1.Lay the Groundwork

Capital One's Future of Work project took more than three years to develop. During that time, Bailar and his team employed tried-and-true project management techniques to see it through from start to finish. But they attribute the project's ultimate success to their unconventional effort to sell it to employees and executives.

Although there was general support within the company for making the workplace more inviting, at first no one knew exactly what that would entail for specific groups of workers. But Bailar was confident that maturing wireless technologies would play a big role. And so in 2003, the team cleared out an area in one of its buildings and for the next several months tested their hunches about how people might work in an open environment. Schuyler's HR and corporate real estate staff went first; IT staffers joined later.

The team experimented with floor configurations, white-noise levels, paint colours, the height of panels between work areas, and new conference and quiet-zone facilities. The group invited other employees (via the employee portal and personal contacts) to check out the space and give their suggestions, in response to which the team tweaked and retested their design. "We said: 'Stop by and take a look at us'," Schuyler recalls.

Bailar also gave out wireless cards for laptops so that employees could try out the new Wi-Fi test areas. He quickly ran out of cards. "This was viral; it was magnetic," he recalls. By taking the time to not only talk about the new environment to the employees but to show them exactly what it was going to look like and allow them to play with the new technologies, Bailar and Schuyler learned what workers wanted as they built support for the change.

"All of these things helped us manage the natural emotions and resistance," Schuyler says. Among the decisions that eased the transition: They let employees whose workgroups joined the program decide whether they wanted to be mobile, and they designed new work areas for administrative staff who needed dedicated, everyday space. They also provided training to both workers who retained a fixed space and to newly mobile employees (who were equipped with laptops, BlackBerrys and mobile phones) in how to work paperlessly now that they had less physical storage space.

The investment in marketing the new work concepts paid off: The company has cut its real estate bill in half in its reconfigured buildings because so many employees no longer require permanent space. According to employee surveys, more than 65 percent of those working in the new environment say they are more productive; it's easier to confer with colleagues, and the time spent in large meetings has decreased, among other measures. In the IT department, collaborative meeting spaces dedicated to supporting agile processes have contributed to a 40 percent improvement in project delivery times. And not one executive who made the switch says he would move back to his old office if given the choice.