Post
What we can learn from Matt Mullenweg
image credit: Photo 62306666 ©
Mobile work became the norm in 2020. Jobs we never thought were possible from home, like internal medicine, quickly found a way to work on Zoom. Now, with the end of the pandemic in sight, a lot of organizations are resigned to slinking back into their offices. Is this a mistake?
Matt Mullenweg, one of the founders of WordPress and its now parent company, Automatic, certainly thinks so. Mullenweg has been banging the “distributed work” drum for years now, but until the pandemic not many leaders paid attention. His company has been fully distributed for a long time and is now doing better than ever. He, as you’d probably imagine, attributes much of that success to the distributed model.
Your access to Member Features is limited.
Please sign in or apply for membership to continue reading this post.Mullenweg has a few talking points he likes to hit when discussing the benefits of distributed work structures: It gives people autonomy to create the work environments in which they are most productive and happy. It allows organizations to recruit the best talent, regardless of timezones. Removes office distractions and puts the emphasis on results.
According to Mullenweg, there are 5 levels of distributed work, ranging from not possible to what he calls “nirvana”. Check out this blog post the techie published in April to learn more. Also, if you just YouTube “Mullenweg distributed work” you’ll get a whole bunch of great content where he goes into detail about his philosophy and practical steps and tools that make distributed work possible.
Obviously there are aspects of the utility business that cannot be done remotely. But there are many that are, and Matt Mullenweg makes a compelling case for moving in that direction.
Sign in to Participate