Offices have historically been thought of as places for clerical work and therefore the focus has been on the efficiency of the physical space. In other words, if what an employee is doing is mindlessly repetitive then physical comfort is important. However, if you pay people to create ground breaking insights, discoveries and inventions then surely there is an opportunity here? Surely employers should be spending a bit more time thinking about how people react to physical spaces and what makes people alert and mentally productive?

According to Jeffrey Pfeffer, a Professor of organisational behaviour at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, construction costs represent a mere 2% of costs for a building over a 30-year operating period. Operating expenses come to another 6% but a whopping 92% of costs over this period come from people. Surely some deeper thought, and a bit more expenditure, on getting peoples’ heads in the right mental spaces might pay dividends?

Interesting article in the Nikkei Weekly (Japan) about a University of Tokyo Professor, Toru Nishigaki, who claims that the collapse of Lehman Brothers can be attributed to an over reliance of logical left brain thinking. In other words, we have created a society that puts too much trust in computers and mathematical models over and above human intuition and experience.

To quote the Prof:  “We are excited about the digital age that has just begun :but we haven’t learned how to deal with IT. Since the digital left-brain field has expanded rapidly, the right-brain field has been neglected, and various problems have arisen.”

I couldn’t agree more. Moreover, I think this over-reliance on machines and machine-like thinking is going to cause even more problems in the future (e.g Flight safety critical software). The other thing that he says, which I personally find fascinating, is that it is only really the right side of the brain that has the ability to connect with things that bring about true happiness.

PS – Possible linkage here with Susan Greenfield who said that the GFC was partly caused by sensation seeking young men who failed to appreciate real risk due to a diet of screen based entertainment in which a re-set button could always be used (i.e. the link being the digital era causing unforeseen problems).

I’ve been reading something in a newspaper about Edward de Bono, who is suggesting that schools should teach children how to think. I agree but with a few additions.

We need to rebalance how people are taught to think and recognise that new ideas respond best to certain kinds of tools and environments. This means that we need to relax a bit and build flexibility into whatever systems we use. It also means that diverse inputs should be valued and that serendipitous situations should be encouraged. Education clearly has a fundamental role to play with this but we shouldn’t forget that education is only one part of the puzzle. Schools should teach children (and their parents) that formal education is important, but it is less critical than many people realise. The family unit is far more important. At least that used to be the case.

Parental influence is waning these days, partly because the family unit is less fixed than it used to be (i.e. families are more likely to split up) but also because parents now have to compete with a host of other influencing factors. This has obviously always included peer groups but it also now includes things such as mobile phones and websites that compete for finite attention and potentially drain the brain of concentration.

The old adage that you become like those you are with would seem to hold true for technology and architecture. We instinctively know this but we somehow ignore it. We know, for instance, that landscapes, music, art and so on influence how we think but the effects are so subtle that in most instances we are oblivious to it. We therefore continue to build and inhabit spaces that appear superficially efficient without stopping to think deeply about what these places are doing to our minds. We hear demands from employers for ‘out of the box’ thinking aimed squarely at employees that are themselves placed inside row upon row of identical cubicles.