A Few Architectural Insights into the Practice of Managment

I am a big fan of a version of analogical learning where you take the ideas and concepts of one discipline and apply them to the issues and problems of another. I have found this sharpens my creative problem solving skills and gives me new insight into the discipline I’m studying. For this reason I believe that our business schools should require MBA students to take courses in the history of art, science, and philosophy alongside the regular management school course work. In my next few posts, I will be looking at some ideas from architecture and applying them to the practice of management. Hopefully it will spark some ideas for you as well.

An architect designs much more than physical space. Through the use of walls, windows, doors and openings, floors, ceilings, and building materials, the architect creates physical space, but also contributes to the symbolic space in which people live and work. The Norwegian architectural critic, Christian Norberg-Schulz, writes in his classic work, The Concept of Dwelling, that the way the architect uses these elements of architecture gathers a world of meaning that gives the people who dwell in them a sense of identity and an orientation in their world. This world of meaning provides them with existential security and also with direction or purpose. Poorly designed buildings produce a sense of existential insecurity and aimlessness in those who must live and work there. Many of us have, no doubt, experienced that! So the artistry and care with which the buildings we live and work in are designed does matter, very much!

Though Norberg-Schulz was using the work of the German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, in the Concept of Dwelling, it reminds me of another great architect, the American, Frank Lloyd Wright. Apparently Wright would often tell his students it wasn’t the materials and design that come first, but the space. The type of space, the tonality or feeling, should determine the materials and the design of the building, not the other way around. The space was the thing, and it should emerge organically from both the natural place and the needs of the client! Architects were in the business of creating meaningful spaces, not applying mundane design templates to prefabricated materials to create nothing more than boxes for people to live and work in. If you want to see this distinction, just look up on the Internet some of the homes and buildings designed by Wright, than walk outside your cubicle, or front door, and look around.

So I imagine a great architect is one that sits her or his clients down and asks them first, not what type of design they want, but what kind of space can be created by this building – what type of world do they want gathered there? This would take some courage because I can imagine the client just staring back with an uncomprehending look at such a question. Wright, himself, often felt letdown by the lack of understanding of his own clients.

In our organizations we are architects, not of physical spaces, but of psychological, interpersonal, and social spaces. Our use of the elements of organizations – titles, positions, tasks, relationships, pathways of communication and decision-making, etc. – creates a tone and feeling that creates the spaces between our people; that gathers a meaning world in which we dwell together with one another. This organizational space should provide our people with both a secure center and a purposeful direction. It should be a space where we are skillfully enabled to perform our tasks in such a way that we cultivate confidence in ourselves, kindness in our relationships, and joy in our work.

Unfortunately, when we ask people how they would describe that world, the organizational space of their workplace, too often the words and phrases we hear are: low trust, burnout, turf wars, cynicism, apathy, one-way communication, stifled creativity, dissatisfaction, etc. Few words are spoken that suggest a secure identity, purposeful orientation, and joy. I’m certain no owner or manager sets out intentionally to create this type of space – to gather this type of world. Yet, it is often the space and world we unintentionally create in our organizations by how we intentionally design, organize, and manage the elements of organizational space. What might we learn from Wright and Norberg-Schulz?

Perhaps the place to start is to realize that in designing and managing work we are doing more than merely determining the span of control or division of labor, but we are creating psychological space. We are gathering a world of meaning to dwell in with our people. We should become much more intentional about the kind of world we want to create and then design and manage to that end. Like a great architect, we should sit down with our people and converse about possibilities and the type of meaning world we want gathered by how we arrange the elements of organizations – titles, positions, tasks, relationships, and most importantly pathways of communication and decision-making. I imagine the kind of space we will want to create is described by words and phrases such as: mutual trust, participation, cooperation, dignity, contribution, shared prosperity, and joy. Lets envision the organizational space together and then design and manage to bring into existence a shared world of beautiful and meaningful work.