With the present Coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19) and rapid adoption of non-face-to-face means of interaction, digital transformation is spreading throughout society. The work-from-home approach has now been reactivated, and the term ‘remote’ has been added to most of our daily activities.
A similar shift is evident in the field of architecture. Beginning in the second half of last year, the Seoul Metropolitan Government began to hold a design competition for public buildings as using the format of a digital competition. Some construction companies and architectural design offices introduced a system that would remotely manage construction sites to improve the quality of construction and productivity. The design process has been digitised ― from hand-drawn architectural drawings and actual models to Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and 3D printing ― and the presentations are being delivered through augmented reality and virtual reality platforms. Nevertheless, the spaces on which architects strive to design are still at the front of their monitor in their office. The custom of working together by gathering in one place is too sturdy to break, so not many offices in South Korea have initiated remote working in response to the COVID-19 crisis.
Contrary to this tendency in the field, THE_SYSTEM LAB was actively promoting digital transformation well before the outbreak. The office eliminated designated seats in their office, implemented video conferencing and remote working, and introduced other inducements to maintain these initiatives. On 14 April, SPACE met up with Kim Chanjoong at his office in THE_SYSTEM LAB in Seongsu and heard the stories of the studio.
Lee Sungje (Lee): Following the outbreak of COVID-19, THE_SYSTEM LAB initiated a work-from-home policy. Many people are curious about how this works in practice?
Kim Chanjoong (Kim): I have long been doubtful of daily office routines, such as working from the same seat and mingling with the same colleagues every day. I didn’t think that it is appropriate to carry out creative work such as the architectural design in a monotonous working environment. Relocating the office from Bundang to Seongsu served as a galvanizing moment. At that time, I also thought carefully about the ways of segmenting the organisation. That is why we introduced the hot-desking method of working, which allows employees to work from wherever they want instead of working in assigned seats.
Lee: Hot-desking is a method mainly found in IT companies. Have you had any difficulty implementing it?
Kim: There were no precedents for us to follow from the field of architectural design, not even in contingent fields such as graphic or product design. These are the jobs that require high-performance computer equipment. The sizes of the work files are very large, causing people in charge of such tasks to be assigned fixed workstations. So in the beginning, I even devised desks with wheels, but in the end, I provided workstation-class high-end laptops to all employees. The budget was as high as the cost of remodeling the office. The reason behind this decision was to dismantle the ‘hierarchy’ within the office. Let’s look at how a work typically moves through the office: the supervisor asks the junior staff ‘hey did you finish it?’, then the junior staff, whose work is interrupted, hurries to respond, ‘yes, this is blah blah...’. (Laugh) He definitely finds it hard to focus on work. Since architectural design requires a certain level of expertise, it is impossible to completely eradicate the hierarchy of the organisation, but I thought at least the stress and pressure occurring from fixed seating arrangements could be lessened.
Lee: What are the advantages when the person seating next to you continues to switch?
Kim: My office began with two people. The current number of employees has reached 51. Even as the office grew in size, I did not want it to lose its status as an atelier. We used to do a frequent pin-up to share what everyone was working on, but as the number of people increased the effect was not as great as it was in the past. However, after initiating a hot-desking scheme, people got to sit next to and mix with colleagues from different teams, learning more naturally about other ventures and practices in the studio. New employees can immediately ask questions of the team leaders that sit next to them. In other words, people get to move around regardless of their positions or teams. Even team leaders or executives have no designated seats. For this to work smoothly, an enthusiasm for ‘networking’ is required. That is the reason why some activities, such as a Happy Hour where we drink beer together at 5:30 pm every Friday or Pot Luck evenings that presents opportunities for those as yet unfamiliar to have a meal together, have been introduced.
Lee: In a way, at the core of hot-desking is a reliance on networking as opposed to technology or hardware.
Kim: Yes. Sometimes, difficult problems are easily solved by getting a lead from a conversation. This could be known as operating with a collective intelligence. Instead of giving orders like ‘I’m the manager, so do it this way’, we collect and coordinate opinions from different people. And through hot-desking, we have reached the stage of ‘working in an environment in which you perform most productively’. Discussions are ongoing to create an Access Point (AP), which is a space in which people can work outside the office.
Lee: To perform tasks such as sharing data or convening conferences and facilitating communication, you also need software like Cloud Computing Services.
Kim: We use the Google platform, but I think that Cloud Systems technology is already mature so any services on the market can be used. However, everyone chooses not to use it as frequently as they might because we can just turn our heads and say to our junior staff, ‘come here’. The working environment of THE_SYSTEM LAB might seem unrestricted, but there are two rules to follow. First, every morning, you must post your daily tasks on the Kakao Talk group chat room If the working direction has been set up incorrectly, the team leader can tell you that ‘you don’t need to do this today’. Second, every team must have a video conference call between 9 to 10 am every morning, even if they are all in the office, as it also serves as a casual morning greeting.
Lee: How many people are assigned to one team?
Kim: About seven? In THE_SYSTEM LAB, we refer a team as a ‘lab’. There are two labs in Bundang, while there are labs zero to five in Seongsu, in addition to the separate labs for supervision and management. Each lab has one video conference call in the morning, and another around 6pm. As I mentioned before, these are a casual greetings, which means that the office is determining the beginning and end of working hours. It means that you should work intensively during the hours between the two conference calls, and you can use the rest of the day freely. This institutes checkpoints in the overall operation of the organisation.
Lee: How do you evaluate the performance of your employees?
Kim: One must upload one’s work onto Google Plus every day, and it remains in our history. When one uploads what he/she is doing now, replies are added underneath it. I talked about collective intelligence a moment ago. When someone posts something, an alarm is sent by email. Dozens of emails arrive every day. If the uploaded work is something that you are interested in, you can look it up, even if it is not your lab’s work. You can add your own comment to the post. This is a system open to all employees, not limited to the immediate senior or the lab members. If the agenda is complicated, dozens of replies may be added. In this way, we can figure out who adds a lot of replies and those who do not add much, and this performance is related to their professional evaluation.
Lee: I can understand how each lab works. How do executives get involved in this process?
Kim: They read all the uploaded posts of each lab. Managers and directors read and add comments. For instance, ‘this is hard to understand, so please hand over the PDF data’, (showing the posts), at which point you can open the data from the ‘Goodnotes’ iPad app, make some marks on it and post it underneath the original post. Suggestions are added such as ‘please modify’. Even if the person who originally posted it cannot check the suggestions in real-time, he/she can check them later. Since each person comes from different experience and holds a range of opinions, this strategy is designed so that we share them all as a group. There are at least 50 posts uploaded every day, meaning that there are so many things to read. Sometimes its 2 or 3am by the time I’ve finished reading them all.
Lee: The reason for hesitation when trialling a new method is because of the following concerns; ‘will this work well?’ or ‘will this welcome any results?’
Kim: I never had such concerns. What I tell our employees is that whenever you are afraid about the question ‘is this going to work?’, then you should just do it and follow your instinct. If you have reached the point of contemplating between doing or not doing a certain task, then it is likely you will regret it if you don’t do it. And even if you decide to do it, and it doesn’t work out, well you will learn from that trial. So when one of our employees is deliberating a certain course of action, I tell them, ‘just do it’. Even when purchasing high-performance laptops!
Lee: I assume some staff members were concerned by these changes to your approach?
Kim: I told them ‘Let’s just do it, and let’s monitor it for 3 months. I will be responsible for all the losses’. But the secret of digital transformation is not in the technology or hardware, but in a consistent discipline and habit-forming behaviours. Even the means of naming the files is coded. It took three months to adopt this method. I am not sure if this was fast or slow, but the important thing is, following the rules. Google Calendar may look like a simple calendar, but it has a lot of features hidden. You can make a video call, and access the file immediately from the Calendar. There is no need to prepare printouts or transfer files to a USB. It took quite a while to get used to this. It was the same with the Google Plus posts. At first, the employees posted text only. But I said, ‘if you are a designer, upload an image’. I also asked them to ‘write frankly, if something doesn’t work out, write it out loud’, or have my own critical comments such as ‘the proposal that the general manager suggested doesn’t look good’.
Lee: In some ways, this digital transformation is like a process of learning how to communicate more effectively.
Kim: It’s like learning how to speak. The problem lies in learning grammar and rules. Even people with excellent performance skills sometimes make mistakes in communication. Still, it is important to tell them that ‘this is wrong, so please fix it’. In other words, the important element in digital transformation is not the technology but in keeping the promises between people and by practicing continuous monitoring.
Lee: If a new employee joins THE_SYSTEM LAB, I think it would be a challenge for them to learn this language.
Kim: Young people are much faster when taking up such things. I would rather have a harder time, but this is all second nature to them. As we were undergoing the shift to this new way of working, COVID-19 broke out. Originally, I thought about initiating a selective work-from-home policy starting from the second half of this year. The most important thing is sharing our ‘spirit’, so is it really necessary to have the ‘bodies’ physically in the same place? More than this, it prompts the following question: ‘is it really necessary to have a design office (place)?’
Lee: And yet, depending on the nature of the project, there may be times when face-to-face work is simply more productive. For instance, pulling an all-nighter together right before the deadline of a design competition?
Kim: There may be times when that approach is more efficient. We just finished one submission yesterday, and it was submitted without any issues with not a single person going into the office. Even I stayed at home. (As of April 14) THE_SYSTEM LAB is in its fifth week of implementing the work-from-home system, and there have been no issues to our schedule. There was no threat of ruining a PT due to an error when sending the data on time. We don’t even produce models by hand, preferring to instead use a 3D printer. Even though the office is operating under the work-from-home system, employees do not work less or loosely. All they have to do is carry out their tasks within our overall schedules. Trust is a fundamental component of this approach.
Lee: Remote work is a concept that has been introduced in the past. IBM and other companies have used it, but it began to decrease in the 2010s. This was due to the value Google, Facebook, and other comparable companies placed on the creativity energy attained through face-to-face communication and teamwork.
Kim: Google has followed this path because it was adjusting to its own ecosystem. Organisations have different ecosystems. The office space should be organised in accordance with the company’s vision and mission, based on ongoing communication. It used to be the same office space in the past, but nowadays every company insists on following the Google style (laugh). We were able to ask ourselves when creating our working model what ours looks like in comparison to those other models commonly encountered in our contemporary economy. Yet it is difficult for the essence to take deep root unless there is a proper understanding of the ecosystem.
Lee: In this regard, we are very interested in the operating methods of THE_SYSTEM LAB.
Kim: You never know when COVID-20 might occur, and whether you should set up longer-lasting fundamental measures instead of simply buying 20 boxes of masks. It is unclear what new paradigms will arise one the threat of COVID-19 is past, but I assume that we might start thinking more carefully about ‘urbanisation’. We need to devise a certain method to maintain our physical distance but not a psychological distance, and make sure that the individual is in sync with the whole, always working together. I am approaching this by concentrating on how to form communities that pursue common values. Regarding the cost of work, I envision something more attractive than the salary, and I also want to create a credit sharing system. Instead of just introducing measures that will be difficult for our society at large to adopt, it is time to think about what you personally can achieve when you endure a bit of discomfort and risk over a limited period of time.