Director Andrew Stanton during a “Finding Dory” story review on May 7, 2014 at Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, California. Photo by Deborah Coleman / Pixar.
It seems implausible, but your conference room table—and those your firm has very likely designed for clients—could very well be bad for business. Especially, if the business in question is creativity-driven, which design firms are by definition, and which most knowledge-based organizations today are as well.
Now, don’t confuse my admonition with the general nature of meetings. I am not referring to the problems commonly associated with unsuccessful or unproductive meetings, such as their excessive length, frequency, or lack of focus. I am speaking specifically of the negative impact that one particular type of conference room table can have on the work product of those compelled to sit at them in group situations.
So what is it about this piece of furniture that bodes so ill for workplace productivity? I can best answer the question by sharing a story told by Ed Catmull, head of Pixar Animation Studios and famed computer animator, in his book Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration:
“For thirteen years we had a table in the large conference room at Pixar. Though it was beautiful, I grew to hate this table. It was long and skinny, like one of those things you’d see in a comedy sketch about an old wealthy couple that sits down for dinner—one person at either end, a candelabra in the middle—and has to shout to make conversation. The table had been chosen by a designer Steve Jobs liked, and it was elegant, all right—but it impeded our work. There you have it: beautiful, long, and skinny. In other words, a rectangular table.”
To the design professional, Catmull’s ire might seem initially a bit overwrought, and at odds with certain facts of life. For one thing, very few business confabs involve two people sitting at polar ends of a conference room, let alone with a candelabra in their midst. For another, a cursory survey of major players in the office furnishings industry—Herman Miller, Steelcase, Knoll, Vitra—as well as most custom design shops, shows that rectangular tables are by far and away the predominant product offering. A Google image search for conference room tables confirms the skew, with over 95 percent of the photographs containing pieces that are either pure rectangles, ellipses, or elongated forms with rounded sides or ends. Is Mr. Catmull telling us that the entire design industry has it terribly wrong.