Proximity Matters

When work involves sharing information, the people involved should sit together. The reason why is captured in a passage I came across describing how currency brokers work in the London Review of Books:

Brokers in major money-market currencies don’t work as individuals, but in teams of up to a dozen or more, sitting close together in subsections of large, open-plan offices. Good eyesight is useful – trainees still sometimes called ‘board boys’ write unfilled bids to borrow and offers to lend on whiteboards surrounding clusters of brokers’ desks, and you can occasionally see a broker using binoculars to read a distant whiteboard or screen – but a more crucial skill is ‘broker’s ear’: the capacity to monitor what is being said by all the other brokers at nearby desks, despite the noise and while at the same time holding a voicebox conversation with a client. As one broker put it to me: ‘When you’re on the desk you’re expected to hear everyone else’s conversations as well, because they’re all relevant to you, and if you’re on the phone speaking to someone about what’s going on in the market there could be a hot piece of information coming in with one of your colleagues that you would want to tell your clients, so you’ve got to be able to hear it coming in as you’re speaking to the person.’

When you first encounter it, broker’s ear is disconcerting. You’ll be sitting beside a broker at his desk, thinking he’s fully engaged in his conversation with you, when suddenly he’ll respond to a question or comment, from several desks away, that you simply hadn’t registered.

I know this idea runs counter to tradition in a lot of places – usually seating is by seniority (all the executives in the corners and along the windows) and functions. In my industry (mortgages), loan officers are in one section, processors in another, underwriters somewhere else, and closers are over there). This is an organization-centric arrangement – good for the egos of managers who can look over their domain, and good for training people within their function. But, separating functions requires information handoffs, and inevitably there are fumbles and failures to communicate. For example, I’ve heard closers asking customers to resubmit information directly to them because it’s easier than finding out if it’s already been provided to someone else in the work flow.

Putting people in earshot of each other greatly reduces the effort needed to keep everyone in the loop, and results in better execution. It’s also much harder to maintain “us versus them” distinctions when everyone sits together.