Visiting Google in Zurich

I went to Google Zurich today to have a look around their offices and have some lunch. It is a very impressive set up with a dynamic feel to the organisation and some interesting features.

Everyone says hello to everyone else whenever they walk past each other in corridors or in offices - it is complusory and part of the culture. It feels friendly and welcoming.

There are lots of creative spaces for meetings (small and large) as well as places to relax, get away from your desk and think and reflect. Some of these spaces are very interesting - converted ski lifts, pods and converted ice stations from the north pole.

The organisation is young and also has a young feel - most of the employees seem to be under 30 years old.

There is also a commitment to employees using some of their time (up to 20%) to pursue their own innovative projects that can complement their core work. This is an interesting way of promoting innovation and new thinking.

There is also a real sense of vision and mission about the place - they want to be a great company, to be a great place to work and to do something good in the world.

Now I don't think any organisation is perfect. Organisations are social entities with a range of dynamics and peculiarities that sometimes only reveal themselves over the longer term. But I do wonder how the Google experience might be adapted to the voluntary sector and to social and health development. And of course they do give a lot of their products away for free at the moment.

I think there is a lot we can learn from different ways of doing things. We don't need to take the whole package but we can 'borrow' and experiment with different ways of doing things - and make work fun and vibrant at the same time.

Have a look at the Google offices - click here for a video tour

What Does Your World Look Like?

How does your world look? How do you capture what you are about?

Well there are many ways to answer those questions - and it could take a while and we could get fairly philosophical too.

A shorter answer is to think about a visual representation of your world. And the new free website wordle does just that.

You can feed in any text and it will create a visual representation. You could paste your diary entry, a short story or anything infact.

Here I have pasted in the text from my own website front page. Wordle produces an interesting representation. It also emphasises the important words. What does your world look like?