Inspire creativity at the office - here's how

The 21st century office needs to inspire creativity more than mere productivity. Richard Leyland offers some advice on how to do it.

Random Walk theory is a funny little idea drawn from the study of complex systems like flocks of birds, politics, even society itself.

It's also known as 'Drunkards Walk', which should help you picture it. The theory maps where we end up when taking a series of random steps and shows how some of the things we think are predictable are actually anything but. (See the illustration below.)

Credit: Weisstein, Eric W. "Random Walk - 2-Dimensional." From MathWorld - A Wolfram Web Resource.

Many believe that the fluctuating fortunes of the stock market show the Random Walk in action, and as a result the theory is associated with arrogance and chaos.

My claim is this: If you want to build an office fit for the 21st century, you must embrace the Random Walk.

Picture a free-range office in which staff have no fixed home but instead feel free to roam, finding inspiration from their environment and from chance encounters with those around them.

Random Walks in the office may seem counter-intuitive (can people work while they walk?) but they should be encouraged and even engineered. Here's why…

Change at work
Work used to be an ordered affair. We came together in offices, sat in rows using typewriters, phones and eventually the computer, which tied us to the spot. Factories and offices were places to concentrate linear, process-driven work. It was tightly controlled and we made stuff.

All that has changed now. Much of the factory-type work has been outsourced to lower-cost economies and most of us, particularly in cities, are engaged in a new type of so-called 'knowledge work'. This, plus the rise of mobile technology, means work is more a thing we do than a place we go - and attendance at the office is often optional.

If we're not making things, what are we doing that's valuable? It's becoming clear that the new currency in the office is creativity. We're not trying to control our staff anymore, instead we're trying to harness the best of their skills and experience. Inspiring this creativity is the job of management and of the office itself.

Creativity and Random Walks
So how can businesses encourage creativity? First we need to understand how it works.

Many think of creativity in terms of apple-on-the-head style 'eureka' moments but in fact creativity is more often the result of collaboration and shared experiences.

Pixar, a renowned creative powerhouse, is fed by a collaborative team ethic, with 'brain trusts' and daily knowledge-sharing sessions.

London is seeing an explosion of independent, shared-workspaces whose principal value is in bringing creative people together to rub shoulders and create the Next Big Thing.

Much of this collaboration is essentially unplanned, a serendipitous process as we bump into one another at the water cooler, by the printers or increasingly, in the lounge. I call these encounters 'creative collisions'.

Today's big companies are loaded with expensive, creative talent, locked in to departmental structures. Set them free to talk to each other!

How to structure your office
Current research suggests we need an ordered, familiar environment in preparation for creativity, like scientists in a lab. Later when creativity is germinating we need the distraction of novelty, new people and ideas, to make new connections.

Of course creativity also has an execution phase. At some point we need to return to our humdrum environment to make good on our best creative ideas. Even Google's Googleplex, legendary among workspace designers for its collaborative ethic, includes a series of three-person concentration areas.

Rather than the traditional departmental hideaways that mark much office design, the office should be designed as a series of varied work settings. It's vital that employees can choose where they work according to the task in hand (knuckle-down concentrated work, creative inspiration, etc), and spaces should be available which reflect that.

Office dwellers fall into comfortable rhythms, for example sitting in the same corner each day, which can limit their exposure to creative stimulation.

Random Walks can help to shift these habits but companies must take care not to badger their employees. A subtle technique is to concentrate on influencing a single 'moment of truth' in the morning when a worker chooses their location for the day. If employees don't naturally reflect on where they should go to achieve the task in hand, why not ask them daily? Allied to this, the advertising agency Mother has long enforced 'Movement Mondays', mandating that staff vary their choice of desk each week.

A city is the ultimate stimulating environment. Random Walks in the office can be encouraged by borrowing urban concepts such as street names and neighbourhoods. Streets feel communally owned and we're happy to explore them. The advertising agency TWBA/Chiat/Day and the tech giant Nortel were pioneers of the city metaphor in the office.

Of course the Random Walk is a complex mathematical theory and some uber-geeks out there may be spluttering at my appropriation here, but I'm standing firm. The vital process in the future office is creativity and companies can help to unlock that creativity by regularly sending their staff on Random Walks.

Richard Leyland is a futurist and writer, with a particular focus on the future of work. He writes at www.richardleyland.com or follow him on Twitter @leylandrichard.