I recently read a profile of Jason Fried in Inc. Magazine (Nov. 2009 issue). Fried runs the company 37Signals, which you may know as the creators of the popular online collaboration and project management software, Basecamp.
37Signals is technically based in Chicago, IL, though they employ folks in across the nation and even other countries. What struck me as completely refreshing was Fried's philosophies regarding meetings and a 40 hour work week, among other things. I personally identified with the way Fried approaches work and his dislike for time-wasting meetings, and the micromanaging constraints of a 40 hour work week. Fried's thoughts are that meetings are a waste of time...his example was that if you have 10 employees in a meeting for one hour that's 10 hours of wasted productivity because you've pulled 10 people away from what they were doing for an hour. Also, Fried mentioned that he doesn't much care for how many hours his employees work a week as long as the work gets done. That said he's completely fine with the idea that employees can work from home or at their Chicago office, or both, etc. He also doesn't seem to care if employees work during regular business hours or not. The idea that Jason Fried doesn't seem to want to impose typical work day structures in his company that might hinder creativity and productivity is a sentiment that I think could benefit many other companies. Perhaps your employees would be more creative and productive if they had less of a traditionally structured work day. Certainly something to think about. Comments are closed.
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