If you haven’t seen, Pardot was awarded the Best Workplace in Atlanta by the AJC last week. It was no fluke – they earned it.
I have known David Cummings (one of the Pardot co-founders) since 2007. I’ve watched as he built – with great discipline, the culture that makes Pardot such a great place to work.
At work, Ripplers are ass-kicking experts helping people with their IT problems. But outside the office, we’re musicians, parents, filmmakers, and more. Being in a ROWE company, we manage our own time, work where we want to, and are treated like adults. It’s a philosophy that requires us to communicate a lot with one another. So, we tend to know more about each other’s families, hobbies, and goals than the average coworker. And that’s without having to dig through any social networks. We know Curt spends a good amount of time at the gym, Alfredo can spin on his head, and Bryan Gibson is a killer cellist.
In June, I was asked by the ROWE honchos at GoROWE to write on their blog a little bit of how Ripple became a ROWE. Here’s what I said…
Let me put this out there: I am a Work Utopia guy. I want people to come to work and feel like it’s more than a job. I want them to feel a deeper sense of meaning, connectedness, and engagement. I have implemented many, many ideas that would help make Ripple a Work Utopia. So when I read about ROWE in 2006 I was struck by how Work Utopia it was. Complete freedom! A Results-Only Work Environment. How much more Work Utopia could something be, really? Even with a Work Utopia mindset I still struggled with the perceived loss of control. I wondered: “How the hell could that even work?”
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“I need them here so I can keep an eye on them, make sure they’re working and not stealing from me.”We hear this occasionally from small business owners when we are discussing VPN or other remote access capabilities for their employees. We went through this same discussion internally years ago. At some point we realized that if we have to worry about our employees actually working, or worse, stealing from us, we’ve hired the wrong people, or we haven’t defined our expected results, or probably both. The ones who are asking for remote access are the ones who want to work, and want to be able to work while they’re waiting for the doctor, or even more likely, when they’re at one of our clients. Our experience taught us to define the expected results, give people the tools they need, and let them succeed. Or let them fail and send them on their way. But we don’t build roadblocks. Our founder, Mike Landman, wrote a nifty bit about our experience with mobility for Smart Business Magazine. Head here to read it.
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