I do some of my best work on the weekend. That’s not to say that DTLT isn’t a great place to work or that we don’t get a lot done during the week. In fact I’m sure my wife has wished on more than one occasion that I’d leave my work there and not be glued to the laptop so much on evenings and weekends. But the reality is that the work I do during the day is often very different from the work I feel free to do on the weekend. And it’s got me thinking and wondering what it would look like to flip some of that.
Everyone loves to cite Google’s 20% time as a motivator to giving employees time and space to explore their passions and dream up big things. In many ways I feel lucky at DTLT that I’ve felt more often than not that I’m given this freedom on a regular basis. The demands of my job aren’t so large that I don’t have time to read up on what’s out there, install a few test pieces of software, tinker for a bit. But the reality is that there are plenty of things I’m responsible for during the week. Meetings are a regular occurrence, sometimes several over the course of a day. Meet with a faculty member about a course they’re working on. Meet with a cohort about the Domain of One’s Own, meet with a class of students to show them 3D printing. These are all awesome things and I have to pinch myself to think that I get to call this work. But it leaves me spending the weekend thinking about what’s next. It’s in those off hours that I can step back and really wonder what’s possible.
It usually starts when I’m browsing RSS feeds and come across something interesting. Maybe it’s a piece of software I haven’t heard of. Oh, it’s open source? Cool, wonder how easy it is to install. I’ll give it a shot. By the next day when I head into work I have something cool to show off and maybe it builds into something really interesting like Mediacore did for our media server. Maybe it doesn’t lead to much of anything. But I think it’s telling that most of the time this kind of innovation is happening in the early morning hours, the evenings, and the weekends. Not when I’m technically “on the clock” (whatever that means). What would our office look like if we attempted to build that kind of innovation into our workflow? What if we supported it and celebrated it?
So here’s what I’m imagining that support could look like (and I’m literally just thinking out loud here). Each person in DTLT is given an allowance of $500 and allowed to schedule a 3 week time period at any point during the year to take retreat from the office. Everyone knows in advance when this will happen so they can figure out how best to support the day to day stuff that person was doing. 3 weeks that person doesn’t have to answer email, phone, or be responsible for any meetings. They can work from wherever they want, be it their home, a coffee shop, their brother’s house in North Carolina. They have the small allowance to purchase whatever software or hardware they might need. And for 3 weeks they dream big. Maybe they don’t know what they’ll research going into it, maybe they have an idea they want to pursue. 3 weeks to build it. When they come back they do a presentation for the group and those ideas get built into the work we do every day.
To me that sounds like an exciting way of driving innovation in our department and at our University. It’s the freedom to explore broken out of the day to day office environment. It’s the empowerment of the individual and the gift of freedom, time, and resources to explore. What could we do with something like this? Could one of us build the syndication framework we’ve dreamed of for so long? Could we find new ways for televising and broadcasting content in new and interesting ways? Could we discover things that the Horizon Report isn’t even thinking about yet? It’s an idea that could certainly fail, but one that I think has legs. If we want to be an incubator of innovation perhaps the best way to do that is to start setting ourselves free in some way where we’re empowered to build amazing things.
I certainly see the benefit of it. I think it may be a greater sell if you were to suggest the model to be more collaborative teams based. That may increase the likelihood of a deliverable. Perhaps also a model where it was every Xday afternoon for the month of Y… That way, it isn’t so much of a time drain on the department. Also, it could have a clearer “benefit to students” goal to help justify it whether improving student systems or involving students in the project to improve their skills.
-Billy
To me the idea of doing it with the expectation of a deliverable defeats the point. Some of the best stuff my group has done has grown out of experimentation and not an outline of goals and objectives. People have to have the freedom to throw whatever they want against a wall occasionally to see what sticks. I think it’s worth the risk. Not everything that comes out of it will be great, but what if half of it was really great? What if 10% of it was revolutionary? Just thinking out loud here.
Some of what you mention I already have at work, the freedom to spend an afternoon researching and exploring new things, the collaborative team-based work, etc. I don’t disagree with you those things are important and I think a lot of the innovative stuff we’ve done is because we have such a great culture in our office. I just wonder if there’s a better way to remove the day to day distractions (for lack of a kinder word at the moment) for some extended period of time and radically change the environment to promote radical ideas.
Certainly understand your perspective too. I was going through inventory today and had the thought that I could build a Mediascape equivalent for maybe 1/5 the cost they sell it for.
I just implemented an iOS inventory system that runs on QR codes that I think will be a model moving forward. It’s also cheap and subscription based, so no sinking $5k+ into something that may not end up being used.
(http://www.ezofficeinventory.com/) There are still a few things that could be better, but they seem to have many fixes in the works.
The main reason I’d suggest the teams is b/c you get that sounding board/support/kick in the ass if you need it.
From what I’ve seen, your team’s level of collaboration would be very desireable to have.
I just thought teams/goals sounds better to the people that sign the checks than “give me money and hope inspiration strikes”, but is all in how you spin it and how you build on your track record
-Billy
Have you seen the lecture John Cleese gave on creativity? It’s worth a watch if you haven’t already, or a re-watch if you have
I definitely agree that getting away from the day-to-day demands of work is necessary for being creative, and for me that’s not possible to do without a larger chunk of time set aside. Having one or two days within a week isn’t enough time for my brain to clear its cache — I need at least 3-4 days away from the usual phone/email/meeting for that to happen, and only THEN can I start really thinking big.
I love this idea, and my only issue would be three weeks may not be long enough. We had talked about building in semester long sabbaticals where we cover each other so we can lock in to ideas like this. I know I personally need one to get my head back into some of this kind of thinking, and I would really encourage it. I think the covering for each other while we do it is key, and figuring out a work flow so it is fair makes sense as well. The more I think about three weeks, the more I think it is manageable, and might make a good pilot program to evaluate if it really is helpful or not. Let’s figure it out.
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