conflict that emerge are ones of substance or of tradition and culture.
Once you know the rules, itâll be easy to catch yourself and the team when you fail to think differently. Ask persistently and politely, âWhy arenât we considering another way of doing this?â
Environment Constraints: Comfort Versus Collaboration
Many of us find that we are more productive in some environments than in others when tackling specific kinds of tasks. When generating ideas, some people prefer absolute quiet, whereas others do their most creative work in noisy, stimulus-filled places. For individuals, this constraint is usually straightforward to overcome: simply change places. But what about working environments for groups, in which preferences differ and interaction needs to be facilitated? The spaces that groups use are usually chosen by what is available and possibly comfortable to members of the group. Rarely are they chosen or designed so as to enhance the kind of interactions needed during an innovation project. But as we are about to see, a groupâs working environment can seriously constrain innovation by affecting the way the group processes information and emotion.
Using Spaces That Impede Interaction
Our physical environment shapes interactions in a number of ways. For example, when individuals sit face-to-face across the table, the seating arrangement sets up an implicit competition between them. Studies looking at communication patterns find that the most argumentative and oppositional statements made in a group sitting at a table tend to be directed at the individual seated exactly opposite (e.g., Sillars, Pike, Jones, and Murphy, 1984). Rectangular tables reinforce this dynamic, which is why many âcreative designâ tables have irregular shapes.
Other aspects of the physical space also affect a groupâs ability to fulfill its mission. Offices and conference rooms are usually designed for routine work. Recognizing this, many interior designers suggest fashioning a âcreative workspaceâ by omitting walls, lowering cubicles, and encasing conference rooms in glass. Although the end result may look cool, it can become problematic for a group trying to do creative work.
The problem with glass-enclosed conference rooms, for example, is the distractions outside. The knowledge that the group is virtually under surveillance can create social pressure on the group members, encouraging them to restrict their behaviors to those that will seem normal and justifiable to anyone who happens to be passing by (such as the boss). Such behaviors as becoming playful or engaging in healthy conflict are necessary to spur imagination, but they will be suppressed to the extent that they might be perceived as not being real work.
Communicating Using Limited Media
In addition to spatial arrangements or geography, other aspects of the physical environment, such as the tools provided to a group, can powerfully shape its work.
Although it can be nice to have a large screen and a digital projector to illuminate it, these can only be driven from one personâs computer at a time. We also default to using programs like PowerPoint or Keynote, which require the content to be developed in advance and make it all but impossible to change the presentation or even capture comments or insights as you go. IT staff and other expert users with access to digitizing tablets or touch screens might bristle at this assertion, suggesting that you can use the âdigital inkâ feature of these programs for annotating presentations. True, but the feature is limited to one personâs input and is clunky at best.
This is not to say that these tools have no value; they are great for sharing information that one person has collected and organized into a âpresentationâ for the group. However, this is only a small part of an innovation groupâs work. Beyond perceiving the information, they need to
Once you know the rules, itâll be easy to catch yourself and the team when you fail to think differently. Ask persistently and politely, âWhy arenât we considering another way of doing this?â
Environment Constraints: Comfort Versus Collaboration
Many of us find that we are more productive in some environments than in others when tackling specific kinds of tasks. When generating ideas, some people prefer absolute quiet, whereas others do their most creative work in noisy, stimulus-filled places. For individuals, this constraint is usually straightforward to overcome: simply change places. But what about working environments for groups, in which preferences differ and interaction needs to be facilitated? The spaces that groups use are usually chosen by what is available and possibly comfortable to members of the group. Rarely are they chosen or designed so as to enhance the kind of interactions needed during an innovation project. But as we are about to see, a groupâs working environment can seriously constrain innovation by affecting the way the group processes information and emotion.
Using Spaces That Impede Interaction
Our physical environment shapes interactions in a number of ways. For example, when individuals sit face-to-face across the table, the seating arrangement sets up an implicit competition between them. Studies looking at communication patterns find that the most argumentative and oppositional statements made in a group sitting at a table tend to be directed at the individual seated exactly opposite (e.g., Sillars, Pike, Jones, and Murphy, 1984). Rectangular tables reinforce this dynamic, which is why many âcreative designâ tables have irregular shapes.
Other aspects of the physical space also affect a groupâs ability to fulfill its mission. Offices and conference rooms are usually designed for routine work. Recognizing this, many interior designers suggest fashioning a âcreative workspaceâ by omitting walls, lowering cubicles, and encasing conference rooms in glass. Although the end result may look cool, it can become problematic for a group trying to do creative work.
The problem with glass-enclosed conference rooms, for example, is the distractions outside. The knowledge that the group is virtually under surveillance can create social pressure on the group members, encouraging them to restrict their behaviors to those that will seem normal and justifiable to anyone who happens to be passing by (such as the boss). Such behaviors as becoming playful or engaging in healthy conflict are necessary to spur imagination, but they will be suppressed to the extent that they might be perceived as not being real work.
Communicating Using Limited Media
In addition to spatial arrangements or geography, other aspects of the physical environment, such as the tools provided to a group, can powerfully shape its work.
Although it can be nice to have a large screen and a digital projector to illuminate it, these can only be driven from one personâs computer at a time. We also default to using programs like PowerPoint or Keynote, which require the content to be developed in advance and make it all but impossible to change the presentation or even capture comments or insights as you go. IT staff and other expert users with access to digitizing tablets or touch screens might bristle at this assertion, suggesting that you can use the âdigital inkâ feature of these programs for annotating presentations. True, but the feature is limited to one personâs input and is clunky at best.
This is not to say that these tools have no value; they are great for sharing information that one person has collected and organized into a âpresentationâ for the group. However, this is only a small part of an innovation groupâs work. Beyond perceiving the information, they need to
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