Square Feet
Changing a Culture by Removing Walls
By JONATHAN VATNER
Published: February 9, 2010
In November, after 45 years in cloistered offices at 777 Third Avenue, the advertising giant Grey Group moved to an open-plan layout in the International Toy Center building at 200 Fifth Avenue.
Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
The Grey Group’s offices at 200 Fifth Avenue have open spaces with long, continuous work tables to foster greater collaboration.
Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
Natalia Schultz, left, chief talent officer for Grey New York, with Tor Myhren, the advertising firm’s chief creative officer.
The change was astonishing — and a little unsettling — for the 1,200 employees, who now occupy just six floors instead of 26. Before, most everyone had an office; now there are three in the entire company. And the floor that houses the creative and production departments lacks even cubicle walls.
Grey, founded in 1917 and known these days for the frequent references to it on “Mad Men” and its talking baby campaign for E*Trade, is far from the first company to try an open layout.
Notably, Alcoa’s corporate center in Pittsburgh has had an open plan since 1998, and when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took office in 2002, he sat with his top deputies and aides in an open office with low dividers, an arrangement that has since been adopted by almost a dozen other New York City departments. But at Grey, dispensing with the traditional hierarchy shook the company to its roots — as it was meant to.
Tor Myhren, the chief creative officer of Grey New York, the largest subsidiary, said the change was essential to foster transparency and collaboration. “Grey was a symbol of what advertising used to be: very slow and not very nimble,” Mr. Myhren said. “We’ve created a faster environment, one that is more open and collaborative. This space reflects what’s happening in the digital world.”
Despite the appeal of the new building — and the dreary seclusion of the old one — it took a grand effort to convince employees that improving the company meant dispensing with their private offices. Management spent a full year introducing the open plan to employees, and in coming months, a business psychologist will hold “space therapy” sessions to ease any lingering concerns.
“Grumblings don’t just disappear at night,” said Joel Mausner, the business psychologist whom Grey Group is employing to ensure the move will not leave employees unhappy. “They go underground. Part of the point of my intervention is to air these things out so they don’t fester.”
The interior space, designed by Studios Architecture, reflects the trend in office design of combining industrial and residential elements. Slabs of raw, reclaimed oak line many of the walls and the bar area (the firm has a number of liquor clients).
Edison bulbs hang naked from the ceiling, and long butcher-block tables provide ad hoc collaborative spaces. Surprisingly — but somehow appropriately — a furnished bedroom with glass walls sits on the second floor.
The bedroom “actually does get use,” Mr. Myhren said. “I mean, not that kind of use.”
Even so, the office maintains some original details from the building, which opened in 1909 and is part of the Ladies’ Mile Historic District. The carpet was torn out to reveal mosaic tile and terrazzo beneath, and in places, holes were carved out of the new ceiling to showcase the old one.
Grand arched windows offer prized views of Madison Square Park. And the furniture, much of which was selected from among discards from Grey’s history, represents just about every decade back to the ’40s.
Dr. Mausner said the newly office-less employees might be feeling both what he called intrusion anxiety and exposure anxiety. He is planning to hold three types of sessions: one to let employees mourn the loss of the old building; a second to come up with ways to handle potential drawbacks of the open plan; and a third to help workers use the new space to its full potential.
“A lot of people think it’s a bunch of nonsense, but it can be very helpful to reach a collective understanding of how they’re going to behave differently in the new space,” Dr. Mausner said.
Before the big move, anxiety levels were high. Not only were employees concerned about losing their walls, but they also had to drastically condense their files and possessions. Those in creative positions got one box; everyone else got two. The creative and production area has long, continuous work tables; the other floors have separate desks with low cubicle walls.
“I had a shoe closet in my office,” said Natalia Schultz, whose title is chief talent officer for Grey New York. “I still only got two boxes.” Because Ms. Schultz is in human resources, she required a small office in the new building, but it is not big enough for her footwear collection. “Now the bulk of my shoes live in the trunk of my car,” she said.
On moving day, most everyone settled right in, and the office’s obvious beauty and functionality kept complaints to a minimum. “I think it was more fear of the unknown,” said Alex Lubar, vice president for new business at Grey New York. “Fear of the implications of an open space. No more affairs and siestas. Or at least if you’re going to do them you have to be more theatrical about it.”
Employees are still adjusting to the lack of privacy. They are working on a gesture to replace the traditional knock on the door and have learned to duck into a conference room to take important calls.
Unofficial house rules have emerged, too. For example, Ms. Schultz said, “Tuna should never be consumed in the open plan.”
Some longtime employees miss their old offices. For Rob Baiocco, executive creative director at Grey New York, the move was bittersweet. “I spent 17 years of my life going into the old building,” he said. “It was my first job in New York, and I had a little bit of a bond with it. I knew it like the back of my hand.”
Over all, however, Mr. Baiocco said he was thrilled about the new space. “It’s a little bit like the old Yankee Stadium,” he said. “The new stadium kind of blows it away, but people were still fond of the old one.”
