At the end of the day, workplace supports business operations. It’s the place where employees perform the tasks that keep the company operational and earn the company revenues. Done well and everything is a well-oiled machine, done poorly and activities can grind to a halt.
Operations that are running smoothly often perform like a well-practiced orchestra. Everyone knows their cues without needing to reference the conductor. One Action 1 happens, Action 2 immediately follows. When Action 2 is complete, Process 3 kicks in. From Process 3, Report A and B are immediately generated. There’s a tempo to everything that happens that allows for an expected outcome.
When everyone is not on the same page, Action 2 may complete without Process 3 kicking in. Only when a downstream manager yells loudly enough does that process kick in. That could be 30 mins, 2 days or 2 weeks later than it should have. That time delay is the proof of an organization out of sync.
Workplace plays a critical role in how all of this comes about. When people are comfortable in their environment they are more likely to be proactive. Discomfort leads people to worry about themselves and their personal situation ahead of other considerations. Similarly, a well-constructed workplace provides opportunities for people to more easily work together on getting to the outcomes of each step. Whether this is through an open-plan design or through a more traditional office is completely separate from everything else.
Whether this is through an open-plan design or through a more traditional office is completely separate from everything else. It’s simply that the workplace must support the operation. Some companies have built nimble operations that can adapt to any type of environment whereas other companies are much more structured to a single way of working.
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