Because chance has a way of getting things right!

Narrated by

François Bénard

Published on

2019-01-17

Updated on

2026-07-02

min read

The fine art of courting chance and staying open to happy surprises

Anyone who works in a coworking space is more or less convinced of one thing: the value of these workspaces lies not so much in the walls and the creature comforts you find there, but rather in what happens inside them. The exchanges, the sharing and all the value born of that very particular dynamic. The trouble is, those exchanges aren't so straightforward, thanks to our surly, wild-animal streak, so often resistant to free and disinterested exchanges with the stranger at the next desk.One of the challenges at Morning Coworking is to stir up unexpected encounters, to set up triggers that court chance and gently nudge you out of your comfort zone. The basic premise certainly isn't to ask everyone to have the social ease of a Club Med host. Not at all. To take the plunge, however, each of us has to be ready to stay open to those lovely, unexpected surprises.

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Hazard, chance and serendipity...

Open up the Larousse dictionary in search of a definition for the term aléa (hazard) and here is what you will read: "An unpredictable and most often unfavourable turn taken by events and tied to an activity or an action; a risk (chiefly used in the plural): the hazards of the trade." Charming. Here is yet another unenviable notion that clings to the coat-tails of work. A definition like that is hardly going to help the unexpected find a happy place within our workspaces. We can always reassure ourselves by falling back on the definition of the word chance: "A circumstance of an unforeseen or unpredictable nature whose effects may be favourable or unfavourable to someone". That's better, but it's still no cure-all.

*"Alea", in Latin, means "a game of dice"*

A third term – borrowed from the English serendipity – might do rather more to justify this shift towards the unexpected. The website of the Académie Française defines serendipity as the « gift of making fruitful discoveries by chance ». The article goes on in these terms: "Today the noun serendipity is frequently used in the scientific world to describe a form of intellectual availability that allows one to draw rich lessons from an unexpected find or from a mistake. One speaks of serendipity, for instance, in connection with a brilliant but careless English researcher who had a reputation for regularly forgetting his culture dishes and who, returning from holiday, was surprised to discover in one of them that a form of mould had prevented the bacteria from developing. Alexander Fleming had just discovered penicillin."This is the sort of stance that could well help us take the plunge: expecting the best when faced with the unknown. That state of mind could well lead us to see the unexpected and constant change as a fine habit to have.

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Courting chance in your workspace

The whole challenge, then, comes down to turning the hazards of the trade into happy accidents. Not easy. How can it be done without forcing anyone's hand? Certain solutions do exist, already being put into practice at varying levels of maturity. Each of these ideas offers a way to create pretexts for encounters between people with a leaning towards serendipity.

#1 Every break is a good excuse.

Coffee break or lunch, any reason is a good one for strangers to get talking. You just need the right pretext to get started. Several solutions have carved out a niche in this space, such as Random Lunch (who are, as it happens, members at Morning Coworking Bellini) for the lunch hour. In practical terms, participants receive an invitation a week before the set lunch date to take part in a prize draw. They can sign up on a platform, by email or via a mobile app. On the day itself, they know the name or names of their fellow diners, with the meeting place set by the participants. The random lunch is ideal for meeting 4 people in one go.Through February, Morning Coworking will be inviting its members to take part in random encounters over a shared "surprise coffee". It offers a one-to-one to spice up your break and your morning wake-up. Participants are drawn at random from those who have made themselves available after responding positively to an email sent automatically each week. To begin with, this shared coffee will be rolled out on a trial basis at Morning Coworking République.

#2 A day in the life of a member?

Along the same lines, coworking spaces could also set up another kind of roulette, a more ambitious one this time. The idea? To offer companies in private offices a game of musical chairs to encourage the exchange of ideas and inspiration. You could imagine – among the participating companies – one person from each team drawn at random who would go and spend a certain amount of time in the office of another team of members. A rather formidable way to get to know a great many people all at once, while discovering what a new company gets up to. Admittedly more of a commitment than a simple coffee, this solution would also be far more effective...