What is the one thing people who can wholly lean into joy have in common? It's gratitude. They practice gratitude. It’s not an “attitude of gratitude”—it’s an actual practice. (Brené Brown writes about this in her great book Dare to Lead.)
Practicing gratitude and celebrating milestones and victories increases employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention.
How do you practice gratitude? What other practices do you have?
Amy Edmondson, the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, wrote in her book "The Fearless Organization" how achieving high performance requires the confidence to take risks, especially in a knowledge-intensive world. This is a book that I highly recommend.
How can leaders create the psychological safety that employees need in times of burnout, languish, anxiety, depression, fear, and stress?
It's not news that knowledge and innovation have become vital sources of competitive advantage in almost every market and industry. "For knowledge work to flourish, the workplace must be one where people feel able to share their knowledge!"
Another important factor is that the problems we have to solve today are so complex that the only way to solve them is in a collaborative way. More than ever, our decisions and actions are interdependent. Hiring talented people does not guarantee results if they do not know how to work collaboratively. Organizations need people who break down silos, move beyond formal responsibilities, and proactively seek solutions as a team. Individuals who bring their talent to do their best work for a higher purpose.
“People must bring their brains to work and collaborate with each other to solve problems and accomplish work that’s perpetually changing.”
That’s why psychological safety is so important. When individuals feel safe at the workplace, they can take risks, fully participate, and teams can perform at their best.
“Psychological safety is broadly defined as a climate in which people are comfortable expressing and being themselves. More specifically, when people have psychological safety at work, they feel comfortable sharing concerns and mistakes without fear of embarrassment or retribution.
(...)
When a work environment has reasonably high psychological safety, good things happen: mistakes are reported quickly so that prompt corrective action can be taken; seamless coordination across groups or departments is enabled, and potentially game-changing ideas for innovation are shared.”
An excellent distinction between what is and what is not psychological safety:
Source: Janko Kotze
“Brain science has amply demonstrated that fear inhibits learning and cooperation. (...)
Research in neuroscience shows that fear consumes physiologic resources, diverting them from parts of the brain that manage working memory and process new information. This impairs analytic thinking, creative insight, and problem solving.”
In a time when we need to work collaboratively to do the work that serves our customers, it's relevant that people feel that they are able to take risks, speak up, question the proposals, share information, and work with each other to create lasting impact.
Time cannot and will not be managed, and you will never get more of it. The problem is rooted in the choices you are making with others and your own choices. You choose how to use it every moment of every day, whether you believe you do or not.
— Jamie Cornell
Every day we have to examine our priorities, agendas, and choices. When we say yes to one thing, we implicitly say no to others. We can control choices, not time. Even if we are unaware, we define how we spend our day. That requires us to prioritize and say no to many things.
The quality of our life is related to the quality of our decisions. The best choices compound. Sometimes we don't get what we want because we lack focus, not motivation. Change your focus to change your outcomes.
One of the most important habits to learn is to make a specific time in the day to reflect. Without reflection, many things cannot be learned. If we don't learn, we are prone to make the same mistakes again.
Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim, and end of human existence.
― Aristotle
What is your purpose in life? From time to time, ask yourself what would happen if today were the last day of your life. What would you do if you only had this day? What would you do first? What would you prioritize from your list?
Don't overthink it, but reflect on your priorities. Limiting your choices can bring clarity to your mind.
Leo Babauta wrote, "When I’m truly committed, there is a deeper feeling, in my gut, that there is no way I’m going to fail at the commitment." When I read this quote, I reflected on some of my priorities because I didn't find myself with that level of commitment. Why? I want to do many things; however, It’s not possible to be committed to everything I want to do. It's really clear that there are important things for me, but they require that I make some choices. Some choices could be simple (but not easy), like saying no to other things that I also want to do. Regardless, I have to do things differently because time is limited.
Minor and trivial tasks threaten to steal much of our time. If we’re not careful, we can spend most of our time on the wrong things.
How about you? Do you find yourself with a list of things that you want to do, but you are not keeping the intentionality level required? What is your level of commitment to your priorities?
In the long term, you are only as good as your consistency.
— Shane Parrish.
You should aim to compound your habits.
Be willing to let small daily habits convert into opportunities and increase your focus on things that really matter to you. Long-term vision and thinking can be one of your most significant competitive advantages.
By implementing daily habits, you take your life vision and your short- and long-term goals and mold your lifestyle so you can be successful in your pursuit of creating and living a meaningful life.
One of the most important habits to learn is to make specific time in the day to reflect. Without reflection, many things cannot be learned. If we don't learn, we are prone to make the same mistakes again.
Learning happens when you go through an experience, but it is multiplied if you take time to reflect on the experience and share your reflections with colleagues who share your path.
Journaling can help you establish a positive pattern of thinking and acting when it really matters. Build this positive habit, establish a new ritual, and it will allow you to thrive. In about five minutes per day, journaling will allow you to achieve more during the day and be a happier person. It's a strategy that has helped wise people along the ages to become better at what they do.
Since 2016 I started this journey to put more intentionality into the things that are really important for me. I started to create new habits and be more clear about how I am spending my time. My family, intentional learning, how I can add more value to my work. This is a journey in progress, and I continue learning by standing on the shoulders of giants. Trying to look and learn from what the best referents are doing to achieve what they want and how they are doing it. A huge part of this journey has been using a daily planner and journaling.
When I started, I had two kids, and it was very challenging to handle all that I wanted to do. Currently, I have three kids, and I have to admit that without those learnings, without that clarity, I wouldn't have been able to grow and make progress in the most important things in my life.
In the beginning, it was frustrating to see that even when I considered myself a very organized person, the days were passing by with many things overlapping, many urgent issues consuming my time, jumping from one topic to another. For me, starting this journey was a before and after, representing a huge change in my life.
In this journey, I learned how to create intentional time and work on the most essential things in my life. Now I intentionally decide what the things that I want to focus on are. This learning process shows me how to have more clarity, define what I want to focus my time on, and what things I choose to say no to.
Based on what I learned, I decided to create an annual journal-planner for this year, the "Five-Minute Habit Journal for Happiness & Success." It contains the most valuable practices and effective processes that I found. In a simple way, this journal-planner intends to help strengthen your independent will and invites you to commit to reflecting on the past and planning for the future.
You should aim to compound your habits. If you are interested in learning more, visit this link.
It's not what you are going to do, but it's what you are doing right now that counts.
— Napoleon Hill
All we have is now.
Most people start the year planning; some write their new year resolutions with dreams and hopes of accomplishing new projects. Probably most people have plans to start new goals, new habits, or want to return to others that they put on hold. We want to improve our lives. The question isn't if you want it to happen but if you have the commitment and intentionality required.
The most important project you will ever take on is your own life.
If you don't take the time to design and execute your own life plan, someone else will.
Life with focus and intentionality creates progress. There is no more significant challenge than controlling yourself.
To grow consciously, it's good advice to focus on the journey instead of the destination. Ask yourself how far you can go?
Start with small steps every day. Over time, you'll see progress. Consistency compounds.
Growth begins at the end of our comfort zone. Can you learn to feel comfortable with the uncomfortable?
In 2020, we initiated an organizational challenge that started with a new global organizational model. The plan was put in place with a lot of enthusiasm from all the leaders. It was centered around models that facilitated fitter and faster operations and decision making. It also created a lot of uncertainty for most employees, who were trying to understand their new role among other things. It was during those moments of change when Covid-19 hit.
Since we received the challenge in the Consumer Business Group in Latin America, we were convinced that we could make an impact and challenge the status quo. We identified some early challenges, like that the team felt like a non-prioritized business compared to the other industrial businesses of the company. There was a need to change that perception and make the consumer business more attractive in order to find, develop and retain the best talent to grow the business.
With the leaders of the Consumer Business group in Latin America, we believe in going above and beyond to support our customers, our communities, and one another. We defined that the way we would challenge the status quo was by establishing the right culture, that would allow us to have the best and strongest team. People who were willing to care, to take responsibility, to be resilient and to lead.
In April 2020 we created our People and Culture program and called it “Time to Lead."
The value proposition we defined is: "Leadership is a decision. Leadership is a choice. We expect our team to take responsibility for their own leadership, to take action and risk enough to make a difference. We also expect them to care for others, so they can perform at their best in their current role, accelerate their growth and create value as one great team."
Part of our focus was to try to understand how the teams were doing and identify the top priorities to ensure the new organizational model’s success. We analyzed our team, what the potential risk of losing talent was, and what the retention and engagement drivers were.
I personally had one on one meetings with the leaders with the purpose of identifying the level of engagement, and to explore different career possibilities, and development needs. Moreover, we also sat down with several companies to gain a better understanding of the best practices in the market.
In a context of pandemics, the virtual mode of the workplace emphasized the need for both behavioral and technology solutions that would help us to build the culture of a team that barely knew each other.
Once our priorities were clear, we designed the actions to develop our team and to help our top talent reach their maximum potential.
We worked together and involved different teams and areas. The commitment and engagement was incredible.
When everyone understands that they’re part of a group of people creating something bigger than themselves, great things happen.
Some key takeaways we focused on:
People as our main priority. We put our people at the center of our decisions. Our main priority is that our employees are fine. The leaders have been focusing a lot on being very close to their teams, on understanding the different needs and difficulties that they could be going through professionally or personally. Trust has been one of our core values during this journey.
Wellbeing and Flexibility. We relaunched a global campaign called FlexAbility 2.0, encouraging people to organize their working schedules according to their needs. We embraced practices like "zero-meetings Fridays." We also tried to minimize the number and duration of meetings. Instead of having 1-hour long meetings, we reduced the time to 45 minutes or 25 minutes.
Psychological Safety. We encouraged all the leaders to create a safe space for people to talk to each other about these complicated, emotional topics; to find the courage to ask for help, to be real, to understand what they were going through.
Listening to our employees. We had a strong communication rhythm across Latin America. In our Quarterly Townhalls anyone can ask any question, and someone in the company just answers them in real-time. We had coffee talks lead by the Area Business Leader, to understand the main difficulties they were having and what opportunities we had to make their work more effective; etc.
Team Executive Coaching. Monthly sessions for the new country or region leaders of the team.
Learning and Development training programs that we consider relevant within the current global context like: how to sell, negotiate and maintain relationships with clients remotely; Emotional Intelligence, Strengthen Remote Teams; etc.
In August we paused to evaluate how we were doing and to make the necessary adjustments. We are very proud of the results. The survey shows that we have increased our engagement from 71% to 94%.
We’ve also identified our main opportunities, and we've already started to work on them. We listened to our people and let them know that we are taking action.
I cannot be more grateful and excited about what we have gone through in these months. We know that we have outstanding leaders, each with unique talents, skills, and experience. The issues we face today are so big and challenging, it becomes quite clear we can't do this alone. We must do it as a team.
We know we have great foundations. This is an ongoing effort and we have to work on it every day. We are just getting started. There is more to do but I am really looking forward to it.
Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash
The year 2020 and the COVID pandemic brought a series of unprecedented changes, challenging people and organizations to drastically change how they worked. For some of them, it implied working in ways they previously thought impossible.
With the challenges and difficulties, opportunities arrived. The humanization of work and empathy became more relevant than ever. The awareness of helping and caring for others grew. We heard frequently expressions like "you are not working from home; you are at your home, during a crisis, trying to work." For everyone, it represented a unique experience. It was precisely those moments that brought subjects like flexibility, psychological safety, and wellbeing to the table. These challenges also opened a door to opportunities. In some cases, levels of productivity increased dramatically. Being able to work remotely opened a global talent marketplace that, until then, very few companies were taking advantage of.
3M, where I work, relaunched a global campaign called FlexAbility 2.0, encouraging people to organize their working schedules according to their needs. In Consumer Business, we embraced practices like "zero-meetings Fridays." We also tried to minimize the number and duration of meetings. Instead of having 1-hour long meetings, we reduced the time to 45 minutes or 25 minutes. Most important, we encouraged all the leaders to create a safe space for people to talk to each other about these complicated, emotional topics; to find the courage to ask for help, to be real, to understand what they were going through.
It's true we still are a company with lots of meetings, but with a great flexibility that is based in a culture of trust and autonomy so that you can discern how do you want to organize your work. Reinforcing trust is key when you are not willing to replicate everything you did in the office while working remotely; when hearing leaders say that "it's OK not to be OK", and that it's also OK to say that you need to disconnect, or take a day off, or a week, or whatever you need. The premise is that our work relies on a culture of trust and responsibility, and not on one of working hours or connection time.
Remote work has uncovered the advantages of a flexible job, with increased opportunity for family time, and for a lot of people, it also represented an increase in productivity.
According to a study from Microsoft based on more than 30,000 people in 31 countries, employees are reevaluating priorities, home bases, and their entire lives. The research shows that 41 percent of the global workforce is likely to consider leaving their current employer within the next year, with 46 percent planning to make a major pivot or career transition.
At the beginning of the year, Shane Parrish interviewed Matt Mullenweg on The Knowledge Project podcast. Matt is co-founder of WordPress, the open platform that runs more than 30% of websites in the world, and CEO of Automattic.
Talking about the difference between remote and distributed work, Matt explains that the word remote implies isolation. "Who wants to be remote from their colleagues? Remote implies that there’s something central and you’re far away from it. There’s a remote mountain or you’re in a remote town. You’re isolated. (...) When you operate as a distributed team, the system itself becomes resilient because the nodes are relatively independent but each able to fully contribute. For us, it’s so important that every single person in the company has an equal ability to contribute."
"In non-pandemic times, a lot of automatitions love dropping their kids off from school and picking them up. That’s easy to do because you don’t have to leave an office, walk into a parking lot, all your colleagues see you going somewhere and wonder if you’re goofing off. It’s just part of your day, and I like that it creates a lot more objectivity and focus around what the actual work is. Because I believe in offices we’re so distracted, just as human social animals, by all the things around the work. How someone dresses, whether they’re present or not, what times they’re present, do they appear to be working really hard? And these things are... They’re the map, not the territory, right? "
Automattic, with more than 1,300 employees distributed around the world, started from its inception as a distributed company. Below are some highlights from the interview, where Matt Mullenweg shares the six levels of distributed autonomy that he learn from this journey:
"Level zero: is a job which absolutely cannot be done distributed. Eg. construction.
"Level one is when if you weren’t in the office or with your other colleagues for a little bit of time you could get by, but the environment is not really suited for it. Maybe you could hop on a phone call but maybe you wouldn’t have access to a VPN or internal company resources.
"Level two is where most companies went to in the pandemic. This is where you basically try to take everything you did in the office and recreate it online. You say, “Oh, we used to be in six hours of meetings a day. Now let’s be in six hours of Zooms a day, and let’s have these ways of reporting.” Maybe you have access to more of the tools online. If you’re in level two, you might feel totally exhausted at the end of every day in a way you never did in the office. Lots of level two organizations have too many meetings. They worry about installing monitoring software on their employees’ computers, or they don’t have a good way for people to have a home office set up, or things like that.
"Level three is where you start to embrace the benefits of being online. We like to have a Google Doc. When we have meetings, we have Google Doc that’s open on everyone’s computer, and we’re taking notes in real-time, and everyone is looking at that next to the Zoom. This allows a real-time record of whatever’s being recorded in the meeting. Also, that becomes a sense-making apparatus, so if someone is taking the notes, which, by the way, we can share, and they see something written down which wasn’t what they thought was said, all of a sudden you’re reconciling that difference. That’s super, super powerful.
"Level three, you start to have fewer meetings too, which I like. Level three is still synchronous though. You’re still expecting people to be online working together at that same time to get work done.
"Level four is where you go from synchronous to asynchronous, and this one’s kind of magical. By the way, it’s also really, really hard. It’s much easier to work together if you’re there at the same time and you can kind of ping pong back and forth. But if you’re able to design an organization that people popping in and out at whatever timezone or whatever times are able to fully contribute and move forward the goals in a meaningful way, then you unlock access to the world’s talent. You unlock ultimately flexibility in everyone’s day.
"You give people a ton of autonomy, and I believe asynchronous interactions can be far richer than synchronous ones. You unlock the power of the introverts in your company. People for whom in a real- time meeting they might hang back a little bit or be shy, or they might need to think about things to really contribute their best thoughts."
"For example, inside Automattic, we have this internal blogging system called P2. If we’re trying to make a decision for this widget inside of the product we don’t call a bunch of meetings about it. We create a thread, and so this internal blogging thread someone will say, “Hey, we need to decide on this widget. Let’s discuss it for 36 hours and then we’re going to make a decision. And then everyone essentially has almost an internal comment thread that’s kind of like a mix between... Well, it’s just like a blogging comment thread or forum where they can discuss and they can embed videos, and gifs, and mock-ups, and discussions, and link to research, and everyone’s participating in their own time. (...) So, instead of just on the cuff responses and reactions to things, they’re able to really think about it. Take a walk around the block. Take a shower. Play with your dog. Think about the problem and really ruminate on it and bring your best answer too. Then everyone’s doing that back and forth, and then at the end of the time period, we can be like, 'All right, let’s synthesize the best wisdom, and knowledge, and information from this and make a decision.'
"And so, it took a little bit longer, maybe from start to finish, but I feel like the decision could be 10 or 100 times better. And when the quality of your decisions determines your outcome, this sort of process can be amazing.
"Level five is nirvana. It’s somewhat unattainable but what you always want to aspire to. Level five is where I believe that the organization in a distributed fashion is outperforming at every single level. Productivity, quality, employee happiness, everything, any in-person organization. Because you’ve embraced all the power, all the special features of this asynchronous approach and everything’s better.
"A secret sauce, a magic ingredient of our distributed approach is in normal times we get people together three or four times a year. As humans, I still think there’s something that is impossible to recreate online, which is that breaking bread, the bottle of wine you and I share. Whatever the equivalent of that is. It just builds trust in a way that you can get pretty close online. I think you can get 85-90% of the way, but you can’t get to 100. "
It's a great interview, I strongly encourage you to listen to the complete version.
Some points that help Automattic and Wordpress run a fully distributed operation:
Monthly town halls, where anyone can ask any question, and someone in the company just answers them in real-time.
Record meetings. Post meeting recordings, so anyone who wants can watch later at faster speed that hour-long meeting.
Real-time collaborative notes. Take real-time notes of meetings using a tool like Google Doc, in a document that’s open on everyone’s computer. If someone sees something written down which wasn’t what they thought was said, all of a sudden you’re reconciling that difference.
Meeting notes. If every meeting is transparent and has really good notes or a recording, people don’t feel the need to be there.
Clear expectations, which create accountability. You can evaluate if you did the things that were expected of the role, or this job, or that other people were depending on. The most common issue is that people work really hard on the wrong things.
Asynchronous work. Experiment to go from synchronous to asynchronous work.
Face-to-face contact. Get people together three or four times a year. As humans, face-to-face contact builds trust and empowers distributed work.
Overwork. The problem they have in distributed work is not underwork but overwork. To address this problem, they have developed a lot of internal systems. They used to not track any vacation or what they call AFK, away from keyboard time, because they have a completely open policy there. The problem was people weren't taking vacations, so they started tracking to encourage people to take it.
Almost Zero email. Everything happens on the blogs, except for truly private things.
The way companies approach the next phase of work — embracing the positives and learning from the challenges of last year — will impact who stays, who goes, and who ultimately seeks to join your company. The choices leaders make will impact an organization’s ability to compete for the best talent, drive creativity and innovation, and create an inclusive work environment for years to come.
Every person, leader and organization faces the challenge of telling a story that moves people—one that deepens engagement with others.
Sometimes what’s stopping us isn’t the value of our ideas—it’s our ability to communicate them meaningfully and bring others along.
I found this TEDx from Bernadette Jiwa (8 min). Bernadette’s eight bestselling books are modern classics on mastering the art of storytelling to persuade, influence and inspire. She advises, consults and speaks with organizations, entrepreneurs and business leaders, from startups to Fortune 500 companies, universities to non-profits who want to amplify their influence and impact.
It doesn't matter how good your ideas is if nobody cares. I think you will like it as I did.
Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash.
Some days ago I had the opportunity to participate in a Workshop called “Allies to Advocates for Diversity and Inclusion” with an extraordinary group of people who expressed their interests to be part of the change, people who want to add value, and believe that things can be different.
Many reflections came out in that session. For example, how our brain is pre-programmed to not pay attention to each other. Or that our survival instinct is not prepared to deal with what is “different” to us. Other reflections came out, as the relevance of listening with genuine interest. Also, to have the openness to try to understand that the challenges of minorities can be very different and that they do not have a voice to represent them. And the relevance of self-knowledge, to consciously try to recognize that as humans we may not be seeing that there is a problem.
One of the objectives of the workshop was to start this space of reflection, but it also was a calling to take action. Although it is a good start, we need more than empathy if we want to see a change. It takes more than good will to make things happen. We need to make choices.
Consider these possibilities. What if we make a stop to think and choose to behave differently, less indifferent to the each other. What if we don’t judge, if we recognize that we have stereotypes about what is the right thing to do and even about how people should behave.
What If we chose to behave beyond our natural instincts for what we like and don’t like. If we come up and show true interest and ask her about her great idea. If we really listen and try to understand. What if we really care enough to work for a deep connection, because connection is what enables us to add value.
If we are not willing to do something different, we may be missing out on something that could change our lives. Our choices and actions —or our inaction— define us as the person we are.
We all have the capacity to change for better. Everyone has the capacity to do better. The choices that we are making, the effort, and the risk are just the beginning of the journey.
We need to get involved. We need to go beyond what is expected.
Photo by Esteban Lopez on Unsplash
I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.
— Superman
Inspired by Stan Lee, legendary writer and co-creator of Superheroes, Jim Kwik, brain and memory coach, prepared an inspiring tribute video of his work.
An important learning point is that “one person can make a difference”.
Stan Lee used his passion for storytelling to find his purpose, which was making a difference. He reminded us that a superhero is not just somebody who was discovered and developed his superpower. All the characters that Stan Lee created, they weren’t only incredible wonder women or wonder men that were just perfect, they were actual humans with their flaws and challenges.
Superpowers don’t make them superheros, what makes them superheros is using those powers for good.
Jim Kwik said: “I believe, as many of you, that the mindset of an incredible creator affected billions of individuals. We have the power to make a difference. It’s not about unrealistic powers. It’s about discovering and developing your superpower, so you could make a difference. Because just having a superpower doesn’t make you superhero. You have to use it to be able to save the day”
With great power comes great responsibility.
— Uncle Ben (Spider-man)
Stan Lee believed that there is a superhero in each of us, and we have to discover how to unleash our superhero power. But he also believed that when we have great power, we have great responsibility to wield it in the area of service.
To that expression Jim Kwik shares an important reflection, that in the opposite sense it’s also true. “With great responsibility comes great power.” When we take responsibility for something, we have to make things better. We can be responsible for be the best version of ourselves, our family, community or work. When we take responsibility for what we focus on, for our actions, when we own our mistakes and become accountable, then we have great power.
We have great power, but we are responsible not only for what we do, but for the results we get from it.
Once, Jim Kwik asked Stan Lee, if he could have any superpower what would it be?
And he got two answers from him:
One was the super power of luck. (…) Having the ability to be lucky is the ultimate superpower, you’re gonna win every single battle, you’re gonna be able to do all these amazing things because you’re always lucky.
And he (Stan) felt lucky. He felt lucky in his career, he felt lucky in his life.
The power of gratitude. Gratitude rewires your brain, what you appreciate actually gets better.
Luck is really a superpower and a lot of it is your observation. Paying attention to the things that you are most grateful for will makes you more lucky and grateful.
His second answer from Stan was the power of love. How do you have tolerance or acceptance, it’s like the ability to spread love is the ultimate superpower.
Do you ever ask yourself, if you could have any superpower what would it be? What are your current superpowers?
Everyone has a superpower.
We can be accountable. We can make things better. We can create. We can be people who don’t shirk responsibility when the chips are down. People who want to do the difference. Who live our values, who want to make an impact in the world.
Be the first person to greet, be first to say something that cheers the day to others.
Do not despise small steps and small moments of routine, diligence and fidelity. Because those are the steps that lead us to the great things that we are striving for.
Everyone can make a difference.
Photograph by Roberto Zoia; Machu Picchu, Peru
Culture eats strategy for breakfast.
— Peter Drucker
If you are one of those persons who likes to be ahead of the curve and is interested in knowing the trends and best practices of the market, this compilation of the book "It Does not Have to Be Crazy to Work" by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson may interest you.
The authors of the book are the founders of Basecamp, a technology company with a revenue of more than $10M per month, and 54 employees working from different parts of the world. In the book, they share their vision and culture, and what makes them a totally different company from usual market practices.
Basecamp is a unique company that inspires and invites you to rethink "What is it for? What are the results you are looking for, and if as a society we are doing it in the best way.
The following are some excerpts of the book.
We’re in one of the most competitive industries in the world. In addition to tech giants, the software industry is dominated by startups backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital. We’ve taken zero. Where does our money come from? Customers. Call us old-fashioned.
(…)
We put in about 40 hours a week most of the year and just 32 in the summer. We send people on month-long sabbaticals every three years. We not only pay for people’s vacation time, we pay for the actual vacation, too.
No, not 9 p.m. Wednesday night. It can wait until 9 a.m. Thursday morning. No, not Sunday. Monday.
Are there occasionally stressful moments? Sure—such is life. Is every day peachy? Of course not —we’d be lying if we said it was. But we do our best to make sure those are the exceptions. On balance we’re calm —by choice, by practice. We’re intentional about it. We’ve made different decisions from the rest.
Ask people where they go when they really need to get something done. One answer you’ll rarely hear: the office.
That’s right. When you really need to get work done you rarely go into the office. Or, if you must, it’s early in the morning, late at night, or on the weekends. All the times when no one else is around. At that point it’s not even “the office”—it’s just a quiet space where you won’t be bothered.
The expectation of an immediate response is the ember that ignites so many fires at work.
First someone emails you. Then if they don’t hear from you in a few minutes, they text you. No answer? Next they call you. Then they ask someone else where you are. And that someone else goes through the same steps to get your attention.
All of a sudden you’re pulled away from what you’re working on. And why? Is it a crisis? Okay, fine then! They’re excused. But if it’s not—and it almost never is—then there’s no excuse.
In almost every situation, the expectation of an immediate response is an unreasonable expectation. Yet with more and more real-time communication tools creeping into daily work—especially instant-messaging tools and group chat—the expectation of an immediate response has become the new normal. (…)
Emergencies? Okay. You need me to resend that thing I sent you last week? That can wait. You need an answer to a question you can find yourself? That can wait. (…)
Almost everything can wait. And almost everything should.
At Basecamp, we’ve tried to create a culture of eventual response rather than immediate response. One where everyone doesn’t lose their shit if the answer to a non urgent question arrives three hours later. One where we not only accept but strongly encourage people not to check email, or chat, or instant message for long stretches of uninterrupted time.
Give it a try. Say something, then get back to work. Don’t expect anything. You’ll get a response when the other person is free and ready to respond.
And if someone doesn’t get back to you quickly, it’s not because they’re ignoring you—it’s probably because they’re working. Don’t you have some other work to do while you wait?
FOMO. The fear of missing out. It’s the affliction that drives obsessive checking of Twitter feeds, Facebook updates, Instagram stories, WhatsApp groups, and news apps. It’s not uncommon for people to pick up their phones dozens of times a day when some push notification makes it buzz, because WHAT IF IT WAS SOMETHING SUPER IMPORTANT! (It just about never is.) (…)
People should be missing out! Most people should miss out on most things most of the time. That’s what we try to encourage at Basecamp. JOMO! The joy of missing out.
It’s JOMO that lets you turn off the firehose of information and chatter and interruptions to actually get the right shit done. It’s JOMO that lets you catch up on what happened today as a single summary email tomorrow morning rather than with a drip-drip-drip feed throughout the day. JOMO, baby, JOMO.
Because there’s absolutely no reason everyone needs to attempt to know everything that’s going on at our company. And especially not in real time! If it’s important, you’ll find out. (…)
At many companies these days, people treat every detail at work like there’s going to be a pop quiz. They have to know every fact, every figure, every name, every event. This is a waste of brain power and an even more egregious waste of attention. Focus on your work at hand. That’s all we ask. That’s all we require. If there’s anything you must know, we promise you’ll hear about it. If you’re curious, cool—follow whatever you want—but we want people to feel the oblivious joy of focus rather than the frantic, manic fear of missing something that didn’t matter anyway.
Companies love to declare “We’re all family here.” No, you’re not. Neither are we at Basecamp. We’re coworkers. That doesn’t mean we don’t care about one another. That doesn’t mean we won’t go out of our way for one another. We do care and we do help. But a family we are not. And neither is your business. (…)
The best companies aren’t families. They’re supporters of families. Allies of families. They’re there to provide healthy, fulfilling work environments so that when workers shut their laptops at a reasonable hour, they’re the best husbands, wives, parents, siblings, and children they can be.
Have you heard about those companies whose benefits include game-console rooms, cereal snack bars, top-chef lunches and dinners, nap rooms, laundry service, and free beer on Fridays? It seems so generous, but there’s also a catch: You can’t leave the office.
These fancy benefits blur the lines between work and play to the point where it’s mostly just work. When you look at it like that, it isn’t really generous—it’s insidious. (…)
There’s an uncanny correlation between the companies with these kinds of benefits and the companies that can’t stop talking about the need to push work to the max. Dinners, lunches, game rooms, late nights—these mainly exist at companies that work 60-plus hours a week, not 40. Sounds more like bribes than benefits, doesn’t it?
At Basecamp, we’re having none of that. (…) There’s no mission to maximize the hours we make employees stay at the office. We aren’t looking to get the most out of everyone, we’re only looking for what’s reasonable. That requires balance.
That’s why we look at benefits as a way to help people get away from work and lead healthier, more interesting lives. Benefits that actually benefit them, not the company. Although the company clearly benefits, too, from having healthier, more interesting, well-rested workers.
Here’s a list of relevant “outside the office” benefits we offer all employees, regardless of position, regardless of salary:
· Fully paid vacations every year for everyone who’s been with the company for more than a year. Not just the time off, but we’ll actually pay for the whole trip—airfare, hotel accommodations—up to $5,000 per person or family.
· Three-day weekends all summer. May through September we only work 32-hour weeks. This allows everyone to take Friday off, or Monday off, so they can have a full three-day weekend, every weekend, all summer long.
· 30-day-paid sabbaticals every three years. People can spend it at home doing nothing, deep-diving into a new skill, or hiking the Himalayas. Whatever floats their boat.
· $1,000 per year continuing-education stipend. This isn’t about learning a skill people can use at work—it’s about everything outside of work. Want to learn how to play the banjo? It’s on us. Want to learn how to cook? It’s on us. None of these things have anything to do with work at Basecamp—they all have to do with encouraging people to do things they’ve always wanted to do but needed a bit of encouragement and help to actually make happen.
· $2,000 per year charity match. Donate to a charity of your choice up to $2,000, and we’ll match it up to $2,000.
· A local monthly CSA (community-supported agriculture) share. This means fresh fruits and vegetables at home for people and their families.
· One monthly massage at an actual spa, not the office.
· $100 monthly fitness allowance. We’ll basically pay for people’s health club membership, yoga classes, running shoes, race registrations, or whatever else they do to stay healthy on a regular basis.Not a single benefit aimed at trapping people at the office. Not a single benefit that would make someone prefer to be at work rather than at home. Not a single benefit that puts work ahead of life. Instead, plenty of reasons to close the laptop at a reasonable time so that there’s time to learn, cook, work out, and live life with family and friends.
It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work is a very suggestive book. The authors share their vision and culture as a company, but mainly they invite you to think and question your standards of work.
We have a choice. We define our standards. Our standards and our priorities define us as persons.
It does not matter what position you have. We can all make better decisions.
