oceanspace

There were so many things about this Farnam Street podcast episode that are salient for workplaces in general and the digital work environment that we’ve now found ourselves in.

Some highlights:

• Motivation driven by Mastery, Autonomy, Purpose; based on Daniel Pink’s Drive (summarized here)
• Mullenweg describes his time being split into 3rds for the following aspects of his work. (1) the people and the environment in which they work; (2) the product; (3) emergencies.
• The company is described as having a strong written communication culture, which I guess one might expect from a company that makes web tools for writers ;)
• Make reversible decisions quickly (throw together a prototype); make irreversible decisions deliberately (who you choose as your investor)

• This blog post is a summary of Mullenweg’s the 5 levels of “distributed work”, or you can listen to it described in the podcast episode linked above, or this one. My quick notes are as follows:

  1. Jobs that absolutely cannot be done remotely (e.g. construction)
  2. Jobs that can’t be done without on-site company resources
  3. Take everything you used to do in person and do it online
  4. Embrace the benefits of being online. (e.g. ability to live edit meeting notes, and real time come to a consensus on the outcomes of the meeting
  5. Unlock the power of asynchronous productivity, which has the additional benefit of fewer or shorter meetings, which unlocks the power of introverts who may not be as vocal in meetings
  6. All of this to aspire to… an organization that, in its distributed work fashion, is way better than if it were not