I was in a workshop recently where the word neighborhood was used a lot. The context was the workplace and how to promote cross-team collaboration. The solution our workplace partner had given us were neighborhoods.
There is nothing particularly unique about thinking of the workplace as a series of adjoined neighborhoods. This thinking goes back a long way and doesn’t even need to be tied in with a modern, open workplan. What got me really thinking about it though was the discussion of it from a colleague perspective and not just a seat layout. The workplace as neighborhood allows for us to think differently about how people work within an office.
I’m going to own up that I’m a bit behind on the most recent thinking on this topic so it’s possible that many in the industry and sitting there laughing about how far behind I am. But I’m guessing there is a large group that, like me, may not have been exposed to this yet. So for their (and my own) benefit I’m going to keep going.
The beauty of neighborhoods (geographically speaking) is that they don’t have firm edges. Maybe today they are bounded by a particular street but the reality is that tomorrow the neighborhood may have crossed over culturally. Neighborhoods are collective groups of people that are located together geographically which causes them to experience many shared events, allowing them to think in similar patterns. Some neighborhoods are big and diverse. Others are small and personal.
In the workplace, the exact same is true. Some groups of coworkers will grow and include 20 or more people that enjoy a shared drink after work every week with an interchanging group of people that are as much socially connected as professionally. Other neighborhoods may only be 2 people that happen to keep the systems on and running and their introverted natures keep them from branching out into something bigger.
Setting up the workplace to encourage soft boundaries that are easily crossed and easily can quickly and efficiently promote a one team mentality. This serves to more readily allow people from different groups to work directly together but also to allow the many micro-cultures in the office to move closer to a single norm.