Kitchens, Offices and Collaboration

There have been a lot of rambling and related threads going on in my little head lately, one has been the show where the famous chef, Gordon Ramsey, goes into a failing restaurant and, with the application of tough love and possibly a freer use of the F word than even I am capable of, turns the place around. I should say, turns the team around.

For team it is. From the front of the house to the back door of the kitchen, a successful restaurant is one of the most intimate, and purest examples of a team in business. In every case Ramsey's cure is to fix the leadership in the kitchen- the head chef, remedy problems in the chain of command, eliminate weak links in the team, refocus the entire team on the customer.

Another little thread in my head has been the photography industry, and freelance photographers. See the post below, which originated on my Facebook page. Working as a photographer, then working with photographers, teaching photographers and now sharing online forums and groups with photographers, I can generalize one characteristic about photographers. Photographers need to think in terms of their industry, their community, and learn to collaborate if they are to keep this industry alive.

Which leads me to Tech Superpowers, my day job. Our company is, first, a company of techies. OK, geeks. We all try really hard to work together- in spite of our natural tendencies to hide behind our keyboards, our physical locations, (from a scattering around Eastern MA and CT, to FL, to even London), and in some cases our just plain geeky shyness, lovable though it may be. We're all really really good at what we do, and we do really really different things, much like a kitchen. (You don't want the sous-chef seating the customers and talking up the specials, you don't want our Consulting Director talking Color Management, you don't want me going anywhere near your server or doing your scripting. uh. Whatever that is.) Internally, we've been getting into an interesting discussion about our location needs, and I stumbled on this, from Cisco, on the "connected workplace"- Office Design Case Study: How Cisco Designed the Collaborative Connected Workplace Environment It's funny, I found that while looking for information on office design, lead there by my image of a perfect office- one where people meet, talk, work together, form plans, execute projects- based on being together in the same place at the same time. Like a kitchen.




My conclusions? Tune in later, I'm still working on it... but I can tell you that social networking, Instant Messaging, tools like Twitter, they're all fascinating and intriguing as they evolve. Facebook, for example- my friend Logan said, "...when the hell did this thing that was a way for college kids to hook up turn into a business tool?" I don't know, but it has, and a very powerful one at that.

We have all these tools, but I'll argue one point until I take my last breath. We're animals. Animals that communicate with every fiber of our bodies, and we still need to understand and use that tool, too. And the only way to do that, is to, at one time or another, be in the same place at the same time. It doesn't matter if you're a tech geek, a photographer, a head chef.

Communicate, and collaborate.