How to manage creative people - Labtek Indie
- Micha
- Apr 21, 2018
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 27, 2018
Company Labtek Indie focuses on an area of research, design, & development for products in technological sphere through human-centred approach. Business core is divided into two main areas Design Thinking Consulting and Rapid Prototyping using methods like Sprint and Scrum. An interdisciplinary team of freelancers including researchers, designers, engineers, programmers are developing products using the methods of Agile and Lean development, Scrum and Human Centred Design. Through this range of methods, they help their clients to build up prototypes and validation for new products and services. Activities of Labtek Indie include trainings of design thinking, scrum, product owner, consulting, the creation of digital applications and interactive installations.
I was talking with Saska Akbar, the CEO of the company. Currently, Labtek Indie is providing services as design research and software development. Developers are not part of the in-house employees and they work with the talent pool of freelancers. The matching process is according to the needs of freelancers and clients. Practice is based on 10 days sprints[1] and agile approach[2]. These methods allowed them to make quick retrospectives and reviews and continue in the process with the improved quality.
We moved our conversation from the projects to the topic of managing creative people. In the era, when job market is changing fast, we need to react to those changes. While these creative people require different conditions and expect values is not primarily based on salary, the company Labtek Indie was facing new challenges. Saska with his team is now experimenting with the holocracy system [3]. It is a self-managing organisational structure with a purpose-driven practices. “We spent first three months implementing it wrong. We didn’t get the value of the setting of rigid rules during the meetings. We research again and try these sets of rules. Finally we got results using 2 types of meetings – tactical and governance meetings.”
These types of meetings help them to manage the way of information and also task distribution. Guys from Labtek Indie are testing this system in-house and after they spread it out to the world. For the managing all the tasks they use application Glassfrog[4]. Let’s take a closer look at these meetings:
1. Tactical meeting [5] – the important role for a tactical meeting has a facilitator, who “check in” if everyone is present. It is not just physical presence, but facilitator asks about their life or news. After warming up, they continue with a checklist review of the ongoing tasks which need to be done. Future agenda is built on the spot, so they can flexibly react to the new conditions.
More information you can find here: https://www.holacracy.org/tactical-meetings
2. Governance meeting [6] – this type of meeting is based on a discussion about current structural efficiency. They have a freedom, that the structural change can be applied anytime when is needed.
More information you can find here: https://www.holacracy.org/governance-meetings
Labtek Indie is inspired by reinventing organisation model [7] and also they use open approach toward salary system. “We are learning from reinventing organisation. Is self-management, more human centred and decentralized. There are lots of responsibilities, sometimes lots of stress (laugh). We also use self-salary system. At the end of the month, employees reflect and evaluate their work financially. We inform them how much revenue we have and according to that we distribute money. Its really open model, so everyone knows how much everyone gets. And furthermore, you see the consequences and responsibilities.”
Also we were talking with Saska about the way, how they approach creativity in their work. “I don’t think we talk about creativity; in terms that we don’t put it as an issue that specifically needs to be addressing. We do it organically and we even don’t necessary mention the word creativity. What we do, is to enable people to experience it. At first we used design thinking to solve clients problems and then afterwards it becomes natural for us to understand problem, do sensing, empathizing, prototyping and finally see how the solution works. For us is important to get facilitating skills to make a structure in chaotic things.”
Later I was talking with other members of Labtek Indie and meeting with the inspiring group of people gave me a lot of topics and insights to think about. I was also invited to their workshop in the place Spasial [8], where they made workshops on the topics of product owner and scrum master. I could observe real enthusiasm, strong feeling to make an impact and the most important to don’t be afraid of changes or potential failures.
More information:
Labtek Indie website: https://labtekindie.com
Labtek Indie facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LabtekIndie/?ref=br_rs
Sources:
[1] http://www.gv.com/sprint/
[2] https://www.cio.com/article/3156998/agile-development/agile-project-management-a-beginners-guide.html
[3] https://www.holacracy.org
[4] https://glassfrog.com
[5] https://www.holacracy.org/tactical-meetings
[6] https://www.holacracy.org/governance-meetings
[7] http://www.reinventingorganizations.com
[8] https://www.facebook.com/youarespasial/?ref=br_rs
Image sources:
[1] Facebook Labtek Indie: https://www.facebook.com/LabtekIndie/photos/a.677933838922922.1073741825.454728451243463/1694346140615015/?type=3&theater
[2] Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seterhenakbar/detail/photo/
[3] Facebook Labtek Indie: https://www.facebook.com/LabtekIndie/photos/a.677933838922922.1073741825.454728451243463/1604148022968161/?type=3&theater
[4] Facebook Labtek Indie: https://www.facebook.com/LabtekIndie/photos/a.677933838922922.1073741825.454728451243463/1713624652020497/?type=3&theater
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