What are we thinking?

My office is located right off of a busy hallway and across from several classrooms.  As a result, there is often a lot of activity and noise right outside of my office door.  Most of the times this does not represent a problem as it is nice to see all of the activity of the students and faculty in the building.  However, there are times where I need to shut my office door so that I may concentrate on reading, grading, or other more mentally taxing activities.

I'm very fortunate to have a single office with a door.  When I need to, I'm able to close out the noise and create a relatively peaceful environment where I can concentrate.  Unfortunately, this office environment does not exist for many people in the workforce.  A recent article I read reminded me again of this issue and made me start thinking about the office environment for the typical professional.

Our workforce today is predominantly a knowledge workforce.  We commonly work with data and information to generate knowledge.  Our knowledge may be used as a service for our customers or may support our decision making within the organization.  We also quite often work as part of a project team which requires careful planning and response to changing conditions.  The knowledge and project environments require us to draw upon our intellect and experiences to produce high quality work.

My point here is that we really need to be able to think in our jobs.  We need to be able to problem solve, formulate creative solutions, and plan our actions.  While there exists a significant need to use our intelligence in the workplace, the workplace does not seem to be conducive to a more thoughtful environment.  Our cubicles and open office environments contribute to a culture of collaboration but this is at the expense of our ability to conduct more deep thinking.  There exists times where we need to work with our teams but there also exists many times where we need time to think; where do we find the environment and the time where we can think?