabinets and specialized tools. The situation has improved, after WWII office furniture was designed like battleships, grey and heavy; Bell Tell owned the telephones, laptop computers were called slide rules and you couldn’t bring a telephone with you. Businesses only changed locations when they had to. Although many businesses are still location dependent, for many industries the shift has from their location being all-important, the corner store, to their team’s performance and technology being the power driving the engine. That is why it so important to be fluent in the language of design controlling work place dynamics.
The Left and Right Message
What is the message in a desk position? If instead of facing the desk at the door we tilted it left, so the person’s right side is open to those entering, what does that say?
It says ‘I’m a mover and a shaker. I’m ready to jump up at a moment’s notice and head out that door to bring products to my customers. I’m the person who expands my company’s reach, market and power’. How does it say that? Because the right-side of the body is the muscular, armored side! In boxing you hold the left hand close to protect the body, while the right hand reaches out to attack. We offer our right hand in greeting because it is our less vulnerable side.
‘Hi, my name is Ralph, can I sell you something? Trust me, you’ll love it’!
Let’s spin the desk the other way. What does it say when your left-side is open to the entrance?It says, ‘I receive, I accept, I’m open to what you bring me and I’ll provide guidance and help because of our emotional connection’. The left side is where we feel our beating heart, it is the more emotional and responsive side of the body.
Think of it this way: We hold a new baby on our left side so they sense the beating of our heart, emulating the protective environment of the mother’s womb. You can’t get much more nurturing than that! Meanwhile the right side of the body is stronger and tougher, so that’s the side that we use to fend off the offers of others to hold the baby, until they start crying of course.
Back to work, when we put our left side towards the entrance it says ‘welcome in, I’ll be here, I’ll listen to you, and together we’ll solve your problems. It is not about jumping up and leaving the space, it is about being there and accessible.
When you face the door, either directly, or angled left or right, it says you are facing the outside world ready to take it on. You are a problem solver.
The right side facing out = Expanding your horizons beyond your close circle.
Directly facing at the door = Being in charge, yet balanced and adaptable
The left side facing out = Open to connections within your organization.
Who Should Face East?
The flexible office is good because individuals prefer specific directions; natural sales people work best facing east and philosophers like facing north. By allowing for directional differences you promote individual genius. That’s why we developed these guidelines.
Work spaces are oriented in dominant directions based on the main entrance. Traditionally bosses faced so they could see who was coming in the door. Symbolically the boss is in alignment with the company’s mission. With the boss on the 20th floor they don’t see who is coming in, but facing that same cardinal direction keeps them in philosophical alignment! Using traditional methods makes us feel safe and confident.
Because of personal programming some people benefit from the work space’s orientation more than others. We say they are a good fit with the company. Their personality type describes what that direction signifies. Stable, dependable workers like to face south, so when you put them in a southern aligned work space of course they feel supported by their surroundings.
Before wide spread electric lighting people had a more prevalent experience of sunlight and the night sky, the phases of the Moon and the constellations. They decided the timing of important activities and were illumination and guide posts for night time journeys along unlit pathways.
Recall that primordial sense of the cardinal directions when you plot the route that you want your business to travel. When have your whole crew facing the same direction they are navigating by the same stars. What direction would that be?
Does your Position Support your Mission?
Henry Ford, one of the pioneers of the production line said that from the neck down a man was worth a dollar a day, but from the neck up their value was unlimited.
To be good at performing a task you need the necessary mindset. Correctly arranging your work space creates and maintains that mindset despite the workday chaos. Numerous movies begin with cases of mistaken identity where a person is sitting at some else’s desk, or wearing their uniform. We assume the person behind that name plate is who it describes; we assume the person wearing the crown is the monarch. Environments send such a strong message that it can overwhelm any sense of the unique person surrounded by that picture. The messages a desk position sends are specific.
Working in Unison
Setting up work spaces where your whole team faces the same direction encourages a shared sense of mission and responsibility. Look at the most popular team sports which emerged from this ancient tradition, teams line up side by side facing the other teams aiming the opposite way. In the past this contributed to companies being more cohesive with a greater sense of loyalty resulting in employment longevity. These are qualities that Japanese businesses still embody where meetings normally take place with everyone on the same side of the table and groups of desks often face the same part of the compass.
That doesn’t mean that our modern system of the free-wheeling office with desks face multiple directions is wrong. It encourages individual thinking and alternate points of view as well as entrepreneurship. It also means that your employees are more inclined to strike out on their own, hopefully not taking your customers with them, but I wouldn’t count on that.
Sharing Sunlight
Before electricity entered the workplace teams sat at their stations facing the same direction to take advantage of sun light to illuminate their tasks. Understanding light sources is critical for creating effective office designs because the body reacts automatically to them and magnetic influence. Geese navigate long distances using magnetic nodes in their skulls. South sea islanders prize their traditional navigators who feel their way to the islands over the horizon. We react to these influences even when we’re not consciously aware of them.
Our GPS and Google maps speak to our conscious, frontal brains, but the primal brain where emotions and fight or flight live navigates by the cardinal (light source) and magnetic (particle based) directions. The glandular system times the body’s cycles to the electromagnetic fields of the Sun and Moon and growth and healing cycles depend on them. The body grows in Solar cycles and heals in Lunar cycles. Without you realizing it your body leans against the current of magnetic particles flowing from the North to the South Pole. How does that affect you sitting at your desk?
How to Place the Desks
Although there are times when your whole team should sit facing the same direction in most western offices we know that isn’t going to happen. Truthfully in a creative, dynamic work place it’s not necessarily a good idea because it doesn’t support the individual gifts of the team members.
Still, the position of a desk makes a statement and in a smooth-working organization everyone needs to know their position because physical placement is a reflection of social status. Depending on the hierarchy be careful about which desks face the front of the building or department, because it symbolizes that they are your representatives to the outside world. They affect your organization’s place in that world.
On the sailing ships that once navigated the world using sextants and stars to guide them the captain commanded the ship, but the navigator or pilot guided its path. In organizations some people focus on the inner workings while others do the external navigation. And some people are below decks pumping out the bilge.
As the boss you decide where the desks are placed. Beware of junior executives moving their desks to dominant positions. There is nothing wrong with ambition, but they need to remember who the boss is and that they are being paid to ‘follow that leader’.
Who is in Charge Here?
When you walk into the boss’s office and they are facing you, what message does that send? It says, ‘We both know who’s in charge here’. That positioning, that posture shows that the boss is ready, willing and able to face issues and solve problems NOW! When you walk into that office arrangement be prepared for decisions to be made, whether or not you like them. Managers who set up their office with a commanding posture have a clear vision for the future of their enterprise. Their decisions will fit into that long-range plan which can be confusing when you’re just looking for a short-term answer.
If you’re habitually frustrated by a boss’s decisions, then turn yourself around and look at it from their side of the desk, literally. It is like the Indian adage of walking a mile in a person’s moccasins before you criticize them. Consider what they are seeing when they are working, adopt their perspective. Face the same quadrant of the compass as your boss and see if you are inspired by the same stars.
Look at your Team as a Leader
Step back and take a look at your team like a leader. How well do they work together? Are there disagreements and feuds or do they act like friends who work together? Do they help each other when time is of the essence? Do they talk with each other or hide behind closed doors and emails? Do they like coming to work? How are they positioned relative to each other and how does that affect their interaction?
Positioning matters for cooperation and emotional support. Japanese businesses often conduct meetings with everyone on the same side of the table, not looking at each other’s faces.
What does that body language say? It is hard to be confrontational sitting side by side. Facing the same direction you are all subject to the same light sources, you cast similar shadows and your nervous systems are pushed the same directions by natural and manufactured electromagnetic currents. You see the same images and scenes outside the windows. With so many impressions in common it is easier to reach an accord.
Not surprisingly Japanese businesses are famous for cooperating on successful long-term projects with a high degree of shared dedication. Facing the same gets everyone on the same page. It makes it easier to be more concerned about we than me.
When making a presentation the group often faces one direction. This formation is used by police and military for transmitting directions. Facing your audience you challenge them with your position. But when you use a video presentation and face the screen along with your audience it is easier to get them onto your side of the proposal. Your body language says ‘I’m on your side’, and you are aligned with the same direction, something that should not be underestimated.
Where does God Advertise for Help?
There is an old story where God decides that he or she wants to retire so they review resumes from the celestial internet. Lo and behold who should come up as the candidate with the best experience for the job? That guy they fired who went off and started his own operation, Satan. Now, they’re an equal opportunity employer and to forgive is divine so they give him the job. Now old Nick is thinking, ‘They’re letting the fox guard the hen house’, but when he puts his name plate on that desk he finds out that he has to start acting like God just to do the job at all.
The Correct Personality for the Job
Certain positions require certain personality types. We are not universal in our talents; each person has their own genius, or set of geniuses. Work places, like all man-made environments have a personality and project a message. Ideally the message of the workplace speaks honestly about the mission of the workers. The secret of success in environmental design is recognizing what work space arrangement best supports that personality type and then supplying it whole heartedly.
When you put your assistant at your desk and they do well there it’s a sign that their personality fits the task.
I (Ralph) grew up working in my family’s factory and I remember my Father telling me that he would never be able to sit at a production machine all day, year after year, although we had plenty of people who did that for a lifetime. He was an engineer and mechanic and an entrepreneurial personality who had the big view, but still got his hands dirty. He was teaching me that finding people who were truly suited to their positions was important for the stability of our large and tremendously complex company which he ran for more than sixty five years. Experience counts!
The Office B.E. = Before Electronics
The pre-electronic work environment was like hand me down clothes, broken in but comfortable. Moving into an office with a new title the odds were good that everything worked the way they needed to for the job, like buying used textbooks, the important parts were already highlighted. The previous occupants had worked out the bugs and after some small personal adjustments your work space would function like a well-tuned production line.
What were those personal adjustments? Positioning your name plate facing out, moving the phone to your non-dominant hand side and placing a picture of your family on a bookcase behind you, that quick you were up and running! Before computers work spaces differed; at a glance you could tell between the accounting department, the art department and the office of the CEO, from the drawing tables, the stacks of ledgers and the wall filled with photos and awards.
Today’s work spaces are often androgynous and benefit from images that reinforce the mission of each work space, otherwise team structure dissolves into an amorphous blob because workers lose track of their roles within the whole.
Before electronics took over the workspace people were groomed for positions, not selected from Monster.com. They came up through the ranks like good soldiers and managers chose and trained their own replacements, looking for someone with skills and talents similar to their own.
Having your assistant work at your desk while you’re away was a way to see whether they could handle the job when you move upstairs. Management styles and personality types coincide and express themselves in office arrangement preferences. When a person works well at your desk they are probably a good fit for your job because you share personality traits.
When a troubleshooter takes over from a failing manager the chaos of the work space shows them where their predecessor lacked focus and control. The best solution is dramatically changing the work space arrangement to fit their management style and send the message there is a new Sheriff in town.
The Task Specific Space
Because computers do many different tasks work spaces are design specific. The marketing team uses the same hardware as the art department and bookkeeping and there aren’t any drawing boards or ledgers in sight. The software is different but the ergonomics similar. When you move into an office who knows if the previous occupant was doing the same job? With the popularity of cooperative ventures, contracting and consulting who knows if they worked for the same company? Don’t assume the office design was fine-tuned to do your job; tune it up yourself.
Additional work brings additional benefits; your work space isn’t carved in stone and you can shape it to your own style and talents. This is a huge advantage! In most countries culture and family history limit innovation and genius by funneling efforts into narrow cultural parameters. Being able to create technology and enterprise without a suffocating history made the United States an economic power. Being able to shape your own work space is like having a clean sheet of paper and a big box of crayons, the possibilities abound.
Musical Work Spaces
Work spaces have changed since the advent of computers. In the past when you left school and started a serious ‘job’ you were locked into a work space until you worked your way out of it through promotion or termination. Today technology is portable so you can have multiple work spaces depending on the time of day or week. Bringing your laptop from your office to a meeting, a café, or home office entails multiple positioning decisions that affect your performance.
If you make those decisions well your performance booms and you are promoted to a better office closer to the boss. More decisions! Now thanks to your promotion you telecommute three days a week, but from where? Any place with a chair, a table and wireless and a cup of coffee would be nice!
This rapid succession of work spaces is something many people are coping with. At one time most people counted all of the locations they had worked on one hand with fingers left over, now both fingers and toes wouldn’t be enough. This high speed game of musical offices is a function of technological changes in the tools we consider essential. Our Ergo Dynamic Quiz is designed to help you make those decisions successfully.
Work Space History: How many Spaces have you Worked?
Add up the spaces where you have worked including summer jobs and that dusty desk they parked you during your internship. If you worked waiting tables count that restaurant and if you worked as a life guard count the life guard stand, but not the beach.
How did these work environments shape your personal preferences? When you love the work the space patterns your emotional body so similar environments feel good. In contrast, an emotionally brutal work environment leaves scars even when the pay and professional experience was beneficial. Similar environments feel like scar tissue rubbed the wrong way.
Every work environment shapes your feelings and reactions for better or worse. The best thing about starting off with a good boss is they create an environment that supports their team’s well being and talents. From then on you are drawn to recreate those original work place patterns. In the same way you probably arranged your first living room like the one you grew up with.
If you started with managers that ruled through intimidation or were oblivious to the value of positioning our Ergo Dynamic Work Space Quiz helps you discover the work space pattern that promotes your genius.
That doesn’t mean that people who start off in tough environments can’t be successful, quite the opposite, certain personality types thrive there. Entrepreneurs, future business owners, great salespeople and self-made successes often start their careers in demanding environments, from street vendors to factory floors. They develop a toughness and resilience that serves them well. But not everyone is built that way or can rise above their initial programming. That is why managers need to can create work environments that promote cooperation and genius. Not only will your team accomplish more with greater satisfaction, but pass that on by recreating successful environments that benefit everyone they work with in the future.
The Importance of Signs
Before the advent of the free address, anonymous office whenever you arrived in a work space there were signs on the doors and desks that said things like, ‘Director of Something or Other’.When you walked inside an executive’s office the person’s name plaque was on their desk. The ‘director’ sign stayed with the room while the personal sign traveled with the worker from post to post.
Signs are important, a sign on your work room door makes you stand a little straighter and think in a business-like way every time you see it, even if you work in a home office with no co-workers around. In the home office it stakes out your working territory and sends the message that behind that sign you are at work; when they disturb you it’s costing somebody money. Signs remind everyone, including you of your place in the organization and your responsibilities.
This system of signs was developed way before lap tops, thumb drives and web-based back up information storage, so you might think they are obsolete, but that’s your head talking. Even if you communicate with your team via group emails your body wants clearly marked signs to navigate your work space because it helps you feel secure within the team hierarchy. When people feel they belong and are supported by their group they perform better; signs do that and having a biography and photo on the company website doesn’t carry that kind of emotional oomph.
How ‘Go to Offices!’ became ‘Go to Guys!’
Traditionally within an industry work spaces shared styles and designs! That was a message sent through their choice of furniture and colors. This was prevalent when offices and factories were more closely connected so offices needed to stand up to the grime their team trailed into their offices. Today most offices exist in a sea of other offices and the workers would be hard pressed to name a factory nearby. If their business is factory dependent that plant is probably on another continent. But it continues to be important to have a signature work space design related to your primary industry and your core income because it helps your team keep their priorities clear.
When workers get busy with the busy work and forget about the central purpose less time is devoted to the important tasks that yield significant benefits.
These days the main place that we see signature designs are on websites and stationary; ‘build it yourself’ websites and publishing programs designate designs by their industry. If you run a plant nursery there is a host of website and stationary designs for that. While work space designs within the professions have a distinct signature, we all know what a doctor or lawyer’s office should look like; business spaces have become increasing androgynous. That makes it difficult to instill a sense of shared purpose and unique value in the team. Even the lowest level worker benefits from feeling connected to something significant and unique, to be able to say ‘I’m part of the company that makes that product that you use’. The correct work environment reminds them of that connection and keeps them on track.
Before computers took over the workplace information was managed in low tech ways, paper and files, rolodexes and directories, mail rooms and messengers. Of course these tools still exist, but more information goes through email and websites, servers and thumb drives, social media and smart phones. At that time companies didn’t have ‘go to guys’; they had 'go to offices'. Every job was based on its location because the sheer weight and volume of the paper files meant that it had to be kept someplace. When you needed that information you went there.
When you got the job and the title, you got the place, the desk and the office. Normally it was the office of the person who had held the job before you. It was a practical arrangement based on having access to those files and it produced stability and continuity. When you needed to find something you knew where to get it using your feet, not the World Wide Web.
The Curse of Cubicles
Many big, established companies use interior designers to create their work space. For the space to be most effective it is extremely important that the designers intimately understand the work that the space is being used for and the personality types that are drawn to that type of activity. That is one of the reasons that the cartoon Dilbert has thrived; a generation of industrial designers created a sea of soul-killing cubicles and the denizens of those boxes laugh about it daily. When you isolate your team you dampen their talents and limit the interactions that make them effective.
The traditional cubicle with its high sides requires workers to sit with their backs to the door which turns on the fight or flight reflex. That triggers the adrenals to consume the body’s stores of essential fatty acids and other vital hormonal nutrients as well as Vitamin C which is critical to immune response. As a result workers eventually suffer from anxiety, stress, muscle strain, hormonal issues and lowered immunity. Companies see an increasing incidence of medical problems, sick days, disability claims, emotional displays, petty jealousies and employee turnover. Our recommendation; tear the cubicles down and turn the desks around!
Fortunately the restrictive view cubicle is going out of fashion thanks to two reasons. First the advent of bright flat screens and laptop computers has eliminated the need for the dimly lit, highly engineered space that could accommodate the thick network wires that brought the first desk top terminals into offices. Second, the generation of workers that first suffered from cubicles has moved into management positions and they are not choosing cubicles.
The growing popularity of the low panel cubicle comes from companies being able to use their original electrical wiring and still allow their workers a sense of community and teamwork. Eventually as buildings are changed and spaces turned over the cubicle will probably disappear. Do you want to know why we believe that? Because in all the home offices that we’ve seen and designed no client has ever requested or used a cubicle for their desk no matter how many people worked in the space!
School and its Environmental Design Education Lapses
Your first dozen years of school didn’t teach you how to create the best work environment for yourself and your team for a simple reason; students sit where they are told and teachers stand where the furniture demands. In turn the furniture landed there due to the architects plan for the room which was laid out based on the need for maximum window exposure and access to wide hallways.
The class room layout is as standardized as possible so that both teachers and students can quickly find their places. The only opportunity that you have to learn about the power of positioning in school is on the sports field and there isn’t usually much furniture out there. Luckily your time on the softball field taught you to automatically understand your rank in the office by your desk’s position related to your boss’s. Are you the person that catches the boss’s ideas? Do you snatch up the fast track projects from the infield or are you stuck in the outfield waiting for someone to notice you while waiting for your time at bat?
Knowing your position is important. That’s why large government buildings and businesses hang pictures of their chief executives in prominent places, because it lets everybody know who’s in charge. If your work space isn’t supporting your best talents, and it more than likely isn’t, your school should hang its head in shame for not teaching you how to read the configuration of a work space and then shape it to your needs. But luckily that’s what our Amicis Ergo Dynamic Work Space Quiz does.
Definition of the Boss: The person who decides where the desks go!
Here is a secret about very successful business leaders; they have a tremendously good instinct about how to position themselves in their workplace. They also understand how to position others depending on their relationship. Ambitious leaders seek out the positions of power; that includes being physically higher, placed to the north of the rest of the group, and in visual command of the entranceways and in alignment with the front of the building. Each position has its own advantages. The Early Bird
Successful people like to arrive early to meetings so they can choose the most strategic position. Once their chaired is reserved and assured they can arrive late now and then to make the point that nothing is going happen until they arrive, but that’s the exception, leaders lead by example. Of course by arriving late and taking the prominent position they are using both space and time to make their point and establish their dominance. If you work with a good leader watch how they adjust their position depending on the situation, for instance, where they sit with a customer is different from where they position themselves with their assistant.They may sit across the table during a hard negotiation and then insist on sharing a couch with a colleague to reconnect on a personal level. This flexibility is the union of body sense and emotional intelligence and it’s the sign of a successful person.
Ralph & Lahni de Amicis conduct their Ergo Dynamic Work Space Quiz for groups throughout the Bay area. They are authors of numerous books on environmental design and well being and have consulted for thousands of clients internationally in multiple languages. For more information visit www.SpaceAndTime.com and to arrange a talk and get a speaker’s package email Ralph@spaceandtime.com or call 707-235-2364.
An Historical Perspective of the Office
To better understand how people and workspaces interact let’s look at the history of office work. Until the later part of the twentieth century people typically worked for the same company or within the same industry for their entire career. Education was not universally available and on the job training was the standard operating procedure. Managers assumed that no matter the quality of your education, unless you had worked someplace similar previously you arrived with little of any value in your head. So they would invest a great deal in your training with the implicit understanding that you were there for the long haul. With this kind of assured longevity work place designs were improved over time so you could accomplish tasks as efficiently as possible and then changed very little until newer technology arrived and had to be accommodated.
In the past work stations were dependent on sunlight, dim candles and oil lamps, so first and foremost buildings, work tables and desks are aligned to take advantage of the sunlight. Our admiration of the ‘corner office’ with its multi directional windows is a throwback to that tradition. Then electricity and artificial lighting transformed work spaces. Today, people can change jobs, careers, offices and technology at a dizzying rate of speed because of the portability of electronic devices, but you still need to understand the secrets of personal positioning if you want to work to your greatest potential.
So You Have a New Office!
What is an office? For many people it’s a smart phone, a laptop computer, a chair and a table with a person attached. The first two gadgets didn’t exist fifty years ago and the chair and table could be anyplace with good lighting and a wireless connection. So, saying that office environments are changing is a massive understatement, they’ve gone fluid. Yet, people like familiarity, sitting down in a chair that’s shaped itself to your backside makes them feel safe and secure. Even the office gypsies that rotate between coffee shops have their well considered collection of cafes and their favorite chairs within each space.
Where do People Work?
Everywhere! People are working in a wide variety of spaces and the purpose of our approach is to help you perform at your best no matter what environment that might be. More people are working at home carving out offices in houses that were rarely designed with that in mind. Large office complexes are increasingly providing shared, open address work stations for team members who are normally on the road or in home offices. You don’t see as many family photos around because people don’t leave anything at the desks.
For all of this change most people are still employed at smaller businesses with stable locations. Technology has transformed the way that people work, but the design of the human form is still the primal dimension for every workspace design. To work at your best you need to shape the space, no matter how temporary, around your unique talents and personality.