Placing a name on something brings more meaning to it.  A name describes an object of interest, providing additional insight into what the object is.  For example, think about the sky.  The sky is a big entity that we can all associate with.  But give the sky a “name”, and a different understanding is gained:  blue sky, stormy sky, angry sky, sun-set sky.  Each name fills out of different image in our mind of the nature of the sky.

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.

Tags: Change, Communication, Learning, Lesson
Posted in Agility, Architecture, Futuristic, Innovative, Mobility, Trends, Workplace

I recently had the pleasure of attending a two day Lessons Learned Workshop at NIH related to Biomedical Research Facilities that have been built in the last several years. In today’s complex world we architects are trying, harder than ever it seems, to meet the needs of our client with each project, but today, our clients seem to have many voices. The beauty of this conference was that all of the competing voices were in one place and had a chance to express their perspective in an educational setting. In the project world it can be an extremely delicate balancing act to place the proper emphasis on the right voice.

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Tags: Advice, Behavior, Biocontainment, Change, Collaboration, Labs, Leadership, Learning, NIH, pain, Programming, Research, Safety, Strategy
Posted in Agility, Architecture, Change Management, Design, Generations, Innovative, Lab Planning, People, Science

In the middle of 2010, Keith Perske posted a compelling blog challenging the design field to think about work without our typical reliance on thinking about place.  I say, “AMEN”.

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.

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Tags: Behavior, Change, Experience
Posted in Agility, Architecture, Mobility, People, Workplace

If you’ve been to a seminar on sustainable practices lately, you may have heard the popular concept that tunneling through cost barriers might provide better spaces for people. To my knowledge, the concept was popularized by Paul Hawkins, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins in their book, Natural Capitalism, more than 10 years ago.

Graph from 'Natural Capitalism' by Paul Hawkins, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins

So what does it mean? The simplest example that is often given is that of a residential house: you can buy better windows, more efficient insulation, and even take advantage of passive solar heating. With all of these improvements, you will eventually reach the point of diminishing returns when you are spending extra money to save energy on heating your home. The detour that now seems possible is that you can reach a point where you’ve so radically reduced the heating load that you can eliminate the furnace and its associated ductwork altogether.

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Tags: Change, Renovation
Posted in Architecture, LEED, Science, Sustainability, Technology, Technology/Innovation

Like it or not, the availability of tools we can use to alter our world is always affected by current events happening on the global stage.  I’ve been involved in the architectural profession since the mid-1980’s and the design of laboratory and process environments since 1989.  Yesterday, I saw a presentation made by one of our laboratory planners related to fumehood technology.  It got me thinking about why we use the tools we use, what events cause the tools to change and why the change takes so long to evolve.

Take the standard chemical fumehood.  For as long as I’ve designed laboratories it’s been the go-to tool to protect people from hazardous experiments.  Even though today they can look pretty high-tech and sophisticated, they were pretty much just a dumb box working on ancient principals of convection, just like the fireplace in your house, right up to the oil crisis of the 1970’s.  After the oil crisis of the 1970’s engineers got serious about the fluid dynamics involved in a fumehood and focused on a tool that would use less energy.  By the mid-1980’s these hoods had reached the mainstream and were marketed as “low flow’ hoods.  By the time I started designing labs the oil crisis of the 1970’s was a distant memory and I can distinctly remember being told by engineers and owner’s safety officers to never use them.  A fumehood should be designed to protect people from hazards, not to save money.  I honestly don’t think things would have changed were it not for events affecting the world stage.

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Tags: Change
Posted in Lab Planning, People, Science, Technology, Technology/Innovation, Tools

Insights from the Global Chief Executive Officer Study

Do you occasionally sit back and wonder why work is so complicated?  What happened to our worlds of work when we knew almost every day how to attack and beat back the infamous “to-do” list?  A good day ten years ago was when I finished all but a couple of the items on my list, and was charged up to refresh and hit it again the next day.  Those days are gone.  Work and life priorities are in constant change.  Reaction times require continuous immediacy.  Requirements simply present themselves as “complex”, sometimes bordering on the edge of chaotic.

If Uncertainty was the word for 2010, then Complexity is the word for 2011. Complexity is defined as: “the varied relationship of multiple elements that are relative and changing over time.”  The nature of the elements, the relationship of the connections, and the change nature of it all, compound over time resulting is a loss of predictability and order in the system.  The personal result is that today our daily lists of to-do’s are often blown up in hour one of the day, never to be returned to again.

In the spring of 2010, IBM released the fourth year of a study of what is on the minds of the world’s CEO’s.  The title of the 2010 report is Capitalizing on Complexity.  The introduction to the report states:

“In a world fraught with uncertainty, what are today’s CEOs doing to strengthen their situations against competitors?

Previously, CEOs have consistently identified change as their most pressing challenge. Today, CEOs are telling us that the complexity of operating in an increasingly volatile and uncertain world is their primary challenge. And, a surprising number of them told us that they feel ill-equipped to succeed in this drastically different world.” Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Change, Experience, Leadership, Learning, Strategy
Posted in Agility, Cool, People, Workplace

I just returned from the 2010 SCUP North Central Conference held at the University of Cincinnati. I always find it energizing to reacquaint with old friends, make new ones, and truly inspiring to witness the passion in higher education that SCUP members share in common. It was a privilege to present the topic “The Future is Now: Community College Planning for 2020” with Bruce Massis of Columbus State Community College and Jerry Webster of Terra State Community College. Our talk focused on the challenges and opportunities that these colleges face from the impact of the “Great Recession”, the varied needs of an increasingly diverse group of students, effective strategic planning, effective partnerships that benefit both community colleges and surrounding communities, and the positive impact that architecture can have to enhance the experience of learning, social interaction, and student success. Over the next several weeks, I will continue to share more information about the subject

Tags: Behavior, Campus, Change, Generations, Leadership, Learning, Millenials, Programming, Recession, Research, Strategy, students
Posted in Architecture, Campus Planning, Classrooms, Futuristic, Generations, Higher Education, People, Trends

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.  

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

At our house we don’t call ourselves “human beings”.  Instead we call ourselves “human becomings” because change and growth is so constant and ever present in our lives.

When giving a talk recently to our regional conference for the American Institute of Architects, I shared how interesting our human reaction to change is to me…the irony that though it is and has been constantly part of our lives since the day we were born, people hate change. 

It was then that I saw a hand shoot up in the audience, and Charlie a colleague of mine said, “I really disagree with that.  I think people love change.  What they hate is the process they have to go through to make the change happen.” 

After reflection, I had to agree.  I liken Charlie’s idea to a family vacation to the beach.  We all love to go to the beach.  We like the change of scenery, how it looks, the way it smells and makes us feel different from our daily life.  Give me two weeks and I will want to stay there.  What we don’t like is the drive to the beach – the process of getting there.

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Tags: Change, Communication
Posted in People, Tools

I have been involved in many projects with different types of retailers, where I always inquire about the number of employees in the store and their responsibilities. In the past twenty years, the number of people manning the floor and servicing the guest has reduced considerably. The responsibility of those left has increased, an employee used to be there to service the guest and refold merchandise has in most cases now include boarder activities including: stocking, changing signage, visual merchandising, moving fixtures and even changing light bulbs in some instances.     

With the recession, I have noticed that those behind the counter or on the sales floor have been getting older, and not just by a few years. I encounter a returning retired work force. A survey by AARP recently found 20 percent of workers age 55 to 64 plan to delay retirement because of current economic conditions. Couple that with the added job responsibilities and what does all this mean to the aging sales force?     

Mother’s Day was coming and the kids decided they wanted to get their mother an iPod Touch. So we investigated the best and closest place to get a metal clad 8 GB model and Walmart came up the winner. The Friday night before, we headed up to my Super Walmart in Lebanon, Ohio to purchase one. There has always been elderly gentleman at the door, no matter the time of day, greeting us at the door: “Welcome to Walmart” and then randomly checking register receipts against what was in your basket on the way out, but always a “Thank you for Shopping Walmart”; not a tremendous amount of responsibility.  I have noticed that the staffing at Walmart has also been getting older. The cashiers, floor stockers and even the deli team members have been changing over to much older employees.     

Since it was late at night, there was no electronics department manager on duty or manning the electronics department cash register. My son found a man stocking the office supply aisles who radioed the night manager to assist us. Mary, a friendly, senior women came to our assistance to open the Apple showcase to retrieve our iPod. To my surprise, as she reached down with the set of keys to open the sliding door lock, she suddenly let out a loud grunt as she sat down hard on the floor. Apparently she could not physically bend down to 4 inches off the floor to unlock the case. In a lot of discomfort, I quickly offered to help her; she refused and remarked how she is “used to it”. As Mary reached into the case I quickly captured the moment on my camera.      

We insisted to help her back up, but again she refused and noted “Why, in the life of me, wouldn’t they have put the lock high up on the case?”. I looked her in the eye and sincerely replied, ” Unfortunately,  I am a store designer.  I am one the people in the world whose responsibility is to think about these things. I even know the head of design for electronics at Walmart and he would never want you to end up sitting on the floor.  So on his behalf and my profession, I apologize.” I meant what I said, but I quickly realized how strange and unimportant it was to say it to someone who probably has to sit on the floor several times a night. Mary then hobbled over to register to ring us up.     

I did some research on Saturday after wrapping the gift. According to one government estimate, 93% of the growth in the U.S. labor force from 2006 to 2016 will be among workers ages 55 and older. The incident has had me thinking more about our responsibilities to truly consider the need of the employee and recognizing everyday tasks that are difficult, if not dangerous for a senior retail workforce. Retailers and designers need to plan more user friendly environment; one that consider the ergonomics, the physical limits, the eyesight and the too broad responsibilities for this every increasing demographic.     

So far the biggest problems I have observed include; the handling weight of product, ladders, under stocking, over stocking,  button sizes on registers, font sizes on safety signage, low light levels, register floor matting, walk-off mat edges, and the distance required to traveled in the larger stores. I believe we all have a duty as  designers and storeplanners to at the very least understand the needs and limitation of a senior work force.

Tags: Change, Experience, Generations, Store
Posted in Big Box, Design, Environmental Graphic Design, Generations, People, Retail, Store Design, Trends