The Path to Freedom
Yesterday we held our “Monthly Meeting” for my company Imonology Inc.
As we have been a remote company since day 1, where members mostly work at home, we don’t have the office/workplace encounters most people take for granted. Yet while we believe that removing the need to commute from house to workplace is more efficient, we also believe that occasional face to face is more effective at understanding one another.
Imonology is formed by a bandit of individuals who value and look for freedom, in both work and life, starting from myself. Because I had the experience of being “chained” to the school systems for many years (with a Ph.D at the end), mostly due to desire to avoid 2-year mandatory military service in Taiwan, I’ve long for and consider “freedom” to be a valuable asset.
It hasn’t been easy however, as we tried to figure exactly how to build up such a remote organization, especially in a Chinese culture where the traditional and existing system mostly do not trust people to be self-reliable / disciplined enough to be left alone at work.
Knowing that you want to have a remote work environment is one thing, actually building one is another. How do you measure performance? How do you keep track of work progress? How to conduct meetings? How to find and source clients? And most important of all: how do you bind together people who rarely meet each other in real life, but only through virtual online meetings?
We believe the secrets and keys lie in a shared vision of creating more freedom for ourselves and the world around us, but also having common core values, which we discussed at yesterday’s “Monthly Gathering”.
It’s been many years since we “revisit” our core values, but recently we boil them down to being: “visionary” “realistic” and “humane”, or in noun forms: “vision” “realism” “humanity”.
Being “visionary” indicates that we will always look for ways and goals that’s ahead of the times; “realistic” indicates when we approach problems or do things, we should rely on facts and actual situations (I think of Ray Dailo’s Hyper-realism); “humane” indicates the basic attitude when dealing with people, to show respect and be supportive, especially during difficult situations.
I would not say that we’re successful yet, nor do I think we ever will be, as these are high ideals to live by. But I also feel that we’ve made good and positive progress since our beginnings.
If you’re interested to learn more about Imonology and what we do, feel free to visit us and drop a hello!
