Within our team, we trust each other to know how to manage our work, and to communicate when we need to adjust it. We don’t have a culture of micromanagement or fear of repercussions, because we have an implicit understanding about our interdependence and self-ownership of our parts of the process.

Because we trust each other, there’s no question that the outcome of the work we do will be excellent. We also trust that we’ll communicate if we have a reason we can’t meet expectations, and co-create alternative plans if needed.

Our team has a sense of relief and trust knowing that we are accountable to each other — not from a place of responsibility or obligation, but from a space of collective care. Responsibility and risk don’t solely rest on one of us, and if any one of us is experiencing hardship, our collective answer is to step in and offer tangible support.

A lot of our past work histories have felt isolated in one way or another, and it brings each of us deep security to know we’re not doing this alone. We hope in working together, you get to feel the same.

It’s fairly common for one of us to gently suggest that another take the rest of the day off if they’re feeling under the weather, overwhelmed by stress, subsumed by grief, or overly scattered. It’s even more common that we say, “What can I take off your plate?” or “Here’s what I can do for this project. Would that be helpful?”

We’re never going to arrive at a point where we’re only ever working on days that we have 100% of our energy, and we’re not trying to. Sometimes we do work when we’re not at our fullest capacity because we’re in communication and balance with the realities around us. We’re not trying to create an easy workplace (because some impacts will always require effort), but we are always working toward more ease to prioritize true needs.

We choose projects that genuinely light us up in some way and try to create opportunities to pause and assess how the work is feeling. If we feel a sense of joy, we’re on the right track. If resentment is present, we’re due for an adjustment.

We also take pleasure in the enjoyment that the work allows for and helps us prioritize outside of our business. We love to work because we’ve set up structures to enable us to love what we do, but we also don’t just work for the sake of working. We work in order to have resources for the lives that feel worth living to us, ones with play and connection and a sense of contribution. Those resources are sometimes money, but often just as valuable are the time and energy to do what we want. We purposely set up our business to amplify those resources.

We see the blank page as an opportunity — and we also see our apprehension as an opportunity too. The fears that come up around creating are human impulse, and that’s okay. But we do what we can to re-engage with each other and the creative process.

As a team, we don’t live in fear of making mistakes, which can be an unfortunate given in some work environments. None of us are strangers to the chokehold of perfectionism, and we’ll all probably have a lifetime of unlearning to be kinder to ourselves as we try new things. But each one of us is a student of relearning how to be better bosses to ourselves and better cheerleaders for each other. We are working toward being able to add employee benefits that include both a personal/professional learning stipend and a tech stipend to foster new opportunities for creative growth and the tools to support it.