Transcript

Episode: The Ultimate Collaborative Workplace

Lead to Win is brought to you by LeaderBox, a monthly reading experience curated by leaders for leaders. Learn more at leaderbox.com.

Michael Hyatt: Hey, I’m Michael Hyatt.

Megan Hyatt Miller: And I’m Megan Hyatt Miller.

Michael:  And this is Lead to Win, our weekly podcast to help you win at work, succeed at life, and lead with confidence. This is going to be a little bit different episode than we’ve done in the past. A few weeks ago, we moved into our first permanent office space here at Michael Hyatt & Company. It’s a collaborative workspace just outside of Nashville, Tennessee. Today we’re going to pull back the curtain and give you a peek into how we created this unique team environment and why, because it has had a powerful impact on our team.

Megan: Collaborative workspaces are becoming more common as more and more employees work remotely, but productivity suffers when teams don’t have the environment they need to communicate and collaborate effectively.

Michael: So true.

Megan: In this episode, we’ll show you how to create the perfect hybrid workspace by incorporating four essential elements of team collaboration. We’ll also take you behind the scenes for a guided tour of our coworking space here at Michael Hyatt & Company. As a bonus, make sure to check out the show notes to see photos of our space. When we’re done, you’ll be able to bust down those silos and create a collaborative environment where your team can thrive.

Michael: Before we dig in, let me remind you that you can get every single episode of this podcast delivered straight to your computer or mobile device. Who wouldn’t want that? That includes occasional bonus episodes that are not released through any other channel. All you have to do is subscribe to Lead to Win on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts, and if you need help, just visit leadto.win/subscribe. We made it super easy. Thanks.

Megan: So, Dad, let’s talk about some bad work environments you’ve been in.

Michael: Like cube hell?

Megan: Like a lot of them. Right? For both of us, probably.

Michael: Well, yeah. I’ve worked in those environments that are the open-office environments, where it’s supposed to be trendy and make it easy for management to rearrange stuff every 30 days or so. Those are so disruptive, because you can’t really get any privacy, and you don’t feel valued. But I totally get it from a management standpoint. If you create the private offices for everybody, then it becomes this whole status thing and I think actually adds to the political environment where people have private offices. Who has the corner office? Who has the office that’s too small?

I can tell you, a lot of the issues I dealt with in corporate America were the sizes of people’s offices. Now, in our company, you went through an entire title and salary study to make sure we had equity. We literally (I’m not making this up)… At a company I was at previously, we had the dimensions of the size of the office that went with every position.

Megan: Oh my gosh.

Michael: You talk about trying to rearrange your architecture every time you promote somebody. And what happens if you promote somebody who now deserves a bigger office, but there are no bigger offices available? It becomes a whole thing.

Megan: So stressful.

Michael: It shouldn’t have to be that difficult. Part of what we’ve done here is kind of taken a rational, common sense approach. This will not work for everybody. We’d be the first to admit that, but it’s a pretty cool solution. One of the issues that has come up in the last seven or eight years is this whole on-site versus remote work. There are a lot of extremes in this. I remember having this debate probably about 10 years ago, and there were people who were emphatic on both sides.

Megan: Well, a lot of managers hate for their people to be off-site, because they feel like if they can’t see them, how do they know they’re really working?

Michael: Exactly. That’s what goes on.

Megan: Which is kind of funny to think about as the whole remote work thing has evolved. But then on the flip side, it has become very trendy to have a totally remote team, where you have no central office, no real home base, where everybody works from home all over the country, all over the world, in fact, different time zones. I think we’re just starting to see there are some problems with that too.

Michael: There are. At Michael Hyatt & Company we started as a complete remote workforce. Nobody was in the same office. There was no centralized office, and we started seeing the limitations of that, particularly as it relates to collaboration, but we didn’t want to create the traditional on-site work that required everybody to come in and have their own cube or their own specific office space. So we’ve come up with a unique hybrid solution, and we believe in the hybrid model for a few reasons. Do you want to start with this?

Megan: Yeah. Remote employees are generally happier and more productive. There are numerous studies that confirm the benefits of engagement, productivity, and focus, but according to a study of 1,100 remote workers, they can also feel left out.

Michael: That’s kind of the part of it that people don’t talk about. We certainly have seen that in our own employees, kind of a loneliness, a sense of not being connected. That’s where on-site collaboration sometimes becomes necessary. Studies show that workers who balance at-home and in-office time fare the best. Some tasks just flat-out require in-person work.

One of the things we did was we got this membership to a coworking space. That was our answer for a few years. Every time we needed to collaborate, we went to one of those spaces, we reserved a room, and we had our collaboration, but it just got to the point where we said, “Hey, you know what? We really need to do this for our own team.”

Megan: Well, one of the things that I found was that at the beginning of our business, the work we were doing was mostly with contractors, and it was transactional. They would provide a service that we requested, they would deliver the service, and that was kind of the end of it. Culture wasn’t a big part of what we were thinking about in those early days. It was really just about getting the work done, and we needed more hands than we had employees, so we used contractors.

Over time, what we realized was that to stay aligned, to do something bigger and better together, we really needed a culture. We needed collaboration. We needed alignment. Those are hard things to create in a transactional environment. Even Slack and some of the tools we use for interoffice communication, which are great and we love having access to, are just not enough to hold a company together. You have to be intentional about creating some kind of a glue, an identity, a corporate identity, a company identity, and a sense of belonging and sense of place. Those are things that, over time, are what enable you to scale, and if you don’t have them it can be a problem.

Michael: So true. Just to be crystal clear, what we’re talking about is we’ve created our own coworking space. It’s not an open-office concept; it’s a coworking space. Here’s the key distinction: everyone is invited, no one is required to come into the office. People can continue to work at home if they want to. If they find that the work they’re focusing on that day is better done off-site, no problem. Nobody is going to check up on you. Nobody is going to even question it. But anybody can come in here at any time they want to. That’s totally up to them.

Megan: So it’s remote work but central connection.

Michael: Yeah, that’s a good way to say it.

Megan: I think most of our people are here at least a couple of days a week, maybe more. Certainly there are mandatory meetings for teams and things like that, so they need to come in for those, but I would say at least one or two days a week people are working from home and getting the benefit of that.

Michael: Also, 90 percent of our people live in the Nashville area, so that makes it convenient. That’s another thing we studied and saw over time that it was very helpful if we had people local, but we have a few key important people, two of them in this room, who are not local to Nashville, and that’s fine too.

Megan: We’re working on it.

Michael: Yeah, we’re working on it. Okay, first we want to talk about the theory behind our space. That’s going to be pretty quick, and, Megan, we’re going to reverse roles here. I’m going to be asking you about it, because you were the most involved in designing the space, working with the designers, all of the different people who were involved. Then we’re going to take (and this is going to be fun) a guided tour.

So, let’s identify the four essential elements of a collaborative space. We distilled this after the fact, but I think, for those of you who are considering something like this, this will be very helpful to you. What’s the first element?

Megan: The first element is culture. The space you create defines who you are and how you work, whether you know it or not. It sets the mood for your team every day, and it’s the first impression for visitors, vendors, clients, prospective team members, even, which is something we often don’t think about. So what we want to do, intentionally, is to create a space that incorporates our values and kind of externalize them.

Some of them are really obvious, like we have our core values hanging out there. We’ll talk about that in a minute. Our values are communicated through the kind of furniture we picked, the finishes we have chosen, the flow of the space. All of those kinds of things communicate who we are to our team in important ways.

Michael: I think it also communicates how much we value the team, that we’re willing to make this kind of investment where I could take the money, as the owner of the company, as profit, but I wanted to invest this here because I esteem the people I work with. I want them to have a beautiful place to work in. If you want to go into a concrete warehouse and do card tables… Some businesses are low margin and that’s the best you can do. That does communicate something.

Maybe if you’re in a business where you’re negotiating hard with vendors and you really want to get the best price, probably a really luxurious space like we have isn’t going to help you, because people walk into that space and go, “Oh! They have some money to spend.” On the other hand, it is nice to have this kind of environment for our kind of business, for our clients and employees and everybody else we’re trying to get onboard.

Megan: I think it gives our team confidence. It makes them feel like what we’re doing is important. It conveys a level of authority, that the space feels beautiful and finished and defined as it is. I think that’s critical too.

Michael: Yeah, we experienced that this morning when a couple of guys walked in for a meeting. We happened to greet them. You and I both knew them, but they weren’t meeting with us. This was their first time into the space, and they were just like, “Wow! This is unbelievable.”

Megan: This is legit.

Michael: Yeah, we’re a legit business. Okay, what’s the second element?

Megan: The second element is connection. This second element of a collaborative workspace is one that’s easy to ignore if you’ve had a totally remote team. We knew it was very important to have a space where our team was able to build relationships with each other. This is often dismissed or forgotten altogether, but the relationships people have at work are often one of the biggest drivers in their performance. If they don’t feel connected, if they don’t feel engaged, then their performance is going to suffer and the turnover is going to be higher. So we wanted a space that encouraged that kind of connection and for people to build relationships with each other.

One of the things most offices do not have is a place where people are able to do focused work, to create. Very often you’ll hear people say, “Well, I have to do the real work at home.” If they have a traditional office, they go to the office and are in meetings all the time or talking with their coworkers, but they can’t really do head-down kind of work. We thought, “Well, we need to design that into the space,” because that’s a big part of what we do. We’re a very creative company, and we need an actual physical space where people can make things rather than have to do that off-site.

Michael: I’ll tell you why that’s important. When you’re employing younger people, like we do in our company, like almost everybody is under the age of 35 (except for me)…

Megan: And me.

Michael: Oh yeah. You’re on the other side of that too now. When they have small children at home and they’re trying to get work done at home, they don’t really have a focused creative space, so we wanted to offer that here as well. Sometimes, frankly, just for me… I do have a focused creative space at home, and I work 90 percent of the time at home when I’m trying to do that kind of work, but occasionally I just need a change of scenery, and that itself will stimulate creativity.

Megan: Exactly. Kind of like going to a coffee shop, except our coffee shop is quiet and is engineered for productivity.

Michael: Yeah, love that. Okay, the final element, the fourth element?

Megan: The fourth element is collaboration. This is one of the biggest reasons we decided to have an office space. We had nowhere to meet. As our teams grew from one or two people to five, six, seven, eight, nine people on a team, it gets harder and harder to accommodate those people. You can’t do it around somebody’s kitchen table very easily.

Michael: We’ve tried.

Megan: We’ve tried. You can do it remotely, but you really need to be face-to-face.

Michael: There’s value in Zoom conferencing or video conferencing or something like that. We use it all the time, but it’s still not the same as being face-to-face.

Megan: Right. We needed a place where we could get a whiteboard out, where we could come up with ideas, and we just didn’t have a place. Every time we went to schedule a meeting it was a huge pain, so we said, “We have to have our own space where we can collaborate as a team.” So we did.

Michael: Well, here has been the shocking thing to me. I should have known better, but not all the best collaboration can be scheduled. In other words, when you just bump into somebody at the office or have a point or something somebody else says stimulates you in the moment, that’s some of the best, most creative collaborative thinking that can happen.

Megan: Especially cross-functionally. That’s one of the things that was not happening as well as we would have liked to have seen before, because there’s sort of natural siloing that happens in a remote context, but now everybody is here together, and very often people from different teams will bump into each other and rope each other into things that they might not have remembered to otherwise, and that has facilitated better teamwork and better results.

Michael: Okay. Let’s get up and do a guided tour. Are you ready for it?

Megan: Yeah, let’s do it.

Michael: Let’s start by walking into this space just like we do every morning or whenever we come in and just like all of our teammates do. How would you describe what we’re looking at right now, Megan?

Megan: This is the connect space, and this is kind of like a luxury hotel combined with a Starbucks.

Michael: Perfect. That’s exactly what it is. You see a bar in front of us.

Megan: Marble countertop that you can pull up a leather stool to.

Michael: Leather stools. Behind that there’s this amazing coffee machine that I really want to get at home. This is like the best coffee machine you could get.

Megan: It is. We have a fridge full of La Croix. It’s kind of like… Do you remember that show MTV Cribs? They’d always open up the fridge. Inside our fridge, if you’re wondering, is La Croix.

Michael: And all kinds of other drinks too.

Megan: All kinds of other drinks in there.

Michael: Cold brew.

Megan: Cold brew, all kinds of stuff. We also have a water machine, all kinds of stuff on the back side of the island. It’s like drink central in here. We have a beautiful skylight. We get natural light. We have plants that are being delivered right now. Every week we have greenery that comes from a local florist in town that just makes it feel alive.

Michael: Because that’s what you do in a hotel lobby.

Megan: Yeah. Really, what inspired this for me is that there’s a hotel in Chicago you and I have been to before called the Soho House, and it has an amazing lobby. I thought, “That’s what I want our office to feel like.” I want our people to feel as special as guests do when they come into a hotel.

Michael: One of the things we don’t do here is we don’t charge the employees… First of all, we never call our people employees, but we don’t charge the employees so much for the drinks. We don’t have a vending machine. This is family.

Megan: Right. Come on in.

Michael: We provide it. Be responsible, but eat enough, as much as you want. Drink as much as you want.

Megan: This is our version of the water cooler. This is just a really nice water cooler where we create space for our people to connect.

Michael: And a lot of business happens here.

Megan: A lot of business has happened at this island.

Michael: There’s also, I should say, a beautiful rendition of our logo.

Megan: Laser cut.

Michael: Laser cut on the back wall. That’s nice too.

Megan: It’s really great. One of the things I love about this connect space, which is kind of a kitchen sort of space, is a beautiful herringbone floor. This was laid by artisans piece by piece like a puzzle over several days. It turns out this is really complicated. It’s salvaged wood, and it’s just beautiful. You walk in the door, and it’s a showstopper to give you that first impression right when you walk in the door.

Michael: We should also say the colors are… How would you describe them? Neutral?

Megan: Yeah, the colors are neutral, but they’re not boring. We wanted things to feel calming and elegant but not too over the top. We didn’t want it to be loud. We wanted it to be the backdrop for the community and creativity we’re trying to inspire here.

Michael: The thing that’s so good about you managing this project… I should say also I didn’t see this space until the day before we unveiled it to all of our teammates. That’s how much I trusted you with this, because you think through things like color psychology and the subtle parts of the brand that would be lost on a lot of people but all add up to an experience that we wanted.

Megan: I should say, by the way, I had the help of a fantastic interior designer, Elaina Siren, from Red Leaf Interiors. Without her there’s no way I could have made all of these decisions, because it was a lot of decisions to make.

Michael: Feel free to contact her for your design projects.

Megan: That’s right. She’s really wonderful.

Michael: Okay, let’s go over to the create space.

Megan: That sound you just heard is the glass door systems that separate each of these spaces. They’re beautiful black-framed, custom-made glass doors that are soundproof so that we’re able to contain the sound in each space as we want. They’re frosted in the middle for privacy and focus.

Michael: And kind of floor to ceiling. We should mention these are like 12-foot ceilings all through the space, which gives it an elegant, classy look.

Megan: Now we’re in the create space. This is kind of like the best of the Admirals Club. You know how when you’ve missed a flight or your flight is delayed and you have to hang out at the airport you’re like, “Oh, I’m so glad I have somewhere to go away from the hustle and bustle.” Well, this is kind of that space. The rule in here is that it’s quiet. This is where you come to do focused work without distractions. There’s room for probably 10 or 15 people in here, but they’re not talking to each other. There’s a row of…

Michael: We’re violating all that right now.

Megan: I know. We’re really disturbing people.

Michael: Mike is trying to do work behind us.

Megan: I know. Sorry, Mike.

Michael: And we’re just talking.

Megan: There’s a row of stand-up desks along an exposed brick wall that have big curved monitors, so our folks from our finance team and our development team are able to stand there and see side-by-side screens. There are stools they can sit on. The desks are adjustable, so if you’re short or tall it doesn’t really matter. If you want to sit or stand it works. Good lighting in here. There’s also throughout the whole space a white-noise system. You don’t really notice it, but it helps to buffer the noise. Oftentimes in big working spaces it’s really loud and echoey and sound bounces around and it’s kind of deafening. That’s not the case here. We really thought of that in advance.

Michael: It’s super calming too.

Megan: It’s so calming. The colors in here are a little lighter, intentionally, just to facilitate that creativity and openness. There’s a big seating group in the middle with beautiful wing-backed chairs in a grouping and then a separate seating area with a…

Michael: What would you call this style of furniture?

Megan: That’s a good question. Our designer, Elaina, said it was kind of like masculine chic. I’m not sure if that’s really a thing. It’s sort of transitional I think. There’s a little bit of throwback to some turn-of-the-century stuff but also some modern pieces. I don’t know. It’s just kind of a hodgepodge, but it works.

Michael: One of my favorite things is this whiteboard.

Megan: Yeah, we have a glass whiteboard on a wall, so if somebody wants to work out some ideas over there, that can happen. There just are a lot of places where you can sit, kind of like at a Starbucks. There’s a place to put your drink at every table, but there’s a comfortable place to sit and work. I should say I went to Atlanta, and I sat in probably 30 chairs.

Michael: Personally.

Megan: Personally. My own rear end was put to the test. I wanted to make sure every chair was really comfortable, because we’ve all been in hotel lobbies or other places where it looks great, but nobody wants to sit there. They have like two or three great chairs. In this space, every single chair is comfortable and somewhere you’d want to sit for hours and do work.

Michael: I’m going to take your word for that, because I haven’t tried all of them, but the ones I have sat in were amazing.

Megan: There are a lot of chairs.

Michael: Talk about the shelving over here, because this is also unique to us and cool.

Megan: We have some built-in shelving over here that displays our products. It’s floor-to-ceiling with library lights in it, kind of built like cabinetry, and we have our products displayed on it. It’s really pretty, and it feels like kind of a brand showcase on either side of another seating group that has a big leather Chesterfield sofa in the middle.

Michael: One of the things I love about that… We also have posters of my books up. I think in a business like ours when we’re remote, everything can get kind of abstract, and you’re separated. Actually, Karl Marx said this. We’re sort of alienated from our work. Here, the work, the work product for sure, is right here where we can see it and touch it and handle it, and it’s pretty cool.

Megan: It is. One of the fun things we’ve done is intentionally put photos of our team all over the space. These are not all professional photos, and they’re not all photos of us, thank goodness, because that would be weird.

Michael: And boring.

Megan: But they’re photos of fun things we’ve done together with our team over the years. Some of those team members aren’t with us anymore. They’ve moved on to do other things or we’ve been in places that we probably won’t go back to, but it’s so special, because every one captures a memory moment in time in our growth as an organization. I can only imagine that as the years go by those will become more and more precious to us.

Michael: Megan, tell us about this exposed brick, because that was something we had to excavate.

Megan: In this building there was exposed brick on both sides of the walls, but it was covered up and in really bad shape. We made a decision to go ahead and tear off the sheetrock and restore the brick. It was very painstaking. It took a long time.

Michael: And expensive.

Megan: It was very expensive to do, but it really restored this space to its original beauty and I think adds a lot of warmth and texture that you just can’t get from regular walls.

Michael: One of the things I’ve been meaning to ask is we have living plants everywhere. Wouldn’t it have been a lot cheaper to use artificial plants? No maintenance, and don’t they look almost the same?

Megan: I don’t know if it would have been cheaper, but it definitely would have been easier. I personally am a little bit of a plant lady. I have plants all over my house. I’m not a cat lady, but I’m a plant lady. I think there’s something about having living things inside. Not only does it purify the air and all that stuff that we already know, but it just feels good.

Michael: For reasons you can’t articulate.

Megan: Yeah, you really can’t articulate it, but it feels like you’re in a living, breathing space. It’s not plastic. There’s something about it that feels alive, and I think that translates in other areas.

Michael: I think that’s a good example of where we didn’t cut corners for the sake of expense or efficiency, but we just felt like all this stuff added together matters. By the way, it’s a little bit like when we did the Full Focus Planner. Most people won’t know why that’s such a quality product, but for those of us who have been in publishing, it’s a sewn binding, it’s super quality paper…

Megan: We thought about every detail.

Michael: Real silk ribbons, all that. Again, people wouldn’t be able to say, “Oh, that’s why I bought it,” but it all adds up to a brand experience that we’re after even in this space.

Megan: That’s right.

Michael: Okay. Now let’s go to the collaborate space.

Megan: Before we get into the collaborate space I just want to make a note that we have Zoom booths here.

Michael: Zoom booths?

Megan: Zoom booths at Michael Hyatt & Company, which are kind of like the Doctor Who phone booth but high tech. These also have the same soundproof doors that the create space we were just in has, and they have monitors up on the wall, kind of like a concrete countertop with a keypad. They have cords you can plug into your computer, webcams.

Michael: Why do you call them Zoom rooms?

Megan: Well, they’re Zoom booths because we use Zoom, which is our video conferencing software. We do a lot of our virtual meetings that way.

Michael: If you haven’t tried Zoom, you have to try that: zoom.us.

Megan: It’s fantastic. Our conference rooms are also Zoom rooms, but these are like mini Zoom booths. This is where you go if you want to have a conversation that’s confidential or a meeting or maybe do a webinar or something like that. They’re soundproof. I don’t know. It’s just a great way to avoid having a lot of loud conversations or people taking up a conference room when they really just need to have a private conversation.

Michael: Are these getting used?

Megan: Absolutely. They’re getting used every day.

Michael: I just wanted to make sure.

Megan: We have three of those, by the way. If you’re wondering how big they are, they’re probably about four by six.

Michael: Kind of smallish. They’re like a closet. All right. One of the things that’s very noticeable when you move into the collaboration area, which is the biggest area of the entire office space, is you have these hanging chandeliers.

Megan: These are really beautiful. These were original-ish to the space. They’re definitely very old, probably like 1940s, something like that. They sort of have a “circus” feel to them. They have a big brass ring with little lights on the outside and a globe in the middle. I feel like they’re kind of like the jewelry of the space.

Michael: They’re very unique. This is not something you’re going to find at Home Depot.

Megan: Not corporate. Kind of furthering that hotel lobby sort of feel. When you walk in this space, it’s just off the kitchen, and there are two functions to it. There’s an open working space that has, again, several seating areas.

Michael: Think Starbucks.

Megan: Yeah, kind of like Starbucks. There’s a big community table in the middle that has six chairs, and that’s often full of people with headphones on doing work or having an impromptu meeting. Then there is a sofa with a couple of armchairs across from it. Again, a place where people could have an impromptu meeting. I sat there the other day and picked out logos for a new product we’re creating. We have our core values displayed here that are just beautifully designed in bright colors, kind of like a large-scale poster format on the wall. That’s really the big visual feature in this area. Your eye goes there immediately.

Michael: It is beautiful. It’s like artwork. It’s not just like, “Well, let’s just hang the corporate values, the words, in some cheap frame we got at Target.”

Megan: Exactly. These were professionally framed.

Michael: And custom designed.

Megan: They’re really beautiful. That’s kind of like the center of this space. Again, on one wall it’s all exposed brick. Then we have three rooms along the other side that are conference rooms. We have two team huddle rooms and then a conference room at the end.

Michael: What’s the difference between a huddle room and a conference room?

Megan: The huddle rooms are a little bit like the conference room on Air Force One.

Michael: Like we’ve all been there.

Megan: In my many experiences on Air Force One.

Michael: In my imagination.

Megan: This is what I imagined it would be like. These are about 12 by 12, and there is a round concrete conference table. That might sound kind of weird, but it’s actually finished like a countertop. It’s about two inches thick on a big iron pedestal that’s round underneath it. It’s really beautiful. It has a little bit of an industrial feel, but in a good way, surrounded by six leather chairs.

Michael: Also electrical outlets all around the table so it’s easy for people to plug in their laptops.

Megan: They’re screwed into the underneath side of the table. You know how you go to a meeting and everybody is fighting over the one outlet that’s on the wall and it doesn’t reach? It just drives you crazy. We wanted to avoid that. There’s a TV on the wall that makes this a Zoom room. This is also equipped with the Zoom technology. There’s an iPad that runs that so we can have high-tech meetings with webcams in two places where we can see the whiteboard and the attendees. We can also use a digital whiteboard as a part of the Zoom app. These are really functional. They get used almost all day every day, Monday through Wednesday, probably.

Michael: There’s also a physical whiteboard.

Megan: There’s also another glass whiteboard in there.

Michael: Because we can’t talk without whiteboards.

Megan: Then there’s a bookshelf displaying more of our products. We really didn’t want it to feel corporate in any way, so we did some things that were intentionally residential in feel, like bookshelves, like accessories and things that you might not normally see in an office but warm the space up and make it feel welcoming.

Michael: Talk about that iPad that’s outside the wall.

Megan: This is really cool. If you can imagine, there’s this big glass wall that’s a black-framed wall with a frosted glass center, and then on the outside of that is an iPad mini that’s in a mount that has our scheduling software in it.

Michael: This is so cool.

Megan: This is so cool. If you’re wondering, “How do you handle who’s going to be in the meeting rooms and how do you know who’s in there and all that?” the software we use for this is called Teem. This enables us to go into a calendar to reserve rooms. Our executive assistants do this regularly, or you can do it right on the iPad itself by clicking the “Reserve” button. You can see what meetings are coming up and whether or not the room is available. It lets people know if they can use it on an impromptu basis or whether it’s booked for the day.

Michael: A lot of these systems were set up by Shawn Lemon at thedigitalorganizer.com. He does great work, anything related to Apple software or Mac software. All of these rooms have Apple TVs in them as well so we could project things. If we get bored we can watch a movie. Just kidding. Actually we could.

Megan: We haven’t done that yet.

Michael: We haven’t tried that yet.

Megan: We use AirPlay a lot, that kind of stuff.

Michael: Now let’s go to the big conference room.

Megan: This is one of my favorite parts of our space.

Michael: Haven’t you said that for every room?

Megan: I know. It’s like picking children. I love them all. This is a little like Frank Lloyd Wright’s den, if I don’t say so myself.

Michael: It’s pretty magnificent.

Megan: This space is kind of a combination of a larger conference room, an executive conference room (of course, our whole team can use it), and then a living room setup. We have it divided into two parts. We have a big conference table that has 10 chairs around it.

Michael: Same kind of leather chairs that we have in the huddle rooms.

Megan: We have a big walnut slab table that’s solid walnut. It’s so beautiful.

Michael: It is gorgeous.

Megan: It feels really warm. Again, the exposed brick wall, a big glass whiteboard, a big Zoom-enabled TV. It’s like 70 inches or something like that.

Michael: I just noticed for the first time we actually have two cameras.

Megan: We do. The purpose of having two cameras is one to look at the participants who are around the table. We can switch back and forth on our iPad for this. Then the other that’s pointed at the whiteboard, so if there’s someone joining virtually who needs to see what’s happening on the whiteboard, that’s pointed at the whiteboard.

Michael: That’s the first time I knew that.

Megan: Yeah, that’s the thinking on that. This also has the beautiful glass doors that are separating it from the big space, and then it has this living room setup, which is so cozy.

Michael: So cozy.

Megan: We have a big dark ink blue velvet sofa that I think is our best sofa in the whole space, a couple of wool plaid chairs that are just beautiful up against a brick wall. This is a cozy area where we might have a conversation that is a little more confidential and we want to be able to close the door, but we want that more casual feel. We’re brainstorming something with the executive team or something like that.

Michael: Has that sofa been nap tested?

Megan: We’ve had one of our babies nap test it. We have several babies who were born this year, and baby Drew, who is the son of Aleshia Curry, our production assistant… She had him take a nap on it recently. He slept, so it must be great.

Michael: I may have to do that myself before long.

Megan: Yeah, it feels like a nap.

Michael: Talk about these big windows.

Megan: In this space we have two big windows that let in a lot of natural light. Lighting was really important to us. We did not want this space to feel dark. Part of what makes it feel inspirational and enjoyable to be in is to have that natural light, so we really took advantage of that. We kept the window treatments minimal. They’re simple linen drapes. We have shades over them so we make sure if we have a meeting using the Zoom setup we have that we don’t get a glare on the TV if we don’t want to. It’s just a really comfortable, cozy space. We’ve had a lot of great ideas in here already, tons of breakthroughs. Our team loves to use it. It’s just a wonderful place to be.

Michael: Another little touch that might go unnoticed… Gail has done this in our home too. The Wi-Fi access is actually in a frame on the wall.

Megan: It makes it really easy.

Michael: Inevitably, when you have guests in, the first thing they ask is, “What is the Wi-Fi access?”

Megan: So we have that everywhere.

Michael: We have that everywhere for people to do it.

Megan: Little frames on the side tables, on the wall. It’s all over the place. The other thing that’s neat about this space is that it has its own air conditioning system. That’s true also of our smaller conference rooms, which we call our huddle rooms. The reason for that is (I feel like this is true for everybody) I know you’ve been in a room for a meeting that was hot, and it is just miserable, where you can’t adjust the temperature, and it’s like you can’t even focus at a certain point or, alternately, it’s freezing cold and you can’t adjust that. It’s terrible. We wanted to make sure there was temperature control in all of these enclosed spaces so that people could adjust them as needed.

Michael: That’s great. We really try to use technology and automation where we can, so all of the lights go off at a specific time. They come on at a specific time.

Megan: They’re all on a Lutron system.

Michael: We have a fully automated entrance, so the doors are locked all the time, but all our teammates have to have is the iPhone app, and that automatically opens the door. Okay, I hope you guys enjoyed that. That wraps up our tour of the new Michael Hyatt & Company coworking space. We’ve seen the four elements that’ll make your workspace a model team environment. They’re culture, connection, creation, and collaboration. I hope you saw that as we took the guided tour. As we close, I just want to remind you that the design of your workspace matters. It’s a great opportunity to set the tone and the direction for your entire workforce. Meg, I’m going to reverse this. Do you have any final thoughts?

Megan: Well, I think it’s easy to become utilitarian about space and to just think about the functions.

Michael: Or the cost.

Megan: The truth is design matters, and design and functionality together are going to give you the best result in terms of teamwork and productivity. This is one of those areas, as a leader, that if you invest in, your team will really feel it. I think what you’ll notice is a level of teamwork that did not exist before.

Michael: Guys, thanks again for joining us on Lead to Win. Remember that you can see photos of our space, read a transcript of this show, and find other valuable resources at leadto.win. Check it out.

Megan: Also please tell your friends and colleagues about it, and please subscribe to this program wherever you listen to podcasts or visit leadto.win/subscribe. This program is copyrighted by Michael Hyatt & Company. All rights reserved. Our producer is Nick Jaworski.

Michael: Our writers are Joel Miller and Lawrence Wilson.

Megan: Our production assistant is Aleshia Curry.

Michael: We invite you to join us next week when we’ll talk about a problem that many leaders are afraid to mention: goal shame. Until then, lead to win.