Sounds Like Culture: Threadless and 37Signals

As part of Chicago Ideas Week I had the opportunity to visit two of my favorite local businesses. Threadless is a crowd-sourced t-shirt design company, and 37Signals is a software company known for excellence in virtual collaboration and productivity products (37Signals is also well-known for their agile development method…how meta).

"I AM THREADLESS ROBOT"

There was a firehose of information, insights, and fun (for business nerds) shared at both labs, but what struck me most is that the work environments of these two successful businesses feel completely different from one another.

The two cultures are best imagined via sound. Threadless is more raucous, a bunch of highly creative and talented friends working while they play. In contrast, a visitor to 37signals hears almost nothing at all: there is an intentional and library-like silence that shrouds a collection of modern day craftsmen (writing some of the cleanest code out there), seeming to say “we work best while not being disturbed”.

At Threadless, the hum of the warehouse is augmented by music which always plays–each time a worker fulfills an order, that employee gets to play DJ, heading over to the computer to add the next song to the queue. In the Threadless admin areas, the art, marketing, support, and biz dev departments sit in their work groups; laughter, banter, and work discussions reinforce and reveal a culture about fun and connection that is borne from a foundation of community-focused art. The team built a 20 foot cardboard robot that can read tweets that are sent to it–in robot voice of course. In the large open-entry atrium, a pool table, ping pong table, kegerators, and indoor RVs suggest the after-hours noisy fun of people who love where they work.

At 37signals, members of the team project a very similar confident satisfaction

"Shhh. Geniuses at work."

in their work, only you don’t hear it as loudly as at Threadless. The 37signals space was designed to minimize noise; walls are wrapped in noise-reducing material. Desks are spaced as far from one another as possible, and co-workers are discouraged from interrupting one another–communication is via instant messaging rather than by walking 30 feet (or 3000 miles–37Signals has a mostly off-site workforce) to ask your colleague a question. Phone calls are taken in sound-proof rooms, complete with large red “in use” lighted signs that recall a radio studio. Like great code, the office design is minimalist and elegant, the form following the function as in many great Chicago landmarks.

Like all good founders / entrepreneurial managers, both Jason Fried (37 Signals) and Jake Nickell (Threadless) have made conscious efforts to foster their strong respective cultures. Both are highly effective and reflective of the founders themselves.

Which culture would you prefer to work in?

“Undisturbed Peace” or “Pour Some Booze on it and You Got a Party”?