The point of this post is to summarise some of my early research for a book on the companies, the work practices, technologies and places of work of what I describe as the Learning Economy. To aid my investigation, this is also the subject of the LinkedIn group of the same name here.
The point of this post is to summarise the findings of some of my early work, which you can find at these links:
The learning organisation: An interview with Robert Hillard of Deloitte Consulting
Losing fiefdom in the transition to Activity Based Working
Can you compete against the minimum viable office?
Designing for creativity attracts better workers
The challenge of instituting collaborative workplace designs that work across the shop
How will the Learning Economy transform your workplace?
Google wants you to use its minimum viable office. How will you cope?
How might your property be put to better strategic use?
My interest in the facilities and practices that spur organisational learning stems from reading “systems thinker” Peter Senge’s seminal pre-internet The Fifth Discipline (Doubleday, 1990), in which Arie De Geus, former corporate planning director with Royal Dutch Shell, was quoted as saying: “The rate at which organisations learn may become [their] only sustainable source of competitive advantage.”
In my view, the relentless march of social technologies into the workplace, and the necessary adjustments in practices they both demand and encourage, indicate that we are entering an age in which the need for companies to compete on their abilities to learn is becoming a reality. Further, it is born out by my research.
The idea that greater creativity and reduced speed to market for new products can be won by adapting office space to “activity-based working” (ABW) is beginning to capture the convictions of Australian chief executives and their boards, hence the uptake in their workplaces by Commonwealth Bank, Suncorp, Woolworths, AMP, and now several others.
One of my posts, here, directly supports the claim that accelerating the process of innovation by according it the right kind of workspace results directly in getting new products to market more quickly. And this result comes from a distinctly traditional, old-school company needing desperately to lift its game against new highly digitised competitors yapping at its ankles.
(I’ve also worked in the Darling Harbour facility of the CBA for six months a little while back, and the potential for achieving a pronounced pace of innovation was markedly different than in any other workspace of my experience.)
In ABW, there is also a potential property-efficiency dividend, as with more workers now working off-site and with mobility being the way of the future, there may be less demand overall for office space, and therefore, according to a developer friend, lower demand for new office blocks. However, there is a growing demand for space which is focused on need and which offers occupiers the capacity to optimise, or even shed, space usage through new fitouts.
At the same time, workplace social technologies are changing the ways in which work is done – in those companies which choose to adapt to their ways. This is by no means a given. However, optimising the use of those tools, as they require a new mix of collaborative spaces, can only be achieved by undertaking the commensurate workspace redesigns. Not to do this is akin to putting your feet on the brake and the accelerator at the same time. Workplaces must simply adapt to the ways in which companies engage the emerging technologies.
Thus, commercial property developers, if their products are to remain relevant, must construct buildings and spaces which offer the potential for such adaptability, and which accurately reflect the actual uses, and managerial aspirations, to which buildings are to be applied. In buildings, as in management and most other walks of life, both the beliefs and fashions of the moment play a highly influential role in what gets built and bought.
In this evolving mix, agents must be able to tell the right story to companies looking for new space, and to portray an understanding of what is really going on in the world of work. They will miss no opportunity to steer those seeking new office space to the most appropriate, premium, stock if they understand that the story is deeper than the stock itself.
Large property owners, such as the property trusts, don’t want to be sitting on stock that is irrelevant to the times, and are therefore likely to wish to adapt their spaces to fit ABW when they decide to bring their office properties up to date.
As for the trusts, a friend who is consulting to one told me that the pension funds are growing increasingly dissatisfied with the returns the property trusts are returning on their investments in them, and are seeking new ways to grow revenue and derive new streams of income. A fear of holding irrelevant stock will likely trigger their interest in refits which can adapt to the steadily growing trend of ABW-style working. Admittedly, at this point, this is not a subject in which I have expertise or inside knowledge, so I must examine this further as I proceed.
A final but important point, which is reflected in this piece is that the expectations of those entering the workplace are changing, and that to attract the best new workers it will be important to offer the most attractive, collegial workplaces, hence creating the demand that triggers all the way up the chain from occupiers to agents to owners to developers to investors.
There’s a lot to bite off for all parties in this equation. Only one thing seems sure, and that is that the slowest to act will be the least likely to benefit.
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About this post
We aim to get developers and property owners a better return on their built space. But, if they are to offer competitive workplaces attractive to the companies and workers of the future, commercial property owners and developers can not ignore the inexorable trend towards Activity Based Working, nor that which engages social workplace technologies in new business thinking, practices and workspace designs. As architects, we aim to play a part in this transformation. To this end, I am conducting unique, proprietary research, some published here, for a book about the use of social workplace technologies and workspace design in accelerating organisational learning and innovation. (I studied this for my master’s degree.) For more, if you wish to participate in the learning, please also visit the early-stage LinkedIn Learning Economy group.
Please also read:
The learning organisation: An interview with Robert Hillard of Deloitte Consulting
Losing fiefdom in the transition to Activity Based Working
Can you compete against the minimum viable office?
Designing for creativity attracts better workers
The challenge of instituting collaborative workplace designs that work across the shop
How will the Learning Economy transform your workplace?
Google wants you to use its minimum viable office. How will you cope?
How might your property be put to better strategic use?
