Week 27: End of School, Culture Manifestations and our Old Office.
A week to remember.
Hey there!
I had a memorable week. My sons finished school and have started their summer of traveling. After some days in quarantine with a lot of work from home (on mundane, fantastic, future-oriented topics), we all tested negative again. Our extraordinary everyday life can continue a bit closer to plan than before.
End of School
Monday, my sons graduated from school. They left for their summer trip 48 hours later (after testing negative). They will be traveling most of the summer and will celebrate their 18th birthday next week with their friends. We will celebrate with them when they are in Berlin for a few days between their trip around the planet. I am super happy for and with them, and I am also very excited to see how they will decide what they want to do next. I try to inspire them and open doors for them whenever they ask me, but I also want to make sure they live their lives. Not one that I or someone else has in mind for them.
Company Culture Manifestations
How explicit is your company culture? I thought quite a bit about our culture and how I feel we have made a lot of progress in having a shared culture since we went remote first. Before the lockdown, our office was a living manifestation of many dimensions of our culture. And as the teardown of our “old” office started last week, I want to document how it looked and why I liked it.
Our new office is very well designed and functional. And it is the opposite of the old one. We leave no trace there when we pack and leave in the evenings. This is good because it adds a dimension of freedom our old office did not have, but it is also a challenge because a lot of the collateral learnings can not happen. You don’t see all the art, notes, posters, slides, and whiteboards in our new office. And to be clear: it also would not fit there.
With us being remote-first for over 2 years, I think we have figured out many of the transactional dimensions of working together and have developed some glue between us. We have created great ways to connect through walks, offsites, check-ins, and social activities. Still, we are missing being connected and communicating through the art and office layer we had in the past. I am not sure how much we need this anymore, but it was fun when we still had this. We need to increase the art level around us again. And we shall figure out how this can work in our digital dimensions.
What I watched and read
The pragmatic engineer on dealing with incidents: Incident Review and Postmortem Best Practices
All of the other things I read are behind paywalls. Shall I share them anyways?
I did not watch too many shareable things, and I only watched videos to decide on a second new (hybrid) car, improve my coffeemaking skills, figure out which wall box to buy, and become a better bbq cleaner and plancha cook.
Thank you so much for reading. I hope you found something meaningful.
Have a great weekend and next week!
Joerg