Workplace Design Impact on Innovation: Anne Loehr Interviews David Craig

Innovation is the key to an organization’s survival. The world is rapidly changing so having a team that can think creatively and develop new solutions to continually evolving problems is invaluable for any organization.

How can workplace design contribute to innovation?

To explore this topic, I interviewed workplace design expert David Craig, SVP of CannonDesign New York and head of CannonDesign’s global Workplace Strategy Practice.

To see me interview David Craig, follow this link. On this video, we discuss three workplace “must haves” to impact company culture. Then, David names three quick ways for organizations to ramp up innovation with workplace design adjustments. Lastly, we end the interview wondering how workplace designs vary region to region. You can read my first post on this topic here.

Below you will find valuable insight from David Craig on increasing the creativity of teams by using workplace design as a tool.

Anne Loehr: Recently Belle Beth Cooper wrote a piece called, The Science Behind Your Ideal Work Environment, where she focused on the brain and the ideal environment for creativity. She reports thatambient noise levels, warm temperatures and separate, messy desks are beneficial elements in increasing creativity.

1. First, do you think it’s possible for workspace design to incorporate these findings?
   

David Craig: Absolutely. I haven’t had a chance to read the book yet, but I’m familiar with the idea that background chatter and a degree of visual messiness can stimulate creative thinking. In my view, creativity also requires the ability to remove yourself from routine ways of thinking. That’s hard in many organizationsbecausepeople often don’t have time (they’re buried in their routine) and they see the routine all around them. Having the flexibility and time to stop what you’re doing and leave the space you’re doing it in is important.

2.   Second, if workplaces are able to incorporate these three creativity factors, what would that look like?

David Craig: On the messiness front, I’m not sure how important it is for the messiness to be intelligible or not. I’m guessing a messy pile of books is better than a messy pile of trash. In any case, I think the best thing might be to create a messy (or at least dynamic and expressive) group environment versus a messy individual environment, so I’m imagining a workplace with a lot of shared whiteboards that aren’t habitually erased every time someone is done with them. On the ambient noise front, I think openness with white noise is critical. I’ve seen studies suggesting that unintelligible chatter (what you would hear in the background in a café) is best for creativity and is definitely less distracting than intelligible speech. White noise reduces intelligibility, but interestingly, it encourages people to talk, generating the chatter. Without it, even open environments can be deathly silent.

Anne Loehr: When it comes to designing a workplace that enhances creativity, are there certain things that work better for certain generations? For example, might Baby Boomers react the same way to an open office plan as Millennials do?

David Craig: I don’t have any first-hand experiences here, but your ability to manage and take advantage of a chaotic environment (e.g., one with lots of background noise and messiness, for example), depends on the environment you were raised in, and I’m guessing Millennials grew up with more distraction and multi-tasking than other generations did. Hence, I could imagine that chaotic environments would be more effective for the younger generations.

That said, one of the earliest findings about innovation in workplaces was that diversity of social ties – particularly diversity in terms of crossing generations – predicts how innovative a group will be. The thinking is that innovation depends on being exposed to ideas and perspectives that you wouldn’t otherwise have. Hence workplaces that isolate generations by treating them differently may be counterproductive. The best workplaces might be those that provide a common ground that brings generations together.

Anne Loehr: If you could name three quick ways for an organization to ramp up innovation with adjustments to their workplace design, what would they be?

David Craig: The following would be good for stimulating everyday innovation, provided they’re coordinated with process and cultural changes:

• Provide the means to display thinking and work in progress. The simplest way to do this is to put up lots of shared whiteboards or even better paint walls with whiteboard paint. It’s important that they these surfaces be visible to the group – e.g., scattered throughout team “neighborhoods” – but not so public that people are inhibited from using them.
• Create a stimulating area to work away from the desk so that people can use environmental change to spark a cognitive change. A café workspace could be good for this, for example, as long as people have the ability and permission to leave their desk and work there from time to time.
• Offer quiet or calm places people can escape to. Creativity can be spurred by stimulation, but breakthroughs may also require incubation periods where experiences are consolidated into memories. Research has shown that something as simple as a quiet walk in the park enhances the consolidation process.

Anne Loehr: In your Fast Company article you stick by your statement that an open office plan creates more collaboration and better ideas, no matter how annoying it may be. Have you seen any organizations making the switch away from an open office plan or has it been all media hype? What types of organizations are most resistant to the open plan?

David Craig: Actually, I don’t think all open plan environments are better for all organizations. Openness has value when people need to work together, and even in successful workplaces openness may only be one of many key elements and characteristics.

In my experience, organizations that are most resistant to open plan tend to be those where people are sensitive to status. Sometimes that has to do with the culture, but more often it’s tied to professional status. Doctors, lawyers or PhDs, for example, may feel they deserve a degree of autonomy and are even above the workplace fray. Many at this level come from academia or private firms, and even if they’ve joined a corporate organization they may not feel it’s really part of who they are. Taking them out of offices and putting them in the open plan may threaten their identity.

Any company that’s been rewarding people with space for years will find it similarly hard to shift to open plan. If there’s a real need to change the way people communicate and you think openness will help, a few things will be important. First, you have to demonstrate the need. Show employees evidence that there’s a problem and that it’s related to the work environment. Second, you have to show them that the new environment will be designed around people who need to communicate (which means showing them more than just an open environment). Third, you need to talk about cultural change. If space changes threaten the existing value system, you need to shift that value system.

Stay tuned for next week when David Craig discusses how workplace design impacts knowledge-based productivity. In relation to workplace design, he discusses the drawbacks of multitasking, the impact of electronic distractions on productivity, virtual vs. in person communication, and more.

Can you think of a time where you felt particularly creative in your workspace? What are some features of that particular workplace design? How about a workplace design that hindered your ability to be innovative? I’d love to hear about it. Leave a comment below, send me a tweet, or email me.

 

Photo of Einstein’s desk was taken by Jacob Harris.