Usted es me todos: Best of the Issue: Another Reason to Dislike Open Offices

October 22, 2019

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Another Reason to
Dislike Open Offices

From Amy Bernstein
Editor, Harvard Business Review

Do you love your open office? I didn’t think so. It’s probably loud, there’s little personal space or privacy, and it’s not sparking collaboration — at least not the meaningful kind. In “The Truth About Open Offices,” Ethan Bernstein and Ben Waber note that the designs companies invest in often conflict with the ways we actually want to work. From communal desks to enterprise chat apps, these arrangements dictate when and how we engage with others, instead of letting us make those decisions for ourselves. The result? We feel bombarded and become adept at signaling that our colleagues should stay away. (Let me adjust my giant headphones here.) A better approach, the authors say, is to pay closer attention to how employees interact, and then design spaces and systems to build on those interactions.

Given all the turmoil around the globe, the leaders on our 2019 list of the world’s best-performing CEOs demonstrate remarkable longevity. They’ve held their jobs for an average of 15 years, more than twice the average tenure of an S&P 500 CEO. They’ve also outperformed their peers both financially and on increasingly important environmental, social, and governance measures. It gives me no comfort at all, though, that once again there are way too few women on the list — a reflection of the persistent gender imbalance in positions of corporate power.

There used to be a shampoo ad in the U.S. that proclaimed, “Don't hate me because I’m beautiful.” I hated that ad. But it spoke to a stereotype that extends even to the business world. In her research, Leah Sheppard found that when attractive female leaders delivered bad news, they were viewed as less trustworthy than their less-attractive female counterparts. (In comparison, there were no differences in people’s reactions to attractive and less-attractive men in her study.) Why? Sheppard and her colleague suspect it has something to do with the trope of the evil seductress: a subconscious anxiety among both sexes that beautiful women will use their looks to manipulate people. Read more about her study in our latest Defend Your Research interview.

Thanks for reading,
Amy Bernstein

In the Issue:

The Truth About Open Offices

by Ethan Bernstein and Ben Waber

It’s never been easier for workers to collaborate — or so it seems. Open offices, messaging, and virtual-meeting software in theory make people more visible and available. But as the physical and technological structures for omnichannel collaboration have spread, evidence suggests they are producing less interaction — or less meaningful interaction — not more. As a result, many companies don’t understand how to achieve the kinds of collaboration they want. The authors provide guidance on reaching such an understanding. Companies can use new technologies to learn how team members are actually interacting. They can then experiment to learn how to achieve the types of exchanges they want: trying various office configurations, testing a pilot floor plans, and exploring the impact of small tweaks. This approach will help companies equip employees with the spaces and technologies that best support their needs.

The Best-Performing CEOs in the World, 2019

by Harvard Business Review Staff

HBR’s list relies on objective performance measures over a chief executive’s entire tenure — and these “career numbers” tend to hold steady. It’s no surprise, then, that 65 of last year’s CEOs reappear this year. They do so despite a change in our methodology, made to reflect the fact that a rapidly growing number of funds and individuals now focus on far more than bottom-line metrics when they make investment decisions: For the past four years we’ve weighted environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores to account for 20% of each CEO’s final ranking. This year we increased that share to 30%.

For Women in Business, Beauty Is a Liability

by Ania G. Wieckowski

Leah D. Sheppard, an assistant professor at Washington State University, and Stefanie K. Johnson, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, mocked up articles about company layoffs that included photos of the executives announcing the cuts. They then had study participants read the articles, rate the honesty of the leaders pictured, and decide whether they should be fired. When the executive shown was a woman, people found her to be less truthful and more worthy of termination if she was also highly attractive. The conclusion: For women in business, beauty is a liability. In this interview, Professor Sheppard discusses the far-reaching implications of her findings.