Entrepreneurship Lesson #321: On The Importance of Sitting Together

At the time when I ran a publishing startup, our first office was a small 200-square feet place, on the 2nd floor of a bank branch, c0nsisting of one irregular shaped room. We started off with just 3 people and the space felt a little tight. So you can imagine what it was like when we expanded to 6 – and used it for storing thousands of copies of the magazine that we published every quarter.

That said, there was something really productive about all of us working out of the same open (albeit slightly claustrophobic) space. The fact that there was no walls made collaboration easier and made it really easy to resolve issues quickly and work on team tasks effectively. After all, if there was any problems, all we had to do was turn the chair around and we could resolve it right away.

Eventually when we moved to a larger space consisting of 2 separate rooms, we had to divide up the staff and the effect was immediate. Interaction among people sitting in one room vs. people sitting in the other decreased immensely. You bonded with the people closer to you and grew apart from people in the other room – even though they were less than 50 feet away.

I would take it even step further now. In the currently startup, we have a similar environment where there is just have one giant open area with many tables strewn about (there are multiple startups working out of this incubator). That works very well. In our case, we have 4 tables put together and people sitting around them, facing one another. Amazingly enough, you can even see the same effect on a micro-scale with the people who sit next to each other. There is more interaction going on among those who sit side by side, rather than across the table.

Perhaps some of that is self-selected – we put people with common responsibilities closer to one another. But I believe  it goes beyond that. It’s the little things that begin adding up – whether it’s sharing and discussing a latest article or showing the person next to you an email you want their opinion on – without even noticing, these things end up bringing you closer together professionally.

Maybe this is where the “right-hand man” expression is coming from…