I have a messy closet. It’s a bit like when that bad joke is played in the janitor closets on school grounds. You know the one, where the protagonist hides in the closet and then tries to get out, only to have lots of brooms and other various cleaning utilities fall all over the place. That’s kind of like my closet, except I don’t keep cleaning utilities in it. You would think that I would keep the closet doors closed all the time because of that, but I don’t. It ends up being unfortunate, really, because then night comes and I just see a dark area that a monster could jump out of. This concerns me but then I realize it’s just silly- my closet is far too messy to fit a monster.
I think organizations are both like and unlike my closet. Organizations are messy like my closet but their doors are closed unlike my closet. You might think I am going to say it should be the opposite, but you would be wrong.
Organizations should be messy because they are made up of humans and we humans can be messy. Likewise, their closet door should be open because we can relate to the organization itself as we see the little humans running around doing work inside like little.. uh… lego people doing neat lego things.
What I mean is, people don’t generally see Microsoft and say “Microsoft so totally defines me.” And it’s not because “so” and “totally” were used right next to each other. It’s because you can’t identify with Microsoft. You can identify with the humans you see using their product, but not Microsoft. Their closet is closed (slightly more open now a la Blue Monster).
SkinnyCorp’s (makers of Threadless) closet is open. They blog, you see them sleeping, playing ping pong in the office, they create and share homemade movies, they interact with you on a personal level. I relate to SkinnyCorp because I see their mess. I can relate to mess. I know mess. It’s what keeps monsters out of my closet.