By Holly Uverity CPO®, Office Organizers
In today’s business world, it’s not uncommon for people to share tasks and spaces and to work closely with their colleagues. So what happens when the organizational styles of the two people don’t mesh? What do you do when you share office space with someone whose organizational style is very different from your own? What if you feel more comfortable working in a clear, clean space with minimal clutter and your officemate, deskmate, or spouse is the opposite? How can two opposing styles of organization not only work together but be productive? Is it fair to either of you to ask the other one to change?
The first step always is communication; when you have an honest conversation about sharing space with someone, you may discover that your differences could simply be a difference of priorities. Let’s assume that your officemate’s habit of dropping the mail on any given surface makes you crazy because you can’t ever find your mail. If you have a conversation about how the mail is delivered, you may each discover that a) the mail is more important to you than it is your officemate and/or b) that your officemate drops it anywhere there’s space because he never knows what to do with it. The solutions in this situation can be pretty simple – maybe you and your officemate agree that you’ll get the mail from now on or you may simply choose a specific place to put the mail and your officemate agrees to put it there consistently.
Another conversation you can have as you begin working together is to define clutter. You may think clutter is anything that’s on a desk other than what is being worked on at that moment and your officemate may think clutter is anything on the floor; these are very different definitions of clutter. By talking about your own definitions of clutter, you can come to a mutual understanding and agreement. Your style may be to have only one thing out on your desk at a time yet your officemate may work best if he has several files out at once. What you define as clutter, your officemate defines as a work in progress. Your officemate may not understand that seeing clutter anywhere can be distracting to you and cause you to lose focus. Alternatively, you may not realize that for your officemate, a clear space creates anxiety, which does happen with some people. Agreeing on definitions of working styles as well as definitions of clutter can be a great first step in working better together.
If your officemate’s clutter is spilling into your area and it’s causing problems, another conversation could be about physical boundaries. You and your officemate can create literal boundaries and commit to keeping your own physical areas as agreed upon. If you share a common table or workspace, for example, you can create areas in which it’s okay to have a certain amount of clutter and areas where it’s not okay.
Along with creating boundaries, you and your officemate can also create a written checklist detailing who is responsible for which areas and when. It can be as simple as a list of shared tasks that need to be done and a schedule of who’s responsible for completing the tasks. The list and agreement need to be reviewed on a regular basis, especially in the beginning, and then tweaked as needed. When people make a commitment to each other and take personal responsibility and ownership for tasks and spaces, they are more likely to get those tasks done.
The key to sharing space is communication, followed by understanding. It’s easy to blame someone else for issues that affect you both, however, it’s more productive to honestly communicate, without anger or resentment, about the issues and co-create the solutions.
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Office Organizers is The Entrepreneur’s Organizer. Founded in 1993, they work with business people to create solutions to their organizational challenges. Contact them at 281.655.5022, www.OfficeOrganizers.com, or www.fb.com/OfficeOrganizers.
