The work we make for clients changes all the time. The craft you build in yourself does not.
Our operating model keeps those two things in their right places, so the work can move fast without wearing you down, and so getting better at your craft never depends on whichever project is loudest this week.
You have three homes
Where you belong
Your community
Your craft family. It's where your craft has a home, where your growth is taken seriously, and where you belong. It doesn't come and go.
Where you sharpen
Your pod
A small standing group inside your community who share a focus and get better together: studying good work, tracking where the field is going, learning, and celebrating what you make. It's where the craft improves, not where the work ships.
Where you ship
Your project team
It forms around a client, pulls people from different pods, and delivers. Some are short. Some become account teams that stay with a client long enough to really know their business. Either way, it's about the work and the client.
The line to hold
Your pod is where you get better at the craft; your project team is where you ship the work. You stay in your pod. You move through project teams.
A pod keeps the craft sharp
Every pod runs a monthly rhythm, led by its pod lead. Keeping the two separate is what lets the craft deepen while the work moves.
You grow as an IC or a Hybrid
Individual Contributor
You do your craft and manage your own work. You can lead your pod's craft and still be one. Going deep in a single craft is a career in its own right, not a step on the way to managing people.
Hybrid
You do your craft and also manage the process of others, a client, or a team. Still a maker, now with others alongside.
Think of it like a tree. Some of us grow tall and deep in one craft. Some branch out into leading others. Both are growing, and your path doesn't set your pay.
Two people have your back
Your workload manager
Your priorities and the balance of your time.
Your performance coach
Developing you, tracking how you're doing, and writing your review. Your coach can come from a different community than yours, on purpose, because the best person to help you grow isn't always the one who runs your team.
Through the year, your coach checks in with your workload manager and everyone you've worked with, and keeps notes as they go.
At review time, they pull it all into one picture, so the great work you did on a project outside your home team shows up too. Your coach holds the whole story of your year.
In short
You belong to a community.
You sharpen your craft in a pod.
You ship the work in project teams.
You grow as an IC or a Hybrid, however your tree wants to grow.
And two people have your back, one for your work, one for your growth.
