Forget your morning shot of espresso. To get your brain going, we’re serving up strong and ultra-concentrated insights from Think Work Out of the Box, our new book on workplace transformation.

Fortunately, long gone are the days when workers were expected to sit at their desk all day, observing a strict and static nine-to-five routine. The contemporary knowledge-worker is expected to shift his mindset every few hours or even more frequently. In order to perform at his/her best, he/she needs an environment that responds to, enables, and supports each of those modes.

If you want to activate your workforce, you need to go beyond the binary model of desk-plus-meeting room. Consider how a series of purpose focused environments can transform your workplace into a landscape where collaborators have, at each moment, the choice to move to the specific area offering the most suitable conditions for the task at hand. This is not a prescriptive palette of activity-assigned rooms, but rather an approach that considers your workplace as a carefully balanced ecosystem of different purposes that span the range of learning, sharing, discussing, concentrating, creating, and relaxing. It is your role as garden keeper to ensure that everyone in this workplace can blossom. Transitioning from a control-based model to this new polycentric workplace means rethinking your leadership style and re-educating your teams, as well as trusting and empowering your staff to make the best use of this diverse range of habitats.

This excerpt comes from the Purpose Focused Environments chapter of Think Work Out of the Box. If you would like to stay informed and receive more information on the book, you can join our publication mailing list.

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