I originally wrote the blog post below in March of 2010, when we made the decision to move to a new kind of office space as soon as our lease was up. We are now just two weeks away from moving to our brand new office. I revisited what I wrote 16 months ago, to see if our rationale for moving had changed. It hasn’t. But something I didn’t realize back then was how many businesses are moving to shared work space environments. Most surprising, it’s not because of the economy.
Shared space is not a new idea. Remember Chiat Day’s virtual office disaster back in 1999? But it has certainly grown more popular for companies that used to make bigger offices on better floors more important than money. For many businesses now being run by energetic entrepreneurs this seems like a ridiculous idea. Why separate brain power? Why limit collaboration to conference rooms? And why make office size a competition between co-workers?
I personally give a lot of credit for this change in thinking to Tony Hsieh, CEO and founder of Zappos. As Zappos grew from a small online shoe seller, to the mammoth business that Amazon purchased in 2009 for $1.2 billion, Tony never thought twice about moving out of his same-size cubicle located in the middle of all the other Zappos employees. Certainly it was an act of humility, which Tony is known for, but he also knew how important it was for the company’s success that he stay in the midst of the action. In his book, Delivering Happiness, he credits the most successful collaborations came from people having direct access with him, and each other.
That’s pretty much what you’ll see at the new Brandtailers office. And, even though it’s been a little scary for us to realize we’re going to be working literally side-by-side and face-to-face, we have the team to pull it off. Stop by after August 1st and see for yourself. Our new address will be posted shortly on our Contact page on this site.
March 2010:
Brandtailers has moved four times during our 20 years in business. Each time we’ve moved to a bigger (although not necessarily better) space. Before we made our last address change a little over four years ago, it felt like we were stepping over each other just to get around the office.
So we made the move from 5,800 square feet to just short of 14,000. For the first few months the extra room to breath was so refreshing. The Creative Department had their own wing, the Media Department had theirs. The Interactive Department was on the other side of the building, while Account Services and Admin were off in a whole other section. Ahhh, space.
But guess what happened over just a couple of months? People stopped talking to each other face-to-face. They weren’t collaborating like they used to. Instead of getting out of their chairs and walking 100 feet to talk to someone in another department, they’d send them an email. We thought we came up with the brilliant solution of encouraging instant messaging to make the communication feel more personal. That was dumb. People stayed in their offices even more.
Our lease is coming up for renewal in the next year and, yes, we will be moving to a different type of space. No more “wings” for us. It just doesn’t work. Hopefully in our next office instant messaging will involve vocal chords, emails will be for external purposes, and collaboration will be spontaneous moments of smart, creative people within ear shots of each other.
For those of you who like coming to our office, don’t worry. We’ll be taking the pool, ping-pong and fuss ball tables with us. And our walls will still be bright and tell their stories. Yes, we’ll take the African spears too. But we may be stepping over each other again, so bring your own chair.
