A company as beautiful as a work of art
Is it possible to create a company as beautiful as a work of art? This was the question Bill Witherspoon asked himself. An artist who struggled hard in the early 70’s painting day after day, he went on later to sell his paintings for tidy sums. Once Witherspoon offered to tear out the ceiling in an orthodontist’s office and replace it with a skyscape made from painted tiles in exchange for braces for his children. That act of creative barter provided the idea for The Sky Factory, a $3.9 million, 34-employee company in Fairfield, Iowa. The business makes backlit images of sea and sky that are installed on ceilings and walls. Its products are popular in hotels, spas, restaurants, and hospitals.
Founded in 2002, The Sky Factory was Witherspoon’s answer to his question. This ‘beautiful company’ was formed by removing rules that restricted people’s expression of natural curiosity and creativity, and thus had a flat organizational structure that had no employees, just owners, where everyone does what is best for the company. The company like a painting started with a blank canvas with each talented individual creating comprar rimonabant beauty with each thoughtful act of his or her, like each brush stroke of a painting in progress, making propecia and shedding working an enjoyable and creative process.
Witherspoon lays out from his experience five essential contributing principles required in running a beautiful company.
- Everyone in the company knows everything in the company.
- Everyone is a leader by virtue of innately doing the job they see that the company needs them to do.
- Decisions are made with everyone’s contribution and resolve.
- A culture of spontaneous selfless service to each other.
- Sharing profits regularly in a fair and simple manner.
Witherspoon admits that the Sky Factory is not a perfectly successful experiment. The system can sometimes seem inefficient, slow in decision making and uncomfortable to some. Not everyone’s needs are met every time. But this is a novel way of working which gives everyone a deeper understanding of the company product and most importantly the vision to see the company as a whole and not just a sum of its parts. Witherspoon believes that this appreciation of what the company is doing is what keeps great people here, and great people will ensure that The Sky Factory endures. After all, that’s what great art does, Endures.
Source: [Inc]
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