-- Intro --
Chris Moriarty
Hello and welcome to the Workplace Geeks your regular hot, soapy soak in the world of wonderful workplace academia with a brilliant brains behind it. I'm Chris Moriarty.
Ian Ellison
And I'm Ian Ellison.
Chris Moriarty
And we're that friendly guiding voice on your shoulder whilst we navigate all things workplace research. Now, first order of business is of course, the mailbag. And we've had some lovely comments on LinkedIn, some on emails, and we do love an email. So, Ian, why don't you let us know what people thought of our episode with Ben Waber.
Ian Ellison
Chris, we have got a lovely message from Bob Seddon ex Chair of BIFM Workplace SIG, and also a very, very good friend of mine. So, hello, Bob, thank you very much for writing in. So what Bob says is So following on from your mention of Bill Hillier of UCL in the 80s Welsh School of Architecture, students of a similar era had the pleasure of Professor Alan Lippmann who and Bob hasn't said this I've worked out since sounds like quite a spiky academic character. And his human studies courses, these endeavour to bring sociological theory into contribution with architectural design.
So again, this message of joining the dots between different disciplines, listen out for that on today's discussion, we also heard from Sharon Mitchell of D Young & Co LLP, down in Southampton. Thank you, Sharon, lovely comment, really enjoyed this podcast, it has been so valuable, as my organisation is just about to go through the project of moving office, being a legal firm, it's a challenge to move and develop and encourage change. That said, of course, the pandemic has helped this along. I'm very excited about this whole journey, and encouraged by what I've heard in the podcast, and she's just gonna sort of track backwards and start listening to other episodes. So that's amazing, Sharon, thank you very much. And it also proves that you do not need to listen to our podcast in order.
Chris Moriarty
And in what is becoming a regular feature for us a quick nod to those listeners in far flung corners of the planet. So, hello to the person who listened to the Ben episode in Bloomington, Minnesota, very exciting. Bengaluru, Karnataka in India, we've got someone in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in Canada, and Thatcham in West Berkshire. So, thank you to all of our listeners in all corners of the globe. Now, we do love hearing from you. So, do please get in touch with us about your thoughts. Wherever you are in the world about each episode. The easiest and most popular way to do that is on LinkedIn. Just search for Workplace Geeks using the Wrkplace Geeks hashtag, that's #workplacegeeks, dropping us an email on hello@workplacegeeks.org like Sharon, or signing up to our newsletter for which all the information is at workplacegeeks.org. Now on to today's episode Ian tell the good folk who we're about to hear from and what we're going to be hearing about.
Ian Ellison
So, we are speaking today with Dan Wakelin, Director at workplace consultancy HCG and formerly of a number of different universities in and around the South East. So, we've known Dan for years rubbing shoulders in a range of different workplaces, industry and professional body bits and bobs. He's an absolutely lovely chap. And as you're about to hear, this is a conversation all about his doctoral journey, which was really insightful, not just topically, but also in terms of personal growth. Since we recorded the interview, he's also been selected as core net, which is corporate real estate network, global UK chapters young leader of the year, quite an accolade quite a mouthful. And he's also recently published a range of articles to make his thesis findings accessible. So, check the show notes. And we will post links to those too.
Chris Moriarty
Now last ime out, we managed to coach Dr. Pinder to talk to us well, we've only gone to manage to do it again. And this time in and I actually hunted him down in his hometown of Sheffield and spoke to him in person. So, look forward to that. But in the meantime, Dr. Dan Wakelin.
-- Interview --
Chris Moriarty
Welcome Dr. Dan, to the Workplace Geeks podcast now Ian and I know you very well. But for those who don't know, you tell us a little bit about you the work you do and where you do it.
Dan Wakelin
So, I'm a director at HCG, we deliver workplace strategy and change management, mostly in London and the UK, but our work thankfully takes us abroad. Occasionally we get to explore bits of the world, which is very nice.
Ian Ellison
So, Dan, you've told us about what you do and where you work, but you don't tell us anything about you. So, Dan Wakelin How did you get to be where you are? And tell us about this doctoral journey of yours, which has led to Dr. Dan,
Dan Wakelin
How did I end up where I am? As a lot of people probably by mistake. I started out doing events management and had some responsibility for a very, very small venue within a university that became facilities became space planning and over time It sort of grew. And here I am, the doctoral journey. I've always really enjoyed studying. And I thought, after I finished my masters that I would need something to fill the time, a doctoral journey certainly did that certainly fulfilled that brief. Yes.
Ian Ellison
Before we get into the actual thesis and the topic of the thesis in the findings, Dan, you mentioned, doing a doctorate whilst working, and there are different types of doctorate, right. So, I'm fairly sure that this was a practically focused doctorate, it not in the sense that being practical makes it any easier. But you can do deeply theoretical stuff or a thesis, but it feels to me like the point of this thesis was both grounded in the professional world that you work in at HCG. And also, to inform that work and to find findings which are useful beyond the actual project itself.
Dan Wakelin
No, you're exactly right. So, the course that I did is actually a Doctor of Business Administration, rather than a traditional PhD, or DBA. So the key difference really is in a traditional PhD, you normally go sort of theory, practice theory, you start with a load of theory, you do a little bit of practical applied research, and then you produce new theory, the DBA, flips that over and goes practice, let's look at what's happening out there in the world, theory in the middle, and then practice again at the end. So there needs to be some sort of practical application for your research. And for me, I didn't want to become a full time academic, the aspiration was always to apply the academic findings into a professional practice, sort of world. And so, it made sense for me to do the DBA route, rather than something a bit more traditional.
Ian Ellison
It's interesting the way you frame that, for me, it's about contributions to knowledge. So, a PhD needs to make a theoretical contribution to knowledge. And what DBAs have to do is they well, the way I understood it, and you might see this slightly differently, you have to make both a theoretical and a practical contribution to knowledge. So, you're trying to give something back essentially, to the industry that you've been working, researching within?
Dan Wakelin
Yes so, my thesis had both a contribution to knowledge and to practice, the contribution to practice in this case was rather bigger than the contribution to knowledge. That's pretty normal in a DBA. But yeah, you have to have both.
Chris Moriarty
Well, thank you very much for that deep insight into the different types of papers. So, let's get into the paper. Let's talk about your thesis here. So, we've got a title of employee engagement in the post COVID workplace, which has a lot of very interesting words in it. So, I think you know that a lot of people are interested in employee engagement. And a lot of people are interested in the post COVID workplace. So, it's interesting to see them smashed together in that title. So, before we get into the actual gubbings of the of the paper, and what you found and what you contributed, just tell us a little bit about the topic and how you arrived at it and why this became the thing.
Dan Wakelin
Yeah so, I actually started my doctoral journey back in 2018. And I was keen from the start to think about employee engagement and the workplace. I had taken some tentative steps in that direction as part of my master's. And I wanted to build on that here. And so, I knew I wanted to look at both of those worlds, bringing together the practice around the workplace, and also a more sort of Human Resources perspective as well. There was some events in 2020, which you might be aware of that sort of changed the direction of my research slightly. And it really, really quickly became very clear to everybody that you couldn't talk about the workplace without talking about COVID.
I wrestled with that for a long time, because I didn't want to write a thesis about COVID. I wanted to write a thesis about the workplace. In the end, I had some really fantastic support from a couple of academic supervisors that at the University, who really helpfully guided me through this idea that actually thinking about COVID would make it even more applicable. And they were right. I think what it has done is made the study even more relevant than it might have been five years ago, when the world looks slightly different.
Chris Moriarty
That's what I was gonna ask you Dan, because I guess like many of us, when that whole thing started rolling out on a very personal level, we don't want to believe that this is going to transform everything because that's terrifying. But then there was this sort of growing realisation that oh, no, this has changed a lot of things if not everything, but certainly work was one of those things but and you there's been lots of people that have talked about almost generational defining change that happened in months rather than decades as it could have done.
So, there's parts of me and it depends on personal circumstances against this part of me. It goes on one hand, yes, the idea of having to change everything and change where you, obviously, you mentioned it was that the tail end masters, so you've obviously had this sort of long tail in your head about this is where I'll take it next. And then you've got people going, that's not going to be relevant anymore. And you're going, whoa, hold on a minute. I've had this plan in my head for so long, it's difficult to change. But the flip side of it is, and it gets it's lovely. When you can look back and post rationalise the rest of it. We've ended up with a topic. That is of the moment.
Dan Wakelin
Yeah, absolutely I think that process took me at least six months of almost grieving for the study that I felt I had lost, you know, I had my practical research lined up, and I'm ready to go. And it all had to pivot. Excuse me all had to pivot and change.
Chris Moriarty
Are you getting a bit emotional? Is this?
Dan Wakelin
Yeah, I'm welling up just thinking about it. Yeah, it was, it was a real grief. And it, you know, it took me a long time to kind of refocus and move forward.
Ian Ellison
I think that is an incredible window into how all-encompassing research of this magnitude is. Because there you are doing full time job. And you've decided to keep your educational journey going a doctoral level, which is, and this would be an understatement, no insignificant undertaking. And then the world changes in a completely unexpected, unpredictable and thoroughly at the time, unnerving way. And the fact that you've got a plan, it's taken you ages to work it through ages to gain access ages, to set up your case studies or whatever you have plans to gather your research data to inform your, your hypothesis where this is going, which by the way, you've probably been wrestling with one to two years to try and just work out exactly where in this theoretical landscape, there's some work to be done.
And then all of a sudden, you can't do it anymore. But when you said grieving, I was thinking about mourning, you were mourning the loss of what the hell this thing could be. Here you are, and you pivot during the pandemic. So, listeners have got a sense of when you were doing this research, you pivot to a new way of gathering some research data to inform where you're going. So, let's talk a little bit about kind of what you were thinking about the sort of the theory, if you like, the ideas that you had in your head that you want to research. Let's talk about how you then went and gathered data in the real world to inform that research. And then let's start talking about the findings.
Dan Wakelin
So I suppose there were a couple of really important theoretical elements that I wanted to explore a little bit more, one really fascinating one by a geography researcher called Creswell he has a theory about transgressions, the idea that we transgress within spaces, that there are things that we can and can't do within a space and that people recognise the things that we can't do as transgressions.
I found that really fascinating as a concept. And I wanted to explore that a little bit more. And we have talked before he and about the Lefebvre, who I've grown to love through much, much pain. And his writing, I think, you know, is complicated, actually. And I had wanted to try and make it slightly more accessible for people because what he's got to say, is fascinating and really applicable, but a difficult read.
Ian Ellison
So, Chris, well, geographer, which is interesting, right? Because the business of geography is space, whether it's urban space, rural space, human space, and natural space, but it doesn't necessarily align with the workspace industry. So that's always interesting. I think
Dan Wakelin
I think just touching on that geography was just one of the disciplines that I delved into as part of my sort of theoretical exploration. And that was the beautiful thing for me about this particular topic was I could pull on geography, sociology, anthropology, psychology. You know, there's just so many fascinating disciplines that have a relevance here that it makes for a really interesting piece of research when you're actually reading things because you're not just looking at one topic all of the time.
Ian Ellison
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. So, I began my doctoral journey, thinking about all of the knowledge we had within our workspace industry for want of a better word fence boundary. And I saw these weird outliers out there. And it's interesting that when I read your summary of your thesis, I saw some other papers to the ones that I was interested in. So, I saw pieces of work were at the time I thought, well, they are like not us, but they're interested in us. And the deeper I went, I recognised that we were actually a tiny part of a much bigger we were constellation in a wider galaxy of spatial knowledge that people have been interested in for hundreds, if not 1000s of years.
So, you found Creswell, and others, besides in sociology, and anthropology and psychology and whatnot, you also found, as you mentioned, Henri Lefebvre. He's a French Marxist socialist philosopher, who became very popular in some circles in the 1960s and was involved in a lot of political posturing of the time, you said he's incredibly tricky to work with. So just paint a little picture of what you found with Lefebvre and what you got from him.
Dan Wakelin
So, look, I've wrote about almost everything, his philosophical works are very wide ranging, as you said, French Marxist philosopher, all of the original works, therefore, are in French, and there is only more recently translations of them in English, but they are very good translations of his very complicated writing. One of his most famous bits of writing is about the production of space. And he talks about how we as a society, experience, and simultaneously produce space. So, the actions that we all take creates the environment, as much as the environment creates us.
He talks about something that he calls the spatial triad. So, there are sort of three key elements within this spatial mix. There are how we draw and talk about space, how we see it on maps, and you know, how scientists talk and how we plan it. So that's what he calls the conceived space, the way that it's written and articulated, there's the perceived space, which is really the practices, how we actually behave and the routines and rituals that we undertake in that space. And finally, the lived space, which is, the more nonverbal symbols, it is the signs, the imagery, and the symbolism that tell us something about space, but without actually telling us it's the things that we feel and experience.
Chris Moriarty
This will surprise you. I've read some French philosophy. I've done that. That's, you know, I've read the simulacra and simulation, which is the book that's behind the matrix. I literally could only read two pages at a time. And I had to put the book down and think for a bit about what I just read. It was honestly so dense and so and the idea is so complicated, that it made my head hurt and it sounds like Lefebvre, why is he got a B in there? There's like a random B in it. That's the thing
Ian Ellison
Well it’s only random in our language it's not in French.
Chris Moriarty
That's a very good point. I what I liked then about your work, right? There was a sentence that made me laugh out loud that touches immediately on this issue. So, you make a point, Lefebvre, Lefebvre
Dan Wakelin
That French guy
Chris Moriarty
That French guy
Ian Ellison
The French Marxist that caused a lot of trouble, cantankerous French Marxists
Chris Moriarty
Me and him are quite close. So, Henri, Henri was a prolific writer on many aspects of everyday life is what you've said here, and his writing has been considered this is quoting directly from your summary, and his writing has been considered as key to the continued development of Marx's theories. While his concept of the production of space has garnered much attention, it is far from being an accessible read. correct. His writing style and language is at times look lacocious. and complicated by the fact I had to look up that word. So, what does lacocious mean? And I might say in it, right?
Dan Wakelin
Loquacious, it basically just means talkative, but yes, it was
Dan Wakelin
It basically means he says a lot. But yes, it was sort of a little bit tongue in cheek, you know, if you're going to if you're going to have a dig at somebody, you know, why not find the fanciest word you can to do it?
Ian Ellison
Lots of people ignore him because he's hard. But he has some incredible perspectives to bring to the debate about workspace open plan, who says we should use it and how do we use it? It cracks open a different way to think about it.
Dan Wakelin
And that's where going back to our earlier conversation, the difference between a PhD and a DBA This is one of the benefits so, for me, part of the aim is to take this complicated language, these complicated theories and turn them into something that we can apply in the real world. That's subtly different to a PhD where you would be building on that theory
Ian Ellison
You'd be coming up with equally complicated theory. So, we've explored Creswell, and we’ve explored Lefebvre as your, let's call them your theoretical foundations to ideas that you're really interested to explore. Okay, so where did you go? What did you design to be able to explore them?
Dan Wakelin
Yeah. So, what I had wanted to do, again, in this pursuit of making this a very real and practical study was explore two very real case studies. And I was very fortunate to have access to two organisations who were transitioning from a slightly more traditional way of working into activity-based working. And it gave me a really perfect opportunity to explore the impact of both activity-based working and hybrid working and what the introduction of those new approaches to work would have on the employee engagement of the people who are already working there.
So, my two case study organisations were very helpful, very welcoming, and allowed me to do a number of observations, just being in the space observing, absorbing a number of interviews. And also, very helpfully sharing with me a lot of secondary data sources, so things that they already had like strategy documents, meeting minutes, and notes, and really helpful documentation that adds huge amounts of context to some of the things that I was then observing and asking people about in the interviews
Ian Ellison
So, this is deeply immersive, deeply specific, deeply qualitative research, right?
Dan Wakelin
It is very unapologetically qualitative research. It is not trying to be a quantitative study with lots of data, it is deliberately saying that actually, these theories that we've talked about, say that humans influence space. So, it requires that human understanding and experience to be able to research that. And therefore, a qualitative approach is the only one that gives you the depth and the understanding, to properly answer those questions.
Ian Ellison
I think you put that brilliantly. And I remember in a previous conversation with you, you said you went through a phase of almost defending that. And then you came to go, I don't need to defend this. What I need to do is embrace it as a valid approach. It's not the other compared to a better quantitative approach. What it is, is it's valuable, measured by its own merits.
Dan Wakelin
Yeah, exactly.
Chris Moriarty
In that little intro there, then you were dropping, dropping workplace terms left, right and centre. But you know, a lot of people will have heard those terms. But just in case there is someone that has been living under a rock, just help us understand ABW activity-based working, I'm not expecting you to have the definitive answer to what it is because there's been a lot of debate about it. And there's a lot of conjecture about it, and what it is, what it isn't, and who, who started it, who did it first, and all this sort of stuff. But just from your point of view, in particular, but the view of this study, just give us a bit of a summary of ABW, how you see it, and also how it relates to or is different to hybrid work in which is the other part of this equation that we've been talking about?
Dan Wakelin
Yeah, so for me, activity-based working is about the locations it is about choosing the appropriate location for the work and the activities that people are doing. So, I think there's two really key elements to that. One is that people have the ability and the freedom to make sensible choices. And that the space enables that there is a third piece, which is technology. But one of the great things about COVID is that we can almost consider that a given almost I'm sure there are areas where that's not quite true. But broadly, for a lot of as the technology supports that sort of flexibility without question now
Chris Moriarty
Going back to what you said about how the pandemic kind of changed your thesis because the pandemic changed work. Is it a fair summary then to say activity-based working up until like pre-pandemic was a kind of almost like the way I saw it was almost like a kind of space approach. Like we're going to you know, we're going to redesign this floor and we're going to adopt an ABW mindset. So, what that kind of means is you know, we're not just gonna have banks or desks, we're gonna have some desks, we're gonna have some of their some of that some of this, you know, sort of going back to an earlier episode with Nigel Oseland, it's kind of that Bureau land shaft kind of landscaped office type vibe.
But what you're describing is actually almost forget about the pockets of things within this floor space, what we're taking a step back on, is that this is ultimately about choice. And up until the pandemic, that choice was contained within the corporate space. But now, that context has completely changed, and there is increasingly more choice. Beyond that. For more people, there was always that choice existed, but there's more choice for more people that might not even be in that floor space that you are responsible for.
Dan Wakelin
You're exactly right. What I think COVID did was it redrew the boundary of what we consider the workplace to be. So, for a lot of us it was previously the office that the physical workspace where our company’s kind of get together. But I think what we've been able to do now is extend that boundary to include our homes, to include other third spaces. And it has opened up that opportunity for many, many more people than we were seeing pre COVID.
Ian Ellison
I think it's also worth just quickly reminding that, if you are listening from within the workspace bubble, we tend to see more activity-based workspaces than perhaps truly exist because some research was done a good few years ago, it was before the pandemic. But I'd be very interested to see whether the pandemic has changed things or whether it's changed things yet, in terms of the lifecycle of spaces and buildings. But we tend to assume that lots of future spaces, lots of new spaces are designed in an activity-based way. Actually, back in the day, I think it was 2017, that this research was done. They were in the minority.
They're in the minority within the data set that was being researched. And that dataset was arguing different progressive organisations that were interested in the performance of their workspaces. So, it's really easy to think that all the view of the future is activity-based and up until the pandemic and perhaps beyond, it actually wasn't. But when you do look at those spaces, you're right, the thing that makes them work is a choice. Because if you don't have choice, or you don't have the right tools to be able to move around a space, it doesn't matter how many lovely different settings you got. What can you actually do with it, because you feel like you should sit at your desk. And it's the only place that your computer works anyway,
Dan Wakelin
I think that's really important. For me that activity-based working, I think pre COVID had become a bit of a template, we were probably able to walk into most office environments and know what we were going to see what work settings we might encounter and experience. And there's almost a set of assumptions that underlie the design of that space, that do not actually apply to huge amounts of people. So, my belief is not with activity-based working environments, it is with the assumption that they are all exactly the same, and that we can roll out a standard template and that it will just work for everybody.
Ian Ellison
So this, is what you talk about in your thesis, you kind of critique that around what Becker and Steele, who are two incredibly influential writers, particularly Franklin Becker, from the States, called the universal plan. And you kind of draw this parallel to say, if we take a painting by numbers approach, and they're my words, not yours, if we almost take this, this is the way space should be done way with activity-based working. All we ended up with is different furniture and fit out firms essentially copying each other different clients asking for what they had, I want one of them, and we innovate poorly. We don't support organisations well, and we just essentially ended up creating a new breed of vanilla space is the universal activity-based working plan.
Dan Wakelin
Exactly. And we come back to Lefebvre here he has this notion that in a capitalist society building must have what he calls a residual exchange value, they need to have some sort of value at the end of their usable lifetime. So, when Company A is finished with this space, we have to be able to sell it to Company B for them to move in. And what that creates, I think is almost an unconscious bias towards flexibility. And what that means is vanilla. Exactly what we end up creating is spaces with huge exchange. value, but not therefore personalised.
Chris Moriarty
It was like hotel rooms, isn't it? Like I need, you know, this needs to be stripped back stripped down and ready to go again. So, we can resell it again. And that's because there's someone else with a different motivation that owns that space, and therefore they can never be quite right. You can make do, you can do well within it. But ultimately, there is something else driving it. The other thing I wanted to just touch on, because we are, you know, it's almost like you two Lefebvre fanatics, honouree fanatics have sort of, you're showing me some of the stuff. Do you know what it sounds to me, you know, sometimes when there's a load of bands that you love, and then you find out, they all really were into the same kind of obscure folk singer, and you're like, oh, this is the kind of stem cells for all the stuff I'm thinking about the Churchill quote about our spaces influenced us. And then we influence whatever way around it is, I'm thinking about form and function and all this sort of stuff. What we're ultimately saying here is you have space and space can be a thing. But it comes to life when people are in it, and it might completely change in how it is.
And there are some people that wants it to be something else, and therefore hardwire that into it. And that's the status thing. But with all that stuff, you also got me thinking about, and you actually talk about them in the paper with Veldhoen who are the activity-based gurus, I was really lucky to do some work with those guys. And they will talk about the fact that actually activity-based working to space part of its almost the smallest part of it, like we can design a floor plan with lots of different places in it. Actually, most of that work is cultural, most of it is behavioural, and awareness and change. And that's the hardest bit and I guess that is so often overlooked by organisations, when they say to the you know, they go to a conference, hear someone talk about ABW and drag that idea back into their organisation, say, I've got a new idea. Look what I found out about today at the conference.
So, what I'm starting to see and then correct me if like if I'm on a bit of a wild goose chase here, but I can start to see how very philosophical ideas about the human condition, start to explain some of the challenges that we think are because we've designed a space poorly, or we've put the wrong bits into the wrong floor play.
Dan Wakelin
Yeah, absolutely. And I think what that tells me is that it's not an easy fix, either. Actually, there's an awful lot that we need to understand properly before we can fix the problem. Air quotes for the benefit of those who can't see me. It, yeah, there. It's not a simple soul, a lot of time
Ian Ellison
Hearing you use the musical evolution and allergy, Chris, and then hearing Dan react to that. The clue is in Lefebvre’s title of his book, The production of space. So, it's not space, per se, it's not space itself. It's all of the means the production bit makes it political. The production bit makes it social. So, when we talk about production of space, we're talking about the management of it, whether it's enabling management, whether it's dictatorial management as much as we talking about the design, so it's the people bit, it's absolutely the people bid.
Okay, armed with all of this interesting, fascinating theory and the impact that it might have. You're two case studies that you accessed. One was a research facility research organisation, and one was an academic institution. Both anonymised all of the participants anonymised as well, we talked an awful lot about the theory. Let's talk about the practical then what did you find? What were you interested in? What did you find?
Dan Wakelin
One of the most fascinating things that I found was, we talked about earlier appropriation, the appropriation of spaces. So, we know that in an activity-based working environment, one of the underlying assumptions is that spaces are not owned, that people will move between spaces as required. But actually, what I saw in both of my case studies was a hugely underpopulated environment as a result of hybrid working. And what that meant was that some of those underlying assumptions fundamentally changed quite often. Our reason for complying with the rules about sort of moving around was that we wouldn't deprive others of the settings that they need to use when they need to use them.
But actually, that was no longer a concern in the two organisations I, I researched, there was enough space and people were therefore able to appropriate the spaces that they wanted to use. Some of that was very informal and some of it was becoming a formalised appropriation. There was a fabulous quote, and I don't have the exact words in front of me, but one of my interviewees who was a relatively new starter at the academic institution that I researched. He said, I was told on my first day that you can sit anywhere, as long as it's not the first two rows, because that's where we sit, because we're here every day.
Chris Moriarty
That's like a wedding.
Dan Wakelin
Yeah, and I just thought, there's something really fascinating about that you can choose anything as long as you make the right choice.
Ian Ellison
Isn't that interesting? So, from a Creswellian perspective, this notion of transgressions is a transgression in the eye of the beholder. Is it or is it not depending upon the perspective from which you view it?
Dan Wakelin
I think it is in the eye of the beholder, we can transgress unknowingly. And sometimes we transgress in spaces because we are not clear what the rules are. And it only becomes a transgression. Because the ice cracks
Ian Ellison
Well you might argue it becomes a transgression. If there is a rule to say you shouldn't do it, because from a different and more permissive perspective, you would need to appropriate if it said, use the space as appropriate to your needs. And you don't all have to move around. Because some of you don't need to move around. What you're doing is you're re lensing, one of the perpetual beefs about the rules that come with ABW aren’t you?
Dan Wakelin
Absolutely. And I think just building on that it's not just about rules that are written and well-articulated. It's also the practices that actually informally create rules. So actually, there can be things that we perceive as being transgressions in a space that are not in any way related to the formal rules, but to the practices that have become embedded.
Chris Moriarty
I’m gonna have a go at a take here. I don't know if it's a hot take. But it's certainly a take and, and desperately trying not to sound like three dudes sat around a campfire in California smoking a fat one, right. But what we're talking about here is, I guess, it feels like it's some of the if you've done this study, pre-pandemic, some of this stuff would have come out already, right, you know, would have been that kind of bag in a chair. And that's my chair, and I leave my cardigan on it and all that sort of stuff that happened a lot. But the best and the most successful activity based working schemes, I'm going to use that word to try and encompass the change, as well as the space itself. It did work, you know, I, when I was reading your paper I started considering, and again, with the Lefebvre’s kinda of mindset here, that there are less people in those spaces.
Now, that has changed an environmental condition, which is kind of capacity, right? I don't need to move because there's not enough people for me to do that transgression of hogging this space, because there's no one else here. So, it kind of deflates the balloon doesn't it slightly, because there's not enough people in there to push those behaviours a little bit to go, yes, if you keep staying there, there's people that want that space over there. And it's busy in here, and we need to make sure we keep people keep moving. And you're what you're saying. And this is where I think this is a really interesting paper, all be it that, you know, it was a quite painful process to arrive at it is that we've focused so much on hybrid through one lens, but actually, this is one where it's gone.
You know, those ideas we had before they've had to change as well, because a load of assumptions and baked in assumptions have completely changed.
Dan Wakelin
If we'd done this pre COVID, you're right, we might well have found some of the same behaviours. What I think is different is that pre COVID, that would have mattered, we would have sprung into change management mode. And let's think about behaviours. What's different now is does it matter?
Chris Moriarty
Whether it would have been a passive aggressive email, a suspect
Ian Ellison
Or even a desk drop a mail shot? How dare you occupy this desk for more than your allotted four hours?
Chris Moriarty
Or what are those little signs on there? Do you really need this desk? Think about a colleague
Dan Wakelin
Love all of those, obviously. Now, now, the question is, do we need them? Does it matter? Does anyone care?
Ian Ellison
Well, isn't this is interesting, because there's going back to Lefebvre this is about the power, and it's about who's got the power and who gets to say it's really interesting, because that question of would we have found similar findings? Right? So, the point about case studies is they're unique, but then you get into a debate. Did you do any flipbook and that I don't know how you pronounce that, but the transferability of case studies, you know, arguing for whether it's so qualitative as to be specific and non-transferable, or whether you can take the findings and generalise them, because I did two case studies back in the day.
And the particular case study that I looked at was a professional services firm who were in and around our industry, right. And they had just moved into a new quote unquote, activity-based workspace. And it was beautiful and well designed, and they really liked it. But one of the reasons they really liked it was because they had the space to essentially to use your language, transgress and stay put, they were things like different team areas. And there were anchor desks for key people who never move to like pas and secretaries and, you know, team coordinators and whatnot. But then teams coalesced around them. But there weren't enough people to force the model to force the calculation to make people have to share. And they knew it was coming.
And you could hear in their language that their view of the space was going to change when it did. Up until that point, they were absolutely fine with it, because it was new and shiny, and they felt very valued, but it wasn't at capacity. So is that where I mean, we go back to your title, and it's got employee engagement, as the first two words is that where that started to come into it, understanding it from their perspectives, and the way it affected, how they felt about the space, how they perceive the space, how they're able to work effectively for the organisation within the space.
Dan Wakelin
Yes, so employee engagement is another term has got as many definitions as you like. And, you know, pick whichever one you think is most appropriate. I've really focused on one particular definition of employee engagement that talks about these constructs of vigour, dedication and absorption as being the sort of key antecedents of employee engagement. So, what I was looking at in these spaces was, do they allow those things to happen? Now, again, thinking about this, in a practical context, rather than a theoretical one, I changed some of the language when I was talking to people.
So, I didn't Bandy around the space talking about vigour, dedication and absorption, because that's ludicrous. But you know, for instance, absorption becomes in the zone, and people's ability to get in the zone. So, what I was looking at was, how able are people to have that feeling of vigour of dedication and absorption, really interesting findings for me, one is that absorption is much harder in these sorts of environments. That probably comes as no great surprise to many of us
Ian Ellison
That feels counterintuitive, because if there's less people and there's more space, and I've got myself comfortable, why would I struggle to become absorbed
Dan Wakelin
I think the change that we've experienced post COVID is the rise of video calls. And so, the irony of there being fewer people around is that it actually makes the noise much more noticeable. So, calls like the one that we're having. Now, if I did this in an office, I would be annoying a whole bunch of people more than just you to, you know, it's going to be very disruptive for everybody around us.
So one of the interviewees that I talked to describe firebreak days, his words, he talked about this idea that he had days at home, as fire break days, which, you know, there's just so much imagery in there about the sort of relentless collaboration that he was expected to participate in on the days that he's in the office that he needs this huge chunk of time to be able to decompress from that and actually get on with some sort of heads down focused work, which, you know, again, is just this slightly odd combination of hybrid plus activity based working having this, this impacts that we didn't necessarily think about
Chris Moriarty
Again, I think that's a really interesting parallel and link to pre pandemic, but it feels like it's, it's exacerbated as exaggerated it because I used to talk about, you know, if you're finding a lot of people to work from home on a Friday, which was kind of the old, you know, senior management work from home on Friday, because we trusted them, we didn't trust anyone else, right? And you talked to a lot of them, they said, oh, it's the day I catch up on my emails, because when I'm in the office of constantly getting interrupted, but even in an act, it just goes back to the behaviours right, in an activity-based environment.
In theory, there should be somewhere where someone can go and concentrate and do that and not and I did, I saw that that term in the paper, that that kind of relentless collaboration thing, they should be able to dip out and go into a booth somewhere and all the rest of it, but the behaviours need to match it. I don't disturb them when they're there, because that defeats the whole purpose. That whole thing have you got a minute, that proximity of that person knowing they are in the building? And you need a quick answer, you can start to see why people have gone to exercise that choice of going. I'm checking out because I can't get my work done.
Dan Wakelin
I agree. But I also think that those spaces to dip out are very often under provided in activity-based work environments. That's a generalisation. And I'm sure there are great examples of where that that is not true. But on the whole activity-based working environments are built on this premise of transparency, that actually being able to see people will encourage collaboration, it will bring us closer together physically and metaphorically, and actually hiding, you know, going away to do some heads down focused work that was really perceived as a transgression, pre COVID, hiding was a transgression, because it went against the grain of what that space was intended to do.
And so often, we know that people, those spaces are under provided, and people have this very real sense that they shouldn't be hiding in these big open spaces. And so, it, I think you're right, in theory, Chris, that people can go off and use those spaces. But in practice, I don't know how well that works.
Ian Ellison
But it feels like there's a bit of a paradox here. Because if activity-based workspaces and workspaces in general, were about, you know, the power for knowledge, workers of collaboration, and your hunch, and your belief is that we've kind of overemphasized the collaboration beyond concentration, even though we were calling for those things, as well as contemplation and all the other stuff, we can make any model you like, out of any set of letters. During the pandemic, we started talking about offices as social destinations, because we just discovered that all of our focus work could get done at home, even though we were perpetually on teams calls and zoom calls. Some people are now saying that unless people wise up to this, the office is essentially dead.
Dan Wakelin
And I think there is the risk of oversimplifying the purpose of the office. So, I agree that there is a strong rationale for it to being the hub of collaboration, social connection, you know, the things that bring us together, but I can't organise my days, in a way that I only collaborate on the days that I'm in the office, and that I only do concentrated work on the day that I'm at home. And I daresay there are others who struggle to be able to partition their workload in in that way, as well. And so regardless of what the primary purpose of the offices, whether it is collaboration, we still need to facilitate quiet, contemplative work, because we have to do that as part of our role. So, I do think there's a risk, we sort of oversimplify and say people will do collaboration in the office and concentrate at home and it doesn't work that neatly in in reality
Ian Ellison
So slightly different question from me. So, when you did the final edit, read through and essentially completed your research journey, worked out what your contribution was worked out what your theoretical and practical contributions to knowledge were. How did you feel?
Dan Wakelin
Gosh, that's a great question. There's a mixture of emotions in that moment, there's this sort of overwhelming relief that you've got to the end of five years’ worth of work. And then I think there was, there was also an excitement for me that it wasn't a waste of time. But it wasn't just a regurgitation of what had been before that, actually, there was something I could take into my practice. And my hope is that others might take something useful from it as well. But if nothing else, my practice has changed. As a result of this research, the work that I do with businesses has changed because of this research. That's exciting. That feeling of having been value from it.
-- Reflection Section --
Chris Moriarty
Right, welcome to the reflection section, if you're getting a different vibe from this audio is because we're actually and I think this is true. The first time ever we've done this in person, all three of us. So, we're here to talk about Dr. Dan Wakelin interview. Now, from one doctor to another Dr. Pinder, what did you make of what Dan and talk to us through in his chat.
James Pinder
Yeah, I mean, it's two bits to the recording that stood out to me. There's the topic itself, which is obviously, you talked at length, and it was really interesting discussion in terms of the subject. But I guess there's also the process side and doing a PhD and all the ins and outs of that, which obviously resonated with me as well. It's 20 years since I finished my, what was your PhD, and it was around workspace actually, it was to do with the design of office buildings and the link or looking at the relationship to people's perceptions of those buildings.
So how people rate their buildings, or different parts of their buildings, and then the physical characteristics of those buildings. So, it was like, I think I walked around 70 or 80. office buildings. Remember the number? And then statistically, right is the relationship between particular design features, and whether people on a rating scale on a survey rate them really well or less well?
Ian Ellison
20 years ahead of its time, the OG of doctors have offices
Chris Moriarty
Because I'm glad you've kind of gone down that route, rather than talk specifically about ABW. Because you're right, the topic itself was quite interesting. But the whole process of a PhD, but also what it means to become a doctor of a of something, I guess, fascinates me as well, to the point like so you're talking in your example, right? You're talking about you were going around looking at the characteristics of a building. Now that might be, does it have an atrium? How many windows does it have?
Is it big and square? Or is it curvy, and beautiful, and all the rest of it, and its linkage to people self-reported satisfaction with it. Now, I could then see a situation in the future where someone is doing a story on London's ugliest building. And they might go we want someone to come and pass expert judgment on this story. And somebody who did a PhD in that topic would rank fairly highly in a list of people that there would be an authoritative voice on it. Hmm. lineout for extra work. I guess my whole thing with it was thinking about the designations or once you've done a qualification, like what is the point of a qualification of this size?
James Pinder
So, one of my supervisors was called If Price. Professor, Ilfryn price, if you and don't think I'm misrepresented, was that you know, doing a PhD is about becoming an expert in a topic area. Whereas my view of it and this might be a little bit sort of different to a lot of people it was about, it was almost it for me anyway, it was about developing the skills and expertise. In some respects, the topic was less important to me, and developing the methodologies and the skills was kind of felt to me like what I got more out of the PhD than necessarily subject expertise. Does that make sense? Yes, I don't know if it does.
So yeah, there's subject knowledge isn't there. And I guess, when you're doing a PhD, going into something in a lot of detail, and developing a very, a lot of knowledge about a very focused thing, usually, but also, while you're doing that you're developing skills around or how you will be around methodology and research techniques. And then I guess, you get both of those things out there. Why would argue personally is probably the skills and methodologies is the thing, that's been the enduring thing for me, because topics move on and subjects move on. And the work you do almost becomes, is it a point in time, but you know, a lot of the things I learned when I was doing my PhD, I still use and apply now sort of thing. And I've done over the years as a consultant or a researcher.
So, I guess for me, that's the thing that was the really valuable thing that I got out of doing a PhD being perfectly honest. I'm sure a lot of people disagree with that. And say, Now, that was the subject knowledge, that was the most important thing. But for me, it was the actual process.
Ian Ellison
The bit that stood out for me with Dan, and I think we talked about it during the conversation was that bit where he really embraced his case study, qualitative design, unapologetically. And that's because through my own sort of journeys through academia, you recognise these different tribes. And just like in politics, just like in society, just like in real life, you have different tribes, fiercely defending their turf. And maybe it depends on the tribe. How sensitised to this you are, but for Dan to move from a position of, oh, I should really explain why I've chosen this to I'm going to own the fact that I've chosen this because he has a valid technique for the things I was seeking to investigate. I just think that's really that stands out to me because of what I'm interested in.
James Pinder
And the other thing is, if you don't have that conviction, you can't really go into the vibe we're in
Ian Ellison
The vibe is and an oral examination right?
Chris Moriarty
No, like a dentist, like, like an examination that you speak.
Ian Ellison
Like you get asked anything about anything within your thesis, and you got to defend it. Yeah, you defend it.
James Pinder
So, you've got to have that conviction that this one day is valid in the right way to do it, because or what's right for me? Because, yeah, at some point, you're going to be having a conversation with some people. And then the other thing that stands out, obviously, I guess, a fair bit if there's a subject knowledge, the techniques and the skills is there. It's a bit of an emotional roller coaster as well.
Chris Moriarty
I mean, I've done an MBA, and that was, that felt less emotional, just hard, you know, like, it was graft
Ian Ellison
On top of the day job graph.
Chris Moriarty
Yeah, but it was, you know, I, I wasn't I didn't feel particularly emotionally connected to what I was doing. It was I had to learn this stuff. And I had to demonstrate and apply it, I had to show I knew my stuff. Whereas he got that impression with Dan, that this was a topic that he really, really cared about really was really interested in.
James Pinder
Well, it's not just that is it, it's your thing. You know, you've got supervisors, you may be working with collaborators on the data collection, but ultimately, it's very, can be quite lonely experience can’t it. And, ultimately, is your thing. And that's, that can be tough, can't it
Ian Ellison
I think that also depends on the organisation of the doctor. So, two examples, if you are done, and you are doing a DBA, the first year or two of the DBA is to get to grips with what is in your field of interest. And then what specifically you're going to do to add to it, it's collaborative in the DBA is structured to have peers around you learning together. But you still make a choice yourself. It's your decision, you defend that decision, you go through gateways to start researching that decision. And then off you go. You have to, as James said, totally believe in your thing. Go on then Chris. So, what about you
Chris Moriarty
I was just thinking about the why of doing stuff like this. That's the thing that got me interested. Because, you know, there's Dan, he spent an extraordinary amount of time studying. Now he did his master's before this, He then spent five years on this. And for what now he'll have his own motivations and stuff. And I'm impressed, you know, he's a doctor. And I was, oh, that's quite cool. They just got me thinking about, we need this stuff. Because we need knowledge to be enhanced. So, there's one system that exists that says, will recognise this stuff, if you can demonstrate that you've taken existing knowledge and built on it, and contributed to knowledge. That's independent, almost of the individuals, that's just like, if you want a ticket to the table, that's the ticket, because that's going to help scientific knowledge, generally.
So, then you think of what the personal benefits of doing that. And clearly, I mean, I can't believe there's anyone that's going to listen to Dan and not think he'd be really useful in our business to help us understand this problem. For two reasons. The top, only to your point James to topic, though, knows his onions, right, clearly. But also, the methodological approach to it. You know, if we've got a problem, here's someone who can come in and really unpack this problem, because they know how to unpack problems, and look at them in a certain way.
And that just got me thinking actually, is really cool. And then my sort of drifted to the what designation, I spent a long time in professional bodies, what designations actually mean these quick labels that convey all that stuff very quickly to people to say, look, if you're dealing with someone, and they're called a doctor, and they ain't got a stethoscope, it's probably because they're really, really expert in something else. Right? Whatever you're talking to them about, potentially, right. So, in this room, if we think about ranking, and it's a tricky area to get into, but obviously Dr. Pinder ranks top of the shop, right?
So, if they, you know, someone was going to come in here and start say, that I need I need the most qualified workplace person in this room, then you get the nod. Right? I would say that, why wouldn't you say that? Whether you like it or not, or whether you agree with it or not, you've got the highest-ranking qualification in this room, right?
James Pinder
I'd say is, if you came in to the room, and it was maybe around researching and aspects of workplace or exploring some data around workplace, I would maybe say, yeah, I've probably got the most experience. But in terms of like subject knowledge, I'd argue Ian’s probably more widely read around the topic of workplace and actually, it's probably got more interest in the topic than I have
Ian Ellison
Do you know what this is what your what you are debating is essentially academic Top Trumps right if you called on it particular skill on that card. For anybody in the world who has not discovered Top Trumps or does not remember this from childhood? Right? Then sorry for the next two minutes, you can be bewildered. But yeah, if you play the research points card, James in gonna win. And if you play the academic qualification card, James is gonna win.
Chris Moriarty
So, I used to play Marvel Top Trumps. If you got Galactus. You basically went in every time. And I can't remember which one specifically, but there was one line, one line, where a lot of people you could yeah, you could just nick it. And nick it was the most obscure character as well, right?
Ian Ellison
In this room, there is nobody being everybody at top Trump. That's his point.
Chris Moriarty
So, what have you you've got an improv, haven't you?
Ian Ellison
I've got an MBA, an improv, and a teaching qualification at master’s level. And they're all at level seven, which means he still wins top trump
Chris Moriarty
On that front. But your argument is because of the subject matters, and the all the rest of it more widely read on the topic of workplace. So, I guess what we're saying is with these sorts of processes, what they're doing is they're offering us an opportunity to certify a credit, what we are capable of know and understand for the right context. Because the word basically said it has its context. What is it that you need? When which case look for someone and how do you know that that someone has it? Well, look, there's a bit of paper there that says, Actually, they've been through this sort of stuff?
James Pinder
Well and the other thing is, which we've kind of said is it's assembling a team, isn't it? Often, nobody's got all of the skills and all of the knowledge and you need that mix of different people. You need the pack of top trumps
Chris Moriarty
Ultimately, though, and this is going to I should if he's listening, this is a nice test to see if he listens right to the end, Matt Tucker. I suspect I might get a text for him because when I finished my MBA, he was straight on to right when you're going to start your DBA. And I was like nah, nah, nah.
Ian Ellison
You sure he wasn't just recruiting for Liverpool John Moores.
Chris Moriarty
100%. But he was like when you're going to start your DBA. And talking to Dan, it kind of started getting me thinking about it.
James Pinder
See, I always said to Ian. I mean I did my PhD, partly full time, partly part time job while I was working. But I've always said to Ian, I couldn't do it now.
Ian Ellison
I am now going to quote the great Dr. Mary Clark, from Sheffield business school, do not undertake a doctorate. If you plan to change job, build a business, have children or move house, the reason I never completed and I haven't improv instead of a DBA it’s because I ticked every single one of those boxes whilst trying to do a doctorate. And you wonder why it didn't work.
James Pinder
And Chris, I would argue you've got us you quite a few things on your plate. So, I don't want to discourage you. But
Ian Ellison
Can we get back to the paper, because I want Lefebvre again, I think it's clear to say from the discussion with Dan, that I get incredibly excited about the Lefebvre both from a kind of real geeky, geek out academic perspective, but also about the value that I think is lens brings to workplace and workplace management and workplace experience. And I remember it was actually if price back in the day saying why are you getting so excited about Lefebvre. What does he bring. And my argument all the way has been, he actually shows you that different sides of the argument are equally valid, the conceived management design side is a very powerful lens is a very powerful force in this stuff. But what you've also got to remember is that if we all produce space, then the users of space, the fact that we've turned this meeting room into a temporary recording studio, right? We just did, because we produce space as well to our needs.
And I was reading a piece of work from somebody in a government agency recently, who's doing a qualification that I'm heading up. And they talked about how their design team saw that people had used spaces wrongly. And they recorded them as they weren't non-conformances. But it was a word like a non-conformance. And it's like the point about the Lefebvre from whose perspective is a non-conformance because if they're trying to get their job done, and you've created space, which doesn't help them get their job done, who's actually at fault. And this is a really interesting conundrum that I think Lefebvre maturely the opens up and challenges. So that's one thing that I really thought it was interesting and we should take forwards and think about.
The other thing is, if you remember we got talking about constellations of knowledge and realising that you know, sociology and geography and whatnot. And they've all got it's not just we're the experts about space and nobody else's views count. Well, you know, that phrase, it's been rattling around industry for years third space. And it's back in fashion, again, because of hybrid. So, we can work at home, we can work in offices, but we can work in third spaces. I was listening to a podcast at the weekend, about nascent surf culture, in Malibu in the 1950s. That's very niche where it was very interesting, right, and I was listening to it. And the person they were interviewing was the original. She was essentially the story scope gets it. And she's the story that bade Hollywood fallen in love with surf culture, which made the world fall in love with surf culture.
So, the way this argument is, is that everything tracks back to gidgit from when surfing goes from this underground thing that only absolute diehard committed folk do on massive pieces of wood that weighed like 200 pounds, to where we are today, that billion-dollar industry can be tracked back to gidgit. She sat there going, you know, from a sociological perspective, the beach was the third space. And unlike we didn't even invent that, there is so much to be found about workplace from beyond workplace. And that the beauty of Dan's journey for me
Chris Moriarty
Is that does that not sit at the heart of all the workplace challenges, which is that we look at it through some sort of bubble, we're like, we're the only ones that can possibly understand our challenges and come up with solutions.
Ian Ellison
The best activity based co working space I've ever seen, was not called an activity-based workspace. It wasn't designed with that in mind. And it came out of a design studio that thought differently. And they were research specialists. They were qualitative research specialists, they were building ethnographers, anthropologists, sociologists, their skills, they were architects, but their skills were super diverse. And I think that's where you get the real power in this industry. And I will put my soapbox away now.
-- Outro --
Chris Moriarty
Thank you very much. We'll put our soapbox away. Well, that's all folks remember to rate review and recommend the show to help build our community. And please do get in touch via LinkedIn community search Workplace Geeks and you'll find us you can also use the Workplace Geeks hashtag, that's #workplacegeeks. And of course, you can email us at hello@workplacegeeks.org or visit our shiny new website and join the mailing list sign up at workplacegeeks.org speak to you next time.
