What Your Office Environment Communicates

There are two kinds of environment in business.  The office where you work and your own personal space within it.

The uniformity of most of the open plan offices leaves much to be desired.  For the most part they are big, personality-less spaces.  But some offices are over designed.

In the mid-1990's, when the wonderful Agency Ammirati & Puris was merged by Interpublic into Lintas, which became Ammirati Puris/Lintas, the Lintas offices were completely redone at the behest of Ralph Ammirati and Martin Puris.  What they did became legendary.

The new offices copied the Ammirati offices, but were very different from Lintas. Everything was white.  Everything was precise.  Furniture was uniform and specifically chosen – no one could have their own favorite chairs unless pre-approved. Personal artwork, to be placed in private offices or on the walls of people’s cubicles, had to be pre-approved. Picture frames were regulated.  There were even clear dots on the sides of window frames indicating the level of where blinds had to be placed; they could not be higher or lower, even those offices on the east and South sides of the building which got huge amounts of sun.  There were actually office services people who policed the offices every day, including the blinds.

The first time I ever heard of this was when I visited CBS.  CBS had just moved into the offices it occupied on Sixth Avenue and Lou Dorfsman, the design guru who developed the CBS eye logo, dictated what could and could not be in offices,  all of which, like Lintas’in the mid 1990’s, were painted white. CBS offices were uniform and stark.

I once worked in a firm that was run by a protégé of Lew Dorfsman and he went so far as to tell executives that their desks were too messy, even before they went home. When clients visited the offices, he was tyrannical about neat papers on desks.

I always felt that this kind of graphic dictatorship was antithetical to creativity. In fact, at ad agencies, my opinion is that this kind of uniformity is boring and sterile.  I never did ask a client how they felt about it, but I heard from a lot of creative people about the absurdity of the design edicts. And that applies to personal offices as well.

Then, recently, I read a study which was reported on the web by MSN (which is my home page) which proved my thoughts and feelings right.  It appears that, according to the study published in Psychological Science the conclusion was that it is better to have a messy desk at the start of a project (a clean one at the end).  The messy desk, among other things, promotes creative thinking and new ideas.  Sounds right to me.

I would extend that to personal offices which are cluttered and well worn.  Those who know my office know that it is homey and loaded with my “stuff” and exudes my personality.  It also allows people to be comfortable and open with me when I am interviewing them.

 My Office

Not surprisingly, most people don't decorate their office space.  But for me, an office is where I have to spend eight to twelve hours every day, so I make it my second home.  I have done this my whole career, even when I was an account executive (occasionally it got me in trouble, but that is another post).  People always complimented me on my space, even when I was young.

If I were a client looking to hire a new agency, I would look for an agency which exudes energy and creativity.

What does your office say about you?