A Spaceship-Shaped, 12K Capacity Building As Our New Apple Campus

This article was published...on TechCrunch...

After having a banner WWDC start yesterday, Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs humblypresented his idea for a new Apple campus at the Cupertino City Council today. Jobs wants to build one building that will hold 12,000 Apple employees on a former Hewlett-Packard property in the area between Tantau North Wolfe, Homestead and the 280 freeway.”It’s a little like a spaceship landed,” Jobs says. No kidding.

Jobs began the presentation referring to the fact that Apple is growing “like a weed,” and that its current campus at D’Anza and the 280 isn’t enough — fitting only about 2,800 people. Apple currently rents buildings to house its other 6,700 employees in the area. The new building will augment the current campus.

Paving the way for these plans, Apple purchased about 100 acres from Hewlett Packard in 2010 and added them to the 50 it owns adjacent. Jobs says he has corralled “some great architects … some of the best in the world” to come up with a design that will house 12,000 people in one four story high building on the property. The area is now mainly apricot orchards.

With the futuristic design Apple apparently is relying heavily on its experience building retail stores, and it will be creating one massive piece of curved glass if the proposal goes through. “There’s not a single straight piece of glass in this building,” Jobs says. The parking will be underground.

Jobs also wants the building to function as its own power source, with an “energy center” as its primary source of power (“with natural gas and other ways that are cleaner and cheaper”), using the grid as a backup.

The campus will include amenities like its own auditorium similar to Apple’s current Town Hall (“We’ve got an auditorium, cause we put on presentations, much like we did yesterday but we have to go to San Francisco to do them.”) and a cafeteria that will feed 3,000 people at one sitting.

“We do have a shot at building the best office building in the world,” Jobs told the Council members, “Architecture students will come here to see this.” Ideally Apple wants to move into the campus in 2015.

The individual members of the Cupertino City Council seemed like they were in awe the entire time the infamously charismatic Apple CEO spoke (which isn’t surprising), asking Jobs for free Wifi and iPads for constituents as well as for an Apple store that’s actually in Cupertino and not in the Valley or Los Gatos. Jobs shyly responded to the requests, “I think we bring a lot more than free Wifi.”

Key facts about the new Apple campus:

• Design will include a courtyard in the middle and curved glass all the way around.
• Jobs is planning on transforming an area that’s 20% landscaping to 80% landscaping by putting most of the building’s parking underground.
• There are 3,700 trees in the area at the moment, Jobs has hired an arborist from Stanford to take the area up to 6,000 trees.
• The plan is to build a four-story high building and four-story parking structure.
• The campus will incude an energy center, and natural gas will be the primary source of power, using the grid as backup.
• There will be an auditorium, fitness center and some R & D buildings.
• Jobs plans a 40% increase in Apple employees going from 9,500 today to 13, 000 in 2015.
• He wants to increase the campus’ space 20% from 2.6 million to 3.1 million square feet.
• Landscaping will increase 60% from 3,700 to 6,000.
• Surface parking will decrease 90% from 9,800 to 1,200 .
• The building footprint will decrease 30% from 1.4 million to 1 million.
• Cafeterias will fit 3,000 people at a sitting.
• The whole building will be designed with the utmost concern for employee safety.
• Apple currently has 20 buses running on bio-diesel fuel for its employees and Jobs thinks that system will work well with the new campus.
• The plan for the new design will submitted asap, and Jobs hopes to break ground next year and move in 2015.

Employees Uncomfortable Talking To Bosses

Quite an interesting article..

This was published under Human Resources Online:

By: Lee Xieli, Singapore

WORKPLACE COMMUNICATION

US – The lack of effective communication between senior management and their workforce has resulted in employees feeling uncomfortable in sharing their ideas on innovation with bosses.

According to the first Workplace Communications Impact Survey of 1,168 employees by Yammer, companies still have a long way to go in improving their internal communication and collaboration programmes. Only 8% of respondents said their company is extremely effective at sharing business goals, timelines and plans internally.

A majority added that they felt uncomfortable sharing ideas or feedback with their managers or senior-ranking executives. Yet three in five employees were comfortable sharing ideas and feedback with their peers or colleagues.

Worryingly, respondents preferred using emails (74%) and phone (61%) to communicate with their bosses even though it was difficult to work effectively with these methods. Only 31% will schedule face-to-face meetings and 53% will engage in unplanned conversations.  

Slightly more than a third said the lack of communication has a significant impact on their work productivity as they do not feel valued by their employer. Three in 10 felt they do not have all the information needed to do their jobs well while long, ineffective meetings are another drain on productivity for 22%.

Furthermore, close to a fifth said their companies are poor at recognising and rewarding employees who come up with ideas on improving the organisation. Only 8% felt their suggestions for innovation were being recognised.

The lack of connection between bosses and their teams may result in the differences in the level of respect respondents have for the people they work with. More than half said they respect their co-workers while only 39% respect their managers. Respondents also deemed their peers (29%) as better mentors than their bosses (19%).

“It is clear that fostering a sense of community among co-workers is key to success,” David Sacks, CEO of business social networking tool Yammer, said. “But even more so is providing managers a chance to interact with their employees on a daily basis and build more of an open, authentic connection.”

When Silence Haunts The Workplace

Found this another very interesting article.. 

When Silence Haunts The Workplace

By: Lee Xieli, Singapore

Published: 23 hours 20 min ago

ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE

Singapore - When employees choose to remain quiet out of fear or for the wrong reasons, the silence can lead to disastrous outcomes for the organisation.

With Asians renowned for being more reserved than other cultures, an unwillingness to encourage employees to address issues out loud can lead to a breakdown in the company. 

When Yee Ping Yi came onboard as CEO of CPF Board in January this year, he asked the HR function for the government agency to organise a series of chats with employees.

Derek Tan, chief human resource officer at CPF Board, said Yee then would sit in and "just listen" to the employees without any HR representative present. While Tan was initially worried about the silence, he realised the CEO was setting the tone for the organisation's senior management.

Speaking at an event organised by consulting firm True North Leadership Asia yesterday, Tan said "his silence speaks volume". His leadership style has helped shift the way managers hold meetings with their teams in the company.

According to Tan, listening to employees is twice as important when you're a leader because if no one dares to speak up, it means they deem the corporate culture unsafe.

Neo Boon Sim, director of HR development division in Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), concurs. He further highlights the "importance of breaking the silence and encouraging a culture of openness within the organisation".

"I don't think we have a big problem [at MAS] in the sense that people don't dare to speak up or there is a culture of fear," Neo said. "We might have that sort of environment in the past but it was about 15 years ago during the previous management style."

MAS has since then deliberately moved away from that. The HR function at MAS has been conducting in-house "Generative conversations" training programmes for every level of the organisation for the past three years. Neo said the training is designed to "help people break gridlocks in meetings and help them see each other's perspective".

A "Silence Fails: The Five Crucial Conversations for Flawless Execution" study conducted by VitalSmarts and The Concours Group found that a lack of "crucial conversations" can result in a 85% failure rate for projects. There have also been instances where team members refuse to speak up when they run into issues. More than half had employees who rather wait for someone else to broach the subject.

It found that leaders who conduct effective discussions are 50% to 70% more likely to achieve their projects objectives - within budget, on schedule, meeting quality standards and with intact team morale.

Yet those who do run into problems do not confront or resolve them. Out of half who do so, only 17% were able to air their concerns. The survey found that many managers (88%) lack the skills to provide leadership, political clout, time, or energy to see a project through to completion.