Welcome to The Very Daily Weblog of Joshua Blankenship

Quote, “Hire to be the dumbest person in the room. Surround yourself with people that are smarter than you. Somebody who is of excellence and passion.” — Michael Lebowitz, founder Big Spaceship from his CLICK NY session

I LOVE THAT. As we’re rapidly expanding and experimenting with our team here (especially in web and communications) I am excited to be a part of hires that have specified knowledge far beyond mine. Our other designer Chris knows so much more about getting things printed well than I do. When it comes to web development, I have enough knowledge to get things done, but not enough to make a dent in the universe, so we’re looking for a web developer to own it and push us/me forward. For us to accomplish great things, I have to make an intentional, concerted effort to not be the smartest guy in the room.

As we grow, I will know less and less about the specifics of our team’s individual tasks so that those things can be done passionately, excellently and on a world-class level by the right people. Otherwise, we only grow as far as my knowledge capacity will let us and we never leverage the power of being a team.

You can try to outspend the competition. Or you can try to outculture them. Create a place that makes employees feel special. A place that makes them feel like they’re part of a bigger whole. A place where they continually get to learn and evolve. A place where everyone actually likes each other.

If you create a culture like that, who would want to leave? Plus, you’ll get the best minds out there knocking on your door to get in.
— Matt Linderman, excerpted from Pixar’s tightknit culture is its edge

I think Matt hits on something important here. I know for us at NewSpring, it’s essentially impossible to outspend the competition, especially when it comes to skilled professional jobs like designers. We joke about “negotiating your paycut” when you come on staff here. For better or worse, it is what it is — a constraint we work within. We’re a church, and we simply don’t have the resources to “compete” with a company that sells products and makes profits.

But we can outculture them every day of the week. We can offer creative staff permission to fail (big) and have freedom, we can ditch as much bureaucracy as possible and we can push boundaries. Plenty of people work in “dream jobs” that don’t have any of these values.

Besides, after the initial courting process, I don’t worry too much about salary. I mainly think “do I want to go to my job today?” I answer “yes” 99% of the time these days, and I assure you that has nothing to do with my paycheck and everything to do with the culture I walk into everyday.

I found this Wikipedia article via Jakob Lodwick who quoted some of this excerpt:

Skunk Works is a term first coined in 1943 by Lockheed…and widely used in business, engineering, and technical fields to describe a group within an organization given a high degree of autonomy and unhampered by bureaucracy, tasked with working on advanced or secret projects.

I feel extremely lucky to work in an organization that 1. values autonomy, 2. values leadership, 3. tries their best not to get bogged down in bureaucracy and 4. trusts their employees (and volunteers!) to put their skills and effort into creating new solutions to help us move forward.

Oh, the secret projects we have up our collective sleeves…

[When shoe company] Zappos hires new employees, it provides a four-week training period that immerses them in the company’s strategy, culture, and obsession with customers…After a week or so in this immersive experience…[Zappos] says to its newest employees: “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.” [Because]…if you’re willing to take the company up on the offer, you obviously don’t have the sense of commitment they are looking for.
— William C. Taylor, Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit—And You Should Too

From my very satisfied customer’s point-of-view, Zappos is an incredible company. What’s even more fascinating to see is their corporate culture functioning in non-standard ways like the quoted policy, and fully embracing technology like Twitter (they have over 300 employees using Twitter) in order to connect directly with customers.

I work in an office. I have worked in offices, both large and small, non-profit and for-profit, for the majority of the last 5 and a half years. I enjoy the consistency of a fulltime job, the regular paychecks, and the team environment. I do not enjoy being on an imposed schedule that rarely lines up with my most productive, creative hours. To wit:

The corporate world rewards based on perceived productivity rather than accomplishment. People who arrive at work at 8am, take a 30 minute lunch break (at their desk), and leave at 6pm are usually congratulated regardless of their real accomplishments, while those who struggle with corporate schedules but produce brilliant work (delivered on time) are often penalized.
— Dan Benjamin, Offices and The Creativity Zone (emphasis mine)

Story of my life. Anyone else struggle with this?

Not only does Deuce Design have fantastic graphic design, branding, signage, environmental graphics, and typography work, they obviously have what looks to be a fun-having office environment.

Nothing says “we have fun” quite like luchador masks. And a big desk. Never underestimate the intangible quality that humor can bring to a company.

I’ve become fairly fascinated with Jelly lately. The idea is simple: individuals who may or may not know each other gather together on a semi-weekly basis in one place and they work together/separately for the day. Quote, “We provide chairs and sofas, wireless internet, and interesting people to talk to, collaborate with, and bounce ideas off of. You bring a laptop (or whatever you need to get work done) and a friendly disposition.”

Quote, “Jelly started in NYC in February of 2006 when roommates Amit and Luke realized that they loved working from home, but they missed the creative brainstorming, sharing, and camaraderie of a traditional office. (Office politics, not so much.) So they started inviting friends to come work from their home one day a week. They soon found that working in close proximity to new and interesting people every couple weeks resulted in new ideas and interesting conversations.” So far they’ve been featured in Wired, The NY Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and NPR.

People are now doing the semi-weekly work-together in Manhattan/Brooklyn, Austin, Atlanta, Sydney, Philadelphia, and Boston. I’ll be working at the Jelly in Boston in December. I look forward to meeting some smart, motivated people, and trying a new work environment for the day. Other Jelly groups are getting started in different cities around the world, setting up their own wikis to stay connected and let each other know who will be where working on what.

Simple idea, huge impact. This is a perfect example of how the way an entire generation of people may come to view work, office culture, office hours, and so many other things that we think have to be a certain way because that’s all we’ve ever known. It’s a whole new work world, one with more freedom and less constraint. But we still crave the benefits of collaboration, social interaction, brainstorming, and human contact that the traditional office sometimes provided.

Maybe now we can have our jelly and eat it too. (I couldn’t resist. I apologize.)

Every so often, I’ll have an idea, or a topic, or something will come up, and out comes a long-ish, fairly articulate blog post. Engaging, equally-articulate commentary often follows, things are discussed, points and counter-points are made. It’s fun.

The problem is, the nature of the blog format and my frequency of posting means that those more in-depth posts only have a shelf life of a week or two at the most, before they fade into obscurity, buried under my 7-posts-a-day linking habit.

I don’t want to be contributing to the web’s lack of good conversation anymore than I already am. In an attempt to be more pro-active about writing well (in preparation for a personal goal of trying to write a book in ‘08) and simply writing more (instead of just editing, like here), I bought a silly domain and now have an outlet for that sort of thing in So Serious. I tried to think of a few key topics I’d most likely be passionate enough about to actually write and research and draft articles on. Work, Faith, People, and Creativity seemed to sum it up well for me. Most of my life intersects with these things on a daily basis.

There are, as always, a few bugs to work out and changes to make (I haven’t even peeked at it in Internet Explorer), but it’s at least ready for public outing. So Serious will of course get some press on this blog whenever I write new articles there, or you can grab the Serious RSS feed to stay in the loop. Don’t expect Very Daily Weblog-esque prolificness, I have no set schedule in mind, but hopefully there will be a strong sense of quality over quantity with the articles.

Thanks for reading.