Have you ever added 30 minutes to your personal schedule to troubleshoot the commander’s video teleconference system before the weekly unit synch? Have you ever had a printer that didn’t work, but still took up space in your office? Ever tried to follow the secretary’s instructions for scheduling the conference room in an “easy outlook calendar that links to the last version of SharePoint but doesn’t work now?” These frustrations distract us from creating world-class units.

Good workspace design, which is based on principles of simplicity and responsibility, can significantly improve unit effectiveness because it allows us to focus on our missions and not waste time, emotions, and resources learning to fix printers and AV systems. This article introduces two important principles to increase productivity and creativity in the workspace by drawing on a growing body of research to improve workforce productivity by making small changes that have significant impacts. Pictures of modern office spaces highlight how intentional design minimizes wasted time, space, and money by eliminating distractions and promoting value creation (both moral and monetary). Simplicity and responsibility are two tools to use in building workspaces that increase unit effectiveness. 

Recently having spent a weekend helping MD5 (now the National Security Innovation Network) run a hackathon in an NYC coworking space this winter, I was struck by the themes of simplicity and responsibility on display in that space. Yes, they had really cool $4,646.98 tables; but those were the frosting on a space that had turned simplicity and responsibility into a launchpad for the creativity and hard work of its users. Most notably, the conference room lacked a complicated AV system. Instead, it had an HDMI cable and audio jack running directly from the screen to the middle of the conference table. Instructions were posted on the wall. Just plug in your laptop and start working. This theme was repeated across the space. 

Responsibility, moreover, was shown in two ways. First, the space hired facility managers who ensured equipment was clean and serviceable, consumables were re-stocked, and the facilities were maintained. Their names and number were posted at any location that regularly required their attention. 

Second, the office relied on delegation through outsourcing, including using a third-party application to schedule conference rooms. The managers of the space did not need to be experts in building and maintaining scheduling software. They paid experts to do that for them while they concentrated on creating their own value for their users. Being responsible for facilities includes knowing what you should and should not spend your time being good at.

In the private sector, competition for talent and creativity is driving businesses to create value in every asset that they can. As a result, the workplace is being transformed from a cost into an investment. Genseler’s U.S. Workplace Survey 2019 found that workplace effectiveness alone can account for 29% of workplace commitment and 38% of job satisfaction. Firms today hire design companies that first review how a company works and then consider how space affects a company’s processes. Facades and finishes to create a visually complex environment are added only after user needs and efficient layouts are determined.

Organizations that are successfully competing for the best talent also are turning to the growing field of ethonomics to build offices and cultures that the best talent wants to work in. Ethonomics research indicates that creative spaces are visually complex, have views of nature, use natural materials, have few cool colors, and avoid manufactured composite surfaces. This is consistent with research that indicates increased novelty and complexity in our environment will improve our ability to enter flow states. Organizations are using visual complexity to stimulate creativity and productivity, while avoiding or eliminating negative, unproductive, or invaluable distractions. 

This approach aligns with the principles of LEAN, the famed Toyota Production System. LEAN seeks to determine how an organization creates value and how it can eliminate waste from the value production process. Are your facilities creating value or wasting time and effort? Does the commander’s secretary need to write conference room scheduling software, or should he be focused on the commander’s needs and delegate software development and maintenance to an actual software expert? Using the principles of simplicity and responsibility can help us focus on how we add value to the unit and remove distractions from our lives.

Establishing and enforcing responsibility assigns clear delegation of roles and responsibilities and creates ownership. Once matched with resources, the assignment of responsibility should create incentives, opportunities, and permission for people to improve “their” property and processes. This can have surprisingly effective results when a requirement is transformed into a work of art by an individual or team that decided to exercise some pride of ownership. 

The military has used these principles in a few organizations, such as the Naval Postgraduate School. It may not have $4,646.98 tables, but it does have classrooms and library spaces that meet the student’s needs. Every trash can and printer has a card explaining who is responsible for its service and how to contact them. Students don’t spend their time trying to figure out what “PC Load letter” means. It feels like another universe, another military, one where things work so we can concentrate on our jobs rather than on fixing bad hardware. It is heaven.

As the fiscal year ends, a lot of units will be spending money on new office furniture instead of investing in good workplace design. But, even without significant spending, there are simple ways of improving our unit’s performance and members’ lives:  

1. Understand your unit’s values, your commander’s vision, and the goals and processes needed to achieve both.
2. Learn the workflows in the office and your members’ frustrations. Gather empirical evidence.
3. Identify key pieces of hardware and comms that are distracting your unit.
4. Prioritize tackling inefficiencies and frustrations, especially those whose improvement will solve or ameliorate other inefficiencies and frustrations. Compare this list to your available manpower and budget. 
5. Assign responsibility for workspace maintenance and sustainment to specific individuals in your workspace team (and don’t forget to include yourself.) Post names and numbers over the equipment. Then, provide the resources to maintain and sustain that equipment.

The Gensler’s survey mentioned earlier found that the majority of respondents who reported both low workplace effectiveness and experience were government and defense employees. Spending time thinking about the design and function of your unit’s spaces may seem like a distraction from the mountain of work piling up in your inbox. But a growing body of research indicates that taking a moment to reflect on the design of our spaces can significantly improve unit productivity and creativity, and, thus, effectiveness.  Adhering to principles of simplicity and responsibility are two ways that we can start to create facilities that help us focus on making our units better.

Maj Kurt Degerlund is a USAF officer currently attending DLI in Washington, D.C. He is a C-17 pilot by trade who has served in Airlift Squadrons, as an Air Mobility Liaison Officer (AMLO) to 8th Army in Korea, and most recently in the 621 Contingency Response Wing at JB McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst. He is a member of the Military Writers Guild and can be reached @kjdegs on Twitter. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.