I read this post titled “The Door is Not the Problem” on GapingVoid blog and was reminded of a couple of things that are important to remember if we want to be a leader worth following.
Firstly, we need to realize that our behavior is much more impacted by our environment than we think. Every element of design of a product or service or the way we design our environment (intentional or unintentional) – it has elements of affordances and signifiers (Affordances are what the design makes possible. Signifiers make you aware of these possibilities).
Consequently, how we design our environment (physical, emotional and intellectual – the combination of which is what is the culture), can have a significant impact on the behaviors of the people who operate in there. Which also means that if we want people to behave in a specific way, it is way easier to design the environment that triggers these behaviors rather than ask, cajole or influence people to behave that way.
So, you want people to take risk, create an environment that naturally elicits more risk taking behavior.
You want people to collaborate more, create an environment such that collaborating becomes the default behavior rather than something to aspire to.
You want people to have fun while working hard, design your environment that encourages exactly this behavior.
In conclusion, we should remember that the environment needs to include all the three elements – physical spaces (offices, desks, etc), emotional states (trusted, safe, open, vulnerable) and intellectual activities (experiments, explorations, change, rewards, recognition, punishment, etc).
Another key thing to remember is that it doesn’t matter if the design is intentional or not, it impacts how people show up and behave. So, we would be much better off, if we put in the effort to intentionally design it based on how we want people to show up and behave.
