Co-creating Change

Abstract

The open, flexible workplace modeled after best practices from Silicon Valley is hailed for promoting better communication, collaboration, and increased productivity. IT is known as a university change agent, but at IU Bloomington the future move into the new Cyberinfrastructure Building meant change on a radical scale, in every aspect of the workplace: physical space, business practices, and social and cultural environment. Many IT staff anticipated loss of privacy, personal space, and individuality. The challenge facing the executive project lead was to help staff begin to embrace the new culture while still occupying their old offices, a challenge not amenable to executive mandate or the change management process customary in IT. The solution was an experiment. Teams of staff led their co-workers in an organic process of articulating and addressing the issues, believing that socializing the change would encourage buy-in and investment and restore some sense of control. The experiment broke many models: Self-governing teams lead the initiative; teams crossed hierarchies and divisional boundaries. Team leads were sometimes junior staff. The book discusses the experiment and the many small and large decisions and strategies that helped make it a success: The process of creating teams, language and communication, situational leadership, the role of humor, team strategies for engaging staff, and team interactions with architects and planners. Teamwork was challenging — the organic process provided no steps to follow — but the team experience provided another benefit beyond socializing change: that of building leadership in the trenches. This experience involves a building, but the principles of change it confirms can apply to any kind of change, from altering the structure of a business to changing a culture. The discussion may be of interest to those in human resources, industrial psychology, sociology, business, academe, and architecture