Do WE want a Zappos or Buffer type culture…really???
This is meant for my internal staff who I admire lots:):)
Do we want a Zappos or Buffer type culture…really??? So incase you do not know both of these companies have been doing things that are not normal in how they recruit, who they recruit and how they run their business’s. They have had many challenges and I am sure they still are. Anyway internally in our company there is lots of admiration about how they experiment with things.
Anyway let me paint some background to our company before I explain what I have done.
:)
I started a company 13 years ago and believe it or not we have a really business with 50-100 staff depending on how and who you count. We have done probably £1 billion plus in sales over the years and we now turn over £10’s of millions pa. and are responsible for £100’s of million in sales p.a to partners we work with. Honestly we are real:)
I have invested in loads and loads of companies, stupidly early that have become very very real and I thank those founders for allowing me to invest and even some to let me help them:). Those companies have grown from being worth $20 million to probably close to $200 million ( on paper anyway)
As many of you will know I have never been conventional in my approach:) I don’t mean to do anything odd, it is just how my brain is wired.
Now you have the background of where we are:) So now let me explain what happens with growing pains………
We have lots of and lots of great staff who are much smarter than me in many ways. My role as the Group CEO has become several things:
- make sure we can pay the bills
- always be recruiting good people who can fit in
- set a vision
- push people outside their comfort zone
- be nice and do things to the benefit of the staff and everyone we deal with who kindly allow me to try to guide them to be better people
This week I have decided to make something public that is a challenge for myself as many people maybe able to understand it. Here goes:)
Remember internally we talk lots about companies like Zappos and Buffer and admire what they are doing, and their openness, we have positioned ourselves as a company with a pirate flag and a pirate bandanna, we are in early days of getting people in to try and help with our culture. So we definitely are on a journey……..
Due to the growth we need to get another office ( we already have 4 ), this new office was to replace the office I am based at. The new office is simply a different league, treble the size, overlooking a park, table tennis table etc etc etc etc. All sounds wonderful:)
Except I threw everything into confusion:
I have decided to mix up where everyone sits and break up all the groups of friends, groups of developers, even break up people working on the same projects. I know the business theory that people doing similar jobs should sit next to each other as it is more productive, but I also know that this is not healthy mentally for people to only sit with people who understand them. People need to be challenged and mix with people from different backgrounds, ethnicity, wealth, religion, etc etc….I recruit every type and I abuse them all:) . It is too easy to do tech and code with headphones on, use Slack, talk code to people who look and sound like you. I believe simply that random chaos makes people better in so many way, they get new perspectives, they become better people and the world gets better. Maybe they don’t do the coding or writing job aswell as they could , but I don’t want my staff to just be coders or writers etc I want this to be part of me helping them on a journey…..
So now everyone will have to learn what it is like to sit in a new seat….wow imagine if I had announced something dramatic:):) As a company grows this is one of the many issues YOU will face.
We class ourselves as pirates and we have a pirate boat as a logo what did you think I was going to do with the boat? Leave it in the harbour.
This has create mass discussions and turmoil in the office?? Do WE want a Zappos or Buffer type culture…really???
Doug