Excerpt
from:
Managing the Evolving Corporation
Chapter 10, Places for Learning, page 153
Chrysler Corporation created a billion-dollar Technology Center to
accommodate the 7,000 Chrysler employees engaged in the design and development
of new cars. Constructed between 1986 and 1993, the 3.5 million square
foot facility supports a new approach to organizing the automobile design
process, platform teams. Working in these teams and in the CTC has enabled
Chrysler to reduce its automotive development time from 5 years to 3.25
years, a critical competitive advantage in the demanding auto market.
Chrysler's platform teams have been quite successful, developing new products
for the company that have propelled it to record profits. Consequently,
other auto companies such as Ford are now copying the platform team concept.
The shift from the departmental organization to platform teams is a significant
departure that exemplifies the shift from structure-oriented thinking
to process thinking, but Chrysler is one of the few companies to recognize
that such new organizational models can be significantly enhanced through
the design of the work place itself.
ooo
In the factories of the early and mid-20th century, work was divided into
small tasks, fragmented and performed on production lines by tens, hundreds,
or thousands of workers. Frederick Taylor initiated a productivity revolution
by defining each worker's job in precise, invariant steps, bringing new
levels of order to manufacturing. Each worker did only one task to ensure
that it would be done consistently.
This same approach, based on fragmentation and specialization, was also
applied to work in offices, where legions of specialists examined the
contents of only their particular box on only their particular forms,
and shuffled papers from the pile marketed 'in' to the pile marked 'out'.
Michael Rothschild has observed that the ubiquitous, multi-story office
tower filled with clerical workers is a response to the problem of organizing
work space to efficiently move paper from person to person. (Rothschild,
Michael. Remarks at The First Bionomics Conference, October 8, 1993, San
Francisco, California.) With row after row of desks and small cubicles,
surrounded by row upon row of small offices, all driven by logistics of
paper, these are places where everyone works in a separate little cell
like so many penitent monks.
Most people are not conscious of the impact that the design of the work
place has on how work is done, but it does have an impact, and in many
cases it is an enormous impact. As with the organization itself, this
work place was once designed to be the way it is, but people have
lost sight of this fact and they simply assume that offices have to be
the same as they have been for decades.
As it is a specific intent of the process orientation to re-integrate
work into coherent wholes, the work place designed for fragmentation and
specialization does not provide adequate support for organizations that
adopt process-oriented organizational models such as recognition and response.
In the new organization, the work place is not a place for segmentation,
but a place for learning.
This chapter presents approaches to the new work place. The ideas that
are presented here are based on projects that have been completed by a
team of designers, including the author and others, that have resulted
in high performance workplaces that support new organizational models.
Eliminating Excess Time and Cost
Overall, two factors have converged in the knowledge economy to bring
an end to the pattern of fragmented work. Both are consequences of the
dynamics of the competitive marketplace, and the astonishing inefficiency
of clerical work as it was performed during the industrial era.
First, increasing competition is squeezing excess time out of all
work processes. Sequential work is slow, but the marketplace is moving
faster and faster all the time.
The learning curve model shows that those who achieve faster cycle times
in the production and marketing of products and services will have more
opportunities to learn, and will gain a distinct competitive advantage.
Since clerical work is very time-consuming, but is among the least value-added
activities in any organization, it is being eliminated through the implementation
of new organizational models, and work process redesign (reengineering).
Secondly, increasing competition drives prices down and squeezes cost
out of the work process, and there is simply no money available to pay
people who do not contribute discernible value. If a company is paying
workers who are engaged in non-productive tasks, its competitors can probably
do the same work at a lower cost.
Consequently, clerical work is being designed out of existence, and much
that cannot be entirely eliminated is being handled by computers.
In addition to the decline of clerical work, the work of middle management
is also being eliminated. People at all levels are working with greater
autonomy, and through the application of computer networks that enable
people to exchange information with each other directly, hierarchical
layers of middle managers have become unnecessary.
As a result of these trends, organizations are doing more work with fewer
people, and the consequences are unmistakably clear: jobs must be made
unnecessary.
At GE, for example, between 1981 and 1991, total employment declined from
about 400,000 to 300,000 people even as total revenues increased from
$28 to $60 billion; revenue per employee increased from $70,000 to $200,000.
(Tichy, Noel M. and Stratford Sherman, Control Your Destiny or Someone
Else Will. New York, Currency Doubleday, 1993. p. 18. These figures
do not seem to be adjusted for inflation.)
This creates a dilemma for government officials responsible for the economy
as a whole, for even as many companies increase their revenues and profits,
they do so with fewer employees. There is a disturbing possibility of
increasing, systemic unemployment, and no one can be sure if this is a
temporary phenomenon that is related to the transition from an industrial
economy to an information economy, or if will be permanent.
Knowledge Work
As a result of the economic changes and the changes in the nature
of the work itself, a new kind work has become vital to the new organization.
Twenty-five years ago, Peter Drucker identified this growing segment of
the work force as 'knowledge workers', and he accurately predicted that
their importance to the economy would steadily increase. Knowledge workers
add value, in his words, by applying knowledge to knowledge.
Robert Reich calls them 'symbolic analysts', and he identifies them as
people who "solve, identify, and broker problems by manipulating
symbols. They simplify reality into abstract images." (Reich, Robert, The Work of Nations. New York, Vintage Books, 1991, 1992. p. 178.)
These symbols are drawings, diagrams, and of course, the written alphabet.
As most professional work is dependent on information is recorded in symbols,
symbolic analysts are at the heart of the information economy.
In the language of the design process, these people are engaged in continual
learning, and applying their learning through the process of design. Thus,
whether you call them knowledge workers, symbolic analysts, or designers,
they are professionals of all disciplines, including writers, programmers,
nurses, engineers, lawyers, producers, accountants, marketers, architects
....
Knowledge work, like the process of learning to which it is so closely
related, begins with the individual. Knowledge workers engage in the design
and creation of informed distinctions that differentiate an organization's
products and services in the marketplace.
Frequently, this work is dynamic, engaging, and often fast-moving. It
can also be painfully slow and exactingly detailed, but whether it is
fast or slow, it nearly always involves complexity. It may be the complexity
of a medical diagnosis; a computer chip design; a class action law suit;
the engineering of a high-rise building; or any of thousands of activities
undertaken throughout an organization that require years of education,
subsequent years of concentrated practice, and an abundance of creativity.
Such complexity can only rarely be well represented on a pad of legal
paper or well described in a four page memo, or even four hundred pages
of text. It takes images and objects to model complexity, diagrams,
photographs, calendars, flow charts, blueprints, mock-ups, prototypes,
samples, schematics and illustrations.
Frequently, these complex problems and design challenges involve the knowledge
of many different specialties, and can rarely be fully modeled and understood
by individuals working alone. Thus, many people must work together to
comprehend them, specialists from different disciplines who combine their
diverse knowledge into a complete picture. William Miller, former Director
of Research and Business Development for Steelcase notes, "Most innovation
today occurs through combining skills from different disciplines. It's
very hard to push the state of the art in one discipline."
Working amidst such complexity, the activities of knowledge workers are
almost always projects; they are almost never 'jobs'. A project
may last for a day, a week, or a year, and an individual may participate
on only one, or simultaneously on five project teams.
Thus, it is clear that knowledge work is fundamentally different from
the fragmented, repetitive clerical and middle management work that most
office buildings were originally designed to accommodate. With its rows
of desks, cubicles, and small offices, the old work place is simply not
competent to support the kinds of collaborative dialog, creativity, and
exploration that individuals and teams of knowledge workers regularly
undertake. Nor does it readily accommodate rolls of large drawings, scale
models, test parts and samples, large calendars and flow charts that are
the common artifacts of such projects.
As the work place itself is a vital part of the knowledge infrastructure,
the expanding importance of knowledge work calls for a new kind of work
place, one that is designed to fulfill the specific and unique needs of
knowledge workers.
In most organizations, knowledge workers need three different settings
to accommodate the different aspects of their work:
1. Individual Work Spaces
2. Project Rooms
3. Management Centers.
1. Individual Work Spaces
The individual's work space must be place for learning and for designing,
the two things that knowledge workers spend most of their time doing.
This takes many forms, such as reading, writing, drawing, inventing, studying,
exploring, and thinking. About such work Ricardo Semler comments that,
"Thinking is difficult. It requires concentration and discipline.
Give it the time it deserves." (Semler, Ricardo, Maverick.
New York, Warner Books, 1993. p. 297.) To this we would add, in the theme
of this chapter, "Give it the space it deserves." This work
space must be large enough to spread out the documentation that complex
projects generate, for it takes space to be able to use these documents
effectively.
Perhaps most important is that the individual be in control of this space,
for no one knows more than the individual about how to support their own
learning process. Some need a large space piled with accumulated documents;
some need orderly shelves; some want a compact space, and others a large
one.
As learning is deeply personal, the place for learning must be personal
as well. Thus, individuals should arrange their own furniture, and set
the sound, light, air temperature, and decor to suit their own needs.
This may be considered revolutionary in view of the limited and standardized
approach that is taken with most offices, but it fits well the individualistic
character of knowledge work and the organization's dependence on the productivity
of these workers.
2. Project Rooms
Many knowledge workers spend as much time working in teams as they
do working alone. In most office buildings, teams are forced to meet wherever
they can find enough space, whether it happens to be in large offices,
not-so-large offices, meeting rooms, training rooms, cafeterias, classrooms,
hallways or empty offices (there will be more of these due to continued
downsizing). But none of these rooms is designed to support the kind of
open-ended learning that knowledge work projects involve.
What project teams really need are project rooms that they can call their
own. These must be large enough so that each individual has room for a
desk for their own work, without having to go four floors away to do it,
and with enough additional space so that an entire team can easily work
together at once.
The work habits and thinking habits derived from standardized and fragmented
offices reinforce the pattern of command and control management. As colleague
Bryan Coffman recently observed, "the 'old philosophy' space design
inhibits reengineering and transformation more than any other single factor,
although it will not of itself prove a sufficient tool to complete the
transformation."
Project rooms designed specifically for collaborative knowledge work are
therefore crucial to the infrastructure of organizations committed to
working in new ways. Since these rooms do not already exist in most offices,
they will have to be created.
Like individual work spaces, one of the most important qualities of project
rooms is that the people who are doing the work must be in control of
the places in which they work. Their needs may change from hour to hour,
and it simply won't do to have someone from the building department come
in every time something needs to be moved.
There is a constant reconfiguration of the team that occurs in response
to the rhythm of the work itself, and to accommodate this flow of work
and the continual regroupings, the space itself and the furniture within
it will be moved many times. When it is needed, a conference table can
be composed from four smaller work tables, and it can also be used in
smaller pieces for small team work. Computers, file cabinets, desks, are
rolled in and out as they are needed. Flexibility is the key.
The flow of a typical day in a project room illustrates this: at the start
of the day, a team of ten people may be working separately at their own
desks, making phone calls, writing, and reading. The full team gathers
at 10:00 am for a brief update, and then breaks into three separate work
sessions at 10:30. After working in these teams during lunch, the whole
team flows through an uninterrupted afternoon in which they work intermittently
as a full team, individually, and in small groups. To accommodate this
flow, people and furniture are continually moving, for it is the work
itself that determines how the space is used, and this cannot be predicted
in advance.
As simple as this sounds, the fact is that most work spaces and most furniture
are designed with assumption that people are incompetent to make such
choices, and their placement is fixed by an architect or a facility manager.
The space is expected to remain unchanged for years, regardless of the
composition of the team or the nature of the work that they do. Most conference
rooms are dominated by large, fixed tables that are attached to the floor
so that they cannot be moved, even when a large, open space is what is
really needed. This is the facility's corollary of the rigid hierarchy
that impedes organizational flexibility.
A project room can be more than just a big, square room. To support a
variety of work styles and needs, it may be a group of connected sub-spaces
of different sizes and shapes.
Once the flexibility of recognition and response is accepted, its expression
has an infinite variety of forms in the work place. Anyone should be able
to set up or remove any element of a work space quickly and easily. The
work drives the individuals and the teams, and they must drive their work
environments to accomplish the best possible work.
3. Management Centers
Cybernetician Stafford Beer installed a management center (or as he
refers to it, a control centre) in Santiago, Chile in 1971 in conjunction
with his work for the government of president Salvador Allende. Photos
and a discussion of this facility were published in Beer's Platform
for Change, and a description of its genesis and function was published
in Brain of the Firm.
In Brain of the Firm, Beer wrote, "I propose a control
centre for the corporation which is in continuous activity. ... All senior
formal meetings would be held there; and the rest of the time, all senior
executives would treat it as a kind of a club room. ... It is what the
Greeks called a phrontisterion - a thinking shop." (Beer,
Stafford, Brain of the Firm. Chichester, John Wiley & Sons,
1981. p. 194.)
The intent of developing such a facility must be, ultimately, to provide
a place where learning takes place in the most effective ways possible
to support individuals and teams in the design of ever-more effective
actions. Thus, an organization's management center is a central learning
hub, a place where people come together to learn and to design, to synthesize
a broad range of information, people, and ideas, to create the knowledge
that makes it possible to understand the present and to create the future.
The use of this facility, however, need not be limited just to senior
managers. Everyone in the organization will need this facility at one
time or another. For some this will occur infrequently, while others will
be there nearly every day. Thus, by 'management center' we must expand
our thinking beyond 'bosses only' to the idea of management as an activity
that includes those who participates in managing the organization, which
is of course absolutely everyone.
Designing a Management Center
There are probably hundreds of ways to configure a management center.
After observing many and helping to design some, the general layout presented
here seems quite effective, and will provide a good starting point for
thinking about the design issues that must be considered.
Figure 10.3 shows how a management center might be arranged for a typical
corporation.
(figure 10.3)
It is a gathering place, a place where information is collected and people
work together to solve problems. It must, therefore, be a place where
people want to be, a place with a feeling of welcoming and openness, and
as Beer suggests, a club room that is rich in information and interactions.
Overall, this is a large space of approximately 5000 square feet. Within
it there are two different kinds of spaces, a control room located at
the apex of the primary sight lines, and three project rooms. The project
rooms are divided from one another by movable partitions that can be opened
to create one very large space, or closed to provide privacy and intimacy.
The Control Room
The control room is an information hub that is linked to the organization's
electronic network of communications channels and can access the organization's
real time financial information and its qualitative databases. Large projection
screens display real time financial activities in flow charts and diagrams,
as well as images and models that enable people to grasp the significance
of the broadest concepts as well as the specific details. They can also
display broadcast TV and cable TV, whether local news or CNN (or the Super
Bowl). These display screens can also be used for video conferencing.
The control room is staffed by a team of knowledge workers, shown at a
row of workstations facing the large screens, who provide information,
facilitation, documentation, and logistics support to the people who are
working in the center. They also filter the flow of information that is
shown on the large-screen displays to present the most relevant and interesting
information that is pertinent to the issues that the teams are dealing
with.
At any given time, some of them may be analyzing a set of reports, preparing
documents, or gathering data for projects that are under way or are about
to start. Tapping into the ongoing data stream, they also design and run
business simulations that model the alternative future possibilities for
the organization.
The center is linked with all of the organization's offices, so participation
in its work is not limited to those who happen to be in the center on
a particular day. Through two-way video conferencing, the room can be
expanded to include any number of people, from tens to hundreds to thousands,
so that all can be working on projects with members of the organization
who are elsewhere in the building or an ocean away. In addition, they
may be in contact with their counterparts in other organizations throughout
the world.
In addition, the 'virtual management center' will be accessible on line
through computer networks, enabling individuals working remotely to see
the information that is being displayed in the center on their own computers.
Groupware will support interactive dialog between those in the management
center and others who are elsewhere, so even those who happen to be traveling
can directly participate in making critical decisions, or casually check
in just to see what's happening.
Project Rooms
The two large project rooms and the smaller one can be used for collaborative
design events, formal meetings, or for informal brainstorming. They are
adjacent to the control room and positioned to have a good views of the
large screen displays to make it easy to link the ongoing flow of information
with the design activities of project teams.
On any given day, there may be a team working on developing strategic
initiatives in one project room, while another team use the collaborative
design process to solve a complex tactical problem in the adjacent room.
Still others may come by for half an hour simply to take the pulse the
ongoing activities of the business.
This co-mingling of project teams in a single large space creates opportunities
for people to interact spontaneously and to draw from each others' experience
as they solve specific problems.
A curved wall is the focal point of each project room. Seven feet tall
and 30 or 40 feet long, these walls are enormous white boards that are
big enough to develop and present models as complex as the entire corporate
strategic plan, detailed briefings on critical issues, or even elaborate
marketing campaigns. The curve enables one to stand in the center of the
space and clearly see a display of 300 square feet of information. There
is simply no better way to see the overview and the details of
complexity at the same time.
Depending on their size and their style of working, some organizations
will need to have only one project room. Others may wish to have ten,
making for a full-fledged conference center.
Management centers are lively places where people come to test out new
ideas with their colleagues; to solve complex problems; to participate
in large-scale business simulations and educational events; to catch up
on the latest events. They will be centers for active learning, for dialog
and speculation and argument, and most of all for creating the future.
Management centers are also, of course, the ideal facilities for managing
during crisis. Here, many people can work side by side with immediate
access to complete information to develop and test alternative responses.
As information comes in, strategy can be developed and mapped out in detail,
while others working remotely will participate electronically. As it becomes
clear what actions need to be taken, an entire organization can be communicated
with and immediately mobilized for action.
Management centers are also idea places for boards of directors to learn
about what's really happening in their businesses. Whereas the old board
room emphasized the importance of the hierarchy and expressed the stability
of the enterprise with expensive wood paneling and an enormous table surrounded
by stern, high-backed chairs, the new board room represents the need for
continuous learning amidst the rapidly changing marketplace. Whereas the
members of the old board studied financial reports and one-page memos
in quiet isolation, the members of the new board interact with everyone,
from the CEO to the shipping dock workers, gathering information and giving
it out at every opportunity.
Thus, management centers are a long way from the four walls, desk, and
chair occupied by the clerical workers of 1950; they are key components
of the high performance knowledge infrastructure of the 21st century.
By enabling so much information to be integrated in one place, management
centers will have tremendous influence on the thinking of everyone who
uses them, and on the effectiveness of an organization self-regulatory
processes. They will, therefore, contribute enormously to the adaptiveness
of the organizations that implement them.
Excerpts
from Managing the Evolving Corporation
