Tool No 33: Spaces outside Spaces
HOW? When you book a room for a meeting, stop and think. Is it the right one for this particular meeting? Will it set the right atmosphere? Does it do what I want it to do? Or should I change my mind and instead take the meeting as a walk-and-talk session out in the corridors, or perhaps at the round tables in the café?
A space is not necessarily defined by four walls, a table, six chairs, 14 square metres or a name in a booking system. Space is also an atmosphere, one defined by the view, by the distance between people (we sit closer together on a bench than around a table), by shapes, colours, fabrics and lighting.
There are spaces in the canteen, on the stairs in the sunshine, on a sofa, on a roof terrace and so on. Include all of these in your considerations when deciding which conversations to hold where.
Of course, some meetings demand a traditional set-up. But what about internal meetings? Would it be better to hold some of them somewhere else, for example when you sense a need to neutralise power imbalances?
