I’ve been re-reading the posts which came hot on the heels of Jason Calacanis’ 17 startup tips. Some of the stuff he wrote makes perfect sense, like buy cheap tables and expensive chairs. Why waste a lot of cash on a desk when you can get a perfectly good one from Ikea for £22?
Some of the other stuff was bollocks. Like having an expensive coffee machine and a fridge full of ’soda’. I don’t think you should do everything in house. A company canteen, no matter how good it is, cannot provide the same variety of a lot of different cafes/restaurants. Sometimes I want Japanese and sometimes I want a sandwich. As Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares teaches us those two things will never be done well by a single organisation. Especially if that organisation is a technology company. You need somewhere people can sit and eat the food they bring in, even invite local cafes and restaurants to pitch a stall, but don’t make it yourself.
Get out of the office
One of the things the facebook employees (apparently) like about the company is that it is based in downtown Palo Alto. Now they are off to some facebookplex at the behest of new COO Sheryl Sandberg and some employees don’t like the idea. The reason is people like balance. They like to get out of the office during the day and stroll around. They are not slackers for doing this, they’re just recharging their batteries and if you can’t see this your organisation is not going anywhere.
Semco is one of the best run companies in the world and one of the reasons is that they treat their employees like adults. The CEO Ricardo Semler tried it the ‘traditional’ way when he inherited the company and burnt himself out in his twenties. Once he had recovered he realised it didn’t matter where people were or what hours they were doing. What mattered was that they were completing tasks which pushed the company forward. By focusing on output not process Semco revolutionised their productivity.
I’m currently reading ‘Joe Wilson and the creation of Xerox’. It’s a great book about a great leader. What Wilson recognised is that you motivate people to work well by having a worthwhile project, a great vision and treating them properly. The bottom line is you can’t motivate good people to work hard on a stupid idea. That’s Mahalo’s essential problem and no amount of fancy coffee machines will change it.
Have a nice weekend folks, the sun is shining and I won’t be working.
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On work
On relaxing
On simplicity
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