my problem with offices.

When people talk about coffee shops these days, the phrase ‘third space’ comes up. A third space, in these situations, means a place outside of work and home, where people feel comfortable spending some of the time in-between that makes up their lives.

An office, on the other hand, is a half-space. Let me explain.

Work, in my mind, comes down to two situations, cycling forever - collaboration and creation.

Collaboration requires getting people in a room, either mentally or physically. It requires a lack of barriers, open communication, discussion, back and forth, and space to document the thinking and talking that’s happening.

Boardrooms are functionally collaboration ghettos. Building a space that cuts off collaboration from the tools and trappings of the actual work, makes no sense to me. Put me in a room to think and generate ideas, but all the tools of creation and research and inspiration are locked away at a desk.

People complain about the Best Animated Feature Oscar, because it immediately removes animation from the rest of the realm of great film. No matter how great the best animated movie of the world is, it’s still the best ANIMATED movie.

Moving collaboration into specific rooms is the same deal. It says, very clearly, that collaboration is another thing, a lesser thing. It’s an evil that businesses think we must endure, but we need to keep it separate from the actual work.

Creation, on the other hand, often requires focus and isolation. Space where one can just lean in and get shit done. For some people, it’s a coffee shop, for others a well lit and well organized desk.

I think that the standard office setup is the ideal space of getting work done for precisely no living human.

And so, the average office manages to ghettoize collaboration, leading to it sneaking out in spurts in a non-ideal environment, usually by talking over cubicle walls, or hallway conversations, or a million emails, replying back and forth.

I humbly suggest the average office completely flip it’s approach.

Have the main working areas focus on facilitating collaboration. Big, open tables, with ad-hoc grouping and seating. Give me plugs, wifi, projectors, displays, anything that actually encourages collaborative work, rather than tolerating it.

And then, instead of only boardrooms or meeting rooms, have ‘work rooms’.

A small room that has enough space for a person, a laptop, a phone, and their notes, to let people bubble up and get stuff done.

The current approach of headphones and hoodies to send the ‘let me do this’ message doesn’t actually work. And it actively encourages avoidance of collaboration.

I understand that there will be important, closed-door meetings. Take them offsite. They generally exist to heighten anxiety in the staff, and lead to a whole bunch of lost productivity as everyone outside the meeting tries to figure out what’s going on.

We treat offices as work-spaces, but build them as demonstrations of professionalism, not as spaces that actually facilitate work.

This bugs me.