When I was in college studying for my BS in Computer Engineering degree back in the early 90’s, I took a part-time position at a company that made audio recording devices for use in professional recording studios. I was a test engineer on the manufacturing floor in a small warehouse. There was no room for decorating your area on the floor but in the office area where all the engineers were, they were plenty of room in their cubicles to display artifacts and show a sense of culture in the organization. The founders of the company were very much the creative type. They encouraged the displays of oneself however one chose to. I’ll never forgot this one guy’s cubicle that had netting draped from the ceiling with various toys and other funky items hanging from it. Inside the cubicle were posters, hand drawings, more toys and just stuff everywhere. When entering the space, you kind of felt like you were entering a dark hole that was his creative chamber. The darkness was created by netting along with the hanging items blocking the lighting from above. The glow of the computer screen seemed to be the main lighting in his area. The space definitely fit his personality; quirky, mysterious and a creative genius.
You talk about two different things in this, creativity in a organization and the artifacts. I think being able to be creative and make where you work feel like a little home away from home, or even just to remind you of home is always a good thing. Where I work, we all share an office, no one has their own space. However, we all have little sections of the walls where we will mainly put up pictures. Post of the pictures consist of our dogs, we play a game of who's is cuter and who's isn't that cute lol.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like such a cool cubicle. I love when cubicles are decorated with people's passions and joys. You can learn a lot about a person by what they have in their cubicle. It's a great conversation starter and a great way to meet new people in the company that you don't interact with daily. There was an episode of "Better of Ted" in which each person's cubicle was decorated by upper management. There were four basic cubicle designs that included astronomy, cats, sports and one other that I can't remember at the moment. The episode was based on raising employee moral by allowing them to make their workspace more personable. Being that the boss was moronic, everyone was involuntarily assigned a cubicle decoration that eventually led to the formation of groups by "interest" type... but that's a whole 'nother story...
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