Let's Take This Open Floor Plan To the Next Level

theodp writes: In response to those of you who are unhappy with your Open Office, McSweeney's has some ideas for taking the open floor plan to the next level. "Our open floor plan was decided upon after rigorous research that primarily involved looking at what cool internet companies were doing and reflexively copying them," writes Kelsey Rexroat. "We're dismayed and confused as to why their model isn't succeeding for our own business, and have concluded that we just haven't embraced the open floor plan ideals as fully as we possibly can. So team, let's take this open floor plan to the next level!" Among the changes being implemented in the spirit of transparency and collaboration: 1. "All tables, chairs, and filing cabinets will be replaced by see-through plastic furnishings." 2. "All desks will be mounted on wheels and arranged into four-desk clusters. At random intervals throughout the day, a whistle will blow, at which point you should quickly roll your desk into a new cluster." 3. "Employees' desktops will be randomly projected onto a movie screen in the center of the office." 4. "You can now dial into a designated phone line to listen in on any calls taking place within the office and add your opinion." Some workplaces might make you question just how tongue-in-cheek this description is.

Comments

Missing the 'why' of it.

[Shoten]

Companies where the open office approach succeeded had something in common: the population of the office chose it for themselves, early on. They had an open office environment because that's how they wanted to work, and because the dynamic that existed between the employees was compatible with it. Then later, a lot of other companies had executives look at both the success of those companies and the lower real estate costs that the model uses, and decided they would "choose" it for their own staff. And that's not quite how it works. It's rather like deciding that your goldfish would be better off in a salt water tank because of how big the fish were in some other tank you saw, and then finding yourself confused as to why the fish all died. Not all cultures are the same, and you can't change the culture by imposing something upon it that is toxic.