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Why working from home is good for business

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    The basic problem
    with working in an office
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    is you're just not in control
    of your work environment.
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    [The Way We Work]
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    Howdy, my name is Matt,
    and I'm the CEO of Automattic,
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    the company behind WordPress.com,
    Jetpack and WooCommerce.
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    We're coming up on over 800 employees,
    and they live everywhere,
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    from California to Alabama, Mississippi,
    to where I live in Texas.
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    They're also in 67 countries.
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    Canada, Mexico, India, New Zealand.
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    Some of them choose not even
    to have a home base, they're nomads.
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    Whether they are in RVs
    or traveling through Airbnbs,
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    they are in new places
    every day, week or month.
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    As long as they can find good Wi-Fi,
    we don't care where they are.
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    Our focus on distributed work
    didn't happen accidentally.
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    It was a conscious choice
    from the very beginning.
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    Notice I don't use the word "remote,"
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    because it sets up the expectation,
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    that some people are essential
    and some aren't.
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    I use the word "distributed"
    to describe what we do,
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    where everyone is
    on an equal playing field.
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    I think a distributed workforce
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    is the most effective way
    to build a company.
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    The key is you have to
    approach it consciously.
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    When we started WordPress,
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    many of the first 20 hires
    were people I'd never met in person.
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    But we'd collaborated online,
    sometimes for years.
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    I wanted to continue that
    for one simple reason.
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    I believe that talent and intelligence
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    are equally distributed
    throughout the world.
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    But opportunity is not.
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    In Silicon Valley,
    the big tech companies fish
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    from essentially
    the same small pond or bay.
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    A distributed company
    can fish from the entire ocean.
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    Instead of hiring someone who grew up
    in Japan but lives in California,
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    you can gain someone who lives, works,
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    wakes up and goes to sleep
    wherever they are in the world.
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    They bring a different
    understanding of that culture
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    and a different lived experience.
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    At the base of the decision
    to go distributed,
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    there's a desire to give people autonomy
    over how they do their work.
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    Unless you're in a role
    where specific hours are important,
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    you can make your own schedule.
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    Everyone can have a corner office,
    their windows, the food they want to eat,
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    you can choose when there's music
    and when there's silence.
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    You can choose what temperature
    the room should be.
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    You can save the time
    you'd spend commuting
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    and put it into things
    that are important to you.
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    A distributed workforce
    is ideal for a technology company.
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    But people often ask me,
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    "This works great for y'all,
    but what about everyone else?"
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    If you have an office,
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    you can do a few things
    to build distributed capability.
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    First: document everything.
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    In an office, it's easy
    to make decisions in the moment,
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    in the kitchen, in the hall.
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    But if people work remotely
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    and some members of the team
    are having those conversations
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    they don't have access to,
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    they'll see these decisions being made
    without understanding the why.
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    Always leave a trail of where you were
    and what you were thinking about.
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    This allows others to pick up
    where you left off.
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    It allows people in different
    time zones to interact,
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    it's also great to think about
    as an organization evolves,
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    people leaving and people joining.
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    Try to have as much communication
    as possible online.
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    When everything's shared and public,
    it allows new people to catch up quickly.
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    You also need to find the right tools.
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    There are so many apps and services
    that help with day-to-day communication,
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    video conferencing, project management.
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    The things that changed how you work
    probably aren't objects anymore.
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    They're things you access
    through your computer.
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    So experiment with different
    tools that enable collaboration,
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    see what works.
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    Create productive, face-to-face time.
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    In a traditional office,
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    you're in the same place
    48 weeks out of the year
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    and you might have
    three or four weeks apart.
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    We try to flip that: we come together
    for short, intense bursts.
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    Once a year we do a grand meet-up
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    where the entire company
    comes together for a week.
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    It's half-work, half-play.
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    The primary goal is connecting people.
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    We want to make sure
    everyone's aligned and on the same page,
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    and they have a deeper connection
    with their colleagues.
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    When they work together
    the rest of the year,
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    they can bring together
    that understanding and empathy.
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    And the final practice:
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    give people the flexibility
    to make their own work environment.
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    Every person at Automattic
    has a co-working stipend
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    that they can put
    towards a co-working space
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    or just to buy coffee, so they don't
    get kicked out of the coffee shop.
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    One group in Seattle
    decided to pool their stipends together
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    and rented a workspace on a fishing pier.
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    Each person who joins the company
    gets a home-office stipend.
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    This is money they can invest
    in getting the right chair, monitor,
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    the right desk setup, so they can have
    the most productive environment for them.
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    Today, there are just a few companies
    that are distributed first.
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    In a decade or two,
    I predict that 90 percent of companies
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    that are going to be changing
    the course of the world
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    are going to function this way.
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    They will evolve to be distributed first,
    or they'll be replaced by those that are.
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    As you think about
    what you're going to build next,
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    consider how you can tap
    into global talent,
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    give people autonomy to live and work
    where they feel they should
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    and still participate fully in whatever
    it is that you're creating together.
Title:
Why working from home is good for business
Speaker:
Matt Mullenweg
Description:

As the popularity of remote working continues to spread, workers today can collaborate across cities, countries and even multiple time zones. How does this change office dynamics? And how can we make sure that all employees, both at headquarters and at home, feel connected? Matt Mullenweg, cofounder of Wordpress and CEO of Automattic (which has a 100 percent distributed workforce), shares his secrets.

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Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TED Series
Duration:
04:44

English subtitles

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