Finding an all-inclusive name for work has been a broad search in recent years.  We in workplace strategy have been seeking the right name to describe the evolving world of work we are living in today?   I turned to Google’s search engine to collect some data on today’s more common work names.

“Knowledge Work”:  1,880,000 results

Peter Drucker created the name knowledge work in 1959 to describe work based on using information to develop knowledge to gain results.  This name differentiated work that was primarily focused on products and goods.  The PBS study “The First Measured Century” stated that knowledge work (tertiary occupations) began at 21% of the male workforce (sorry females!) in 1900 and ended at 58% in 1998.  In 1900 20% of women held professional work.  In 1998 52% of women held professional work.

“Telework”:  1,660,000 results

According to Merriam Webster’s, an associated name to telework, “telecommute”, was first used in 1974.  In using the connector “tele”, the name pays tribute to the most commonly owned technology of the 1970’s – the television.  The television was a device designed to transmit vision over huge distances.  Telework, then, is work that happens over distance.  In 2010, the president signed The Telework Enhancement Act, which was intended to enable government workers to engage in more work at a distance, thus reducing costs.

“Smart Work”:  1,620,000 results

Smart work often is described as work to make ideas happen.  Scott Belsky writes in his “WorkSmart” blog in Fast Company that, “The greatest achievements happen in the overlap of three things: Your genuine interests, skills, and opportunities. To find success, work within your overlap.”

“Mobile Work”:  1,350,000 results

Mobile work has one core principle:  work results are not dependent on a single place.  The impact of mobile work on the workplace has been most dramatic in the past ten years.  Some estimates are currently quoting that there are 1 billion mobile workers in the world today.  We consistently see utilization measurements averaging as low as 35% in workplaces today.

“Alternative Work”:  668,000 results

Alternative work is most often used to describe protocols for work under variable schedules.  The U.S. Office of Personnel Management has published an on-line Handbook of Alternative Work Schedules.

“Distributed Work”:  477,000 results

In the 2002 book titled “Distributed Work” published by The MIT Press, the authors expanded the definition of telework to include the attributes of smart work.  The combination of diverse locations and a concentration on idea generation within distributed work is uniquely dependent of the use of technology. 

“Flexible Work”:  4,340,000 results

Of all the names for work, the name that leads them all is Flexible Work.  Such phrases as “work & life balance”, autonomy of choice, engagement & worker satisfaction, and overtime regulation are within the meaning of the name flexible work.  Of all the names given to the nature or work today, the name Flexible Work stirs that most change reaction.  A 2011 Fortune article states once again the challenges from the perceived losses of face time and visible long hours in the office resulting from Flexible Work. 

Workplace strategy has not condensed the nomenclature around a common name for work.  As companies of all types and sizes continue to develop their own uniquely branded names for the work that is actually occurring within their footprints, more names will surely be created.  There may be as many names for work as there are companies in the world. 

My opinion is that “Flexible work” is the best of the bunch, as it is the most encompassing of the basic migration of behaviors of work process.  And flexible OR agile space design is a good general term for workplaces that meet the evolving work processes and cultural needs of all companies at work.

I do not like “alternative work”, “tele-work”, “smart work”.  Each of these implies that there is an opposite version of work, which creates conflict.  It is a continuing debate with no clear end in sight.

“Discovering that there was an air purer than pure air required qualitative analytical skills – an improvisational style – that Priestly possessed in abundance.  But defining the chemical composition of that air took a different toolkit, both mental and technological.”

The irony of this story according to Johnson is that by 1779 Ben Franklin, a fellow Honest Whig member, would negotiate to purchase 800 tons of French gunpowder for the struggling Continental Army.  This gunpowder was made with saltpeter directly from Lavoisier’s Laboratory which capitalized on the process of oxidation.  Johnson quotes Joe Jackson on the Battle of Yorktown:  “British solders complained that they could not get close enough to shoot colonials before they themselves were blasted from the garters.”  As architects we can  illustrate the importance of wide ranging functional space that supports collaboration, but the cultural mindset to share ideas must be encouraged at an institutional level and through actual stories of discovery rather than the eureka myth.

You fear the internet might send your job to some far-away place.  You worry about the cost of filling your gas tank more than buying an international airline ticket.  You hear about the threats of terror somewhat regularly.  This constant connectivity can cause us to lose perspective and take a negative outlook about the state of the world in which we live.  Every now and then we have an experience that sharpens our perspective and reminds us of the great opportunities that exist in modern society. 

I recently read a fascinating book by Mandit Kumar:  Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality.  This is a book about the dawn of theoretical physics and the beginning of the atomic age.  It includes a twelve page timeline that starts in 1858 with the birth of Max Planck and ends in 2007 with the current puzzle of how pairs of non-local photons can behave predictably over long distances.  You might wonder what it could possibly have to do with politics, international collaboration and the building of relationships. 

The main plot of the story was not the part of the book that sharpened my perspective.  The fascinating sub-plot of the book that should be of interest to anybody trying to solve a problem that requires teamwork, was the story of the relationships between the dozen characters that led the focus of scientific discovery.  Nine pages of this twelve page saga occurred between 1900 and 1945.  If you take the time to plough through the subject matter you will realize that the incredible advances chronicled in this relatively short period of time would have not been possible to unlock by one person.  Even a person with the legendary intellect of Albert Einstein cannot succeed without the constant challenge and prodding of ideas from his peers.  As you begin to understand how long-standing relationships, respect and social engagement between this diverse group of scientists, you see the engine that propelled discovery and understand the necessity and the value of teamwork. 

Compare the collaboration tools, access to travel and the social and political state of the world between 1900 and 1945 to what we have today.  If you think we live in difficult times consider the following:

·         Forget the internet they wrote letters and had them delivered days or weeks later by steam ship

·         Commercial air travel was not available so if they met for a conference it took a real commitment of time.

·         These events took place during two world wars and the protagonists of the story were on different political and social sides of the conflicts.

With all the advantages we have today I suggest the next time you feel inclined to find an excuse about why you can’t collaborate with a colleague to solve a problem you might want to get a little perspective, role up your sleeves and get busy.  

In a world focused on action and results here are three questions that you might want to consider every day:

1.    If I hit a dead end when trying to solve a problem, what do I do?  Have you built a support network of trusted collaborators that can help you break-through?

2.    What keeps me from opening up to the insights of others?

3.    What risk did I take yesterday?  What risk will I take tomorrow?

Challenging Perceived Wisdom Report – A Brief Critique
Read it Here
Brady reacts to and places his opinion on a report that is currently being circulated on LinkedIn.

Workplace Community Session- The Next Wave of Work & Place
Read it Here
Brady presents his experience as facilitator of the November 7 Community break out session in Atlanta.

Why do flocking birds relate to work?
Read it Here
Brady offers his article relating the nature of flocking birds to the nature of people at work in the workplace

• The flame creates turbulence in the laminar flow of air minimizing product protection.
• Heat could melt HEPA filter bonding agents which destroys the filters effectiveness and loss of containment.
• If flame goes out gas will be distributed into the space possibly reaching explosive limits. ( use of an class II -A2 70% recirculation)

The BMBL states open flames are not required in the near microbe- free environment of a BSC and that touch plate micro burners could be used minimizing turbulence and heat buildup.

The CDC states if a flame is necessary there are products that are safer than the Bunsen burner. Attached is one of these and check out the video link on how it works.

In researching this I found that NUAIRE and Baker Company have issued similar warnings regarding the use of Gas in a BSC.

I’m seeing increasing evidence that skilled labor and the people who produce it are growing in value to business owners. So even in an economy with a nearly 10% unemployment rate, why are these key employees in short supply?  The answer is simple, it’s because our idea that the value of labor is rooted in an industrial revolution era concept of the assembly line.  We tend to view all labor as a mindless task reserved to those who don’t have the mental capacity to do something else.  In a six sigma, just-in-time manufacturing world, labor has become anything but a mindless task.  We are increasing the need for both thinking and doing.  I predict that this phenomenon will eventually change our mindset about higher education. To advance in the new economy, we’ll need intelligent workers who can make informed decisions in the manufacturing process and the employers who are willing to pay a premium to get workers that can both think and do.

In a July 2010 article in the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/02/business/economy/02manufacturing.html, there were some amazing facts that support this thesis. According to the author, manufacturers “are looking to hire people who can operate sophisticated computerized machinery, follow complex blueprints and demonstrate higher math proficiency than was previously required of the typical assembly line worker.” To make the point, the author used an example from Ben Venue Laboratories in Cleveland, Ohio. In a quest to fill100 positions, the company reviewed 3600 applications, and still, they were able to hire only 47 skilled workers for jobs paying $13 to $15 per hour. Ben Venue has resorted to recruiting from the ranks of office workers. In one case, there was a 32 year old army veteran who was laid-off from the filing room at a law firm. He spent four months learning how to operate a very sophisticated freeze dryer, known in the industry as a Lyophilizer. As evidence that he likes his new job better than the old one he offered, “I like jobs that are more hands-on, as opposed to watching paperwork all day.”

If that is not enough for you, then consider the fact the testimony given by Mike Rowe of The Discovery Chanel’s Dirty Jobs when he appeared before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on May 11, 2011 (more here – http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/dirtyjobs/mike-rowe-senate-testimony.html).

Mike Rowe's Testimony Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation

“In high schools, the vocational arts have all but vanished. We’ve elevated the importance of “higher education” to such a lofty perch that all other forms of knowledge are now labeled “alternative.” Millions of parents and kids see apprenticeships and on-the-job-training opportunities as “vocational consolation prizes,” best suited for those not cut out for a four-year degree. And still, we talk about millions of “shovel ready” jobs for a society that doesn’t encourage people to pick up a shovel.”

To be successful as a society we’re going to have to raise our expectations for the level of education and the type of training these workers need. We’d probably also do well to re-consider long-held social attitudes about factory work. To successfully design these workplaces, as architects we need to learn more about the nature of this work.

We have the voice of the economic buyer who commissions a building to add value to the bottom line of their business. They may not actually work within its confines, but they are likely to see the building as one of many pieces they are using to solve a larger puzzle. We have the voice of the user buyer who will work daily in the building. They have the expectation that it will be a comfortable, safe place to work and that it will help them be more effective at building their piece of the puzzle. Then we have the technical buyer whose job is to get the building done on time and budget while still meeting an ever increasing and sometimes conflicting minimum standard of code requirements. Lastly we have the public. While they aren’t a buyer per se they have the expectations, especially with issues related to biological containment, that our profession will exercise due diligence and safeguard them from hazards that may be produced in the building. With all of this noise it’s refreshing to hear a voice speaking a simple, clear concept that seems to cut across the needs of all groups. This is what I heard when Debra L. Hunt the Director of Biological Safety for Duke University said the following words: “Work Practices make all the difference… Technology advances but people stay the same”.

It was clear from Dr. Hunt’s remarks that Duke University struggled mightily to get the most building they could possibly get 0n a limited budget when they built their new Regional Biocontainment Laboratory. This is not new in today’s economic times, but when push came to shove they opted for “state-of-the-art” fail safe engineering control solutions. Its hard to argue with the choice, but remember given the principal of scarce resources every choice you make has consequences. In their case I’m sure this choice affected the amount and quality of space they could build. Dr. Hunt had historical data that showed nearly all laboratory-acquired infections at Duke and elsewhere are caused by poor work practices.

This led me to a place I’ve been many times before. As architects and engineers, we are not cape wearing super heroes. (Frank Lloyd Wright may be an exception). We can’t design buildings that protect people from all of the hazards of their jobs. The question we should be asking is: What can we do with the design of our buildings to encourage behaviors that will inherently lead to safe work practices? The combination of Dr. Hunt’s examples and my past experience in highly unique containment spaces gave me a list of five places to start. I wonder what others think:

1. Plan to make the gowning and access to Personnel Protective Equipment (PPE) as effective as possible – The act of gowning and de-gowning is a constant reality for these kinds of spaces. Unfortunately it is too often the last item considered. Please understand that every time a worker must enter a containment space they are committing a minimum of 15 minutes to dawn protective clothing and another 15 minutes to doff the material properly. Make two trips per day into containment and you’ve lost an hour of your day. Having this protective clothing properly in place is essential and when you take it off you must take extreme care not to expose yourself to particulate that may be on the clothing. Why isn’t it obvious that we must commit adequate space for this activity? More importantly we must carefully consider making proper hand washing and toilet facilities readily accessible to reinforce how important actions such as hand washing are in the prevention of exposure.

2. Encourage situational awareness – By their nature containment spaces can be a confusing maze. They can have very utilitarian finishes and look so similar that staff can easily become disoriented. I was recently in a space where by stenciling the room number on the clock; the only orienting device present in each room, the research staff was greatly able to improve their situational awareness. I couldn’t help but think what we could do if we employed our full arsenal of creative ideas on this topic. The use of color and/or graphics on various rooms could make a huge difference. The use of glazing in barrier walls can simultaneously improve orientation, operational efficiency, because you may not have to open a door to find a colleague and safety because we all behave differently when we can be observed.

3. Provide access to natural light – I’m not naïve enough to think that we’ll ever have windows in containment spaces, but the idea of knowing if the sun is shining without having to entirely leave the containment space seems far from impossible.

4. Think about how people will accomplish non-laboratory related tasks – In spite of the need to focus on this highly dangerous work; researchers are people too. They get emergency calls from home that a child is sick, they have to respond to e-mails, they need to take notes to document things and they need to communicate with each other. Yes they can do all of this stuff in their office, but is it too much to ask to have a small space for data reduction in a location that doesn’t require them to commit a half hour to gowning and de-gowning just to find out that the child in the nurses office with a tummy ache is OK and going back to class?

5. Carefully plan material and people flow simultaneously – In addition to people animals, samples, cages, feed, bedding, chemicals, glassware, gowns and varied supplies must all move through the facility. Given that people of varied education, security clearances and containment experience must move these materials, there are countless stories of how just one well-placed equipment air-lock or material pass-through had a positive impact on operations and prevented a potential exposure.

The link is as follows: http://www.educause.edu/LearningSpaces

Those of you that are cynical about what the future holds for this country most likely have a very different view than I.  You see I’m a 3^rd generation member of the melting pot that makes this place great.  My grandfather Carmen Moronti came to the US in the late 1930’s in search of “streets paved with gold” with nothing but the shirt on his back.  He found the American dream and passed it on.  I plan to do the same. 

My Aunt just returned from our ancestral home on the Adriatic Coast of Italy and brought back these photographs of the home and town where my grandfather was born.  She tells me that his mother, also pictured here, kept his room for many years, but he was never to return.

He built a new life in the US and a home with his own hands.  He married, raised my uncle, mother, my aunt.  His job was to work in a steel mill under conditions that today we would likely not find acceptable and that most likely evoke thoughts of mindless backbreaking labor.  He spent the rest of the time when he wasn’t at his job laboring with his hands farming the 3 acre plot of ground adjacent to the house he built.  Though I was only 7 when he died I can remember spending hours riding the tractor with him and working the land.  I loved that labor and the joy he exuded while doing it.  He would sing Santa Lucia while working and call me “Luigi”.  Those good feelings remain in my psyche about work.  He would be proud to pick the first tomato every year before the 4^th of July.  He grew the produce to feed the family and sold the extra stuff on the side for a little extra money.  Locally he was known for the quality of his strawberries, peppers

and tomatoes.  My mother would tell me stories of grandpa showing up every week with a trunk load of produce to help cut the grocery bills as she and my father were struggling to build their future.  My grandfather was a product of a culture that valued work and the self-sufficiency it created, but he wanted something more and perhaps better for me than what he called his “job”.  I was to go to college and earn my living with my brain not my back.  I fear that somehow by stressing the value of thinking we have de-valued work and consequently the quality of the places where it often occurs.

The first job that I can actually remember wanting to do was carpentry.  It was my grandpa’s influence, along with a little help from my parents that eventually translated that desire into becoming an architect.  My grandpa’s generation found great joy in expressing themselves through the work they did even if it was separate from their day jobs.  He wanted me to have a job that was meaningful.  I think he imagined me working in a grand office free from the toil of the job he didn’t value.  I’m not sure that he understood that I too would want to express myself and find value in my work.  I’ve become far less fearful of seeing my children work than he was.  The taboo that labor is done by people with inferior mental capacity is being shattered in a post Great Recession world.  This generational change in attitude towards work became clearer to me after recently reading Matthew Crawford’s Book Shop Class as Soulcraft.  (see http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/231844/june-24-2009/matthew-crawford)

I am an architect passionate about science – Crawford’s observations about work seem consistent with my experience relative to the pharmaceutical production operations I’ve observed.  Here the best and brightest want to be as close as possible to the making of the product. Often, they want to understand the nuances of how the work is done, in spite of what can be oppressive conditions foreign to what my generation has come to accept as an ideal Workplace.  They will work in some very unkind places as long as they are involved in such a way that they can rely on their own

judgment to produce an outcome that they find meaningful.  Though these production facilities are highly mechanized, today’s TQM principals demand that they are nothing like the assembly lines or steel mills of my grandfather’s generation.  Increasingly workers in these spaces are counted-on for exercising critical judgments to create safe, high qualityproducts.

I’m imaging that my Grandfather didn’t love his job, he only loved the opportunity it provided him to do the work he found fulfilling.  I’m luckier than him in that my work and job are one.  If I succeed with my work I just might help create fulfilling and productive workplaces that my children’s children will use to build a new and better economy.   I’ll bet that my grandpa would be as proud as those places as he was of a bright juicy beefsteak tomato that he “created”.

As an architect deeply concerned about the nature of work, I see places continually being created that are disconnected from the reality of what it now means to be “people” at work.  We have limited our thinking of “place” to the physical, and have not touched on the emotional, psychological, and inter-relationship that drive people to produce results in the context of their work.  Place is a subset of work, along with the parameters of technology, process, brand, economics, etc.  In combination, these parameters create demands of place that are simultaneously physical and virtual, but equal in social dynamics.

Keith’s call for broader AND deeper pursuits to understand the “whole answer” is directly on the mark.  Arriving at a whole answer requires a cognitive shift from our traditional reductive approach to design, to an adherence to a deeper connection to the emergent, dynamic complexity of people at work.  The traditional reductive approach to design has a concentration on the hard measures of programming; number of people, type of team, standards of space, number of leaders in offices, and the infamous square footage per person allowable.  These are all good measures alone for the success of designing for work, but measured alone miss the broader and wider reality of work from people.

Dynamic complexity is an emergent approach.  Carl Jung discovered that we each share a common sub conscious cognitive existence.  We each think with our brains.  We each sense with our 5 senses.  We each feel with our hearts.  We each have intuition in our guts.  As individuals we develop preferences for how we lead our lives under these cognitions and we socialize and adapt our cognitions in conjunction with the skills we develop, the talents we were born with, and the passions that drive us.  We dynamically reconfigure our cognitions constantly as we encounter both internal and external changes as we move through our lives, particularly as we encounter people throughout our work.  BHDP has engaged in the practical study of culture and social dynamics in order to better understand the impact of design on people at work, whether this design has an outcome in place or not.

Keith recommends including many other arenas of thought in the future of work discussion.  Amen again.  Broadening the work discussion makes me think about the pursuit of defining work productivity today.  There is a reason that work strategists, work leaders, and theorists have been calling the search for measuring work productivity a search for “the holy grail”.  Today there is more myth than fact available to measure productivity due to work transforming from transactional interaction to creative problem understanding.

Work is very good at measuring hard data:  time, money and widgets.  Hard data alliance relies heavily on the human cognitions of thinking and sensing.  If work productivity can be rationalized through cognitive thought, or better, held in your hand, it is of direct value.  Work has barely begun to become proficient at measuring soft data:  people, quality and process.  Knowing how people tick, how to recognize and appreciate quality, and how process is dynamically complex is a difficult encounter for the reductionist.  Dynamic complexity requires a paradigm shift toward the inclusion of the human cognitions of emotion and intuition into the business process.  In our work at BHDP with our customers, I see emotion and intuition consistently enter into the business process, yet the value is grossly underplayed.

If our design profession were to truly remove space from the equation of what is vital about understanding work, then we may impact the creation of wholly relevant value for people and the organizations for which they work.  Why?  Because thinking about space IS holding us back.  Keith is right to introduce anthropologists and behaviorists; futurists and story tellers; technologists and humorists; urban planners and inventors.  And I would respectfully expand the list to psychologists and statisticians; economists and poets; academics and engineers; politicians and vanguards.  For that matter, I recommend we engage with the worker foremost.  Leading the worker through the design thinking process has the hope of arriving at the future of work where the people benefit more from their place.

I am proud to report to Keith that BHDP and others have entered these different arenas for expanding work.  Yes, we remain a design firm and are thus fully committed to our customers’ successful realization of place, but our focus is directly embedded in the deeper nature of people, requiring us to expand our thinking and sensing abilities to include a broader knowledge of the feelings and intuitions of people at work.  Human conscientiousness is changing dramatically from the forces that Keith rightly recognizes, and as we live this change the design world is responsible for the physical outcome like no other time in the history of modern work.  The requirements of people at work to deliver creative and collaborative solutions to business has tipped beyond the production systems of the past, creating new levels of complexity throughout the business world.  Complexity is having the biggest impact on the pressures on people at work, so gaining knowledge of the nature of these complexities supersedes the design rules of the past.

I say we follow Keith’s challenge and help people at work through the changes in the rules of how business success is measured.  Let’s first help them understand that workplace does not equal status, and workplace does not dictate hard results alone, and that workplace may be the most important domain of a profound purpose and relationship along with family and faith.

I respectfully wish to reemphasize Keith’s conclusion:  “Yes, place and good design still matter.  But meeting the needs of future workers will require a lot of discussion beginning with gaining a full cognition of people before we consider the places and ways they will work.  Let’s get started.”