Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Open Office Culture Doesn’t Work

Yesterday I realized this open culture of cube farms doesn’t work. Facebook and Google may have created the push for this open culture but they are counterproductive. Don’t get me wrong here. At one time I thought they were productive. I thought they were the way to go but then I realized something. People aren’t collaborating and the people who are collaborating are disturbing the rest of the people in the area. If you walk around you will see almost everyone with a headset on or ear phones in. They aren’t in online meetings. They are trying to drown out the noise of all the conversations in the area so they can be somewhat productive which means they aren’t collaborating. They are slowly becoming less and less productive.

Over the years I’ve been in numerous office situations. I’ve found that individual offices don’t work either. They create silos of people who hardly ever collaborate causing lots of rework. I think they work great for managers and executives who need their private times but not for individuals or team leaders.

So what is the solution? The solution is a mix of both. This mix is team rooms. Rooms that seat anywhere from 5 to 10 people in a room where the area in that room is open just like the low wall cube farms. This allows for teams to become closer than just colleagues and that is what builds a team. That is what fosters collaboration, open communication, and ownership. The people in the room work on the same or similar projects that require open atmosphere communication. This is the day-to-day communication that doesn’t directly affect a project but is important. The team members shouldn’t need to wear head phones every day to get work done. The team leaders should also sit with their team members to keep track of their team’s problems and activities.

Just some thoughts from a rambling office worker.

Monday, April 20, 2015

Easter realization

Today I realized something…
So what stemmed this thought? Today at church a new friend came over and gave me a hug after the service. It was a glorious service today. Anyway, it wasn't just a hug. It felt different. It sparked something inside of me that made me realize something. I finally realized that something I've been looking for my whole life, something I've been praying for, I will never have on this earth. What I mean is I’ll never know what it feels like to have an earthly father’s love for his son. This may seem bad to you but it’s a great breakthrough for me. It means I’m letting go of things that are holding me back. I’ve struggled my whole life of 35 years with wondering what it felt like to have a father’s love for his son. Even as being a father now, I’ve made my mistakes. From the outside looking in, most people would probably say I haven’t been a good father. Especially to my son. What I’ve learned over the past few months is I’m not a bad father. I’m a father who didn’t have a father to model that example so I’m having to figure things out the hard way. By making mistakes and failing a lot.
I’m sure you are thinking, where is the breakthrough right! The breakthrough is that by letting go of the thought and trying to find the feeling of what a father’s love should feel like, I can focus my time and energy on accepting the love of God as my father filling the hole in my heart and let that joy and love overflow from my heart into my own family. I can let the Godly men I have become friends with be the example of being a loving father.
This thought then got me thinking what is going to happen with my kids and their kids. The absence of a father at one generation before the developing of the foundation can take place will ripple across multiple generations before the males in the family genealogy becomes aligned with children who've had a stable father the whole time. Sometimes a grandparent or someone else can step in and take on the role shortening the generations ripple affect but it all takes time. Something we all have a limited amount of.