The Wall-Less Office

Last week my colleagues and I at the Drucker Institute moved back into our office, which earlier in the month had been redesigned, top to bottom, by Herman Miller. It’s a beautiful facility, the perfect blend of form and function, featuring 140 new pieces of furniture that are flexible, mobile, multifunctional (with storage cabinets that double as benches, for example), and environmentally friendly.

Still, my favorite detail is this: There are no interior walls. Eight of us sit all together in one large, sunlit space, without any obstacles in between. We were configured pretty much this way before, but, as the boss, I’d had a work area enclosed by partitions. They’ve now been tossed away.

Far more than symbolism is at play here. With no walls, my team and I communicate in precisely the ways that Peter Drucker advocated. In fact, our 1,400 square feet of openness is, I’m convinced, a major driver of our results.