Physical Space: The Forgotten Factor

I happened to stumble upon some notes that I had in an old notebook  about a project that I had some involvement with while working at Bell Canada. It was about the development of Bell’s “campus” that was being built in the suburbs of Toronto. The idea was to collapse all of the smaller offices in and around the city into one big campus for the purposes of increased collaboration amongst employees. The assumption was that if everyone was located in a few buildings on the campus the company would be able to move more quickly, be more proactive, nimble and all of those other good things that companies strive for.

Our group became involved in the real estate discussions because as professional collaborators we thought we could contribute to the discussion based on our experience in designing for human interaction (albeit on an “intervention” basis) and in designing physical space to support those human interactions. In conversing with the architects, we learned some interesting things.

1. Research suggests that workers in large office environments tend to interact with people who are only within 150 feet (50 metres) of their own desk.
2. Up to 87% of knowledge creation is gained informally, through such means as social learning (water cooler wisdom), learning in the moment, communities of practice and other techniques. Information transfer occurs formally, through lectures, workshops and seminars.

* Farrow Partnership Architects

The conclusion I drew from this was that simple co-location does not even come close to guaranteeing increased collaboration amongst employees.

The conceptual solution that I had envisioned was threefold:

1. Apply architectural design principles that are used to build dedicated collaborative spaces to an entire office complex. It’s no secret that traditional cubicle farms don’t exactly lend themselves to lots of interesting conversations among inmates. While the initial dot-com boom accelerated the notion of a more “social” office space as a way of being more creative and productive, there are some deeper principles at play that go beyond free chocolate bars and a pool table. Innovation Labs has a whitepaper on the topic of designing collaborative spaces.
2. Train a network of specialized workers/facilitators/information synthesizers to be responsible for certain physical areas of each office floor. They would help to “design” the work that the employees are doing, facilitate small and large meetings, perform graphic recording, information visualization and other specialized tasks designed to tease out the collective intelligence of the organization. These types of workers would be part of a network of practitioners within the organization who are more in tune with the concept of social business design, the concept of which is now being put into play by the folks at Dachis Corporation. As a network of practitioners they would be in communication with each other and act as a “biological overlay” for the otherwise mechanistic organization. It is a lot to ask for a corporation to switch its mindset to being “social” but if there were networks of people within the organization acting behind the scenes to make this happen, wholesale revolution might not be necessary.
3. Implement the necessary Enterprise 2.0 software to enable knowledge sharing, insight generation, weak signal monitoring and other techniques that will allow the network of practitioners to bring the work from the rest of the organization into their areas of responsibility. They are acting as the eyes and ears to the rest of the organization (and the world at large) for the group to which they’ve been assigned. A further benefit of training these types of workers is that it adds a level of governance and risk mitigation for executives who see social media as being a risky endeavour.

I did my best to sketch out what this might look like at Bell Canada but it’s quite generic and could be applied anywhere. The idea is that with tens of thousands of employees it’s impossible to be co-located. With good design principles, implementation of a soft infrastructure based on principles of collaboration and a hard infrastructure of the right social tools it’s possible to realize a significant shift in how legacy organizations transition to becoming social businesses.

Published in MPI One+

I was recently interviewed for and quoted in the Meeting Planning International‘s One+ Magazine for the July/August issue. It was interesting to talk about process facilitation and collaborative event design from an “event industry” perspective. It’s great to see some exposure on the idea that a typical meeting or event doesn’t have to have such a broadcast dynamic, where a speaker or a panel talks at the audience. Usually my work is with a specific organization which is trying to solve a particularly hairy business problem but conferences often have very smart, dedicated people as participants and it’s high time the participants and speakers started working together at conferences to solve some of the hairy problems that we face as a society.

Read the article.

Here’s a quote from Joel Spasky that I JUST picked off Twitter, from @ibmdesigns, which I think is relevant to the article in the MPI magazine: “Design adds value faster than it adds cost.”

Some thoughts on Consensus vs. Collaboration

I’ve been giving some thought to the notion of “consensus building”. When I think of consensus building I imagine a situation where a bunch of people are sitting around debating an issue and the consensus occurs when the people at the table no longer wish to debate and can live with the proposed solution. I don’t actually have any “official” definition from anywhere to back this up, as the definitions from dictionary.com aren’t too specific. I should mention that the entry in Wikipedia does briefly suggest that consensus “usually involves collaboration, rather than compromise”.

Despite this suggestion from Wikipedia, from my experience I tend to find that discussions around “consensus building” seem to be focused on compromise rather than collaboration. Again, it’s just a gut feel but whether the conversation is facilitated or not I find that the questions in the conversation tend to be along the lines of “if i gave up ‘x’, would you give me ‘y’”? In other words I find the conversations to be subtractive. Ie. how can the proposed solution be pared down until it isn’t disagreeable for most or all of the people in the room. (Apologies for the double negative.) This has to be a less than ideal situation for all parties. Nobody truly wins.

This differs from collaborative conservations which I would suggest are more additive. Ie. lots of “yes, and” with a goal of expressing and building towards an ideal solution for all parties and it would haven been impossible to have achieved individually. My experience tells me that people leave these types of conversations energized, motivated and confident in their colleagues.

Maybe it’s just some pointless semantic babbling, but I’m thinking that “consensus building” is an oxymoron up there with “army intelligence” and “jumbo shrimp”.

Looking at the “ins” & “cons”

When designing large collaborative sessions with complex topics it is almost always the case that there is a big variance between the few people who know a lot about the topic and a few who have little to no context and everyone else falls somewhere in between. Sponsors are generally very anxious to do a lot of “education” around the project so that everyone gets up to speed. Usually this results in a desire to do a 3 hour PowerPoint presentation. This makes me cringe. (I don’t understand how the same people who complain about sitting through 3 hour presentations end up with a desire to present one.) I try to explain that people don’t learn well this way and the information will not stick. 

I started reading a book recently that has really helped me hammer my argument home. Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams by Mitchel Resnick of MIT talks about the difference between instructional learning and constructional learning. He argues that by telling people what you think they need to know, the results are mediocre at best. By having people create something on their own (or with small groups), the concepts are much more likely to stick. It’s a learn-by-doing approach.

With the type of work that I’m in, this concept wasn’t new to me, but the fact that I can now summarize the concept in a framework that clients really seem to get, was a valuable insight for me. I think most people know this as well, but with a lack of a better tool than PowerPoint to use for “education”, it seems to be the default. Suggesting the “instructional/constructional” framework to clients seems to introduce the contrast between socratic methods and constructional methods. They suddenly see “the other side”. By giving the other side a name, it’s easier to convince them of the benefits of giving it a try. Like the old saying goes, “A fish doesn’t understand water until it experiences air.”

I’m curious to know if anyone else has had this type of experience; where you don’t necessarily learn a new concept, but learn a new way to express it that seems to have a lot of resonance. Please comment!

Looking at the “ins” & “cons”

When designing large collaborative sessions with complex topics it is almost always the case that there is a big variance between the few people who know a lot about the topic and a few who have little to no context and everyone else falls somewhere in between. Sponsors are generally very anxious to do a lot of “education” around the project so that everyone gets up to speed. Usually this results in a desire to do a 3 hour PowerPoint presentation. This makes me cringe. (I don’t understand how the same people who complain about sitting through 3 hour presentations end up with a desire to present one.) I try to explain that people don’t learn well this way and the information will not stick. 

I started reading a book recently that has really helped me hammer my argument home. Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams by Mitchel Resnick of MIT talks about the difference between instructional learning and constructional learning. He argues that by telling people what you think they need to know, the results are mediocre at best. By having people create something on their own (or with small groups), the concepts are much more likely to stick. It’s a learn-by-doing approach.

With the type of work that I’m in, this concept wasn’t new to me, but the fact that I can now summarize the concept in a framework that clients really seem to get, was a valuable insight for me. I think most people know this as well, but with a lack of a better tool than PowerPoint to use for “education”, it seems to be the default. Suggesting the “instructional/constructional” framework to clients seems to introduce the contrast between socratic methods and constructional methods. They suddenly see “the other side”. By giving the other side a name, it’s easier to convince them of the benefits of giving it a try. Like the old saying goes, “A fish doesn’t understand water until it experiences air.”

I’m curious to know if anyone else has had this type of experience; where you don’t necessarily learn a new concept, but learn a new way to express it that seems to have a lot of resonance. Please comment!

John Maeda’s The Laws of Simplicity – Part I

Summary: Graphic designer and computer scientist John Maeda proposes ten laws for simplifying complex systems in business and life-but mostly in product design. Maeda’s upbeat explanations usefully break down the power of less-fewer features, fewer buttons and fewer distractions-while providing practical strategies for harnessing that power. (Amazon.com)

Maeda’s book discusses 10 key principles moving from the tangible to the abstract. His first principle of “Reduce” has three components:

Shrink: the smaller the object the more forgiving we are as users.
Hide: make the complexity go away, like a swiss army knife
Embody: once a product has been shrunk and features taken away embed a real or perceived sense of value in the product

So as a designer and facilitator of collaborative work events, the Hide concept really stands out for me, and here’s why: 

When getting 40 or 50 people to put their heads together and come up with something brilliant I try to make the session design as unobtrusive as possible while making the group activities as clear as possible. Participants have only what they need to do the task at hand and nothing more. As more information or tools is required, I introduce it and take away that which is no longer necessary (the Hide component).

The other two components (Shrink and Embody) are a bit more of a challenge to apply to a face to face collaborative event (but they were put to good use on the iPod shuffle), but it’s the process of finding a way to apply concepts such as those to face to face sessions that results in innovative new practices in my line of work and pushes the boundaries on what groups can do when working together.

So, I promise a future posting on how I was able to incorporate the “Shrink” component into a session. If the real skill in design is removing as much as possible rather than adding as much as possible, what

John Maeda’s The Laws of Simplicity – Part I

Summary: Graphic designer and computer scientist John Maeda proposes ten laws for simplifying complex systems in business and life-but mostly in product design. Maeda’s upbeat explanations usefully break down the power of less-fewer features, fewer buttons and fewer distractions-while providing practical strategies for harnessing that power. (Amazon.com)

Maeda’s book discusses 10 key principles moving from the tangible to the abstract. His first principle of “Reduce” has three components:

Shrink: the smaller the object the more forgiving we are as users.
Hide: make the complexity go away, like a swiss army knife
Embody: once a product has been shrunk and features taken away embed a real or perceived sense of value in the product

So as a designer and facilitator of collaborative work events, the Hide concept really stands out for me, and here’s why: 

When getting 40 or 50 people to put their heads together and come up with something brilliant I try to make the session design as unobtrusive as possible while making the group activities as clear as possible. Participants have only what they need to do the task at hand and nothing more. As more information or tools is required, I introduce it and take away that which is no longer necessary (the Hide component).

The other two components (Shrink and Embody) are a bit more of a challenge to apply to a face to face collaborative event (but they were put to good use on the iPod shuffle), but it’s the process of finding a way to apply concepts such as those to face to face sessions that results in innovative new practices in my line of work and pushes the boundaries on what groups can do when working together.

So, I promise a future posting on how I was able to incorporate the “Shrink” component into a session. If the real skill in design is removing as much as possible rather than adding as much as possible, what

Lo Fidelity vs. Hi Fidelity

My practice as an event designer and facilitator is pretty unique. It’s not the typical way of doing business. I’m part of a team that includes an artist, DJ, website designer, photographer…it’s an experience. People come to the events having never been to one before and can’t quite believe the art, music, the pace of work, etc. In that sense, the experience is very new and “cutting edge.”

However, while the method might be cutting edge, the tools are not. We use simple whiteboards with dry erase markers (made by the fine folks at Kinetic Energies), poster boards, foam core, art supplies, etc. This contrast confuses some people, as they figure we should be using SmartBoards that automatically capture the writing, projectors, internet connections, and lots of other “techie” stuff.

The reason we don’t is because we find that all of that neat stuff becomes a distraction from the task at hand. The projectors, PowerPoint, etc. start to mediate the conversations between people and we feel as though it’s our job to provide the simplest possible environment for the right people to have the right conversations.

Welcome to Whitespace

Let me introduce myself. My name is Daniel Rose and I live and work in the bustling metropolis of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. My living/passion (and topic of this blog) is in helping large groups to solve tough, complex problems by providing event design and facilitation so that the collective wisdom of the group can generate sustainable solutions in a rapid way.

Yeah…that’s kind of a mouthful and in subsequent blogs I’ll delve into what all of that means to me and I hope that you’ll take some time to help me define it. For now I’ll touch on the title of the blog, ie. Whitespace.

Inspired by my good friends at Sente Corporation and Innovation Labs, I’m very intrigued by the idea that by getting diverse opinions and viewpoints together to tackle complex issues, the process of different knowledge sets and assumptions coming together and mixing can be the spark of innovation. That space between people is the whitespace. (Thanks to my friend Lisa Sorsa for sketching out the graphic above.) By creating opportunity for whitespace to exist, interesting conversations can occur, novel ideas can be combined and there is real potential for breakthrough ideas to happen.

The inclination in the corporate or not for profit sectors in North America is to pare down participation in meetings because it seems intuitive that the more opinions you have at the table, the less likely you are to reach consensus. While “consensus” will be the topic for a future post, my belief is that if breakthrough and innovation is the goal, there will be a greater possibility of that occurring if there is a large, diverse crowd contributing to the effort.

 Of course, it takes great skill and experience to generate and focus that energy towards valuable, tangible business outcomes and that’s where I come in!

Rather than having a discussion about “out of the box” thinking, I gently suggest to clients that what they really want is to expand the size of the box they’re playing in and by including other people, the whitespace is increased and opportunity for breakthrough innovation increases as well!