Imagine! has been planning a significant overhaul of both of our workspaces for some time now. As we get closer to the time that the actual work of remodeling and reassigning of workspaces will take place, it is probably time to discuss a little bit of the “why” of this project.
In a stroke of fortunate timing, I was pondering how to share with our stakeholders, especially our employees, the reasons for the redesign of our offices when I came across a
fantastic podcast. This
Harvard Business Review (HBR) podcast features an interview with Jennifer Magnolfi, Founder & Principal Investigator at Programmable Habitats LLC, on how digital work and the Internet of Things will fundamentally change the how we use the buildings and neighborhoods we work in. Magnolfi is one of the authors of an HBR article entitled “
Workspaces That Move People,” which encourages companies to measure whether a workspace’s design helps or hurts performance.
That important question, whether Imagine!’s workspace currently helps or hurts our performance, underlies our decision to reconsider how Imagine!’s workspaces are configured. I would argue that our current workspace hurts our performance.
Let me provide a couple of examples of how I think our current workspace inhibits top functioning.
First of all, we are missing many opportunities for what Magnolfi and her co-authors describe as collisions - chance encounters and unplanned interactions between knowledge workers, both inside and outside the organization. Studies indicate that face-to-face interactions are by far the most important activity in a workspace. This is especially true at Imagine!. We have many employees with very specific knowledge about different aspects of Imagine!, the services we provide, the individuals we serve, and the funding mechanisms for providing those services. No one person has all the pieces to the puzzle, including me. Unfortunately, we tend to literally “silo” knowledge experts with our current workspace set up. People working in the same workspace on the same things for multiple years are less likely to have opportunities to share what they know with those outside of their limited area of expertise. The chance that a comment such as “I’m working on this” will lead to a response of “That fits in perfectly with what I’m doing, let’s see what we can do together” is significantly lessened by the silos that we have, albeit unintentionally, created at Imagine!’s workspaces. Tearing down those silos will lead to accelerated learning and increasing interaction among our workforce.
Here’s a second reason. The redesign is being directed to make our space more user friendly for visitors. For example, currently, many of the meeting rooms at our main administrative building are located on the second floor. Those rooms host meetings every day with the individuals and families we serve. What kind of message does it send when we make the people we are supposed to be assisting, many of whom have physical disabilities in addition to intellectual and developmental disabilities, climb stairs or wait for elevators when we have a ground floor dedicated to other purposes? Not a very friendly or person-centered message, to be sure. So if we have a new workspace design with meeting spaces on the first floor designated for use for meetings with visitors and the people we serve, we are sending a subtle but very powerful message – your needs matter. For an organization like Imagine!, that seems like exactly the message we want to send every day and in every way to our community and the people we serve.
Those are just two examples of why I believe this redesign is so important. There are others as well, but the main point is that we are trying to look at office space in a similar way as we might look at software. No one is surprised when a company updates software annually, or even every six months. It is expected, and assumed, that the upgrades will provide new opportunities for improved performance. But we don’t look at physical buildings in the same way. Workspaces remain static for long periods of time. I agree with Magnolfi that we need to rethink that attitude. Changes should always be considered when the opportunity to do better through that change arises. We can’t cling to our outdated notions of what our workspaces should look like just because we are comfortable, or we like our cube mates, or because change can be intimidating. We have to do our homework. We have to understand how new tools have changed how we work. If we want to be the best we can be, we have to examine everything, including the spaces where we work.
Then again, what do I know?
Like many organizations, both for profit and not for profit, from time to time Imagine! has engaged in team building activities. You know, the kind of activities facilitated by an outsider where you fill out quizzes to determine what your personality is and how that personality drives how you interact with others, or where you climb trees and travel across ropes to other trees, or where you try to figure out complex brain teasers as a group. While I may occasionally fall on the skeptical side when it comes to these activities, I acknowledge that they can and do bring value (as well as bring teams together) if done properly and with the right group of people.
Tuesday, December 9 was Colorado Gives Day, and the Imagine! Foundation raised $23,745 from 130 donors during that day of giving! 
Lately I have been following the 2014 edition of the USA Ski Jumping Story Project, which shares stories from ski jumpers (and fans) from across the nation as part of a fundraising campaign. Last year’s version of this project was one of the inspirations for Imagine!’s “50 Years, 50 Stories,” shared right on this very blog in celebration of our 50th Anniversary in 2013.
As an organization, Imagine! makes decisions that impact the organization and the people we serve every day. As the CEO of Imagine!, I also have to make decisions that impact the organization and the people we serve every day.
Imagine!’s own Stephanie Tilley was recently the subject of an article in Apostrophe Magazine. 
I recently heard the phrase “Ethical Persuasion” and it really struck me as an interesting and thoughtful phrase. Especially considering the recent election cycle our country just endured. And I use the term endure very intentionally.
Our awesome project is an electronic color organ box. A phone or music player is plugged into it, and six different boxes will light up based on the bass, mid, and treble sounds from the music. There will be two columns of boxes, the bottom two are the biggest and will light up the same color with the base. The middle two will light up a different color together with the mid frequencies. And the top two boxes will light up a third color with the high frequencies. There will be three different color schemes that the user can choose for the boxes to be through a remote. The remote will also be able to control the volume of the music and intensity of the light. This electronic color organ box will be put in Imagine!’s Charles Family SmartHome in Longmont, CO, which is a home for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. We will use the money for electronic boards such as an arduino and spectrum shield. A spectrum shield breaks up the frequencies of the music. Also, we will buy nice acrylic to make the boxes and so the light will have a nice glow through it. We will buy LEDs for the colored light, an AC/DC cord, and miscellaneous things such as wires and screws. The money will definitely be put to good use! 
