At Straddle, we've decided to adopt the "working with the door open" philosophy. This means we're making a deliberate choice to work transparently, sharing our ideas, progress, and challenges openly with one another.
How come?
Because we believe it will make us a stronger, more effective organization in several key ways:
Manufactured serendipity: (not the , although I wish) with distributed teams, the opportunities for creative serendipity are few and far between. You can’t exactly hold off on good ideas until that weekly Zoom check-in. Working in the open creates more opportunities for concepts to collide and mash together into something new and creative. Improving visibility: Doing great work isn't enough if no one sees it. Working transparently generates automatic visibility for your efforts, without the awkwardness of self-promotion.
Sharing best practices: We learn by watching others. When work is out in the open, the best techniques, tools, and approaches spread quickly and naturally.
Getting early feedback: Problems are easiest to fix early on. Sharing work-in-progress makes it easy to get quick, actionable input from teammates that can save time and hassle down the line.
Building shared context: The more open our work, the better sense everyone has of what's happening across the org. This makes it easier to connect the dots and tap into collective knowledge.
To make this philosophy real, we're investing in tools and practices that make it frictionless to share and engage with work across the company. We want it to be as natural as possible for everyone to stay plugged into the flow of projects and ideas.
We'll all need to build habits around how we curate and process the influx of information. When knowledge flows freely, good things happen. Teams align more easily. Collaboration happens more naturally. The best ideas spread and take root. And the end result is better, more innovative work.
Let’s be intentional and make transparency and collaboration our default, not the exception. In doing so, we won't just be making better products. We'll be building a better way of working together (or something).