RESEARCH QUALITY I3l

The techniques and tools employed at each stage are presented below,
with some description of how they worked. Pre— and post-change occupancy
survey results are then compared.

The first step toward creating a shared vision was a structured team walk-
through of the existing facility. The Hypertherm management team and consult-
ants toured the facility as a group, discussing the tasks of each workgroup,
pointing out difficulties and advantages with the present space, and comment-
ing on each other’s presentations. Recorded on cassette tape and transcribed,
the tour commentary was presented back to the client along with a comprehen-
sive set of photographs as a document of existing conditions. This activity effec—
tively involved all the members of the team, efficiently gave the consultant a
large amount of information, and began to build internal consensus on what
needed to be done to solve the space problems.

Members of the five—person Hypertherm management team and the CEO
met weekly thereafter for a series of two-hour work sessions with the consult-
ant. The sessions were necessary for the leaders of the organization to define the
organizational change they envisioned, to outline the main points of the physi-
cal environment they wanted to create to accommodate the new organization,
and to set priorities that would enable them to communicate these decisions to
their employees. The consultant acted largely as a facilitator during this stage
in the process.

The meetings included goal and priority setting, documenting design cri-
teria and guidelines for the new space, and even filling out questionnaires on
individual decision-making styles to help the management team communicate
and come to consensus. The consultant set the agenda and the tasks for each
session. The consultant and her staff worked between sessions to organize and
document the material they received and to produce sketches, drawings, and
other illustrations that kept the process focused on design of the new building.

By the end of this stage, the management team had generated a set of
goals and objectives for both their new space and their restructured organiza-
tion. They had a set of design guidelines to be applied to the new design, and
had established priorities ranking the relative importance of all they hoped to
achieve. Most importantly for the future of the process, they had a consensus.

The three priorities for the new organization were team-based work,
cross-functional communication, and a supportive and attractive work environ-
ment. The most important design guidelines were an open office environment
with smaller workstations and lower partitions, collaborative spaces for group
work, co-location of cross-functional team members, mutual inter-penetrability
of office and manufacturing space, and convenient and accessible laboratories.

The next step required involving the employees, in order to assure accept-
ance of the new arrangement. A validated questionnaire survey about the phys—
ical conditions of work in the existing building started the process of employee
involvement (Vischer, 1989). Every employee filled out the survey and was
therefore alerted to the imminent new space-design process and to the impor-
tance of their role in it. The survey results, published in the company newslet-
ter, also documented problems in the existing building.