Steve Blank (The Four Steps to the Epiphany) describes how his company suffered the Curse of a New Building:
The most obvious problem; the time we spent planning the building distracted the company from running the business. But there were three more insidious problems.
- While offices for everyone sound good on paper, moving everyone out of cubicles destroyed a culture of tight-knit interaction and communication. Individuals within departments were isolated, and the size and scale of the building isolated departments from each other.
- The new building telegraphed to our employees, “We’ve arrived. We’re no longer a small struggling startup. You can stop working like a startup and start working like a big company.”
- We started to believe that the new building was a reflection of the company’s (and our own) success. We took our eye off the business. We thought that since we in such a fine building, we were geniuses, and the business would take care of itself.
While our competitors furiously worked on regaining market share, we were arguing about whether the carpets should be wool or nylon. The result was not pretty.