​Resilience & Design Thinking

In late August, the 130-mph winds of Hurricane Harvey rudely elbowed their way into Houston and greater Harris County, Texas, bringing with them 50 inches of rainfall. (Average annual August rainfall there is a little more than three inches.) In the earlier years of this century, Houston paved over a great deal of its porous land with roads, parking lots and strip malls. With nowhere to go, the sudden deluge seeped and oozed into every nook and crevice of the built environment while creating a toxic stew of sewage, excreta, and a cornucopia of pathogens just looking for open wounds to infect. A 31-year old carpenter and 77-year old mother, both helping others to clean out damaged living spaces, contracted necrotizing faciitis, a rapidly expanding flesh-eating bacteria. They died.

Sven Govaars, then a workplace strategist in Gensler’s Houston office, was prompted to consider how his occupation with workplace design might help his and other offices bounce back from this and similar disruptions by natural forces, and also man-made disruptions. (Business Resilience – Design Thinking – Disruptions)

Some may chortle and raise eyebrows at the eccentric idea that interior designers might have valuable insights for organizations threatened by nature’s tumultuous events. But having spent some time considering “design thinking,” Mr. Govaars recognized that a re-examination of the assumptions underlying the status quo might indicate a path toward improvement. This reflects the well-known idea that the same thinking that got you into a problem is unlikely to get you out of it, and suggests that looking farther afield might lead to a new and better solution.

A multi-disciplinary brainstorming session to kick of a project makes a lot of sense. But, with a moment’s thought, one can easily see why interior designers might be a fruitful source of advice. The recent hurricanes, floods and fires in this country raise serious questions about how humans might best live with their environments. But answering that question is, in essence, what workplace designers do except, in their case, they fashion the environments.

Mr. Govaars also notes that “design thinking” requires the problem solver to reassess the underlying premises of a particular design in order to arrive at a new, creative solution. During natural disruptions, there is an underlying assumption that the restoration of normality is the responsibility of governmental bodies, the relevant utilities and the individuals affected. One does not normally think of employers having other than a limited role, and that, one centering on their business purposes. The underlying premise for business organizations, said Mr. Govaars is the idea that “companies are built for stability, predictability and control” in order to maximize revenue and lower costs.

One should not cavalierly dismiss these suppositions, but it is possible to dig a little deeper and revise them based upon our experience. While the destruction of infrastructure is the most obvious result of extraordinary environmental events, the physical and mental health of the affected populace is equally important. In this regard, employers could be very well positioned to help their organization while helping their employees. As Mr. Govaars indicated, the alignment of interests of employers and employees is more marked in this type of situation than one might think.

Remarking on the aftereffects of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, one newspaper stated: “Returning to a routine is the most important step toward overcoming trauma, according to physicians and public health officials.” (After Hurricane, Signs of a Mental Health Crisis Haunt Puerto Rico) 

But how do we return to routine, even if it is a new one? Looking more carefully at the requirements of “stability, predictability and control” suggests that the core element, the essence of this model, is control. But control is nothing more than a mechanism used to get employees to promote the organization’s aims. As we moved toward the 21st century, employers discovered that an often more effective technique was to devise ways to enhance employee engagement. Both of these methodologies are largely a function of feedback loops.

Historically, the feedback loop was a function of direct observation by a supervisor, or supervisory element, of the actual functionary or functional apparatus, whether human or electro-mechanical in nature. Thus, in the post industrial-revolution era, office workers were to a large extent monitored in a hierarchical arrangement of workers and supervisors, permitting a greater or lesser degree of supervisory observation.

More recently, alternative work-styles have arisen, including teleworking, co-working and free-range working. These developments have been driven by several considerations, including employee accommodation, workplace cost reductions, task requirements and simple necessity. Underlying it all, however, is the techno-science that provides the required almost-instant communication and a reasonable means of assessing productivity, and thus the control feedback loop.

Employee engagement minimizes the need for close external control and emphasizes the need for a manifest and communicated organizational attitude and purpose, one that engenders a sense of participation in and belonging to the work community and its objectives. For over a decade, interior designers of the workplace have recognized the importance of organizational culture as a guiding element in their designs. This has been generalized in the work of Yuval N. Harari, in his book, “Sapiens.” There, he coins the term Cognitive Revolution to refer to the culture, i.e., the elaborate set of ideas, values and behaviors, that enable humans in large numbers to act in concert in support or pursuit of a given set of community objectives. This cooperative behavior (sense of mission), in turn, he believes, accounts for the great success of the species Homo Sapiens in dominating the living things of the Earth, and presumably, applies on a smaller scale to a competitive business environment.

Organizations are becoming increasingly aware of the need to develop employee engagement and to reduce the surprising volume of presenteeism, defined as the attendance at the worksite but with very low contribution or productivity, present in body but not in mind (Presenteeism was originally concerned with work attendance by sick employees, but now includes other factors that interfere with workplace productivity). HNI companies, for example, effectively use ubiquitous metrics, and subsequent multi-division feedback and assessment sessions, to dramatically heighten the awareness of their manufacturing workforces of the collective achievements of various parts of the related company; this practice also helps create a sense of teamwork and participation in the organization’s goals.

Let us now consider, as an example, a significant disruptive event, such as Hurricane Harvey and the flooding and attendant problems in Houston. And let’s assume for purposes of illustration that we are dealing with office workers whose home and workplace are disrupted, say with flooding.

The Free-Range workplace and its antecedents described by Dean Strombom and Mr. Govaars in their annual NeoCon presentations provide for practical and technological stepping stones for much more dispersed and ad hoc working arrangements and locations such as may be required by significant natural disruptions.

The focus here is on the organization’s performance, rather than that of the workforce, generally, and, as an essential part of design thinking, requires a high degree of empathy for the plight of employees. In particular, the role of the organization is to do what it can to protect the psychological wellbeing of its workforce, in particular, the need to feel that one is not isolated and that help is on the way. In the very least, the first step toward resilience is the ability to communicate one’s location and problems. Consider also the favorable impact when an employee in difficulty knows that their work organization is showing in a very important way that it cares about its employees, even outside of the workplace.

This brings into a much clearer view the role of interior design in the context of workplace design and, for that matter, organizational design and how the organization interacts with, and becomes a part of, the community at large. Too often, the interior design of the workplace is at best a sideshow, a nice icing on the cake, if senior management has the taste for it and the resources to expend. But the opportunity cost of that type of thinking is much greater than we can easily understand.

[We] create our own environments. … Do we know what we are doing?

The interior design profession has delayed beyond all imagination the undertaking of its own responsibility to ensure that the broad conceptual framework of its profession becomes part of the common consciousness. In the end, its purpose is to help create built environments that supportively co-exist with the rest of the natural environment and enhance the personal and economic wellbeing of the human species.

We recognize that one of the greatest attributes of our species is the ability to create our own environments. We are not alone in this, but our abilities in this area far exceed those of other living things. But even though we have exercised this ability for millennia, the question is now even more pressing, “Do we know what we are doing?” Moreover, are we willing to listen to the professionals whose life-work is the study of how best to do this? Some of us do, but we recognize that the knowledge of the few is not always paramount in the minds of those who develop the built environment.