Stadium Work is a new way to operate. Using a DAO (Distributed Autonomous Organization) digital approach + shifting the typical cadence/interaction between people, we collectively share how you can drive more impact in your communities (day job or otherwise!)

We do our daily work dictated by:

• email
• calendar
• boss
• to-do list

We interact with people dictated by:

• our teammates/project teams
• customers 
• our social/economic/geographic reality

Why?

 

The new standard for work:

• It is a daily framework/platform upon which our work becomes a net positive ecosystem
• It is comprised of four pillars: Daily Cadence, Collaboration Tools, Physical Environment and NetworkOS™
• It enables every person to have a clear purpose and connection to their full impact on a daily basis
• It empowers every person to be a designer, a producer and feedback generator
• It is a creates a real time human-to-human network of knowledge aided by artificial intelligence that can scale from small teams to multi-national corporations and communities
• It enables the exporting of routine tasks… to enable human creativity and relationships to scale

 

To stay competitive, the next generation way of working is needed. And that is what Stadium Work offers. Stadiums are distinctly different from traditional project management, workshops and daily work environments. They are fast-paced, fun, incredibly productive and ensure the transparency and relationships for long term success are built.

 

Structure: How Stadium Work is Different  

Up-drafts   

You work in accelerated design periods called “Up-Drafts” each day. Approximately three 30-120 minute rounds of accelerated project work followed by “engineered co-working”

 

Engineered Co-working   

Traditional “Co-working” is a desk and a reactionary community manager. Engineered Co-Working is about getting your day job done with engineered support all around you.  

 

Collaboration Tools   

Technology should facilitate. Although Stadiums are technology agnostic, it is integrated into your workflow instead of endless emails and conference calls

 

Learning   

The world is changing and so each person needs to constantly learn. There is a new type of on-the-job-training that is only possible when utilizing Stadium Work.    

 

Innovation   

Stadium Work enables innovation at the edges to be brought to the core.  Councils, initiatives, forums have all been proven ineffective for driving transformative innovation. By integrating innovation into actual delivery, actionable innovations go up exponentially

 

NetworkOS    

Serendipity has reigned for too long at work. Who you sit next to, what groups/teams you work on, even external experts and people from completely different parts of the company are all intentionally put together to ensure success. And if you wish, it can be tracked as you move between companies to help you succeed all along the way.  

 

Culture   

There is no need to focus on culture because it is forced to be lived in everyday, not hidden behind cubicles and hidden decision making.

Why the Name Stadium Work?

 

An Up-Draft is a very common movement of large volumes of air, especially when regions of hot, wet air rise and create large clouds and often times start thunderstorms. In a hurricane however, some air moves inward to the center of the storm where the air actually descends and creates a rain free area inside of the most devastating storms on the planet – the eye. And the eye of course is protection by the eye wall or Stadium Effect.

The stadium effect is how the inside of a well-defined eye can appear to look like a bowl-shaped stadium. The towering clouds that make up the surrounding eye wall take on the role of stadium seating, while the lower, clearer portion near the center of the eye is the playing field.

 

So the name Stadium Work refers to the circular patterns around chaos that allow employees/teams to see the center of their work and focus very clearly on what needs to be done. An Up-Draft is the calm air in the middle of a storm (accelerated work) that is intelligently designed to foster concentration when surrounded by all the chaos of typical work that usually distracts and makes us much less efficient (and less fun) during that antiquated work days that have barely evolved since the industrial age.

 

A New Type of Work

Stadiums Work days alternate between intense collaboration and daily personal deliverables enabling both the introvert and extrovert, the engineer and the artist to succeed in high performing teams.

 

As the agrarian age moved into the industrial age and eventually turned to the information age, we now find ourselves in the connected age. For years now, we have been adding devices and tools to our work without adding a new way of working. As assembly lines, cubicles, meetings and asynchronous communication were designed for ages past, a new way of working must be established to usher in the connected possibilities.

 

Through this shared collaboration, we believe we have created a better way to work. A replacement for the traditional 9 to 5 and locked into your current employer. Status checks, endless email, agile business operations, conference calls and presentations. The reality of a real time, hyper-connected organization is now possible. The team creating this has come to value a new holistic system of how we coordinate and execute work:

 

Stadium Work vs Normal Work

Physical environment to promote fun and engagement	over	traditional offices built for efficiency with occasional areas for fun
Modular spaces as a serendipity generators for instant innovation and collaboration to bring a real time company to life	versus	a desk, phone, computer, cubicle and/or meeting/conference room
Continuous social capital sharing and sacrificing	instead of	(singularly focused) tiger teams, clear tasks, roles, performance reviews and corporate visions
Pervasive NetworkOS that ensures requisite variety and intentional personal and professional networking possibilities	versus	strategic work teams occasionally working across silos
Weave the network of people (employees/friends) and empowering the collective group for true growth and sacrifice	versus	trying to be the smartest guys/girls in the room and ranking on bell curves
Project integrated learning, development and instant testing/application	versus	traditional education, outside of work training, culture and leadership courses
Provocation of changes that will bring play and experimentation back (while still based on/founded by) crystal clear purpose, mission and community/company mantra.  (Daily success markers)	versus	quarterly targets, weekly status summaries and performance reviews
Re-create pacing of days with novelty, intrigue and excitement	versus	locked schedules, calendar blocks and endless meetings
Rituals, intent and DNA (not physical!) sharing amongst colleagues/friends	Versus	weather, sports, sarcasm, executive bickering and ‘being busy’
Shared values drive deep collaboration. Shared values drive trust. Shared values drive sacrifice. Shared values resist standardization	Versus	Values on a poster… antiquated standards and rules for efficiency and arbitrary metrics
An intentional technology agnostic feedback ecosystem for both process and content	versus	tools, techniques and casual torch passing
Continuous productivity focused on seamless integration of knowledge (both digital and human APIs)	Versus	Integration procedures between business
Teach the younger generations sacrifice for a better way to work and sustainability of our children’s future	Versus	The way it has always been done
Ecosystem perspectives	Versus	Task perspectives
Social always open interconnected Tools	Versus	Specific technology
Advanced mesh networking with real time re-combination of ideas	Versus	Hierarchies, protecting fiefdoms and power plays
Have fun always	Versus	Have fun after work
Experiment every day	Versus	Only in special innovative branches experiment
Ship by Up-Draft	Versus	Ship at project deadlines
Sacrifice for others to improve the system	Versus	Keeping knowledge and connections for personal gain

 

 

 

Stadium Work Benefits

Making Work Better to Make Your Results Better

 

• Accelerate your important projects… and still do your day job:
  • Stadiums are designed around micro-project sprints (Up-Drafts) where groups alternate between intense collaboration sessions and their daily tasks.
• Collaborate like a start up – but better:
  • Imagine working in a place with no walls – where you can see your colleagues face-to-face and get a better understanding of the symbiotic nature of our work. No IM. No email. Just old fashioned chatting with the right people at the right time.
• Connect with people you didn’t know existed:
  • NetworkOS continuously targets people throughout the company (and other companies) that have been identified as experts in your project area (or complimentary area) and are brought in to work and collaborate with you.
• Make your virtual team a reality:
  • Bring your remote colleagues on a 5-1 basis to collaborate as part of the larger group.
• Align your team – on all levels:
  • We work better with people professionally if we get along with them personally. Using Relationship Makers, we allow team members to connect on their similarities and benefit from their diversity.
• Build Culture into your work:
  • Stadium Work directly incorporates elements of our successful cultures and inherently fosters our values in the work that you do with your team.
• Have a BLAST:
  • You can only solve big problems when you are having fun – Stadium Work is designed to promote a high-energy and enjoyable work environment proven to enhance our ability to work together better.

 

 

Types of Stadium Work & 4 Key Tenets

Stadium Work functions best as a continuous way to operate. But it can also be used to help:

• Every day all day (full workplace replacement)
• Projects
• Co-working
• Virtual events
• Workshop
• Tiger Teams
• Forums
• And more  

Stadium Work – whether a day or lifetime, follows several key tenets:

 

Tenet I – The Process/Rules:

“A creative approach encourages rapid and flexible response to change, yet provides a framework that promotes interaction, understanding, and improved output.”

• Time-boxing
• Different/more effective presentation and sharing mechanisms  
• The use of design thinking modules/exercises for all group time
• Built in “engineered co-working” work time every day

 

Tenet II – NetworkOS:

“It is not just what we do, but how and with whom we act and interact that brings transformation.” Otto Scharmer. NetworkOS is used for everything from informing where teams and individuals sit to how cross-connected teams maximize output.  

• Improving the quantity and quality of relationships
• Mobilizing leadership
• Providing a framework for effective intentional networks across communities (and silos and other companies)
• The formula for breakthroughs and high performance teams

 

Tenet III – The Environment:

“The human eye can see visual patterns 65,000 times faster on a picture than in tabular form” and “How can I think outside the box when I work inside a cube?”

• Custom collaboration environment
• Education/information and ambient learning/dash-boarding
• No walls, no barriers to relationships and success

 

Tenet IV – The Technology:

• Knowledge weavers integrating useful information real time
• Virtual participants actively engaged through new remote technology  
• Digital task management and outsourcing, social solutions, real time group results  
• Everything gets shared back to entire extended teams with full transparency

And the overarching tenet underpinning all of Stadium Work is the the Pyramid of Impact Model. In order for individuals, team, projects and organizations to reach impact, they must follow the model.

 

Process

Stadium Work requires a new process for each person’s day. By optimizing our days and team interactions, we can increase almost every metric from individuals to entire communities’ performance.

 

 

Stadium Work Principles

Principles are a foundation by which we can operate more effectively together. With strong enough principles, we no longer need rules:

• Continuous, improved and exponential knowledge and relationship sharing trump all
• Each Stadium Work day starts with the people in the room connecting… and ends with the people in the room connecting
• Each person is responsible for establishing unique ‘points of memory’ between individuals and content in the room. This network operation is fundamental to an ecosystem approach and ideally captured in NetworkOS for augmented community performance
• Each Stadium Work day/week has a primary focus or set of objectives that are part of a larger set of projects or company/community goals  
• To achieve the objective, each Stadium Work week has a minimum number of predetermined Up-Drafts and engineered co-working times
• Each Stadium has to add to the organizational memory by continuous capture and feedback loops (NetworkOS)
• Educating the next generation is incorporated into everyday work, much like traditional apprenticeships   
• Each Stadium needs a story. Create your own with the teams  

Stadium Leader Principles

 

YOU WILL HAVE TO RELINQUISH CONTROL… and EMPOWER YOUR TEAM

To get more from your team than you have ever seen before, you have to empower them to work in this new format. That means you need to commit to it first. Your first few Stadium days are experiments. Keep experimenting in this framework and you will succeed. You will soon seek to work exclusively this way.

 

LEAVE YOUR OLD HABITS BEHIND

As a leader, you will have to be the first to remove your previous habits for running meetings, emailing timelines and getting work done. Time to have fun! Time to embrace the future of work.  

 

OPERATE IN SYNC

High performing teams operate in sync. Synchronized teams are built off of the rituals and DNA of previous great teams. Therefore, patterns and cadence are key. Embrace this with your team by starting with a story – a story of your best team. Continue to tell stories everyday. BUT, make sure they are balanced. Evidence is mounting that the more shared talking time each team member has, the higher performing a team is. Equalize the loud moths and know-it-alls… they decrease synchronization and performance.

 

BEGIN NEW RITUALS  

Once you have finished your story – develop a ritual as a team. Clapping was ‘praise’ in the 20th century. Practice your new ritual until you can feel the atmosphere in the room change and your team becomes one. Your journey to real-time work has now begun. This sounds hokey at first, but it is critical that you establish a rhythm and synchronization with your team through rituals.

 

SANITY RULES (think rules in a game, not rules that were created because someone made a mistake)  

• 18 minutes is the longest anyone person can talk – at most once per day
• Two 11-minute maximum talk time for two other people  
• Multi-tasking means move on. If 20% of the heads are looking at a personal screen, the default is to move on, not persist through  
• A shot clock showing timing is always visible (time boxing…)
• Music – play it in transitions. Play it as background. We are all more effective   
• Dashboards – keep real time updates visible at all times. No one looks beyond the first few lines and the negative information in status up-dates, so keep everything visible
• Let NetworkOS do its job by continuously feeding it

 

KEEP IT FRESH

Don’t talk about the things you usually talk about. For example, no detailed agenda walk through. They have it on their phone, their computer, and the white board. Don’t talk about the weather, everyone already knows what it is and everyone also knows the score of the big game last night. Keep it fresh.

 

RESPECT THE CADENCE OF THE DAY

Your new days are structured in Up-Drafts – highly intense periods of time that replace hundreds of emails and weeks of calls. Between the Up-Drafts are Engineered Co-Working times – time that allows task level details that people need to do for a project and need to do to be ready for the next Up-Draft. Therefore, honor:

• Engineered Co-working time. Learn from each other and make valuable connections in a way you aren’t traditionally allowed
• Up-Draft time. If an Up-Draft needs more time, just ask the 3-5 people that are really critical to stay. Let everyone else go back to co-working time
• Living real-time. Focus on the 20% that is most important. The rest will follow.

 

NetworkOS SECOND

The idea that companies leave professional networks and relationships to chance is as antiquated as transportation by horse. Far too many people from different parts of the company/community are working on similar things that do not talk/don’t know the other existed. The days of accidently increasing the number of new ideas, innovation and serendipitous possibilities are as old school as the horse and buggy driver. Innovation and connections are now the responsibility of everyone. Therefore, Stadium Work must have experts from other parts of the company that may be able to contribute to the project and do their day job/“co-working” most of the time.  Stadium leaders as well as participants are responsible for inviting People Scientists to each and every part of Stadium Work

 

WELLNESS

The workday of the future is a well-rounded employee. Working long hours without treating your body right will be as alien as smoking is to the workplace. Stadium Work must have built in play and exercise time

 

RIGHT FUTURE TECH

Stadium Work provides technology platforms that high performing teams utilize. Corporations used to provide computers and other devices that ‘workers’ needed to do their job. Very few offices actually provide any advanced technology that isn’t easily available at a local store or online. As part of high performing teams, this future tech can be made possible again

 

NEW JUNIOR/EMPLOYEES/APPRENTICESHIP    

Stadium Work requires that the younger generation/recently out of college employees (and sometimes new) join the daily cadence of more senior employees to provide capture, delivery and facilitation support. These employees should be open minded and willing to support. It is the modern day apprenticeship accelerated dramatically

 

Stadium Player Principles

Principles internally motivate the team to do the things that seem good and right.

Rules, on the other hand, are meant to be broken. Adapt these typical Stadium Work principles to ones that match your organization/community.

 

YOU CHOOSE THE WAY YOU WORK

What is your best work story? When did you feel great about your job? It probably didn’t involve most of how you spend 99% of your day. The way you work is YOUR choice. Stadiums enable your choices. Speak up and have your optimal way of working addressed. It is all possible in the Stadium Work structure.

 

EACH DAY IS STRUCTURED TO MATCH THE WAY YOUR BRAIN IS DESIGNED

Huh? Conference calls, endless email, PowerPoint, appendix #50 for your Tuesday afternoon – just aren’t the way we are supposed to spend our days. Adapt the timing and cadence of your Stadium Work day to meet your teams needs. Early afternoon is a great time to get exercise. Adjust the Up-Drafts accordingly.  

 

DAYS ARE ORGANIZED IN UP-DRAFTS

Literally speaking, an Up-Draft wall is the inner part of a hurricane eye that can defend against 200 mph winds. In a Stadium, an updraft is a period of time dedicated to a specific task or project – defending, if you will, against the many distractions of everyday work life so that you can focus on the work at hand. Design experts, Agile Masters, Process Gurus, Education Phd’s and other professionals are at hand to design these with your Up-Draft Leaders. These are quite simply, ‘meeting erasers’ – short time bursts to radically accelerate and improve the project elements you are a part of. Trust their process, contribute your own, and take full advantage. The easiest way to think about it is that each Up-Draft should eliminate the need for the next 10 conference calls on the subject.  

 

ENGINEERED CO-WORKING IS NOT OPTIONAL

Co-working is a proven way to improve your day-to-day work. Studies have shown that people who co-work for at least a year increase their salary on average by 36%. The statistic is mind boggling. The reason for such success is largely attributed to the cliché ‘you are who you know.’ Stadiums take it one step further and create the intentional/engineered networking within your seating arrangements so that you meet the right people to do your job better. Not only do you meet many more people than you would in a traditional work environment, but you are usually meeting more of the people that can make a difference for you moving forward. A common concern is having people talking around you all the time. Simply put on headphones or step over to a quiet space still in visual striking distance.  

 

USE THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY

Too much technology hinders work. The right technology blends effortlessly. Each Stadium should provide social technology at the right point and at the right level to enable teams to excel in the digital realm as well as the physical!

 

 

Importance of Guest Integrated Educators

Stadium Work is the ideal time to easily bring in outside educators with different areas of expertise. Using the beginning or end of Up-Drafts is the perfect time for an 11 or 18-minute overview of a complimentary expert’s opinion. Showcase the range of information and availability of the connections in the room. Even better is integrating the external expert into the Up-Draft to directly add value to the work of the teams.

 

Importance of Human Connection Leaders (sometimes called Knowledge Weavers)

The single strongest predictor of group effectiveness is the amount of help that employees/members offer/give to each other. In other words, the highest- performing teams, invest extensive time and energy in coaching, teaching, and consulting with their colleagues.

 

To further emphasize the importance of these experts and the NetworkOS approach is the concept of mesh networks: “systems of nodes where each node must not only capture and disseminate its own data, but also service as a relay for other nodes, that is, it must collaborate to propagate the data in the network. This is right. In mesh networks, people act as sovereign ‘nodes’ deciding for themselves whether or not to share information with other networks. Therefore, the networks themselves become extraordinarily dynamic and flow into each other, forming a mesh. This makes it difficult to determine the exact place of value creation within the mesh. The future will belong to organizations that embed themselves within their own mesh.”

  

When a company/community learn to move information/knowledge and people around openly and intentionally, they will effectively become ‘real-time companies’ – networked organizations with permanently connected stakeholders in which informal and formal relationships/knowledge flourish and complement each other. In essence where machines have the “Internet of Things,” humans will have a creative “Human to Community” network to achieve impact.  NetworkOS can help make this a reality.

 

Importance of Music

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

Ludwig van Beethoven

 

Corporate offices are almost completely devoid of music (and many other things, but we won’t address that here.) Music should always be used to transition teams into and out of Up-Drafts. Ideally it is used as background music/ambient noise to create a pacing for each person’s day.

 

Music incorporation can be as simple as assigning a DJ for the day or having a dedicated expert.

 

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything. ~Plato

 

Importance of the Days Cadence

The new way of working is as simple as:

• People are intentionally seated next to other specific people each day, every day
  • Can you believe that companies leave it to chance that people from different parts of the company working on similar things wouldn’t talk/didn’t know each other existed! The days of accidently increasing new ideas, innovation and serendipitous possibilities are as old school as the milk man to get your world news. Innovation, connections, are now the responsibility of everyone.  
• People need dedicated personal time several times each day while sitting with colleagues. Encourage individuals to go for a walk. Put on headphones. Call home. Practice mindfulness, etc.  
  • Focus on a project deliverable, browse the web, make a doctors appointment… so each day gives at least three lengthy periods of time to do this while seated as point one. Back to back conference calls and emails is like humans painting cars on a production line
• Spend time EVERY DAY dedicated to fun and exercise. All evidence proves that fun and exercise increase brain capacity.   
  • We are humans that need exercise. Period. Our health directly dictates our performance in every aspect of our lives. Exercise is built into every Stadium
• Specific project work is dramatically accelerated by using at least two highly intentional, structured sections that make up between 20% and 60% of each day – called “Up-Drafts”  
  • Complexity, big projects and big organizations need structure and meeting replacements! Each Up-Draft should replace at least 3 to 10 traditional meetings and status updates, not to mention removing dozens of emails
  • The company that has a million to-dos and “busy” employees just to keep ‘business running’ are the quickest to disappear as the pace of change accelerates dramatically.
  • “If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.” Jack Welch  
• Every person and every team needs to ship “something” at the end of each day.
  • Each person must be accountable for shipping what they declare and publish to the group/room what they accomplish each day
  • This creates accountability, but also allows visibility into how the collective group or ecosystem is progressing
• Everyone operates with full transparency – down to the task level if relevant
  • Project details must be transparent as well
  • Macro ideas, schedules, details are publicly available/published at all times
• Most corporate strategies and culture initiatives are DOA (dead on arrival) because the DNA of the working environment hasn’t caught up to the demands of the new strategies. Culture and strategy can be totally integrated into every Stadium until every day is a Stadium day with every employee living the strategy and culture without even thinking about it
  • Each Stadium should be underpinned by one internal (corporate) force of the month/year/etc. It should also imitate the top priorities, mission, targets, culture, innovation, etc.
• We are in the age of new world learning – i.e. – nothing separate, all integrated and a ‘flipped classroom’ where possible. Each Stadium Work week should have completely different 11 to 18-minute learning explorations
  • In fact, there should be at least one Up-Draft of “formerly known as corporate learning, development and training” built into the overall execution. Although not intended to replace traditional training and education, when integrated correctly, 90% of training, learning and development will be completely integrated into direct work via Stadiums
• There is nothing wrong with to-do’s, but don’t forget that checklists can’t fly a plane, only a trained and experienced pilot can.
• Rituals – build them with your team. It doesn’t matter what type, how long… from Friday beers to singing ensembles. Doesn’t matter. Just do it.
• Everything in the Stadium Work environment should speak. Everything in the environment is there for you to use. Everything is shared (except personal computers and phones which are still considered personal space).
• Although this is designed as a better way of working EVERY DAY, most organizations will need transitioning time. This transition takes time. Most Stadium Work starts out as three days with a medium to large project team and then evolves into full time Stadium Work.