Jennifer B. Davis
I just received a great little article by Patrick Lencioni, an author who I highly recommend. You can sign up for their newsletter here. It was about the design of office spaces and how it affects employee interaction.

"The biggest problem with traditional office space is what it suggests about the importance of individual versus collective work. By placing greater emphasis on privacy than openness and collaboration, companies unconsciously encourage people to see their work as being primarily individual. Whether we‘re talking about line employees in cubicles or senior executives in walled offices, workers are almost trained to seek out greater separation and space."

What is your favorite work environment? Private in an office, yards or time zones away from your colleagues? In an open environment for collaboration?

About a year ago I worked on a full-scale office redo and I found it very inspiring to visit some office showrooms. I loved Herman Miller, whose innovation is award-winning. They had these great "bee-hive" designed cubes with 120-degree angles (instead of the traditional square 90-degree cubes). If you are interested in this sort of thing, I'd definitely recommend you taking a field trip to a local showroom or checking out their research white papers.


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