Going Bedouin at Work
14 Aug 2006
Where do you
work? Many of my colleagues don’t spend much time in their offices.
They are modern-day Bedouins -- working in a variety of different places
and carrying their electronic tools (primarily computer and mobile
phone) with them wherever they go.
In fact,
according to a recent story in BusinessWeek, at any given time,
roughly 40% of a company’s employees are not in the office. Instead,
they are working in a variety of other venues -- with customers or
suppliers, in another office, working at home or meeting at a local
coffeeshop.
I’m part of this
office evacuation. I do much of my work out of my home office, and am
usually at Babson only a few days a week. I’ve had my share of business
meetings at Starbucks and Panera Bread.
Almost-free Wi-Fi at Café Ari in New York
As a result, the
personal offices and cubicles of these
Bedouin-type workers are often empty and
unused. This mismatch between space and use presents both challenges
and opportunities to companies of all sizes.
For most
professional service businesses, the cost of office space is the second
biggest expense, after people. I was recently talking to Marilyn Minot,
an expert on law firm management, and she estimated that the cost of
space was between 12 and 15 percent of the total operating budget for
most law firms. That’s a lot of cost
saving opportunity.
While existing
office designs may have outlived their functions, there are a number of
issues with change. For example:
·
People like bumping into each other. Studies have documented
that creative work benefits from this kind of unplanned interaction –
there truly is a “water cooler effect;”
·
There are certain days and times when everyone needs to be in the
office, (staff meetings, for example), and most offices are sized for
those few days. Reducing office sizes below this peak creates tensions
and ill-will on the few days when too many people all are in the space
at the same time.
·
Any kind of change in the office environment is expensive and uncertain.
Consider the
cautionary tale of Chiat/Day, the advertising agency. Back in 1995,
Chiat/Day’s success resulted in more employees than the company’s Los
Angeles office could hold. So it introduced an office-sharing system
called “hoteling.” This required employees to “check-in” to a concierge
and be assigned a space. The consequences were disastrous.
“We thought people would want to be at home, but they ended up wanting
to be at work. People love to be together, … and everyone wants their
own desk. Morale definitely slipped because of [hoteling].”
Carol Madonna, Director of Office Services, TBWA Chiat/Day, 2004
The company
abandoned hoteling in 1998. Its subsequent office space, called
“Advertising City,” features dedicated space for each worker, whether
the worker chooses to occupy it or not.
Newer firms,
without the legacies of office space, may be the most fertile areas for
new office layouts. As these firms grow, many of them are rethinking
their need for space. Coghead, for example, is a 20-person Web-based
business applications developer in Mountain View, California. Their
founder and Chief Technology Officer Greg Olsen published his “Recipe
for Going Bedouin” in February 2006:
Src: Greg Olsen
Going Bedouin: One Recipe
Many companies,
like Procter & Gamble or Cisco Systems, are also trying to get their
real estate costs down while at the same time making the space work
better for collaboration. When Cisco Systems undertook this
reconfiguration in 2005, it realized reductions in space costs of 37%,
as well as gaining $2.4 billion in what the company calls “productivity
benefits.”
It seems evident
that the opportunities are there. The question is, how many companies
can overcome resistance to such basic change – change in the office
spaces where we (occasionally) work?
More Information:
-
The
BusinessWeek story on office space was published in their 3 July
06 issue, and is available to subscribers
here.
-
The sad
story of Chiat/Day’s Hoteling misadventure is recounted
here.
-
I did a
recent update on the changing architectures of R&D. That’s
here.
-
The original
“going Bedouin” piece from Greg Olsen, published Feb 06, is
here.
-
An earlier
reference to “Jet-Age” Bedouins is from Pico Iyer in Wired
Magazine, back in Aug 1998. That’s
here.
