A Culture Designed to Serve Everyone Better

Jay Love — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:59:00 GMT

There was a very kind article written about eTapestry and its culture by a local reporter recently. Since the Greenfield Reporter has a fairly local reach in the communities located east of Indianapolis, I have included a link here.

Yes, it was a fun article to read and enjoy, but to be honest, it was just as much fun to be part of the planning and dreaming that led to such a culture being established. It seems like only yesterday that I and the other co-founders of eTapestry were sitting around a small table in my basement every other Thursday evening. This is truly where the dream of eTapestry was formed and expanded.

The most fun part of those meetings, in my opinion, was the open discussions about what “culture” we could create from scratch. It was our desire to let work not be work, but to actually be rewarding and fun! We brainstormed on how to eliminate portions of any company’s culture that result in staff not being excited, not looking out for each other, not enjoying each day, not having fun, not being productive, not sensing achievement and most of all, not being friendly and caring for all of our thousands of future customers. We even had a “CULTURE” page in our first draft of a business plan.

We tried to challenge every norm or standard we had heard about and had been part of in our careers. We thought if we hit the right notes, we would have a powerful employee recruiting and retention story to tell and watch unfold. Our ideas came from everywhere. There were the obvious ones like Silicon Valley start-ups and “best company to work for” lists. But our imagination soared even higher when we considered other questions like the following:

What made your best class in school just that, the best?
What made the best party or event you ever attended?
What was special about a vacation where you never wanted to return home?
What stimulated the most activity or effort ever for you?
What makes you feel good about yourself?
What makes you feel the most comfortable with your surroundings?
What is the fastest way to better become acquainted with others?

Once we started discussing these items, some of the answers were just so obvious. Such things as a large and useful kitchen, a neat multi-purpose room to have activities in, fun if not sometimes zany competitions over lunch hours, volunteer projects that everyone felt good inside doing, tons of pictures of the staff activities on as many walls as possible, company provided meals, a multitude of communication options and others became easy to make happen. We just had to think about them and in some cases do a little planning or budgeting.

I hope you enjoyed the article and some of the eTap history behind it. Perhaps we can explore that history even more in future posts. (We even have a designated curator for the eTapestry museum of curious artifacts.)

Please consider this an invitation to come visit us sometime. We would love to share and show you around. If you are not careful, we will use a little bit of our Hoosier Hospitality to convince you to play kickball or Ultimate Frisbee, try out for our next Rock Band contest or spit a few watermelon seeds with the gang. It might just bring a smile to your face like it does for so many of us...

The Jay Love Blog : dreams

A Culture Designed to Serve Everyone Better