schneiderism

The video above is an interview with Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners that I found at a newish and excellent blog named Life in Perpetual Beta. I found this blog via David Armano’s Logic+Emotion, a blog I have followed for some time and greatly enjoy. There are several great videos with individuals like Jim and David on Life in Perptetual Beta that seek perspective on things like creativity, design thinking, and authenticity. In the interview Jim talks about some of the consistent qualities he has experienced with creative people, including himself. Things like short attention spans, starting strong and finishing weak, and the all-consuming enthusiasm for discovery and inspiration. These qualities, to his point, are to be embraced as it is this make-up that sets creativity in motion. This would be absolutely consistent with my own experience not only working with exceptionally creative personalities and designers that I absolutely respect, but also with myself. It takes a different mindset to forage for inspiration and ideas than it does to methodically and consistently move something along. Process is not the mother of invention, after all.

Another great point revealed in the interview is that within any creative enterprise there is always a tension between the work that we are doing and the work that we want or need to be doing. Often, as an enterprise has success and grows there is a implied need to take on work that does not necessarily move the organization forward, but that helps to pay the bills, so to speak. Coudal gets this, and probably has learned a great deal from surfing this tension. In his interview he presents three questions to ask yourself about an opportunity:

1. Will we make money from this.
2. Will we be proud of our work.
3. Will we learn something new along the way.

Three simple, sharp questions that get to the root of value creation and that can focus you on those opportunities for creativity, innovation, and invention. Three simple questions that can focus you on what you should be doing.

A fantastic line from the interview:

“I have a short attention span, but I pay really good attention in those short periods.”

Jim Coudal

Bear with the shameless self-promotion for a moment while I make a point.

Yes, that is me on the cover of a local commercial real estate publication. It came out last month and something about the interview with me inspired them to put me on the cover. Good times. The point of the interview was a conversation about how the modern workplace has changed, and will continue to change, and how my firm is beginning to experiment on itself to navigate this change and determine those workplace innovations that work, and those that do not. This is as much about organizational dynamics and ergonomics as it is about technology and communications, and it is part of a much larger exercise we are undertaking to develop a comprehensive program and master plan for our office and studio environments. By 2010 my firm will be in a new environment, and ideally one that we own, and this programmatical exercise will inform the type of space we ultimately need to occupy. It is also the inception of a longer term plan to treat our entire office environment as a laboratory, to experiment on ourselves, and be able to model different workplace innovations for our clients by using our own environments as proof of concept. Currently, we have an experimental area of our office, featured in the magazine, that is a studio dedicated to one comprehensive project, and we have used this studio to co-locate the central project team of 8-10 individuals. The space is flexible, surrounded by collaborative tools, and emphasizes the immediacy of communication. It is not private, it is not perfect, but it is a valuable experiment and the quality of work from this team has greatly benefited as a result.

The point that I want to make is that without having experienced and experimented with workplace innovations and organizational concepts it is impossible to appropriately represent them to our clients. For lack of a better expression, this would be “walking the talk.” A significant focus on this blog has been the concept of “the workplace of the future”, but what does that really mean? It means an environment that is about the work to be done and not about place. It means that substantial thought goes into the way an organization works, into its culture and business strategy, and how a work environment can manifest in support of these key aspects. It means that the conservative notion of office organization and layout is not only increasingly irrelevant, but actually counterproductive to the longer term success of a company. At its core, this is the physical embodiment within the environments that we create of superior occupant quality, of environments that are supportive of work and task while also enhancing health, well-being, and ultimately productivity. We know that an environment that we create today may be challenged anywhere from one to five years from now, that is how fast organizations and the markets within which they operate can change. The challenge to us is how we build in flexibility and anticipate this change so that we create value on behalf of our clients that allows their work environments to grow and change in advance of the demands of their markets and their people, without sacrificing the occupant quality of the environment. This is workplace innovation, and at its core involves a thorough understanding of organizational dynamics, occupant quality, product design, communications, materials technology, cultural analysis, and of an organization’s long term business strategy. These are the catalysts to the creation of successful work environments, and it mandates a rethinking of legacy notions of office and a focus on innovations that begin with an individual person’s needs and experiences as they relate to the physical environment.