Turning the Inside Out

The Workplace Meets Mother Nature

Remember back in college when you begged your professor to hold class in the quad under a tree? It turns out, you were onto something.

By Leigh Stringer, Workplace Research & Strategy, EYP

For most of human history, we spent our days outdoors. We hunted, gathered, scavenged, and farmed in the open air. But around 300 years ago (a tiny blip in our human timeline), we started spending most of our days working inside, specifically in factories. The industrial revolution introduced long hours, child labor, and some pretty frightening working conditions. Since then, major labor movements have put limits on the number of hours worked, environmental laws have improved air quality at work, business and building codes now protect most workers’ safety, and some workplaces are even designed to maximize ergonomics and well-being.

Yet despite major changes in the workplace for the better, including mobile technology that allows us to choose how, when, and where we work, we still continue to spend most of our time indoors. In fact, today, we spend roughly 92% of our day inside a building or in a vehicle (1). We can easily do part or all of our job in trains, planes, coffee shops, or hotels. But somehow working outside is a foreign concept.

It shouldn’t be. The term “biophilia” (reintroduced by the Harvard entomologist and environmentalist E.O. Wilson) refers to our preference as humans to be in and among nature. We simply thrive in it. Study after study shows that not only does being outside in nature improve our mental and physical wellbeing, it improves memory and focus, reduces mental fatigue and increases creativity. It helps us do our jobs better. The more biodiverse the environment we’re in, the better. Taking time to reconnect in nature establishes our body’s natural balance of sympathetic and parasympathetic responses, both preparing our bodies for mental activity (sympathetic) while reducing our stress and keeping us relaxed (parasympathetic).

Many organizations are trying to bring the outdoors in, designing interiors to include plants, sunlight (or artificial lighting that mimics sunlight), fresh air, and “natural analogues,” or surfaces and materials that mimic the natural environment. Research overwhelmingly shows that exposure to natural elements (even in small doses) while indoors is genuinely good for our mental and physical well-being. A recent Harvard study shows that subjects in offices exposed to real nature (plants and views outside), and those wearing virtual reality headsets with images of nature, both showed improved health and productivity outcomes over subjects who sat in environments with no exposure to nature (2). Another study by the University of Oregon found that simply providing employees with a view of trees and landscape reduced the amount of sick time they took per year (3).

But is being indoors with a view and a breath of fresh air enough? Research shows it may not be a substitute for actually being outside. In Japan, the practice of “forest bathing,” (shinrin-yoku) or taking immersive walks in nature, has been shown to decrease cortisol levels, sympathetic nervous activity, systolic blood pressure and heart rate (4). Studies have also discovered that certain forest trees emit organic compounds called phytoncides, and inhaling these compounds has been proven to decrease blood pressure, and improve immune system functions (5). In light of these benefits, the Japanese government has endorsed the practice and developed 48 “forest therapy” trails throughout the country.

What’s Keeping Work Inside

So if being outside is so good for us, what’s keeping us from going outdoors more, particularly at work, where we spend enormous parts of our day? I recently partnered with L.L.Bean to send a survey to 1,050 American “indoor” workers to find out. We found that 87% of those surveyed really enjoy the outdoors, but most rarely or never take time to work outside. 57% of those surveyed said they spend less than half an hour outside during the workday.

When we asked these indoor workers what kept them from going outdoors more, 65% said one of their biggest barriers was their job. Job inhibitors were wide-ranging and included issues with technology (no Wi-Fi or power, plus screen glare), organizational culture (they were afraid their boss would think they were goofing off), or their job required them to be indoors (nurses, retail employees, etc).

We found most respondents understand the benefits of nature to them personally, but not as many made the connection that being in nature could improve their performance at work. Most said the benefits to them working outdoors were improved mood, lowered stress levels, relaxation, increased health and wellness and increased happiness. Interestingly, if respondents said they already had an outdoor workspace available to them, they were much more likely to make the connection to productivity. Apparently seeing is believing.

First Outdoor Coworking Space

L.L.Bean partnered with Industrious (a coworking company) to test these findings, and in the Summer of 2018 we launched the firstever outdoor coworking space, pop-up style. It started in New York City’s Madison Square Park and moved to urban parks in Boston, Philadelphia, and Madison, Wisconsin. The outdoor office included a mix of work settings including meeting tables, soft seating, even a pedal table – with some spaces covered and some open to the sky. Industrious set up their online room reservation system to allow the public to book space outdoors and reserve a seat ahead of time.

A few thousand people took advantage of working outside at L.L.Bean’s outdoor areas, and participants widely reported the experience as refreshing and fun. The majority of participants surveyed said they were very likely to try to work outside more often. Here are a few notable reactions of participants who reserved one of the covered outdoor meeting rooms in Boston:

“Meeting in the outdoor co-working space was energizing and a refreshing departure. The experience felt like a break from the work day while also yielding a productive meeting.” — Sarah Brett, Senior Associate, Graphics & Branded Environments, Unispace

 

“It was a nice day to get outside, and to have a change of scenery, but I found the location to be a bit distracting. There were sirens because we were right near the fire station, horn honking from the traffic, dogs barking, and various street noises. This was a great place to have a quick check in meeting but I’m not sure it would be the most ideal setting for an intense collaborative work session.” — Meredith McCarthy, Senior Associate, Architect, Sasaki

Of course, those reactions were captured in mid-summer. When asked, “Would you be willing to work outdoors more in the wintertime?” the response by this same group was more mixed:

“Yes, if it’s not raining! Phone calls, face-to-face meetings that can be done while walking – either in the city or in local parks. In fact, this past winter I had some of the best meetings while walking and talking.” — Karin Sharav- Zalkind, Owner/ Designer, NoBox Studio

 

“Probably not, I don’t really like the cold! Maybe October/November but not December in Boston.” — Ashley Dunn, Director of Workplace, Dyer Brown Architects

L.L.Bean is not the only company experimenting with ways to bring the indoors out. There are many examples of organizations providing outdoor work environments for their employees including Amazon, Microsoft, Casper, Facebook, and Etsy. Whether they are taking advantage of green space nearby or real estate on top of their building, companies are thinking about how they recapture workspace.

Our Impact

Here are some of the key takeaways of working outdoors as a researcher and as a designer:

We can do more than we think outside.

People we surveyed claimed they felt more comfortable doing creative and relationship-based work outdoors vs. work involving technology and equipment. They could envision themselves having walking meetings, team brainstorm sessions, sitting on conference calls, or performing other hands-free activities outdoors. Activities requiring technical or detailed spreadsheet work were not as appealing. That said, I saw several people writing and answering emails in the L.L.Bean pop-up space. I think a surprising amount of work could get done outdoors and on a more regular basis. It just requires a little planning.

Working outdoors doesn’t require money.

The cost of piloting an outdoor workspace is very small and the net benefit to employee happiness and productivity is significant. It might just mean setting up a table, some chairs, and an umbrella. During the summer tour, many people reached out to L.L.Bean to see if the outdoor space could be set up in their city. Invariably our team would smile answer, “You don’t need us to work outdoors. Just open the door, and you’ve got it!”

Outdoor workplace can be seasonal.

We spoke with folks in Florida last June who were very resistant to working outside in the summer, but open to doing so more during the winter. Folks in Boston felt the opposite. I have started thinking about the workplace more dynamically. Where you work could vary by season or by climate zone. I mean, why should space be 100% occupiable 100% of the year? In fact, isn’t it boring if it doesn’t change?

Outdoor spaces are not one-size-fits-all.

Sometimes, when we asked people “hypothetically” what they thought about working outside, they answered like we were asking them to sit on a chair in the middle of a baseball field, completely exposed to the elements. The solution for good outdoor work environment is probably nothing like that. The space might be covered, use glass to block wind, have fans, be wired or Wi-Fi enabled. I was in London this summer and saw an outdoor workspace filled with bean bag chairs. Really, the sky’s the limit.

We know being outside is good for us, but we are still learning why.

Early forest bathing research in Japan tells us that even a small amount of outdoor exposure is good, and that the benefits can be long lasting. But how much exposure to the outdoors is ideal? What about the quality of the outdoor space? Forest bathing studies are often conducted in lush natural environments full of cypress and pine trees. Does working outside in an urban setting have the same physical and psychological effect? Interestingly, I noticed that after working outside for two days straight in Madison Square Park, my brain started to filter out ambulance sirens and filter in birdsong, leaves rustling, and other pleasant sounds. This filtering, or “cognitive inhibition” in my brain, allowed me to sort out what I didn’t want to hear, and I could focus better. There is still a lot we have to learn.

For more information about the L.L.Bean outdoor co-working space and the research behind the project, check out BeAnOutsiderAtWork.com.

Sources

1. Klepis, Neil, et al. “The National Human Activity Pattern Survey (NHAPS): a Resources for Assessing Exposure to Environmental Pollutants.” Nature, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 231–252.

2. Yin, Jie, et al. “Physiological and Cognitive Performance of Exposure to Biophilic Indoor Environment.” Building and Environment, vol. 132, Jan. 2018, pp. 255–262., doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2018.01.006.

3. Elzeyadi, Ihab M.K. Daylighting-Bias and Biophilia: Quantifying the Impact of Daylighting on Occupants Health. USGBC, 3 Oct. 2011, www.usgbc.org/sites/ default/files/OR10_Daylighting%20Bias%20and%20 Biophilia.pdf.

4. Miyazaki, Yoshifumi, et al. “Preventive Medical Effects of Nature Therapy.” Nippon Eiseigaku Zasshi (Japanese Journal of Hygiene), vol. 66, no. 4, Sept. 2011, pp. 651– 656., doi:10.1265/jjh.66.651.

5. Li, Q., et al. “Effect of Phytoncide from Trees on Human Natural Killer Cell Function.” International Journal of Immunopathology and Pharmacology, vol. 22, no. 4, 2009, pp. 951–959., doi:10.1177/039463200902200410.

Sell by Design

Achieve Dramatic Results by Combining Design Thinking & Sales

When Sachin Rai boarded a Greyhound bus in San Francisco, he had little idea that his trip to Los Angeles would land him a multimillion-dollar sales contract.

By Ashley Welch & Justin Jones, Co-Founders, Somersault Innovation

Sachin was an account executive at Salesforce, one of the world’s largest cloud-computing companies. He was searching for strategies to close deals faster while enjoying his job more.

That’s when he joined our Sell by Design program, where we teach salespeople how to become authentically customer-centric. For Sachin, the noble and logical idea of putting the customer first paled in comparison to the pressure of meeting his numbers. That’s why we launched Somersault Innovation, to put design thinking tools in the hands of sales professionals and demonstrate how authentic design can drive dramatic sales results. We set out to be coaches and teachers of Design Thinking but given our backgrounds in sales, we quickly realized there was a great deal of overlap between great Design Thinkers and great salespeople: both are curious, focused on the end-customer, looking for insights, and aiming to co-create with their customer for optimal results. With this realization, we started teaching sales people some of the mindsets and tools from the world of design.

Customer Experience

We suggested Sachin choose a prospect account which offered services he could experience as a customer. He chose one he’d been trying hard to sign: Greyhound. He packed his things, loaded up his curiosity, and set out on an eighthour learning journey on a California freeway. On his trip he talked to everyone, from ticket sellers and baggage handlers to bus drivers and customers. We asked him to pay attention, take notes, shoot pictures, and fully absorb the customer’s experience.

The long-term goal, of course, was to sign Greyhound as a client. The short-term goal, however, was to conduct deep research so Sachin could understand the bus company through the eyes of a passenger and bus employee. If he could teach the C-suite something they didn’t know about their customers, they might finally engage. As he boarded the bus, the first thing he noticed was a frowning, frustrated driver filling out a lengthy report with pencil and paper. “Why did she have to waste time on that before starting the journey?” Sachin wondered. He asked the driver, who sighed and explained the tedium of filling out maintenance details on the requisite service log form.

The entire maintenance reporting process was woefully inefficient, and it often resulted in a suboptimal passenger experience such as inoperable Wi-Fi. Sachin was so fascinated with what he discovered through his observations southbound, he decided to take the Greyhound down and BoltBus on the return trip from LA to San Francisco. The BoltBus offered an automated ticketing process. The “automation” was a tablet, but it was so slow the driver used a “hack”—a workaround to bypass company procedure—to speed things up.

The hack? You guessed it: he used pencil and paper to record passenger boarding information. When your company’s technology is slower than a five-thousand-year-old technique used by the ancient Egyptians, that’s probably a red flag. Sachin didn’t discover any of these revealing details about the “automation process” during his initial online research. Because he was willing to immerse himself in the customer experience, he was rewarded with these valuable insights.

He then used this information to open doors with Greyhound’s executives. He emailed them and explained he’d taken a long ride on their bus and asked if he could share some feedback he had as a customer. He received immediate responses from C-suite executives. They were astounded by what he had to say. The problems he described had been invisible to them from their vantage point. In fact, the vice president of digital strategy had never taken an eight-hour ride on her company’s bus. Greyhound’s COO brought Sachin in to discuss the problems he’d witnessed.

Typically, Sachin would have walked into Greyhound’s office with a product to pitch. Before riding to LA he had begun designing a driver app solution, but he later discovered this would have been irrelevant. Without the knowledge from his trip, he would have pitched his app, struggling to convince a junior-level gatekeeper to send him to a decision maker. He never would’ve been in the same elevator as the COO, much less invited into his office.

Instead, Sachin showed the COO pictures he took with Marie, his driver, and he shared her frustrations about the service log form. The COO was awestruck that Sachin knew what the service log was and was eager to look for solutions. The two sat down to work together on a solution. Eight months later, Sachin and his team were able to build a relationship across multiple channels into a $3 million global deal. It was far beyond what Sachin had hoped for.

Salesforce had initially envisioned a marketing deal, but Sachin’s insights led to ideas that included a much larger solution with a customer community app, a bus app, and a support app. Because of his firsthand experience, Sachin was able to explain how these apps would work in concert to benefit customers and drivers, as well as Greyhound’s bottom line. Sachin and Salesforce credit the Greyhound deal to the Sell by Design process. The most important element of his success, however, was something that occurred before he ever set foot in a bus depot: his mindset. Sachin succeeded where Salesforce had previously failed because he shifted his perspective from salesperson to customer.

Rather than go into a client meeting armed with the pitch of a salesperson, Sachin spoke the language of the company. He understood the service log form and the inefficiencies involved with it, as well as how these impacted the passenger experience. He had educated himself with the knowledge of internal Greyhound operations unfamiliar to most salespeople. When you begin your sales approach with the intent of understanding the client’s issues from their point of view—and their customers’ point of view—you position yourself for greater success.

We have seen this repeated over and over. This type of approach leads to faster call connects (the time that it takes to get a response from a customer), leads to higher engagement for both the sales professional and the customer, increases credibility and trust, and ultimately gives you the potential for a bigger deal size. It is also more fun!

Discovery, Insight, Accelerate

Sales and design thinking are more alike than you may think. We simplified a design thinking process to make it fit a sales cycle. It has three stages: Discovery, Insight, Acceleration. Each stage has a strategy and a set of tools. The entire cycle is supported by the design mindsets of curiosity, empathy, and agility.

Discovery. Learn more about your client, their business, and their customers. This stage focuses on real, living, breathing people. Data is important, and design thinking uncovers the human element within the data. Recall how Sachin discovered firsthand various hacks Greyhound staff employed to work around ineffective systems.

Insight. Use discoveries to form insights: interesting points of view that can lead to new solution ideas. Sachin was able to connect directly with Salesforce’s COO to discuss business opportunities at a completely different level thanks to his discoveries. These insights opened the door for Salesforce to connect with Greyhound at a deep level, perfect for building a long-term relationship.

Accelerate. Use visuals and storytelling to cocreate with your client and drive deal velocity. Sachin and Salesforce built on these discoveries and insights to develop multiple, cross-platform solutions. Because of Sachin’s authentic customer experiences he could accelerate the deal into something greater than a one-time engagement.

Get Started

Start by considering your potential client’s ecosystem of customers (internal and external). Who is your client’s customer and what do they care about? Focus your discovery there, and then bring your insights to the client. Be your client’s customer — just like Sachin did. Can you go into a store and make a purchase? Can you get online and engage with customer service? Scan the web for customer reviews and satisfaction reports. Look at industry groups, what are they saying? Talk to your client’s internal stakeholder groups. Get creative, how can you get close to your client’s customer? Many of the people we work with will make a purchase online from their client, and then make a purchase in a client’s retail store, to compare the experience. Or they will chat online with customer service, call, email, and tweet, and then compare the experience. These approaches provide valuable insight.

The genesis point of value for any business is when and where it comes in contact with its customers. To the extent you can speak to that connection in an authentic way, you will enhance your credibility and overall position as a trusted advisor.

When you are doing discovery on your customer, be authentically curious. Set aside time, and forget about what you are selling for a moment — just focus on learning things you don’t know about your potential client. To quote a young friend, “unawesomeness is unacceptable,” so stop selling and start getting curious about your prospects and their customers. You never know what breakthroughs you’ll have along the way!