ClearSpace is intended to be a self-managing, self-organizing group of individuals. The goal being to treat everyone like a grown-up along with expecting everyone to act like one. A few specific examples:

• Control over your work environment. We collaborate and come together when needed, however, we all have home offices that allow us to work in a place we designed.
• Paid when the client pays. We have no traditional payroll where our company would front people money until the client pays their invoice.
• Choose your work. Ultimately our people decide whether they want to work on any particular project. No one is assigned to work on projects.

We do our best not to hide or shelter our people. If a client pays late, or doesn’t pay, we all know about it, and feel it. If an individual, or team, drops the ball on a project we all feel it.

Some people will read this and think I’m describing the ultimate workplace while others will run in the opposite direction. It takes a certain individual to want, and succeed in, this model. You will feel the business everyday. Why do this? It stems from a respect for the people, however, it’s even more self-serving than that. It’s a good business decision. Having everyone, not a select few at the ‘top’, in tune with our business puts us in a better position for success. When an opportunity or crisis presents itself we’re in the best possible situation to face it.

Years ago, I assumed everyone would want to work in a model like this and it’s those big, bad companies that prevent us from having access to all this learning. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been involved in a few other experiments like this over the years. I’ve come to understand that a lot of people do NOT want this. Quite the opposite. Looking at it from the other direction, you could say those people are paying their company NOT to tell them about all this. That’s part of the value their company offers them. If a client pays late and it means finances may be stretched next month, fine but don’t tell me, that’s what I’m paying you for.

For me, while it’s stressful and freaks you out somedays, I’d much rather feel the business than not.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 23rd, 2006 at 2:10 pm and is filed under Office Gossip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.