New order organisations and the death of the cubicle

Cubicle = order. Cubicle = interoperable, interchangeable, replaceable. But companies like that have gone out of fashion. Only Luton light-industry, abattoirs and Findus still do things in linear chains, everyone else are now agile polymaths who, should you ever attempt to place in a box will leap out explosively/over-dramatically or break into a ghastly rash.

The architecture and attitudes of business always projects down to the organisation and structures of executives, workers and executors. We used to have hierarchies so we needed executive washrooms and secretaries to have sex on or oppress or both. We needed typing pools and different coloured shirts to know who to spit on and who to lick the spit off.

I’m glad we’ve left this behind. I’m glad a bit of the Californian sunshine has made it into all of our lives. I’m glad we’re slurping moccafuckachinos at our frosted glass desks rather than a mug of frothy-six-scoop Maxwell House on a bland office chair that has wheel-worn a hole in the sticky carpet tiles beneath.

In our new progressive workplace, business has really got what makes people tick. You put people in boxes and what do you get? Yes, boxes. Not people but machines. One in, one out, 1 + 1 = 2, “I want you to send a parcel to Hounslow”, “Package sent!” “Can you find everyone on the database who subscribes to our catalogue who is over 44 and send them this special offer?” “Offer sent!”

Business has woken up to the greatest asset in people; their creativity. 1+1 = Gustaf Klimt, one in love out, “I want to send this parcel to Hounslow”, “Package placed in the bin”, “Can you find everyone on the database who subscribes to our catalogue who is over 44 and send them this special offer?” “Sorry I only just got this message. Massive hangover, what a night!”

Businesses need creativity but how the hell can you extract it? This is the perennial problem for new order organisations. For the answer, you need to look back to your childhood, arguably the most creative periods of our lives. Innocent, pre-indoctrinated, wide-eyed and open-minded. The toys and games we used to play with, scooters, pool tables, ping-pong swing-ball, bat and ball, bat and bat, ball and ball. Bringing these symbols of fun back into the office breaks the spell of the tawdry formality and lets everyone know that dicking about is the new mantra as dicking about is interchangeable with creativity and creativity is interchangeable with making someone else a shitload of cash.

But as I pride myself on using my forward-thinking brain to help the backward stinkers climb aboard my vision gravy train, I’ll risk my rep and prophesise the conclusion of this workplace revolution. Why stop at toys and slides and Connect 4 as catalysts for creativity? The business of tomorrow will concern itself with a fuller spectrum of potent attributes. What about those other qualities that provide the oxygen to commerce’s furnace? I want to see flick-knives, blunderbusses and naked samurai swords in banks to lure out aggression, fluffy lap-puppies in diners to make waitresses all doe-eyed and cutesy-patronising, I want to see thumb-screws and Black & Decker work benches in council offices country wide to promote resourcefulness.

Business didn’t need the cubicle, it turns out. What it needed was a symbol to control the worker. It needed a micro-scooter or a skateboard so they knew they were free, so they felt liberated from the shackles of the regiment as they worked on a doomed intranet project into the early hours, as they texted their wives to say sorry. Again.

Nik Roope (@nikroope) is founder and ECD at Poke.

This article was first published in Can't Understand New Technology Issue 2, June 2013