
How to Build Culture Through Office Design - aashaysanghvi
https://www.bureauwork.com/blogs/office-management/how-to-build-culture-through-office-design
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RickS
> Culture is the only long-term competitive advantage an organization can
> bring to bear,

wut.

these guys are trying to sell office furniture. but let's pretend for a second
that this article _isn't_ in bad faith:

I have yet to meet an office layout designed for a cultural principles that
delivers anything but a hollow approximation of the desired outcome.
"Collaborative spaces" in every company I've seen feel fake as hell. It's
usually difficult to be undistracted and private, alone or with your group.

Short of a large, glass-walled, soundproof conference room dedicated to one
team, I have found no "manufactured" environment that reliably elicits
excellent work.

I'm pretty sure the best office design for culture is "here's a big room. you
decide who comes in here. here's some budget for furnishings" and then you
figure it out as you go and let the trajectory of the work dictate the
trajectory of the space.

\---

separate from culturally shaped space, i do find designing for general
happiness to be worthwhile and effective. Plants, views, lighting, etc. But
that's not cultural IMO.

~~~
dsr_
Plants can be cultural signifiers. Do they exist? Are they on exhibit or part
of the background? Are they uniformly distributed? Are they banned? Are they
supplied by the office management? Are they the property of individuals?

~~~
dvtrn
_Leave my Amazon Basics bonzai tree out of this_.

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jdlyga
Culture is very important. I used to work for a series of startups in open
office environments where you're working on Jira tickets close to 100% of your
day. Now, I'm working for a large company with bigger and more private desks
with more downtime. It's expected that you watch programming talks and do
research, and you're given more time to do that. It's a very nice change.
Instead of only plowing away on endless bug fixes, we're improving our skills
and getting better.

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sexyflanders
Although I like a flat org structure I never felt fully comfortable sharing an
open office plan space with my boss nearby. I felt it was hard to have
autonomy with them always within earshot and sometimes interjecting.

~~~
malvosenior
Sharing an open office with anyone is horrible and yeah having your boss right
next to you is even worse. People don't/shouldn't need that much literal
supervision.

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burlesona
If I could “downvote” that site for its obscene margin widths on mobile, I
would.

~~~
0_gravitas
Dear god it's actually one word per line in some places

~~~
Stratoscope
Lucky you. I don't even get one word per line:

    
    
      Culture
      is the
      only
      long-
      term
      competi
      tive
      advanta
      ge an
      organiza
      tion can
      ...
      and
      executio
      n are
      supporti
      ng
      players
      ...
      and new
      challeng
      ers
      emerge
      with
      increasin
      g
      frequenc
      y in our
      ...

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caboteria
> Open layouts with integrated common spaces foster a sense of connection,
> fluidity and creativity among your team members

Wrong:
[https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.201...](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2017.0239)

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wbronitsky
TFA should be called: "How to oppress your employees into doing exactly what
you want"

~~~
commandlinefan
> doing exactly what you want

spending more time maintaining the appearance of doing exactly what you seem
to want than producing any actual tangible value, actually.

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jtms
What kind of furniture, I mean culture, produces a readable web experience on
mobile?

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MrTonyD
What is interesting is that most of Schein's book was based on Steve Jobs (the
original draft was almost all Steve, but got rewritten to emphasize Steve much
less and other executives much more when Steve complained that the book was
just about him. But even when using other executives for his examples, Schein
was usually talking about Steve.) And at the time of that book we did none of
the things in the article. Really, the book is excellent, but hard to
interpret well. If I hadn't been working there at the time I would probably be
misinterpreting it too.

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eplanit
Advertisement.

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musicale
Offices with actual doors are better for work that requires concentration
without interruptions.

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readhn
open plan offices don’t live up to the hype–in fact, the idea that they
promote interaction is dead wrong.

~~~
maxxxxx
This should be repeated a thousand times. Open office hinders real
collaboration.

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josephby
Crap. Open office cargo cult.

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purplezooey
A freaking office with a freaking wood door. For everyone. Not difficult.

