Sometimes metrics that matter are best captured on something other than a spreadsheet.

We are thinking about ways that we can make measures for organizational improvement associated with workplace change more effective by making them more visual.  The idea is to help people see their work in order to understand it better and make quicker more tangible changes in their behavior, similar to the way a dancer, a diver, a tennis player or a golfer might use visualization to improve performance. 

Tim Gallwey, the author of the Inner Game of Work put it this way.

  “…if your goal is better teamwork with your colleagues, it contributes to mobility to envision what that might look and sound like.  When you use pictures, sounds, and words to project a desired future state, more parts of the brain are involved in the goal setting.  This increases the likelihood that more of your brain will be used in the process of fulfilling the goal.” *

Instead of the standard pre and post occupancy evaluation (which is valuable to the change process anyway), what if we use a more visual measure.  What if we do time lapse video from a stationary birds-eye view, work activity in a current space prior to a renovation or physical workplace change.  We could then set the camera in the same spot and show work and social activity in a new space for comparison.  This would be especially valuable if the same group from the old space is moving back into the new space.  It would be great to visually see the change in movement, behavior and collaboration that results from the change.  We could then use this kind of practical ethnography as a way to visually portray what other survey content tells us, and make change more tangible in this fast paced, media driven world of work.   Sometimes metrics that matter are best captured on something other than a spreadsheet.

 *Inner Game of Work, W. Timothy Gallwey, Pg. 126-127

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