When Kaz started, we said:
it doesn’t have to be that way. Work needs to be something we love.
And our strategy was that if we can work smart we will love our work. That was the goal and that’s what we always stuck to, and look at us 16 years later. We have enjoyed each and every moment of those years yet we have worked hard, making hundreds of great software. It all happened because we loved our work and we worked smart.
No secrets here. I’m surprised every time I get asked about our little secret of how we make work so loved. How we achieve high quality in our software time and time. I’m surprised because there is no secret. It’s obvious, it’s common sense. Judge for yourself, here are some of those “secrets”.
Let people choose their work
This is the big one. Everyone has their own soft spot for tasks. Some people love writing up precise documents whereas most hate documentation. Some developers can only relax when they are doing algorithms yet some great developers I know would rather die than think of maths. If you can come up with a team structure, a work plan where everyone can choose their own piece of work you are on your way to creating love for work.
What happens to the pieces no one likes? Easy. Once everyone has got a pick of their own the left overs people don’t mind so much to divide up between them and just slog it. Try this, I have tested this a thousand times before and I know it works like magic.
Cut out the red tape
Red tape - all the “process”, sign offs, authorizations, email acceptance, form fillups or whatever time wasting, soul sapping, life destroying stuff that organizations have come up with must be take out. Red tape takes away the fun from real work. The only thing it adds is just delays. I’ve found that all the promise of red tape that is supposed to make a project work according to plans are complete myth. Throw them away and you’ll find that a group of smart individuals working on a project they love will always deliver on plan.
Say no to politics
Politics is when a team needs to appease certain groups within the company. Politics is when saying what’s on your mind makes things difficult for you in the team. Politics is the single most harmful thing that a project or a company can have, yet it is something that exists in most teams. Maybe it is in the nature humans. You have to work hard to keep politics out, but it’s worth it. Take it out and then work becomes so much stress free. And stress free work leads to work that you love.
Risk takers are celebrated (even when they fail)
I’ve kept the best one for the last. Working smart and loving work means you have to own your work. You have to be responsible for the decisions you take and you need to take them without fear. If you in a work environment where failure from a decision leads to huge repercussions and pain, you end up in an endless process of authorizations and double checking. This leads to wasted time, but more detrimentally to a feeling that you do not own the work, you just happen to be doing it for the company. A psychology like that will never get you smart work. And it will never get you great, amazing results.
OK that’s about it. Simple, isn’t it? For the past 16 years we have proven over and over that these simple techniques give you great results. This is our work smart and love work way of doing things.
