Enabling Innovation Through Office Design

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O'Neill did some reorganizing, but still felt that something was wrong. There was rigidity in the way people worked; the existing headquarters building in Pittsburgh was too large and the configuration of the space was wrong. There were small floor plates with 8-foot ceilings and small windows with a very limited amount of light.

O'Neill worked closely with Marty Powell, principal of architecture firm the Design Alliance in Pittsburgh to design a new six-floor HQ. "The most important thing was for people to be able to associate with each other in an open way, almost because the space demands it," O'Neill says. Even before the new building was started he moved the nine most senior executives, with their assistants, from large, private offices to a completely open-plan environment. It was a clear signal to the rest of the firm of what the future held.

In the new building everyone, including O'Neill, got a 9-ft.-by-9-ft. open area. No one was too far from the new 11-ft.-high windows through which natural light streamed. At the entrance way of each floor is an open kitchen area to encourage informal encounters. And O'Neill and his design team factored in enough meeting space so that every employee in the building could be in a meeting, out of their assigned work space, at the same time. Escalators were designed to be faster than the elevators to encourage workers to see and be seen.

Improved Performance

When I asked if the redesign had been effective, O'Neill turned the screen of his computer around to show the growth of Alcoa's stock price. The company's revenues grew from $1.5 billion in 1987, when O'Neill became CEO, to $23 billion in 2000. (He left the company in 1999.) And while it's clear that office design was only one factor in Alcoa's growth, O'Neill was adamant that it had a significant impact on the business.

SEI Investments (SEIC), based in Oaks, Pa. is a leading provider of investment accounting and administrative services and provides another good office design case study. The firm processes more than $50 trillion of investment transactions annually. In the late 1980s the company, in the words of CEO and founder Al West, was "doing O.K." Growth was 15%, but West was frustrated with the silo mentality of the three internal divisions (technology, asset management, and pension consulting) that neither collaborated nor cross-sold services. Perhaps surprisingly, he also felt that it was "not a fun environment." With these thoughts in mind, West began a seven-year reinvention process to shake up the business. He wanted his people to "get out of their box, to think differently."

The reinvention involved a radical organizational shake-up. But during the process, West and his management team realized that the firm's existing facilities, which they had tried to retrofit, simply could not support their new culture. In choosing an architect, Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle, West said: "We didn't have a design run-off, we had a cultural run-off." To West, the challenge was no less than to create a space to enable the new culture to function.

Furniture on Wheels at SEI Investments

The resulting workplace is a series of two-story buildings in an irregular arrangement next to a wilderness area. Everyone in the company works at a completely open desk area. All the furniture is on wheels, as West wanted people to be able to move when they wanted to, with "no barriers to change." In addition, there was no need for an electrician or tech support when an employee had to move a desk: As a result, the cost of moving one person dropped from $1,400 to 0.

In 1996, after it moved into its new campus, one of SEI's divisions had a 90% close rate—double what it was previously—if a potential client was brought to its campus. The new SEI space was not intended to be a showplace, but it became one.