Google Days

For a number of people working with the web, myself included, Google will be pretty high up the list of dream companies to work for.

When you see descriptions of their company culture and offices it all sounds too good to be true. Free food, no dress code, subsidised massages and a commitment to allowing people to spend 20% of their work time on 'personal' projects. Their offices look gorgeous and they have a very strong commitment to green issues.. Forbes named them Best Company to Work For this year.

I think there's a lot to learn from their attitudes. Of course not everybody has the available funds and scale that they do, but there are elements of their work culture that just about everybody can learn from.

Of course, if you're a somewhat bitter competitor who's been losing current and potential employees to the offer of a free lunch, there's even more reason to try and do better. But apparently if you're Microsoft rather than try to improve yourselves, you just try and criticise the competition. When they're recruiting young graduates, do they really think that being able to say "our health insurance policy is better than Google's" is going to work? No, they're going to look at the pictures of the funky office, grinning staff members and exciting projects and be sold on them.

Make changes to your ways of working, make your staff happy and then show the world. Criticising the competition is just... tacky.

Using the buzz

Yesterday's post talked (or maybe rambled) about enthusiasm curves, the natural way enthusiasm waxes and wains for a project. But what do you do with the enthusiasm when you have it and how do you create it when you don't?

Messaging Times talks about encouraging enthusiasm:
"Enthusiasm can’t be faked. You can’t expect your team to create buzz about your new project, product or service simply because you held a staff meeting and told them that it is something that matters to you or the business. It has to matter to them."

Spread the buzz
When you're enthusiastic, talk about it; when you're not, shut up. Talk to people early on, even if they are not going to be involved with the project until a distant point in the future, enthuse at them while you can. If you spread your excitement to people that aren't going to get caught up in the inevitable slump, you can use their enthusiasm as a sort of emergency stock-pile.

Make the most of it
When you're feeling positive about the project you will do a better job selling it to other people. So near the beginning of the project write everything down, any ideas you have, snippets of copy, concepts for advertising; they can all be looked at later.

Smooth the curve
While you're enthusiastic get some of the boring tasks out the way, any of the nitty gritty stuff that can be cleared early. This may well bring you down a bit, but hopefully it will make your slump either shorter or less slumpy.

Get on with it
If your project has moved into development, just get on with it. Create a todo list and tick things off, I can motivate myself to do boring tasks using the simple reward of crossing something off a list. Make sure you share the list with other people, maybe the task you're dreading is straight-forward to someone else. Try to avoid going backwards and rethinking your original ideas and decisions unless there's unassailable practical problems.

Go towards the light
At some point, your enthusiasm is going to lapse (unless you're some kind of chirpy, optimistic freak) but even in the darkest moments you should have something to look forward to. Keep your initial ideas visible, put up pictures of designs and targets. Reward yourself and your colleagues when mile-stones are reached, the light at the end of the tunnel may be an usherette with an ice-cream tray.

Know when to quit
If your enthusiasm is low and the light at the end of the tunnel turns out to be someone with a torch running away from you, it may be that you need to give up. There's no point in chasing him for ever until he eventually disappears leaving you in the dark (to stretch the metaphor to death). Talk to the people you initially shared your enthusiasm with and try to re-ignite it. Think hard about whether the project is salvageable by taking a step backwards and rethinking it, or whether it's just a bad lot altogether.

(That photo is one of mine so... © All rights reserved)

Nice ideas, shame about the implementation

How to be a Good Boss
"You're the boss. But it's no fun (and very difficult) being a boss that is not respected, or even actively disliked. How do you get your staff to be the best thing that ever happened to you? By being the best boss that ever happened to them."

The heart of this page is in the right place, all the concepts are good, but many of the practical examples are hilariously cheesy. My particular favourite I think is the suggestion for a Batman and Superman themed party which would cause record breaking amounts of eye rolling if anyone treated/threatened me with such a thing.

Hmmm... doughnuts....

Round of teas: 50p
Doughnuts for the office: £4.50
An office full of people on a sugar high: priceless.

It's all about the biscuits

I figured it was about time I wrote a post explaining this blog's tagline - "it's all about the biscuits".

I believe very strongly that of the many thousands of pieces of advice that can be offered (and we will continue to offer) about how to improve your office morale it can be broken down to something very very simple. It's all about the biscuits.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't pay your staff a decent wage, be flexible about working hours, listen to them and encourage their individuality and creativity. But while you're doing all that, just make sure there's some decent biscuits available. For the sake of a couple of quid a week you can get nice chocolate digestives, hobnobs or just a decent selection box.

The very worst thing you can do is have biscuits available for meetings and then not allow your staff to eat them, or have different 'classes' of biscuit - good ones for meetings with important people, mediocre ones for less important people and cheap ones for your staff. Classism by biscuits is not a healthy message to be sending.

Splurge occasionally and bring in Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Get in cakes for people's birthdays and anniversaries at work. If money is a bit tight, encourage people (and set a good example) to bake cookies and bring them in.

From Indexed

Over the last few weeks in my office we have had cake to celebrate a birthday and someone's 10th anniversary with the company, champagne to celebrate someone's engagement and lots of leftover food from meetings because they intentionally over-cater so there's enough for staff. That cost may be 50quid and increased office morale a huge amount, it made us feel like a group of colleagues rather than just isolated individuals.

It's also a good opportunity for everyone to get together and chat. It's not a formal meeting but it's a good chance to listen to staff and find out what's going on. Why not just knock off work half hour early every Friday, get some sort of food in chat about how the week's been?

See Also
Sometimes it's about tea