Samantha Julka: Leaders, read the room literally before taking action

In my mid-20s working in the “real world” late at night on a design project, I received a call from a friend who worked at a large marketing firm in Chicago. She told me the firm had some difficult months, resulting in layoffs. My friend maintained her job with a skeleton crew of co-workers; she was feeling equal parts grateful to have a job and overwhelmed with the bigger workload she inherited from the layoffs.

As we were talking on the phone—our office phones, with cords—she told me about her frustration with her leadership team, which had just purchased new Aeron chairs for everyone.

(Complete sidebar: Did you know the furniture industry actually has an Aeron chair index? It tracks the average secondhand sale price of Aeron chairs in a few major markets around the country as an indicator of the strength of a market. Now back to the story.)

My friend resented the fact that her colleagues and friends just lost their jobs and then the leadership team spent a bunch of money on really expensive chairs. She told me she found her old chair in the basement of the office building, wheeled it upstairs and set aside the Aeron chair. She hated what that costly chair represented.

Years later, as I reflect on this story as a leader myself, I can empathize with her former leaders. Undoubtedly, their line of thinking might have been that these new chairs would lift morale in the wake of some tough times. Recognizing all the extra hours the staff was now working, perhaps they were providing a little extra ergonomic support for the remaining employees. Although that might have been the intention, unfortunately, it backfired.

From an academic perspective, what happened was that the leaders failed to understand the cultural human factors associated with the built environment. Cultural human factors are a tricky concept because they are somewhat heady. Often scientifically, when one talks about human factors, it is with respect to the physical world (i.e. are artifacts in the built environment capable of supporting our human bodies?). Whereas cultural human factors approach this with cognition (the stories the artifacts in the built environment tell us). It’s subjective, yes, qualitative, and very important. Perception is reality.

The failure to account for cultural human factors associated with the built environment can lead to disastrous outcomes. The previous example illustrates the problem with assuming the solution to a problem when it doesn’t actually solve the problem. At DORIS, we see this a lot with physical office space. It’s a tangible, controllable solution for leaders to grab onto even though it might not solve the real business problem at hand—plus it’s expensive.

Over and over again, we see leaders bringing people back together in the office space assuming that will build or rebuild their culture.

A new or renovated office won’t always fix the business problem, but it will be a huge expense. Take time to find out what the real problem is and understand the cultural human factors associated with the solution being implemented. A new office space (or Aeron chairs!) might be part of the solution, but it’s important to know exactly how and understand the story it tells the workforce.

The built environment is not a Band-Aid to fix all problems. When implemented incorrectly, it can make the cut deeper. Avoid the missteps made by the leaders from my friend’s old organization and literally read the room.•

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Julka is founder of Indianapolis-based DORIS Research, which uses design thinking to organize workspaces.