GOOGLE on Creative Spaces and Design Thinking

Colleagues John Warburton and Melanie Gurney visited Google Sydney with me recently. Shane Nantasis our fabulous host took us on an informative, enlightening and very interesting tour of the two Google buildings.  We studied: the different work, kitchen and fun spaces; the suite of Google APPS; plus we were lucky to meet other Googlers and have a discussion on how Government could find new ways to be creative, reduce bureaucracy and engage with our constituents, especially youth. How can Council get over the stigma of 'not fast'.

Down under Room

Our host tells us Googlers believe that the space we work in is critical to the success of an organisation. They do a lot of investigation around spaces. It's important to have a range of different spaces for an organisations culture to thrive Shane says. Google has a “Real Estate and Workplace Services’officer in each country.

All offices around the world are different – there are no generic designs except that every campus/office has a Games Room.  They want working at Google to be an 'EXPERIENCE" - fun and quirky.  Spaces in Sydney have Australian themes such as the Eski Café, the Lodge, The Downunder Room, to name only a few.

Interestingly Kitchens/Cafes are very important to Google.  They believe their cafe's can be some of the best spaces for brainstorming. Eating and Whiteboards mix well, we are told.  Food and coffee are the attractors that bring people together, often those that might not normally mix.  In fact GMAIL was invented in a KITCHEN. 

Eski Cafe

People need TIME for innovation and SPACE to think.

When you work on different things, you need different spaces.

Googlers have dedicated spaces where they can store their own photos, painting and mess but then they can move around and work in different spaces. People are not sitting in silo'd spaces but talking and relating to each other in open plan with then a range of mixed spaces - tear drop break out spaces for meetings; informal kitchen bump spaces; of course the treadmill and we also found quiet spaces including a couple of meditation/sleep pods in the library. BOOTHS we are told are silly, for one reason, the acoustics.  

Viewing APPS in the CLOUD

 Google admit that measuring the importance of creative work spaces is difficult as it’s intangible however to some extent it is can be measured through productivity.  They do a mix of ‘observation study’s’ combined with staff interviews and meetings, prototypes, feedback ‘design surveys’, and experts intuition to finalise the design that will work best in different buildings. 'Design Thinking' in other words.

On Design Thinking

Shane agreed that Design Thinking can be difficult to explain.  He said it’s more an exercise for the brain – its about changing how we think and being comfortable in new thinking.  It’s about taking the blinkers off and getting rid of the tunnel vision.    It’s OK to think differently.  We need to be aware that people stop ideas straight up – it's easy to say ‘no that won’t work' without giving more time and thought into the idea. It’s Brain Training to shift thinking.  We can use Design Thinking to create an event, design a service differently or brainstorm a new idea. It also includes partnering with new company’s not thought of before.

Partnerships!!!

Why not create interesting and different partnerships.  Google and Council could be a great combination!

Lastly, we got a glimpse of Google's culture. The biggest barriers to collaboration are workplace culture and management structure. It's a very transparent organisation which is extremely important to Googlers.  They believe honesty, trust and confidentiality are of highest importance.  So I thought I'd finish this Blog with Google's values.

On Google Values

"Top 10 things we know to be true"

• Focus on the user and all else will follow.
• It’s best to do one thing really, really well.
• Fast is better than slow.
• Democracy on the web works
• You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.
• You can make money without doing evil
• There’s always more information out there
• The need for information crosses all borders
• You can be serious without a suit
• Great just isn't good enough. We see being great at something as a starting point, not an endpoint

Innovative Characteristics of Company's I visited

What are the positive point’s government could take on and how? Discussion at Canberra ‘unconference’

	IDEO, DESIGN FIRMS, GOOGLE, FACEBOOK, APPLE’s OF THE WORLD	LOCAL GOVERNMENT equivalent	GAP	HOW CAN WE CLOSE THE GAP?
Creative Spaces / work spaces / lunch spaces	·         No booths – open plan - collaborative ·         Diverse range of spaces with plenty of options from open plan to quiet space for focused work to café-style ·         Cozy’s – smaller meeting rooms for 2 ·         Plants, benches, story boards ·         Personalised spaces ·         Creative communal kitchen spaces that spark creativity and collaboration when people bump into each other	·         Space not intelligently used – out of date designs ·         Booths which block creativity ·         Tired colours ·         Confined to the same space – 1 desk ·         Corporate hierarchies ·         Little time for  idea generation	Lack well designed, carefully considered, high-performance open plan offices that have a mix of facilities and a range of meeting spaces Need healthy interactive environments with a mixture of inspiring working spaces	Consider design and behavioural change management to assess right mix – how do we get take up for this?
Partnerships / relationships	·         Leaders	·         Traditional, Conservative ·         Leaders in some areas ·         Not a great deal of thinking outside the square regarding partnering with uni students or entrepreneurs or innovation companies ·         Keeping up instead of ‘leading the way’	Need to knock down old traditional walls	Connect with the private sector and involve them – how to promote this need though?
Collaboration	·         Cutting edge research ·         Collaborate up front with key segments/customers	·         No discipline or culture here. Internally councils don’t usually collaborate well and especially up front. ·         Varies – depends on individuals and business units in councils ·         Silo’s	Need to build some capacity here – what are the tools?
Tools	·         Design thinking – human centric approach ·         Agile – holds people accountable ·         HACK-A-TON	·         Data centric approach ·         Six sigma ·         Lean ·         Project Management ·         Don’t showcase great stuff that is done.	Warringah has great tools and sharing where we can – however many local councils way behind Still more creativity available – eg Prezzi, mapped stories, creative presentations etc
Speed	·         Work fast ·         Develop ideas fast ·         Rapid prototyping ·         Hack-a-thons	·         Slow ·         Lack innovation and skills to develop ideas fast ·         Lack of leadership ·         Unnecessary bureaucracy slows things down
Flexibility	·         Flexible work practises ·         “Fail fast, fail early’ approach	·         Red Tape ·         Probity checks ·         Very low tolerance for failure and learning from failing. Fear of failure can mean speed and flexibility is compromised
Accountability	Accountable to: ·         The organisation ·         Teams – highly accountable and rely on each other ·         Cross team work ·         Perform or perish	Accountable to: ·         the community ·         the organisation - but some confusion here ·         Teams – accountable to team members ·         Cross team work - No accountability, often struggle to understand who accountable to and what for ·         Protected	Local govt obviously is different to private sector – more transparent, have to justify existence and jobs  are often more secure There is still a  perception that public sector is slow, inefficient and staff unaccountable
Fun based interaction	·         Encouraged	·         Varies ·         Personality driven	How build into the workplace?
Senior Management /Leaders visible	·         Founders still run many of these companies ·         Q&A with CEO every Friday with a beer

Top 10 Tips

TIPS

1.            Stay on top of technology.  It’s easy to ignore however it’s changing so rapidly we need to keep up - plus exciting things are afoot - so explore. 

2.            Write a Blog on a topic, hobby, passion you have or when you are travelling.  It makes you think more deeply on your topic and connects you with the world. It can be a game-changer. Alternatively read someone else's Blog and share thoughts and ideas  

3.            Share what you learn. It’s cool to share, it’s not cool to hold onto ideas thinking it gives you leverage or power - the power is in sharing - whether it’s personal or work related.  

4.            Shift Thinking to a 'human-centered design thinking' approach.  As they say at Google

Focus on the user and all else will follow

5.            1/2hr TED education twice a week – Mark in your diary to listen to a TED talk (inspirations in Technology, Education, and Design) or read a Blog/Linkedin article to learn something new each week.  Here is one to get you started, it’s bit longer but it’s a goodie http://youtu.be/Ks-_Mh1QhMc

6.          Think BIG, start Small. Are we using our innovative/creative minds daily?  We are all creative, its just practice.  Encourage each other to feel confident and think creatively. 

7.            Tell a good story.  When presenting, take people on a ‘journey’.  A good story requires: a character; a created world (flesh and blood, eg about people with dialogue that brings them to life); obstacles; conflict/drama that has been turned around; emotion; throw in data; then make sure your story has clear meaning and a call for action.

8.            Create a Visual Management Board for yourself or your team.  It can make things a lot quicker for yourself, teams or for managers to see what you are doing and where you are up to plus it highlights what you’ve achieved.  Meetings can be quick stand-ups over the visual board

9.            Get faster. "Fail fast, fail early" Don’t dwell over a strategy, project or design for a long time – rapid prototype it – get it out there to ask for opinions.  Don’t be precious or worried about ego.  Get suggestions and keep moving. 'Build it, break it and then rebuild it"

10.        Partnerships. Be creative in the use of partnerships at work both internal & external.  What’s around us? Can we use existing resources more, put eclectic teams together? Could we involve in our projects, Individual businesses, uni students who can use an experience for reputation and resume, entrepreneurs, developers, non profits, innovation agencies and crowdsourcing platforms?

USA Exchange Conclusion

The LGMA Exchange was a personal 'game-changer'.  Exploring the inner local government corridors in the US for three weeks and encountering new techniques, trends and ways of thinking  first hand provided me with a deep understanding around my topic  - ‘Innovation in local government’.  Things I’d studied, read or been told started to take shape.

Google glasses.
We will see the world differently

I caught a glimpse of how fast the world really is changing; how the Recession (or GFC as we call it in Australia) really did hit the USA; how the Recession is or can be a catalyst for innovation, and how innovation really is an important topic and discussion point in governments around the world. 



Recession drives more Americans to
poverty

           The Exchange opened my eyes to the world so much more than I was expecting; to the troubles, hardships and opportunities in America; to the excitement and innovations in America; and to America’s contradictions - equality vs.inequality, open vs.closed government and extremely advanced practices vs. embarrassingly backward practices. 

To try and summarise my profound experience I've divided my conclusion into 3 parts:

1. Adversity - a driving force for Innovation (can we learn, copy, replicate some ideas that have developed in response to the enormity of the USA Recession)
2. Shifts in Thinking – what USA cities (our equivalent to councils) are currently thinking and doing
3. Barriers to innovation in local government - can we reduce some barriers by taking just a few ideas from the big guns – the Google, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo’s of the world.

1.       Adversity

America was hit very hard as we know by the Recession, but did we really know how hard or for how long? We know some cities went bankrupt but many more were so very close and in fact some are still teetering on the edge. Difficult tactics to hold off bankruptcy included closing the City (council) for 1 day a week, totally shutting or radically reducing library hours, retrenching 20% of the workforce (including police), stopping the watering of gardens and parks, fighting to remove overly generous pensions, reducing many services and sadly, with no choice, watching neighbourhoods slide backwards.

Hard times however can create an environment or a driving force for innovation.  As the USA emerges from its recession, encouraging and innovative local government trends and shifts in thinking emerge with it. Cities, big business, universities, residents and other agencies are pulling together in new and creative ways to assist cities revitalise neighbourhoods. Just one example is San Jose which has created a ‘Talent Bridge’ of partnerships with professionals in the private sector (and smack in the middle of Silicon Valley, I can tell you there are some beauties), non-profits, and universities to work probono with city employees to assist City  leaders advance key strategic goals.

New city models are being developed and shifts in thinking are producing creative new initiatives for the nation to collaborate in bold ways with each other not just state by state.

Shifts in Thinking

As the economic downturn hit most cities in America they started looking for inspiring ideas to tackle the country's toughest challenges together and break out of old thinking.  To embrace a culture of innovation they have started looking for bigger and bolder approaches than previously and ones that have the potential to transform their cities and lives of citizens. Some of these include: creating more positive and productive interactions for and with residents; creating powerful new networks and partnerships; rethinking how to use underutilized assets; embedding innovation into city cultures as an everyday thing instead of a sometimes thing and finding ways to develop technology requirements faster using university student help, Code for America or hack-a-thons.  Barriers and silly bureaucratic rules that hinder the ability to reinvigorate neighbourhoods sensibly and quickly have been reassessed.   

Cities are the new ‘connectors’ and are tapping into broader networks to pool resources and get ideas to create better futures with partners. New creative spaces to explore ideas with citizens (residents) are being developed (either physical spaces like ‘innovation labs’ or via technology platforms like ImproveSF)  The shift is about connecting people not only with their council but with each other. For example providing unemployed people opportunities through micro-volunteering to work on government projects or creating community labs bringing low-income residents, uni students, entrepreneurs and financial partners together to develop and implement projects together.

New protocols, reducing red tape, bold and insightful competitions, incentives and digital tools for two-way communication and sharing is taking place to connect with people and of course we can’t ignore the thinking around creative social media spaces that continue to evolve (especially crowd sourcing)

Another approach currently being explored globally in the public sector is “Design Thinking”.  This is an approach taken from the private sector designers toolkit that aims to understand the citizen (or user) better; put the citizen at the centre of a whole system; create more positive and productive interactions with citizens who usually don't engage.  Basically to co-create ‘with’ the citizen not ‘for’ the citizen (Tom Kelly IDEO).  The ‘newness’ here comes from how all our current approaches interact and whether design thinking will fit with the various public sector methodologies.

A new Australian Government ‘start-up’ called DesignGOV is currently asking questions in this space - What does design offer that we don’t already have in the public sector? How does design fit with what we already do or with other ‘new’ trends and techniques? In the public servant’s tool-set, when and how should design be used?   There is a lot of interest in design thinking and what it can offer governments from the UK, Denmark, America to Australia. 

Reducing cultural barriers to innovation

Lastly, what are some of the possible ways local government back home can continue to reduce impediments to innovation and create innovative spaces – whether physical or not? 

Internally we know what some of the barriers to innovation in local government are, therefore some of the areas that I feel we could review are included below.  For CULTURE we know we need to stop doing what we've always done and bring in, where practical, a more optimistic YES culture.  LEADER’S could be more thoughtful and intentional about how to make Innovation a regular, even day-to-day practice, not a ‘sometimes’ exception. (A JDI program at Warringah Council is a good example of this) We could build more innovation teams or forums, reenergise some of our spaces and design a mix of facilities/meeting spaces and reward the unusual instead of the status quo. POLITICS,  get our councillors on board to encourage an internal culture of innovation and help sustain ideas to implementation.  Stick up for staff if there is media scrutiny and allow some failure, as long as we learn from it. Can we ask the community to also step up in more creative ways to create with us?  This may help staff reduce the fear of failing the community and the backlash that sometimes comes with that?  If the community is designing with us and we were to fail, we fail together but the community recognises we tried our hardest.  With  STRUCTURE & PROCESSES lets employ the most up to date thinking and approaches to deal with the increasingly complex issues facing local government.  This could be where 'Design Thinking' comes in?

My other angle (having spent time in Silicon Valley where the big guns are playing) is what can we actually take away from these players, ie the Google, Facebook and Apples of the world.  What can we bring into our own context?  Can we model something a little ‘fresh’?  Take on just a few of the best ideas and create our own model for an improved local government?  To commence this discussion I will put a ‘Best of the Best’ table together. I’m talking with people at Google, Facebook, Apple and Yahoo who are happy to contribute ideas to assist civic society.  To follow some of their practices I therefore need to produce this table quickly, prototype it, go to the users and ask questions, experiment but also allow it to fail if it goes that way.  (stay tuned for the table in the next blog for you to contribute ideas) 

Final thought - Why is it that while most businesses and governments are reducing staff to stay afloat - Google, Facebook etc are doing the opposite - expanding at rapid rates? Apart from the obvious, being the product, is it because of the way they work works???

Creative office and kitchen spaces help.
The kitchen can in fact be where the most creative ideas are born

So in summary:

• We must contribute to the global discussion on Innovation
•  Be constantly resourceful and innovative.  It’s vitally important to keep abreast of what’s happening overseas and to share and add value
• When councils are under enormous pressure, interesting and innovative opportunities can emerge – let’s not ignore these.  What ideas that are working in other places can we take on, but always with the view to shaping it to the particular environment of our place / council
•  Councils as ‘Connectors’.  Let’s share our great ideas more with other councils and residents, allow ideas to flow more freely.  Even create some unusual labs for residents who don't normally contribute to become interested and engaged
•  Build an optimistic foundation for culture to thrive – recognise that when people (often leaders) say ‘no that won’t work’ it could be just habit talking – be more conscious and change the habit of initially saying NO to YES
• Build a tolerance for failure in government, this allows for innovation.  When new ideas appear, let them be trialled instead of the first reaction of 'no' it might not work for 1 specific reason.  GIVE IT A GO 
•  For those keen on Innovation in the public sector, let’s explore ‘Design Thinking’ and support our new Australian Government start-up ‘DesignGov’ to see where this approach can take us
•  Take some of the creative practices from the big guns (including work spaces) and implement to suit our environment. Stretch just that little bit more than we do in local government to support creativity and innovation

American Colloquialisms

Before I conclude the USA Exchange part of this blog and move onto general innovations I thought I'd share some of my favourite American sayings

GAME-CHANGER -  Used practically daily in Silicon Valley and Australia has certainly taken on the phrase lately as well.  If a new invention/innovation is sensational and going to take off it’s a game-changer.  Sometimes things are good however “it’s not going to be a game-changer”.   By the way, my Exchange was a personal "game-changer"

SNAFU - Example of use at Council could include when a city may have a SNAFU with a developer or company.  It refers to "Situation Normal All F…… Up” and originated as a military phrase because soldiers report to superior officers using phrases like "situation normal"

DRINKING THE KOOL-AID -  I head people refer to others saying "Oh he has drunk the Kool-aid" when they dont agree with an idea someone else might. It  is a metaphor commonly used in the United States that refers to a person or group holding an unquestioned belief, argument, or philosophy without critical examination. The phrase typically carries a negative connotation when applied to an individual or group. There are two likely sources for the term: the first is the Ken Kesey Kool-Aid Acid Tests of the 1960s. The second source is the November 1978 Rev. Jim Jones Jonestown Massacre,^[1][2] where members of the Peoples Temple were said to have committed suicide by drinking a Kool-Aid drink laced with cyanide.

Although we know of the following phrases in Australia we do not use them as commonly as I experienced them expressed in meetings in the USA.

“I’m not keen on that idea it would be like TAKING A KNIFE TO A GUN FIGHT”

“This next problem of ours is definitely GOING TO CAUSE BRAIN DAMAGE”

"That could CAUSE A FOOD FIGHT"

“Are you DOWN with that?”

“Now HERE’S THE DEAL” Pronounced HEE-AARRRRRRRR’s the DEEEE-AARRRRRL

“This will be the CACHE of the city”

“We’ve struck a BANANA group” – Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything (or Anyone)

 “DO IT AND SAY IT 6 TIMES” used when the team want to change a habit