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Here’s one forgotten component essential to assembling a better environment.

I was chatting with a friend the other day who classified herself as “unhappily employed.” “All I want is to work for a company where I can really use my skills and where I feel like my contribution is valued,” she said.

“That sounds like a basic human need to me,” said our sage third companion.

Sadly, this gal isn’t the only person I know going through a tough time at work. Another friend, a bright, talented, once-enthusiastic fellow tells me his days are filled with long stretches of nothing to do occasionally broken up by political maneuvering and frustration. “I read an article about a company where managers are actually held accountable for keeping good employees. Can you imagine?” he asked with wonder.

There’s a Different Way

With so much drudgery and dissatisfaction in the workplace, when a company gets the work environment right, it makes news. Such is the case with Michigan-based Menlo Innovations. This software design firm has created a smooth-running, functional environment by stripping away the layers of hierarchy and getting back to simple basics of true collaborative teamwork and honest conversation.

Things work so well at Menlo that folks come to tour the facility and learn how they might put these techniques to work in their own companies. Founder, Richard Sheridan, also makes the rounds speaking and teaching business people about how Menlo built its culture and how these values impact the work they do daily. He recently spoke in at an event sponsored by the Rochester chapter of Conscious Capitalism.

Menlo’s methods include the stripping away of bureaucracy and the addition of babies and dogs. Staff plans complex software systems with little folded pieces of paper and designates speakers at team meetings by passing around a Viking helmet. Employees are encouraged to tweak and add to the culture, having an impact on the bigger picture as well as each individual project.

The Missing Ingredient

If you want to learn more about how Menlo is reinvigorating work, check out the book Sheridan wrote about their practices — “Joy, Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People Love.”

But if you want to know why Menlo was inspired to reconfigure the software development work environment, it all goes back to a shelving unit Sheridan’s mother bought when he was 10 years old. Not unlike a piece of IKEA furniture, this shelf required assembly. The day it arrived, Sheridan’s parents went out for the evening, leaving him alone.

Looking at the boxed-up shelf, Sheridan was struck with the idea that he’d put it together and surprise his mother. He unpacked the box in the garage and put it together.

That’s when Sheridan realized that he needed to move the shelf from the garage up to the living room in the spot his mother had picked out. So he managed to coax the heavy piece of furniture up, out of the garage and into the living room.

But Sheridan didn’t stop there. He positioned all the books and knickknacks his mother wanted to display on the shelf. He set the stereo up in its spot on the unit and had music playing when his parents returned.

His mother was so delighted when she saw what he had done that she had tears in her eyes as she thanked him.

This is the other component of the modern workplace that’s essential to Menlo’s way of doing business. Truly understanding their customer’s needs and enabling employees to meet them and see their delight. You can pay employees well and have an energetic culture, but if it’s not all done to be of true service to your customer, you’re missing an essential element. And that connection brings true satisfaction to employee and customer alike.