If I were to run shop…
Part I of the Series
Do you ever have this special day-dream? The one where you are the owner & founder of a successful startup and you kind of imagine how things would run in your shop?
Yeah?
Me as well.
Here’s how I’d run shop in, well, my shop.
Meet the Team
So, you want to meet the bright and brilliant human beings that create greatness on a daily scale?
Well, you’d have to simply hop on a video chat to meet them in an “All-Hands”… wait what… video chat?
Yes. If you want to meet my team, basically anyone below management, you’d have to call in via one of the many video chat services available.
I believe that we do our best work, if we have the decision of where and when we want to work. So why pen people up in enclosed spaces and force them to be creative, productive or awake?
Work is a process; it includes sprints and marathons and walks. Sometimes even a bit of standing around. There is no need to exhaust people from 9 to 5, by making them feel chased for output. Give them space and give them choice— both temporal and geographically.
And yes, there will always be cases when we have to meet with the client in person or when things are chronologically critical. But how often do you think that’s the case?
Enable your crew to be realistic about timings, workload and work distribution, and then communicate the same towards your clients and customers.
So if you wanted to meet my team, you’d have two choices: either dial in to our video call or not…
Well, there is a second way to meet my team. And that’s in our “Pop.Up.Office.”
Welcome to the Pop.Up.Office!
Space… the final frontier!
But only if you have a headcount-fetish and try to stuff as many warm bodies into an open space to impress people with the number of peeps reporting to you.
I’ve never liked this idea.
Yet if I have to have all the crew in one place, how do I create an office space that is able accommodate all my remote working crew when I basically don’t need an office?
Enter the Pop.Up.Office — it’s basically your traditional “offsite”. But we make it our “onsite” in my shop. Once every 6 weeks (or whatever interval you deem appropriate) we’d have all come to work together physically — at the company onsite. We would rent a space, additional infrastructure and whatever is needed to hit the street running.
“But that’s expensive!” you say. And yes it is… but I would need this kind of scale only at certain intervals and not for 52 weeks a year. Say we do an onsite every six weeks — that’s 8,5 onsites per year. That’s 8,5 weeks of large office space rent, infrastructure and peripherals — including a dedicated team to coordinate. Every six weeks we connect as humans, hunch together as a tribe, experience together and strengthen our bonds.
And that half-a-week: That’s solely for fun.
I know this is reads very “Utopian”, yet “Utopian” is where ideas are born. Take this perspective for a second: my crew doesn’t have to commute every day, my crew can choose where they work, my crew is working towards a client-oriented output and not for a process that’s based on the HiPPO’s on some board. By eliminating factors that render us down to basically a warm body in a rented space, I want to ensure that there is more value to the value we create for our clients.
And that’s a core tenet: Value can be delivered from anywhere. And individuals and teams have to have their own space and time to create the kind of value that makes us and our work so valuable.
Management…
“Ah, Daniel, but you certainly have to have an office for management. To meet clients and customers and handle the day-to-day business?”
Yep. That’s what Co-Working spaces are for, offering flat fees for private team offices. That’s where you find the C-Suite… well, whenever it is needed to assemble in one place. One of my local co-working places offers a fixed desk with free use of meeting rooms, access to events and services for roughly 300 Euros a month. That’s 3600 Euros a year with perks and services — a bargain for the added value.
If I’d need a tad more glamour and glitz to meet clients I’d hop over to a hotel no 15 minutes by foot from that co-working space. They offer a stylish atmosphere, great meeting rooms and a top-notch roof bar & restaurant for ending the day in style with good food and a great view of the city. For less than 1500 Euros I get a meeting room and catering for a whole day in a great place to make business.
But then again, what applies for the team also applies for the management:
The freedom to work from anywhere and at any time.
As I’ve written above, this very basic sketch of an idea may be labelled as very “Utopian”.
Yet those “Utopian” ideas become visions.
Visions become plans.
Plans become reality.
And perhaps this little “Utopia” will be a very real thing some day.
You never know.
Thanks for reading!
Daniel
Inspiration for this piece came from the Tobias Kremkau’s blog “Isarmatrose” as well as this TED post in LinkedIn.
