by Lauri Goodman Lampson and Jackie Wheat

The Problem

To evolve in today’s ever-changing business landscape, organizations have very complex problems to solve. First and foremost, they must stay relevant to thrive in the future. That means attracting and retaining the right people with the right talent and inspiring them to do their best work.

Staying relevant also requires leveraging new tools and technologies that are continuously changing everything about the way work is done – and at an extraordinary pace. Often, these pursuits create new objectives that take the form of corporate initiatives; mandates direct from C-Suite leadership that have senior executive oversight to ensure the initiatives are rolled out and the business objectives are met.

Unfortunately, most organizations today are simply in reactive mode; reacting to the changing nature of work and workers and responding to individual preferences instead of shaping new ways of working and new cultural norms that are required to support new business objectives. What is often missing is the direct connection between work and place, and the fact that the workplace plays a significant and vital role in enabling, catalyzing and accelerating those new initiatives and business performance objectives. Approached strategically, the workplace has the potential to inspire people to be at their best and do their best work. Conversely, new initiatives and business performance will no doubt struggle UNLESS the workplace enables them.

The Solution

The solution is to create an Enterprise Workplace Strategy (EwpS) to plan for those changes and enable peak business performance. EWpS is your framework for workplace decision making and should be grounded in your organization’s purpose and connected to your strategic business objectives, with the intent to drive high performance. A successful EWpS needs to be treated like an imperative corporate initiative and must have C-Suite/Executive sponsorship and oversight to ensure that it is fully embraced by all leaders in the organization. It must be non-negotiable. The result of a strong EWpS is a spectrum of solutions that connects evolving business needs with clarity on the investment in the spaces created for people to be their best and do their best work. An EWpS can help shift an organization’s decision-making process so that it is no longer siloed. It shifts from solutions-focused to outcome-focused, and ultimately drives all workplace design decisions.

Each organization has a unique set of business imperatives and priorities for success. The EWpS provides a platform for intentionally connecting with the organization’s purpose and strategic objectives. Working inside organizations across industries, we ask leadership to define which initiatives they are targeting and we’ve developed a set of universal Business Imperatives. These include Well-Being, Inclusion, Empowerment, Employee Experience, Right Talent, Innovation, Synergy, Agility, Exponential Technology, and Purpose. An EWpS and further defining of their Business Imperatives is the framework that ultimately drives all design decisions and is the foundation for the other movement you will see in 2019, which is Responsible Design.

Bridge to Responsible Design

Design is a powerful vehicle and catalyst for change. As designers we are responsible for impacting the lives of tens of thousands of people daily. We have an extreme responsibility to create environments that are a strategic business tool. The design must authentically reflect a firm’s purpose, enrich the employee experience, promote creativity and cross-functional collaboration, and enable future growth to affect positive organizational change.