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Productivity Versus Alignment

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Steve Jobs famously laid out his offices to facilitate employees bumping into each other. “When Steve Jobs designed a new headquarters for Pixar,” wrote his biographer Walter Isaacson, “he obsessed over ways to structure the atrium, and even where to locate the bathrooms, so that serendipitous personal encounters would occur.” The thinking was that the more he could get people to interact (particularly people from different teams), the more likely it was that they’d think outside the box and innovate. Many others have adopted this philosophy. And while the strategy certainly might lead to a bit more ideation, I would argue, the increased alignment between disparate teams likely had a negative impact on productive innovation. In my experience, no matter where you work, things are less productive than you’d want, and there’s less alignment than you’d hope for. Why does this happen? As individuals become stakeholders to a project, the number of communication channels between them rises ex

Productivity Versus Alignment 0 Productivity Versus Alignment One of the many trade-offs companies face Nir Zicherman May 28, 2024 Intersections Steve Jobs famously laid out his offices to facilitate employees bumping into each other. “When Steve Jobs designed a new headquarters for Pixar,” wrote his biographer Walter Isaacson, “he obsessed over ways to structure the atrium, and even where to locate the bathrooms, so that serendipitous personal encounters would occur.” The thinking was that the more he could get people to interact (particularly people from different teams), the more likely it

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