Blog Courtsey : Sam Sahni, Workplace Strategy Director at Work Transformers
The trouble with most corporate offices is not that they were designed poorly; it’s that they were designed for a world that has vanished. For decades, the reigning doctrine could be summed up as the‘3 Es’:
1.Efficiency – squeeze more people into fewer square metres.
2.Effectiveness– supply a predictable mix of desks, collaboration spaces and off-the-shelf space types so that desk sharing can be justified.
3.Expression– wrap the floorplate in glossy branding so visitors knew who paid the rent.
On spreadsheets, the formula was flawless. In practice, it ignored a fourth and very important E: Empathy.
THE EMPATHY GAP
When Tomoko Tanaka reported for her first day at Phoenix Robotics2her orientation pack promised ‘creative freedom in a collaborative hub.’ What she found was a single, gleaming warehouse-type floor where 120people shared one sensory landscape. Bright LED glare, the thrum of air-conditioning and the constant ping of Slack notifications. Tomoko writes low-level firmware, a task that demands deep, 90-minute tunnels of concentration. Every interruption reset her mental clock. By week six she was starting her ‘real’ work after 6pm, long after the social buzz had decamped to izakaya bars.
Nobody at Phoenix doubted Tomoko’s talent, yet no metric captured the nightly toll on her focus or the slippery delay that crept into product timelines. Efficiency measured seats, not attention. Effectiveness counted colab rooms, not mental stamina. Expression ranked Instagram-ability, not physiological comfort. The fourth E, Empathy, was nowhere in the formula, and its absence hollowed the other three from within.
ONE SIZE, MANY MISFITS.
The legacy office rested on a second myth: fairness by sameness. Uniformity once felt progressive. Everyone got the same swivel chair, the same locker and the same 9.00–17.30 contract with a lunch break. But a modern organization resembles a mosaic more than a monochrome tile. On the second floor of Phoenix sits a customer success team whose shifts begin at three in the afternoon to match clients in São Paulo and Johannesburg. Half of them stand to ease the strain of back-to-back calls, the other half pace around on headsets to stay alert. By the time they arrive, every height-adjustable desk has been commandeered by data analysts who started early.
Standardization did not create fairness; it sparked a daily turf war. Analysts hoarded conference rooms for silence, the support team colonized lounge areas, and firmware engineers like Tomoko worked from home ‘just to get real work done.’ The building had become a negotiation arena instead of a performance platform. This example shows that equality isn’t equity either.
The above is a short excerpt from Destination 2.0 by Sam Sahni, speaker at Workspace Design Show London 2026.
The world of work has changed forever. Offices built for the rhythms of the1990s no longer match the flexibility, diversity and digital fluency today’s workforce demands. Leaders face a stark choice: cling to outdated models and risk disengagement or reimagine the office as a powerful lever for culture, performance and innovation.
Destination 2.0 is the practical guide every executive needs to navigate this moment. Drawing on two decades of global experience, Sam Sahni presents a clear, human-centred framework built around 11 pillars – from wellbeing and inclusion to technology, sustainability and leadership. Packed with real-world case studies, actionable tools and proven strategies, it shows how to transform workplaces from underused assets into thriving destinations.