The good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired. - Francis Bacon, on Seneca [102]

I find Signpost 4 particularly intriguing. It tells us that adversities are worth keeping, even introduced, in the workplace to promote innovation. This signpost points in the opposite direction from the way in which design deals with adversity and David summarised this well:

Architecture has a gene of optimism and utopia in it, we use architecture to ‘show the better’.

This better version of the world has a lot to do with removing the bad, including adversity. That is why even if adversity is as good at delivering wisdom and innovation, design might be as hardwired to avoid it as the rest of us. Then Frank reminded me why it’s important to follow Signpost 4:

You read stories of people that worked for Steve Jobs and it sounds a lot like what you called ‘Type 2 fun’ – it was difficult at the time, but they look back on it with satisfaction and pride. And I wonder if we focus too much on Type 1 fun in the workplace – we want free food and massage chairs, which make people happy in the short-term but perhaps doesn’t lead to lasting satisfaction. Perhaps the best work is a type of pilgrimage.

This signpost was the most polarising of the seven I discussed with our locals. Still, most of them agreed that existing adversities, the ones which come with the environment, have little to offer and are best removed. This is reflected in the calibrations where our locals separately adjusted keeping adversities and introducing them, Fig. 35.1. Note the bigger ‘go there’ arrow for introduced adversity (bottom, right).

Fig. 35.1
figure 1

Calibration of Signpost 4 – adversity. Established view (left), Personal view (right). Keep adversity (top), Introduce adversity (bottom)

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All in all, when keep and introduced adversities are combined, the locals considered that we should still ‘go there’ – so let’s go there.

This signpost covers a variety of knowledge domains which makes it easy to get lost. Fortunately for us, while knowledge is invisible it can be mapped [103, 104] and I have prepared a knowledge map of the territories that we will be passing through to help keep us out of trouble, see Fig. 35.2. However, this map doesn’t aim to be a comprehensive one – such a map would confuse us more. Instead, it’s a simplified and stylised version based on two academic journal databases (Web of Science [105] and Google Scholar [106]) and the online tool Open Knowledge Maps [107].

Fig. 35.2
figure 2

Knowledge map of adversity in the workplace. The number in brackets indicates reference number

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The map focuses on two environments in which adversity occurs in organisations: intangible and tangible, represented in the western and eastern territories, respectively.

In the western territory, adversity finds its way through organisational culture and other intangible environments. For example, breaking the implicit agreement about the obligations that the employer bears toward employees (psychological contract) is considered a source of adversity [108]. Researchers found humour, laughing it off, to be a good way to manage this type of adversity. Overall, adversity occurring in intangible environments is mostly dealt with through resilience.

In the east, adversity occurs in tangible parameters from the physical environment in the workplace like temperature and illumination. This type of adversity is overcome through good design.

You might notice that the intangible territory is bigger than the tangible one. This is because disciplines studying this environment, like management, seem to be more curious about adversity than their counterparts studying tangible environments, like design and engineering.

One example from the intangible territory is the paper Predicting Scientific Creativity: The role of adversity, collaborations, and work strategies [109]. Here, the researchers position the adversity faced by scientists alongside the contemporary darling of the workplace: collaboration. Although this study didn’t find adversity to be a predictor of scientific creativity, the question was asked. These questions are much rarer in tangible environments.

In workplace design adversity is almost always understood as lack of comfort. Here we find fringe studies reporting increased productivity under uncomfortable conditions, for example when it is uncomfortably cold [110]. The overwhelming conclusion from this territory is that adversity, better said discomfort, in the workplace is undesirable and must be eliminated. The extent to which this happens is taken as an indicator of the quality of the design.

There are numerous ‘quality peaks’ that can be reached by a combination of design and engineering trails. Let’s explore one of these peaks: Frictionless Design.

In The Design of Everyday Things [111] Don Norman, cognitive scientist and usability engineer, makes a convincing case to use design to effortlessly guide the user through the function of an object, from stovetops to websites. Soon enough these principles found their way into the ‘frictionless workplace’ [112]: “a workplace where tasks, policies, procedures, and structures are free of unnecessary effort, [and] undue stress... Achieving a frictionless workplace is the pinnacle of a great employee experience” [113].

It is under this context that I found it extraordinary to encounter designers among our locals who not only saw value in adversity, but who, like Isabel, told me “[Signpost 4] is a number one for me. I have a strong view on purposeful friction.”

But even if we agree, how do we use design to benefit from adversity? At the valley southeast of the peaks in our knowledge map, we find a type of design which actually puts adversity and discomfort into practice. Aptly it is called ‘hostile design’ and you might be more familiar with it than you think. One example is the middle armrest on benches to prevent rough sleepers from laying down on park benches.

The purpose of hostile design is to restrict behaviour and exclude particular people [114], not to innovate. I heard it loud and clear from the interviewees that adversity should never be used to alienate or exclude anyone in any environment. Olivia was particularly clear:

I would definitely agree with [the use of adversity], it’s just a question of what kind. If you said, well, we’re going to make it harder for women to be promoted, then no!

With no other practical way in which design deals with adversity, we are left with one more region in this territory: speculative design. A good example of this is Design Noir [115] which explores the role of danger, adventure, and transgression in manufactured environments. These art-based propositions are valuable in their commentary and capacity to provoke thinking, but they are risky because it’s unclear how they can contribute to organisations in the way Signpost 4 suggests. They might produce a décor which conveys the concept, but such a look might be left behind at the next office renovation because it failed to deliver its purpose.

As I was wandering rather aimlessly through the speculative trails, Ethan told me:

If [employees] have less resources, they don’t waste them. They think harder, they become more resourceful. Being resource constrained might be a good thing for innovation. Have a look at studies on organisational slack.

The organisational slack trail turned into a path to Signpost 4. From the many definitions on organisational slack, we will go here with “the resources in or available to an organisation that are in excess of the minimum necessary to produce a given level of organisational output” [116].

The first assumptions on organisational slack were that organisations with an excess of time, people, and money were better placed to innovate [117]. However, later studies [118] showed that organisations suffering from a lack of resources have higher levels of innovation, and that too much slack can be counterproductive. The most recent assumption is that “zero slack leaves the organisation too inflexible, while too much slack results in inefficiencies accelerating the organisations’ termination” [116].

You may have already started making some connections here, but we will need more tiles to start laying our path. One of which comes from the notion of ‘environmental press’ which itself comes from a larger theory of Man-Environment Transaction [119]. It’s really easy to get lost here, so we will just have a short peek into this trail. An environmental press is built on the crucial role that adaptation plays in how we relate to the environment. A situation in which an environmental press is above the competency of the person is not good, but too little is not good either.

Both, an environmental press and organisational slack advocate for environments, tangible and intangible, which are challenging enough.

The wider theory of Man-Environment Transaction also tells us that we are usually at adaptation level with respect to our environment and thus we filter out cognition of our physical surrounding [120]. But by purposefully altering our surroundings we could reignite the adaptation process. In words of Architect Peter Eisenman: “The architecture we remember is that which never consoles or comfort us” [121].

From where we are now, we can see at a distance the faint trail of environmental enrichment. This is a trail of interest because it’s about stimulating the brain by enhancing cognitive and physical environments with puzzles and obstacles [122]. In other words, it is about making things purposely harder for a better quality of life. However, environmental enrichment focuses on non-human primates and other animals kept in captivity. That is why it’s not in our map and we will not spend time there.

Instead, we will have a short stroll through trails which make a bestselling book out of adversity– and we can certainly learn from that. Here is where we find books like The Comfort Crisis [123] and Can’t Hurt Me [124] reminding us that we are too comfortable for our own good. Nothing new here, but common to both books is their use of gruelling physical experiences to reclaim the lost benefits of adversity.

Followers of the Can’t Hurt Me way of life use hashtags like #embracethesuck and #dontgetcomfortable while posting pictures of themselves doing harrowing physical activities in pursuit of a better self. There are hundreds of thousands of posts in Instagram with these hashtags which remind me of times during my walk to Sydney, but then again, I was embracing so much suck that I didn’t even think of taking a picture.

In The Comfort Crisis I learnt about Harvard-trained physician, Dr. Marcus Elliot, a proponent of taxing physical challenges known as misogi – referencing the old Japanese Shinto ritual of washing the body under a freezing cold waterfall, in winter. Following Dr. Elliot’s trail, I came across a conversation he had with a global accounting firm [125] in which he shared the two rules he uses to set the level of difficulty of his misogi challenges: Rule one, if you do everything right, you should have just about 50% chance of completing the challenge. Rule two, don’t die.

Ok… So how are these challenges supposed to help? Dr. Elliot explains this in a way which summarises the reliance of both books on tough physical challenges:

You’re watching yourself do so much more than you ever dreamed you could, and you generalise from there. You start trusting that you can do much more than you thought possible in other situations. [125]

The suggestion that we build confidence from experience has been long explored and formalised by psychologist Albert Bandura in his Self-Efficacy Theory (SET) [126]. The challenge here is to determine the extent that toughing it out outside the office can lead to knowledge workers innovating within the organisation. In SET competency is built across similarly associated tasks.

Fortunately, we don’t have to worry about that, nor follow this trail any further. Our signpost argues that the adversities should come from the workplace itself, not from a weekend challenge. Still, this trail has shown us that adversity can be made approachable and even popular. Key here is to design a sort of adversity on tap, one which can be controlled in its intensity, opted in, and opted out, even bragged about – just like physical challenges. This ability to control adversity was stressed by our locals as a pre-requisite for where conversations about this signpost could begin.

We have embarked on a long expedition following this signpost, fortunately there is just one last trail to cover. This trail is important because it tells us that as things get better, we become fussier. Participants in an experiment [127] were shown a series of dots that varied in colour from very purple to very blue and were asked to say whether the dot was blue or not. The researchers then decreased the frequency of blue dots. Surprisingly, the participants’ concept of blue expanded to include dots that they had previously excluded. The experiment was repeated with more complex scenarios than the colour of a dot, such as aggression and unethical behaviour.

Just as with the blue dots, participants saw occurrences of these in instances which they didn’t see them before. The researchers concluded that:

Although modern societies have made extraordinary progress… the majority of people believe that the world is getting worse. The fact that concepts grow larger when their instances grow smaller may be one source of that pessimism. [127]

In a similar way, employees might expand their concept of adversity as fewer instances of it occur in the workplace. This could derail attempts of aspiring to ever more comfortable environments and polished experiences in the workplace as employees might just find adversity where they didn’t experience it before. If we can’t get rid of adversity, at least we could explore how to make the most out of it.

We will conclude our chase of Signpost 4 with a chat with Dr. Natasha Layton. When Natasha and I meet for coffee, she would say: “let’s get the environment right!” and proceed to move the chairs and table to ensure that we are both sitting comfortably, without glare or any other environmental discomfort. Natasha is not an architect nor an interior designer and moves things around with disregard to the design intent, but with the conviction of an occupational therapist. Natasha studies the relationship between person, task, and environment and consults for the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Natasha’s view of the world, her knowledge map, is different from the one I depicted in Fig. 35.2. Hers is based on the WHO International Classification of Functioning (WHO-ICF) [128], a classification of human endeavours with an incredibly comprehensive list of factors that we interact with in the course of our daily life. This framework includes environmental factors like temperature and light as well as a variety of intangible factors such as attitudes and ‘support and relationships’. One thing that all these have in common, Natasha explained to me, is that they are all neutral. These factors can be either a barrier or a facilitator depending on the individual, the task, and the desired outcome.

In other words, there is no objective adversity as such, it depends on the circumstances. “What I aim for is to remove all the barriers and create a lot of facilitators for excellent functioning”, Natasha added. At this point I hesitate to ask if she thought adversity was a good thing, but I soldier on:

Oh, yes, but health practitioners would call it ‘treatment planning’. We increase the amount of challenge that the environment asks from the person to increase physical and cognitive functions to prepare them for a workplace.

Her answer gave me courage to ask what type of adversity she would prescribe in a workplace to promote innovation:

If I were to implement an adversity, to use your word, I would do so with a goal in mind. The innovation that I would like to see the most in any workplace is an appreciation of what it means to be human and what comes with that is a gratitude around working.

Natasha then told me of her experience consulting for another large organisation which hires experts with lived experience of disability: “the accommodations needed in a workplace that works for ‘all’ can actually raise challenges to work there as a non-disabled person.”

Beyond ramps and accessible lunchrooms for physical access, she described the many ways in which communication must change to include people with visual and hearing impairment, and how standard communication would not work – at all. “So initially it’s awkward, and you feel that it slows you down in your work, but... Oh. My. Goodness!”, Natasha’s face lights up with a big smile:

When everyone can join in and you have successful interactions then, at that workplace, you can feel a profound societal shift towards inclusion. If you understand disability, you understand diversity, you understand humans.

My idea of innovation is close to Natasha’s, yours might be too, or not. But what the trails of adversity suggest is that working in tangible and intangible environments which increase in just the right amount the challenge that the environment asks from the person might lead to the innovation you seek.