We Doubled Productivity Because I Messed Up

Redemption. This is the story of how I inspired changes that led us to double our creative team without hiring new people but got ostracized by my colleagues during the process.

You have probably heard of the productivity principle which states that 80% of the results come from 20% of the actions.

The theory was created by Vilfredo Pareto in 1896 to show that 20% of the population owned approximately 80% of the land in Italy, but it became popular among entrepreneurs in 2007 when Tim Ferris first talked about it his book “The Four-Hour Work Week.”

I had never heard of the 80/20 rule before my first product meeting. But after learning of its existence and reading as much as I could on the subject, I became fascinated with the principle and started looking for ways to improve everything.

The first step I took toward increasing our 20 percent was to study the team to understand the rationale behind their actions and research ways to get more out of them.

I would arrive at the office every day and post the results of the research I had conducted the night before on our message board and tag the people I thought should read (and study) them.

There was nothing wrong with their way of doing things. They were experts in their respective fields and I was fully aware of that. Although I may still be on the defensive here, all I wanted everyone to want to get better. I pushed for everyone to go beyond the boundaries of their personalities and intellects so that we could genuinely innovate at what we were doing.

My posts would mostly go unnoticed and the only changes I noticed in the workplace were the ones related to the interactions between my colleagues and me.

That’s when I noticed that I was fucking up.

Looking back at it, that was not a healthy way to approach the whole thing.

I was way too hard on everyone. I perceived moments of relaxation around the office as a waste of time and seeing my colleagues acting happily would make me angry. I had the same problem with myself. I’d arrive home exhausted after a long day at work and watch something silly on Netflix for an hour or so to empty my mind and immediately feel guilty afterward for doing so because I could have been doing something productive instead.

It’s just that I was brought up in Newark, where you had no other choice but to be tough. And if you were not fighting for ways to change your reality, you’d have your future laid out for you. And I couldn’t let that happen. The wife and I had just taken a mortgage on a house, and our first kid was on his way. So in my mind, if my co-workers were not willing to do their best, we would fail. And I couldn’t fail.

So I changed my approach.

I hadn’t given up on my mission to hack everything. Especially my colleagues.

The Immigrant Mentality

I decided that I was going to share one last thing with the team. If that didn’t work, I’d shut up and put up with the way things were.

I grew up surrounded by people from different cultures and backgrounds, and I knew how rich of an experience that was. Kyte is a multi-cultural company and thought I could take advantage of that. So I sat down with my bosses and told them about a study I had read from linguist Lera Boroditsky on how language shapes thought and affects our perceptions of the world.

I went on to tell them about one of her lectures were she shares a beautiful insight into what it means to communicate:

“We humans have the gift of language. Just by making noises, hisses and pops with our mouths while exhaling, we can send pressure waves through the air and these pressure waves then magically create ideas in other people’s minds.” — Lera Boroditsky

In her research, Boroditsky talks about how each language possesses its own cognitive toolkit which results in different understandings of time, space, gender, etc., making people think and act differently depending on the language they are speaking.

According to the linguist, bilinguals tend to have in their minds all of the knowledge systems from all of the languages in which they are proficient.

Given the fact that everyone in the office is bilingual, my theory was that we could benefit from the different knowledge systems that come with each language if we were to create an environment that incentivized us to think in more than one.

What I tried to make very clear with the conversation was that if we were to achieve innovation of creativity and imagination, we would have to implement a multi-lingual culture around the office.

So we did just that.

“To have a second language is to have a second soul.” — Charlemagne

We began not only by encouraging everyone to communicate in a different language but also by giving them the opportunity to learn new ones.

In addition to that, we decided to have a weekly meeting in another language to discuss matters related to product development, content creation and the future of the company.

And the results were phenomenal.

During these meetings, programmers, designers, and content creators showcased different personal and professional traits that enhanced their abilities to think more clearly. On top of that, everyone exhibited a more rational approach when confronting problems.

It was as if we were conversing with an entirely different group of people.

People with new ideas; new takes on things; new personalities.

All these changes had a meaningful impact on our product and journey. Because now we were compelled to look at our actions from twice as many angles this helped us build a more solid foundation for our processes.

The multi-lingual culture we’ve instated at Kyte has not only changed the work environment but also transformed the impact of our actions and how we present them. There are now all these different personalities empowering our ideas which are in consequence revolutionizing our entire journey.

The relationship with my colleagues is still healing, and after a long conversation with one of our founders, I have since changed the way in which I introduce new ideas. Being too hard on my colleagues was my way of coping with the fact that I was unhappy with my way of doing things. I am now much more focused on bettering myself so that others may see in me what I always wanted to force on them.

Ivan Farias is a former journalist from NYC with expertise in politics, media, and international affairs. Now based in Brazil and working as an International Communications Specialist at Kyte. Currently focused on learning how to dad.

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