So… for the ninth time in nearly three years, I am moving offices.
Normally, there is a specious, meretricious justification for the move. “Planning and Creative need to sit together!”, “Planning needs its own identity!”, “Worldwide should feel like part of London!” (the unintentional hubristic comedy of this point still eludes those people who run the – unsuccessful – London office), “London needs its own identity!” and so on.
The latest reason behind my bad-tempered hurling of books into big blue crates is “We need to design a more creative, energetic environment.” This is such a lame one that I’m not even going to bother to unpack my stuff – it can only be a matter of months before the next one comes along to take its place.
There’s a terrible sense of rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic about the whole thing – not that the network is doing badly, but I think I am fairly justified in saying that the placement of desks in relation to huge, colourful mobiles, tractors, inflatable animals or whatever other symbol of “creativity” has been stumbled upon, is not going to be the key to future growth… Oh well, I shall keep my mouth shut (for once) and let you know what the reason for our reversion back to the old set-up is.
