Does workplace design boost performance, or is it another passing trend for companies who are grasping at straws in their ongoing quest to be “cool”, innovative or enticing in their efforts for attracting top talent?

First, let me be clear: I’m not an expert in the design of physical workspaces. But, having had the privilege to consult for many different organizations over the years, I have seen firsthand the impact that physical work environment can have on attitude and behavior.

This experience has given me a deep appreciation of the ways office design can reinforce the underlying beliefs, assumptions and values that are held to be true in organizations. As an organizational psychologist who specializes in organizational culture, I understand that physical work environment can play a critical role in reinforcing what is and isn’t valued in the company- a physical manifestation of what people hold to be true about how work should get done.

For example, as a medical company, you should be utilising a company such as iMedical to effectively design and build your space. Their floor planning service is tailor made for medical companies – and this can improve employee retention, happiness and productivity.

Similar to other physical manifestations of culture, like the way people dress or the formality of their interactions, physical environment can serve to clearly reinforce what “successful” or “desired” behavior looks like. But, it takes more than exposed brick or a new foosball table to make it happen in a sustainable way.

How Workplace Design Can Help (Or Hinder) Performance

There are two trends I see in organizations trying to change their culture (and behavior) by changing their workspace: The group that thinks that offering craft beer in the breakroom will make people behave in more innovative ways, and those organizations that use changes in the physical workspace as one lever in an intentional change effort that supports and reinforces changes in all other areas of the business.

Organizations in the former category attempt to find a silver bullet through superficial changes in the hopes that it will spur new, desired behaviors. Unfortunately, they usually find their efforts falling short as the other aspects of their culture pull people to maintain the status quo.

Conversely, companies that take a more multifaceted approach to evolving behaviors by shaping and aligning the physical environment in addition to their existing systems and processes seem better able to affect sustainable behavior change.

So, what makes the difference?

The norms of behavior that develop in an organization do so over time.  They are continually reinforced at every turn from the way people are compensated to the way meetings occur and everything in between. To assume that changing one thing (like the physical environment) is enough to sway people’s behavior in the midst of so many other aspects of culture influencing their behaviors seems aspirational at best. Even by keeping the work-space at a nice working temperature during the winter months would keep motivation up an would increase productivity. If you operating within a large premises you should look at Go Home heating HVAC repair to make sure your A/C has been serviced to ensure it last throughout the winter months.

Today’s leaders must be thoughtful about the way in which their office design supports the culture they want to create, and the behaviors they want to reinforce.

My smart colleague, Maya Razon, an organizational development consultant in the Bay Area, has been researching thought leaders in the space of physical office design. Recently, I was able to catch up with her to discuss some of her key learnings about how organizations can truly drive performance through thoughtful workplace design.  Here’s what she had to say-

3 Ways to Drive Performance Through Workplace Design

1. Bring Nature Indoors. Have you heard of the biophilia hypothesis? It literally means “love of life or living systems.” It’s the idea that there is an intrinsic bond between humans and other living things, like plants.

The theory was popularized in 1984, but recent research has found a more scientific link between productivity and the presence of nature. In fact, researchers from the Rocky Mountain Institute and Carnegie Mellon University have reported significant improvements in productivity as a result of green building features, including day lighting and views to the outdoors.

You can easily incorporate this theory into the workplace by simply adding plants and greenery around your offices. Environmental psychologist Sally Augustin, PhD suggests providing views of nature if at all possible. rolling hills and gently flowing water are best. Too much vegetation (views that feel jungle-like or water rapids) can have the opposite effect of adding stress vs. decreasing it.

2. Give Your Employees Control. Humans desire control over their environment, so consider giving your employees more control over how their individual workplace looks and feels. Even little things, like getting to pick their computer desk or having a desk lamp, which an employee can turn on and off, or ways to change the office temperature with fans or heaters can make a big difference.

Dr. Stefano Schiavon, Assistant Professor of Architecture at UC Berkeley says, “Managers should provide the opportunity for control. If we allow employees to control their time and tasks, they are more productive. And if we do the same for their thermal conditions with openable windows, personal temperature control, access to outside, and energy efficient personal heaters and fans, they will be happier.”

3. Know who you are and what you are trying to accomplish. The approach to office space design today is varied, from assigned cubicles, flexing work spaces and the open-office trend. If you study successful workplace design in companies like Google or Pixar, you’ll find a variety of fresh approaches within their walls, all of them supporting the values and behaviors they want to encourage.

Franklin Becker, Professor Emeritus of Design and Environmental Analysis at Cornell University cautions about how easy it is to get caught up in rhetoric about workspaces. Before jumping in to make changes to your office environment it’s helpful to ask “What is my organization and culture about? What really counts if we have to make choices about space and where can we make choices that have the best ROI?”

Design With Purpose

Look, I’m a fan of foosball and ping-pong as much as the next guy. But if I’m going to put a table in our office I want to know that my company and our people are going to get something meaningful out of it.

As leaders in our organizations, we have a responsibility to think more critically and holistically about the design decisions we make. We must be aware of how these external motivators are meant to influence our organizational culture and values – or if they do at all.

This article originally appeared on Forbes

“You don’t learn to walk by following the rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.” – Richard Branson

As an entrepreneur, business owner, or a leader in your organization, you may already know how important it is to be adaptable, build trust, and align your team around a common purpose that drives your bottom line performance goals.

But, how do you, as a leader, weave these qualities into the fabric of your team? How can you proactively create an organizational culture that allows for mistakes, encourages perseverance, and engages all of your stakeholders around a common goal?

In today’s rapidly changing and ever evolving business marketplace, there are few qualities that drive a team’s success like resilience. And in my experience, the best way you can help your team build resilience in the workplace is to explore the skills and experiences related to improv comedy.

Why Improv?

Years ago, I had the opportunity to work with a major service/product organization on training for a point-of-sale system.

As part of the supporting effort for the training, we developed a series of improv exercises to engage the participants, raise their level of commitment, and actually help some of the key points in the training be more “sticky”.  This initial training became a core component of a multi-year engagement, and I saw first hand that these core improv skills became key building blocks for the system trainers and users.

Why? There were three core components of improv that helped this organization’s training program succeed:

1. Focus: In improvisational comedy, participants must come together as a unified team to make an improv scene work, no matter their skill level or seniority.  When even the most tangential (wacky) ideas, distractions or curveballs are introduced, it is up to the team to collectively bring focus to the scene through adapting to the change in stride.
2. Commitment: Commitment on stage is no different than commitment in the workplace. Those participants who are committed (not just “doing” but COMMITTED) to a scene are as successful and contributory as those who are committed in the workplace.
3. Energy: The longest engagements, solutions, services, or efforts will most certainly languish if your workforce doesn’t bring energy to the process.  So, too, will an improv exercise languish if the participants don’t bring over-the-top levels of energy to their words and actions. Energy becomes the engine for an organization to be resilient and sustain their efforts.

“Yes, And…”

There is a key concept in improv called the “yes, and…” rule. Instead of thinking about problems as obstacles, and stifling team members with a “yes, but…” response, the “yes, and…” rule allows your team to brainstorm as a collective, build off of each other’s ideas in a positive way, and foster an environment of creativity and innovation.

So, how does it work? In another article I wrote for the BossaBlog, I gave the following example; an exercise called “Animal Ad Agency.” It works like this:

Break into small groups.  Five to seven is ideal.  Each small group forms a circle. Ask each group to name two things:

• An animal. (Take the quickest or best answer.)
• A common household product.  (Take the quickest or best answer.)

Then explain that your organization has been hired to be the advertising firm to sell the common household product to a group of those animals.

Describe the process to the group.

Someone starts by identifying a feature of the product that would be compelling for the animal; the next person says “yes, and…” then gives their feature; and so on around the circle. It might sound like this for selling Eyeglasses to Elephants:

• Person 1: The glasses would be enormous, to fit their large head.
• Person 2: Yes, and…they would have a special nose-saddle to adapt to the movement of their trunks.
• Person 3: Yes, and…they would have a heads-up display that pinpoints distance to their next meal.
• Person 4: Yes, and…they would have special bifocals strictly for seeing their tiny mouse friends.
• And so on…

When you debrief, discuss the importance of “yes, and…” in terms of the creative process.  As a team of professionals, what types of new possibilities are created by thinking in terms of “yes, and…” instead of the more often heard “no, because…” or even “Yes, but…”

The benefits of an exercise of this type will remain evident into the future as well.  Meetings and discussions will include more “yes, and” thinking—and the results will be immediate and valuable.

Building Resilience Through Improv

We as leaders inspire trust as we let everyone know that ALL voices are heard and are important, that the best ideas come from building together as a team, and by letting our personnel know that we trust and empower them to come up with the solutions.

These three core concepts—adaptability, trust, and a common purpose—are the building blocks needed for successful, sustainable teams. Show them that it’s ok to trust their gut, try new things, and learn from their mistakes. They will learn to be resilient, they’ll be more prepared when problems arise, and they’ll be better aligned to collectively handle anything that may come their way.

While cultural fit is often lauded as the most important part of hiring for both recruiters and candidates, it’s not always done in a way that truly puts the company’s cultural values before personal opinions. A recent New York Times article about hiring for cultural fit explores this idea further.

Here at gothamCulture, we’re not quite ready to give up on the importance of cultural fit, however. While many companies may struggle to set aside personal bias, cultural fit is a critical part of our hiring decisions.

Whether you realize it or not, every new employee has an impact across any organization, and we want to ensure that the changes we put in place align well with our overall culture and values.

In addition to more traditional ways of vetting job applicants, we ensure every candidate is part of a team interview as an opportunity to get to know his or her potential coworkers. This ensures that both the team and the interviewee are comfortable with their potential relationships and roles in the company going forward.

But, we understand that not every organization functions this way. So, we asked our team to share their answers to the following question:

How can organizations ensure that they are hiring for cultural fit?

Mark Emerson, General Manager

I don’t think an HR manager who gets a requirement from a department head about a new hire can possibly be able to assess cultural fit, but that is usually not the role of HR.  Their job is to assess work history, credentials and technical skills to actually perform the work. It’s then generally the role of the manager to assess the cultural fit.

And this is where I think the process can break down.

I hired someone a long time ago who was fully qualified for the role, but I didn’t read the culture of my team properly and it ended up being somewhat of a disaster. I vowed not to make that mistake again and instituted team interviews. The team was taken aback at first but over time, began to really appreciate the fact that I valued their judgment and wasn’t simply throwing someone new into their established culture without their input. They quickly took to the process and we ended up with some outstanding teammates.

It’s cumbersome and logistically more difficult to do team interviews, but I can’t see not doing them. The team has valuable input, insight into their daily work, and might see things that the manager doesn’t.

Simultaneously giving the team a chance to vet applicants and giving the applicant the chance to vet the team is a win-win. It allows everyone to ‘see the field’ and it prevents the hierarchical nature of a manager solely deciding on the fit of a candidate.

Arthur Kim, Engagement Manager

Most companies don’t spend enough time or effort on their hiring practices. Unfortunately, many don’t even hire until they are barely able to keep their heads above water with all the business activity they have coming in.

When it comes time to interview candidates, they either have a random manager speak with the candidate or the hiring manager is so busy that they haven’t had time to properly prepare. As a result, the interviewer has little or no knowledge of the job that the interviewee is applying for.

It’s important that every interviewer knows the position being applied for, but more importantly, they need to fully understand the culture and values of the company so they can convey that message and see if the candidate fits into those characteristics.

It’s also important for upper management to prep interviewers with what needs to be asked, what to look for in a candidate, topics of conversation and what questions they’re allowed to ask.

If cultural fit is a priority, they should design the interview to vet those characteristics, rather than generic problem-solving or skills-assessment questions.

Pamela Farago, OD Intern

A company becomes who it hires, so the future culture of an organization is strongly tied to the kinds of people it selects to represent it today. However, a potential employee’s “cultural fit” in the organization should not be determined by their certain talkative type of personality or their specific love of baseball.

The values and goals that a company holds are what should be assessed when determining a potential employee’s cultural fit, not their hobbies and hometowns.  If employers merely hired new workers who they wanted to hang out with and who shared all their same thought processes, an organization would become an army of clones, both incapable of innovating and prone to making poor decisions due to limited information.

To ensure that company values and goals are the criteria used to make hiring decisions, a business should consider several steps.

First, the organization should sit down and document what their values and goals actually are.  Then, the organization’s determined culture should be communicated not only to its current employees, but also to its potential employees. This allows potential employees to make a preliminary judgment of whether they should even apply for a job with this company.

Finally, the business should assess the fit of potential employees’ values and goals to the values and goals that it holds using an objective assessment, such as a structured interview or checklist. This would decrease the potential for interviewers to make subjective decisions about candidates based on either their own definitions of “cultural fit” or their favorite sports team.

Chelsea Weber, OD Intern

Working for an organization where I feel like I “fit in” has deepened my ability to lean into the work, take risks, and perform.  There are deep benefits on both sides of the equation—when employees and their employers are on the same page as far as “the way we do things around here,” everyone gets to spend time on deeper conversations.

And yet, a word of caution when using “cultural fit” as a singular benchmark for hiring: If an organization is not explicitly aware of the culture it seeks to fit, hiring managers and supervisors risk letting implicit biases seep into their hiring practices. Be wary of the words “cultural fit” becoming a veil for discrimination.

Companies should ask themselves: Are we aware of what we’re looking for when we hire for “cultural fit?” Are the things we look for measurable? Truly based on what will drive performance in our organization?

Consider doing exercises to uncover those implicit biases—there are online tests and conversations you can have to be honest with yourself and your team about what might get in the way.  Finally, remember that cultural fit is a conversation. Uncover what the person you’re hiring is looking for, and ask candidly if that matches what your company offers.