What It Is and How We’re Approaching It

We’ve devoted the week of August twenty second to a model new inner initiative referred to as Construct Week. We’ll all be placing apart our common work for a single week to return collectively in small teams and work on concepts that may profit clients or us as an organization, ideally with one thing of worth shipped or in place by the top.

The inspiration for Construct Week

Earlier than constructing Buffer, I had a number of formative experiences attending “construct a startup in a weekend”-type occasions.

Two I attended had been run by Launch48, and one other was Startup Weekend. Anybody may signal as much as attend it doesn’t matter what talent set or expertise stage they’d deliver. So long as you had been keen to roll up your sleeves, construct one thing, and contribute in any method, you’d be very welcome.

The main target was on constructing one thing quickly from finish to finish, inside the area of a weekend. Groups can be capped to a small quantity, round three to 5 folks per crew, so the teams may transfer shortly with choice making. As soon as the groups had been shaped, you’d get to work and begin doing analysis, constructing, and advertising and marketing (usually all in parallel) to maneuver as quick as doable in constructing a minimal viable product and attaining a stage of validation.

On the finish of the weekend, groups would current what they achieved, what they validated, and what they discovered.

Via these occasions, I met folks, shaped robust bonds, and stayed in touch for years with them afterward. Some groups even grew to become startups. It felt like extremely accelerated studying, and it was intense however enjoyable, very energizing and galvanizing.

I’ve been fascinated with how this might translate to Buffer and why it could be so highly effective for us in our present season, which is the place Construct Week is available in.

What’s Construct Week?

Construct Week is every week at Buffer the place we’ll type groups, work with folks we don’t usually work with, and work collectively on an thought we really feel referred to as in the direction of.

The best stage objectives of Construct Week are to inject into the corporate and crew a spirit of transport, creativity, and innovation, making progress and selections quickly, consolation with uncertainty, and finally going from thought to usable worth out on the planet within the area of every week.

On the subject of the kind of initiatives we’ll work on and the talent units required to perform them, the objective is for these to be far-reaching. Whereas it could look like Construct Week can be extra suited to engineers particularly, our objective is to attain the end result that everybody realizes they’re and generally is a Builder.

Finally, being a Builder in Buffer Construct Week will imply that you’re a part of a crew that efficiently makes a change that brings worth, and it occurs within the brief interval of every week. Everybody on the crew has one thing to deliver to this objective, and I am excited by the assorted initiatives that shall be labored on.

How we’re approaching Construct Week

With our high-level imaginative and prescient and concepts for Construct Week, a number of months in the past we set to work to deliver this idea to life and make it occur.

The very first thing we did was type a crew to plan and design Construct Week itself. Staying true to our imaginative and prescient for Construct Week itself, the place we need to have small groups of people that don’t usually work collectively, that is additionally how we approached forming the Construct Week Planning crew. With this crew in place, we began assembly weekly. General, it has been a small time dedication of 45 minutes per week to plan and design Construct Week. As we bought nearer to the precise week, we began assembly for longer and having actual working periods.

Our ultimate design for Construct Week consisted of three key phases: Concept Gathering, Staff Formation and Construct Week.

For the Concept Gathering stage, we created a Trello board the place anybody within the crew may contribute an thought. We used voting and commenting on the playing cards, which helped slender the concepts to people who can be labored on throughout Construct Week. We gave folks a couple of days to submit concepts and obtained 78 complete contributions. This was an enormous win and a transparent indication of an enormous urge for food for Construct Week inside the firm.

The Staff Formation stage was a trickier drawback to unravel and decide the method for. Initially, we had hoped that this may very well be fully natural, with folks gravitating in the direction of an thought and becoming a member of up with people who find themselves additionally excited to work on that concept. Finally, we realized that if we approached it this manner, we’d doubtless battle with our objective of getting folks work with of us they don’t usually work with, and we wouldn’t have sufficient management over different features, such because the time zones inside every crew. All of this might jeopardize the success of Construct Week itself. So we arrived at a hybrid, the place we created a Google Type for folks to submit their prime 3 selections of concepts they’d prefer to work on. With that info, we decided the groups and made each effort to place folks in a crew that they had put down as a alternative.

And the ultimate stage is, after all, Construct Week itself! The groups have now been shaped, and we created a Slack channel for every crew to begin organizing themselves. We’re offering some very light-weight steering, and we may have a couple of required deliverables, however aside from that, we’re leaving it to every crew to find out the easiest way to work collectively to create worth in the course of the week.

For those who’re a Buffer buyer, one small word that as we embrace this company-wide occasion and time collectively, we shall be shifting our focus barely away from the help inbox. We’ll nonetheless be responding to your questions and issues with Buffer; nevertheless, we could also be barely slower than traditional. We additionally will not be publishing any new content material on the weblog. We’re assured that this time for the crew to bond and construct numerous initiatives of worth will finally profit all Buffer clients.

Why proper now could be the time for Construct Week at Buffer

2022 has been a distinct 12 months for Buffer. We’re able of flatter to declining income, and we’ve been working arduous to seek out our path again to wholesome, sustainable progress. One key factor of this effort has been actively embracing being a smaller firm. We’re nonetheless a small firm, and we serve small companies. Until we lean into this, we’ll lose a lot of our benefits.

We need to drive extra connection throughout the crew in a time the place we’ve felt it missing for the previous couple of years. Whereas we’ve been distant for many of our 11+ years of existence, we’ve all the time discovered a ton of worth from firm retreats the place all of us meet in particular person, and we’ve suffered in the course of the pandemic the place we’ve not been capable of have these occasions. Construct Week is a chance for us to try this with a complete new idea and occasion somewhat than attempting to do it with one thing like a digital retreat which might doubtless by no means be capable to reside as much as our earlier retreat experiences.

There’s an enormous alternative for exchanging context and concepts of present Buffer challenges inside groups the place the groups are cross-functional and with individuals who don’t usually work collectively. This might assist us for months afterward.

Construct Week can be a time the place robust bonds, each in work and personally, are shaped. My dream can be that after Construct Week, folks inside their groups hit one another up in Slack and bounce on a spontaneous catch-up name from time to time as a result of they’ve change into shut in the course of the week.

We’ve had engineering hack weeks for a very long time now. These have been superior of their method, however they’ve been very contained to engineering. And whereas these occasions created a variety of worth, they usually lacked views that might have enhanced the work, comparable to buyer advocacy, design, tradition, or operational views.

As an organization, we need to problem a few of the processes we now have constructed up over the previous few years. Construct Week is sort of a clean canvas – we filter a complete week after which diligently resolve what we’d like when it comes to construction and course of to make this idea thrive and no extra. This may act as inspiration for us going ahead, the place we will use the week for example of rethinking course of and questioning the methods we do issues.

The chance that comes with Construct Week

If we’re profitable with Construct Week, I’m assured that we’ll shock ourselves with simply how a lot worth is created by the entire firm in that one week alone. In embracing being a small firm, we’re at the moment striving to problem ourselves by shifting at a quicker tempo with out over-working. I feel that is doable, and the utterly totally different nature of how we work collectively in Construct Week may give us concepts for what we will regulate to work extra successfully and productively collectively in our common move of labor.

The chance for worth creation inside Construct Week goes far past product options or enhancements. Construct Week shall be a time for us to construct something that serves both clients or the crew in pursuit of our imaginative and prescient and mission, or strengthens and upholds our values. We will stretch ourselves within the potentialities – there may very well be a advertising and marketing marketing campaign, an information report, bettering an current course of within the firm, rethinking our instruments, creating a brand new factor of transparency, bringing our clients collectively, and so on.

Want us luck!

I imagine Construct Week may be one of the enjoyable, high-energy weeks we’ve had in years. I count on we will come out of the week on a excessive that may gasoline us with motivation and delight of our work for months. That could be a worthy objective and one thing I feel we will obtain with somewhat creativity and the appropriate group of individuals designing and planning the occasion.

In fact, a part of the fantastic thing about Construct Week itself is that identical to all of the concepts and the liberty to decide on how you’re employed in a crew, we don’t know every little thing we’ll be taught as an organization by doing this. It may very well be chaotic, there may very well be challenges, and there’ll undoubtedly be many insights, however we shall be higher off for having gone by way of the method.

Please want us all luck as we head into subsequent week. There’s a variety of pleasure within the firm to create worth. We hope to have new options to share with you within the coming weeks, and we’ll be again quickly with a publish sharing the way it went.
Have you ever tried one thing like Construct Week earlier than? If that’s the case, how did it go? I’d love to listen to from you on Twitter.