Something I realized when binge watching the television show 30 Rock at year end: Jack Donaghy is right (mostly) about workplace design.
First, some background: 30 Rock is described (accurately) by Wikipedia as “an American satirical television sitcom created by Tina Fey that ran on NBC from October 11, 2006, to January 31, 2013. The series, based on Fey’s experiences as head writer for Saturday Night Live, takes place behind the scenes of a fictional live sketch comedy show depicted as airing on NBC. The series’ name refers to 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, the address of the Comcast Building, where the NBC studios are located” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_Rock). Jack Donaghy is the executive that’s the Fey character’s boss. He struggled to “make it” in the business world and has achieved great success, after a poor childhood in Boston.
What Jack is right about is the important but silent (generally) conversation that the design of a workplace has with the people in it. Jack signals his success, to himself and others, through the design of his office. As Jack climbs the corporate ladder, he remodels his new offices so that they communicate his prestige, sophistication, etc. Finishes used and furniture in place are not haphazardly chosen, nor is anything else in place selected without deliberation.
When Jack temporarily loses favor and is relocated to a low-prestige floor, the changes in his physical work world are intensely experienced by his character and extensively (for a half hour television program) discussed. Jack is stressed because he finds undesirable messages being sent by his surroundings.
When Jack goes on the road, so does his office; he hires an office replication service that recreates his office whenever he needs to work from a space outside 30 Rockefeller Plaza. And Jack is surprised that the people he employs don’t use office replication services. Jack’s responsibilities don’t change when he’s outside Rockefeller center, so he is certain his office shouldn’t either. (Even though, as a psychologist, I like consistent signaling, I do think that office replication is a little excessive.)
Another reason it’s noteworthy that Jack recreates his 30 Rockefeller Plaza office when he’s elsewhere: people are most comfortable in a familiar space. Jack and his subordinates probably find that his consistent office design helps them overcome some working-from-the-road tension.
When Jack needs to negotiate with members of Fey’s team, he reconfigures his office to make sure those other parties feel less powerful than he does. The whole idea of using space to advantage makes sense, but Jack’s techniques are, in this case, a little obvious. He sits the parties he wishes to best on lower chairs than his own to encourage them to negotiate less vigorously. Most times he’s a little more sophisticated about how he uses his office to advantage.
Jack wants to send certain messages to the people who visit his office, and we could debate if they are the ones he should be projecting. Jack would have selected to “say” something else with his office, if he was interested in different aspects of his life being clear, very clear, to others.
30 Rock’s workplace design/signaling vignettes are strangely compelling, whether you’re vegging out and Netflix/Hulu binging, or it’s just a Tuesday.
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.