Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World

by Stanley McChrystal

The cubicle itself is a good example of management space gone wrong. Originally created by the visionary inventor Robert Propst to free workers from isolation, the cubicle has become a symbol of the impersonal culture it aimed to reform. The “Action Office II” was supposed to be customizable and reconfigurable for privacy, but also for cooperation, promoting interaction. It was designed to be arranged in organic clusters, reflecting a new conception of the office as an interconnected whole. Put into production by Herman Miller in 1967, Propst’s invention was immediately perceived as transformative. The New York Post ran an article about it titled “Revolution Hits the Office,” which argued that the days of “the completely enclosed ‘boxes’ in which the bosses isolate themselves behind monster mahogany status symbols and the inhuman row upon rigid row of steel desks with their clumsy drawers at which you sit all day” would soon draw to a close. “The success of the concept seems assured,” the article concluded.