I managed to get hold of a copy of the ‘Joy of Work’ segment filmed at my office for the Richard and Judy show and broadcast on Channel 4 last Monday. It was definitely portrayed in a light-hearted manner! You can see it in Real Player format (3.13MB). Thankfully, I’m not in it! 😉

We had a presentation of the company’s three year plan today. Along with the details of the re-organisation which is taking place over the next few weeks. It was quite interesting. Not too ‘rah rah’ motivational pat-on-the-back. Just a few home truths.
I think the plan to switch from departments (development, testing, etc.) to project based teams will be a good thing. I’ve been in companies where that has worked before. I’m sure there will be a few noses put out, and some adjustments along the way, but overall I’m quite impressed.
It beat working for the afternoon anyway 😉

Today, at my office, we had a TV film crew in from Channel 4‘s Richard and Judy Show.
The intended purpose, according to an email sent round the company was

“They are planning to run a feature around a Brazilian ‘guru’ who has some radical views on working practices, including having ‘rest’ hammocks in the office, and would like to obtain the views of a selection of individuals on what they think of this and his other ideas.”

“All we ask is for a bit of co-operation from a few of you to answer a questions on camera.”

A second email was sent to clarify the situation further:

“Just to add to my previous e-mail, the sort of questions they will be asking tomorrow are:
1. If you could set your own working hours/perfect day what would it be? (eg come in at 7am, 2 hour lunch etc)
2. If you could set your own salary what would it be? (all bonus-related? etc)
3. What would you do if you were the boss for the day?”

OK. That all sounds fine. Quite reasonable.

But what happened, as far as I can see, is that they faked a lot of stuff! They were filming scripted parts for people, they had a bunch of people put on their coats and filmed them walking in through the front door as if it was morning! At one point they turned the lights off in one part of the office and filmed one guy pretending to be working late! Apparently a couple of people were taken off to a local pub at lunchtime and filmed, pretending to have an after work drink.

Now, it may be that the interviews also went on, and people were able to give their opinions, but I find the whole thing rather bizarre.

Had I done a little research I’d have found this page (third article down: The Joy Of Work: Ricardo Semler) on R&J’s site which perhaps goes some way towards explaining what was going on.

“We will also see a short film of what happened when people empowering happened for a day at web design firm, Zendor, in Manchester.”

Interestingly, if you look at the third article on this page you will see a different emphasis:

“We talk to Ricardo about how he makes this work and will see an amusing short film of how such practises worked when tried out at a web design company in Manchester.”

On top of all this, it was very disruptive, despite the original emails promise:

“I will do my best to ensure the crew go about their job whilst causing as little disruption as possible to your day.”

What with doors into the office being blocked off because of filming; and the turning off of the lights affected a large number of people. I had to wait for one person to get to a meeting because he was ‘filming’. Plus there was a general ‘buzz’ around the office which made it quite hard to concentrate at times.

Edit: I should note that the show will be going out on Monday’s Richard and Judy show. It’ll probably be on in the office (we have several TV’s scattered about which are always on) — another distraction, but I’ll have to try and tape it.

Second Edit: There is an interesting article on Ricardo Semler‘s management practices over at the BBC World Service in a completely unrelated article. His philosophy looks very interesting, and has worked very successfully in the case of his own company. Worth a read.

I’m going home now. It’s been a silly day today. Besides being far too hot in the office (84 F), we have had a TV film crew in most of the day being a disruption (more on that later).

I’ve been in another all day meeting today apart from when I was in a different meeting first thing this morning. But I have been pleasantly surprised to find how productive it has been. We’ve designed a speed up for the web sites (albeit one which ought to be a slowdown), and identified and fixed several faults in the system.

I worked from home again today. I’d sent an email late last night informing my manager that this would be the case. I even offered to participate in a meeting I was going to otherwise miss by telephone.
After dropping Jamie off at school and back home checking Jan was OK, I logged into the office network and filled in my time sheet for last week.
Now, because I had been dropping Jamie off at school in the morning, collecting her in the afternoon, looking after Jan as much as she would let me, and various other things like making the odd meal; I hadn’t managed to work a full seven and a half hours on Thursday and Friday. So I filled in my time sheet appropriately. I put down five and a half hours for each day.
Note, I could have lied about my time and claimed I’d done full days, but that doesn’t do any one any good: neither me for not having work to show for that amount of work; nor the company for paying me for work I didn’t do; nor the client for being billed for work they haven’t had; so I was honest.

I received a reply in return which simply said:

Can you make sure that you do 37.5 (hours) when working from home.
thanks

and signed by my line manager.

My response:

Unfortunately with taking Jamie to school, Picking her up again, making meals, looking after Jan, etc., I cannot.
As hard as it may be to believe, with the amount of unpaid overtime I have done in the past, my family comes before work.
I shall therefore take the next fews days off as sick leave/ compassionate leave/ holiday, whatever, to avoid disappointing people and upsetting the books.
I’ll let you know nearer the time when I can return to work.

Who lost out do you think?

I put the air cooling unit on today in my part of the office, and it seems to have helped a little. THe temperature didn’t get above 84 degrees today. Still too warm, but I didn’t feel as bad at the end of the day today.
I hope the get the lifts in our building fixed soon. One of the two we can use has been out of action for a full week now. The other one is playing up, it rarely allows more than five people in without setting off the overloaded alarm! I’ve had to jog up the stairs a couple of times today because there were more than ten people waiting for the lift. It’s crazy when there are more than 2000 people in the building!

After far too long, too many changes, too many bugs, and too much heartache, project Dandy finally went live this afternoon. There was a last minute hitch (an unrelated bug fix revealed some bad data), but it’s now live on all 20 sites. Not that you can tell; until they activate the ‘triggers’ which will actually use the functionality provided by the project, everything looks the same!
That is a serious load off all our minds.