People often ask me how Nomad8 works. To explain this I need to tell a bit about how we came about and what kind of company we want to create.
History …
Things got started in 2007 when Brenda and I formed Nomad8 as a company for ourselves, a way to work with clients we loved on projects that tickled our fancy. We kept things fairly low key for a while. Then two years ago I was inspired by a blog post by Henrik Kniberg about how his company, Crisp, works. In fact, I found it so inspiring that I had to go to Stockholm to find out more.
And that’s what I did: I booked a ticket to the other side of the world to meet Henrik and Reza and to find out about the intricacies of the Crisp model. We had a very long and interesting conversation about how Crisp worked, how they had come up with their model and how they kept Crisp a place they loved working at. And even better, they encouraged me to build upon their ideas and offered helpful advice.
Nomad8 now …
Nomad8 is a home for consultants. We share everything and we help each other. We learn from each other and we’ve got each other’s backs. We are each other’s work family.
We don’t have a shareholder model or owners who can get rich through other people’s work. Nomad8 as a company itself makes no money – only people who do the work do.
We work with clients who we like and respect. We choose clients we wish to help and whose potential we can see. We love to help them create fun, playful, creative, collaborative and disciplined Agile teams and work places. We never work over capacity and we refer clients who don’t share our values to other consultancies.
Here’s how it works (the mechanics) …
None of us are employed by Nomad8. We simply don’t want to deal with the hassle of employing and managing people so we all run as either sole contractors or companies in the background.
As a general rule people keep the money they make. If they work a lot they make a lot, if they work less they make less.
People usually find their own work but we make sure that we all have interesting and fulfilling work to do and we share the good stuff and the tough stuff. As I said, we’ve got each others’ backs.
We all pay for the privilege to be part of Nomad8 so we leave a small percentage of our monthly income in the company to cover running and admin costs.
Why Nomad8?
We are from all over the world and we have lived in many different countries; like nomads.
Also, nomads live in tribes and that’s what Nomad8 is to me – a tribe, my kind of people.
Oh, and the 8 is my old handball number … ;-)
Now what?
We haven’t worked out everything yet, but we’re slowly creating the company we all want to work for. The plan is that Nomad8 will never stop emerging, learning and developing.
Thanks Henrik and Crisp for the inspiration and for your ideas and advice. See you in Wellington or Gamla Stan :-)