My CEO Life

I had the opportunity today to visit the San Francisco offices of Google.  They are fantastic.  I was given a guided tour and saw just how the Google guys do it.  A couple of things i observed were:

• The technology (ie screen / keyboard) was identical on every desk – this means that people can move desk and just plug in
• There were some offies but these were shared – evidently no one has their own office
• The office was decorated with lots of fun things that people had obviously bought in from home
• Casual clothes is the order of the day – and i dont mean business casual – i mean casual
• They have a free cafeteria with a great selection of food
• There are TV screens everywhere
• The office is in general very open plan
• They had a huge slide between floors – unfortunately i didnt get a chance to ride it

So it made me think about how important open plan is to the culture of a business.  In many businesses, management have their own offices and sometimes, they have their own floors.  Often they have an office with a secretary sitting out the front.  I always remember doing a study at the National Australia Bank in Melbourne in the mid 90’s and there the senior management had their floor and even an express lift from the carpark to that floor.  These senior management floors still exist today in many large businesses.

Now, for me, this is old world culture – a representation of the baby boomers and not in alignment with what Gen X or Y expect.  At the REA Group we went for open plan.  I had a desk just like everyone else and i think it helped create a very open culture.  Quite often people would just walk up to my desk and have a chat.  I found i could keep in the loop and openly participate in discussions that were randomly happening around me.  If a private meeting was required, people can go to a separate meeting room and then have their discussion. 

I would recommend to any business that wants to build a open, fun, engaging, happy culture that they think about the structure of the office and how they keep it open and equal.