Stop Reading and Emailing and Start Talking

One of the core values of USGBC's original LEED program was collaboration. Instead of using the old and tried lineal approach to design and building, the program insisted that the design and build teams talk and work together from the start to the finish. Collaboration, listening to a teammate with years of experience, working through problems, establishing healthy conflict that has to exist to break through old ideas to find a new and better way are all ways to help to construct a high performance building economically.

Every week it seems that there are more and more articles about being green and ironically, they all seem to have a theme of collaboration and community...

The New York Times had an article last week by Megan Hustad about the general hum of an office, the activity of the workplace and the ringing of the telephone. "Everyone sat at desks silently reading and typing email passages". The noise of people talking, the sound of the phone ringing, the daily energy in the air is gone. Also gone are important ambient learning moments- eavesdropping on your boss' conversations to learn the business. "The office phone call, properly overheard, is really the cheapest, easiest way to transmit institutional knowledge." "Business calls also taught me the necessary summoning of courage for potentially fraught encounters. Typing a tough e-mail is simply no substitute for the fine art of handling a difficult conversation. So though we may welcome the way e-mail spares us from confrontation, it's worth remembering that resorting to e-mail rather than picking up the phone results in not merely a quieter workplace but also a feebler one".

I remember way back when, well in 1985, when I went to work at Merrill Lynch in their New York City-midtown offices. The workplace had just changed from the traditional bull pen of desks in a room with brokers and assistants lined up talking on the phone to the new cubicle arrangement. The panels were set up in pods of 4 with peek holes in the middle so we all sat facing a corner that was connected to one another. I supported 3 brokers, all of us in this one pod configuration. The office was no longer noisy - everyone was in their little space doing their thing. The older brokers were culturally shocked but adapted, the younger brokers were lost. They could not learn from the older group because they could not hear them. The assistants were put next to the team but the ambient information that we used to hear that helped us do our jobs was lost in the new set up.

There was an article at least 6-7 years ago in Fast Company about a company in the south bay that banned emails on Friday for internal company correspondence. The CEO was demanding the return of conversation among the employees. He was also protesting, if I remember correctly, the amount of emails being received by everyone from people sitting 6 feet away. Get up and talk to one another, solve problems, work together, stop hiding. We followed this in our offices for a short time and it was a lot of fun, difficult, but fun and funny. Some people adapted quickly and painlessly. Some just could not adapt. Rifling off emails without thinking, forwarding emails without dissecting who needs to do what or know what information was just easier than thinking. It quickly pointed out how often we are emailing when we could be talking and building our office community.

Last week the Wall Street Journal cited a company offering incentives to employees to trade in their low gas mileage cars for more fuel efficient types. I have very little to say on this as my Prius costs $20 in gas for a week and I drive 20,000 a year - for $1200. I cannot understand spending money on gas when there are options - but that is just me.

Last week there was an article in Entrepreneur about how facilities can be more green. Simple things we all know - programmable thermostats, motion-sensor lighting, turn off your computers and screens when you leave for the day, install bike rakes and showers to encourage bike riding to work, and subsidize mass transit costs. This article also said that the average worker uses 12,000 sheets of paper a year and that email cuts down on waste.

So, writing less emails means you have to talk more and therefore you are not wasting paper and writing more emails and less memos on paper means you are saving paper. So, while I am not confused, I guess you can do both - email more and email less. But the most important thing is to honor your community and talk to one another and collaborate with your office mates.

IFMA Green on April 9th

As I mentioned in my last posting, IFMA San Diego is presenting a wonderful Green Symposium. The event has several speakers, all of whom are addressing green interiors and facilities. Topics include: Construction, Flooring, Maintenance / Cleaning and of course, the granddaddy of them all, Furniture.

Kelly Devereaux from DPR, Ron Sutliff from Integrated Project Management and Danette Ferretti and I are all sharing the stage to talk about Furniture. We are covering some basics, such as what is LEED, what credits are relevant to furniture, which LEED programs are which, how do you treat the three buckets ( if you will ) of furniture; movable walls, systems furniture and ancillary furniture, what are the misperceptions of LEED, what does Greenguard mean, why you can't just buy a point or credit and what you may have in your existing facility that is already "green".

We are going to address strategies for seeking LEED. How do you get a point for a credit. What are the trade offs. What can be specified by a designer to provide a longer/better life cycle cost to a workplace. What is the process for getting LEED and greening your interiors. How do movable walls work in construction and tenant improvements.

Lastly, what are the costs of green, or better yet, what are the savings with green. Do you have to spend more to buy green products? Can you build a green interiors inexpensively? What can you do to be more green but not spend a lot of green doing it.

We are looking for an interactive audience so sign up now, come ask questions and learn something new.