The Achievement Habit (17 page)

When we first moved into the permanent d.school space, we had just hired a woman named Kim to be our chief financial person. Previously, she had worked for many years in the dean’s office, and she was very familiar with the Stanford finance system. After two weeks she told me that she was finding it difficult to do her work in the open d.school space. I immediately responded that I could solve her problem. We purchased a new desktop computer for her and set her up in my private office. I gave her my office key and assured her she would be the only person using that office.

After about ten days I noticed Kim was back at her original computer station in the open-space community office; she never went back to the private office. Once she had experienced the feelings of camaraderie, she could not go back to the old seclusion of the private office; it was too isolating for her. I knew just how she felt. We eventually moved the computer out of the private office and into our common space. (I wonder if the computer also felt a sense of relief.)

Before we moved to the open floor plan, I had been in private offices my entire professional life. I now realize how much better equipped the d.school is for individual and group relations. It also does wonders for information flow and communications. When I come in to work, it feels very much like coming home to my family.

We do, of course, all have times when we need to think or work without interruptions. When that happens, there’s a simple signal: we put on headphones, and then everyone knows not to bother us. We can also remove ourselves from that space and go into one of the private rooms if we need quiet.

If you have any input into your work space, try opening it up to a more nonhierarchical setup. Give yourself some time to get used to it, and then see if you work better in a collaborative environment.

Physical position is very important. Unless I am giving a theater-style lecture, my favorite teaching arrangement is to have everyone sit in a circle. Moreover, I insist on the circle being as small and as perfectly round as possible. The closer the people are to each other physically, the better the group functions. I have conducted many experiments with all sorts of groups, and
the results are overwhelmingly in favor of very tight circles. This falls in line with the design thinking concept of radical collaboration—a circle means there’s no hierarchy of who sits where. There are no “good seats,” “bad seats,” or preconceived notions about the types of people who sit in front (brown-nosers) or back (class clowns and slackers). It means that we’re all looking at each other, encouraging eye contact and connections among people.

Changing the circle’s diameter changes the feeling in the group in a very palpable way. If we want everyone to participate, then no one can be left out physically; everyone needs to be on the same level. If someone sits back a little from the circumference, she is left out emotionally as well as physically. And those too far inside exclude others by blocking their view of fellow participants.

If you find yourself on the periphery of a group and notice that you feel left out, try moving to a more central location; chances are you will feel more involved in what is going on. Change your location, and you will change how you feel about the event you’re attending. When you have trouble really engaging or working on a goal, see if your location is supporting or hindering your efforts. It’s hard to get noticed at work if you’re always sitting closest to the exit, and it’s more likely you’ll put in more effort in your workout class if you’re in the instructor’s sight line.

I am often in a situation in which students working on the same project sit in a group of four or more around a small table. If one of the students does not seem to be participating much, and her chair is farther away from the table than the other students, I gently push that student’s chair inward so that she is physically an integral part of the group. That change usually results in much greater participation from the former outlier. Be aware of your
body and what it is telling you. If you like what it is saying, keep doing what you are doing. If you do not like what it is saying, move it to the position where it says what you like.

Large meetings provide classic examples of the importance of physical position. They often take place in conference rooms where there is one big rectangular table that everyone sits around. If the table is long, it is difficult to see most of the people on your side of the table. If people do not see each other, the effectiveness of their communication is diminished. If one person is running the meeting, or perceived as more important than the others, there is an implicit authority associated with how close you sit to that person.

If you want to strengthen your voice in the meeting, sit as close to the authority figure(s) as possible and opposite the people you want to influence. If you want to hide, sit on the same side of the table and as far as possible from the people you want to hide from. It is even easier to disappear if the room is so crowded that you can take a back-row seat and not sit at the table at all. If you have no one to hide from and you want to have a fully participatory meeting, it is much better to abandon the rectangular conference table in favor of a circular arrangement where everyone can see and be seen by all of the other participants. Your physical position at a meeting influences both your effectiveness and your state of mind.

Working in a supportive physical environment is a huge plus, as students in the Stanford d.school know well. A book about the school,
Make Space
(Doorley and Witthoft, 2012), refers to some of the key factors in providing a space to promote creative learning in learning-by-doing situations.

It is interesting to look at attitudes about the d.school type of space. People seeing it for the first time immediately think of
it as being a “creative space.” So do the students. It is as if the space is talking to them, saying, “Hey, the expectations here are different from those in the rest of the university.”

When we were designing the space, there were often arguments between the d.school team and the people who manage space renovations for the university. I recall being told several times, “It may be good for you guys, but who will want to use it if you leave the building?” It turns out almost everyone wants it.

The question of spatial position and body language is widely neglected in education. Most of university education is set up to be teacher- and mind-centered. The major concern seems to be whether the students can see and hear the lecturer. There is little regard for student-to-student communication; the idea that a student’s spatial position might influence the quality of her education gets little recognition.

A simple experiment brings home the importance of body position. In any group setting, take a moment of silence and become mindful of your emotional state. Then change your position within the group, take a moment of silence again, and notice your new emotional state.

This experiment can be done with any size group participating simultaneously. It is amazing what a difference even small changes of position can make.

The next time you are in a meeting that is not working, get your group to rearrange their chairs in a circle and see what happens. Asking each person in turn to say something (anything he wants to say, as long as it is only a few words or a short sentence) is an
excellent way to start each meeting. It is also a great way to end each meeting. This works especially well if people are seated in a close circle.

One of my profound learning experiences about body positions occurred when I was teaching my “Introduction to Robotics” course in a large auditorium. There were about ninety students in a space that could seat four hundred. The students sat all over the auditorium, and most of them chose to sit toward the back. I repeatedly requested, during the first few weeks, that they sit toward the front when they came for the next class—they never did.

The class met three times a week for fifty-minute sessions, and I noticed that I was exhausted after each lecture. Even though I used a microphone, it felt like I was being drained by trying to reach this widely distributed mass of students. So I got a roll of yellow barricade tape, the type with large black letters reading
CAUTION
. I went into the auditorium a half hour before class and taped off the entire back half of the room. When the students arrived they naturally migrated to the front, and were even further biased toward the first few rows. Who would want to sit close to the taped-off section, with its unknown dangers?

I ended that lecture with more energy than when I started. Instead of the students draining me, I was being energized by this captive mass of people who I could now easily interact with. They were there with me, and I could give to them and get from them. I repeated the taping for two weeks. After that the students were habituated to their new seats, and I did not need to close off the back.

That was a long time ago, and I will always remember that class and those students with a special fondness. I am still very pleased with myself that I took control of the physical situation
and didn’t just tough it out and suffer through ten weeks of a debilitating experience.

The meta-lesson here is, take control of your environment. If you are leading a meeting, or if your goal is to learn to give a successful presentation, give some thought to everybody’s position. If you are in a meeting or listening to a lecture and you feel bored or left out, move to the front. If you feel intimidated, go hide at the back. If you are distracted by the person next to you, or cannot hear or see, move. Be mindful of how you feel, and experiment by moving to different locations. Our body’s location matters. It colors our experience more than most of us think.

My wife, Ruth, two close friends, and I were in a small single-engine plane on a long, slow flight over California’s Imperial Valley. We were playing cards to entertain ourselves. The pilot had turned on the autopilot and rotated his seat so he could play with us. The game went on for about forty minutes, and suddenly there was a click, followed by a frightening silence. The engine had stopped firing. In a flash the pilot spun his seat around, cards flying in the air. He flipped the switch to the other gas tank, and the engine started up again immediately. He reacted reflexively without any analysis. He had been trained so that his body reacted; he did not need to pause and think. It was incredibly impressive, and we were glad we had him as our pilot. Still, we did not resume our card game for the rest of the trip.

There are movement activities that directly use the mind-body connection to stimulate learning and creativity. In the Design Division, we have been teaching these activities for a long time. Originally, these were considered somewhat New
Agey. I recall an unlucky lecturer getting into a lot of trouble when he broke an ankle doing a warm-up exercise. The president’s office could not see any justification for an engineering design class being in the women’s gym for warm-up exercises. Fortunately, those days are long past.

Dance and all forms of body movement are also valuable for working and learning in groups. You have probably been at events where a speaker has asked the audience to stand up for a minute and stretch. Just a simple interlude of stretching can make a huge difference in your ability to properly participate and to think creatively.

The human body needs to move. It likes to move, and it loves to move to music. When we introduce movement into our classes and workshops, the response is overwhelmingly positive, even from participants with special physical limitations.

In the intensive weeklong “Introduction to Design Thinking” workshop we did at the d.school each summer, we programmed two half-hour movement sessions each day, led by a professional dance teacher: one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The sessions did not require any special training, just the ability to go with the flow and join the pandemonium of forty bodies moving to loud music. The energy level rose after each such session, and everyone was ready to conquer whatever came next. The effect of the movement sessions on the workshop atmosphere was palpable through the entire day. It was in sharp contrast to workshops where people just sit and talk.

In my experience, most people take readily to such physical activities as part of their learning and work process. Even people who are at first reluctant to participate quickly overcome their hesitation and join the fun. The big secret, though, is that this stuff is more than fun. It is actually a great way to give your
mind what it needs: the mind-body connection. Whenever possible, include extra movement activities in your schedule.

My wife, Ruth, uses all her senses to learn about her environment. She is always touching, feeling, smelling, looking, and listening to things. Like a child, she often gets into trouble touching stuff she shouldn’t. I will never forget when eight guards came running at us from all directions at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Ruth had set off the alarm by using her hand to “see” the canvas on a Rembrandt painting.

My mode of learning, by contrast, is primarily cerebral. It is enough for me to deal with the concept; I do not need to touch something to know what it is. I can imagine objects in my head. Ruth cannot visualize in her head; she has to touch and see the real thing. When we discuss rearranging the furniture, I can visualize the change. She cannot. We need to move the furniture so that she can see the concept, then after experiencing all possible configurations, she is much better than I am at seeing what works best.

When we did a house remodel, we put just enough detail in the plans to get the building permits. The plans were a placeholder. The real design took place during construction, when Ruth had the workers physically lay out various different ideas. The builder’s accountant loved it!

Ruth is an artist and a born craftsperson and tinkerer. She has fantastic talent for making and fixing things, and she is continually using her physical senses to learn. She truly learns by doing. We have some students at Stanford with similar dispositions, who unfortunately are the exceptions; the admission system creates a bias toward other types of learning. Happily, a
maker culture has been growing in popularity, and every year hundreds more students get exposed to a balanced approach in which they learn with their entire bodies, not only with their heads. This fits well with the design thinking method of ideating; it’s a way of opening yourself up to new possibilities by allowing your brain to experience problem solving in ways you normally wouldn’t.