The Idea Room
I have never been one to pay much attention to work place design. Several months ago the Ninth Store team received a physical workplace transformation. The scattered physical team was relocated and consolidated into one room. The room quickly got labelled: The Idea Room by the new occupants.
Currently there are four full time team members in the room. Monday morning task review meetings are held in the room with part time team members joining to gather around a round table. Bi-monthly Ninth Store learning and metric review sessions are held in the same fashion with several members teleconferencing using Mikogo to share screens. The change has been remarkable and beyond expectations. Productivity and morale has gone up, creatively and accountability has gone up. Collaboration has gone up. In fact every management metric that can be measured has gone up.
For management gurus it really is not secret as to why. Create an environment with the right conditions and things flourish. What is that environment? An open, creative, social workspace which the team created, not management. An environment that the team feels ownership of; it is their space, not a temporary work cubical. That is the key, if you want engagement and buy in you need to give to get. The team was good before, now it is great. I wish we had made the move a long time ago to The Idea Room. Maybe someday I will join them.
Steve Whittington is President of Roadmap Agency Inc. He has also served for over a decade as a member of the Executive Team of Flaman Group of Companies an award-winning organization and has over 25 years of executive experience. Steve’s current board work includes serving as; President of Glenora Child Care Society; and Co-Chair of the Marketing Program Advisory Committee for NAIT’s JR Shaw School of Business. Previous notable board work included, Chair of the board for Flaman Fitness Canada, a national retailer, a Director for a meal prep internet Startup Mealife and Chair of Lethbridge Housing authority, the third-largest Social housing NGO in Alberta.
Academically, Steve was an instructor of Project Management at Lethbridge College for seven years. Steve holds a Bachelor of Commerce Honours degree; he is a Certified Sales Professional (CSP), Project Management Professional (PMP), Certified Marketing Specialist (CMS) and (CCXP) Certified Customer Experience Professional.
Steve’s first book Thriving in the Customer Age – 8 Key Metrics to Transform your Business Results teaches about the customer journey and provides a guiding framework spanning all stages of the customer experience. The book explains how every metric impacts an organization and how leaders can best utilize each metric to provide a stellar customer experience. Everyone knows the customer is the most important part of a business. This book provides the tools to improve an organization’s customer experience and drastically transform business results.
Recently Steve’s Blog has been profiled as one of the Top 75 Customer Experience blogs
Topic: Blogs, Creative Work Space, Creativity, Marketing