From Little Boxes to Big Picture Thinking: Innovation Requires an all-in Approach

When he was appointed head of the Herman Miller Research Corporation in the 1960s, designer Robert Propst came to a devastating conclusion: “Today’s office is a wasteland. It saps vitality, blocks talent, frustrates accomplishment. It is the daily scene of unfulfilled intentions and failed effort.” His answer to what he deemed “a way of life substantially dead and gone” went on to redefine offices around the globe for generations, earning the furniture maker an estimated $5 billion in profits by the turn of the millennium.

Herman Miller marketed its invention as the Action Office system. But it gained prominence by a more familiar name: the cubicle.

For today’s workers, framing the cubicle as a design intervention that stimulates vitality, talent, and accomplishment among workers feels like pushing the PalmPilot as a solution for mobile communication in the 21st century. In fact, the idea of separating workers into little boxes brings to mind the same conclusion that Propst drew more than 60 years ago: that way of life is dead and gone.

Even as cubicles have gone the way of PDA devices in recent years—there was some speculation in the early days of the pandemic that partitioned offices might make a comeback, although successful COVID-19 vaccines and treatment methods have largely made these retrofits unnecessary—their lasting impact is less obvious. The physical walls have come down, but invisible barriers to communication still exist between people and teams, standing in the way of collaboration and innovation.

To address these challenges, companies need to get creative—and hands-on.

Recently, AgileOne convened leadership from our client services, RPO, and enterprise transformation teams for two days of in-person workshops and networking. This was a first for our company—an opportunity for our talented leaders to peel back the layers of each of our job descriptions and genuinely learn from one another. Sitting around the table, we weren’t Tamara Rashid from ETT and Maggie McGill from client services. We were Tee and Maggie from AgileOne. This kind of company-wide collaboration will only help us better support each other and collaborate in the best interest of our customers.

As I reflected on my observations of our senior leadership forum, there were three questions I found myself asking that are relevant to any business leader—whether you are in the workforce solutions industry or not:

1. Am I breaking down silos?

Companies that create silos aren’t ill-intentioned. By carefully defining roles and building cohorts of like-minded employees, employers can increase the productivity of their workforce, inspire employees to lean on one another for assistance, and reduce the potential for cross-departmental conflict. But without promoting horizontal collaboration across different teams, companies aren’t tapping into their greatest resource: their people.

Researchers at Harvard have documented the value of breaking down silos: “Employees who can reach outside their silos to find colleagues with complementary expertise learn more, sell more, and gain skills faster. Harvard’s Heidi Gardner has found that firms with more cross-boundary collaboration achieve greater customer loyalty and higher margins.”

In an environment where labor is tight and their bottom lines are getting squeezed by inflation, companies would be wise to prioritize breaking down silos as a way to increase opportunities for employees to grow—and by extension—help their customers succeed.

AgileOne can help, leveraging our award-winning AccelerationVMS technology to give companies extraordinary visibility into their temporary workforces, allowing you to build more effective and collaborative teams.

2. Am I allowing innovation to thrive?

For generations, writers and theorists have anticipated the death of innovation as we know it. For example, in 2012—near the nexus of two decades that saw the introduction of the iPhone and social media, as well as the mass production of the first widely-available electric vehicles and the launch of ride-hailing apps Uber and Lyft—an article in the Wall Street Journal argued that the word “innovation” had become so overhyped we should throw it out altogether.

While I agree that not every idea is an innovation, there are plenty of innovative ideas being born today. I see them all around me—in the work of our team members and suppliers who collaborate to bring to market best-in-class workforce solutions, to our customers who are putting quality talent to work amid a rollercoaster economy.

To foster an environment that elevates good ideas to great ones, companies must encourage learning and growth among their ranks.

That means supporting reskilling and upskilling opportunities, which also helps ensure that your best employees have opportunities to meet your evolving needs. It means holding regular innovation sprints, too, bringing together different teams to investigate and map out solutions to common challenges.

3. Am I devoted to real transformation?

Everything I’ve described so far requires a recognition that change is needed—and a commitment to real transformation. To be effective, this mindset must be shared by everyone in your company’s organizational chart—from your senior leaders to your frontline employees.

As I’ve written before, at AgileOne, we recognize that transformation starts from within. That’s why we’ve been making investments in our Enterprise Transformation Team (ETT), expanding and aligning our department to better meet the needs of our customers, suppliers, and internal stakeholders. We recognize that the customer experience matters most in everything we do, and it’s our customers who stand to benefit the most from the decisions we’re making today.

Taking what we’ve learned in our own practice, AgileOne is building a strong foundation to help our customers recognize the same potential of transformative thinking.