Name: Year Without Pants
Rating: 4.3 (28 reviews)
Author: Scott Berkun

Introduction

What’s in it for me? Learn how to develop creative teams from the masters behind WordPress.

Next time you’re at work, ask yourself this question: “Can I be sure that my colleagues are wearing pants?” You’re probably thankful that the answer is “yes, of course.” But think of it this way: if you can be sure that every one of your colleagues is fully clothed, then it means that they are all with you in the office.

And that means your company is not taking advantage of flexible working.

These blinks are based on advice from Automattic, the highly innovative company behind WordPress.com. They’ll show you how most of us are stuck in our traditional office practices, how we can all break free from unproductive work, and how we can really start to change (with or without pants!)

In these blinks you’ll discover

why Automattic ship a new product every day, even if it’s not perfect;
why you shouldn’t necessarily fix something when it breaks; and

how to make people enjoy the office meeting.

Key idea 1 of 7

If you want your employees to be independent, hire people you can trust.

If you’ve browsed the web, you’ve seen the name WordPress. It’s among the most popular blogging platforms available.

WordPress.com was started by Automattic, one of the most famous web developers in the world.

They’re known for their awesome team spirit and flexible working environment, which attract developers from all across the world. Getting a job there, however, isn’t easy.

Automattic places heavy emphasis on hiring precisely the right people for the job.

At other job interviews, you might face abstract questions designed to test your problem-solving skills, such as: How many ping pong balls can you fit into a 747?

Not at Automattic. Here they prefer to concentrate on assessing the concrete skills you’ll need to do your job. So, interviewees are instead tasked with completing a small project, using the tools and techniques that would be available to them if they joined the team. This way, only the people who can actually do the job get recruited, not the ones who are best at interviews.

After recruitment, Automattic ensures that staff are immediately trained in the most important area of the business: customer support.

With any new job, people can concentrate so much on their own little world that they ignore the wider goals of the company. To counteract this, Automattic starts their employees off in customer-facing roles, where they learn that the client is all important.

The author, for example, spent his first weeks at Automattic as a Happiness Engineer. Each day was spent dealing with customer problems in different areas of the company. This ingrained in him the knowledge that, wherever he worked in the company, the needs of the customer would always come first.

Quote: “Founders often hire to solve immediate needs and simultaneously create long-term problems.”

Key idea 2 of 7

If you want to have the most effective team, your leaders need to create the best culture.

In 1999 a highly innovative and influential design company, IDEO, went on the popular American TV show Nightline to shed some light on how they managed to be so creative.

One of the tips they revealed to the world was a brainstorming practice called “deep dive.” They explained how they had used this process to develop new prototypes and products with incredible speed, such as when they redesigned a shopping cart in only five days.

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Key idea 3 of 7

A simple innovative process, free from overmanagement, is the best method for developing creativity.

Here’s a simple question: How do you innovate in your team? Almost every company tries to encourage innovation, but many fail in establishing an effective process.

Some organizations simply make the process of innovation too complex, placing too many barriers between ideas and implementation. Maybe you’ve even experienced this at your company: ideas are closely scrutinized on paper, then the prototype is evaluated and then there’s a beta test. Only after the innovation has run the gauntlet can it finally be sent out into the world.

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Key idea 4 of 7

Lose the traditions that hinder productivity.

Many businesses swear by their traditions and time-tested practices. But if our ancestors had stayed loyal to their traditions, we’d still be living in caves and wearing skins!

The simple truth of the matter is that no matter how convenient and comforting traditions may be, they can often hinder productivity.

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Key idea 5 of 7

Your system should support the people who create the products.

If you’ve ever worked at a large company, then you’ll probably remember how massive their support teams were. In fact, it’s a fair bet that the IT and HR departments were the largest in the company. But this can’t be right!

The most important employees in any business are those who actually create products and services. Quite intuitively, if you concentrate too much on the support staff and not enough on your creators, then your products and services will suffer in quality.

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Key idea 6 of 7

We all hate meetings, but they are an important part of the working environment – when they’re done right.

How many meetings do you have every week? No matter how many it is, it probably feels like too many. Meetings are one of the most frustrating elements of modern work, and quite a few of us would prefer not to have any meetings at all!

Our frustration isn’t the fault of meetings per se. Rather, we get frustrated because meetings aren’t conducted effectively.

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Key idea 7 of 7

Effective teams need good, healthy communication and plenty of laughter.

In any organization there should be one goal that the entire staff aims to achieve. To achieve this goal, good communication is needed both between teams as well as within them.

For one, healthy teams need to laugh with each other, as laughter fosters connection between people. We’re at ease when we laugh, and this creates trust within the team and helps strengthen relationships.

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Year Without Pants summary