Chaos and Creativity

For years I worked in a classic newspaper newsroom. It was a noisy, cluttered, and often crazy. Peoples’ desks were cheek-by-jowl, sometimes separated by low cubicle walls, but mostly jammed edge to edge in a wide open space. Police scanners, radios and TVs were on; your neighbors were on the phone or debating a fine point with an editor, banging away at a keyboard or cracking jokes, or complaining loudly about who-knew-what. It was a great place to work.

Why? Because amidst all the chaos, two amazing things happened: You learned to focus on your work despite the din and you fed off the creative energy of your colleagues.

I was reminded of this by a visit this week to the offices of Google in Cambridge and the stark contrast that workplace has to my current digs.

Goggle (where my son is doing a summer internship for math and computer whiz kids) promotes a very open office culture. Work spaces for nearly all 350 employees are open-air cubicles, spread out over three or four floors of their building. Even the boss has a cubicle (though he also has exclusive dibs on a small conference room for private meetings). There's stuff everywhere – from hanging mobiles to dog beds, large robots to a life-size cutout of John Kerry (no, those aren’t the same thing!). There’s a geodesic dome the size of a two-person tent – and there's an actual tent and sleeping bag. There are several well-stocked, free-for-all kitchens, a sound-proof workout/rumpus room, a game room (ping pong, foosball, etc.), and lots more.

Googlers gather for meetings around their desks or in "huddle rooms" -- meeting spaces stocked with computers and video conferencing equipment that are often decorated with toys or props around a particular theme. And there are whiteboards everywhere that are covered by undecipherable writing and calculations. Apparently between the Nerf gun duels and flying remote-controlled dirigible contests, a lot of work gets done. Mid day, the boss said, it can be remarkably quiet, in fact.

Where I work now is a bit more traditional – very nice, orderly, and quiet. Almost everyone has a private office. And while most doors remain open, people tend to sit at their desks and do their work in solitude. Collaboration happens among members of 2-3-person teams or at all-staff meetings. Most of these come with prepared agendas.

Don't get me wrong; it's a great group of people, and they tend to work hard and well. But we’re not operating in an environment that's conducive to free-flowing thinking and spontaneous collaboration. In fact, that's one of our main organizational conundrums – how to break out of the silo frame of mind where I do my work and you do yours without regard for how our actions and goals might intersect. Our management team has begun to make progress on getting people to think beyond their old bounds, but it is a challenge.

In the old newsroom, things hummed along on adrenalin, coffee, and other creative juices. Your business was everybody else’s. Everyone worked toward a common goal. It seems that same thing happens at Google. I’m sure it’s not just the no-walls approach (or the toys), but it sure shows what a bit of out-of-the-box (or -office) thinking can produce.

Friends? Indeed!

“Whoa, Dad, you have no friends!” my son informed me last night when he was helping sign me up for a new Facebook group he’s created (Let’s Bring the Space Shuttle to Boston).

Really, it’s not “no” as in “none,” I said in my defense. To me, there’s a whole bunch of folks. It’s just that in contrast to his teen-aged sphere of influencers, or his mother’s expansive social circle, my collection of friendly faces is rather anemic.

But I can live with that. For me, on a personal level at least, having the time and bandwidth to keep track of 10 or 20 or 50 people is plenty. (At work it’s a very different story, where we measure our “friends” by the thousands.) In fact, whether at work or at home, it’s all about why you want to stay in touch and how much effort you want to put in.

For my son, FB is a platform to share comments, crack wise, and otherwise connect with his buddies from school, his ham radio club, assorted astronomers, family members, and others. FB is the flip side of text messaging, with the bonus of links and images.

My wife uses FB for business and pleasure, swapping PR pointers as well as pointed comments with several hundred acquaintances, from the governor to fabled Red Sox players, local media types, and many more. She works at it, and her network works for her. That’s as it should be.

My sister, a rather late adopter of the site, now trolls FB in search of old classmates, workmates, and others from her past. She thinks it’s funny that I don’t much care about these bygoners. I’m OK with that. My brother too has built an impressive network, mostly to promote his documentary and his varied music and media interests. Good for him.

Social media is all about what you need and what you’ve got to give in return. And, of course, who’s on the other end of the line. It’s public platform versus personal touch. So if you’re looking for me on Facebook, I’ll be there when I have something to say to my friends.


P.S.: If you’re reading this, you might notice that it’s been a while since I last checked in. Heck, sorry, I’ve been busy. Since that last item was about summer on the beach, let’s just pretend I wrote it the other day and here I am again today. Welcome back!