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Our son will be starting school in September allowing my wife to return to work; she wants to I’m not forcing her – honest. She has always wanted to train to be a nursery nurse, and through a chance conversation at our son’s pre-school she has secured a position starting immediately.

To give her the greatest possible flexibility I said that I would request to adopt a flexible working pattern which I am entitled to under UK law. Sadly my manager initially refused my request, but following a successful appeal I started my flexible working last week.

I now work “five days in four”; working all of my contracted hours in four days as opposed to five. I  work from 8.15 to 18.00 Monday to Thursday and don’t work on Fridays. This has allowed my wife to take the great opportunity presented to her and to start training right away.

Having talked about other companies that have adopted a similar pattern wholesale I thought it might be interesting for others to document my experiences working a four day week in a five day week company.

Last week was my first four day week and it looks like this work pattern will work out well for me and my family and have no negative impact for my employers.

Not being a morning person I will admit to being concerned about actually making it in on time and being effective. Perhaps the biggest and most pleasant surprise of week one was early rising. I’ve found that I’ve had no problem actually getting up and that I feel more awake and alert through the day as a result. I wonder if it’s anything to do with seeing more daylight.

Having said that I also think that my increased alertness may be due to a greater focus and awareness of time I now have. I want this arrangement to be a success for me, for my family, for my employer and also for others that may want to work this way in the future. To this end I have found I have a much greater sense of engagement and focus.

So all very good so far.

Week two may be more of a test as I have a day in London on Thursday giving me have just three days in the office, but such days are a fact of business life so I don’t expect big problems.

As an ex-Psion employee I was disappointed and a little saddened to learn of Psion’s spurious trademark claim to the word netbook. Psion were once a great technology company practically inventing the PDA , creating some classic hardware designs and creating the operating system that powers a huge proporation of today’s smartphones: Symbian.

Psion launched the Psion netBook (also badged a Series 7) in 1999. The netBook was a sub-notebook running Psion’s EPOC operating system and discontinued in 2003.

I remember playing with a pre-production netBook giving my feedback as to how I felt the EPOC OS should be adapted to work on the bigger screen and thinking we had a very cool device here. Psion used external design consultants Therefore for their hardware design, and the netBook was another triumph of industrial design.

As with the Series 3 and 5 PDAs that preceded it the netBook had a clever hinge that made the device seem to grow as you opened it revealing a keyboard that seemed larger than it should be. The hinge itself was wrapped in leather so it felt like carrying a leather book or Filofax. As well as an almost full size keyboard the netBook had a touch screen and solid state internals. Writing this now I realise that the Psion netBook really was ahead of it’s time.

A few years ago I bumped into an old colleague who showed me a netBook running Linux pre-dating the Eee PC and co. by some years. Sadly Psion didn’t release this version in yet another moment of corporate short-sightedness and cowardice.

Palm chickened out of the two hottest personal technology markets despite having a massive head start on the competition. I was fortunate to see the designs and concepts for a range of smartphones Psion were working on but ultimately didn’t develop. Then of course Psion pulled out of the PDA market saying they couldn’t beat Palm.

Psion are now a pale imitation of the once great innovators they were; based in Canada Psion Teklogix now produce rugged industrial handheld computers. So their decision to claim the netbook trademark and to threaten websites, resellers and IT manufacturers with legal action felt like the last dieing actions of once great brand.

Shame on you Psion.

But well done Dell for challenging this ridiculous claim; it looks like game over for Psion before they’ve even started.

Update: Dell have accused Psion of “fraudulently” claiming the trademark netbook was still in use.

Note: I was also amazed to see that design of the Psion Teklogix site is largely the same as the one I left behind when I left Psion in 2000 and it was out of date then.

Seth Godin has another great post on his blog today entitled How to Answer the Phone in which he states:

The only reason to answer the phone when a customer calls is to make the customer happy.

He goes on to say

If you’re not doing this or you are unable to do this, do not answer the phone. There is no middle ground on this discussion. There are no half measures. Saving 50 cents a call with a complicated phone tree is a false savings. Think of all the money you’ll save if you just stop answering altogether. Think of all the money you’ll make if you just make people happy.

I couldn’t agree more.

My heart sinks whenever I call a company and find myself in an off-shore call centre. If a company has “off-shored” their call centres it means two things: that they don’t care about you the customer and the service they deliver to you, and that they care more about their profits.

When a company sees it’s customers as a cost rather than a benefit they have a BIG problem.

This is not so much a book review as a book recommendation. In fact I’m quite happy for you to stop reading this now and to go and buy Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard it’s that good.

photo of book

Still here? OK I’ll talk a little about this great book.

I bought this book to read about how Patagonia looks after its staff; the whole “let my people go surfing” flexible working philosophy, I didn’t expect to have my outlook on the environment fundamentally altered.

The book is divided into two main sections, the first looks at the history of Patagonia and the second the philosophies of the company.

The history of Patagonia is very interesting and sets the tone for the future of the company. Yvon wanted to build the best climbing equipment he could and did so. In the process he changed how people climbed – moving them away from destructive pitons and over to less damaging blocks.

Over time his company gradually moved into clothing and grew into the Patagonia of today.

However it’s the company philosophies that I wanted to learn about. Patagonia has eight stated philosophies ranging from product design to the environmenta. I’ll talk first about the human resources philosophy for that is what brought me to this book.

As with the other companies I have featured recently Patagonia fundamentally respects and values it’s staff. Patagonia treats it’s people like adults. There’s the fabled flexible working of course, Patagonia also provides award winning child care facilities on site combined with sixty days paid maternity/paternity which I believe is very generous for a US company. Patagonia will allow it’s staff to take time away from the day job to help fight for environmental causes. Yvon wants to ensure that work is fun, as he says in the book

why on earth would anyone run a company that is hard to work for?

The vast majority of companies could learn much from that one sentence alone; of course those that need to most are those least likely to learn and change…

It’s telling that the environmental philosophy accounts for over a third of the philosophies section. The environment has always been Yvon’s main driver and prime concern and it is this focus on the environment that was the revelation of the book for me.

I thought I was fairly environmentally aware and also pretty “green” but clearly I’m not. The environment has only become an issue to the general public in the last few years really but Yvon and Patagonia have been aware of the issues and campaining since the late sixties. Sadly it’s very concerning to read Yvon’s pessimism for the planet – he clearly feels that too much damage has already been done and there is too little movement to alter human behaviour. The very fact that the US refuse the accept global warming as an issue and the Kyoto Agreement as a way to address it beggars belief.

I’m not going to go into detail here about Patagonia’s environmental work as I feel it would be much better for you to read it yourself and for you to absorb in your own way.

Reading the environmental section of this book was a massive eye-opener for me, possibly compounded by reading it whilst on holiday in Cornwall one of the most lovely parts of the UK, but nonetheless made me question some of my actions and habits and determined to change.

The very last section of the book concerns the 1% For the Planet Alliance. Patagonia have always given a percentage of their profits and then sales to environmental causes. To help other like minded companies do the same Yvon helped found the 1% For the Planet Alliance to administer the donations. They now have 859 companies donating 1% of sales; a good number but 859 out of the thousands of companies worldwide is a poor show.

Read this book; it will make you question how your company functions,thinks, treats it’s staff and the environment.

Continuing my theme of modern and clever working arrangements…

I’ve just read Seth Godin’s latest post the new standard for meetings and conferences in which Seth says

If you’re a knowledge worker, your boss shouldn’t make you come to the (expensive) office every day unless there’s something there that makes it worth your trip. She needs to provide you with resources or interactions or energy you can’t find at home or at Starbucks. And if she does invite you in, don’t bother showing up if you’re just going to sit quietly.

I’m pleased that it isn’t just me that finds the idea of commuting to a physical office an increasingly outdated concept; surely as the world becomes more environmentally aware this has to stop.

Remember that the nine to five, five day week was designed to maximise production in the mills of the industrial revolution – isn’t it time we updated the way we work for the 21st century?

A tweet from Ryan Carson yesterday, led me to Howies about page; a page which Ryan described as “inspiring” and I can see why.

There are two sections of Howies our beliefs page that I think are fantastic:

The rocking chair test
Every product we make has passed the ‘rocking chair test’. This is something we use to guide us along the path we are taking. So when we are old and grey and sitting in our rocking chairs, we can look back on the company we created with a smile. That’s why we go to the trouble of using the best quality materials to make sure our clothing lasts longer. The longer our products last the less impact they will have on the environment, and the bigger our smile will be

Fun
We are trying to get the balance right between work and play. Whenever a real nice day comes along, it’d be a shame to waste it. So if you phone up and no-one answers, don’t worry. We are out there doing what we love. So leave a message and we’ll get back to you in a while

I think the rocking chair test should be adopted by all companies as a measure of success – are you proud of what you are doing and have done? Does it make you smile?

Howies “policy” on fun is clearly influenced by Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard – owner of Patagonia; a book that I hadn’t heard of before but found on Howies site in their stuff we love section.

Yvon Chouinard allows his staff to use flexi-time to go surfing when conditions are good. Very cool and very much in keeping with my previous article; Yvon Chouinard clearly treats his people like grown ups. As with Carsonified I bet the people at Patagonia feel valued and trusted and so just naturally give more to the business and enjoy doing so.

The book sounds really interesting, so I’ve ordered a copy to read on holiday next week.

It’s a shame that so few companies have this enlightened approach but good to see that there are some brave and visionary leaders out there that do.