Our world of work is agile.  How many people move around in a day?  Everyone moves; even if just to go to get coffee, or lunch, or other.  Some of us are in the office 50% or less.  The 8 to 5 day in corporate America is so far gone that the memory has nearly faded.  And the 20-somethings are looking around and questioning the value of work that is tied down in any way.  The value of the desk, the office, the conference room, is over shadowed by the desire to move, connect and produce results in agile ways.

How does space, or more accurately “Workplace” support agile work today?  Most space does not support work, and the proof is the millions of square feet our society builds, maintains and fills with the infamous workstations every year that, essentially, lie useless and empty.  Why?

What is the answer to this problem?  The solution seems complicated, but really it may be quite simple.  Management change!

Leaders are leading.  Associates are associating.  And managers are managing.  Sounds simple, but each motivation is quite different.  

Developing the business metrics to satisfy the C-Suite/ Leaders is straight forward.  Ask a leader:  “Would you like to build less square footage next year, and have happier, more productive associates?”  The motivation of leaders is to choose courses of action that deliver great results to drive business.  Investing less in the perceived “sunk cost” of space and in turn getting more out of people is in essence a no-brainer.

Telling associates that you trust them to work anywhere to deliver results, to stay connect in ways they are probably already used to, to creatively balance their personal life needs with work needs, and come into the office to share knowledge, information and culture, can be like telling them to move to the beach to work.  Collecting the data, developing the vision and telling the story of the associate benefits is also readably obtainable and convincing. 

But managers manage.  Agile work behaviors can make their job harder if a manager is motivated by seeing the work directly.  Telling a manager that their people will now work according to their needs for flexibility contradicts with the motivation of directly managing work progress.  If a manager cannot see the worker, how do they KNOW work is getting done?  Agile workplaces affect managers differently because they require behavioral change.

Management strategy is different for agile work.  The motivational values of the managers need to be addressed in a more robust way in order to achieve the fullest benefit from our already agile work force.  The question remains, “What consideration for space do we need to make for managers?”  Here are a few simple tips to increase a consciousness of the manager’s behavioral change toward space:

Space not-as status:  Managers are motivated and rewarded to create success for their company.  They value recognition for accomplishment.  Move your management reward programs away from space as a mark of status.  Find other measures instead of the corner office.

Team space:  Managers are comforted by knowing their team is at work.  They feel most like they are managing when they see the papers flying and smell the sweat.  Provide your managers with team space designed to build the type of team culture that creates relationship, the sharing of experience, and knowledge.  Managers know that having highly efficient and effective teams is the recipe for results.  Concentrate the design of space in the experience of the TEAM.

Privacy corners:  Human emotion; managers have to deal with it.  Each manager of the team has to interact with their associates in emotional contexts.  Human nature is to deal with these sorts of interactions with a high degree of privacy.  Provide comfortable, private corners in the workplace, and tell mangers these are for them to manage emotional situations.

Open work:  Managers try hard to open all types of communication within their teams, and with other managers.  This is hard work to accomplish.  Yet, managers resist open space with worry of noise and distraction.  Empower managers to reinforce positive collaborative behaviors, while discouraging negative distracting behaviors.  Only the manager has the power to create the correct team balance of open work in an open environment.

Not 1-to-1/ butt-to-seat:  Managers often create value based on team size.  There can be pride in how many associates they are responsible for.  Maintain that pride, but disconnect team size from chair count.  Instead, give the manager the right amount of seats for the associate count that is clearly agile.  Heads down work for 40+ hours a week indeed requires personal, dedicated work space.  For the rest, give them community setting ready for all types of work, and encourage managers to be creative with the space.  Work can then be redefined as “our” space instead of a series of underutilized “my” spaces.

Agile work challenges the managers more than leaders and associates.  Agile work requires managers to substantially shift their motivations toward the value of work place.  Agile work need not conflict with their values for results, personal success, status and site centered management principle.  The design of work settings for agile work will challenge the base motivations of many managers.  Without manager’s engagement an agile workplace strategy can quickly become misaligned with the preferred behaviors managing successful work, creating a loss of value from the workplace design.

Take the time needed to create value in agile work with your managers.

Tags: Change, Leadership, Strategy
Posted in Agility, Design, People, Workplace