Running a session this week on organization design led to the participant group raising questions and then discussing the differences and similarities between workplace design, workplace strategy, workplace design strategy, and organization design.

There was no real conclusion except that semantics matter, and in order not to confuse our clients and ourselves we need to clarify the terms, or stick with one agreed short description that covers the range.

Attempting to clarify this for myself I found an article by Eric Olsen, Workplace Design Strategy: An Alternative View. In this he compares Galbraith's Five Star model with Hurst's soft bubble model. He does this in the context of discussing a paper, Solving the Right Problem: A Strategic Approach to Designing Today's Workplace, written by Arnold Craig Levin in the Spring 2007 issue of the Design Management Review.

Levin's paper builds on a previous one he published Changing the role of workplace design within the business organisation: A model for linking workplace design solutions to business strategies published in the Journal of Facilities Management in 2005. In the abstract Levin notes that:

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Somewhere along the line I got the phrase 'All models are wrong. Some models are useful.' This has come to top of mind during the week when models of all types have entered my consciousness. This week I've been walking round a full size cardboard mock-up of new office space and furniture that the intended occupants are walking around and through, making comments on its viability and suggesting improvements. It's great fun seeing the ease with which the cardboard can be picked up and re-sited with no difficulty. Cardboard boxes piled one on top of the other represent standing work stations, and flip chart paper the computer monitor. Intended occupants are assessing light levels, asking questions about noise, and so on.

This exercise was followed by a trip to an office furniture showroom where the same people now experienced the type of furniture that would go in the spaces. So where we had the cardboard mock-up of six people sitting at what is called benching (essentially akin to a long rectangular dining table that in the café chain, Le Pain Quotidien, is called 'our communal table' and has a little spiel associated with it ) in the office showrooms we went to they were sitting at the real thing and thoroughly enjoying it. But again the showrooms are just a model. We don't know what the real thing will actually be like, and that's where the phrase sprang to mind, because people are fearful that the model is useful in theory but could be wrong in practice.

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At the Organization Design Forum Conference in Atlanta earlier in the week Shoshana Zuboff, the now retired Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration, at Harvard Business School was the hit of the event. Unfortunately I missed her as I was traveling but I took a look at a couple of You Tube clips of her talking. Her seven minutes on design flaws in organizational structure resonated.

She talks of 'chapters of capitalism' and asks how we realign our commercial operations with new needs. Which she suggests is very difficult. I guess much of her video clip is drawn from her book The Support Economy: Why Corporations Are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism as she proposes a new chapter of capitalism based on serving the new needs of customers that are grounded in personal empowerment and expression. I haven't read the book yet – although when I went to put in on my Amazon wish list after the conference I discovered that it was already on my list. 'Amazon' politely told me that since I was trying to put it on my list again it would move it to the top. I've now ordered the book from my local library.

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Organization design and development in the public sector has been to front of mind this past week. I was running a public CIPD course in organization design with a mix of private and public sector organizations. I then went to speak at a city council conference on emerging trends in organization design, and then on to run an organization development Master class for a government department. The common thread through the public sector employees was the question of how to deliver value in extremely challenging and very fast moving contexts.

A year or so ago there was an article in the Economist The Gods that Have Failed – so far, that muses on a similar question 'Could technology and good management bring the public-sector up to scratch?' In the article bringing the public sector 'up to scratch' requires seizing two opportunities: a) changing what the state does; and b) changing its structure. The article then goes on to outline why seizing the opportunities is a whole lot more difficult that it might seem to be. Various reasons for pessimism are discussed:

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Last week I started to get to grips with being a fully remote worker for my new company. I am one of the very few (only?) employees who is not tied to an office but is home based and also mobile. Also this past week I facilitated a webinar on managing mobile workers for my previous organization, and so it seems like I am eating more dog food (see previous post on eating dogfood) but this week's is about mobile/remote working. The session I facilitated was the first in a series of monthly sessions targeted at managers in one organization. Each month there will be

A one hour input webinar for managers on a specific topic with hints and tips, guidance, ideas to apply
A guest speaker from an external organization giving a case on how they are tackling the topic, also an hour

Topics for the next 12 months are:

• Overview of managing a mobile workforce
• Setting up your team for success
• Setting and managing performance expectations
• Managing effective communication across mobile and on-site team members
• Introducing new employees to your mobile environment
• Building trust among and between mobile workers, managers, customers, etc.
• Managing the work flow
• Managing customer expectations
• Managing employee issues with the mobile environment
• Managing employee stress in an 'always-on' environment
• Developing your team members skills for mobility
• Support for you as a manager of a mobile workforce

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The strange thing about joining a new company is the strangeness of it. Everything is somewhat different from the known, but it is not completely unknown either. Some attributes of organizations tend to be present in all of them. Use of Microsoft Office is one example, having conference rooms, kitchen areas, photocopiers, and other office equipment is largely similar, so is the likelihood of enjoying a level of employee benefits. Similar organizational processes appear: a payroll system, expense and timesheet requirements, and phone numbers, business cards, and email addresses are part and parcel of most organizational life. But beyond these explicit and/or tangible aspects things are different, and it's getting to grips with those which are so fascinating.

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