Plow Under Those Cube Farms!

by Jim Ware

August 21, 2009 at 12:38 pm · Filed under Collaboration, Management, Work Design

Here’s some new evidence about how cube farms destroy creativity and collaboration – or at least don’t encourage or enable productive work.

Harvard Business Review online has just published a provocative short piece by Laura Sherbin and Karen Sumberg called “Bulldoze Your Cubicles for Better Collaboration.”

The idea really isn’t new, and the data isn’t that surprising, but it’s nice to see the recognition growing that cubicles don’t work – or produce good work by their “inhabitants.”

Here’s one brief excerpt:

Companies are finally realizing what their employees have known for ages: Cubicle cultures just don’t work. With concerns about knowledge-sharing among older and younger generations of employees skyrocketing, organizations are concluding that impersonal “cube farms” discourage collaboration, stifle employee engagement and, as a result, strangle innovation at the exact time when it’s desperately needed.

Perhaps the most important idea in the article, however, is something I’ve long believed: Baby Boomer and Millennials/Gen Y have more in common than most people think–especially when it comes to how they view the workplace:

“Bookend Generations,” a study of how Baby Boomers and Generation Y view work, found that both Boomers and Gen Ys prize interacting with high-quality colleagues—so much so that both generations rank it equal to or higher than financial compensation. Far from glaring at each other across the generation gap, 58% of Boomers say they enjoy helping Gen Ys navigate the workplace and the same number of Ys report that they look to Boomers for professional advice more than any other generation.

The Bookend Generations report is available (for a fee) from the Center for Work-Life Policy.

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14 Comments »

Thanks for the confirmation of what we attempted to achieve as part of Web 1.0 — a shift in the way we work. Other prior examples http://twurl.nl/5fi251

Not to mention there’s a gross oversimplification in this model — that the people who are co-located actually have anything to do with each other’s work. In today’s economy, that’s actually typically not the case. And moving people around physically to support such a scenario is also too costly.

Jim, thanks for the pointer to the HBR article. Your GenY comments reminded me about a terrific presentation at Enterprise 2.0 Boston 2008 by Sean Dennehy and Don Burke, two CIA employees driving Intellipedia, a “Web 2.0 collaboration environment created by the Department of National Intelligence (DNI) for the intelligence community”. http://snurl.com/quh36

They deflated assumptions about Gen Y’ers being agents of change in organizations by sharing their experience that newer younger staff members tend to be less active Intellipedia contributors. Why? Because they are focused on fitting in and emulating the practices of established staff members and were hence conservative about participating openly. Dennehy and Burke noted that the most active Intellipedia contributor was actually somebody in their 60″s close to retirement.

RT @theappgap: New Post “” http://www.theappgap.com/2308.html. It’s my note about bulldozing cubicles. #dilbert #cubefarm #collaboration

RT @NatHarp: cube farms stifle innovation (cross post from delicious) http://icio.us/awb0op

RT @BillIves: Office Cubicles Reduce Collaboration http://bit.ly/lSOlo posted on @theappgap

RT @BillIves: Office Cubicles Reduce Collaboration http://bit.ly/lSOlo posted on @theappgap & Boomers lk helping Gen Y (and vice versa) #yam

We have been discussing the merit or otherwise of Yammer in our brand. I believe it adds value. We are a geographically dispersed organisation and many people homework. I think you have hit on a good point that Twitter/ Yammer can replace the water cooler conversations.

I know of people who couldn’t work from home because they missed these types of conversations, I doubt the technology will change that, but I definately believe there is value to be had from water cooler conversations. I am sure it was a book by "Cotter" – What Leaders Do, that talked about the real value to organisations of informal communications.

Thanks for the comment. Are you still interested in sharing your learnings in more depth. I now have Skype so it will be easier to talk if you have it also. Let me know. You can send an email – iveswillliam@comcast.net

I found the same thing at a major UK repair division. The plumbers would get their assignments at the local depot and share tips over tea. Then they closed the depots as a cost cutting measure and had the the plumbers work out of their homes. It destroyed the knowledge sharing except for some diehards who took time off during the day to meet. Bill

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