Recently at Hendrick Motorsports, we turned a seldom used storage space into a new meeting area for our pit crews. That by itself is nothing amazing or awe-inspiring. What is more interesting, however, is how we arrived at the decision… It began with my attending the Leaders in Sport performance seminar in New York City where I heard Adam Grant speaking about his book, Give and Take. When I returned back to work, I got a copy of the book for each one of our pit coaches and we began to read and discuss a chapter a week as part of our standing department meeting. A mandate, while reading the book, was to come up with achievable changes we could enact within our department based on the principles outlined in the chapters. One of the inspirations I had while working through out task was – while our company culture at Hendrick Motorsports is built around, “family,” we didn’t have much in the way of social or personal space for our pit crew athletes. Our practice and workout facilities are top-notch but our crew members had to keep their bags with training gear in various corners of the shop floor. They also had no place to go during any down time between practices or workouts. We determined that a lack of this type of space was impeding our ability to communicate with our players, debrief our race performance and was not allowing us to properly deliver on our company’s family culture.
Bring in the accountants… Meeting space is at a premium around our place so finding a spot to create this area would be challenging. The answer, as it turned out, was right over our heads. There is a mezzanine level above our offices with stairs and a door that opened right into our coaches offices. It was used by our accounting department for historical document storage. Since, long ago they went to electronic records, it was a door and an area that was rarely used – all but forgotten. When we asked if we could repurpose that area, they happily agreed to move out their boxes – thank you accounting!
Door to storage space
Stairs to storage space
Accounting storage area
Bring in the architects…Another step in this process was to obtain the necessary budget approvals for the numerous and required structural, hvac and aesthetic changes required. After we sold our case, work began to transform that space. Fast forward about two months and voila – brand new meeting and social space. The meeting and debrief area has a hard mounted projector for race review and tiered seating levels to give everyone a prefect view of the screen. The social area has couches, chairs and satelite TV. Some of the more informal team and group meetings are also held there. A really great imporovement in all areas from what we had depended on before.
Work space
Casual space
Meeting space
It goes to show that innovation is a process, not a flash of brilliance or an, ah-ha moment. Our innovation started from very simple beginnings like attending a seminar, reading a book, meeting with accountants and architects and then finally remodeling some storage space. Nothing really monumental there. However, when those simple ideas are applied to solve complex goals like, communication of company values as well as improving team performance and efficiancy, they can tuely become game changing innovations.
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