[5 min read] Shaping a corporate culture is a huge challenge. Creating the opportunity to wander is a potent ingredient for change.
I’ve just returned from a two-week trip to the West coast, somehow managing to avoid tornadic thunderstorms at home, wildfires choking the skies of Portland and, in a move that even Indiana Jones would appreciate, sliding away from the first recorded hurricane to surf up the coast of southern California.
It was an adventurous trip.
Flying Off the Proverbial Treadmill
My first stop just outside of Portland, Oregon was to join my client’s IT Management team for an in-person retreat starting at the company headquarters and including an overnight to The Gorge for some hiking. The past year hasn’t been easy for the home fitness industry, and the company has been forced to make some painful choices to keep the business from flying off the proverbial treadmill. Before the pandemic, the company culture was vibrant and family-like. The kickball team was almost mandatory. But the combination of remote work and hard times has bruised morale, and the time to bring folks together was long overdue.
We met in an abandoned shell of a headquarters, keeping pace with the scheduled agenda for about 30 minutes. You could feel the team’s energy draining out the door, spilling over the unused exercise bikes and dumbbells that stood motionless in the common area. Someone sighed and mentioned that the company went virtual during the pandemic with little preparation. Returning in-person for a week was a reminder of how efficient face-to-face communication can be. Yet no one was ready to jump back into a daily commute.
People perked up and started paying attention.
“Grind-and-Brew” Collaboration
We wandered off-course and started talking about the rituals that foster collaboration, like the ubiquitous 3pm coffee run where you can catch up with a colleague. I shared a story about the former office of Harvard Business Publishing, a converted brick armory with a central glass staircase. On each floor, at the stair landing, an imposing Starbucks grind-and-brew machine provided caffeine and ample opportunity to talk shop with co-workers from the different levels of the building. When HBP moved into larger, more corporate digs the staircase barista was left behind along with an invisible yet precious web of connectivity.
We agreed to create a manifesto for remote work. And then we carpooled to the mountains just outside Vancouver. I rode with co-workers whom I had met only once before in-person, and in that 45-minute drive I learned about Mt. Hood and berry-picking, and where to find the best food trucks in Portland.
Nurturing Creativity at Scale
I thought about this experience a week later, after the retreat, on the rooftop pergola of the Visitor Center at Apple headquarters. Crowning an airy structure of glass, aluminum and marble, the rooftop is a warm wooden area with picnic tables featuring a glimpse of “the spaceship.” The uniformed Apple docents on the ground level explained that, with its 360-degree views of nature through tall glass windows and a central café, the spaceship was deliberately designed to foster creativity and collaboration.
Apple’s headquarters may seem excessive. But I think that “the spaceship” answers a mortal concern shared by Steve Jobs and Jony Ives: How do you nurture creativity at scale for thousands of distributed employees…forever? The spaceship celebrates our primal need to socialize in person, close to nature, as part of a collective creative energy. I’m wearing the Apple T-shirt I purchased at the Visitor Center, with its classic rainbow Apple logo, and I’m looking at trees through the tall windows of my studio in Boston, feeling oddly inspired by that overpriced spaceship floating just over the pines back in Cupertino.
