Avoid Culture Shock: Measure Twice Cut Once

Customer Discovery Lessons Learned Part 3

We recently completed a rigorous customer discovery program. In four weeks we interviewed 50 industry leaders and corporate insiders, all of whom were generous with their time and passionate about the development of contemporary office environments.

We heard many stories and gained useful insights. This post, the last in the series, will discuss the role of success criteria in the workplace development process. We have also discovered that what we learned is more important now in the age of COVID-19 than ever before.

This article originally appeared in LinkedIn Pulse.

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Close But No Cigar

Early on in the discovery program, Karen, a Product Designer for a web-based service provider, told us, “Better results can be achieved when product managers can bring in numbers, designers can bring in qualitative responses, and then those signals are combined.” Her statement came from the frustration that design should not be at the mercy of data driven processes alone, as trends appeared to indicate. “Good designs should not be the outcome of an A/B test.” Karen believes a good design needs to include elements that can only come from a designer’s years of training and experience. The underlying principles of combining sources of quantitative and qualitative data to establish success criteria should be applicable to any project. Over the course of the discovery program, it became clear that Karen’s perspective about web design also has significance for workplace development.

A 56 employee software company servicing the commercial real estate industry recently established a new headquarters in California. We talked to Ken, who works remotely in New York. He had no direct involvement with planning the new space, but remarked that because transparency is such a core value in his company, he was able to share observations on how the development team finalized the project. Speaking to that value, Ken said that all parties involved had to agree on the substance of the proposal. Once consensus was reached, the proposal was delivered to the COO for final approval. But Ken admitted that, more than anything else, the lease term ultimately drove this development.

“The advantage of data driven workplace strategy is the techniques available for sharing information and making it accessible for analysis”

Meghan, an EVP of a growing start-up, was responsible for the workplace strategy of the company's new offices. Adhering to the principles of Feng Shui was important to her CEO, but Meghan found it hard to find consultants and design teams experienced in the practice. Meghan’s goal for the new workplace was for it to be a comfortable and fun environment. “People should want to come to work,” Meghan said, “it’s necessary for business.” But more than that, the space is intended to impress customers and attract investors. Workplace strategy took Meghan 6 to 12 months to complete. She wanted to get it right. Meghan knew it would be a major undertaking and started early enough to not be at the mercy of leasing cycle deadline pressures. When the workplace strategy phase ended, the design team simply followed Meghan's guidelines and made only minor suggestions.

Before jumping to the conclusion that, “If Meghan can be happy with her workplace strategy, I don’t need to hire an outside consultant, I’ll do it myself!” consider a conversation we had with Howard. Howard is the director of a co-working space that did not employ an architect. Howard made this decision based on his previous experience doing workplace strategy for large organizations. He's sorry now, however, because the space lacks storage and ‘breakout’ rooms for members. Retrofitting the workplace to fix these problems after-the-fact would be very costly. When we asked Howard how he knows when the workplace strategy phase of a project is complete, he said, “While the strategy phase could take a year or more, you always have deadlines you have to meet.”

On the other hand, there are no guarantees for success by engaging outside help, either. Donna participated in planning the office space of a fashion manufacturer she works for. She and other designers in the company provided inputs for the architect. The process ended when everybody accepted the architect's plan and the office principal signed-off on the design. Donna believed the office planning staff and the architect worked together well. When asked about the result, Donna said, “There is not enough storage space. I can't work efficiently because there are items that should be put away blocking access to the conference rooms.”

Success Criteria

These stories appear to illustrate that there are no assurances when designing office space. The question is, can small and medium-sized businesses, especially at early growth stages, avoid mistakes common to workplace strategy decision making using only qualitative data? The answer, of course, is “yes,” if they have effectively merged workplace culture, operational goals, and physical constraints into well-defined success criteria. Aside from Meghan’s experience, each of the workplace strategy teams could have benefitted from Karen’s advice about stakeholders incorporating numerical analysis with qualitative observations. Whether the lead strategist was appointed from within the organization or hired from the outside, none of the workspace strategy teams used analytics. The individuals or teams relied on a subjective understanding of the business and on their past experiences with similar projects. Quantitative data can add an objective dimension that both novices and experts alike can use to more effectively navigate a difficult decision making process.

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The principal advantage of data driven workplace strategy is the assortment of techniques available for sharing information and making it accessible for analysis. For example, tabulated lists of square footage requirements may suffice for team members tasked with financial analysis. But others might need to visualize a broader scope of data by creating graphical dashboards that make it easier to identify values that may have been overemphasized or to help focus on details that need more attention.

And we’ve noticed it’s as important when workplace strategy begins as who is responsible for achieving it. Successful workplace transformations require that business owners come to the realization it’s time to move on from the current workspace as early in the leasing cycle as possible. Ideally, the process should begin 18 to 24 months before the end of the lease term, but at least a minimum of six months. This is critical for two reasons. The first is, design teams need time to acquire and analyze data to provide qualitative cultural insights that will help assure business success. The second is pure economics. Most real estate professionals will tell you, tenants lose any leverage the may have had renegotiating a lease with six months or less before it expires. Developing an effective workplace strategy, identifying suitable location candidates, and arriving at agreeable lease terms all require ample time.

“Design teams need time to acquire & analyze data to provide qualitative cultural insights that will help assure business success”

With a qualitative set of recorded observations that represent business operational and cultural needs, in addition to quantitative assessments of existing physical environments, workplace strategy teams can more easily define work to be done in terms of tangible benchmarks and concrete goals. Deliverables for this process include a set of transformed metrics, or Key Performance Indicators (KPI), that define targets for a host of workplace proposals and provide the context for defining success criteria in final designs. Hard deadlines like lease expiration dates are not eliminated, but the workplace strategy phase is now gated by measurable parameters that remain under the company's control. Once a plan achieves the defined success criteria (Figure 1), the workplace strategy phase is complete and the project can confidently progress to the next stage.

FIGURE 1 — Defined Success Criteria

FIGURE 1 — Defined Success Criteria

Key Performance Indicators

Well-defined success criteria can dramatically improve a workplace development process that might otherwise yield unpredictable results. Aenvision provides tools for small and medium-sized businesses to model office cultures from readily available organizational data gathered from a variety of familiar sources. These models define success criteria based on objective needs. So, instead of making design plans based on subjective criteria like, “we’ve always done it this way,” or “whatever space is available when the lease expires,” development teams can easily propose a wide range of options based on impartial rankings that best satisfy business demands under any number of possible circumstances.

“Proposals are evaluated quantitatively and can be objectively eliminated, reworked, or promoted depending on the outcome”

As an example, a data driven workplace strategy might first quantitatively analyze an existing floor plan to benchmark the current environment according to a number of different vectors, including physical distancing metrics. Stakeholders can then review these results and distill them down to the KPI best suited to their needs. This process objectively describes an archetypal workplace for the business. We call this the Aenvision Business Cultural Model (BCM). These KPI can then be scaled and weighted according to qualitative data acquired either through automated online processes or by unbiased third parties conducting IRL interviews. Entire organizations, or any portion thereof, can participate in workplace experience surveys.

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When workplace strategy teams develop effective business culture models, they decode the keys for measuring success. The order in which qualitative and quantitative data sets are acquired isn’t critical, only that these signals are combined, as Karen suggested. Proposals are evaluated quantitatively against existing success criteria and can be objectively eliminated, reworked, or promoted to the next stage depending on the outcome. The development process is tangible and dynamic. Evaluations happen iteratively and incrementally until workplace strategy teams identify the proposals best suited for optimized new office environments. And it all takes place according to the company's timelines, not for any other reason.

 

Is your business currently defining or redefining a workplace or planning to do so soon? Contact us to learn more today! Can you think of experiences of your own you'd like to add? Please leave a comment or get in touch.

Henry Villadiegoworkplace strategy, Business Culture Model, physical distancing, flex spaceComment