The USE phase of a project is often not considered to be as creative as the design and make phases. This is an impoverished perception of the creative process. Building Bill’s and Judy’s workplace is just the opening gambit. The Four Step Re-Creation Model [link] describes how feedback works between phases of the entire creative process which includes The entire life cycle of, in this case, a work environment.

The 7 Domains analysis, which follows, is a systemic way to think about designing, building and operating a human environment - and, in this case, a specific environment for an unique individual. It is a mental architecture that allows the sensing and appropriate [link] responding to an individual executive/ knowledge-worker. It will take a year to move beyond the virgin environment photographed above to the making of a rich, effective system of knowledge-augmentation and support.

The 7 Domains are those attributes that make up the work environment of an individual that, if properly constituted, augment his/her’ personal creative capacity and capability of exercising GROUP GENIUS in teams and ValueWebs [link]. The Domains have to be understood and managed on several levels of recursion [link].

The attributes of a system are those things, processes and characteristics, without which, the system ceases to be what it is.

An environment is that which forms and makes up the circumstances of an organism.

Humans do not need to be managed. On occasion, it is useful that they be facilitated (to make easy) and educated (to lead out). Sometimes training (to drag behind) is appropriate as training is essentially the creation of new, useful habits [link]. The 7 Domains, properly designed and managed, create a natural, organic [link] environment that can be made fit for each individual and for augmenting their interactions with others.

These 7 Domains cannot be seen as isolated or independent phenomena. The separation into domains is an intellectual convenience. These have to operated as a system - it is the lines in the diagram that are of foremost importance - not the nodes in isolation.

BODY OF KNOWLEDGE

An individual’s and an enterprise’s body of knowledge remains the most under utilized resource in our society. Most of what is hyped as knowledge-management does not function - this is because it does not understand what knowledge is or how it is created nor what it is that has to be managed.

Bill has accumulated a vast body of knowledge. It is questionable, however, if this is sufficiently leveraged across the enterprise of his focus and concern. It is also an open question if his knowledge acquiring process, outside his direct field of concern, is optimal for his purposes.

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PROCESS DESIGN and FACILITATION

Most work processes are a social default left over from an earlier and much simpler era - they are hopelessly inadequate for today’s world. Facilitation is regarded too often in terms of what happens in the front of the room which is the least predominate or important aspect of the practice.

TRAINING, EDUCATION and LEARNING

These three concepts, and their related practices, are often confused to the determent of each and the confusion of both individual and society. And, unfortunately, adult humans rarely considers themselves to be a student and learning is consequently separated from what is erroneously still considered to be the legitimate work environment [link]. This is, of course, a significant anomaly in this so-called era of the knowledge-economy [link]. Our societies environments and work processes are still predominately industrial-age in their deep structures. This contradiction would be amusing if it where not so deadly in its consequence.

PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT and TOOLING

In our society, the physical environment is rarely understood in terms of the impact it has on the cognitive functioning of the human brain/mind. The work environment is too often seen as a utility - the cost of which is to managed and kept in control. It is rarely regarded in human terms and even more rarely as a knowledge-factory that can yield huge return business results, let alone, in intellectual capital. Our work environments simply do not work well [link]. Typically, they support but a few of the executive and knowledge-creation and sharing processes [link]. They are almost never seen as the expressive and influential social art that they in fact are.

TECHNICAL SYSTEMS

Most technical systems we have today do a brilliant job of augmenting the practices of the 19th century [link]. They are not designed from the premise of a Knowledge-base era. This, however, is changing. New tools are becoming available, that if used appropriately, can transform the executive routine [link] and the process of knowledge work [link].

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Project management means, literally, the hand before the throw. It is generally practiced as the control function after a game has actually been played out. Effective project management is anticipatory. This means it has to be based on a model of possible futures and practiced as a preemptive and systemic, feedback-driven response to multidimensional emergent events. Most project management methods are far too linear to do this - they are trapped in the industrial era assumptions from which they came. They attempt to control people and circumstances (which is like trying to herd cats) rather than practicing the art of anticipatory design [link]; for this reason, they tend to cut down innovation and effective local action - and, for this reason project management is experience too often as an instrument of repression.

VENTURE MANAGEMENT

There are both individual and corporate venture(s) involved here and it is important to understand them in both their separate and integrated realities.

The most significant aspect of architecture [link] is its ability to be a vehicle of human transformation [link]. This is the high ART [link] of architecture at its best. There are multiple criteria [link] necessary to the making of organic, sustainable, transforming environments.

Every work, no matter how vast or modest in scope, must strive to accomplish both the pragmatic and the sublime in the making of habitat for every human [link]. When fully understood, this is an exciting and daunting task. It is a task that cannot be accomplished without the active participation of the environment’s user. The space must be inhabited not merely occupied.

The VCBH is still a nascent environment. One intent of Bill’s presence in the VCBH environment is to be an exemplar of its full use and to systematically explore the interface [link] between his individual work, his collaborative work and the work of the Center as a whole.

Therefore his “office” is not an office - it is an environment and there is a world of difference between the two concepts and their practices. His environment, in this context, includes the functioning of Judy’s - even as hers has to be fit for her while reaching out and including Bill’s. The relationship between Bill’s personal space and his part of the VCBH commons is critical to the success of the entire endeavor.

It is rare privilege to design an environment - a knowledge-making engine - for a person such as Bill Stead. It is both a challenge and an opportunity to see if this can help him become even more creative and organizationally effective.

The story of how this “experiment” plays out will be documented over the year to come.