I’ve been having a big problem in my company. We’re making very good money (close to 40k last month), and everyone is paid excessively well, but morale is dropping massively. The income we make is very passive – even if we did no work at all, we’d still make about the same amount, but we’re trying to grow, so we are working on new products all the time.
Well, we would be, if we were not so bored out of our minds.
You see, we’re working from different contintents. I’m working from London, my partner is working in singapore, the programmer is working from romania, and we have a couple of guys doing manual labour in china. We communicate using google wave mostly, and we have a skype conference every couple of weeks to discuss what needs to be done.
But the less we see each other, the more of a drudge the tasks become. Where in the past I would be excited to implement a new feature or to share what I have achieved with the others, now it seems like there is very little direct feedback when I try to type out what I have done. Nobody is there to share the little triumphs over stubborn code with me.
And for the others, when they have to do the boring but neccessary things, they are finding it more and more difficult to concentrate and focus.
Shit hits the fan
3 weeks ago, the situation got terrible. I lost motivation, everyone else lost motivation and we hardly got anything done for an entire week. And nobody cared enough to remind anyone else to get to working. We’d just half heartedly post an update with things like “replied two customer emails”, and the other guy would reply with “took a look at the website”. And that was the progress for an entire day for two people. This could not go on.
So I called a meeting. In Bangkok.
Everyone booked a flight, and we all flew down to Bangkok to have a face to face meeting and spend seven days together. (We met the awesome Dustin Curtis there at the same time, by the way).
In Bangkok we checked into a five star hotel and we all went out to one of the infamous Bangkok nightlife spots, and over glasses of whiskey mixed with soda water, had a long discussion. That single face-to-face discussion solved more problems than a two week skype session had.
The next day, we woke up and got to work beside the hotel pool. The productivity was incredible. Each person got ten times as much done as he had alone, even with the distractions of other people talking. Programming went much quicker because I could directly explain what I meant.
We had a lot of other fun together as a team during the days we spent in Bangkok, including swimming on the rooftop of a hotel, partying with tourists, eating street food, going to expensive restaurants and having boat rides. You could have a movie montage at this point of us doing all these activities.
A day before we were about to leave, our programmer remarked – I wish we could do this again. We looked at each other, and I thought – we SHOULD do this again!
An ambitious plan
Seven days together, with all the fun we were having were extremly productive. The dullness was wiped out of the team and we were refreshed and recharged and we regained that energy we had when we started first. We had also made plans and timelines and schedules and everyone now knew exactly what he had to do when he got back home.
We sat down and came up with a plan for our company: We would build our company like this – everyone works from home for five months of the year. The sixth month, everyone gets together, flys out to a cheap country and we all work together. Just like ship captains have to leave their families to go out to sea, workers in our company have to leave their home and family for a month to work with the team. We sleep, work and have fun for an entire month. We do all major planning, demo everything, attend conferences and all that during that period, and when it’s over, everyone goes home and works as he pleases again.
The month together will give us the direction we need to be going in, and create a clear task list for everyone.
Costs
A good hotel in a cheap country would cost $2000 for a month. The flights would cost $700 per person. That’s $10800 base costs for the month. Then entertainment, food and drinks could come to $200 a day, that’s another $6000. So the entire budget would be $17.000 for a month together.
Spread out over 6 months, that’s $2800 a month the company keeps aside for this meeting. That’s just 7% of our monthly revenue, so it’s very doable.
Is it neccessary?
After coming back from our 7 day trip to Bangkok, everyone was refreshed and eager to work. Morale has once again spiked and our energy levels are back to what they were. Having the idea of another jam session to look forward to makes working alone a lot less dull and there is a clear goal that is coming reasonably soon. Without this, I believe our company will fall apart from demotivation. So in so many ways, it’s worth it.
We’re already planning our next trip, this time to Mongolia.
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Hey, You need any more staff? Ha ha ah… JK
What a great plan! But a month seems like a long time. Why wouldn’t you do 2 weeks every quarter?
I like the concept. I can totally relate with hitting the lull in motivation and work and the ‘distraction’ / ‘routines’ from working from home. I’ve also been to Bangkok (I spent 6 weeks in Thailand) and really enjoyed it.I also believe having something to look forward to / aim for, is a definite carrot to help work through the problems and get past any bad points.However, I think the 5 months to 1 month could be the problem.I say this for several reasons:- Firstly, 5 months is a long time to wait. Even if the carrot is a nice one – if it’s too far away, it gives the low feeling (after the month is over) that it is a long long way away. Therefore it’s overall use and benefit may not be as an effective as if it was a shorter duration to wait (e.g. 2.5 months).- Secondly, 1 month is a long time to be away from home, it’s also a long time to be ‘enjoying yourself’, by the end of this month, people will get tired, restless and want to return home. This also may impact on the moral of the team.Therefore, I would suggest changing your plan to: 2.5 months at home, for 2 weeks in a 5 star hotel.In my opinion this would be a far more effective motivational aid, as well as keeping meetings more fresh and often. With 2.5 months you will have more control to steer the ship, than 6 months potentially going off course.- The only downside is the extra costs in flights, since you would be leaving more often.I like the idea though, one to remember for the future.
Great balance.. I hope you have more vacancies coming up..so that i can join you guys…:-)
Hmm maybe you should put the environment a bit higher on your priority list
Cool idea but it doesnt work if you have wife kids and house to take care of… “Sorry honey I’m going to Mongolia for a month for work…” Um, nope.
Hey,What kind of work do you do ?What is your business ?
Jus today I visited your site and tried reading most of the blog entries. Your perception seems very practical and applies to “normal” man not “in-crowd” ones lol. 5 mns (wfh) + 1 mn (5* htl) is a cool idea which makes people motivated to work looking forward the 1 month.
Love the idea, though it doesn’t seem particularly scalable. As long as you stay small it can work. Also, I heartily agree with Bob; toss in a wife, kids, house, etc and a month away is not very feasible. But perhaps 1-2 weeks away every quarter (as Mike suggested) would be. It would also aid in stabilizing the productivity/morale swings. The highs wouldn’t be so high, but the lows wouldn’t be so low.
Nice idea, but how do your employees friends and families feel about them being absent 1/6 of the year?Think about all the weddings, funerals, birthdays, going-away parties, anniversaries etc that will be missed.I personally would prefer some thing like 2 weeks a year.
Cool story and thanks for sharing!Same question as above – what is the product you guys are selling $40k/month of?I checked out the homepage http://www.cubeofm.com is it just from selling these iPhone apps?
Hey. Come to Kenya. Beautiful country and cheap too!
That seems like an awesome plan, but what about employees with families?
@Bob: You have to take care of your wife? What is she, an invalid? I think those people could take a month without you. Especially the house, because it doesn’t have feelings.
I had similar experiences with progamming hackathons: one or two weeks, the most productive weeks ever. 4 weeks will prove too much; routine sets in after the second week. I would meet for 2 weeks every 3 months instead.
cool idea.
Against boredom even the gods struggle in vain. ~ Nieche
awesome idea. Btw I spent a month in mongolia, it’s not quite as developed as bangkok – be warned! very cool though
yeah!
Interesting story. Concerning demotivation: It sounds you have enough money for a good living and you are not necessarily motivated to increase dramatically your sales.But, unless you are sharing 40K$ per month by 5 of you, for many many years, I guess you are far from being financially independent. Isn’t the possibility to be financially independent in a few years a sufficient goal to get ultra motivated? Being financially independent could mean being in a 5 stars hotel in a cheap country 12 months a year
I really enjoyed your post! Here in Stockholm, my friends and I are planning a TEDx event. And, we faced the same issues too. Lack of face-to-face contact and constant interactions through Skype and emails decreased the morale in our team. A lack of initiative is prevalent amongst the members of our team, and constant reminders had to be made. That’s why, although we are all busy with assignments (as we are all students) and work, we always strive to meet up as often as possible for dinner, and conduct meetings to build the bond between each team member.Interesting post. Thanks for the input.
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I was going thorough many blogs briefly, but I had to stop at your blog and had to read it in detail. It’s a wonderful blog post. Thank you for writing it.
There's no way you can escape meeting in person. That's the whole key