Picnic Table Wisdom
A small digression from home to work...
Since we are travelling, and I’ve come down with ‘the cold’, I haven’t been able to write much due to my snotty head and dozy brain. So for a complete change of pace, I’ve reposted below an article I wrote awhile ago for our Chamber of Commerce when I was working in Plymouth, as the co-owner and day-to-day operator of a small Coworking space (which is still thriving very well, I’m delighted to say, although I have nothing to do with it anymore). The article is about the importance of a picnic table we installed in a previous company I worked with, and how it shaped the kind of company we grew to become. We used that same strategy in the early days of the Coworking space with similar effect. I’m interested to hear your thoughts. Hope you enjoy it!
Many years ago, in a land far, far away, we were moving office due to growing staff size, and we were going to lose our beloved outside deck space. The deck had been the main gathering place for everyone in the company since we moved in. Like many, many startups, we had quickly outgrown the original living room/dining room and master bedroom (for conference calls) of the owner’s apartment where we started out. In our first proper office we had a large south-facing deck with a big picnic table, and except when it was raining, it was where we all gathered to eat lunch, have after-work parties, conduct small meetings, and just pause for a moment in the day to catch a breath and rethink a problem.Â
The picnic table was a great ‘leveler’: there was no choice of tables or better chairs, or the problem of sitting alone. Everyone was included and sat together; there was no place for ‘cool kids’ to separate themselves or for introverts to hide. If you went to the deck, you were included in the community. Conversations flowed easily and creatively. Everyone was valued. It was a serendipitous discovery of one of the many things that made our workplace such an amazingly creative and positive place.
So when we had to move to our new office without a deck, I knew we had to recreate that picnic table mentality somehow, even if it wasn’t outside. We had a huge bright long space where the kitchen/eating area would go. It was logical to put the food prep area at one end, and the eating area amongst the windows at the other end. But whilst the president suggested a bunch of cafe tables and bar stools, which would look nice and would have been been perfect for a coffee house, I knew we NEEDED our picnic table. We needed collaboration, and that sense of inclusion. But of course we were now no longer an office of 12 people, we were between 30-40 in our HQ (and had several other offices by now). How could we all fit around our now very weathered 6-person picnic table?Â
After some research, I eventually found a VERY long picnic table. It was one of the first things to get installed in the new space, and it worked like a charm. Everyone instinctively began gathering there and without missing a beat it became the site of hilarious lunchtime conversations, birthday party celebrations, impromptu meetings, and the pausing place whilst waiting for a cup of tea, or the next pot of coffee to brew.
So whilst a table may be just a place to eat, for our company it reinforced the culture of inclusion and collaboration. Consider what your company’s ‘picnic tables’ are and how they reinforce and support your culture. You may be surprised at what you discover!
Now of course, many workers are remote and are not always in an office together. I haven’t worked in a company office since I left the US over a decade ago so I’m not as knowledgeable about current office spaces. If any of you reading this have thoughts about working spaces, I’d be really interested to hear. Having spaces that help people work more effectively was a big research area of mine for awhile and I wrote a lot about it. Even your personal desk is so important!
What makes a wonderful working space for you? Why? Do you have good light, personal photos, inspirational quotes? (we talked about this with our crafting spaces, didn’t we?)
Where do you like to work? Do you move around to do different kinds of work?
If you work in an office, do you have different or flexible spaces (for meetings, for calls, for quiet focused work?)
As always, thanks so much for reading! I appreciate your time! I hope to be back more ‘home’ focused next week! And if you enjoy these articles, please feel free to share with others!
Sabrina
Glad you posted this. As my kids moved into the workforce after college I remember marveling at Ali’s company that had created nooks and crannies around the multi acre campus for folks to work in if they needed a break from an office mate. And then
I freaked out as my son described his Twitter workspace where most had no office nor cubby, but could move around at large tables as the feeling hit them. Where do you put your stuff? While I always prided myself as a collaborator, this boomer introvert wanted a place I could go, to call my own.
I love your idea of the picnic table, for human interaction and creative collaboration, as long as I had a place to hide.
This article almost made me want to go back to the office to try out this wonderful idea. But I'll leave that to someone else.
I enjoyed reading this because your creativity and thoughtfulness in the work place shine. Also, it describes a piece of the past in another part of your life. Amazing that despite how close we, and the others, remain, there are still big chunks of our lives we don't know about each other.