I was reading Jason Fried’s “The Way I Work” last night and it didn’t take long to realize that I had a new man-crush to rival those of Ryan Reynolds, Bill Simmons, and David Stehle.
When I run my own company, I will run it with a very similar approach to the one Jason takes with his employees. It virtually guarantees you’ll have talented people wanting to work for you. (And tons of idiot’s too.)
“Employees come to the office if and when they feel like it, or else they work from home. I don’t believe in the 40-hour workweek, so we cut all that BS about being somewhere for a certain number of hours. I have no idea how many hours my employees work — I just know they get the work done.”No, not every company can operate this way, but A LOT more can than currently do. Could yours?
But employees won’t do their work? Easy solution. Show them the door. If you hire the best employees it won’t be an issue. They’ll be empowered by the freedom and work harder, at hours you wouldn’t expect them to. Sometimes in a small organization or team this might mean the others pulling the weight until you find the right fit. It’s worth it.
“We rarely have meetings. I hate them. They’re a huge waste of time, and they’re costly. It’s not one hour; it’s 10, because you pulled 10 people away from their real work.”There has to be some research somewhere to show that 95% of meetings are worthless. Lets sit at the conference table and tell everyone what we’re working on. I got an idea. How about a wiki? Google Doc? An E-mail? You don’t need that meeting. That one either.
“After lunch, I get a little lazy between 1:00pm and 3:00pm. I don’t feel that productive, so I’m usually screwing around, which I think is really important. Everyone should read stuff on the Web that’s goofy or discover something new. I hate it when businesses treat their employees like children. They block Facebook or YouTube because they want their employees to work eight hours a day. But instead of getting more productivity, you’re getting frustration. What’s the point? As long as the work gets done, I don’t care what people do all day.”Here’s the rub. If your employees aren’t compensated well, if you don’t respect them, if you don’t trust them, they’ll find ways to waste time. End of story. I think the hour after lunch should be mandatory nap time (like Kindergarten) so everyone wakes up anxious to dominate the second half of the day.
Bottom line, I just thought it was a refreshing perspective from someone who’s been uber successful running a business.
What are your thoughts? How would you run your company? Would this strategy work in your office? Would people take advantage of it? With so many people looking for jobs right now, wouldn’t this be the perfect time to try something like this?
