"Our general philosophy is that an open environment facilitates intellectual intensity," says Paul English, founder of Kayak, the online travel site. So everyone in his office, himself included, sits in an open area. Not only is their a lot of brainstorming and collaboration, but problems are identified and solved swiftly. That's because customer service calls come into a conspicuous red phone in the middle of it all.
Entrepreneurs often have a hard time making time to catch up with direct reports and other employees. To solve that problem, Kim Kleeman, founder of ShakespeareSquared, a Glenview, Illinois, company that creates educational materials, situated her office near the front entrance of her company's office. That way, she can squeeze in conversations with employees as they come and go. "The trick is to catch someone in transit," she explains. "That's something I learned as a teacher when I had to grab students and convey information in the five minutes between classes."
When Justin.tv, a San Francisco-based video streaming service, was going through a site redesign, co-founder Justin Kan moved his desk near his engineers who were working on the project. Kan found that he liked the location because he was able to give employees feedback (and receive it from them) on a steady basis. The downside? More distractions and joking around.
Some leaders don't need to be face to face with their employees to have an impact. Just ask WordPress and Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg. He and his 40-person staff work almost entirely from home and communicate through an intensive group blog called P2. "My management strategy is to find extremely self-motivated and talented people and then let them go," Mullenweg says. "There's no manager looking over your shoulder every day, so you need to be able to completely direct yourself."
"I bounce around from department to department," says Blake Mycoskie, founder of Los Angeles-based Toms Shoes, who technically has a cubicle near the company's customer service department. But, over the years, he has learned he has a penchant for managing by walking around. "Sometimes it's disruptive, I think, but it's just the way I build things," he says.
