1. We’re going to try to learn as much about you as we can before we hire you. We won’t get all up in stuff that’s none of our business, but we need to know if you are a good fit for us. It could take a while.

2. You’ll have to be able to work anywhere. We don’t have an office - or even a cubicle - for you. We are going virtual and serving our customers from our homes or wherever we want.

3. We will judge you based on the results you produce. You can’t get away with looking busy for eight hours a day. We are here to serve our customers.

4. We don’t have annual performance reviews. If you do a good job in June, we’ll know it in June. If you goof up in August, we aren’t going to wait until December to talk about how to improve.

5. We love technology. We hope you do too. And we hope you already know how to do things like use the blind copy feature in your email and create a hyperlink. If you have no idea what any of that means, you might hate working here.

6. We change. A lot. If you want to settle in and then coast, you’ll hate it here. We change because we aren’t perfect. As we learn better ways of doing things, we implement new processes, technology, and ideas.

7. If you think we are talking about the ten day forecast when we mention the cloud, you might hate working here.

8. We don’t take all clients, and sometimes we fire the ones that aren’t right for us. If that makes you nervous, you might hate working here.

9. If you love paper and office supplies, you might hate it here. We are paperless. We don’t deliver paper to our clients, and we don’t accept paper from them either.

We’re looking to hire a couple of part time people that won’t hate it here. If you are interested, please contact our firm administrator, Jennifer Blumer, by emailing her at jennifer @ blumercpas.com. Jennifer can help you get started with our hiring process. We hope you won’t hate it here!

Here are our thoughts on going virtual as a firm.

This first THRIVEal Online Conference of 2012 is with Jody Thompson of Culture Rx. She and Cali Ressler, authors of the book Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It, are the creators of ROWE, bringing dignity back to work and redefining what it means to get a job done and live your freakin’ life!

Jody will take us on a journey through how she and Cali discovered the work problem back in 2003, how they dodged bullets, almost got fired and basically fought their way to redefine work and disrupt this protected social system!

Register here!

Daniel Pink

If not, here it is again:

Mike discusses how Wall Street and Madison Avenue have helped us define work into something it is not really.  This is one of my favorite Ted talks.

My wife and I run two companies that sell knowledge.  And we like to think these companies are changing lives.  We are passionate about what we do and often do it some 12 hours a day.  Our dining room, where we work, doesn’t have nice little place settings on it.  It looks more like a war room where Jennifer and I bang out creative ideas, discuss (sometimes it is a hot debate) how to serve people and is our part of the world where we bring value to those around us.  Would we like more time off?  Sometimes.  But we are quickly learning that our abilities to add value to others lives and change those whom we come in contact with can not be accomplished in 40 hours.  Actually, Congress passed a law that created the 40 hour work week.  How can they define the intimate part of our life called ‘work’ with a law?  Silly.

Work needs to be redefined in our world.  It doesn’t happen in neat 40 hour weeks, just like learning doesn’t stop when you leave school (often times it doesn’t even happen in school).  You don’t have to control people who do the work, and you don’t have to control how people do their work.  When you have the right people in your company, work can become a passion.  A passion you use as a vehicle to change those around you.  Your pursuits are holy, and we have to start thinking and acting like this is true. 

Abolish Time
We need to abolish the false belief that time = work.  Spending time somewhere does not necessarily mean you have accomplished anything for your customer.  Time does not equal effectiveness or proof that you should be promoted at your job (i.e., you work the most, so you get a promotion).  Time is the passing of our lives, something we can’t stop and we must make the most of it.  The passing of time is precious.  But it can’t be the basis by which we price those we serve.  The beautiful function of work can be done anywhere, with any tool, at any time and is performed differently by every single person on your team.  Abolish time, give dignity and freedoms back to your people and watch their work become noble again.

Create Real Value
Time does not necessarily equal the giving of Value.  If you are in a profession that assumes the passing of your professional time equals value being given to your customer, then you have believed something false.  Now it may be true that you can deliver value over an hour of time, but don’t confuse that with those who believe working one hour equals value enough to a customer that you send them a bill for your time.  Who determines value?  Only one person, and they are not found in your company. It is your customer.  When our companies become hyper-focused on our customers, then we will hear and finally see what true value looks like.  It’s time to create real value and ask our customers how we can change their lives.  There is no other reason to be in business.  Profits are not the reason for our business pursuits.  They are a result of our good work, but not the pursuit of our work. 

We must pursue our customers.  To do this, we must redefine our work.  Equating our time with what our customers want is a foolish pursuit that often ends in frustration for us and the customer.  And believing that the passing of one of our hours has created value for a customer is also foolish.  The customer, not our time, will let us know when we have been valuable.  When we discover that intimate exchange with our customer, they will gladly pay us to continue the process of changing their lives; and in exchange we will feel the rush of knowing that our work is valuable to others!

What is a Grok? from Blumer & Associates, CPAs, PC on Vimeo.

See what my friend and design thinking architect, Joel Van Dyke, thought of the Grok conference.

Thanks to Rachel J Blumer for her video expertise!