Furniture Find

Over the past few months, Teammates has partnered with three new clients who were thrilled to discover the furniture that was "included" in the new building lease, could actually be reconfigured and updated with new fabrics and components specific to supporting their team. 

Through close collaboration with the client, project manager and design team, Teammates helped realize savings of over forty percent when compared to buying all new furniture.  These customers asked great questions early on in the process and discovered a real opportunity to update the existing furniture with fabrics, finishes and even different panel heights to support their employees needs.

If you find yourself considering a potential space that might have existing furniture included, seek out a furniture resource and have them take a look. You just might fall in to a real Furniture Find!

COCREATE

Teknion's unique hardcover book that explores the revolution that is happening in the places we work.  Humorous illustrations and conceptual ideas are sure to get the creative juices flowing!

To request a free copy, send an email with "COCREATE" in the subject line to dawes@team-mates.com (please include your name and mailing address).

What, exactly, is collaboration?

Collaboration is thought to be the exchange of ideas and sharing of resources, formally or informally, to achieve a goal that one person alone could not achieve.  Of course, some people, haunted by nightmarish tales of experiences of "design by committee," may be less than comfortable with the concept. So, to give you a better sense of how it works (and help you get your clients on side), we lay down a few principles that challenge commonly held beliefs:

Great ideas seldom leap fully formed from the mind of a single creator

When creative sparks fly between people with differing perspectives, each person makes connections they hadn't before considered.  Their habitual ways of thinking are broken, and new avenues of possibility open up.  It's synergy at work.  Even Thomas Edison, who created over 400 patents in six years and whose name evokes individual brilliance, worked with a team of 14.

Collaboration does not mean attending a meeting

While 11 million formal meetings occur daily across the United States, studies estimate that 50% of this time is wasted and 91% of busy professionals admit to daydreaming during them.  Conversely, informal conversations at work, traditionally considered "wasted time," can actually be fertile sites for collaboration.  The bottom line?  Productivity and creativity can't always be scheduled.

Collaboration can happen anywhere with anyone

It's not about  management getting everyone "on the same page,"coordinating tasks and dividing labor to get the job done more efficiently.  Rather it's an exercise in sharing ideas that come from different points of view.  Collaboration can occur between people of different departments or even organizations; one needn't be a member of a designated "team" to make a valuable contribution.  It can happen in the cafeteria, online, in the hallway, or even on your way to the printer, when something on a white board or screen inspires you to step in to share your insights.  Creative collaboration, then, is an organic process, one that can't be prescribed or predicted.