Menlo Innovations Infographic

Making Joy Their Competitive Advantage. How Menlo Innovations do things differently. [1] About Menlo Innovations. Custom software designers and builders. Founded in two thousand and one by CEO Rich Sheridan. Radically innovative approach to workplace culture, intentionally designed to produce joy. Inspired by Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park Invention Factory, the Menlo Software Factory, trade mark, is a truly open and collaborative environment. Mission. To end human suffering in the world as it relates to technology. [2] Awards include. [3] Twenty fourteen WorldBlu List of Most Democratic Workplaces.Twenty twelve Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist. Eight time winner of Alfred P. Sloan Award for Business Excellence in Workplace Flexibility. Trust, accountability, and results. these get you to joy. [4] Menlo’s innovative workplace practices. One. Fostering innovation. A. Make mistakes faster. Menlonians are encouraged to experiment quickly, and often. [5] B. No fear of failure. Menlo is a safe haven where people can share and test their ideas. Two. Creating a culture A. Extreme interviewing to hire people with the right kindergarten skills, i.e. people that play well with others. Applicants are interviewed en masse by pairing with other applicants to work on real Programing projects and are observed and assessed by existing Menlonians. B. Never work with children or animals, except at Menlo. Menlo babies can come into work with their parents, all day, every day. Pets are welcome too. C. No hierarchy. Leaders lead through example, by being gentle teachers, not through job titles. D. Promotion is a collaborative process. Employees requesting promotion build support for this through feedback from their peers. Three. Collaboration through pair Programing. A. People work together, sharing a workspace and computer. B. Pairings change weekly. Everyone gets a chance to work with everyone else in the Organization, teaching and learning from each other. C. Improved attention to detail equals fewer chances of mistakes. Four. Collaboration with clients. A. Menlo’s High-Tech Anthropologists, trade mark, study and observe the potential end users rather than the customer in their native environment, to get a better understanding of the needs of those users. [6] B. Show and Tell, project teams and clients come together weekly for a demonstration of the most recently completed work, to help build a shared vision and guide the project. Five. Simple, informal communication. A. Menlonians work side by side in a large, open, brick-walled workspace, with no dividing walls or barriers. B. Walls are used to show project plans and progress using index cards, stickers, yarn and Post-it Notes. These are revised weekly. [7] C. Hey, Menlo. Just by shouting this out, anyone can call a meeting, and everyone listens for as long as is required. D. Daily standups are held for 12 minutes a day, five days a week. Work pairs pass a plastic Viking helmet around each other as they describe what is happening on their projects. Six. Flexibility is key. A. Flexible work space, with moveable desks, which change location frequently to suit whatever project is being worked on. B. Flexible individuals. Because pairs change weekly, they must adjust to the personality and work style of another Menlonian, as well as adjusting to a different project, domain or technology. C. Flexible roles and teams. People try out other roles within the company, e.g. programmers become High-Tech Anthropologists, project managers do Q and A etc. If it doesn’t work out, they go back to what they were doing before, simple. Why not try applying some of these innovative approaches in your team, department or Organization.

References
[1] Richard Sheridan, Joy Inc. How We Built a Workplace People Love Portfolio/Penguin, 2013.
[2] From Menlo website. http://www.menloinnovations.com (accessed 24 March 2015.)
[3]Ibid.
[4] Richard Sheridan, Joy Inc. How We Built a Workplace People Love Portfolio/Penguin, 2013.
[5] Team members at Menlo refer to each other as Menlonians.
[6]High-Tech Anthropologists come from all walks of life - they don’t necessarily have a background in software development. Their role is to “study the end users in their own environment, observe and ask questions around their current systems and processes, and use work-flows and mind-maps to capture and distil information to create designs focused on the goals of the target users.”
[7] At Menlo, these are called Work Authorization Boards, and they help avoid the problem of ‘out of sight, out of mind’, as they are clearly visible from all parts of the workspace. Everyone knows what everyone else is working on at any given time.

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