Place

Where we work shapes how we work. Inviting workplaces can lift our spirits and encourage collaboration and creativity. Bad ones buffet us with interruptions and noise, block out sunshine and fresh air, and dull our senses and spirits. Virtual workplaces, with their glitches, diminished nonverbal information, and lack of real presence, are especially challenging for groups that want to sustain a spirit of collaboration and connection.

Wise organizations understand the importance of place. They design for flow, for focus, for connection. Physical or virtual, the environment affects how people move, concentrate, and collaborate. It shapes morale, trust, and rhythm.

Apple’s visionary leader, Steve Jobs, felt the power of place deeply. When overseeing the design of his company’s new headquarters, he didn’t just want a beautiful building. He wanted friction — creative friction. He insisted on a vast circular layout and a central common space where people from different departments would naturally bump into one another. “Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings,” he said. He designed for the kind of work that cannot be scheduled.

Ron Johnson, Apple’s retail whiz, took over as CEO of J.C. Penney and made a different choice. He refused to move to the company’s headquarters in Plano, Texas. He commuted from California by private jet. The message was clear. He was not part of the place. And in time, his sweeping reforms failed — untethered from the culture, context, and people he was trying to lead.

Because leadership, too, is shaped by place. Not just by principles or plans, but by presence. To lead well is to inhabit the realities of others — their routines, frustrations, constraints, and hopes.

Place is not a backdrop. It is part of the work itself. As Eudora Welty wrote, “Location is the ground conductor of all the currents of emotion and belief.”

If leadership is to carry current, it must be grounded, too.