-- INTRO --
Chris Moriarty
Hello and welcome to Workplace Geeks, your intrepid journey through the labyrinth of workplace research, where the beacons of brilliance illuminate the path. I'm Chris Moriarty.
Ian Ellison
And I'm Ian Ellison.
Chris Moriarty
And we're merely the footprints left on the shifting sands of the Workplace Insight desert, guiding your way through its ever-changing landscape.
And today is the last interview of the season. That's right, we've hit our 14th episode of this little run, but don't despair. In a moment, we'll let you know exactly what's happening in the next few months to get you through this little break and get your Workplace Geeks fix. Before that though, needless to say that following our interview with Rachel and Sophie at Cushman & Wakefield, we've been flooded with positive vibes for their work.
So we're really, really pleased you enjoyed it. And what that means is that we've got a bulging mailbag to quickly whip through. So whip through it we shall. Ian.,
Ian Ellison
Okay, Robert Wainwright and I think this is not the first time he's been in touch with us, said another fascinating episode from Workplace Geeks challenged my ideas around the merits of remote and in person work.
I was sufficiently absorbed that I extended my morning dog walk to listen to the whole episode. Whilst I would not say I agree with all the ideas put forward, it certainly made me revisit some of my beliefs. And I think that's lovely, Chris, because we don't want agreement. We want debate. We want critical thought.
That is what this is all about.
Chris Moriarty
By the way, that's not the first time I've heard that podcast episodes should closely align to your average dog walk. So apologies to the dog, because clearly it was the dog that bit the bullet for that.
Ian Ellison
Okay. The next person, apologies if I butcher your name, but Laurent Giraud from France for.
Anyone who is curious to understand how organisations connect and communicate, this is a good podcast to listen to Rachel and Sophie share their passion of the study of ONA and share findings on such topics as to who are the influences at work, which communication forums are most effective disseminate knowledge throughout an organisation.
It's got me thinking about how I can grow and support. Others to develop a more enrichening work and social network, but this week's star prize for the mailbag, and it's not the first time we've heard from her goes to Marwa Abdel Latif from Egypt office remote hybrid. This is a wicked problem that requires a second order thinking.
This idea has been stewing in my mind until a recent episode of the workplace geeks podcast shed light on an illuminating study. Their research combined organisational network data with workspace occupation statistics, unveiling how our choices of where and how to work could shape work dynamics in unforeseen ways.
So Marwa is generally grateful. And what I love about what Marwa does is she uses our episodes almost as a starting point for her own provocations on the topic. So these ideas of wicked problems and second or thinking they are academic concepts, which is super relevant, but again, often. and forgotten.
And here they are being challenged. So there you go, Chris, mailbag done.
Chris Moriarty
What I like about Marwa's comment is that she includes show notes on her post, like just to explain wicked problems and second order thinking. So thank you Marwa. Um, look, we really love hearing from you all. Particularly when you don't agree, like Ian says, you know, we want people to debate and challenge each other.
We want to build on ideas like Marwa has there. So yes, we love hearing how much you love the show. It makes us feel great. Uh, but we love it more when the community gets its thinking caps on after listening. So keep it up. And now time for our usual hello to workplace geeks around the world. So thank you to the geeks in Orohovica, county of Virovitica, Podrovina in Croatia.
Hello to Vaxjo, Kronenberg County, Sweden. Hello to San Remo, Victoria in Australia. And hello to our listeners in Hartlepool, North England. Hello there. Um, we love hearing from Workplace Geeks around the world. Do get in touch via LinkedIn, just search for Workplace Geeks using the Workplace Geeks hashtag, that's #workplacegeeks, dropping us an email on hello@workplacegeeks.org or signing up to our newsletter, which is very important information this episode, as you're about to discover before we go there, Ian, tell us who we've got lined up on today's episode.
Ian Ellison
Uh, well actually, and as if you didn't already know this. It's us. But to make this work, we've flipped the script and invited Workplace Geeks reflection section regular Esme Banks Marr to take the interview steering wheel, so to speak.
And we're going to be the guests. So the paper we're talking about is one that we wrote, I think about 18 months ago now that was published, number four, in case you're interested, it's called A New Hope; a holistic framework for workplace experience, and just to really quickly frame this, it's a conceptual paper. It's informed by various workplace theories and practice. And it's all about a framework to embrace this nebulous concept that we all call workplace more fully.
And then it's potential applications like understanding workplace experience and the impacts of workplace experience on work even better. So. We've talked about this framework at Workplace Trends. We've written blogs and more journalistic articles about it for those of you who don't dig on the academia ish.
So now with this podcast discussion, we, I think it's fair to say we've really bent over backwards to make it as accessible as possible because we'd argue that it really warrants your full attention. So links to lots of different ways to get into the topic even more in the show notes, and just one last quick thing is also worth saying that we.
Perhaps being a touch indulgent here and that we allowed our own interview to run to just over an hour, which means exactly what Chris a bonus episode.
Chris Moriarty
So rather than reflect on this chat that you're about to hear, we've invited James back to reflect on the whole of series to the best bits, the interesting ideas.
So it's about 30 minutes long and we'll be publishing that next time out. But Ian, before we jump into our chat with Esme, do you want to give people. a little flavor of what they can be doing in the coming weeks and months to get their Workplace Geeks fix.
Ian Ellison
Well Christopher, we've got more event specials and new projects confirmed, so watch out for promos before we drop them on your socials.
We're definitely recording our Workplace Trends next week and we're almost over the line with some others. And also keep an eye out on your usual socials for a very special exclusive workplace geeks, documentary style podcast commission. We can say no more at this point, but we think you're going to love it.
So that should keep us plenty busy until season three in the new year. And remember. Ready for that. If you've got any suggestions, whether they're topics, guests, research projects, and academic papers, we are all ears talk to us.
Otherwise we'll basically do our own thing. And we'd much prefer to be led by your interests.
So talk to us, debate with us, get involved in the Workplace Geeks community.
Chris Moriarty
And as we enter the festive season, we have a very special invite for you. We'll be hosting the Workplace Geeks Christmas Social on 5th December in central London. Now we've already got guests from the show, Series 1, Series 2 coming along.
We've got friends of the show going to be there, but we also want to make some spaces available to you, the listeners. The way to find out more and to get your name down on our exclusive guest list is to subscribe to the newsletter. So visit workplacegeeks.org, scroll down to the bottom of the landing page, and you'll see there our sign up form.
Do not miss out. Right, that was a fairly long intro, but let's now, without any further ado, hop over to our host with the most, Esme.
-- INTERVIEW --
Esme Banks Marr
It gives me immense pleasure to host this episode of the Workplace Geeks podcast, the finale to round off season two, as your sort of in house, out of house, let's say, workplace enthusiast. I'm not sure I'm entirely at Workplace Geeks level yet. So Chris, Ian, you've achieved two seasons worth of wonderful content on the Workplace Geeks.
You've launched a new workplace experience measurement tool. But you've managed to fit in some research as well. But before we get into that, you probably haven't introduced yourself, Ali, for a few episodes now. So over to you guys.
Chris Moriarty
Well, thank you, Esme. Hi everyone. I'm Chris Moriarty and I'm one half of the soon to be award winning Workplace Geeks podcast.
Um, uh, yeah, so very potted history. 10 years kicking around workplace circles, came in it through a job I took at the British Institute Facilities Management. Um, and since then I have been at Leesman. I have been back at BIFM when they turned into IWFM. I was right at the heart of that. Uh, and also was with them during the pandemic, which was an interesting period of time for institutes and then ended up with this guy on a podcast talking about more workplace thing. Um, but yeah, that's me. Terrible at talking about myself.
Esme Banks Marr
Ooh, the tables have turned. We're going to have fun with this. Ian?
Ian Ellison
Hello. So for that 20 odd years in and around facilities management and workplace. We're at first third of my career working for Orange Telecoms, as they were then known, then went to uni to study and then ended up as a senior lecturer, which is where that whole academic and research thing came back to life.
Probably always in there somewhere, but came back again. And then final third consulting in the workplace sphere, Three Edges Workplace Limited with James. Pinder, who isn't with us today, Dr. Pinder. And now this new venture with Christopher alongside Workplace Geeks.
Esme Banks Marr
Wonderful. Well, welcome to your own podcast.
This is very exciting. Now I feel as though I'm rather well suited to host this one. Uh, not least because I am an enthusiast, but also my day job allows me to get into all of this because my slightly made up title. Um, is strategy director of work and place, which I feel tees us up quite well for a dialogue on your piece of recently published research.
But before we get into that, congratulations on the title. Chris, I have this funny feeling you may be behind this. The title of the piece of research is A New Hope, A Holistic Framework for Understanding Workplace Experience. Chris, am I right? Were you behind that one? No.
Chris Moriarty
It's nothing to do with me, that one.
I think the reason you think it's me is because I'm obviously a Star Wars nut. We secretly are all Star Wars nut, although Ian doesn't like the new stuff. He's, he's old school. I quite like the new stuff.
Ian Ellison
I don't like any of the new stuff. I did pop it in though as a bit of a nod. So there's two things you need in a good academic title, I think, which is some witty reference to pop culture.
And then you need a colon. Those two things are essential for any credible title.
Esme Banks Marr
Gosh, Ian, I think you're maybe the comms expert now. Okay, so that was the first thing. Secondly, this comes at a time when we're all kind of revisiting, individually, I think, revisiting our relationship to work, the places we do it, the times we do it, how we do it, where we do it, all of that good stuff.
Now, before I ask you about the paper, I just wanted to bring attention to What you guys put in there is one of the outcomes that you're anticipating from the research paper. And that is to enable people to holistically consider. So workplace experiences, intrinsic organisational value. Um, we'll get onto the application of it maybe towards the end, because I do want to understand from you both, how people are going to take this forward.
And there is a bit of a call to action for people to do that. But. Should I hand straight over to you and let you give an outline or would you like me to start digging into it? Actually, I get to choose today Okay, I'm gonna start where I'd like to start then. You start the paper with language and this got me very excited You recognise workplace as a word or a phrase that's got lots and lots of different meanings I think I said something similar to you episodes back I think lots of people have said that as guests on the show throughout the two seasons, but Let's just dig into that to start off with and where the paper kind of sets its scene.
Ian Ellison
Well, I think probably a good way to frame this paper is to kind of offer a couple of different starting points. So there's a really academic starting point for this, which is the relationship between space and place. And when you become obsessed with things like this previous guest Dan Wakelin has done, as I have done on my own research journey, um, you kind of end up digging into all sorts of different philosophers and all sorts of different disciplines.
So there's a human geographer called Yifu Tuan, will not have pronounced that properly, but nonetheless, who I think was writing in the 80s about space and place being fundamentally different. Space is freedom, place is home, place is identity, and Henri Lefebvre, which we talked about with, with Dan Wakelin, places essentially social space, which also makes it political, right?
So what does all of this mean? It means that essentially a space is empty until it's full of people. And then once it's full of people, it can't just be about the physical. It can't just be about the geometric. It must be about the social as well. So. That's kind of one side of it. And the other side of it is really, really practical.
So born out of my university year, and I set up the consultancy I mentioned earlier with James, 3edges, and we got commissioned time and time again to come and work with organisations. And the brief often started with a space problem. We've paid millions for an activity based workspace and it's not working.
And other things like that. So the brief is space related, but when you dig into it, all of a sudden you discover that the problems stretch far beyond space and they stretch into cultural stuff, people stuff, they stretch into technological stuff, they stretch into disconnects with business outcomes. What I'm trying to get towards is that once people are involved workplace becomes really multifaceted, and what is going on, whether it's helping or hindering, is at the interfaces between all of this stuff. And so if you really want to make progress, you have to step beyond that single dimension. And that's kind of the beginning of everything for this paper. And I feel like you're starting off by saying let's be accepting of that.
Let's acknowledge it, let's accept it, but also let's embrace it. It has so many different meanings, but there is quite a bit up front. I was very pleased about this, but it is dedicated to semantics, to language. Um, but it got me very excited. Chris, I feel like you want to jump in, or you certainly just grabbed something from your shelf.
Chris Moriarty
Well, I did, like, so, what I find really interesting with all the interviews we do, right, is that you can tell the project didn't start when they started putting pen to paper in that moment, right? It will come from all their history, their background, their curiosity, their experience, all this sort of stuff.
And I, I certainly think it was, you know, cathartic experience, kind of rereading something that we wrote, I guess it was about 18 months ago, really, when we started drafting and went through the process and looking at how focused we were on language right at the very, very start. Some of the references, the cultural references that we bring in there, so the Harari nod for Sapiens, for those who haven't read it, this big whole section about essentially what elevated us as a species above some of our close cousins.
And essentially he puts it down to language and our ability to articulate complicated things with shaped noises that ended up becoming words. But also the fact that we could tell stories, we could talk about stuff beyond its physical limitations and inspire ideas and motivate people by elevating an idea above.
The book I just grabbed is another one which focuses in on this. It's called The Storytelling Animal, chap called, uh, Jonathan, I think it's Gottschall, um, so that for me, I think it was a really important scene setter because quite often what we find in the work we do and when we approach this paper is that there are so many people talking about the same thing.
Sometimes they use the same word. Sometimes they use different words. Sometimes they use the same words and they're talking about different things. What we wanted to do is get that acknowledgement up front, almost take us up a level to go. It's all part of the same mix, but we need to be aware of it if we're going to navigate it.
And we spent far too long. If you look at your life as a, uh, piece of wood, there's a big chunk of that wood dedicated to whether or not workplace was a homonym or a policy. And if he's listening, Professor Matthew Tucker of Liverpool John Moores University was directly involved in that far too long winded conversation about the nuances between the two.
But it was. We were talking about homonyms for a long time, and it was you Ian, wasn't it, that said, no, no, no, it's a polyseme, it's a polyseme. Let me, let me show you 17 slides on homonym, which seems to people to be like over engineered, but it kind of makes sense. There's so much stuff that I've experienced coming into this, this world when we use the word workplace and expect everybody to know what we mean.
Esme Banks Marr
Just going to say, for the attention of listeners who perhaps don't know that, Ian's going to give us the abridged version of the 17 slides, without the slides.
Ian Ellison
Yeah, that was very cheeky, by the way, I can do it in one slide, but basically a homonym is a word which is either spelt or sounds the same, but it's got different meanings.
So, let's take bear, right, so you can have a big furry bear, grizzly bear, you can have a bear bottom. Or you can have to bear a burden, right? That word means different things in different contexts. But the difference, and this is why workplace is such a fascinating term, is because workplace does have different meanings in different contexts, but they've sort of evolved and they're sort of intrinsically related.
So if I've got these four sentences, come and visit us in our great new workplace. It's a pretty toxic workplace, to be honest. Our workplace is on MS Teams now, or. This company's workplace pension, brilliant. All four of those sentences, workplace makes perfect sense, but it means something different. And this is the big challenge.
And this is political as well. You know, if workplace is political, definitions of workplace is political, because people with different vested interests, if I'm interested in the social, the cultural side of workplace, then I'm going to defend that because it protects me. Or if I'm interested in the physical side of workplace, I'm going to defend that definition.
And what we're saying is, actually, if you embrace them all, you end up with a system, a way of thinking about workplace, which allows you to join dots, all the way back to that consultancy I was talking about a while ago. It allows you to talk about that. Positively affecting that, and that's negatively affecting that.
And if we can spot these relationships, we can finally start to do something about it. And so when we were in search of this holistic framework, well, that's. the facility we were sort of trying to tee up.
Chris Moriarty
The one thing that that language thing really stares up in me. And this is a challenge for anyone listening, right?
That's from the, I guess, the property sphere of this debate. We talk about workplace. As a thing, like this is another dimension, right? So in talked about it in in sort of common language, but if you think about it, it is not uncommon for someone in our circle to say this person doesn't understand workplace and I tell you what, every all of you now open up word type that sentence in and watch it have a paddy about workplace.
What? Doesn't understand workplace what? That's, that can't be the end of the sentence, can it? Doesn't make any sense. We talk about workplace as a thing. What were you on about? You were on about workplace culture, workplace experience, workplace desire, you know, workplace in this context is only a contextual word for a thing.
Chris Moriarty
That might, might be residential versus commercial.
Ian Ellison
Signifier or something, isn't it? That tees up the word to follow, that gives you the actual what this thing specifically we're on about is.
Esme Banks Marr
Which is why I think some people started randomly capitalising it, which I know in the paper you don't. And I didn't pick up on that because I feel you can read so much where it's this big important thing and it's capitalized so often and that as well as.
It's just angering me, uh, from a, from a grammar standpoint. I think, oh, somebody's put a lot of importance behind this, but I think it as a signifier is a good way of thinking of it. But look, I think it's a really important place to start. I think by saying it all matters, but also it doesn't matter is very important.
And to the lack of the one definition, I think is also very important for them teeing up the rest of the paper in the entire framework. So look, I feel as though the paper sets out an opportunity, perhaps, Now correct me if I'm wrong, particularly Ian here, in the absence of a hypothesis or is the opportunity outlined at the beginning and what could be done with this framework and how it could be taken forward and why.
But am I right in thinking in the absence of a hypothesis you've set out an opportunity at the very beginning?
Ian Ellison
Opportunity is a lovely way of thinking about it. There's a couple of things to pick up on this, and I'll try not to ramble. Firstly, if you said, like, describe what this paper is, I'd say it's conceptual, right?
It's a conceptual paper informed by theory and practice. So it's not an experiment. We're not reporting the findings of something. So when you say the word hypothesis, in a really scientific sense, that implies a particular scientific method, which is probably quite quote unquote positivistic in its approach, which is we lay out an idea and then we're going to gather evidence to prove or disprove it, right?
That isn't what this paper is, so I'm going to stay away as an academic from words like that because they're not my bag. I'm a social scientist, I'm much more into social construction, which talks to stories and our ability as human beings to interpret things through our own experiential lenses. So, um, I'm really interested in setting up an idea and saying to the readers, okay, here is a framework which we think fits our findings thus far.
Right? So when I said it's informed by theory and practice, it's informed by lots of previous work, which we talk about. It's informed by that whole sort of philosophy of space and place, which I chanted about on earlier, but it's also informed by Lots of different data sets from our past work and our past consultancy and our sense making process wasn't about proving or disproving a hypothesis.
It was about the method is iterative and the proper word for it is constant comparative. So what we're sort of saying is we've got a model, we've got an idea, and then we've got a bunch of data. Do these things work well together? And if they don't, then how do we modify the model to try and make sense of the data?
And it's an iterative journey. So when, if you remember this, Chris, when we were there agonizing over, we know what the themes are, right? Because we've used themes for a long, long time. We've got culture, technology, we've got space, and we've got business impact. But what are the sub themes that allow us to give?
This model more UT, right? Because it's too simple just as a Venn diagram. But if we put like 10 different things within each one, then it becomes unusable and it's inelegant. So how do we create this thing with utility and that helps us make better sense of our data? And to do that is like you try a thing, you see if it fits, you try another thing, you see if it fits, you modify it a little bit.
And it is this constant comparative method of sensemaking, which is quite common. To qualitative work and social science
Chris Moriarty
I think what's also important is to think about the kind of when we write, write it because there's a narrative structure to it. There's a reason we start with language and essentially it's saying workplaces this and it's everything really within this sort of framework.
And then if you think that we're sprinkling anyone that's an avid listener to the podcast, which of course is everybody because soon to be award winning, Dr. Pinder would always say to us, go and see what's already been done. So if you think about what we go through in the paper and then how we think about it, workplaces, A lot of things, depending on where you're coming at it from, we can box those into big boxes.
So what's other people written about this? You know, let's not try and create something new. If we wanted to test the theory, we might come up with a series of tests that say, we go out to a population of people and ask them what they think, and then does it work? Now, we have done that. We can talk about that when we talk about utility, right?
We go away and we find out and go, actually, is there anything that supports that framework at a high level? And actually this stuff is starting to connect. It's neat. It's tidy because those are the frameworks that can become useful because we can get ahead random.
Esme Banks Marr
Two quick things. I think firstly, just a comment that I feel like everything you have both just said showcases our industry, so our workplace industries, aversion to taking on board research, so much of what came out of this and what you brought to the fore for each of the four pillars, or three, and then business, but we'll go on to that in a minute.
Um, You looked, almost did the, the, not literature review, but looked at seminal piece of research that was done on that one particular pillar, and then you kind of disseminated down from there. And I feel like the, even the use of the word socio technical, why is that not a word that we all use all of the time?
Ian Ellison
Well, because that's exactly what Workplace is, right? And it opens up so many ways to our... better, more powerful conversations about it.
Esme Banks Marr
Can't be thought of in isolation. We talk about this all the time. All of us do. It doesn't matter whether you're the design side, FM side, it doesn't matter. And I just think that's another term that we fail to use or to understand.
There's so much in all of this research, but for some reason, our industry has an aversion to listening to it or taking heed of it. And I wonder why that is.
Chris Moriarty
My very, very simple. assessment of that is because it makes it a lot trickier. Like you talk to any social scientist, it's trickier. Anytime you talk to these guys, like the, because people are weird.
People do funny things. They do unexpected things. They do bizarre things. They do things you can predict, but not when you can predict they would do them. I kind of feel like anytime we've spoken to a social scientist, they, you can kind of sense that they feel like they look. Down on in some respects, because they can't be as rigid.
I just wonder whether, certainly from a facilities point of view, I guess a lot of people, they're at home in the technical bit, you know, I suspect there was always, there's always that criticism, isn't there, of people that do space stuff that all the photos in their brochures never got any people in it.
And there's probably a reason because as soon as you put people in it, they're in the way of the photo. You can't see it, you know, all the rest of it. So people, people complicate things. And that makes it hard and also people making money out of it at the end of the day. If you think about it from an industry perspective, you know, imagine someone said, oh, you know, we'll we'll I think facilities management companies talked about this for a long time and they were sort of say, maybe we should be monetised on recruitment.
Measures and, and retention measures. And then they probably looked at it and went, wow, there's a lot of that outside our control. We don't want that dictating our stuff. It's much easier just to do it on price per square meter. I mean, it's a sweep in generalisation, but that's why I think we, it is hard because it's a, it's, it's fluffier.
To use one kind of word that people would attach to it. It's actually the total reverse.
Ian Ellison
If you ask me, it's really difficult.
Esme Banks Marr
I was going to say it should be the opposite. It should be not simplifying but it should be helping along some of the things that we spend 10 weeks talking about. The piece of research has been done that can help you grasp that and move on and apply it to your, your physical workplace, apply it to the behaviors and cultures of your people or whatever it happens to be.
Ian, I feel like you wanted to jump in before I make any more hardcore questions.
Ian Ellison
So systems theory, systems thinking, which is where the socio technical comes from, who would have thought that, you know, 1951, Tristan Bumforth, right? Derbyshire, down the mines. This is where this theory was born about how different parts of organisational behavior management theory rub up against each other.
In a way which either helps or hinders stuff, right? It's that old. You got to celebrate it. You got to point to it. But the point is that James and I have tried to use systems theory in a really sort of pure way in consultancy. We've also tried to teach with it, and it is hard, and so there's lots of time delays, there's lots of negative feedback loops when you really get into systems stuff, and the point of all of this is to say that organisations don't necessarily, particularly leadership teams, don't want to hear about bad news that takes a long time to sort out.
So the whole thing about systems thinking, it's not just that it's complicated and it's messy, the way Chris was talking, but it actually, some people perceive it as a bit of a barrier to getting stuff done, which then drive the silos. Well, we'll just focus on our stuff within the people and culture side of an organisation.
We'll just focus on our tech projects. And before you know it, you've forgotten that you are now antagonising each other and you wonder why nothing changes in your organisation. So this whole framework is an opportunity to explore how to join the dots and make things better collectively. Excellent.
Chris Moriarty
By the way, if anyone at home is playing Ian Ellison bingo, we've got socio technical, he loves talking about socio technical, systems thinking, systems thinking, he loves that, and connecting the dots, he likes connecting dots.
Ian Ellison
Did I say connect the dots?
You connect the dots anymore, but you said connect the dots.
I might circle back in a minute as well, and then my wife will smack me upside the head.
Chris Moriarty
Well, I'm definitely going to do it for the Christmas special, I'm going to do an Ian Ellison Bingo cover. I could probably do a Chris Moriarty Bingo card as well, just to be completely fair and balanced.
Esme Banks Marr
Okay, so I just want to get into the actual framework a little bit more because look, some people may not have read the paper. I'm sure they will rush out and they will be reading it after they listen to this episode.
Ian Ellison
Links in the show notes.
Esme Banks Marr
And links will be in the show notes. Guys, that's my part to say today, just to remind you. Um, to formulate the framework, actually there are four different pillars, let's say culture, space, technology, and business. Can you guys kind of speak to those a little bit, just to help? move us along into the actual framework itself, and perhaps some of the former seminal pieces of research you looked on to help create those kind of elements.
Ian Ellison
If we go to the peoply culturally part of it first, the culture pillar as you called it, the culture part of our framework. We've got Community, Drivers, Activities and Behaviors. And the reason we've got those four things is, is actually after a bit of soul searching and remember that iterative thing between our data and the different theories that might allow us to make sense of culture, it's actually a definition of culture and disguise.
So American academic marketeer theorist, a chap called Seth Godin, who I'm sure some folks are aware of, um, said culture is, this is how he puts it, people like us do things like this, which is a bit like Dylan Kennedy's deceptively simple culture is the way things are done around here from the 80s. And so if you take people like us do things like this, people who people work with, the community like us.
Why people work the way they do, that's Drivers, do things, what people do to get work done, their activities, like this, how people go about their work, their behaviors. So after a lot of soul searching and testing and iterating, those were the descriptive boxes for culture that we settled upon. Do you want to do technology, Chris?
Chris Moriarty
No, I want to talk more about culture. I think the thing with culture, and it's really interesting when you're going through a process like this and essentially doing a lit review of each one of these, right? Is that culture by maybe with the business bit as well, but culture is the thing that's been written about the most, right?
You know, organisations are obsessed with it. It's why we've got this multibillion dollar industry of employee engagement tools that, you know, bring a lot of science to it. And, you know, science and inverted commas sometimes. Um, Yeah. So it would have been very easy to get completely, completely immersed in it and almost tied up in knots with it about what culture is and culture isn't.
Now the Seth Godin thing, you know, we're big fans of Seth Godin, like we used to listen to his Akimbo podcast, right? And that's, it's really interesting because he's come into the professional world as a marketing guru, and it's almost since he's almost got past that, like, he's completed marketing, he's finished all the levels, he's champion marketer, right, he's kind of just got really interested in culture, almost like a side hustle, and the more he talks about it, you know, he's bringing that really big brain of his to something that has been talked about an awful lot, and, you know, we really, we always refer back to the people like us do things like this kind of idea that he's got, and what it always reminds me of, you know, is one of the most powerful examples of culture that I was ever exposed to.
Um, now it's in a film with Jeff Bridges in it and I can't remember the film.
Ian Ellison
It's the Contender. He's the president of the, he's the president of the United States and it's an outtake on the DVD and it's Jeff Bridges and it's five monkeys in a cage.
Chris Moriarty
And the idea is you've got a stepladder with a set of bananas on the top and you've got five monkeys and any monkey that makes an attempt to get to the bananas will get the other four showered, completely soaked. You know, it'll, they'll set the taps on. Monkey comes down and goes, Oh, sorry, lads. Next one will try and go up and they do the same thing again. But the time the third monkey attempts it, the other four attack it going, don't go up there.
We're all going to get wet again. Okay. So they've, they've established, we've worked out any time one of us like go up that ladder, we're going to get soaked. So what the experiment does is then takes one of those monkeys out. And puts a fresh monkey in, okay? The fresh monkey looks at these four wet monkeys and thinks, Why aren't you guys doing anything?
There's bananas up there. Before it even gets to the ladder. It gets attacked. Don't go up there because we're going to get wet. Now four of those monkeys know why they're attacking and one doesn't get it. But, slowly but surely, they, they introduce a new monkey, one by one, until there are five monkeys, bone dry, who have not seen any of this water.
But any time the new monkey goes up the ladder, it gets attacked. Why? Because that's just the way it is around here right and it's kind of a really good visual metaphor how people arrive in organisations and essentially these building blocks that we've got within the cultural part of this model says these are the kind of moving parts of all that you've got the community which is the monkeys you got the drivers because this is what we do around here uh you've got the activity which is getting up the ladder and you've got the the behaviors which is we're going to knock 10 lumps out of you on the way all of those things make it up each one of them is probably you know, manoeuvrable in their own way and will change the outcome.
So rather than get over complicated with, you know, reams and reams and reams of HR research, this is really a simple way for organisations to go. How does work get done?
Esme Banks Marr
Okay, that was going to be one of my questions because I feel like the research or the something or whatever it is that you use to draw on each one of these for culture.
It was decidedly unacademic now I know Seth from his writings, his being a marketeer and him being one of the co founders of Ted. So the tech, I didn't know that makes sense though. Doesn't it? A lot of sense. Dave, and I that, but actually Chris. The monkey thing has helped me along because of course using a cultural reference to explain culture makes a lot more sense.
I feel like there isn't or there shouldn't be a scientific or overly academic explanation for understanding culture.
Ian Ellison
We could have looked at Dale and Kennedy but there was just something, and let's be honest, the references that we've cited and the sources that came to bear We all have bounded rationality, which is we do not have infinite time to absorb infinite information, which means you're only going to be informed to the extent of what you know, right?
And so when we are trying to find a fit, trying to find a way to make sense of this theme of culture in a manageable way, not too many sub themes. Not too few sub themes, something with utility, four felt right, and then stumbling across such a pithy way to capture something so powerful, all of a sudden something unlocks and, you know, other sub themes are available.
And what we say at the end of the paper is, we're pretty sure the themes are right. These sub themes are working for us, right? And we talk about application and utility when we get there. They're working for us. But if you think there's a way to do this better, get in touch. Knowledge is a journey, right?
Knowledge isn't about being right. Knowledge is about discovering stuff, failing at stuff. Dead easy to say. Egos don't like to do it. Science is about actually getting stuff wrong. Important actually that.
Chris Moriarty
All I was going to add to that. Is that there is a danger that if we start talking about oversimplifying something that, you know, almost like you write it off because it almost like it's come about too easy.
And I think there's always a danger of that, but equally and something that we've tried to install into this podcast series and all the work that we do is that actually why is it so inaccessible? I think you'll find as we go through each of them, but certainly with this first one, which has been made a very complex issue by lots of different people for lots of different reasons, is that the people that it impacts, the people in our organisations, the workforce, the employees, they don't think about it as overly complex.
We really wanted this to be as accessible to the people that it is measuring as the people doing the measuring itself, because that's important. Now if we're going to say to people, why are you asking questions about this or why are you collecting data on that? It's because we just want to know what people like you do to get work done, if that's okay.
Not, you know, complicated psychometric test that will tell me at the end what percentage engaged I am with something. How have we worked that out? It's complicated. Is it, I just get in and do my work, mate. You know, what, what's the difference. So I think that's something that was really important to us as we went through this as well, which is, yeah, we can back some of it up with complex ideas, but ultimately it has to land as something straightforward.
Esme Banks Marr
Moving on to the next theme then, space. And I mean, I can't believe we've got this far and we haven't mentioned Frank yet, but, um, Well, here we go.
Ian Ellison
So all aboard the Frank Duffy Appreciation Society. So the spatial subthemes, there's four again, because we are building our way towards an elegant four by four matrix.
We are essentially being inspired by Frank Duffy and Stuart Brand's shearing layers of old, which is an idea from the 90s, which is about buildings. When you're thinking about the infrastructure of buildings, they have layers to them, and that influences the degree to which you can change and replace them.
So you have in the Classic shearing layer sense. You have the shell of a building and then you have the services to that shell. And then you have the settings within the building. And the idea is that it's really hard to change the shell of a building or the structure or the where it lives, but it gets progressively easier to change the things within the building.
And so when you think about. refurbishment and you think about change over time. That's the backstory. So if you kind of take that idea and just remember that work can be done anywhere, it doesn't have to be done in an office or a factory anymore. What you essentially end up with is you end up with locations, whether that's home or at work or somewhere else.
You end up with the settings within those locations, whether it's a front room or a bedroom or a meeting room or a. I don't know, a cafe or whatever. You end up with features within those settings, might be chairs, might be desks, might be whatever, and you end up with services within those settings as well.
So that huge industry that we talk about, facilities management, that multi... Billion, whatever it is, pound global industry lives within one box essentially of our workplace framework, which is services. You know, it's about the cleaning. It's about the vending. It's about the catering. It's about the security.
It's about all of the things that sit. underneath to make that location you're in functional, habitable, useful, make you feel great, all of that stuff. So those four areas, location, settings, features, and services are what comprise Workspace when you step back and look at the framework holistically. What would you add to that, Chris?
Chris Moriarty
I kind of most interesting part of all of that as well as when you put these things together and actually if you go back to the original research about the, uh, how it talks about how these all move a sort of different rates at different paces, it kind of got me thinking about a conversation I had years ago about cogs and we're talking about how we can install workplace change, but the location might not 10 years.
You know, if we think about corporate office space for as an example, we're stuck with this 10 years space. That's it. Like we can't move. There's no break. There's no nothing. Meanwhile, though, and take the pandemic as a shining example of this, the pace at which work practices change is much quicker than.
10 years, you know, sort of your average lease and stuff. So organisations are challenged by this, right? Where they've got different moving parts, but they're all moving at very different rates and they've somehow got to make the four things work in harmony together. So by separating them out, the idea being you get to see what, what part in that cog powered machine, some of your challenges lie, you know, and therefore you can plan around that. Right.
But it was really nice. Because we are massive Frank Duffy fans. Huge. I mean, listeners to the podcast will know that we'll always try and cram a reference to him in somewhere, but I really fell in love with his work. When I was at the Institute and I was sort of going back through the history of the FM profession and he's so for an architect FM would not exist in the UK without him without him without DEGW and it's kind of mind blowing you think it's someone from outside a community created the community right and he was so, you know, even to this day, you know In the interviews the most recent of his interviews talking about the profession and he's in the sense is disappointment with it but his mind It's so like when you start reading his stuff, it's so brilliantly eloquent and brutally simple.
We kind of wanted to bring that into our framework because why reinvent the wheel?
Ian Ellison
It's worth saying that the, and we talk about this in the paper, the other thing that we wrestled with for a while was a different way of thinking about workspace. And we. Turned to Jacqueline Vischer, so a Canadian environmental psychologist.
So would have been friends with Nigel Oseland, probably was. Don't know if she still is. Hard to track her down, actually, because I'd love to get her on the show. But I've gone looking and it seems to be quite hard to find Jacqueline Vischer these days. But she almost came up with. If you've ever seen a workspace related Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the original source was Jacqueline Fisher again, decades ago, right?
And we kind of wrestled with our data and whether it fit a model, which essentially talked to different levels of a workspace hierarchy, but it wasn't the right kind of model. It was prescriptive rather than descriptive. And I think that's a key thing with this framework. It's a base starting point within which to slot what's actually going on rather than a judgmental thing.
When I say prescriptive, I mean, you know, with with vicious. Framework, you'd get to go, it's only doing this, or it's actually elevated to this level, but it's a bit lacking here, whereas what we're doing with our framework is we're allowing the repositories for people to talk about what's good and bad, as opposed to making decisions about what's good and bad within the framework, if that makes sense.
Esme Banks Marr
I think a lot of content that comes out of our industry, our lovely workplace industry, is very prescriptive as well. Especially in the last few years, I would say. This is how it's done, this is what it needs to be in the future, very prescriptive. Other just quick things on that, I feel like DEGW slash Frank Duffy, you pull out one of the quotes that he says about FM towards the end of the paper, and it ends with him saying, And he's talking about FM, the 30s management industry.
“They saw themselves as part of the supply chain. They didn't see themselves as defenders of the users and it's an ethical problem.”
And I worry that it still is, but I also think that it's interesting that Frank is coming at this from a design and architectural standpoint, but I also, from my own experience, see.
And a worrying amount of FM still being quite disregarded, uh, by that, that area.
Ian Ellison
Chris referenced that earlier, the fact that he was sort of lamenting. This is a very late interview in his, I think you'd probably say it was beyond his career. It's from an archival interview from British Libraries and he's looking back.
And this is actually, apart from every academic paper worth its salt should have a pop culture reference and a colon, this is the reason for it being called A New Hope, because what we're basically saying is, look, if Frank, the OG of so much of this stuff is disappointed with where we're at, doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome is crackers.
So we need new tools. We need new frameworks to help us bridge boundaries, think more systemically, do those things which are tricky. And perhaps this tool gives us an opportunity to do just that. Not the only tool, not the exclusive tool, but perhaps it gives us a starting point. So that's why we've got the Star Wars reference there because it's a tribute essentially to everything that Frank tried to achieve and we've failed to achieve since.
Esme Banks Marr
I love it. Right, moving on. Next theme, technology.
Ian Ellison
Okay, so technology. This one was, I would say, probably most informed by the data in terms of just shaping what the categories are, rather than the theory, than the others. It kind of shines out of all of the consultancy that James and I have done in the past.
You, if you backtrack to sort of, you know, give me a framework for what it is, give me a framework for technology that frameworks have been around since the fifties again, and we talk about Levitt and Whistler in the paper 1958 kind of categories for it is, but. When push comes to shove, and if you ask anybody about their workplace experience, uh, invariably, there will be data within it, which talks about the gear I'm using the software on the gear.
So the hardware, the software, whether or not I can connect the bloody. network, whether it's at home or in the office and the level to which I'm being enabled to do that by said IT department. So whether I'm getting the support, the training, the help desk response, maybe the onboard systems and the updates and stuff.
So essentially hardware, software, connectivity, and tech support are the four things in our framework, which we found so readily our field data. From whichever bit of consultancy we've done, just fitting into. And a dead good example of that, there are stereotypical examples we trot out when we talk about workspace change.
And one is, we want our people to be more flexible. We've set up all these lovely new collaborative spaces for that to happen. And then the IT is holding us back because we can't take our laptops into the meeting rooms and make them connect. So we're just as constrained as we always were to our desks.
And it's that classic thing, which is like, once you've got a framework to say, can you see how this is now holding that back, you can actually start to explore causality in a way that you've never have done before.
Chris Moriarty
What I kind of liked about where we arrived on the tech front is that there's, there's a massive parallel with what we just talked about in the space front.
How often do you get a new laptop versus how often do you get new software? On it, they move at different places, right? Now, the slight deviation from that is when you start getting into connectivity and you try and relate that to furniture in the previous, it doesn't quite work, but ultimately, if you think about it, almost, you've got a kit, you've got software, you want to connect it, you want some help with that.
And again, it's important for organisations to know, almost like a sales funnel or a marketing funnel, where you might be looking at how you, how you sort of nurture your prospects to the point of paying, you want to know where stuff's falling out. It might be you've got everyone all the right hardware, but the software is not right.
So, you know, change the software, not the hardware sort of thing. So a lot of this as well is about being able to go back to utility and talking about, you know, hinting towards what we're talking about in utility. This has got to be a framework that's practical as well. And for it to be practical, it's got to be useful.
To be useful, it's got to help you diagnose where some of your challenges are, or your areas of improvement could be. So by separating these core components out, We start to see almost like the handoff points where between these things, where we go, Oh, so we've got a software problem, a hardware problem, which in, you know, other frameworks might just sound like a tech problem.
And that was really crucial. And I guess where we're moving towards now that we've done all three and. You know, forgive me if I've jumped the gun a little bit on the questions is what he has talked about is almost the ecology of it all because they have to all exist in the same framework. Those things, if organisations are looking at these sorts of things in isolation within their departments, they have no idea at all what impact they are having on other people's points of measurement and how.
Those other points of measurement are affecting them and you know, so like Ian's used the example there of the space that's never used because the Wi Fi doesn't work. But what if culturally there's a kind of frowning of people that won't use a library space because they think it's only for senior managers.
We've talked about these things. Over and over again, go to workplace conferences, people will talk about these links, right? Well, isn't it about time we had a framework that showed them all? And then ultimately we start creating the methods of capturing data against this stuff that shows the connection rather than hypothesising that there is one.
Is there a connection and how are they connected? Which is of course, the next step as moving a conceptual model to a practical one.
Esme Banks Marr
Now, is it, just remind me guys, is it that you're saying the themes are fluid and they may be iterative and change or was it that the sub themes that help put the themes into context are the things that are potentially...
Ian Ellison
I think what we technically said in the paper was we're pretty convinced from our own experience that the themes stand, but remember we wrote this about 18 months ago and we were informed by our existing sort of consultancy based data. But we've done work since and we've used the tool subsequently.
And thus far, we haven't found a need to change the sub themes and modify them. But that's not to say we shouldn't in the past. And that's not to say that somebody wouldn't bring evidence to justify why, you know, on their grounds something needed to be slightly different.
Esme Banks Marr
Right. So the final element, I would say, it is a theme, but it's not a theme in the same way that the other three are themes because It's kind of the outcome of the first three.
Now this is where I think we could spend a whole other 30, 40, 50 minutes slash days talking about business.
Ian Ellison
You are not wrong. So the way I would frame it is I would say the fourth theme, business, is qualitatively different to the first three. The first three, culture, technology and space, have an impact upon business outcomes.
Ian Ellison
They have an impact on each other. They kind of join forces as workplace to have an impact upon business. So you are absolutely right to challenge whether it's qualitative, this theme. I don't think it is, but in terms of sense making, remember one of the utilities we wanted to get from this framework was an ability to look at relationships, maybe even cause and effect.
So what we wanted to be able to do was find a way to easily articulate impacts. Good and bad. So the four sub themes that we came up within business, again, in some ways influenced by Frank Duffy. And that's interesting because here you have this seminal workspace expert that we've already paid. homage to and saluted and all the stuff that we always do on this podcast about him.
He came up with these three E's of what workplace does. It helps. It can impact organisational efficiency. It can impact organisational effectiveness and they're different. They're qualitatively different in themselves. It can affect organisational expression. So what that essentially means is. It has an impact upon cost efficiency of an organisation.
It has an impact upon productivity and performance and it has an impact upon brand, right? So if that's a starting point, we all know that productivity and workplace just is a car crash of a debate that nobody can ever make sense of. So we thought, right, let's not go there. Let's just keep this straight for performance.
So efficiency and effectiveness live within performance. How organisational work is going. Brand can be internal and external. From an external perspective, a measure of brand is reputation, attractiveness of an organisation to buy from or work with. Whereas internally from An employee perspective, brand is also about appeal, attractiveness of an organisation to work for.
Do I feel valued? Do I feel invested in this organisation? And then finally, and this is again, a little bit different. We found our consultancy data sets kind of talking about impacts, how working at an organisation affects its people. Does it affect my wellbeing? Does it? affect my work life balance? Does it affect my stress levels?
So we came up with these four sub themes for business, very much influenced by the way Frank Duffy was thinking about what was essentially... a sort of Kaplan and Norton business scorecard way of thinking about business outputs, turning it towards workspace a little bit, but also turning our attention to the way people were talking.
Remember, we were writing this kind of during and post pandemic and, you know, work life balance and well-being and, you know, home versus office. All of these debates and the impacts it was having on people were very prevalent. So they were very there in the data that we were looking at. So that's why we came up with these four.
But I agree with you as they are not qualitatively the same as the other three.
Esme Banks Marr
Also moving into the territory of trying to create a quantitative outcome, sort of identify the first three. And I feel like this is the bloody 64, 000 question slash calculation. If someone can come up with it.
Chris Moriarty
We all want to think that what we're doing matters.
So if you look at it from that point of view, you. work backwards and go, well, what do businesses care about? And they care about how well they're performing. And I think it's really important to keep that fairly loose. Going back to definitions the years ago, when I worked at the Charlton Institute of Marketing, we had a marketing definition project and never do I want to do one of those again.
And there was a massive hoo ha about the word profit. in, in the definition. Of course, charities say, well, we don't make profit. Um, although they've kind of changed their mindset on that and said, no, we do, we just need to make as much as possible to fund the stuff we want to do, but all organisations want to perform well.
Right. And, and within that, you can. Define what, what that looks like. I think the whole productivity debate, which I've been right in the middle of at times, it's kind of reductive because we're kind of end up on equations. And I'm not sure that's going to help anybody really make informed decisions. It might give us the false comfort that we're making informed decisions, but the reality is you've got to assume the equations, right?
So, um, so performance is nice and loose. But clear, um, and I think the other two are the two things that probably within the workplace context. Well, certainly with the retention of staff is probably the easiest one. You know, if productivity is a bit elusive to really pin down, you can certainly start to point towards data about people wanted to join because of the glossy.
Building or wanted to stay because, you know, it's great fun to work there and there's a free bar and all this sort of stuff. Well, it's, I would argue that they do border on the superficial and therefore we need to be cautious of those things. And ultimately people leave their manager is the kind of the, the thing that most people talk about.
The thing I like most about where we arrived at with the business is the impacts bit, which is. The kind of toll, if you like, on people, both positively and negatively, right? You know, some people get energized by work, some people are demoralized by work. And that felt to me like a very contemporary inclusion into a...
Business framework, but ultimately you can almost say that part of it is kind of inspired by triple bottom line ideas, where it looks at people, planet profit, you know, there's ways of looking at organisational performance that go beyond how much money have you given to your shareholders. Now, you sort of talk about the kind of 64-million-dollar question and going through this as an academic, academic exercise, we suddenly got into the.
The kind of nuance of how these blocks are positioned against each other, you know, what order, what structure did they look like now, if you look at the original paper, what we've got is the fact that spaces, people, technology overlap on each other because they go back to my previous point, it's an ecology.
They're all impacting on each other. They're all influencing each other. They're connected, but ultimately above that sits business because they are all in service. Thank Of the business outcomes that we're looking for. Otherwise, why have you got a workplace? We don't need a workplace if, if it's not linked to some sort of business performance and what we need to start showing now.
And the reason they all have to live in the same ecosystem is because different leavers will have different effects on those top line outcomes. It's not as simple as have an amazing workspace and people will do X and you will be great. It's not that simple. And we all know that. Except from a data and a framework point of view, we've been collecting all our little bits of siloed data to prove that our bit's okay.
So if it's not my fault. And I think we probably need to move away from that.
Esme Banks Marr
But I feel like we have, right? And you guys have created a framework that isn't just based on space. That's the whole point here. Personally, I am still going to forever be in the pursuit of something that can evidence the impact of workplace in the way that we're understanding it here.
And I think maybe formula could be better than calculation. Because I feel like the formula has started to be created through something like a framework like this. But one of my questions was going to be around the so what? Okay, so you've created a framework and you've talked about people applying this and you've very much welcomed evidence based applications and examples and case studies and I look forward to those.
But if there was going to be future collaborators for new pieces of research and this is the kind of foundational piece where would you see those?
Chris Moriarty
Well, we've hinted that during the development of this framework, we use data, you know, we've talked about using data for a while and that was real data from consultancy work that Ian and James had done, um, where we kind of wanted to see does, does what we have fit into these parts, right?
So, you know, we kind of conceptually come up with something, test it against some data. Okay, and the next stage was then to run it past some people. So we went out to a few friendly organisations that were collecting data and said, Hey, can we collect it? And can we sort it and put it into the different pots that we've developed to see if it works now so far so good.
And, you know, there's a separate project where we've developed a way of doing that. But for me, the most powerful stories that we hear off the back of this framework, um, was an organisation that uses Audiem, which we've talked to you forever about if you want, but we're not here for that today. Um, but huge organisation, UK, uh, brand that almost everybody would have heard of, right?
And they, um, they saw this framework, saw this paper. And so all that looks interesting. Let's take it to our senior leadership team and a team that looks quite similar to most organisations, right, which is some form of corporate services team. So organisations are starting to work out that we should probably keep property in FM and some people aspects and some IT aspects close together.
So there is a realisation that these things overlap. But one of the barriers that they've got. Is, um, language and silos, so they used our framework and they did this exercise where they asked everyone in the room to start writing down things that supported hindered would be improved by the work that they do.
So just write down ideas, thoughts, you know, all these things, pop them onto a post it note and then they collected up all the post it notes and put them onto a big blow up of our framework and they found a home for everything. Now Ian and I got told about this and stole it. Uh, so now if you come to one of our events... were…
Ian Ellison
…influenced by influence that referenced its original location
Chris Moriarty
…and lawyers have just informed us that we didn't steal it. We were influenced by it and give suitable reference to the idea, but we've done it if you see a certain event now. Where we're talking about this framework we'll get a big kind of blow up of the framework and ask the audience to do it and the reality is we are yet to be stumped with something that somebody has written down It doesn't belong in one of these pots.
Now. There is an argument that says well, you know, it's qualitative because people are writing in free text. They're writing, you know, it's not objective in that they've ticked a box somewhere, but they're writing and it's our opinion about where something should sit. But equally, we're yet to find someone that says.
That doesn't make sense that doesn't sit right doesn't tell me anything and we continue to do that work. So it's almost in a way or be it we're not recording it at the moment through the event stuff of just constantly stress testing to go has the world changed to a point where we are missing something or something become irrelevant.
And that's important because ultimately what we now need to start doing is collecting data against this thing so that we can start showing the relationships between stuff. So there's, there's kind of two phases to it. You know, does it work at a kind of surface level? And then once we've got that working, which I think we have, what is it telling us now?
Ian Ellison
What, what have we unearthed? And what does it allow us to do differently to what we did in the past? What new arguments, justifications, evidence does it surface so that we can do workplace stuff better? Because the whole point of something like this is if you're going to say this thing's a socio technical system or you need to see all of these moving parts together to be able to get a better understanding of what's going on.
Well, why? Well, so that we can make better decisions, so that we can all work better and our businesses can perform better. That's fundamentally what the why is, right? Otherwise, what on earth would you do it for? It's not just an academic, self gratifying, aren't we clever activity? Pointless. It's about, and that's why we settled on a four by four as well, because it has to have utility, has to have an elegance, it has to have relevance, and it has to have utility, which is, I believe, a version of the Vitruvian principles. The very first book about architecture ever written.
Esme Banks Marr
Yes. Gosh, I feel like we could enter into another huge debate there, but We're going to pause and I'm going to ask you two quickfire questions before we wrap up. Okay. Firstly, as an explanation, but you only have about, let's say 12 seconds to answer, maybe a bit longer.
Can you explain what you mean by an ontology of workplace experience? Just quickly for some people who may or may not have studied. Philosophy.
Ian Ellison
So, an ontology, if you are old enough to remember the BT advert about the failing student and, and his, it was his grandma or his mum was delighted that he got an, he got an ology, he got an ology.
So, ontology is a fancy word, right? And what it basically means, the way we're using it, is a set of concepts and categories in a given area that shows their properties and relations between them. So, a framework to understand something. Wonderful, thank you.
Esme Banks Marr
Thank you. In light of everything we've discussed and the paper, is workplace zero sum?
I feel like you've set out the paper at the beginning, you started talking about the workplace then, and then you've moved into this framework, and what you're saying, if I've interpreted it correctly, is you don't pull one of the levers and it doesn't have an impact. You have to be pulling all of them at the same time.
So workplace isn't ultimately a zero sum game.
Chris Moriarty
Going back to utility and the gap between academia and practicality, right? And I feel like this is where I made my biggest contribution to this, this endeavour is that we can sit here and call this a workplace experience, holistic framework. We can give it some, some sort of big thing.
But when we were going through this. And I wrote a whole page on this and then Ian deleted it out, right?
Ian Ellison
I didn't delete it. It's just on the cutting room floor for another paper, Christopher. Nuances.
Chris Moriarty
I made a parallel to the marketing mix. Another like complete cornerstone piece of marketing theory.
For those who haven't heard of it, there's an extended marketing mix. We're not going to go there. I'm old school. I'm purist. Four Ps. Product, price, place, promotion. Now, Again, what that's not about is some sort of formula that says, get this one right, get that one right, get this one right, get that one right.
Cause right is, right is kind of subjective. What is right? Well, it depends who you are or who you're aiming it at or what, what the product is or what you're trying to achieve now. What you have to look at is your external environment. When you're doing this as a marketer, you look at your external environment and you go, okay, so where's the gaps in the market?
Well, actually, there's a, there's a gap for a cheaply made product that doesn't let you down. That's a low cost versus a premium product. That's a high cost. And you've got to almost look at it like, um, the mixing table of a sound desk. Another metaphor that Ian's played with in past papers, you know, the workplace graphic equaliser.
Right. So you've got to look at these things as knobs that you adjust to make the output what you need it to be right. And I kind of, I've, you know, I call this when it became a thing in the real world in the, in the kind of practical world, we call it the Workplace Mix because there's such an obsession with benchmarking with cookie cutters with all this sort of stuff.
And the reality is it's not like that. Because your organisation will go in peaks and troughs and move from this side to that side, change their policy, change their direction, all these things. And each time that external environment changes, what I hope happens is that people take this framework and go, what can we improve?
What's it changed? And it might be that you go, do you know what, in the current context, the quality of the location. at the minute isn't that important to us, but these bits are, so we want to get these right for the time being. So it's not about giving people this blueprint, it's about giving people the ability to make their own map so that they can just lay it on top and go, how are we doing against this stuff and how are they all connected?
And if I turn this nozzle over here and ramp this up to a hundred, what's happening somewhere else? Oh Christ, I didn't realize that by changing all of this stuff, it was going to have a detrimental effect on that. And up till now, your HR department had no idea what the FM department was doing that might be impacting them and vice versa.
You know, Google the Workplace Mix. That's, that's where it's at. This idea that we can just sort of tweak and gently adjust this stuff. And it all, you've got to try and find harmony. And that doesn't mean getting every single part of it right. Sometimes it's about making calculated sacrifices for parts that aren't going to work.
And that's why. I think it's important that we don't try to say there's an A plus B equals C equation. There's all sorts going on. Just try and make sense of what you can. Here's a map to simplify it.
Ian Ellison
So get him to do that in 12 seconds.
Chris Moriarty
That was 12 seconds, wasn't it? I counted. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when I'm, when I'm offering such insight like that, time does seem to slow down.
Esme Banks Marr
Well, I also think you answered my final question a little bit there, Chris, which was, right, how do we actually use this? So you've kind of explained who turns what lever, what impacts what sub theme, and ultimately you're providing a tool here by framework for people to go forth, do that. One of the other key things that you have mentioned is that you would like people to Play around with it, use it, adopt it, but also feedback.
I think there are some other calls to action or calls to arms maybe that came out. One, I wonder if we need to do a Ben Weber esque Jacqueline Vischer call out, uh, to see if anyone can, you know, get to her perhaps for, for an episode. Non English language speakers. I think we spoke a lot about English at the beginning and I think this workplace issue It's a term that we kind of adopted we created and I wonder if there's other words
Ian Ellison
I genuinely don't know, and that's a valid challenge.
How do our English spoken theories about workplaces go beyond the English language? Don't know. Genuinely don't know. That's dead interesting.
Esme Banks Marr
I think you have a lot of listeners from here, there, and everywhere. I was listening to the Workplace Zoo episode, actually, earlier this morning, and some of the messages you'd had in, rather, they were from here, there, and everywhere.
So I just think that could be an interesting one. So perhaps revisit.
Chris Moriarty
What I like about that is that you've seen a genuine, um, practical use for that global community, whereas I'm just trying to score a free ticket to. A tropical place.
Esme Banks Marr
Well, unless you guys have anything else to add, I just want to thank you for having me as your guest host.
Chris Moriarty
Thank you. First time we've done it, Esme, you've earned yourself a part of Workplace Geek's history.
Esme Banks Marr
Oh, thank you very much. And also thank you guys. I think it's important to also just say thank you for creating this platform for people to understand a little bit of research, start to put it into context, apply it, and I think there is no better way for ending this season than picking into your guys brains a little bit.
But again. Thank you for having me on.
Ian Ellison
Thanks Ez. Dead welcome.
-- OUTRO --
Chris Moriarty
Don't forget our cheeky series reflection section bonus with James next time out. Keep an eye on the socials for those events and projects Ian hinted at earlier and sign up for the newsletter on workplacegeeks.org to get all the latest information. All the latest news, special discount codes, and details on how you can get your name on our illustrious workplace Christmas social guest list.
Remember to rate review and recommend the show to help build our community. And please do get in touch either via our LinkedIn community, search Workplace Geeks, and you'll find us. You can use our Workplace Geeks hashtag that's #workplacegeeks. And of course you can email us at hello@workplacegeeks.org. Speak to you next time.
