“It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy At Work”

Rethink your assumptions on corporate world with this book

Today’s book is more of a concise manifesto than a guidance type book.

It is a great source of inspiration to rethink operating a company and workspace culture:

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier are the cofounders of Basecamp.

This book is their reflection on the choices they made on how to run and expand their company.

They mention various issues with the corporate work culture, such as:

• Obsession with disruption (“break the rules, and a few laws while you’re at it”)
• Having workdays broken into small fragments because of many meetings (not enough focus time to accomplish anything)
• Forced war like vocabulary and attitude (“battles”, “killing it”) is inappropriate for the corporate world (“it isn’t war, it’s business”)

In what follows, I will list suggestions from the book that really resonated with me. I hope they inspire reflection for you as well.

Time to decompress and reflect

The authors suggest to alternate between 6 weeks of project work, then 2 weeks to decompress and reflect.

Often, work doesn’t happen at work. The best ideas don’t tend to come in the office.Instead, they come on a walk, on a train, in a supermarket. It is crucial to have that time for reflection.

Challenging “no pain, no gain“

Fried and Heinemeier do not agree with the “forced” concept of breaking through as a prerequisite for succes.

To them, it’s not breaking through, but diving in and digging deeper that brings the biggest gains. Depth, not breadth.

Smarter approach to goals

One of the main points in the authors’ philosophy is no growth for the growth’s sake (and at the employees’ expense).

Instead, they suggest focusing on good, high-quality work and satisfaction of clients and employees.

Employees’ time and attention is among the scarcest resources the companies have!

Smaller working units

The authors prefer small “teams of three”: most improvements come from small, incremental steps, and three people is just enough for that.

I can agree with this approach from my experience: the smaller the working unit, the easier it is to communicate and drive the projects forward.

Seasonality at work

It is an issue when work becomes monotonous.

Fried and Heinemeier suggest to counter this by taking seasonality into consideration:

• reduced hours in summer (if it is applicable to the industry)
• more challenging projects in winter
• season specific activities

You might know that I don’t post book reviews without a beer recommendations. This is just not what I would do.

I continue exploring Scottish beers as we have moved to Scotland a few months ago. Today’s beer is a mango IPA by a Glasgow brewery Drygate.

The beer was good, however unexpectedly strong. My understanding is that it is quite unusual for the IPAs brewed in Scotland or England to be anywhere near or above 7%.