Is your office layout keeping you from being effective?

I work in an open plan office..

Noise carries.

I like to listen to podcasts while i work, I also occasionally like to listen to music. The colleagues that I share the space with hate any kind of noise - to the point where any time they're around I'm forced into headphones, which doesn't work - the sound is too intense, too "right there", it forces me to concentrate on the sound instead of the work. Counter intuitively, background music actually makes me more effective by giving me something to block out.

The point is, I'm sitting with two other people who's working style is completely incompatible with mine. Downstairs there are at least 3 other people who work in a similar way to me - but they're from our engineering team (I'm in the sales team).

15 years ago it would have made sense that our office was organized by function - most things relied on paper, communications infrastructure was pretty average and everyone had an assistant of some kind (because admin work inevitably involved something cumbersome and inefficient).

These are the days of hot desks, remote working, video conferencing, collaboration tools and speed of thought communication. Concern for work life balance has lead us to build gyms and enforce responsible working hours and productivity concerns have us painting our walls green and running classes on emotional intelligence. After the walls have been painted and classes run, we send the same people back to their desks to work with the same person who's working habits have been distracting them and annoying them for years and wonder why their effectiveness doesn't increase greatly.

Next time you get a chance to move desks, try it. Sit with someone in an unrelated function who likes to work in the same environment you do, might surprise you just how much more you get done.