How the Muxu.Muxu team brings "transparent culture" to new heights
If you haven't heard about the design studio Muxu.Muxu then you've for sure spotted their wonderful designs in some of your favorite products: Lattice, Payfit, Sqreen and even Slite! Their take on product design is almost as fresh as their team of 7. We sat down with Luc, co-founder of Muxu.Muxu, to talk about:
- Their unique 100% transparent work culture
- How they use Slite as a design studio
What is MuxuTransparency?
A lot of companies will say they believe in transparency in their team but won't necessarily practice what they preach—it's become a buzzword of some sorts. Not for Muxu.Muxu: the team literally practices what it preaches, making all information accessible to all. What's everything? Bank accounts, their QuickBook, salaries, client meeting notes, employee scorecards and team communication.
Some practices that stood out:
- On all tools they use, every single team member is admin.
- They all have equal salaries and benefits—no exception.
- MuxuMood: a weekly Friday lunch meeting about general news on clients and hiring and where everyone talks about their week, from frictions, fails to achievements.
“The idea is that information should be transparent and then people choose to go or not. If it's not transparent it makes it seem like there's something to hide from your team members” —Luc Chaissac, Co-founder of Muxu.Muxu
Since they don't intend to grow their team much more, Luc believes this transparency will forever be part of their team identity at Muxu.Muxu.
Taking their team culture beyond the office
They take this mentality outside of their team and into their client relations. They'll never make false promises, always communicate if their project isn't going as planned in terms of timing and inspiration. Every time they have a meeting with a client, they immediately share the meeting notes in a public Slite note afterward.
They're also very open to disclosing their finances with the world. Luc says he believes it can bring value to people who are thinking of starting their own ventures: being open about their progress and money might make it feel more accessible to the world.
Finally, their Dribbble account is filled with their amazing designs, including their thought processes to getting to a final design.
Enters Slite to enable this culture
Transparency in teams serves no purpose if the information is hard to retrieve. That's why the Muxu.Muxu team uses Slite for all their content to be easily discoverable, searchable and retrievable by all. At first, they were unsure of how to make use of Slite but the templates library gave them a good idea of the following use cases. Here are their best practices:
- They have one channel per client where all meeting notes can be found (and are always shared with clients)
- Prospect notes are shared on Slack with everyone
- Their company playbook: information and processes that everyone contributes to
“Slite has encouraged everyone to share information more efficiently. Since everything is automatically accessible to all, from the team to the clients, the content has to be well structured and readable” —Luc Chaissac, Co-founder of Muxu.Muxu