Glossary of Terms

These are terms used in the handbook that pertain to the operations of the company. Building science terms are available separately in Topical Primers.

All-Remote

“All-remote means that each individual in an organization is empowered to work and live where they are most fulfilled. By including the word “all” in “all-remote,” it makes clear that every team member is equal. No one, not even the executive team, meets in-person on a daily basis.” - Gitlab

Horizontal Practices

Horizontal practices are workplace habits and procedures designed to enhance everyone’s ability to make decisions individually and collectively. We use Samantha Slade’s Going Horizontal as a starting point, and there are many other great resources shared by August Public.

Social Justice

When we talk about justice, we mean primary justice:

“Justice honors the inherent worth of all. It is enacted through relationships. Primary justice, sometimes called social justice, is the condition of respect, dignity, and the protection of rights and opportunities for all, existing in relationships where no one is wronged. Secondary justice, or judicial justice, is understood mainly as a response to harm or crime.” - The Little Book of Restorative Justice in Education

Manager of One

“A manager of one is someone who comes up with their own goals and executes them. They don’t need heavy direction. They don’t need daily check-ins. They do what a manager would do — set the tone, assign items, determine what needs to get done, etc. — but they do it by themselves and for themselves.” - 37 Signals/Basecamp blog

Meeting Hygiene

Conditions or practices conducive to maintaining “healthy” (i.e. effective and efficient) meetings. There are a bunch of “how to have a good meeting” lists out there (e.g. here and here). To summarize:

  1. Ask “Is this best done in a meeting?”

  2. Meetings are for making decisions, not status updates.

  3. Right people at the “table”

  4. Convener invites only the people who must be in the meeting for decisions to be made

  5. If an invitee deems it unnecessary to participate, that person removes themselves.

  6. If someone who was NOT invited deems it necessary to participate, they add themselves.

  7. Good agenda, distributed in advance

  8. Items have designated owner and duration

  9. Items are formatted as decisions to be made rather than topics

  10. Recaps of follow-ups at the end

  11. Reflection on meeting management at the end (“what went well; what should we change”)

  12. Documented for all-remote

  13. Allows people to avoid FOMO (Here’s GitLab’s take)

Term seems to have been coined in 2009 by this guy: Paul H. Burton.

Restorative Practices

“Restorative as an adjective…describes how an individual’s or group’s dignity, worth, and inter-connectedness will be nurtured, protected, or reestablished in ways that will allow people to be fully contributing members of their communities.” - The Little Book of Restorative Justice in Education

Read more here and here.

Short Toes

Having short toes means allowing people to communicate clearly and honestly by cultivating an environment where people don’t feel the need to think “I didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes.” We borrowed this unashamedly from Gitlab.