Six rules to optimize the design of the workspace as platform
In our new workplace planning and design model, what we call “The New Technical Workplace©️,” we look at five key considerations that shape a different kind of place and space for companies doing technical work — Product, Project, Presence, Proximity and Platform. Each of these is illuminated almost as a manifesto, or a set of guidelines that yield a remarkably different kind of performance compared to companies in conventionally-defined workspaces.
The last of the five is especially interesting. It is, in fact, an essential component that activates and amplifies the other four.
We came to the concept of platform from the technology space where it is the holy grail for many. The platform is the technology-based business model that brings two or more groups together in efficient exchange — the providers of a thing or service and its buyers. Startup teams pitch “the ebay of x” or “the Uber of y” evoking the power and potential in the platform concept.
We propose thinking of the workspace as the physical manifestation of the platform promise. Why, we ask, shouldn’t landlords (or corporations or developers) provide space that is uniquely attractive to the potential users of that space? Why shouldn’t occupiers seek space that augments and even amplifies their business or purpose? Why isn’t a floor of a building envisioned as a tech platform, rich with the resources that both producers and buyers, both developers and occupiers, both corporations and departments find compellingly attractive and efficient?
How would this work?
One way of visualizing the platform of The New Technical Workplace would be to derive rules as lessons learned from the errors made by the great technology platform designers, to test a translation into positive physical terms the negatives of failed digital platforms.
In his article, “Platform Failure: Why the Mighty Fail” (http://platformed.info/platform-failure-why-the-mighty-fail/ and https://hbr.org/2016/03/6-reasons-platforms-fail) Marshall van Alstyne and his colleagues suggest six errors —
1. Failure to optimize “openness”
2. Failure to engage developers
3. Failure to share the surplus
4. Failure to launch the right side
5. Failure to put critical mass ahead of money
6. Failure of imagination
Here’s a reformulation of those errors as rules or principles for a new kind of workplace.
- Optimize “openness”
When we speak of the “open office,” we are speaking a different language than used in groupspeak about the office.
Openness is a term that we use when we speak of the transparency of an organization, the visibility of its values, the speed and efficiency of information exchange, the clarity of organizational culture, the evidence of team commitment to solving complex problems, the richness of its creativity and the value of its innovations.
While we believe in the power of open space, our interest in the form of the office is in this quality of organizational and operational openness that activates and amplifies the achievement of the purpose of an organization.
When designing physical space, we are aware of the careful balance that Van Alstyne expresses. “If platforms are too closed, keeping potentially desirable participants out, network effects stall; if they’re too open there can be other value-destroying effects, such as poor quality contributions or misbehavior of some participants that causes others to defect.”
2. Engage project managers
When we reference “Projects” in our framework, we note that the organizational chart is dead. It is in people’s assignment to a project where they find meaning and engage with each other.
When people speak of the 70% of the people in the workforce who are “disengaged,“ we believe they are speaking of organizations managing around the abstractions of departments and functions.
Project leaders, however, have goals to achieve. Appropriately expressed, those goals evoke commitment and inspire energy from others who envision a way to contribute their talents to the greater potential of the team.
Project managers are critically aware of the resources they have to accomplish their mission. When the workplace is a barrier, the most successful managers find a better place, sometimes leaving the company for the organization that better understands the resourcing and experiences of work.
Van Alstyne’s illustration is a good one: “It’s not enough to open the door and set the table. Successful platforms engage in platform evangelism, providing developers with resources to innovate, feedback on design and performance, and rewards for participation. Think of it this way: To host a successful event you must plan carefully, invite the right people, have the right food, and manage competition with the party next door. If Android throws a Hawaiian luau with a five-course feast, free travel, and attendees get to meet Robert Downey Jr. and Sandra Bullock the same night that Johnson Controls offers crackers in Cleveland and asks attendees to cover their own costs, which party will developers attend?”
Our argument is that corporate real estate and facility managers need to become event planners. Project managers are their customers.
3. Share the surplus
The most valuable platforms succeed through powerful network effects.
We like quoting a portion of the subtitle to David Weinberger’s book, Too Big To Know. Speaking of the power of networks, he evokes the concept that “the room is the smartest person in the room.”
We are getting closer to that achievement as sensors move into the workplace, managing building systems by sensing the occupancy and intensities of utilization of space. In those spaces, there is also a tremendous amount of digital exhaust, offering an opportunity to capture and reformulate the knowledge expressed and ideas developed in that space (the whiteboard with the note “save” on it?). Smart buildings now have the potential of getting even smarter.
In the simplest visualization of the use of that data is the information that provides insight about the spaces that work best for people in their quest to achieve their goals. Of course, none of that data is relevant if companies have standards related to entitlements and manage by assigning people to seats. Choice is the path to value.
When the workspace becomes “lighter” and enables reconfiguration by its teams, some very valuable data, the “surplus” to be shared, can inform the next project team and enable the smart room concept.
4. Balance the sides
Our argument is not to compel developers, landlords and corporations to spend out of balance with returns. It is, however, to request their consideration of concepts of value outside of conventional real estate metrics.
Almost every one of our project begins with a request that evokes tired workplace metrics — square feet per person, dollars per share foot, etc. But these metrics are not at all about the purpose of the organization and its space needs.
The purpose of a corporate facilities project is not to minimize the cost of space. The purpose of the project is to advance the purposes of the organization and the benefits it brings to its people and those it intends to serve. An effective and valuable real estate platform moves providers to new metrics aligned with the people and organizations it wants to attract. Occupiers will achieve more if they measure providers in their own terms.
5. Put critical mass in front of money
Engagement in an organization is a measure of the value it delivers to its customers. The critical mass of engagement is achieved in the experiences people have with the quality of the workspace.
Benchmarks and standards introduce friction into the work. People spend more time considering the comparatives of space than the purposes of their work. Status achievement is not goal achievement except in the most personal and political terms.
Authentically aligned weight the purpose of the organization, the workspace attracts and engages people who see their purpose achievable there. The workplace designed by benchmarked metrics instead leads to “evaporative cooling” — people depart for places that remove friction and support purpose.
6. Engage imagination in the design of the workspace
Van Alstyne’s observation is that “the most egregious platform failure is to simply not see the platform play at all. It is also one of the hardest for traditional firms to avoid. Firms guilty of this oversight never get past the idea that they sell products when they could be building ecosystems.”
Let’s put that in real estate terms. Developers, landlords and CRE functions that sell their buildings as products miss the “platform play.” When those who provide places and spaces that support and nurture platform ecosystems, the leading organizations of the future will want to be there. Higher value, the “surplus,” will be gained by both.
The imagination that generates the concepts for the next generation workplace for those engaged in technical work, The New Technical Workplace, begins with a new lexicon that rejects conventional metrics-based selections and embraces engagement-intended principles as the core of the design brief.
To paraphrase Van Alstyne, when a building enters the market, real estate professionals who focus on metrics are not just measuring the wrong things, they’re thinking the wrong thoughts.
