-- Intro --
Chris Moriarty
Welcome to Workplace Geeks, the show that scours the world for the very best exciting, innovative research that explores how we work, and how organisations can best support that work. I'm Chris Moriarty. And I'm joined by Ian Ellison on this here journey, a journey that we want as many of you to be part of. So, keep the feedback coming, find and follow Workplace Geeks on LinkedIn, and most importantly, share this pod with someone who you think will enjoy it. Because this is all about building a community as we collectively join the workplace dots from all the different diverse perspectives. Now on the topic of feedback, we've had another piece of mail come through from Ian Baker, who has said apart from how much he enjoyed the episode with Kursty Groves you talked about collaboration, coming together and working on things from different perspectives to broaden workplace thinking. I think this is really pertinent now as a workplace conversation is occurring with so many different disciplines. What research is happening elsewhere in other sectors? Does it translate into workplace as we know it? So in Ellison, hello, by the way, but what do you make of that?
Ian Ellison
Well, what an interesting question from Ian Baker. So, I think if we go back to Episode 1, and what we said, I think within the first five minutes or so about what is workplace, we defined it as a polyseme. And we said that different perspectives are viewing workplace, in entirely meaningful ways from their own mountaintops. And we said, that was a good thing. So first and foremost, it may not translate into workplace as we know it, but I would argue that that's actually part of the value of appreciating that and understanding that.
Now, I'm going to stretch that a bit further, Chris, I'm going to go from my own academic research perspectives into which different disciplines are interested in place and space and why. When I started trying to get a broader handle on who was thinking about workplace beyond facilities management, and workspace design, and that sort of thing. I started by thinking that, okay, this is us, and we hold the knowledge. And there's maybe outliers out there who are also interested in it. And what was really interesting was, the more I looked, the more I realised that we were perhaps the isolated satellite. And I sort of started to get this kind of idea of there's actually a landscape of thinking about workplaces, and then I ended up going, it's more than that there's a constellation of thinking about workplace. Because disciplines like philosophy, sociology, history, geography, architecture, urban design, organisational management theory, OD, the list goes on and on and on in terms of people from the different disciplines who considered over the years.
So, I guess what I'd say is, Mr. Baker, is a valid question. But I really would encourage you to be open to possibilities I know you are. So I'm sort of using you as a kind of a representative for this. But just be mindful that, you know, we're in our own bubble, especially on LinkedIn. And the more we cross the boundaries, we're going to see how valuable workplace is for these different perspectives. So, work hard to explore different language that people use, because it might not be the same terms. And don't forget, this is why we're here, right Workplace Geeks, this is our job. This is what we're about. We're going to try and join those dots for you.
Chris Moriarty
Lovely stuff.
And if any of you listening, have got any questions, comments, thoughts, or research recommendations, you can email us at hello@workplacegeeks.org. And some of you have been in touch with a very important question, which was where was the Pinder Ponder in the last episode? Well, James was away relaxing. So, we didn't want to bother him. But he's back this week, and we will certainly be bothering him later on for his thoughts on the interview we're about to have so Ian on that note, what we got lined up for today's show.
Ian Ellison
Right. So I'm super excited, Chris.
So, do you remember you sort of said the methods bit of research was sometimes a bit turgid? And do you remember that you've already picked up a bit of flack for that so far?
Chris Moriarty
Yes, I do.
Ian Ellison
Okay, well, I want to say and this is a bit of a weird way to start this but this paper, I think, is a bit of a gateway drug for you, right? It's a gateway drug to accessible, fascinating and super relevant workplace research where the methods are most definitely not turgid, are actually super creative, and really, really clever.
So, what we've got today is we've got a paper by Green and Myerson from 2011 called space for thought, designing for knowledge workers. Now, before we get to who we're going to be speaking to on the show, this paper was awarded ‘Outstanding Paper’ at the Literati Network Awards for Excellence in 2012. Two authors to this Catherine green, Jeremy Myerson, Catherine Green was co author. She was also the lead researcher and hands up we put the feelers out. But we weren't able to get in touch, who we were able to get in touch with was and who agreed to come and speak to us was Jeremy Myerson and I am chuffed to bits about that Chris, Jeremy Myerson Professor Emeritus, long career with all sorts of prolific outputs. I'm gonna say this kind of slightly boldly but workplace royalty as far as I'm concerned, we've talked about Frank Duffy before Kursty Groves mentioned Franklin Becker over in the States. She also mentioned Jacqueline Fisher from Canada, there are some figures who have influenced thinking for years and years and years in the workplace sector. And Jeremy Myerson is certainly one of them. And that's partly because of the role he played out of the Royal College of Art at the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Research, which he's going to talk about.
So if I was gonna say, Chris, that you wanted to learn about the places and spaces that people work in, and I was gonna say that you can't send a survey, you can't ask 20 questions, you can't give people 20 sets of tick boxes, what you can have is one grey box to use as your tool to gather data and understand what would you say about that?
Chris Moriarty
I'd say you're mad. Mr. Ellison, you're mad?
Ian Ellison
Well, this is why I'm so excited about this. Because this, I think this this episode, and this paper in particular, really demonstrates the power of both qualitative research and also visual research methods to really get more of what workplace is really about for organisations.
Chris Moriarty
While that's let's dive right in.
-- Interview –
Chris Moriarty
Hi, Jeremy. Welcome to the Workplace Geeks podcast. Before we get going, perhaps give us a little bit of background on yourself the work you've done that what you're doing before we go into the paper itself.
Jeremy Myerson
Yes. Well, hello, I'm Jeremy Myerson. I'm Professor Emeritus at the Royal College of Art, I co-founded the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design and the RCA. And for 16 years was its director. I'm also a visiting Professorial Fellow at the University of Oxford. And I run WORKTECH Academy, which is a global knowledge platform, looking at how we'll work tomorrow. So, I'm very much active in the world of workplace design and research.
Ian Ellison
The Helen Hamlyn Center has been on my radar for years, principally because you have, it seems that the centre has a very wide-ranging interest in looking at work from different angles for different reasons.
So as much as we're about to talk about a paper, which is very much about knowledge worker, and workstyles. I've seen outputs from the centre, for example, to do with ageing workforces, and how physically and socially we need to think about them. I've seen all sorts of interesting things. But the other thing I've seen with you, Jeremy is, you do really creative research. It's not necessarily formulaic, it's not necessarily run of the mill, you seem to find fascinating ways to explore things from different angles.
Jeremy Myerson
I have always been aware that as a researcher in this field, I'm in a school of Art and Design. And therefore you, you know, you put on different spectacles, if you like, in the way that you approach your research. So, we have always seen our role in relation to workplace as to try and create a more human centric work environment, we're particularly interested in issues of inclusion, diversity, psychological comfort, you know, actualisation, you know, identity, all of those kinds of issues. And what we have tried to do over many years, and we had a research group called Work and City within the Helen Hamlyn Center for Design, we tried to bring fresh processes of enquiry. And in the paper, we're going to discuss there’s a drawing technique, which I don't think you will find amongst researchers in other universities, but it's just the particular artistic environment in which we are operating.
Historically, if you look at the workplace industry, it's been viewing the office as a technical construct. So, they apply technical considerations, mathematics, engineering, and they see the office as something approaching an engineering puzzle, that if you tighten the bolts, you know it will go faster kind of thing. And we have always rejected that position. We understand the mathematical and engineering aspects of the office. But the people who go and work in these places are not machines. They're human beings. And therefore, we were always in our research advocates for the user.
And I suppose I should say a little bit about the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design. It's endowed by the Helen Hamlyn Trust, to work with industrial partners and with academic partners to advance a people centric, inclusive approach to design. That's the broad generic mission. And within that, we carved out three research spaces. One is to do with aging and disability, the inherent frailties of aging. One was to do specifically with healthcare, we did a lot of design research in in the clinical space. And the third was Work and City, which was all about working life, and bringing a more human centric approach to the places and spaces in which people work.
Chris Moriarty
Thanks, Jeremy. So we're here today to talk about your paper that you co-wrote with Catherine Green ‘Space for Thought: Designing for Knowledge Worker’s. So I wonder just before we dive into some of the bits that I know that Ian and I are very interested in, just give us an overview of that paper, you know, what it was about and what it aimed to explore, and some of the kind of headline findings, I guess.
Jeremy Myerson
So this piece of research was conducted in 2008/09. So it's, you know, it's quite a long time ago. But already, themes around knowledge work were very prevalent in the workplace. And people talked about knowledge workers, but they talked about knowledge workers generically as though they were one homogenous mass. And of course, we know that people behave very differently in the office, and they have different tasks and roles and intrarelationships with other people. So we wanted to do a piece of research that was in a sense a segmentation study. Could we find some typologies within knowledge work? And could we ascribe various patterns of behavior to those typologies? And could we identify them and put them into a framework? That was the purpose of the paper.
And we worked with two organisations, we recruited a user panel. And we did develop a drawing exercise so that hundreds of people in offices could do a very quick sketch for us about their mobility within the office. We did a literature search to start. And we felt that mobility within the space was going to be a determinant of how we developed the typologies. So, what came out of the study, were for typologies the anchor, who, who spent most of their time at the desk in the office, very low mobility, but could be quite senior, a law partner, people coming to them all the time, could be quite junior, a junior administrator, but they're kind of anchored in the office. And then there's a connector. And we all know the type there the needle and the thread of the organisation. They're moving around the space they’re connecting people, they're in and out of meetings. You know they're in the building, because you know, that their jackets on the back of the chair, but you haven't seen them all day, because they're buzzing around the building. There is the gatherer who is 50% in the office building, but 50% out, it could be somebody working with a supply chain, it could be somebody on the road, be a marketing person working with various suppliers. And they have different needs. They're only in the building 50% of the time. And then there's the navigator with the highest mobility of all, and they're a really a visitor to their own office. It could be a medical director of a pharmaceutical company who only comes into the office once or twice a month. And what kind of reception do they get? They’re premium senior people, they often get given the worst seats, you know, next to the printer next to the door or the worst hot desks and we develop these four typologies. And we ascribe various behaviors and mobility patterns to them. Based on all the data that we gathered, and created a narrative in the paper that we really set was just a start. It was a small-scale study. It was it was a qualitative study. There were only 20 interviews in depth for them. We consulted quite widely, both in literature and people through exercise.
And what we were saying to people was actually don't design a generic bland office for a homogenous group. Think about different types of knowledge worker. And the good thing about the paper was that people picked it up and ran with it. They started introducing other typeologies. And I was delighted at this people said to me, oh, ‘Aren't you upset as a researcher? Because they're challenging your typologies?’ And I said, ‘No’, you know, we want people to create new typeologies, we want people to use what we've done in a creative way. It did open a debate about how you segment knowledge worker behavior in the workplace. So, in a nutshell, that's what the paper was, was trying to address.
Ian Ellison
So knowledge workers is a term that's been around since the 60s. And people have tried to wrestle with what knowledge workers are knowledge workers, knowledge technologists, but what you sort of observed out in the real world of work, and in the workspace industry, the workplace industry was almost people looking at space before they looked at the people. Even if they looked at the activities, people were doing the conclusions were space based, the provision decisions were spaced based. And you’re almost saying from our perspective, at Helen Hamlyn, he got to be more human centric. So if we rethink knowledge workers and understand a bit more about their mobility, then we can get richer insights into the sort of spaces that might support them.
Jeremy Myerson
Absolutely. I mean, we rejected the conventional processes of how offices were designed, and this is going back 15 years. I mean, there's a lot of sophisticated stuff happening now. And the health sector has moved on. But back then people were still setting briefs by giving designers the organisational chart. And they were saying, you know, he reports to her, and they report to them. And these two groups talk to, you know, talk to each other, and they need to be next to, you know, and it was all about the organisational wiring, from a management point of view. And then designers would take it away and do all that.
And we felt that status and hierarchy were quite weak within knowledge led organizations, and the whole idea of the knowledge work, if you look at the literature of knowledge workers, they never, you know, you ask them what they did they tell you, they were a software engineer, they didn't say I work for IBM, they weren't in William White's term, organisational man, they were exhibiting different traits, particularly knowledge workers like to top up their knowledge, they're reinventing themselves, and learning as they go. I mean, I think that that's true of a lot of knowledge based occupations.
Ian Ellison
If we sort of then turn to the design of the research, the way to sort of start this from an explaining perspective around your methods, it's a mixed methods qualitative piece of research, you started by having conversations with 20 people, which allowed you to explore this concept of mobility. And you use a really novel approach to do that use this very clever drawing tool, this visual tool. That process then took you in the direction of observational case study work, ethnographic work, you called it in the paper in three different organisations. And then you had a backwards and forth to almost validate your findings with different experts in inverted commas, and focus groups. So, it was sort of very carefully sequenced and very carefully stage to unfold your findings. Would that be fair?
Jeremy Myerson
Yes, it was. I mean, we always had a philosophy of design your research, we looked at research projects as a piece of design that you can organise and structure and creatively assemble. And we're also working against quite tight time limits. So, we have a scheme at the Royal College of Art called the Helen Hamlyn research associates program, where we take new graduates of the College, they do a piece of research with an industry partner for one year. And the researcher on this particular project, Catherine Green had studied product design at RCA. And she brought a very fresh curious mind and a very creative brain to the whole thing. And we, at this stage been doing these type of research projects for 10 years and one of Catherine's observations, was that, you know, how do you get data from lots of people in your office. You can go onto an office three or London, handout 150 questionnaires. And you’be lucky if you get nine or 10 back because it's homework for people. And you ask them about their mobility, for example, when and give them a list, and they've got to tick the box. And they think, ‘Oh, God, you know, I'll put that to one side until I'm, I've got some time to do my homework’. And she said, we, what if we could give them a tool that they, they do it in real time instantly. And it'll give us the same information. So, what we developed was a gray box, the gray box is the office building. And we want us to draw your mobility in relationship to the office building, and say, don't take the pen off the page, do it in a single line, if you can, some people didn't of course, but some people did, you know. But you'd hand them this box and say, there's the office, what's your mobility, and the anchors would all take the biro, you know, and stab it in one space, you know, so that the pen goes through the paper, you know, and they say, I sit in this spot all day long, five days a week, nine hours a day. And we had lots of people like that, and we thought that's a typology. And, and other people said, well, I never go in the office, I kind of ring them up and stay in a cafe across the road, and they come up meet me. And, you know, these are the navigators, who rarely go in the office, because when they do go in, they get a rotten spot to work. So that's how we built it up.
Ian Ellison
For me, that's the genius of this research. It's having a tool, which allows people to give you incredibly rich data effortlessly. What do you think about the power relation between the interviewer and the interviewee? There's, there's roles there. And when you have a tool like this, what I've observed to my own research, Jeremy, is it it sort of neutralises that, and it just makes it a conversation. It's fascinating.
Chris Moriarty
Jeremy, one of the things that stood out for me reading this paper for the first time, I guess, my eyes trained into the number of people that have that are part of this study. And I suppose we live in a time where bigger is better when it comes to datasets? But what would your kind of response that be when actually you're what you're talking about something richer, and provides more quality? How would you how would you kind of balance that out?
Jeremy Myerson
In the workplace industry? You know, there was a tendency to say, well, it's a small-scale study, and, and then you then get quite large uptake of the model that you produce. And it must ring true. And I think a lot of consultants in the field said to us. And they always turned up at our research symposia. They said, well, actually, we've got lots of data, and it all fits your model.
So, we were validated in the marketplace by other datasets from other groups. I think that the longevity of this research paper, is because it did, to some extent, it wasn't trying to be clever, it was just trying to differentiate between different types of knowledge worker based on what, what are we basing it on one variable, which was mobility within the office, because that's what jumped out of the initial interviews, and also the literature review.
And if you think about it, designing an office, whether people are sitting or standing or moving, or, and the amount of time they're in the office, it kind of it kind of chimes with all of that. But we went back to the organisations and said, you know, we think you've got four different tribes of knowledge worker in here. And, and they had a look at it, and though ‘Oh yeah’. We hadn't looked at it like that. So we were validating it as we went.
Ian Ellison
So let's move on then to the the ethical side of doing research like this. So I'm kind of interested generally, when you and Catherine at Helen Hamlyn, when you start work like this, what are the sorts of things you think about? Because one of the things that I think's really interesting for listeners is, if they want to try and do something similar, and they're interested in trying a tool like this to unlock richer conversations, what do they need to be mindful of? So, there's that link. The other thing that I'd like to explore is, from a funding perspective, how does research funding affect the ethics of actually conducting the research? So, should we sort of take it in two steps? The first is generally do you think about and then more specifically, let's talk about the funding side of things.
Jeremy Myerson
So the ethical considerations are really around getting access to people in offices, and we have quite a robust and sophisticated ethical framework because we will work with vulnerable people in the aging arena. So people with disabilities, people who, with cognitive difficulties, we've done a lot of research in our Age and Ability lab, and we develop some good ethical practices. With offices, it's slightly different. It's, it's about, there's an economic consideration. You know, most people, when they let researchers in the office, they don't want you interrupting, you know, the work because they're going to cost them money. That's why the instant drawing technique, you know, you could just give somebody a, the white piece of paper with the large gray box, and you know, an instruction and then you just go and pick it up five minutes later. And people just do it very, very quickly. So you're not intruding on their time.
From an ethical point of view, the hardest thing, and all researchers of workplace environments know about this is getting permission to go into commercial organisation. We went into the BBC, we went to a real-estate business who are slightly interested in the project and a public relations firms. And there were three different types of organisation, but very much in the knowledge work, arena, and we were observing, we were going to anonymise we weren't going to attribute. So I think the ethical considerations were, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't a high risk project ethically.
Ian Ellison
So then let's flip to the other side of the ethical conversation that I'm quite interested to explore. This was funded or partially funded by a furniture organisation called Bene. And that well, I think, what I'd love to hear is, so when a firm is interested in sponsoring research like this, but the firm might have an interest in the findings, what sort of things do you need to think about? And how do you make sure that your research is still robust and independent in the way that I'm sure you want it to be from a Helen Hamlyn perspective.
Jeremy Myerson
So you have to lay down very clear guidelines with an industry partner. And if you feel that they're going to breach those, then it's best not to start the project, otherwise, you're only going to stir up trouble down the line. They didn't get involved in the research methods, they didn't get involved in our choice of sites. They were very relaxed, what they what they wanted, was a fresh and different opinion. And they subsequently took our research model. And they developed that themselves, they did some marketing materials, they regrouped their furniture around the typologies. You know, they did a big exhibition at Orgatec, a couple of years after, after this paper was published, in which they use the typologies. And I'm not unhappy about that, because that's part of the remit of the Helen Hamlyn Trust, which supports the center was that we work with industry, and try and influence industry practice.
Chris Moriarty
So Jeremy, I wanted to ask you about business relevance, but you've talked about some of that in both in terms of the Helen Hamlyn Centre, and how they sort of used it move for moving forward. And also, you touched on the typologies and businesses almost validating it post publication by saying yeah, and you know, we've seen that in lots of data. So it's clear that there's been some business application on it.
But I just wanted to get your thoughts really on the continued application of the idea, not necessarily just to typologies because my background is marketing. And when I read something like this, I instantly just think about the segmentation process from understanding that there's certain characteristics and profiles that you can kinda, clustered together to help you develop a proposition. And for me, that was that was the kind of thing that jumped out the paper, it wasn't about the typologies, necessarily, although they're very good and solid. It's the fact that the there will be different topologies that exist within a big group of people. And it makes me think about what's happening in the, in this kind of COVID conversation at the moment, which is where everyone's kind of getting treated like the same worker again. So it's, you know, I just sort of be interested in your thoughts on that and how you think we can see businesses starting to take some inspiration from papers like this, in what is their very real current problem?
Jeremy Myerson
Yeah, I think that that's a very interesting observation. A number of people have been back in touch with me about this paper in the COVID era, because you're right, we are treating the returners to the office as one homogenous mass and, you know, companies are saying everybody back to the office or everybody has freedom to work remotely. And they're not really segmenting. And I'm not the only one arguing at the moment that we need to have a much more nuanced and sophisticated approach to who needs to come back to the office, and who has freedom to stay away. And there are other academics who are looking at this, there's a really nice piece of work, just come out in the Harvard Business Review by Professor Linda Gratton at the London Business School, in which she's done her own segmentation model, around what type of work you do about things like jobs that need huge amounts of energy, jobs that need huge amounts of focus, or jobs that need huge amounts of coordination.
So, the whole segmentation story is still alive. But, you know, the point I'd make is that even my original typologies still have meaning today. I mean, if you've got an anchor role, well, then yes, you do need to come back to the office. But the more variable attendance at the office may make the connector role, more about connecting over digital channels, as well as in the physical workplace. So, the navigator role, they never came into the office anyway. So, they were remote workers before the pandemic. So, I think that that some workers, you can bring back to the office, and others will come in partially maybe a day or two or a week. And then you can begin to work out your ratios of how much space you need, and what type of facilities you need, whether you need less desk space, and more event space and more gathering and meeting space. So, I think I think segmentation of the type that we proposed in this paper is still relevant.
Ian Ellison
For people who have been really inspired by this idea, this paper, maybe the novel research technique, maybe the typography is as a starting point to look at their own organisation. What really practical advice would you give them if they were going to kind of almost pick up and run with this? They've got, let's assume that they've got their heads switched on, let's assume that they're going to think carefully about access and ethics. And they're not just going to go at this like a bull in a China shop. But what do they need to know to make the best of this sort of technique, and this best, the best of this sort of thinking,
Jeremy Myerson
At the most basic level, people have got to be advocates for the users of office buildings. And that might seem obvious. But actually, a lot of research is driven by particular technologies or management considerations. And the human perspective, which is so important, and the pandemic has shown that is, it's not just about the process of the workplace, it's about the experience of the workplace. And I think, you know, we will move from efficiency metrics, increasingly, to experience metrics will take a much more experiential approach. Because how people feel about things is how they behave, how they behave, is how they perform, how they perform affects productivity. And you can't go around that you've got to go through that.
So, be an advocate for the user, think how you're going to gather data and analyse it. And, you know, everybody's now very excited about sensors and location beakers and digital infrastructure that can collect data, and everyone is analysing email trails, and instant messaging and room booking data. But that will only give you give you a very interesting insight into the behavior of organisations, but actually, the visceral putting a pencil on a bit of paper, you know, it's coming straight from the heart almost. I think that gives you a different type of data to supplement the other digitally collected stuff.
So, I was always I'd always advocate some kind of workshop activity, some kind of drawing or making activity, where people are using the different parts of their brain, because we're not machines where we never behave with the same logic, as the technical artifact of the office would have us do.
Chris Moriarty
Jeremy, just with one eye looking forward. I mean, we've mentioned that this paper is, you know, is just over 10 years old now. And I think the mark of a good paper is that, you know, when I read it in preparation for this podcast, I said to Ian this is relevant. Now, this is still relevant, which is great from a paper point of view is I suppose you could take a little bit of sadness in that some of the messages in in that are still being lost in some organisations, like we said earlier on treating everyone as one big sort of group. But if you were, if you were setting up this study, again today, and you're looking at different ways that we can look at, look at some of the hypotheses that you set out in it, and that essentially people are different. What would you be doing? What would you be adding to it? Because one thing that strikes me is that you've talked about this, looking at one set of behaviors, i.e. mobility, because that's the thing that was most obvious. You talked about, it was Linda Gratton work, which looked at a slightly different angle. You've touched on sensors and lots of technology that exists now. So that actually, the scope of a study like this being done today is actually quite vast, because of all those different datasets. Does any of that make you think? Actually, what if I was doing this again, today this is a direction I might I might expand it, or I might look slightly differently? Do you still hold true to that core idea that the mobility is one of the one of the key drivers of a lot of this stuff?
Jeremy Myerson
Well, I think mobility is a key driver, because mobility is about whether you come into the office or whether you stay at home, whether you stay local, whether you travel to a central business district, I think it's still relevant. But I think even more relevant is the question of autonomy. And if you go back to the godfather of all this, Frank Duffy, of DEGW, his Princeton PhD, was a brilliant model, which said that you can measure any job by the level of autonomy you had against the level of interaction you have with others. So a software geek may have huge autonomy, but no interaction with others. So Duffy said he needed they needed a small room, a cell to work on the you know, the other end of the scale, you can be a junior person in a marketing team, you've got very little autonomy, but you've got massive amounts of interactions with others. So, you need to work in a den where you can hang out with other people. So, and then you get people like university professor who has very high autonomy, and very high interaction with others, they need a club, Duffy introduced this club idea. So, I suppose if I was doing stuff today, around this, I would look at autonomy. Because what happened in the, in the pandemic, is that people were given more autonomy. They could work their own hours in their own space and organise themselves as best they could. And they've given a lot of autonomy, what they didn't have was interaction with others. And, you know, there was a honeymoon period where people thought this is marvelous, and productivity went up. And then it dipped globally, as people became fed up, and they missed the interaction with colleagues and, and the hours. You know, at first they were, they were trading their commuting hours for family time. And then they were trading their commuting hours for more work. And Microsoft has all the all the data to support that. So, I would look at autonomy, and interaction with others. I go right back to the core Frank Duffy research.
Ian Ellison
You've mentioned, Linda Gratton, then you've mentioned Microsoft, and you've gone back in time to Frank Duffy's original work. If we were to say, what's inspiring you right now, what have you seen out there where you're kind of really impressed or you want to learn more, or you think is making a really new novel contribution to the field of workplace knowledge and research? Where what's exciting you right now?
Jeremy Myerson
What's exciting me right now is actually social sustainability related to ecological sustainability. So, I'm very, very interested at the moment in the greening of the city, because in the pandemic, you know, roads were shut off and pocket parks were created and cycle lanes were introduced. And how does work fit into that it's more of a mixed use development, rather than the big central business district, or, you know, the out of town Science Park. I'm interested in a greener, healthier city with work integrated within it, that that that's the kind of thing that I'm interested. I'm interested in, in the circular economy, and how companies are, are changing their behaviors to go to net zero. And of course, technology is a big part of that because you can measure environmental conditions and energy use much more successfully than in the past. So, you have dynamic stacking of buildings, where you could shut off floors and turn the heating right off with this fluctuating pattern of occupation. So those are the things it's a basket of stuff, but there's lots to be excited about.
Ian Ellison
Are there any researchers or authors or even practitioners who are doing groundbreaking work in that sort of area then that you'd sort of go you need to talk to these people or is it more that this is the stuff that's floats your boat right now and it's it's, it's more from a topical perspective.
Jeremy Myerson
It's interesting that the big practices, Gensler, WSP, H.O.K, Fosters, Zaha Hadid, all of these types of firms have a very big research component in what they're doing now. And a big communication component. And it's interesting that practice itself is generating new research and ideas. And that has changed with the pandemic. So I'm looking at academia, but I'm also looking at practice for new ideas.
-- Pinder Ponder --
James Pinder
Hello
Chris Moriarty
James, you were off last week, and we had people crying out for the Pinder Ponder. Did you do anything nice?
James Pinder
It was quite nice week, terrible weather, but a nice week.
Chris Moriarty
Lovely. I'm glad. I'm glad you're refreshed. So, you've had a chance to listen to the interview with Jeremy, what were your what were your kind of takeaways from it?
James Pinder
Yeah, I mean, lots of interesting things in the interview. It's interesting, because it's a model that Ian and I have used a lot in our work. And yeah, that that was discussed in the interview. But when I was listening to, to the recording, it took me back to when we've used it in, in our client work. For instance, in 2015, I remember has been up in York, working with a client and working with a senior leadership team. And we use that model as part of the workshop. And in the way that the best thinking tools can have that sort of impact, it created a light bulb moment, created a lightbulb moment, and it sort of changed the conversation in the room, because the people in the room went from thinking about how people work in a particular way to thinking you know, actually, different people have different needs, different groups of people are going to work in different ways. And we need to take a step back and think that through, we can't just go and approach our workspace in our workplace change in the same way that we've always done, we need to think in a more nuanced way.
Ian Ellison
It also got them thinking, I seem to remember, beyond the spatial design bit more nuance, it got them actually reflecting on those groups of people who are currently anchors, should they be anchors to be doing their job really effectively. And Chris, I remember that was something that you were kind of interested in, in the, in the almost when you become aware of a model like this, does it change the way you view things in all sorts of different directions?
James Pinder
What sort of came out of that was some people were anchors that they shouldn't have been, you know, they were either because of the way the workspace was designed or because of the culture in the organisation and people's lack of flexibility. People were working as anchors when they shouldn't have been given their role, given their sort of functional role. So yeah, just a really sort of simple example, but a really powerful one.
Chris Moriarty
We've all worked with anchors from time to time, haven't we?
James Pinder
I think the term that was used was good anchors and bad anchors.
Chris Moriarty
Exactly. There are some good anchors and some bad anchors. I mean, what I what I found interesting about it was not just an organisation thinking, should those people be working that sort of way? It was also the individuals looking at the people around them and who's successful and what behaviors do I need to mirror maybe I'm not progressing because I am sat at my desk all day, maybe I need to be a bit more mobile. And that kind of, I don't know, how I feel about that. And I think on one part, I'm like, you know, you should work in a way that suits you. You shouldn't have to try and conform. But in another way, there's something about pushing people out there kind of comfort zone isn't there and exploring mobility in a different way. And I guess that's what the paper and I guess the work you guys have done before is that explores mobility,
Ian Ellison
Well, you're a hop skip and a jump there away from the value of something like this to promote cultural change as well. Because if you can hold a mirror up and go, ‘Okay, this is the current profile from a mobility perspective. But for us to become a more effective organisation, how do we not just spatially but culturally enable a different, not just all of the different mobility types? How do we enable them better? But are they the right mobility types to make the best of our organisational performance?’ Well, that's really interesting.
Chris Moriarty
James, you mentioned thinking tool and I just wondered what your thoughts were on. Someone might look at research like this, and the methodology and think it's a bit it's a bit off the wall bit wacky, right, you know, some say, well, I can't, I can't go into the boardroom with 400 scribbles from the employees about how they like to work and use it to be sort of compelling. But is it? I wonder what here now you're talking about how you did it with a client? Is it more about using methodologies like this, to get people to just take a step to the left or step to the right and look at something from a slightly different angle? Is that the the real benefit of something like this? Or does the data itself drive its own value?
James Pinder
I think in the case of that particular tool, that particular thinking tool, it's as the case with the best sort of models and thinking tools is it's about prompting conversations, isn't it about something or getting people to think slightly differently about how something might work? And again, going back to the example, I literally did stop people in their tracks, because it's like, well, I've not thought of it in this way before. I'm now seeing it in a different way. Because what we got them to do in this particular workshop, we said right, just on the fly, try and give us the profile of your organisation, how many, what proportion of anchors, what proportion of navigates and just getting them to do that, without going out and doing a survey and collecting the data, which, which was subsequently sort of was part of the work that was done, but just it on the fly in that workshop, just that exercise alone got people thinking because it got them thinking about something they've not thought about before or considered before.
Ian Ellison
And I would add that bit around, you know, is that credible data? I mean, that's, that's a Pandora's Box of a question in itself. You might, you know, source data, that you build ideas and theories from, that might not necessarily be the bit that you ultimately present. But it might be, you know, what Jeremy talked about extensively in the interview was the validation process to arrive at, you know, and he readily says, a starting point, but then people's use of it, validates it retrospectively. The workshops later in the methodology sequence, validates it retrospectively, if you like it, you know, it's almost so deceptively simple. And he sort of remember him chuckling to himself. So deceptively simple. That, is it not obvious. But to make something so obvious. So explicit, allows you to do something really powerful with it.
James Pinder
But often the best models are like that, aren't they? Oh, that's seems really obvious. But actually, there's a lot of work on into that. The other thing that I think that sort of flowed out of that conversation was around, you know, they put it out there as a model for people to use play with adapt, and not being precious about this is the definitive version of this model. It's something for people to use. And you know, Ian, and I try and sort of use a similar mindset. When we use those sorts of tools, you know, this is a starter, take it, use it, adapt it, and use it in the way you want to be. It's a very open source mindset, actually, I think, and it's, you know, it's often in a world where companies and people try and keep ideas closed off.
Ian Ellison
The academic way is much more open source. And here's the thing.
James Pinder
Yeah often, often, that's the case without generalising too much peer, let's get we've created this model. Let's push it out there and let people use it and improve it and use it in the context that they're going to use it.
Chris Moriarty
My doorbell has just gone. So, you to carry on talking, and I'll get I'll go and do that in a moment.
Ian Ellison
So one of the things that you and I James, often try and we sort of wrangle with this, with our own consultancy is if that's a generic model about mobility of knowledge workers, do organisations have almost their own fingerprint, based upon what they do and how they work? And you know, does the housing association at one end of the country have the same knowledge worker mobility profile as an insurance company in the capital, for argument's sake? Or is there a way of taking the idea as a starting point, and producing something much more bespoke? Which is even more useful than a generic one?
James Pinder
Yeah. And we know from the work we've done over the last few years that okay, not every organisation is different, and they do have different fingerprints. And yeah, part of the way we approach this is to take the idea of a different groups of workers in organisations, not necessarily that map against teams and departments, because that's, that's a very risky sort of view of everybody in that team has this particular need or works in this particular way. So, part of the way that we go about that is through using survey data is to is to look for clusters within the data using clustering techniques and statistical techniques where you can see that there are obvious groups within that data set. And actually, within a particular team, you might have three or four different types of employees and they're working in different ways and that could be based upon location, or it could be based on activity. I guess the ultimate message that sits under is don't adopt a one size fits all approach. That's kind of the underlying message, isn't it? And don't make assumptions about what people need. A phrase in and I use, which was coined by another academic was this idea of imagined uses. We make these very easy to make assumptions about what people need to be able to do their jobs, and that is risky and dangerous.
Who was at the door Chris?
Chris Moriarty
The ironing lady
James Pinder
You have your ironing done?
Chris Moriarty
We do have our ironing done.
James Pinder
Because it's a different world, isn't it down south? Can I just ask a quick question? During lockdown, if you still have your ironing done, when you weren't getting it out of the house?
Chris Moriarty
It's since the twins arrived. I used to do all the ironing you two can laugh. Your faces off all you want. I used to do all my ironing, but it's just time. A wise man said to me once, there's only one thing you can buy in life. That's time. And that's all I've done. I've just purchased some time. About two and a half hours probably. And I've spent on it here I am spending it with you two chumps.
So, James, what else did you take from the interview?
James Pinder
I mean, there were quite a few other things. But I guess in terms of sort of data and methodology, I thought the techniques was interesting, participatory mapping has got a sort of history outside of our discipline. And you know, I've used it past in the past on a project. But yeah, it's got sort of roots outside of sort of workplace discipline, you know, particularly in areas around development and things like that. And then in that community sort of development, but it's nice to see people using different techniques.
And I often think that comes off the back as well as have multidisciplinary research teams where you're getting people from very different disciplines and backgrounds coming together and using techniques that they might not normally use in their area. And you know, I've been very lucky in the past to work with some really interesting researchers from very different backgrounds as part of research teams. And you do you learn a lot, but also you apply different techniques that, that you might not previously use and, apply them in contexts that they might not have been used in previously. So yeah, and I also thought that came through in the previous episode when Kursty was talking around, you know, the research team behind the work that she did, because again, that was people from different disciplines, different backgrounds coming together and looking at something through different lenses and through different disciplinary eyes, I guess.
Chris Moriarty
And when you say techniques, you're referring to the kind of draw, you know, here's a gray box, and, you know, what does your movement look like in the day, you know, sort of draw it because I, when I saw that, and linked to what you've just said about multidisciplinary, it reminded me I'm reading a book at the minute called, The Body Keeps the Score, and it's about how the body in mind and brain deals with trauma. And, you know, it's a, it's an amazing read is a tough read in places,
Ian Ellison
You've been reading it for six months
Chris Moriarty
I have well, I've got twins
Ian Ellison
Are you going to finish it soon?
Chris Moriarty
Well, yeah, straight after your PhD. And I'll get back onto it.
So, the book, he talks about some of the discoveries that they had in terms of brain science, neuroscience, all that sort of stuff. But then some of the treatments and one of the treatments they talked about was drawing, they got they got people to draw, they also got people, he found one guy that he would ask people to stage, an idea in their head with physical things. So, they would like put a wardrobe and it would represent their parents and they put on the corner. And it was just amazing how it was sort of saying that by asking you to do something in a different way to I guess what the other approach would be, here's a survey, tick these boxes tell us what you are engaged in a different part your brain? And again, it goes kind of back to that thinking tool idea, isn't it? Where you just sort of take a step to the side and go God, you know, I didn't even know I was thinking that?
James Pinder
Well, there's two things that come off the back of that for me, Chris, one is, it's participant that it's not research led, you're not putting the boundaries of what how this person sees the world around them that you're letting them do that. And that's very different because they might see the world in a very different way.
I remember using the sort of mapping technique quite a few years ago now and it was around draw your workspace or draw your, I think was the question we asked them. And for some people, the workspace was the entire building that they worked in other people, it was literally their desk, very different conceptions of what constitutes workspace but really interesting. But the second part was around, those sorts of techniques are great, prompting conversations with those individuals. And that's where the really rich stuff comes as well, because it's a great way of getting people to open up and talk about things that you might otherwise they might not otherwise talk about or think about talking about. So they are, they're nice. sort of ways of engaging with people and getting them to tell you what what's in their mind and what what they're thinking and how they see the world.
Right? Right guys, I'll leave you to then I need to go nine a shirt. So I will leave you to it.
-- Outro –
Chris Moriarty
So that was the pin to ponder. And that brings us to the end of this episode. So thank you for listening. Thank you to Jeremy for joining us. We've got some exciting interviews lined up and some that further explore some of the creative data capture that Ian mentioned in that intro, and Jeremy spoke about in that interview, so watch this space.
Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss a new episode when it comes out. Feel free to give us a glowing review if you so wish, because that helps us spread the word. And on that note, remember to pass this on to someone who you think is a fellow Workplace Geek. Get in touch with us on hello@workpalcegeeks.org Or find us on LinkedIn but for now. Speak to you soon.
