If you haven’t noticed, things have really picked up around here. New clients, new employees, and lots of new experiences to tackle. In business you are constantly trying to minimize the bad and maximize the good: productivity, responsibility, profits, etc. When days feel like they’re flying by, it seems easier to use policies overly simplistic solutions to solve very complex problems. Becoming overly dependent on policies is a very dangerous road.

One of the hallmarks we stand behind is that employee trust is paramount. As CEO of a six-person startup, my time is better spent making great things happen instead of drafting policy after policy to combat random issues that pop up. Policies are a funny thing; they crop up to deal with uncomfortable situations a business would rather not think its way through. I have more faith in our employees and in BitMethod than that. Instead we have a guiding maxim that we adhere to.

BitMethod’s Guiding Maxim: Respect yourself, your clients, your coworkers and the company.

Things like vacation and sick day policies do not formally exist at BitMethod. I intend to keep it that way. I would like to think we hire folks that won’t bail and run off to Fiji during the critical phase of a scheduled project. Instead, I’d like to think we have a team smart enough to apply our golden rule to things like vacations, sick days and uncomfortable situations. Smart people will sort themselves out. At the end of the day we want everyone to be as happy and productive as possible. That includes taking time for yourself.

Take a look at what work policies you or your company have in place right now. Are they complicating life for your superstars while being ignored by imbeciles who still collect a paycheck? Why are those folks that bring the company down still there? Is it because that even with policies in place you are still avoiding the uncomfortable situations?

Workers: What policies have frustrated you or made you less productive and happy at work?

Bosses: Ever had a moment of weakness and created policies instead of dealing with the situation head-on?

Still not convinced? Go examine what a large successful company like Netflix does.

4 comments

Ze Frank describes brain crack as the ideas that float around in your head collecting untouchable mystique over time. To combat the addiction he said:

“When I get an idea, even a bad one, I try to get it out into the world as fast as possible, ‘cause I certainly don’t want to be addicted to brain crack.”

BitMethod agrees with Ze and actively take steps with our Labs program to encourage the team to put a “rough draft” of their idea into code. Some of our Labs projects like Lite Weight and Eat Sleep have even turned into real products. However, one downside of doing many side projects is figuring out when to axe them. We are still working on that!

Are you addicted to your ideas? How do you combat the addiction?