You may have read this section about 37signals and said to yourself, “that’s great, but I’m not a manager.” You probably don’t have the power to change the expense reporting mechanism of your company or make everyone work from home just because you do. However, that shouldn’t stop you from influencing the way your team works.
Do what you can to make your team easy to use. Remove unnecessary steps from your team processes. Encourage your team to be flat. You can’t make people stop coming to the office, but ask them to try dialing into conference calls from separate rooms.
As a rule, 37signals doesn’t add anything to their company until they absolutely need it. Jason and David are responsible for this, but so is the rest of their team. Many companies, teams, and software products could benefit from this practice.