Walk into the Evernote headquarters in Redwood City, California, and you are bound to be impressed by the full-scale espresso bar in the lobby. Whether you are in the mood for a vegan raspberry white chocolate mocha or a cup of black with two creams and two sugars, you can get your liquid fix without ever having to leave the property.

Evernote hasn’t hired baristas to staff their espresso stations, however. Instead, every employee is given four hours of brewmaster training and then scheduled to work a one-hour shift in the company’s coffee bar each week. Evernote’s goal was to create informal opportunities for staffers to interact with one another. When individuals come together in shared spaces—whether they are making high-end coffee for one another or not—connections are made, relationships are strengthened, and ideas are spread throughout the organization. Espresso duty has also allowed Evernote employees to clear their heads and to work creatively beyond their positions for an hour a week, a surprising side benefit cited by staffers who wouldn’t trade their hour behind the company’s coffee pots for anything (Bernson, 2014).

What’s really surprising about Evernote’s approach to corporate caffeination is that even senior-level employees—including CEO Phil Libin—are expected to work weekly shifts making espresso for their coworkers and subordinates. Evernote executives don’t begrudge their coffee duties, either. Instead, they see time spent serving coffee as an invaluable opportunity to keep in touch with the company. Inundated with the pressures that come along with running a million-dollar business that employs 350 people, making time to stay connected—to see and be seen, to gauge company morale, to get a sense for what’s working and what’s not—is both essential and rewarding. Just as importantly, regular espresso shifts for the company’s bosses create incredibly open lines of communication. No one has to fight to find Libin. They just have to check the coffee bar schedule and figure out when he’s working (Bernson, 2014).

The leaders of learning communities could learn a ton from Evernote’s approach to corporate coffee making and culture building. If you want ideas to spread through an organization dependent on human relationships, it is essential to create spaces for connections to happen. While faculty meetings and professional development days might be valuable forums for moving formal agendas forward, real progress in schools is equally dependent on the kinds of organic networking and intellectual cross-pollination that happens when staffers come together informally.

Successful leaders also create time for themselves to be active participants in these networked spaces. Doing so gives leaders a better sense of the overall health of their schools and/or systems. Instead of relying on secondhand reports about the progress that your school is making, put yourself in the center of your building’s public spaces and start listening. Doing so also gives teachers ready access to organizational decision makers. When you are visible and open, you become approachable and human—two traits that define the most successful school leaders.

Reference

Bernson, A. (2014, January 14). A different kind of coffee break at Evernote HQ. Sprudge.com. Retrieved from http://sprudge.com/evernote.html