a small bit of company culture

[cellio]

The company I work for just got bought. As part of this, we have to change our name -- but there's some flexibility in what that new name will be. People have been making lots of suggestions via our Wiki, but a Wiki is not a good way to track popularity of individual suggestions.

We're a data visualization and collaboration company. We have tools for solving this. :-)

One wall of our kitchen is now covered in stickie notes. Each note contains a proposed name and two vote tallies, one for and one against. People can add new stickies and vote on existing ones at any time. (One vote per stickie, vote on as many as you want, honor system.) The position of the stickie on the wall is governed by the two vote counts -- positive votes on one axis, negative votes on the other. Yeah, we could have done this through software, but this is more fun -- and much more interactive.

This is one of those odd bits of company culture that it's important to preserve. I've worked for places where the answer -- if people got input at all -- would have been to email your top three choices to so-and-so, who will tally them and publish a list. But that does not capture nearly enough information about the data.

Besides, that sort of process would also filter out the wacky suggestions early on. I think it's fun to see the wacky ones alongside the serious ones. Who knows -- a wacky one that catches on might be able to be tweaked to be workable anyway.

Comments

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

We used a similar method. It's fab.

[profane-stencil.livejournal.com]

Take pictures!

[stevethorn.livejournal.com]

At least you get a choice :)
A year and a half ago our company was bought out and we were 'absorbed' into a corporate megalith. From a billion dollar company with 7000 employees to a monster $19 billion company with 67k employees overnight. I miss my little $1 billion company,-- at least it had culture,.. and concern for the individual. What, do I sound bitter?

[cellio]

We get input. That's not quite the same as a choice. :-) (In particular, none of these suggestions have passed the corporate sniff test -- not even our CEO, let alone the folks at the acquiring company.) Still, I have hopes that we'll get something that doesn't completely suck...

I miss my little $1 billion company

That sounds like quite a change, yes.

For context: we were a 55-person company that has just become a unit within a 71,000-person company. We're going to fight really hard for our culture, which certainly includes concern for the individual and a degree of flexibility that is not so common in large companies.

[cellio]

Someone did, though I haven't seen the results yet.

especially if you started out with a small company with

[dmnsqrl.livejournal.com]

concern for the individual and a degree of flexibility....

I've discovered that small companies that do not have those things... can _really_ have a lack of those things.... (because at least in a large company sometimes you can get 'lost' so no one _notices_ your individuality to object to it :)

[jducoeur]

This puts me in mind of when Intermetrics merged with Pacer. The company had a huge, long discussion of what to call the merged entity, with lots of great ideas put forth. And the end result wound up called "Averstar", because that was the *only* name suggested whose domain was still available.

(Of course, all of this is now irrelevant, since Averstar then got absorbed into Titan Industries, the stereotype of a corporate monolith name if ever there was one...)