Article link: "The Rise of the New Groupthink"
I really appreciated this recent article from the New York Times that talks about the downfalls of loners being forced to deal with "collaboration" and "open offices" by corporations and educational institutions:
By SUSAN CAIN
Published: January 13, 2012
SOLITUDE is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place. Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.
But there’s a problem with this view. Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They’re not joiners by nature.
~snip~
The New Groupthink has overtaken our workplaces, our schools and our religious institutions. Anyone who has ever needed noise-canceling headphones in her own office or marked an online calendar with a fake meeting in order to escape yet another real one knows what I’m talking about. Virtually all American workers now spend time on teams and some 70 percent inhabit open-plan offices, in which no one has “a room of one’s own.” During the last decades, the average amount of space allotted to each employee shrank 300 square feet, from 500 square feet in the 1970s to 200 square feet in 2010.
~snip~
But it’s one thing to associate with a group in which each member works autonomously on his piece of the puzzle; it’s another to be corralled into endless meetings or conference calls conducted in offices that afford no respite from the noise and gaze of co-workers. Studies show that open-plan offices make workers hostile, insecure and distracted. They’re also more likely to suffer from high blood pressure, stress, the flu and exhaustion. And people whose work is interrupted make 50 percent more mistakes and take twice as long to finish it.
More at linky: The Rise of the New Groupthink
Looks like the author has a book coming out soon: “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.”.
I pre-ordered it already... the title alone makes me want to read it.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I would have never made it in an open work environment.
I also will never understand why people have to have "noise" to enjoy their day.
I go for days at a time without television or music playing. Good thing I am
single, or I would probably drive someone crazy......
If I have to be in a group to "think", then I'd rather not think.
The title alone pleases me: "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking".
That is exactly how I feel a lot of the time about the rest of the world. ("Why can't they just sit down and shut up for a change? Peace and quiet and stillness is good."
