Designing for the Unknown Unknowns

At the same time, organizations are facing the need to develop workplace design strategies that are more relevant to hiring and retaining their critical workforce. In the business environment, competition for talent is fierce and migrates across industries. Anticipatory design offers strategies for how to approach the development of a workplace that addresses these needs. Design solutions help organizations anticipate the “unknown unknowns” of the future while at the same time manage risk.

The uncertainty of today’s business environment is calling on organizations to anticipate and forecast their future. This forecasting helps ward off disruptive changes to business models. Organizations have historically operated in a business model where the competition was known, and the development and deployment of business strategies were based on what was known and foreseen. Even unforeseen competition was viewed through the lens of what forecasted trends could anticipate.

This mindset allowed organizations to lose competitive ground – not to organizations they deemed as their natural competitor but to organizations that appeared to come from nowhere to “disrupt” their markets and industry. In just one example, Sony, the inventor of the Walkman, based their future view on the music industry through cassette tapes and then compact discs, migrating from the Walkman to the Discman. Along came Apple, an unknown in the world of music, whose perceptual industry was computers and technology. Apple introduced the iPod, followed by the iPhone, which resulted in a total upheaval to the music industry.

Apple became the dominant force in that industry, and Sony gave up ownership of a market they previously dominated in based on past products and innovations. Like many organizations they anticipated the future through the lens of what they knew and the trends they thought they knew. Facility managers can also fall into this trap, especially when it comes to technology.

Technology has been the prime driver of change and disruption across industries. More importantly, it has been the primary driver of disruptive change. It has allowed previously unknown organizations to enter industries and take over market dominance.

Ford, a dominant player in the design and manufacturing of automobiles, has been completely disrupted by Google – even though that may not seem obvious to a casual observer. Google is developing autonomous vehicles at the same time Ford has redirected their business model from solely a car manufacturing company to an organization focused on urban mobility. Companies that once seemed completely separate now find themselves overlapping and competing due to technological advances.

This transformation speaks to the other critical disruptive factor facing organizations: the shared economy. Along with changes to business models that technology creates, technology has also fueled a comfort with creating fluidity. Boundaries are being blurred between traditional entities, such as taxi service and ride share services. Or even things like finding dog walkers and booking rooms at hotels and people’s homes.

The conundrum can be viewed though a quote by former United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, “There are known unknowns. There are unknown unknowns. But there are also unknown knowns…that is to say, things that you think you know that it turns out you did not.”

This addresses the failure of developing fluid workplace design strategies over the past two decades. We have viewed the future of work or the workplace through the lens of predicated trends. Offices shifted to open plan spaces, and open plans shifted to cubicles and benching, then came a shift back to some private offices for introverts.

These trends no more predict the future than an early quote attributed to Henry Ford who said if someone asks a horse owner what they needed, the owner would say faster horses. That answer demonstrates the blind spot most users have when it comes to technological disruptions. It is ironic that the organization founded by Henry Ford was blindsided by the same myopic perspective of how to anticipate the future.

Developing workplace designers and strategists need to stop looking at the future through this same myopic lens of trends and known unknowns. The process of developing a workplace design strategy plays a key role within the organization to assist in anticipating the future.

Analyzing unknowns could disrupt an enterprise’s business model. However, the way the organization views and designs its workplace can create a more realistic way of looking at the future. Anticipatory design strategies start by asking the question: What would happen to my organization if Google, or some other new-tech contender, enters our market?

If we’re Ford, we’d ask, what would happen if Google entered the automobile business? We know the answer to that question through the lessons at Ford. But what would happen if Google entered the world of healthcare? We now have the collaboration between Amazon, Goldman Sachs and Berkshire Hathaway to provide delivery of healthcare services, along with Alphabet’s CityLab engaged in urban design with their Toronto waterfront project which will create a smart city. Alphabet is Google’s parent company.

Developing “anticipatory workplace design strategies” is dependent on several avenues converging to change how we look at the future. Our approach to developing future proofed workplace design strategies should include:

• Stop looking solely at trends to view the future. We should be asking the question “what would happen if…?”

• If we look at any trends, they should be based on data and information. Specifically, look for shifts in the types of work being performed and the attributes of that work. This gives clues to who the future employee might be.

• This data-based research requires going beyond the jargon of Millennials and Generation X or Z. Look at research to find the employee traits that will be needed to work in a new world impacted by constant disruption. In a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), they found the most important traits of the future employee will be adaptability and problem solving.

• We need to look at the types of organizational design paradigms that will be evolving to best understand the future needs of organizations and how they will be designed as business entities. In most cases these revolve around agility and flexibility. Again, from PwC:

“One clear lesson arises from our analysis: adaptability – in organizations, individuals and society – is essential navigating the changes ahead.”

• Use scenario planning as the basis of developing, selecting and evaluating potential workplace design strategies. This is a process based on asking, “What if?” Royal Dutch Shell has been the forerunner of using scenario planning in modeling their strategic responses. This is due to the ever-changing energy environment. 

In an example of scenario planning, Royal Dutch Shell examines multiple forces (political, social and economic) that could disrupt and derail conventional wisdom on the delivery of energy. They create multiple scenarios as the basis for developing strategies.

“Scenarios give us lenses that help us see future prospects more clearly, make richer judgments and be more sensitive to uncertainties,” says Jeremy Benham, Head of Scenarios, Strategy and Business Development, Royal Dutch Shell.

Peter Voser, Chief Executive Officer of Royal Dutch Shell, has also given interviews stating scenario planning helps the company make crucial business decisions during uncertain times in the market.

Ultimately, recognize the only strategy approach that will meet the challenges of the future’s knowns and unknowns is one based on flexibility and agility. This has to be both organizationally and architecturally.

We talk about agile workplace design strategies, but the organizations that inhabit these workplaces need to be designed as agile enterprises. There are new organizational and typological paradigms that inform our approach to workplace design strategies:

• A new organizational paradigm based on a strategic vision that looks at the business intent and future state, not just on current predictions. Adopt agile business models with decentralized authorities, and make use of evolving partnerships across industries, including higher education where universities are partnering with the private sector to create Innovation Corridors.

• A new workplace typological paradigm should be based on connected communities and shaped by the shared economy (co-working). Adopt a “maker space culture” along with curated precincts that merge work, life style, hospitality and learning. Create fluid boundaries between departments and agile and flexible work spaces that can be permeable and changeable in response to unknown disruptions.

Anticipatory design strategies embrace the notion that change happens both organizationally and industry wide. The workplace needs to be at the center of what informs these strategies because the things we never imagined could become the new norm.