The “Trash metaphor”
There are startups where folks walk by trash in the office floor, leaving it for someone else to pick it up, and there are places where anyone would lean down to pick up the trash they walk by, as they would at home.
We try hard to be a place where one feels a sense of belonging and ownership to do the right thing in order to help the business at every crossroad.
The “Trash Metaphor” is a humanistic ideal we stand for when taking care of problems, never thinking “that’s not my problem, that’s not my job”.
We don’t have processes about picking up trash but we try as hard as we can to create the sense of ownership, accountability and pro-activity so that this behavior comes easily.
Our aim is to intellectually tease people more than manage them. We trust our colleagues to do what they think it’s best for IoT Research Labs, giving them liberty, empowering them, and providing them information and tools in support of their decisions, as we believe that people thrive on being trusted The leader’s job at every level is to set clear context so that others have the right information to make generally great decisions.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of The Little Prince, shows us the way:
“If you want to build a ship,
don’t drum up the people
to gather wood, dividing the
work and giving orders.
Instead, teach them to yearn
for the vast and endless sea.”