Alex Adamopoulos Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Emergn Ltd.
How do you bring a new idea to market?
We have a great idea, a new product or service that can really make a difference in our customers’ lives. But how do we get it out there? At the end of the day, it’s the people you surround yourself with who realize the company’s mission and push that idea into the marketplace. Understanding your employees and knowing what motivates them — what gets them engaged in the big picture — is key to that success.
One of the most underutilized tools that business leaders have at their disposal to accomplish this is the workplace -- specifically, the actual physical space itself.
Rethinking Workspaces
What comes to mind when you think of a workspace? For many of us, it’s a numbers game: the budget needed to lease out an office, the square footage of that space, the number of employees it can fit.
We might also think of space as an aesthetic or branding exercise. Does the look of the office reflect the company culture I want to promote? Does it capture our personality? Are our logos, company colors and awards clearly visible?
But workspaces operate on a deeper level than that. The workspace is about authenticity, and that sends a subconscious signal to the people working in those spaces about who and what they’re working for. Positive, engaging workspaces can instill feelings of trust and confidence and an atmosphere for collaboration and community.
Real innovation requires a certain level of trust, collaboration and fluidity among the people driving it. The ability for people to come up with new ideas depends on their ability to feel that they have access to their leaders, to the tools they need and to each other. The workspace is what communicates that accessibility exists.
The Limits Of The Traditional Office
In reimagining what the workspace should do, it’s worth taking a step back to diagnose the limitations that traditional office environments are saddled with today.
I was talking about this recently with one of my good friends, Guillaume Alvarez. Guillaume is an SVP for Steelcase, an office furniture manufacturer. As Guillaume told me, the characteristic that has the biggest negative impact on today’s workplace is the fact that the office often feels like a reflection of the company’s org chart. Just like on an org chart, in the office you’ll typically find the leaders secluded on the top floor. Middle managers get the window seats and corner offices, and the rank and file get grouped into the middle-of-the-floor pool of desks.
Right off the bat, this sends a negative signal to employees. It implies that leaders and managers are inaccessible — because often, they physically are — while everyone else gets grouped together into a blob at the bottom of the ladder. That kind of layout does not inspire confidence in employees, and it doesn’t make them feel valued, and that has a major impact on their mental well-being in the office. When well-being suffers, engagement suffers and, consequently, work suffers.
Bridging The Physical Divide Between Leaders And Employees
When business leaders are sitting on separate floors or in separate buildings from the rest of their employees, that creates a huge gap, both physical and psychological, between the two. This gap is compounded even more by things like access cards and security guards that put up more metaphorical and literal roadblocks between workers and their leaders.
These design choices hail from an older, now irrelevant way of working. And they’re getting in the way of today’s ways of working.
More businesses recognize this, and it’s led to some pretty interesting innovation in how offices work. One option is for business leaders get themselves into the natural circulation paths of the office. One way Steelcase approached this situation was by moving one company's CEO’s office into the path between the building’s main entrance and the café that employees regularly stop in. That’s a natural circulation path because everyone has to walk through that front door and through or into the café. Consequently, everyone will walk by the CEO’s office. That way, an employee and an executive don’t need to go out of their way to meet. Instead, they casually walk by each other and maybe stop for a quick chat, helping to build up a trusting, comfortable relationship.
That access is important for letting employees know what their leaders are up to (and vice versa) and ensures that leaders can better take the temperature of their organization.
Space Should Reflect The People
When you get down to it, there are no across-the-board best practices for optimizing workspaces. The right environment is contextual; it’s unique to each organization and its culture. Workspaces should be driven by people, not color schemes or layouts or furniture. Once you’ve defined your culture — the kind of company you are and the company you want to be — you can nail down the attributes for the space itself.
The right workspaces help to get workers and business leaders more engaged with each other and more engaged with the mission of the company. You can’t innovate if you’re not engaged in what you’re doing. So, don’t get bogged down in the details of square footage and furniture placement. What matters is that the people in the company are defining what that space should look and feel like, and are active participants in shaping their environments. When the people are driving change in how the company looks and feels, that extends to driving change throughout the company and innovating on what that business has to offer.