8.18.2006

Experiment In Progress

One of my long, boring meetings yesterday revolved around our pending move into new office space that is being completed for our Children and Youth departments. The primary topic of the meeting was to determine who 'qualified' for their own office and who would either need to share an office or have a cubicle. Our junior high team has been given 5 offices which is enough for each person to have their own. However, in the meeting I found out that I'm the only person who fits the qualifications for a private office (the process of who does and who does not qualify is a long, detailed one that actually makes quite a bit of sense). What doesn't make sense, however, is to cram two people into a tiny office...they don't qualify for their own, so the traditional practice has been to share an office between two people. Thus, in a moment of creativity mixed in with a twisted sense of adventure I decided to try propose something new.

When we move into our new space next week, NOBODY on the junior high team (including me) will be in an office. We'll all have private cubicles which we can make our own and we will have access to 5 open offices that any one of us can pop into at any given time for an hour or two or eight. Family pictures, knick knacks etc. will remain in the cubicle. We're going to theme each office and decorate accordingly. We'll have the 'big city room', the 'surf room', the 'garage room' , the 'locker room' and the 'global room'. If somebody is feeling beachy, they just pop into the surf room to work. Feeling like visiting New York or London? Then head to the big city room. Nobody will have their own office, but we'll all have 5 offices to chose from.

It might be really cool. It might be a disaster.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

hurray for communism! in all seriousness, i like the idea... but probably because I never got an office while I was there.

Anonymous said...

I think this is a pretty sweet idea. It'd be interesting to find a way to measure the level of productivity - see if it changes. In reality though, you only need an office for two things: meeting privately with someone and focused thinking/strategizing time. Will each of the themed offices have a computer or are laptop-challenged people going to have to work on pad and paper in there?

I know that your office door is open most of the time anyways so being in a cubicle probably won't feel too much different for you. Or it could suck and you'll convert the surf office to your personal office after a month.

Anonymous said...

One plus in this is that we'll all have lap tops so we can just plug into the dock at our cube or in an office.

Anonymous said...

I love this idea! Unless someone tries to hog an office. Will the cubicles be the same as in the old offices?

Anonymous said...

Sounds like an awesome idea. I hope that it works even better than you all envisioned it. Keep the updates comin'!

EM

Anonymous said...

Lots of potential ... everyone is on equal playing fields. JG

Anonymous said...

haha I can't wait to see this...

Anonymous said...

Hey at least no one will miss out on the daily game of "Flinch" now. If you don't know what that is yet, all I can say is - welcome to the cubicles. :)