Simplicity Cubed

Imagine a company where every desk is clean, and not because the firm is out of business or peopled by deviant personalities.

At California Lighting Sales in Industry, a sea of nearly paperless cubicles fills a 10,000-square-foot space.

Each person faces a wall or a higher-than-eye-level partition. Computers are off to the side, away from the primary work area. Employees focus on one project at a time, dispatching less essential work to a pile behind them during the day so that the 180-degree field of vision remains clear except for personal pictures and desk decorations.

And productivity is up, while stress is down.

“We’re in a heavily customer service business with lots of phone calls and lots of files,” said Allan Suttle, president of California Lighting, which represents lighting manufacturers in dealings with architects and contractors.

To help manage the “frantic flow of the lighting business,” Suttle contracted with Productivity Concepts Inc. of West Los Angeles to teach its Careertech productivity system to his 60 employees, each of whom handles an estimated 100 to 120 telephone calls a day. The approach was so effective that the company used it as a guide for designing new offices two years ago.

“This program is far more than space planning; this is how you do your work every day,” Suttle said.

Participants are taught a variety of organizational techniques that are reinforced by follow-up visits from Careertech counselors. The advisors make sure the techniques have been tailored to an individual’s work space and personality, said Len Merson, who developed the Careertech program 24 years ago.

Central to the program is changing the physical setup of an office or cubicle to reduce distractions, and eliminating clutter by teaching workers how to manage work flow, Merson said.

The traditional office model of a desk facing a door is reversed, with the desk facing the wall, so that passersby are less inclined to distract the worker. The desktop is reserved for one immediate project, and all other papers are placed out of the workers’ field of vision. New papers land on an “imaginary in tray”--actually a thick piece of card stock--and are dealt with right away.

“It keeps people calm because they are able to focus on what they’re doing,” Merson said.