Meaningful Returns

If you’ve ever wondered how we got to this point, a recent podcast from NPR’s Planet Money has an interesting look at the birth of the open office. (“This point” being where the evidence has caught up to what anyone who’s worked in an open office has known all along: they are the bane of productive work.

The official beginning of the open office apparently dates back to the 1950s in Germany, but in the US at least, the moment it became engrained in the culture was in 1994. The podcast is short and entertaining, but the gist of it is this: Jay Chiat, CEO of Chiat-Day (the creators of Apple’s Think Different advertising campaign) claimed he had a vision of a new sort of workspace, hired a famous Italian architect named Gaetano Pesce, and gave him one incredibly vague instruction–he wanted an office without paper.

The finished product was admittedly a nightmare, but it caused enough of a buzz that these open offices began showing up all over the place. And what stood out to me was simply this: without a single shred of credible evidence in favor of it, the open office became the de facto office setup in this country.

The status quo is a weird thing. Sometimes its a useful evolutionary shortcut that enables us to survive without thinking too much. But other times it’s just a stumbling block on the way to doing great things. The key is to be open to accepting what the evidence lays before you, to hold tightly to the end goal rather than the means you’re emotionally tied to.