News

Six Feet Up is looking forward to its quarterly FedEx Day on February 9th and 10th 2012. This is an event when employees work in complete autonomy on a project of their choice and have 24 hours to present a complete deliverable to the rest of the team.

Why A FedEx Day

In 2010, faced with the challenges of a growing team, our CEO was researching how to build the foundations of a successful team when she came across the book Drive by Daniel Pink. The book asserts the fact that external motivators such as money, praises, --the carrot-and-stick approach aren't working. Instead, Dan Pink unveils thre three elements of true intrinsinc motivation: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. As an example of an activity that helps boost morale, creativity and productivity, the author describes FedEx Days and cites another software company: Atlassian. The concept, combined with the example of an organization that felt like a sister company to us based on the videos of the office you have on your site, really intrigued our team.

This idea spawned a quarterly FedEx Day at Six Feet Up. In the previous 5 events the team has had more than 50 projects successfully completed over the course of five FedEx Days at the rate of about one event per quarter.

The entire team is encouraged (but not required) to participate. Sometimes we have team members who normally work remotely fly in for the event. During our last FedEx Day, we had 13 projects created by the 22 participants.

Interested But Not Ready to Commit?

Guests interested in the concept are invited to join us for our FedEx Day and evaluate whether this initiative may be a good fit for their own organizations. In 2011 Six Feet Up welcomed Human Resources Consulting and Outsourcing firm AonHewitt, who sent observers investigating the FedEx Day concept for one of their internal projects. Please feel free to contact us for more information.