How 5 Different Work Environments Shaped My Team
From the humble cubicle to the Silicon Valley-beloved open concept, there are a lot of ways to design an office environment — and I’ve worked in just about all of them. One thing I’ve learned along the way? A workplace environment can make or break a team. Done right, it can foster collaboration, kick-start creativity, and even generate empathy. Done poorly, it can crush productivity, create silos, and make you absolutely hate your (work) life. Here’s how five different workplace setups shifted the ways my team worked together, the way I managed, and the level of productivity we achieved, for better or worse.
1. Cramped cubicles — not the hell you might think
Ah, the cubicle, that maligned symbol of workplace monotony that represents all that’s wrong with corporate culture. Or… does it? Hear me out. When I worked on-site at a Slalom client’s office, we were squeezed like sardines into cubes, two-by-two. To anyone spoiled by roomy, open-concept office spaces, this might sound like a particularly sadistic form of torture… but, believe it or not, it actually resulted in one of the most cohesive teams I’ve been a part of.
When you work so closely with someone that your elbows are basically touching all day, you tend to share a lot — and not just your lunch schedules. Collaboration is infinitely easier and more fluid when your teammate is right there, no Outlook meeting requests or conference calls necessary. That kind of proximity breeds compassion, solidarity and empathy… which is the very definition of a great team, no? (Not to mention that, in tight quarters, nothing gets misinterpreted the way it might via email. Sarcasm translates far better IRL.)
2. Pods
Email marketing agency Silverpop was rife with pod people. No, not those pod people — employees were arranged by teams, with four cubes to one general pod area. Inside our little bubble, we had our own culture. We were loud. We goofed off together. But we also kicked ass at our jobs.
Every morning, we’d roll our chairs to the center of our pod and kick off the workday with what we called the Breakfast Club, when we’d talk about all the things we needed to accomplish that day. We were in close proximity and constant communication; all it took to scope out someone’s work was a “hey” and a swift kick of your rolling chair to their desk. Oh, and despite our tendency to be loud and rowdy, did I mention that our team was 120% billable? I guess you could say the pod setup worked out pretty well for us.
3. A room of one’s own: the agony and ecstasy of private offices
My first day at Moxie was like something from a movie montage: I had a VP title, a killer outfit, and — for the first time — my very own office. I was killing it. But that excitement wore off when I realized how isolated I was. I couldn’t see what my people were working on; they couldn’t see what I was working on. No one felt like they could casually pop by my desk the way they might if I were out in the open with everyone else. I was, quite literally, walled-in.
I worked hard to change this dynamic, leading regular seated team meetings on the floor of my office. I wanted my team to view my office as a place to camp out, not as my own personal fortress of solitude. The meetings helped a little, but ultimately, it’s tough to change such a deeply ingrained culture: at the end of the day, private offices are simply less approachable. This did a disservice to both myself and my team — I couldn’t lead effectively while being hermetically sealed away in a box, and my team couldn’t access me as freely and readily as they needed to or deserved.
4. Trendy open concept-style, minus the Foosball (or the talking)
Depending on who you ask, open offices are either the ultimate solution for a collaborative, creative office, or the bane of the modern working world. In my open office at Graco, it was the latter — but not for the reasons you might think. Most people who hate open offices cite the obnoxious noise level, distractions, and lack of privacy. For me, a raucous game of ping-pong would’ve been a welcome change from the tomb-like silence that hung over the office all day, every day.
The work space was so quiet that no one collaborated, no one shared what they were working on, and no one had the chance to step away from their work for a ten-minute water-cooler conversation about what happened on Game of Thrones last night. When we did talk about our projects, it felt forced, like we were all speaking foreign languages. For an “open” office, I’ve never felt so surrounded by invisible walls. While an open office might seem like it’ll transform your office culture into a dynamic, energetic, creative startup, it isn’t a magic bullet. And in some cases, it can even make life worse, because a day of sitting at your computer in total silence can feel like an eternity. (I lasted nine months, for the record.)
5. Who needs an office anyway?
Okay, so we’ve established that my preferred work style involves being physically close to my team. Then why in the hell did my company ditch our office and voluntarily transition to being entirely remote? In a nutshell: when you are forced to fit a task into a two hour window between other tasks, you will get that task done. But when you have an eight hour day of sitting in the office, you will almost always use the whole eight hours. You’ll take a long lunch. You’ll talk about politics. You’ll hang out.
That’s what we discovered as a team after two years in an office: the need to be in an office between certain hours caused a productivity suck. (Not to mention the productivity-destroying distraction inherent in things like, say, a leak in the office ceiling or a snack delivery.) It serves a dual purpose of creating a sense of freedom while also forcing you to be efficient, which we are. Plus, nowadays, we regularly camp out at Noni’s when it’s empty in the afternoon and crush our to-do lists together while chowing down on fries. What could be better?
So, what’s next?
“Just another day at the office” takes on new meaning when you think about how deeply these environments affect the way we think, work, and interact with our team. Wouldn’t it be a dream if you could cull the best of these environments, strip away the stuff that doesn’t work, and create a best-of-all-worlds solution?
Sounds impossible, but we think we’re onto something. Stay tuned for more.
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