February 4, 2024
Recently, I bemoaned how Orwell is often invoked in support of an argument by people who haven’t read him. They are usually drawing on some laundered misperception of his work, and especially Nineteen Eighty-Four. Well, just a few days ago, I witnessed somebody misapplying the work of Kafka in a similar attempt to make a middlebrow point about the so-called return to office. More →
February 2, 2024
The idea of diffusion of innovation has become so embedded in our culture, and most recently so associated with the adoption of new technology, that we might assume it happens in predictable ways. The steps between innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards seem intuitive and certain even when their peaks might be unsure. And yet history teaches us that sometimes new ideas can take years or even decades to take hold, even when they are potentially world-changing and relevant for the era in which they were formulated. More →
February 1, 2024
A while ago, Antony Slumbers asked me why I thought firms had never done anything much about the underutilisation of their offices. This was in the first throes of lockdown-driven remote work hysteria, prompted by one of those headlines about how offices being half empty was some signifier of hatred for them.
January 30, 2024
It has become something of a preoccupation of mine to consider why so many of the conversations we hold about workplace design are largely about the rediscovery of old ideas. It may be because there are constants about how people interact with their surroundings and each other and the truisms underlying those interactions. Although these are often reframed by the amount of data we now have to support them, some things never change. More →
January 25, 2024
There have been many experiments over the years that expose the darker aspects of human nature. One of the most telling of these was carried out by two American researchers called John Darley and Bibb Latane in 1968. The two men’s work was partly inspired by a notorious 1964 murder in which a woman called Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in public. The murder took place over a period of around half an hour, during which a number of witnesses who watched the crime from their windows failed to help the victim.
January 24, 2024
The final word? Of course not. Nearly six years ago, we published an article that described how the quest for productivity had been supplanted almost entirely by a new emphasis on workplace wellbeing. It was the final nail in the coffin of scientific management and its central notion of the office as a factory, subject to rigid times and places of work and manufacturing’s culture of process, efficiency and productivity. The office a splice of factory and panopticon. More →
January 19, 2024
It’s bitterly cold outside but over a glass of hazy IPA, Nigel Oseland and Mark Eltringham warm to a conversation about fish guts, the sounds that make us cringe, what comfort means to different people and what it would really take to get them to spend more time in the office. And it’s not free fruit, corporate sanctioned togetherness or quirky office features. Nigel also explains why firms might be getting it wrong when it comes to managing which people use which spaces in agile environments. We also discuss how people overestimate their own productivity and underestimate that of their colleagues and what that means for the way we organise. More →
January 18, 2024
The piece I wrote on workplace bullshit came in for quite a bit of attention when it was published and also meant I was pointed to this excellent article on how to spot it when you see it. Lots is said about the skills we’ll need to cope with the challenges of the current Century, but this is perhaps one of the most important. Especially trying to spot it in ourselves. Paradoxically, but understandably, we already seem reasonably able to spot it in our politicians and other people we don’t quite trust. More →
January 12, 2024
Monica Parker joins Mark Eltringham to share an Old Fashioned while discussing how to find wonder in the everyday, the limits of workplace design, our renewed obsession with productivity, how to achieve flow states in a world of distractions and what it means to be truly happy. There’s not much workplace news around right now as people are still finding their feet after Christmas, so we also explore some lessons we might take from the Post Office scandal about how organisations go wrong and the role of human nature in creating toxic cultures. More →
January 8, 2024
Interface has launched its latest Luxury Vinyl Tile (LVT), Northern Grain. This latest collection from Interface is clean and uncomplicated, designed to brighten spaces across a range of applications, including corporate office, education, and hospitality. With pale shades and clean neutrals, Northern Grain invites and enhances natural light with airy off-white, beige, and cream woods while also setting a quieter foundation with its deeper soft browns and greys, supporting the ‘relaxed minimalism’ trend seen across interior design this year. More →
January 3, 2024
We know, and have for a long time, that the workplace is in a state of near constant flux. The meteor strike of lockdown was an accelerant, not a deviation. It also laid bare -yet again – the faulty assumption that there is some sort of general evolution towards an idealised version of the office or conversely the universal adoption of remote or hybrid working, whatever it is. That is why we see so many people routinely willing to suspend their critical facilities to make extravagant and even absurd predictions about the office of the future or even the death of the office.
February 7, 2024
Of mice and men
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology