Month: June 2013

On Thursday I found myself sitting in LiquidSpace at least that's who I booked through. LiquidSpace is a clearing house for workspace hirable for the hour, half day, day or longer. It's 'built to help you find a better space to meet or work from a marketplace of thousands of workspaces and meeting rooms'. It's a kind of dating service for workspace. Organizations that have available space to rent post it and people who are looking for space then register to rent it.

More info told me that I could 'Book on the go or plan ahead to work for an hour or for a day. Browse, reserve, and check in to hip co-working venues, high-end business centers, handy hotel lobbies or libraries. Find the right workspace wherever you are, whenever you need it'

I am in the category of planning ahead. I looked on Monday and booked for Thursday. Running down the availability of liquid space in my city (Washington DC) I opted for what looked like a 'hip co-working venue'. I have had my fill this year of 'handy hotel lobbies'. Canvas.Co/work (as they designate themselves) is 'A Washington, DC co-working community; designed for creatives, freelancers, independents and start-ups to be an inspiring environment in which to work and collaborate. Boasting 6,000 square feet of open-space, completely custom designed, from floor to ceiling. We believe that creativity comes from inspiration and that inspiration starts with your surroundings; you won't find any carpets, water-coolers or Ikea here.' So what's not inspirational about carpets I wonder? Could I run a workshop on water coolers as creativity inhibitors?

Why am I doing this? Well the first because during the week I listened to a webinar by Dave Lathrop of Steelcase's Workplace Future Research Group asking the question 'Why bother with buildings anyway?' It is a discussion well worth listening to if you're interested in the office of the future and has, as advertised, 'a refreshing new perspective and a few truly provocative ideas'. Two questions he posed grabbed my attention: 'What if we used workplace as a tool of the social networks that are at the core of how knowledge and creative work really happen?' And 'What if we paid serious attention to observing, discovering, and inventing workspaces with people, that mattered to people … wherever work happens.' He makes a good argument for place and technology that in combination act as a social tool.

Second because I am in the process of setting up a mobility experiment with 15 people who currently have assigned seating and are moving towards mobile working. So I was testing out one of the workplace options that I haven't yet tried myself. I've tried a lot – train, plane, airport, rail station, hotel lobby, home, cafe, street seating, car, Megabus, a canal narrow boat. Through trial and error I've found that the best place to make/take a phone call when I'm on the move is in any bank lobby (where the ATMs are). Bank lobbies are quiet – no blaring cafe music, somewhat insulated from traffic noise and, another plus, often devoid of people.

Third because when I'm not traveling and/or working at client locations, I'm a sole worker working from home. It gets lonely. I miss the day to day interaction and community/social aspects of work. The stuff that Chris Rodgers says in his excellent white paper 'Taking organizational complexity seriously' creates the continuously (re)emerging , organisation, 'in a never-ending, self-organising process of conversational interaction.'

A co-working environment seems to be social, community and work – unlike a coffee shop where people do work but it is not considered a 'workplace', or 'organization'. Co-working seems to create its own form of organization. Maybe that's a fine distinction but anyway …

I cycled down there not quite knowing what to expect. The first surprise was the signage – the options in the lobby did not mention Canvas.co/work so I had to choose the most likely one. I chose nclud which was on the signage with the subtitle 'creative web design agency'. That was a good choice as it turned out to be Canvas.co/work. The design agency has moved but the signage hasn't kept pace. The second surprise was being greeted by a dog. It turned out there were two or three roaming around the space. Then the human greeter, Kallie arrived and showed me around.

The third was age/gender. My bike helmet and backpack somewhat compensated for the fact that I was female and about 30 years older than every other person (95% males) in the space – those two accessories, helmet and backpack,helped me vaguely look the part but I missed a social inclusion point in not knowing that I could bring my bike in and hang it on a wall peg like everyone else did. Maybe next time.

The fourth surprise was the wonderful full-sized espresso machine– but I haven't taken my barista classes yet and felt clueless about operating it. I also had to get used to the idea that I would spend the day largely surrounded by young men so in order to get to grips with this reality I went off to get a coffee from the local espresso cafe. I guess I could have asked one of the men to show me how to operate the espresso machine but that seemed a bridge too far! It was tempting to stay in the coffee shop to work as it was all so familiar and also gender/age balanced, but I'd paid to be in the 'hip co-working venue' so I went back.

The fifth, actually not too much of a surprise, was that it was a great day that I enjoyed a lot. I had a lovely window view at my bar stool and table. I briefly shared the table with Andrew who is working on a crowd funding event website/company development – a form of Kickstarter. From him I discovered that you can get various types of membership to Canvas.co/work, bypassing LiquidSpace altogether. I got a my planned quota of work done though it was tempting to try out the table tennis instead of working (but no partner and I don't think I could shout and groan the way the players did). I wasn't so attracted to the slot machine type of game but it got brisk business. Kallie was just the right type of floor manager, attentive, friendly but not intrusive.

I enjoyed listening in to the lunchtime seminar on home-brewing – there were no samples I noted. But that was addressed in the happy hour meet-up around the espresso machine where beer was the order of the evening not coffee and people chatted to each other. (Or were they collaborating?)

Would I work there again? Yes. It was fun, I got a new experience, and I agree it has the various benefits outlined in the HBR blog has a piece on co-working spaces

Give co-working space a go and let me know what you think.

Would you be willing to nudge a co-worker towards wellness by saying something like: 'Let's take the stairs instead of the elevators'? In our action learning set last week the topic was developing a healthy workforce. The plan was to discuss how designers of workplace could be encouraging and enabling movement and active-work to enhance health and productivity by providing space for walking meetings, asking questions about standing vs. sitting at desks, and considering healthier modes of getting to work. We were asked to ponder three questions prompted from the pre-read material. (This is listed at the end of this blog).

1. How much is it 'ok' for employers to 'nudge' their employees to better health? E.g. via walks to printers, etc.
2. Is employee health a US preoccupation tied to healthcare costs or is it really about business performance?
3. How can workplace contribute to workplace health in the absence of a 'wellness program'?

As we assembled, one snag immediately hit. Only two out of eight or so attendees had read the pre-read (and they were the discussion leads). In my experience this is common. In most situations, people do not read the pre-reads.

This lack of pre-read participation made me wonder whether it was due to lack of time/will/interest or something else. We constantly read about the torrent of information that we are expected to deal with every day in our organizational life. Surely this is detrimental to health and wellness? And a number of articles and books suggest this is so.

In Fast Company, where this month is the month for telling people how to do an 'internet detox' there is a figure that people receive 112 emails daily on average to respond to (not junk ones) and that is on a rise towards 125. So I was pleased to see a piece in Information Week on 10 tools to beat email overload.

As I was musing on the mental toll of information overload the discussion was rapidly getting going on the topic of do architects and designers understand the importance of the environment in the performance of workers or, in the case of hospitals, the recovery time of patients. Someone suggested that environmental design compromises are made for the sake of something that is architecturally 'cool'. And the responses to this was agreement but also a note that designing workplace for health and wellness required a good question set for asking clients about their attitudes and philosophies around workplace wellness and how/whether they would like nudges towards this designed into their workplace.

As we don't have a good question set we came to a view that we could be 'rapid prototyping' around our own workplace design in order to develop one. For example, could we introduce a 15 daily walk around the parking lot that would encourage walking, social interaction, and a renewal time, and see if a walking track could be a design feature.

Related to the idea of renewal someone mentioned that he was doing a piece of work in an office in Taiwan and that at 1:00 p.m. every workday a bell rang and people lay down on the floor under their desks for a one hour nap. The idea of 'power naps' being beneficial to has been around for a while and the space for these is typically not designed into workspace.

Moving on from this topic another person mentioned that she was now wearing an Up Band that she could set to vibrate to remind her to get up from her desk to take a break. She sometimes over-rides the vibration reminder by remaining working but was saying that if she had a co-worker with a similar device they could reinforce each other's healthy behavior, and she would welcome that – others were a little more circumspect in supporting the idea that workers should nudge each other into wellness behaviors. (See Lionel Shriver's new novel 'Big Brother' on tackling a family member's obesity).

This led the discussion back towards methods of unobtrusively nudging people towards health and wellness through the way the workplace is designed, the way the space is then used, and how cultural norms can be developed alongside this. Someone mentioned Healthways in Tennessee that has alternate Fridays afternoons as 'sports afternoon' led by the CEO. This was another idea that people wondered if they could try out. (As we were talking the intercom announced the ice-cream social!)

Shortly after the discussion I happened to read about Cody an app aimed at 'casual fitness enthusiasts by emphasizing sharing rather than tracking … On Cody, users can add photos, videos, tag their location and leave status updates -— actions aimed at making it easy to share the story of their daily fitness routines, rather than the metrics.' This could be the type of thing for co-workers to jointly use with associated development of workplace design to support it.

The conversation switched then towards office furniture and how much influence workplace designers could have on wellness by guiding furniture choices. People felt that workplace designers working much more closely than they do with furniture providers – to develop an integrated design/furniture workplace wellness approach – would be worthwhile. This led back to the rapid prototyping conversation with the suggestion that we start tinkering with our own furniture, for example, raising our desks to become standing desks, changing the ratio of hard and soft seating, and the configuration of the furniture. This with the intent of testing the idea that clients and their designers should be much more deliberate in their relating health and wellness outcomes to integrated workplace design. We agreed that conscious decisions around this matter, but again are not typically designed in to achieve specific health/wellness or other outcomes like purchase decisions.

What we realized is that wellness programs are often operated independently of workplace design opportunities. For example, Iowa State University is currently doing some research on wellness programs but workplace design as a support to wellness does not appear to be part of the research scope. Google – a strong advocate of workplace wellness nods towards the importance of workplace design in a wellness strategy but it is not explicitly called out.

One person made the point that a LEED certified shell building lost opportunities for added-value benefit if the environmental, psychosocial, and health/wellness approaches of the interior design were not consciously developed. (I don't think there's an equivalent to LEED certification for workplace design that is conscious about the environmental, psychosocial, and health/wellness aspects of a workplace. Let me know if I'm wrong on this).

By the end of the hour we had seven actions. Now we just have to take them:
1. Rapid prototyping of different soft seating layouts to determine usage and appropriate configurations for this office's needs
2. Experimenting with standing desks (converting sitting to standing) and tracking user responses
3. Trying out some wellness activity that could be designed in – for example a walking track around the parking lot
4. Developing closer links between client/furniture supplier/workplace designer to get a more integrated approach to workplace wellness
5. Increasing designer/architect skills and knowledge related to the environmental, wellness and pyscho/social aspects of workplace.
6. Developing and testing a diagnostic tool that would assess clients' interest in using workplace design as a conscious nudger of worker wellness.
7. Trying out various tracking/social media devices to encourage a culture of wellness

If you have thoughts on any of these let me know. Chapter Seven of my book Organizational Health:an integrated approach to building optimum performance is on the connection between workplace design and wellness.

Pre-reads

• The impact of psychological needs on office design by Nigel Oseland
• Psychosocially Supportive Design: A Salutogenic Approach to the Design of the Physical Environment by Alan Dilani (I've written about salutogenic design in a previous blog)
• A good infographic 'Sitting is Killing You'
• Ergonomics 102: Creating a Healthy Workstation

Last week I got an intriguing invitation that runs as follows:

'I am working on several fronts right now, putting together the most ambitious, audacious conference ever in the State of West Virginia, Create West Virginia's Conference on the Future. … to take place Thursday, October 24 through Saturday, October 26 2013.

I am asking … thinkers on the future to come to Richwood, West Virginia, a town surrounded by the magnificent Monongahela National Forest, that has a trout stream flowing through it. Richwood's Main Street consists now of 29 mostly boarded-up storefronts of early 1900 vintage. Once a lumber and coal boom town, its residents now drive 25 miles west to Summersville where the big box stores are located on a four-lane corridor that connects two Interstate highways. Richwood appears to be a ghost town, but its 2,000 residents, led by a creative, spunky mayor, believe that it can recreate itself.

We're casting the invitation to the conference very broadly, to economic and community developers, artists and artisans, business people and would-be business people – we're interested in engaging innovators who relish the challenge of reinventing a place, and who want to engage in dialogue with thoughtful people such as yourself.'

Who could resist investigating this further? I took a look at the Richwood city data. It's lost 17.2% of its population since 2000. The median resident age is 49 and the median income is $26,366. In 2012 the unemployment rate was 8.7% and the number of residents living below the poverty level (2009) was 30%, and there were 12 % of Residents with income below 50% of the poverty level in 2009.

The city of Richwood is not alone in these types of statistics. A recent Economist article discusses a very similar sounding town – Greenville, in what's known as the Delta region of Mississippi. Just like Richwood 'Between 2000 and 2010 alone, Greenville lost 17% of its residents. In the poor black neighbourhoods that surround the centre of town, many of the decrepit "shotgun" houses are abandoned, their boarded-up windows and doors almost totally obscured by untended vines. The town centre itself is nearly as run-down, with more vacant shopfronts than occupied ones.'

Then a county rather than a town is described. Issaquena County, also in the Delta region, has a total population today of 1,386. 'Their average income is just over $10,000, half the level for Mississippi as a whole, and 40% of the population lives below the poverty line. The unemployment rate is 17%, more than twice the national rate. The entire county has ten private businesses (other than farms), employing just 99 people. Like the region as a whole, it suffers from low rates of education and high rates of obesity and diabetes.' In parts of this region 'people have a lower life expectancy than in Tanzania; other areas do not yet have proper sanitation.' Yet as in Richwood, 'Local officials talk optimistically of reviving the Delta's economy.'

So as I look at these statistics I'm wondering what it would take beyond ambition, audacity, and optimism to pull off the feat of regeneration in these regions? I'm wondering whether to turn down the invitation to speak because I'm baffled about what I would talk about that could begin to address the personal and collective difficulties of these residents and the regions where they live in something approaching a useful way.

I look back over my life and think of experiences that I could draw on. I have had periods on a very low income. There was a brief time when I was homeless in very difficult circumstances. I have lost jobs in the course of my career and been unemployed but none of these for months or years at a time. Last January I did try – only for one week – living on the $31.50 food allowance granted to US unemployed people. The SNAP program as it is known.

But I have friends who are long-term in these types of situations. The jobless Spanish grandson of a relative is 21 – he lives in a region where youth unemployment is 56% (or 22% according to another source, but either way extremely high). He has almost no chance of finding work. Another friend has been actively looking for a job for the 8 years I have known her. A third is bringing up her 3 children with no child support on the income she makes from cleaning people's houses. She (and her children) have no medical insurance, and no savings to draw on if an emergency arises.

Then someone showed me a piece about Jack Monroe, 24, a single mother who has a budget of 10 GBP a week to feed herself and her two-year-old son, Johnny – all she has to spare after covering rent and bills. She writes a blog on how she manages with 'delicious recipes, published online, [that]are so nutritious and thrifty that they are being handed out by food banks as examples of how to manage on next to nothing.' Following in the steps of J K Rowling she has been offered a book contract and become a public figure. I then remembered the story of the Malawian windmill boy who brought electricity to his community, and through this found fame and fortune, and then the 17 year old whose app was just bought by Yahoo for $30m. (Although he was not in dire circumstances).

But do publicly acclaimed lucky breaks like these three make for good examples for people? What would the residents of Richwood think if I talked about these people. Is it reasonable to suggest that 'if they can do it so can you'? (A different question will the residents come to the conference or is it addressed at potential investors?)

So I'm mulling all this over. From my professional perspective there are massive design challenges – essentially one of redesigning a whole community infrastructure in a very difficult context: one that many communities local and national worldwide are grappling with – see the recent Economist articles on Spain and South Africa.

Beyond the design challenges of the infrastructure there are the challenges of engaging the community in bringing about the regeneration, perhaps involving helping them build skills and confidence, developing trust in each other, and believing that things can be different and better. I contacted a friend at Renew Strategies a company that works predominantly in Africa to ' find promising businesses, connect them to investors around the world and grow them into world-class companies' and asked him whether he invests in US communities. He tells me he is thinking about it. I was cheered by the Winston Churchill quote on his website 'A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.'

None of the things I've found out since the invitation came to my inbox last week have pointed me to a direction that I think might make a meaningful talk. I'm still working on that, but I have come to the conclusion that I should have a go at it. Being able to make even a tiny contribution to a design opportunity on a different scale and from a different perspective from ones that I'm familiar with is a lure, albeit a scary one.

Have you taken organization design skills from business enterprises to social communities? What have you learned? Let me know?

Disruptive Technologies: advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy, a report from the McKinsey Global Institute came out in May 2013. It's long, but fascinating. There's an executive summary if you can't find time for 170 or so pages.

Researchers considered over a hundred different technologies and came to the conclusion that, of these, twelve were likely to radically – perhaps completely – change organizational and working life. (The report has a lot of data to back up the points they make and a good reference list). However, rather than be dogmatic about their assertions they add the sensible reminder that 'By definition such an exercise is incomplete – technology and innovations always surprise'. They say that the technologies they reflect on 'are illustrative of emerging applications over the next decade or two and provide a good indication of the size and shape of the impact that these applications could have.'

The report should be read by every organizational design and development practitioner, not to mention business leaders and managers, for three reasons that I discuss below:

To develop or deepen insight into what is on the technology horizon

To assess the likely impact of the technologies on their organization.

To take planned action to develop their organizational capability to use the technologies effectively before it's too late

Keeping up with technology trends and planning/acting in relation to them should, in fact, be a continuous activity for OD & D practitioners but in my experience they do far too little of it. (See my blog piece on Business Savvy).

• To develop or deepen insight into what is on the technology horizon
• To assess the likely impact of the technologies on their organization.
• To take planned action to develop their organizational capability to use the technologies effectively before it's too late

Keeping up with technology trends and planning/acting in relation to them should, in fact, be a continuous activity for OD & D practitioners but in my experience they do far too little of it. (See my piece on Business Savvy)

What is on the technology horizon?
The twelve technologies that the Institute researchers think will have the most impact are:

Mobile Internet: Increasingly inexpensive and capable mobile computing devices and internet connectivity.
Automation of knowledge work: Intelligent software systems that perform knowledge work tasks involving unstructured commands and subtle judgments.
Internet of Things: Networks of low-cost sensors and actuators for data collection, monitoring, decision making and process optimization.
Cloud Technology: Use of computer hardware and software resources delivered over a network or the Internet, often as a service.
Advanced Robotics: Increasingly capable robots with enhanced senses, dexterity, and intelligence used to automate tasks or augment humans.
Autonomous and Near-Autonomous Vehicles: Vehicles that can navigate and operate with reduced or no human intervention.
Next Generation Genomics: Fast, low-cost gene sequencing, advanced big-data analytics, and synthetic biology. ('Writing DNA')
Energy Storage: Devices or systems that store energy for later use, including batteries
3D Printing: Additive manufacturing techniques to create objects by printing layers of material based on digital models.
Advanced Materials: Materials designed to have superior characteristics (e.g. strength, weight conductivity) or functionality.
Advanced Oil and Natural Gas Recovery: Exploration and recovery techniques that make extraction of unconventional oil and gas economical.
Renewable Energy: Generation of electricity from renewable sources with reduced harmful climate impact.

One of the significant impacts of the technologies is that the nature of work will change and 'millions of people will require new skills'. (See a good NY Times article for a discussion on this.)

Viewing work as one of four types helps clarify where the technology applications are having an impact. Most jobs have a mixture of the types and so in many jobs aspects of it are being replaced by technology whilst other aspects, for the moment, are staying the same. The four types of work are:

• routine and repetitive work – for example on an assembly line
• in person (face to face ) work – for example a doctor or a receptionist
• knowledge and data work – for example a software code writer or an academic researcher
• artisan work – for example a sculptor making piece

But think how things have been changing in the last few years in each of these categories. Take routine and repetitive work: many industries are introducing robots. Taiwan's Foxconn Group is one company that between now and 2015 plans to introduce (even) more robots into its workforce: one million of them by 2015, up from 100,000 in 2010 and 300,000 in 2011. Here's the advanced robotics disruptive technology at play.

How many hotel receptionists, traditionally in person work, have been replaced by self-service check in? The UK's Premier Inn, for example, has replaced its reception counter with self-service check in almost throughout the chain. This is an example of the internet of things coming into daily life.

The world of knowledge work is leading to many new and different jobs being created. Apps developers, for example did not exist a few years ago. Now oganizations routinely employ them (and their skills are in relatively short supply at this point). They use cloud technology – another of the items on the disruptive technology list.

3D printing is changing the face of artisan work. For example, fashion designers can produce one-off pairs of shoes, dresses, and accessories using the techniques. 3D printing is on the list the McKinsey report discusses.

In all four types of work the impact of technology applications is driving massive organizationally design and development challenge and opportunity.

What is the likely impact of the technologies on your organization?
Think about your own organization. If you have been with it more than two years what evidence have you already seen that the technologies are making a difference to the way work is done? How many of the twelve disruptive technologies are present in some form in one or more of the types of work your organization has?

Although details of the future of work are unclear it will without any doubt be very different from what it is now. Here's one example. Right now automobile manufacturers are testing driverless cars (the autonomous vehicles listed as one of the twelve disruptive technologies) with the prediction that they will be on public roads within 10 years. Now start to think through the implications driverless cars would have on your organization. If you employ drivers you may not need to do that. If you offer parking space you may not need as much (driverless cars are better at parking than humans!). If you operate on several sites you may save money by ferrying more people between sites in driverless cars, and so on.

The writer of an Economist article talking about the impact of driverless cars on work adds to the list above noting that among other things:

• That electronics and software firms will enjoy strong demand for in-car entertainment systems, since cars' occupants will no longer need to keep their eyes on the road.
• Bus companies might run convoys of self-piloting coaches down the motorways, providing competition for intercity railways.
• Taxi, lorry drivers and all others whose job is to steer a vehicle will have to find other work.
• Driverless cars will be programmed to obey the law, which means no traffic cops or parking wardens
• Driverless cars will not need driver insurance-—so goodbye to motor insurers and brokers.
• Autonomous vehicles will mean few accidents and so much less work for emergency rooms and orthopedic wards.
• Roads will need fewer signs, signals, guard rails and other features designed for the human driver; their makers will lose business too.

Clearly, a driverless car scenario is only one among many that would have an impact on the jobs people currently do, the jobs that emerge to support the driverless car industry, people's work patterns, social interactions, and organizational policies and processes. Notice too that driverless cars would impact not just work associated with vehicles and travel but work in many other spheres. So a technology that might seem unconnected to an organization might, in fact, have a profound effect on it.

How can you develop your organization's capability to use the technologies effectively?
The role of organization design and development practitioners is to encourage organizational members to look ahead and see what is coming on the horizon. Often the business people are too focused on the day to day matters to think carefully and in good time to make necessary design and development changes to stay competitive:

"When necessary, leaders must be prepared to disrupt their own businesses and make the investments to effect change," the McKinsey Global Institute's report's authors write. "By the time the technologies that we describe are exerting their influence on the economy in 2025, it will be too late for businesses, policy makers, and citizens to plan their responses. Nobody, especially businesses leaders, can afford to be the last person using video cassettes in a DVD world."

An article from Accenture, Six Ways to Make Volatility your Friend suggests four organziational capabilities to design in and develop to manage the world exemplified by disruptive technologies. It's difficult to argue with their four: anticipating, sensing, responding, and adapting. The article expands on these and offers a 12-point checklist which is a good discussion starter.

How is your organization meeting the challenge/opportunity of disruptive technologies? Let me know.

The room I was working in for four days last week had two notices that caused merriment to the organization design groups I was working with. One notice pinned to the smartboard said 'Do not write on this board', and the other said 'no hot drinks to be brought into the room'. There were a number of other notices in the public areas of the office all peremptory in tone, mostly beginning 'no .. ' or 'do not …" . The no hot drinks one led to discussion, speculation and conspiracy – we all wanted to bring coffee into the room. Why were cold drinks ok and not hot? Would a hot drink allowed to stand and go cold still count as a hot drink? Were people checking the waste bins to see if there were hot drink cups in it? What was the penalty for breaking the 'rule'? Why was it instituted in the first place? Would people whistle-blow if a colleague brought a hot drink into the room? Etc. (The no writing on the smartboard was fine because we didn't need a board to write on, although it was still a perplexing notice).

The time spent on the no hot drinks notice may seem like a distraction from the task in hand but it served as a powerful symbol of the type of organizational cultural stuff that grows up and no-one knows why, or how to make sense of it. Just in this small illustration people could see the range of questions and then ingenious work-arounds that people came up with in order to do something they wanted to do and couldn't see the rationale for not doing.

This is the type of thing that isn't typically tackled in organization design projects but it should be. The idea of tackling the informal with the formal is essential – which is why it was good to see a new model illustrating this in an article Organizing for Advantage that came out a couple of weeks ago. The authors discuss 'How to design a mix of formal and informal factors to advance your company's strategy.' This came as a heady relief to the organization designers I was working with who were totally frustrated by being handed an organization chart by managers and told to 'make it like this'.

I experienced a different type of informal organization design challenge earlier in the week working with a multi-national team. It's always annoying to me when stereotypical national characteristics seem to emerge because I think stereotyping misses the richness of individuals and of a culture, but they clearly emanate from something – why is the 'typical' English person so much the character ably described by Bill Bryson in Notes from a Small Island?

A recent HBR article How Culture Shapes the Office drawn from Steelcase research using Hofstede's cultural dimensions seems to suggest (again) that there are national differences in the way people view the world. As a sidenote my book Corporate Culture: Getting it Right has a chapter on whether culture can be measured by tools such as the Hofstede one. I am not convinced that they can be more than a general indicator. However, putting that view slightly to one side it seemed that in the team I was working with their differences lay not only in the national lenses but also in the professional/expert lenses through which team members were – a little one-dimensionally – viewing the new organization design i.e. as the organization chart.

Tasked with a target of simultaneously maintaining, streamlining and expanding services (a phrase I came across in a Soundcloud job advert but which admirably describes the current challenges of most organization design work) the team was finding it hard going – which was how I got involved in helping them find a way forward. So our first task was to draw back from assumptions and preconceptions, and establish some common ground around the principles of achieving the target. The second task was to move thinking away from the organization chart (which, as I said, they equated the design) towards a more wide ranging thought that an organization design is the outcome of complex interactions between a range of formal (explicit) and informal (implicit) elements. This time we worked with the Nadler and Tushman congruence model (newer version) (also see my tool of the month June 2013).

By the end of the day we had established some principles for proceeding which they all (6 different nationalities and professions) appeared willing to adopt and make decisions against. It was lovely to hear the team leader express surprise that what had previously seemed impossibly difficult and riddled with conflict – perhaps because the task was being pursued from a structure/headcount/quantitative approach – now seemed do-able in an amicable way – because this time around the task was approached from a qualitative, cultural informal angle.

So my week's work served to reinforce my notion that organization design must integrate the formal and informal aspects of organizational life – a thought that I pick up in more detail in my forthcoming book – Organization Design: Engaging with Change, coming out towards the end of this year.

What's your view of the need to integrate the formal and informal components of organization into a design project? Let me know.