Coworking Space should "run itself"?

[Miguel]

I am one of the founders/managers at Coworking Evanston. Happy to
report that things are going well since we opened 3 months ago -
steady membership growth, members have started to "collaborate",
organizing meetups and other events, etc :-) I am having a great
deal of fun managing the space, but find that the workload is higher
than I originally expected.

I started talking to a few coworking managers about ways to more
efficiently manage the space. One person mentioned that a coworking
space should really "run itself", and that the founders/managers are
just "members who moved desks in, and pays the rent". The theory is
that most of the work, if any, can/should be delegated to members.
Personally I do not agree with this, but wanted to see what the group
thinks

Cheers,

Miguel
www.coworkingevanston.com

[Annkingman]

Miguel,

I don't have an answer for you, but as the prospective owner of a future space, I'd love to know what aspects of the management of the space is more than you had expected.

Tjanks,
Ann

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[Jeannine]

Hi, Miguel,

I think this depends on what kind of a community you have.
Particularly in large cities, I think the DIY mindset does prevail. I
have a space in a smallish city (50K) which is attached to my house.
So this space is all about the personal. My members are not asked to
do much of anything; but I note that when they really feel a part of
it this is marked by their starting to do things themselves -- they
clean up, they buy stuff for the space, they set coffee for somebody
else. It's at that point that they have made the transition to
feeling that it is really theirs.

I will say that nobody volunteers to clean the bathroom but other than
that.....

This is also the basis of my theory of parenting, so it pleases me to
see that it works for adults also, right down to (not) cleaning the
bathrooms now that I think of it. :-)

Anyway, just as within my family, I don't delegate things to my
members because I am ultimately responsible for it and I see no sense
in pretending that is not true. If your workload is uncomfortably
high then it's time to have a look at that, what is it that is taking
up most of your time?

Laters,

Jeannine

[Miguel]

On a daily basis, other than the typical chores (clean up little
things, trash, coffee pot clean out, etc), most of my time is spent on
interacting with members, answering emails/calls from potential
members, giving tour to drop-ins, organizing and promoting events, and
if there's time left, I will tweet a little bit :-) For us, we are
very young, and still trying hard to grow, so my focus is more on
outreach and community building. Sometimes half the day is gone
before I get to sit down to do my "normal" job.

As mentioned, I am actually having a LOT OF FUN doing all these, and
don't mind the chores at all. And it's good to be busy fielding
questions, and meeting interesting people. But as this was not
intended to be a source of income, I just wanted to get a realistic
sense for labor resource budgeting. I've visited a few awesome
coworking spaces, and talked to a few veterans. I get the sense that
this is a solid part-time job. Hearing the idea that "the place
should run itself", I just thought I may have missed something, or
been doing too much?

Have a great week everyone!

Miguel

[Angel Kwiatkowski]

I think that the phrase "should run itself" is fraught with a level of
expectation that can't be upheld especially by new space catalysts and
owners. New owners: your space will NOT run itself and you shouldn't
feel like you're failing or doing it wrong if it's not. I take care of
most of the infrastructure of our space b/c I set an intention that I
didn't want my members to have to worry about chores like trash,
cleaning, greeting people and giving tours. I wanted the space to be a
place where really busy (and sometimes very sleep deprived)
freelancers could come for respite from the crumby tables of coffee
shops and the piled up dishes of home and concentrate on their craft
and on one another.

I easily worked full time for the first 6 months to get systems and
processes down pat. Even now, here are some of the tasks that are done
by myself or the 2 interns.
Unlock/lock doors
Greet visitors/members and give tours
Make coffee
Put away dishes
Take out trash, compost, recycling, do laundry
Clean tables, straighten chairs
Buy and restock cream, sugar, pp towels, tp
Respond to phone, twitter, facebook and email inquiries
Do invoicing, enter bills, pay bills, take payments
Update the website
Blog 3x/week
Think up and schedule educational and social events
Find partners for events or promotions
Answer member's questions
Go out for coffee and lunch with members and interns (okay, not really
a "task" but it takes time)
Train interns and delegate work to them

Now to clarify--the members cover for me ALL THE TIME. They'll orient
visitors, give tours and make coffee and open and close when I want a
day off, am sick or am traveling. However, MOST of the time I'll just
take care of those details for them. The members really appreciate
that they don't have to think about where the next clean cup will be
or where the wipes are for the toilet rim are. I think as community
cultivators, we should take care of the simple stuff so the members
can do the "hard" stuff that requires a lot of mental gymnastics like
collaborating, solving client problems, learning from one another and
starting companies together.

Angel

[Beth Buczynski]

I just wanted to chime in as a coworker to give a little perspective
from the other side...

Before freelancing I worked at an internet startup, where we were
supposed to be casual and awesome and independent. We had a kitchen
situation that was "everyone's responsibility" but inevitably, this
meant that people always assumed someone else would unload the
dishwasher or take out the recycling. You can't really blame us,
because when the day was full of frantic work (as is often the case at
a startup) we all had more important things to do than dishes. Besides
we all had dishes waiting at home.

Because the community manager at my space (Hi Angel!) doesn't require
us to pitch in on these chore-type tasks, we've been able to avoid all
the reminder notes and awkward scoldings about picking up after
ourselves that I hated about working in an office. This is not to say
that we're all slobs and expect to be cleaned up after. In fact, I'm
even more aware of how I treat the surroundings at Cohere, because I
know that someone has been kind enough to make sure they were clean/
stocked etc. This has created a genuine sense of pride in our
community. Members are more than willing to jump in and lend a hand
when needed, or when someone new shows up, because we're excited to
show it off :)

Basically, I think that if you do it right, the team attitude will
evolve organically, and that sense of community will ensure everything
is taken care of--even if the community manager takes a day off.

Beth
@gonecoworking

[Mike Pihlman]

When I have to go on jury duty (or other such necessary trip)....our members take care of the place.  But most of the time...I clean up, take out the garbage, etc etc.  

By the way...today alone...2 NEW members. If you remember....I was this close to closing last October... :-)

Mike

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[Alex Hillman]

Because Jeannine, Angel, and Beth have done such a great job of answering the tactical elements of this quesiton, I'm going to try to take a different approach.

Rather than ask if a coworking space should run itself, as "should"s tend to be tricky and prescriptive anyway, I'll suggest that a coworking space can run itself - with some caveats to explain what I mean by that - and then why it's valuable to work towards that goal.

Caveat #1) 

I wish I'd given up "control" sooner

When we opened Indy Hall, I was there every day to open and close. I was there to meet every new member. I was there for EVERYTHING, with my fingers in EVERYTHING.

About 18 months in, I was fast approaching burnout. I found someone who I trusted, who was organized and friendly, and set her loose on my inbox and sat her next to me and said "look for things that I'm doing that don't need to be me, and take them from me". She did this, and not only got a large volume of the administrative work out of my field of vision, but found ways to improve and streamline everything since it was now being executed by a fresh set of eyes. Everything I was doing before was not only still being done, but much of it was being done better. Since then, the role has changed hands about once a year, as the person in this role tends to find opportunities in the community to create things for themselves (running Indy Hall is an educational experience in itself, everything from communication skills, organizational skills, business skills, interpersonal skills, etc), and we can't stop somebody from following their path. The role has become one of transformative learning for all four people who've held it (myself included).

If I could do it all over again, I wouldn't have waited until I was almost burned out to get at least one more person involved that wasn't a "partner". It freed me up to work on the things I actually cared about, the things that actually needed me (until they didn't need me either), and gave us room to grow. 

One of my favorite quotes from Geoff has always been, "the only reason to gather power is to give it away". That's the mindset that's let us seen impact and change happen on a bigger scale than any one of us could accomplish on our own.

Caveat #2

Shit always get dirty

No matter who's in charge of the cleanliness, things always get dirty. For the first year, I cleaned the bathrooms. You can also read this as - for the first year, the bathrooms didn't get cleaned very often. Rather than delegate this relatively difficult to delegate task (how many people have trouble getting roommates/housemates/family members to clean up after themselves in the bathroom/kitchen? yeah, it's even harder at coworking-space volumes of activity), we hired a cleaning service. This seems straightforward, but it wasn't to me at the time, and I wish I hadn't waited so long. The hardest part was hiring someone I could trust, since members' equipment was always around and I needed members and myself to feel comfortable leaving things behind.

If you're planning for humans to be in your space, plan for it to get dirty, and have a plan for regularly removing that dirtiness. Period.

P.S. There's a metaphor in this caveat. Can you find it? Bonus points for anyone who does :)

Caveat #3

"Member" is a synonym for potential leader. Key word: Potential

If you expect every person who works from your space to step up and pitch in, you're fooling yourself. But you'll find that if you don't give them a chance to step up and pitch in - they probably won't ever bother to try.

In communities of practice, there's very little hierarchy imposed but instead, there's more of a framework surrounding the individuals of the community that give them the opportunities to step up and take ownership of something. I've found that simple changes to how we respond to inquiries has a dramatic effect on unlocking potential leaders from the community. 

When somebody asks for something, try responding with a simple, "yes". Nothing else, just a confirmation that you'd like to see that done, too. If they don't jump on it - they've probably never had anyone say yes to their idea before, so you might need to nudge a bit further. Something like, "Yeah, that's a great idea - what do you think we need to do in order to accomplish that?". See how they take ownership from there. In the end, they might be like a boy who's bad at reading flirty signals from a girl he likes and they might need a more explicit push, "Hey...would you like to take this on? What can I do to help YOU?". 

Not everyone is comfortable taking ownership of things that they haven't been told explicitly to own - but once people realize they're working in an environment that rewards people taking ownership of their work, it's infectious. 

Caveat #4

"Damage control" shouldn't require you to be a superhero 

It's nobody's fault, sometimes balls get dropped. Rather than jump in and pick up that ball yourself, try to get other community members to rally around the need. It's tempting to be superman (or wonder woman), but the more times we've encouraged/let our members pick up things that have been dropped, the less things have been dropped. 

I think there's something that changes when people do things that they know one person will pick up if they drop it - versus knowing the collective has their back. I can't put my finger on it, but it seems to remove the tension and fear of making a mistake from community members and increases their likelihood of ever trying again.

So the million dollar question is...

Why do you wan't the coworking space to run itself in the first place? 

For me, getting a coworking space to "run itself" has been more about removing myself as a dependency for the space to do what it does best. That means the space can continue to do what it does best for many years to come. That means that the community members can contribute (not dictate) to the direction of the community. And given the chance, they will. They have. 

I've seen and felt what Indy Hall can do for people first hand, and as long as it relies on me in order to do that, it's expression won't match the magnitude of its potential. 

Whatever your goal is in opening a coworking space, consider the magnitude of it's potential if it didn't rely on you. If you focus on THAT goal, day in and day out, rather than "getting it to run itself" - you might actually be able to achieve it.

-Alex

/ah
indyhall.org
coworking in philadelphia

[Joseph K.]

When I started my co-working presence in Singapore (a little, 'big'
city?), most chores listed by Angel were done internal i.e. my staffs,
myself who also use the co-work area. As time goes, efforts are
'chipped in' by subscribing members. Maybe it's a 'pick up your own
litter' mentality or the posted 'keep the place clean' notices sticks.
Hence the management of space is auto. Some of my members even help
'sell' available slots to inquirers! I think this works like a 2-way
street : don't expect members to be delegated tasks, but ensure a
culture is there to love that place they sits at. Hope this helps :)

[thilo]

Hi Miguel and all the others on the list,

i followed the thread closely and it was great read.
I can fully agree from my personal experience with everything what
Angel and Alex explained in more detail.

You are the one in charge and if you make sure everything is taken
care of without bothering your coworkers they will take on some tasks
them self and jump in happily when their help is really needed because
they grew proud of the space.

And I also just learned from reading "The E-Myth Revised " what Alex
said, it's important that you are able to remove yourself as a
dependency.

So beside praises nothing to add.
Cheers
Thilo
coworking: http://co-up.de
coworking management: http://cobot.me

[Miguel]

Sorry been MIA. Thanks everyone for sharing tips and experiences. I
completely agree that ultimately, it's the site manager's
responsibility to make sure to place runs smoothly. Alex's
recommendation to focus on "removing myself as the dependency" is
something I will definitely keep in mind as a strategic goal.
Thanks!!

> > > space should really "runitself", and that the founders/managers are