Reclaiming Conversation (33 page)

I
n 2004, the new CEO of Radnor Partners, a large high-tech consulting company, also became frustrated with the limitations of telecommuting, something that had been in the Radnor culture since the 1990s. As in so many firms, telecommuting cut costs and was widely seen as improving employee satisfaction. But now, this CEO decided to bring his far-flung workforce together.

When Radnor made its decision, the economy was in a downturn and companies were not typically making new investments in physical infrastructure. But the new CEO went against the conventional wisdom of the time. He invested in new, more welcoming office spaces and called people back to work in them.

At first, there was a lot of grumbling—the Radnor management and employees had gotten used to their flexible work arrangements. Also, there was genuine concern among senior management that this new policy would make recruiting difficult and cause talented people to leave Radnor. And there was something else: Radnor was making money. The CEO wanted to change its culture at a time when what it was doing was successful in the marketplace.

But the CEO stood firm. He communicated his vision to an unconvinced management team. Here is how Shelly Browning, the vice-president in charge of human resources, describes what she heard:

He said, “We're a growing company. Change only happens when people collaborate. You can't collaborate as effectively at home, where you don't run into someone in the cafeteria. You don't bring them up to speed on that thing, you forget to tell them the nine other things. It slows down the rate of change. . . .” So, he said, “All of our leaders are going to be in offices. And to the extent that's possible, we're going to hire people to work in offices. . . . Your job is in an office because that's where we collaborate.”

Grudgingly, people came back to work. Grudgingly. Browning describes the process as turbulent:

We wagged our fingers. We told him the world had changed. That he had an archaic view—that in management, people needed to work from home. But over eight years, he has changed every one of our minds. . . . And we have all become believers. We're growing. We work as a team.

Ben Waber's studies demonstrate that workers across different fields are
more productive when they talk more
. So it's not surprising that the positive effects of people brushing shoulders play out at every level of an organization. And that's what happened at Radnor. Physical proximity sparked new conversations. Those who had been skeptical, says Browning, saw for themselves that “face-to-face meetings are what good collaboration looks like.” And the CEO's decision paid off in financial terms: When analysts, salespeople, and consultants worked in the same space, Radnor began to grow at five times its former rate.

Not only did the Radnor CEO bring employees back to local offices, he encouraged more communication among managers in different parts of the company. A group of managers were identified as crucial to the company's future and brought together for a three-day workshop. They weren't there to learn new skills but to be persuaded by a new idea: Radnor would now have a face-to-face leadership culture. They were being asked to be the company-wide advocates for this change in all their different departments.

Browning was given the job of designing the workshop. It was a tough assignment. The assembled managers were happy with the old system. They were able to work from home and had flexible hours. Browning describes the downbeat atmosphere when things began. “They came with their arms crossed and their BlackBerrys at the ready.” But the workshop challenged their set ideas. “Nobody went to their laptop. Nobody went to their BlackBerry, even at night.”

A crucial moment in the workshop came when the managers were asked how much they knew about the people they supervised. In particular, did they know how those they supervised would answer the question “What is your sense of purpose?” Even managers who had supervised the same employees for over a decade could not talk confidentially about their motivations. These are things that you don't learn without a conversation. That's what was missing and that's what the CEO wanted to change.

Since 2011, Radnor has put “sense of purpose” conversations at the heart of all performance reviews. Managers are directly asked, “Did you have the sense-of-purpose conversation?” It's a box that has to be checked. Knowledge about your colleagues that depends on face-to-face conversations has become part of the company's DNA.

As for the face-to-face intensive leadership development program, it is now a regular part of the Radnor system. It has been carefully evaluated and found to exceed expectations. It forged new bonds across the company. Indeed, that first, reticent group of managers continues to meet on monthly conference calls. Their in-person experience built trust that has paid off throughout the organization.

T
he Radnor story illustrates two simple lessons:
Getting together for face-to-face conversation is good for the bottom line, and proactive leaders can do things to make it happen.

In 2008, the CEO of Stoddard, an international design firm, tried to schedule a meeting with a group of vice-presidents and found that it would take over two weeks to get it on his calendar. The senior leadership had 90 percent of its time booked in advance. The CEO realized that in this environment, with people moving from one scheduled meeting to another, there was little room for informal conversation. And not much room for meetings that needed to be scheduled because a problem was looming. Or because someone had a good idea and
wanted to quickly share it with colleagues. So the CEO started a new program: breakfast.

One day a week at corporate headquarters, a senior management group would begin their day forty-five minutes earlier than usual. They would all come to a breakfast that had no agenda. People would simply be there, available to each other. Within months, scheduled meetings dropped by 20 percent. That meant that senior management had 20 percent more time for spontaneous conversations or for scheduling last-minute meetings. The breakfast group is uniformly enthusiastic about the program. At breakfast, problems are solved on the spot. And new ideas get a hearing.

Informal conversation counts. The stage director Liana Hareet recalls that in the theater, it used to happen naturally because of the technology of the “classical” rehearsal room. The actors' union required either a ten-minute break every eighty minutes or a five-minute break every hour. The group of actors rehearsing on any given day would decide how they would take their breaks and everyone took a break at the same time.

At the break, there would be a long line for the one or two pay phones outside the rehearsal room door. Everyone had to call his or her agent and/or answering machine.

You never knew when work was coming in, a last-minute audition. There would be a line at the phone. And on that line, there would be conversation. You would be with the other actors, all the time. There was a lot of kibitz in it. Now, the minute you say, “Take ten,” everybody just takes out their cell and goes to a private space. Everyone goes to a different corner. And then they come back to work, but it's a different energy than everyone having been on the pay phone line, all returning.

The line around a pay phone brought people together. Now, the screens on our phones and laptops keep us apart, or at best, alone together, physically in the same space but isolated, with our minds on our
devices.
Unless we act with intention.
The Stoddard breakfasts illustrate, once again, that if you want to spark conversation, you need the commitment of senior leadership. And you have to design for it.

D
esigning for conversation can be as simple as planning a pre-work breakfast or it can involve elaborate environmental engineering. Google has been a leader in this kind of engineering. It asked Ben Waber to determine whether there is an optimal amount of time for employees to stand in a cafeteria line to maximize conversation. Waber found out that there is: It's three to four minutes—short enough so that people don't feel that they are wasting time, but long enough to meet new people. Similarly, Waber determined the optimal size for a cafeteria table so that strangers wouldn't feel shy about sitting down to join an ongoing conversation. It's a large table, for ten to twelve people.

But in every case, design has to be reinforced by culture.

Stan Hammond, the financial consultant, was serious about designing his office space for conversation and personally committed himself to making the design work. Hammond's design constrains his employees so that they are “forced” to talk, much as the theater staff and actors once were trapped on the rehearsal studio's pay phone line. Everyone in Hammond's company begins the workday at the same place, with coffee and treats laid out for them.

Hammond's office space extends from the fourteenth to the sixteenth floor of a large Manhattan building. He insists that employees get off the elevator on the fifteenth floor even if they work on the fourteenth or sixteenth floor. That's where there is always food, drink, and comfortable seating. He wants his employees to bump into people they don't know at all or don't know very well. He wants to continually create new opportunities for conversation. When he catches an employee getting off on the fourteenth or sixteenth floor, Hammond firmly guides them back to the elevator.

Vincent Castell, who heads a venture capital firm in San Francisco, is equally committed to designing for conversation. He says that only a few years ago, the atmosphere at his company, Castell Advisors, was at “near-crisis levels.” Meetings, he says, were “dead.” Everyone was texting. Including Castell himself.

For Castell, the dead meetings were symptoms. He had allowed technology to shape a culture that taught its members that conversation didn't matter. “People emailed me from the office next door. There was no sense of inspiration or community.” He felt his company slipping away from him: “In all of this silence, as you are emailing the people you work with, you lose the nuance of conversation and you lose the ability to see how someone thinks on their feet.”

Castell made a commitment to reclaim conversation. He began modestly, with a “phones off” rule for meetings—but then he decided on radical change. He bought new office space. He met with several firms that specialize in innovative furniture design and with academics who study office interaction. He studied Ben Waber's work on collaboration. In his redesigned office, there are places where people can claim total privacy and there are casual, quiet areas for people to gather. Twenty percent of the office space is devoted to food, with bar-stool seating designed for conversation.

Now, each day begins with a short, device-free stand-up meeting that brings everyone up to date on company news. Anyone can speak; anyone can ask a question of any member of the firm.

Stand-up meetings were Castell's response to the kind of meetings where he himself gave in to the temptation to text and do his email. The stand-ups have become a staple of contemporary business culture because they force attention, if only for a while. They are not a panacea. Because they are designed to move quickly, they are not the place to work through complex problems. But Castell says that they have had a tonic effect on his organization. “There was a big change in the amount and types of conversation. There are now a huge number of thirty-second conversations and impromptu conversations that were not happening before. Now, people seem to want to go to work.”

Castell feels that what he did to improve his company “responds to a basic human truth: People do business with people they like and trust.” The reason to come to an office is to spur the conversations that will lead to that sense of community. Office design is a big part of the equation. For Castell, it should “stir the senses, promote intellectual curiosity.”

Castell says that clients now choose to work with his firm because they like the work environment. “This is the kind of firm they want to work with; this is the kind of firm they can be excited about.” His profits are up.

On a personal level, conversation is the path back to a capacity for empathy. At work, that capacity paves a path forward to greater productivity. Castell and Hammond see it working in their companies as it worked at Radnor and Stoddard.

W
hen collaboration is key to productivity, companies do well if they design for conversation. At HeartTech, the large software company, there are all-day cafeterias, micro-kitchens, and company outings. And there is more, including a weekly all-company meeting that anyone can attend and where anyone can speak. Officially, at HeartTech, communication and transparency are core values.

But it is at HeartTech that I learn the limitations of “build it and they will come.” Despite the right architecture and vision statement, at HeartTech, no one has time for much open-ended conversation—or people don't believe they have permission to take the time. In a micro-kitchen, marveling at how the healthy snacks are placed at eye level and the less healthy ones require a bit more effort to find, I say hello to a young man and get a laugh in return. “You must be new here.” In this micro-kitchen, he tells me, most of the time you choose a snack and take it back to your desk. People aren't unfriendly. They just don't have time to talk.

HeartTech sees itself as the best in the world and those who work there as superheroes. This means that employees are preoccupied with trying to prove that they are equal to every challenge. The easiest way to demonstrate that you are a master of the universe is to show that, unlike mere mortals, you don't need to take time away from the network.

The early history of software was written by teams of hackers who had a night culture—they worked on time-sharing computers that had fewer users, and thus ran faster, during the night. Long after the technical imperative to work at night was gone, the cultural imperative stayed. Great software guys (and gradually, but only gradually, great software girls) showed their love of computers and code through devotion. Day and night devotion. At HeartTech that old ethos is reflected in a shared understanding that the best employees are always ready to work. They are “on” the company messaging system, with a glowing green heart next to their names.