Where you are affects what you do

I met up with someone yesterday who had been in the same circles as me for many years, but we had never really talked before.  So I remedied that and met him for lunch and was rewarded with a very interesting meeting of minds.  He made a comment that resonated with me and which I had always considered important and then today I came across an article that discussed the same issue; the importance of environment on outcomes.  The Dyson Centre for Neonatal Care at the Royal United Hospital in Bath has been designed with this idea at its heart, that patients will heal faster in an environment that is conducive to healing.

This is interesting but it is easy to neglect or forget the impact the day-to-day environment has on your team.  If you want them to perform or behave differently, changing the environment is a good way to remind people of this and support the new way of working.  If I am running a strategic meeting, I want people thinking and focusing differently, so I always try to make sure we meet somewhere off-site, wearing different clothes too.  If you are trying to encourage your team to be more efficient, don’t expect this to work, if they are in a cluttered, messy environment; if they don’t have access to the tools they need to do the job.  A friend and very busy office manager was working 10 hours a day trying to stay on top of things and expected to work with a computer that was laggy and unreliable.  If I want to have an important conversation, I usually prefer to do so when walking or driving as I find that moving physically helps us move through the issues.

I know companies like Google have some crazy ideas about environment, but they didn’t get to rule the cyber world by just being wacky.  Boxy conventional places are more likely to support ‘in the box’ thinking.  I realise that office refurbs are expensive but that doesn’t stop you using off-site facilities for specific purposes, or creating a particular room that helps people focus more.

Resources:

1. Gizmodo

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 26th, 2014 at 09:48 and is filed under Business Change, Hints, Tips & Techniques, Personal Change. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.