Here’s why you should embrace the disruption, noise and democracy of an office-less office.
1. Our office has no offices. There are nearly 70 people who work here every day–fifty full-time and twenty-ish part-time–and none of them spends time in an office. In fact, nobody even has a wall!
Technically, we’re not even seated at desks. Instead, we purchased 80 plain flat tables from Ikea. These tables are arranged in quads…without any partitions or walls. We do spend $300 per quarter on white orchids–one per quad.
Is it noisy? No. There is a white noise sound of people typing, chatting, writing, tapping feet. Once a week, Toto’s Africa fills the air. Ask yourself, is the total silence of your boss’s big corner office inspiring him to get more stuff done?
Isn’t it distracting? No. Seeing your-co-workers thinking/doing is pretty darn inspirational. Ask yourself, is your cubile wall filled with photos of your vacation helping you crank out that memo or lulling you into dreamland?
2. We change seats every 6 months. And, we have no idea where we’ll be/who we’ll be next to.
Every 6 months, we throw all our names into a hat (literally) and draw at random. My name is in there just like everyone else’s. Every seat is fair game. We call it “The Reaping.” (Apologies to The Hunger Games.)
The first time we did it, I sat across from a biz dev guy and behind someone from our campaigns team. Now I’m across from a mobile developer and behind our finance manager.
Doesn’t this disrupt teams? Yes. And it’s wonderful. People make new friendships and cliques simply don’t exist.
Don’t your top people want the best window seats? Actually, no. And that goes for the best chairs too. Because our office isn’t a place for pretty views and comfy chairs; its a workplace. We’re here to get shit done.
3. Our conference rooms are owned by all of us. No room belongs to any one team or individual for exclusive reservation. In fact, the entire team voted on what to name them. (I voted for Star Wars planets, but super hero lairs won out.)
Don’t people hog the conference rooms for private calls? Nope. We care about each other, so nobody hogs anything and the rooms are kept pretty clean and available. Plus, we set up two phone booths for one-x-one calls.
4. Our lobby says something. The first thing a visitor sees is your lobby. If you fill it with random magazines, plants, and leather couches…I hope you sell random magazines, plants and leather couches. Otherwise, put YOU in your lobby.
5. Meaningful decor. We have a large gong. When you ship a product or launch a campaign, you get to bang the gong. That feels good, it alerts the team that something has gone live, and it hangs on the wall like a pre-plated dessert on the table in front of you. (Eat your beef and beans and you can have that cookie…errr, bang the gong.)
We have a disco ball. It is shiny. It spins. It makes us smile.
There are no posters of soaring eagles with some dead guy’s quote on it. No inspirational quotes written in fancy cursive. And no random art. Instead, the things on the wall are things we’ve done or plan to do–letters from customers, whiteboard plans, examples of comprable products, etc. One entire wall is made of cork, inviting people to post examples of “inspiration” and “perspiration.”
Bottomline: we didn’t hire a designer or spend a ton of money to make our environment like a fancy spa or museum. (Yes. There are some gorgeous offices out there!) Instead, we made it purposeful. Our space helped us (1) crush our 2012 projections by nearly 40% , and (2) have fun doing it. Both of those things matter. Equally.
Source:
http://gd1.gdnm.org/2013/03/19/where-i-work-smash-your-walls/