Facebook’s new office in Palo Alto

If you’re interested in showing people you’re committed to a work environment, as a business coach and mentor, I can say that the easiest way to do that is by getting rid of your private offices. Seriously. While this isn’t the only way to show your committed to the free-flow of information, I believe it’s a powerful way of setting the stage—so to speak—for your employees to pick up on the importance of free-flow information, feedback, and ultimately, success.

When I was a little kid in Winnipeg, Canada, I attended the first “open concept” school, which meant that there were no classrooms, no walls, and lots of great buzz. Sure, there were lots of distractions, but also lots of absorbing what others were doing, too. From this experience, I learned how to focus when I had to, and also how to filter out what I could learn from others around.

Building an open office doesn’t mean that the employees work out in the open and CEO and other senior staff can retreat to private offices. Everyone has to be out in the open—and I mean everyone. Of course, you can still have groups of people with glass walls between some areas. For example, why not create the “Finance Fishbowl” and put all the finance people in one area and give them a glass wall if needed. You can also go radical and have the only barriers be forty-two inch high work stations–that’s only three and a half feet, so you really aren’t blocking much at all.   Everyone can see everyone, which means no hiding.  If you aren’t working, it’ll be obvious.

The benefits of an open work space are numerous. For starters, open offices teach you to filter out the noise and still concentrate on your work. They also allow everyone to hear what’s going on, which means they’ll understand others’ roles better. Best of all? You’ll feel the energy and togetherness grow within the company because you can see everyone more than when they are hiding out in walled offices. Obviously if you want to have private work areas, spots to take confidential phone calls, or little places for private discussions, you can still have lots of small meeting rooms. But whatever you do, get out of your offices!

pic Chill Out Point

This can either be a great tool for companies or a complete waste of time and energy.  I’ve been using social media for years and I know what fits for my company and what doesn’t.  I’ve spent time thinking strategically about how I can leverage components of it and what not to use it for, too.

First order of business? Get on Facebook.  It may seem daunting at first, but you’ll figure it out, trust me!  If you don’t figure it out, it’ll figure itself out for you.  Just don’t get sucked into all the stupid stuff with it.  Put your business profile on Facebook and people will start finding you and linking to you, and all of a sudden you’ll realize that people are learning more about what you do and remembering more about what you do because of this social networking tool.  Don’t bother wasting time with all the silly stuff meant for teenagers – think of Facebook as a resume, except an interactive, colorful one. Ensure it shows the best side of you, but more importantly, the real you.  Start focusing your time on adding all the friends and business associates you know.  If you start with that, and reading the messages people put up, you’ll get the hang out of it.  If it makes sense for your company (it doesn’t for most) then get someone in marketing or sales to set up and manage a “Fan Page” for your company.

LinkedIn is the same thing as an online resume.  Get on there, too!  It’s the new way that people are networking.  I’ve been on LinkedIn for close to 10 years now.  People aren’t going to Board of Trade events to meet each other anymore.  They are way over that.  It’s a waste of time.  I don’t have time to go down to a Board of Trade, pay for parking, walk in, talk to bunch of suits, come back out and realize I’ve got all these business cards to type up.  Eeeeew!  The new economy doesn’t work that way.  You’ll meet a lot more people using the technology that’s out there online, and free.  You won’t build the one-on-one relationships using Facebook and LinkedIn but you will identify potentially useful connections faster, and set-up time to interact outside of LinkedIn. Set up your entire profile so that others can find you easily.  When you or your team are hiring people check out their profiles on both Facebook and LinkedIn, too.  You’ll learn a lot about them.

I’ve been using Twitter since early 2008, and rank in the top 2,500 people in the world to follow.  Follow @cameronherold and you’ll learn a ton about how to use the site for marketing and customer service.  And there are even tools now that allow you to use Twitter in private spaces, one of which is called “Yammer.” Set up Yammer and you can “tweet” inside your own company privately and have the same interaction you would on Twitter—just within your own parameters.

I’ve started using Twitter as my note-taking tool while at conferences.  It allows me to multi task: I share with the people following me while reminding myself of the important points in a presentation. I type each idea or thought from a conference into Twitter.  And at the end of the day, I simply copy and paste all of my tweets into a Word Doc.

Jump in.  It’s easier than you think.