Ice Cold in the Office
Or. Bare walls and silence do not encourage productivity.
(534 words)
By John Locke
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John Locke
Professional Speaker and Trainer
John has been in training and speaking since the early 70s,
He has worked in industry, construction and commerce and
is recognized as an expert in interpersonal communication.
www.AnEnglishmanAbroad.com
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Many years ago in my thirties and on a sharp managerial learning curve I had a meeting in a local government office. I was in the waiting room while my contact was being told I had arrived, when I noticed something peculiar with the room. It was not until I looked for a magazine that I realized what it was. No magazines, no pictures on the walls, no awards, nothing to indicated life of any description. As I am mulling this over, my contact came in and I was taken to a meeting room. Because of the lack of any indication of human life in the waiting room I took notice as we walked through the main office.
The silence except for the scraping of pens on paper and the tapping of a single type writer in a far corner, hit me like ice cream on a sensitive tooth. All walls were bare, as were the desks, no photographs, no trinkets, nothing to indicate human life existed outside this room. I was instantly tempted to jump on a desk and dance a jig to waken the place up. By now I was intrigued as to why people would be expected to work in these conditions.
The meeting room had a glass wall so I could observe all actions in the main office; my concentration was torn between why I was there and what was going on in the other room. I was determined to find out about this antiseptic island before I left.
The meeting over I began to ask a few questions of my contact regarding the sterile office environment. I was told the department manager regarded anything other then work materials as a distraction. The staff were here to work and for no other reason. He also told me that at the end of the day all desks had to be cleared completely so that when the manager walked through nothing could be seen to clutter up the office.
This was an exceptional case, but we all have out little peculiarities and we should stand back and look at the way we operate. Not just as a manager, but also as a team member. We should ensure we are not doing anything to block communication between team members and that the atmosphere in the workplace is up beat and productive.
If you want a department to work efficiently you must put aside all of your personal foibles, as a manager it is your job to maintain a happy, enlightened, informed team. It is not easy and entails work. If you go to work each day and carry on where you left off the day before you need to stand back and look at your life style and system of management.
One simple thing you can do is to ask yourself this question each day. “What can I do today that will help my team to be more efficient?” When you have answered that question put the answer into practice that day.
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Copyright© by John Locke, An Englishman Abroad.
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