Conan O'Brien Foments a Cubicle Revolution

Conan O'Brien's skills as a funnyman and TV talk show host are well known. But unwittingly, he may turn out to be the father of an office culture revolution and the hero of office workers from the shores of Cubetown to the outskirts of Cubeville.Last April O'Brien and a camera crew toured Intel headquarters in Santa Clara. He was mock-horrified by the grey warren of cubicles. "It's good, he told his host. "It makes people feel like they're all basically the same. That there is no individuality. There's no hope. There's no sense that life has possibilities."

A few months later Intel has announced new policies intended to improve the quality of its employees' work environments. Intel is a huge company, but its workplace environments and practices can be observed -- and improved upon -- in small and midsize companies everywhere.

The first pilot, launched last summer is underway in one of Intel's engineering groups, is described by the company as "a six-month pilot combining two work culture changes that give people more 'thinking time'  contiguous chunks of a few hours at a time when they will not be interrupted, and will thus be able to focus on work that requires concentration and thought.

In the second phase of that pilot, 150 Intel engineers will experiment with "Zero Email Friday." The idea is gaining traction, and "companies have noticed an increase in productivity."

Intel is also making a commitment to modernize its physical workspaces. In an August interview in the Financial Times, CEO Paul Otellini said, "The whole nature of sitting down and hashing out ideas and collaborating is a bit stymied by the construct of the cubicles."

O'Brien, Hungry Hungry Hippos, and tube of "good luck" dryer lint notwithstanding, may be this generation's Upton Sinclair -- our cubicles, his abattoirs.