The Hermitage is a massive museum of art and culture located in Saint Petersburg, Russia. One of the largest and oldest museums of the world, it was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and open to the public since 1852. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display, comprise nearly 3 million items, including the largest collection of paintings in the world. It’s close to 2,000 separate rooms make for a daunting proposition for visitors, as simply seeing and finding items and collections of particular interest can certainly be difficult.
As the museum approaches its 250th Anniversary in 2014, it has engaged the services of renowned architect Rem Koolhaas to ‘modernize the art museum experience’ for visitors, while staying true to the history and tradition of the institution, and also under the constraints that no new buildings will be constructed, and no existing structures will be significantly modified.
Kandinsky - Composition VI - 1913
What does this have to do with business, HR, or technology? Perhaps not much, but I was looking for an excuse to run a post with a Kandinsky picture.
Well the three main operating principles that Koolhaas has adopted in his re-design of the museum-goer experience can, I think, be applied to many organizational and system design (or re-design) projects.
Principle 1 - Understand how customers really use your products – not how they “say” they use your products.
Whether it is by an over reliance on policies and procedures, deploying internal knowledge management systems that proscribe a rigid hierarchy and taxonomy for information storage, or explicit and detailed enterprise systems user guides that all attempt to define and control employee interactions, many organizations not only fail to see how their products and services are used, they demand or require a specific method of interaction.
How can HR and IT organizations do a better job at understanding how their products and services are being used? By really observe use patterns in the field, and not just ‘tracking’ them for one. Sure, your latest masterpiece on this year’s Benefits Open Enrollment process has suddenly become the most visited page on the intranet, but is it actually working? What sections or pieces of information are the most important? Where do employees go immediately after accessing the information?
Principle 2 - Create as many opportunities as possible for interaction between the customer and your product
In a museum setting, we’re not really talking physical interaction, but rather ways to foster more mental and emotional engagement with the collections. By creating more opportunities for slowing down, contemplating, and in Koolhaas words "do(ing) everything possible to “diminish the obligations of a directed path”, the architects are attempting to better connect the customer to the experience.
Inside organizations I think there countless opportunities to allow for more exploration, crowd sourcing, and discovery. Does your culture overschedule people with hour upon hour, day upon day of a seemingly endless series of meetings? Have you set the expectation that every e-mail has to be opened, read, and responded to immediately? Do you spend the first six months of a new hire’s tenure indoctrinating on ‘This is how we do things here’, rather than ‘Here is what we need to get done, here are the constraints, have at it’.
Principle 3 - Implement best-in-class practices from around the world
While chasing ‘best practices’ is not always sound advice, (usually it just puts you in catch-up mode, since once you identify which ‘best practices’ to emulate, and take the time to mimic them, the creators of said ‘best practices’ have already moved again to newer, and better practices, leaving you emulating yesterday’s good ideas). To me the ‘around the world’ angle of this principle is the important one. It suggests looking beyond the typical sources of inspiration, (companies in the same industry, other local organizations, and competitors offering the same kinds of products and services). Maybe your large organization can learn a thing or two from a scrappy start-up, your design for a boring B2B product can be energized by the iPad, or your enterprise software can actually look, feel, and be as fun and intuitive to use as Facebook or Amazon. Inspiration and ideas can be found practically everywhere.
Last thought, often when trying to change anything, we can get caught up in the barriers or constraints. But barriers and constraints will always be there, and in fact can for you to get more creative and focused. Koolhaas has to take a 250 year old massive institution and re-design the experience in the next few years, while not changing the structure, layout, or much of anything else - I’ll bet your barriers and constraints are not nearly as daunting.
Note :My friend and fellow blogger Victorio Milian at his Creative Chaos Consultant blog has written about the importance of design and design thinking for HR professionals, and I highly recommend checking out his work on this topic.
As the museum approaches its 250th Anniversary in 2014, it has engaged the services of renowned architect Rem Koolhaas to ‘modernize the art museum experience’ for visitors, while staying true to the history and tradition of the institution, and also under the constraints that no new buildings will be constructed, and no existing structures will be significantly modified.
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Kandinsky - Composition VI - 1913What does this have to do with business, HR, or technology? Perhaps not much, but I was looking for an excuse to run a post with a Kandinsky picture.
Well the three main operating principles that Koolhaas has adopted in his re-design of the museum-goer experience can, I think, be applied to many organizational and system design (or re-design) projects.
Principle 1 - Understand how customers really use your products – not how they “say” they use your products.
Whether it is by an over reliance on policies and procedures, deploying internal knowledge management systems that proscribe a rigid hierarchy and taxonomy for information storage, or explicit and detailed enterprise systems user guides that all attempt to define and control employee interactions, many organizations not only fail to see how their products and services are used, they demand or require a specific method of interaction.
How can HR and IT organizations do a better job at understanding how their products and services are being used? By really observe use patterns in the field, and not just ‘tracking’ them for one. Sure, your latest masterpiece on this year’s Benefits Open Enrollment process has suddenly become the most visited page on the intranet, but is it actually working? What sections or pieces of information are the most important? Where do employees go immediately after accessing the information?
Principle 2 - Create as many opportunities as possible for interaction between the customer and your product
In a museum setting, we’re not really talking physical interaction, but rather ways to foster more mental and emotional engagement with the collections. By creating more opportunities for slowing down, contemplating, and in Koolhaas words "do(ing) everything possible to “diminish the obligations of a directed path”, the architects are attempting to better connect the customer to the experience.
Inside organizations I think there countless opportunities to allow for more exploration, crowd sourcing, and discovery. Does your culture overschedule people with hour upon hour, day upon day of a seemingly endless series of meetings? Have you set the expectation that every e-mail has to be opened, read, and responded to immediately? Do you spend the first six months of a new hire’s tenure indoctrinating on ‘This is how we do things here’, rather than ‘Here is what we need to get done, here are the constraints, have at it’.
Principle 3 - Implement best-in-class practices from around the world
While chasing ‘best practices’ is not always sound advice, (usually it just puts you in catch-up mode, since once you identify which ‘best practices’ to emulate, and take the time to mimic them, the creators of said ‘best practices’ have already moved again to newer, and better practices, leaving you emulating yesterday’s good ideas). To me the ‘around the world’ angle of this principle is the important one. It suggests looking beyond the typical sources of inspiration, (companies in the same industry, other local organizations, and competitors offering the same kinds of products and services). Maybe your large organization can learn a thing or two from a scrappy start-up, your design for a boring B2B product can be energized by the iPad, or your enterprise software can actually look, feel, and be as fun and intuitive to use as Facebook or Amazon. Inspiration and ideas can be found practically everywhere.
Last thought, often when trying to change anything, we can get caught up in the barriers or constraints. But barriers and constraints will always be there, and in fact can for you to get more creative and focused. Koolhaas has to take a 250 year old massive institution and re-design the experience in the next few years, while not changing the structure, layout, or much of anything else - I’ll bet your barriers and constraints are not nearly as daunting.
Note :My friend and fellow blogger Victorio Milian at his Creative Chaos Consultant blog has written about the importance of design and design thinking for HR professionals, and I highly recommend checking out his work on this topic.
