The "modern" office of desks and walls and halls is a vestige of the Industrial Age. It's a manufacturing model. Even our information systems mimic the assembly line. Sometimes it seems as if we're all cogs in a new e-ssembly line. Our job? - process all our e-mail, faxes and voicemail by the end of the day, then start all over again tomorrow.

Many companies have discovered the efficiency of e-mail systems, yet these same systems merely replicate a one-to-one or one-to-many information structure: I know something and pass it to someone else, or I carbon-copy a dozen people. As soon as that e-mail and the files that are attached to it have been read and deleted, the information it contained is gone forever.  The files, copies of which now live on everyone's hard-drive, are out-of-date almost as soon as they've been downloaded.

Information systems need to use a many-to-many infostructure: schedules, budgets, reports, and the other documents needed by the team should be placed in a central electronic repository where they can become part of your company's institutional memory. Members of the team should be able to access that information at any time of day or night, from any location on the planet.

How many of your employees have the same dusty reference books in their offices? The same papers stacking up on their desks? The same product samples, annual reports, journals, magazines …? When was the last time anyone actually used them? How much of that "stuff" should be a shared resource, placed in a central location for easy access, even electronic access, by everyone in the company, thereby eliminating the need for each employee to clutter their office with stuff. (Ooh, we hate stuff!)