Ever heard of W.L. Gore & Associates? Even if you haven't, if you've ever gone camping or hiking, chances are you've used its best-known product: Gore-Tex fabric, which is waterproof and windproof yet breathable, thanks to its permeable plastic coating. But Gore-Tex is far from Gore's only claim to fame. The company, based in Newark, DE, makes over a thousand cutting-edge goods, many of them market leaders in their niches. The best known is probably Glide dental floss, the first floss to resist shredding, but Gore also makes extra-long-lasting guitar strings and medical devices used by millions of patients.
Gore (which, as a private company, doesn't release financial data) claims to enjoy annual double-digit revenue growth; last year's sales totaled more than $1.3 billion. And for six straight years, it's made Fortune's "100 Best Companies to Work For" list. Clearly, it's doing something right. And we ventured a guess that its maverick culture—instilled by its founder, Wilbert L. "Bill" Gore, an engineer who left DuPont in 1958 to start his own firm—was reflected in its meetings.
We were right. Here's how Gore guides innovation and grows its bottom line, in gatherings from ballrooms to breakouts.
Table for None
The first rule at Gore is: no titles. Employees, known as "associates," have "sponsors," who are more mentors than conventional bosses. The second rule is that there are no traditional departments (as we found out when we called Gore's corporate headquarters, asked for the meetings department, and were told it didn't exist). Rather, employees work on teams, which are restructured every few years or so; a Gore associate's first six months on a team are spent getting to know the other team members.
That's where Gail Townsend comes in. As a member of Gore's "organizational effectiveness" team, she's the closest thing to a Gore meeting planner, working in areas ranging from "team development" (which, she insists, is different from training) to "meeting design and facilitation" to "driving change." If that sounds vague, here's an example: How does Townsend facilitate meetings in which she's trying to cultivate leadership and team development? She gets rid of office furniture.
"I do meetings without tables," Townsend explains. "When attendees walk in, they see just a circle of chairs with wheels." At first they resist, she admits, but "when they sit down, they get playful and start rolling the chairs around."
The idea is to encourage openness. Without tables, attendees are more likely to establish eye contact and focus on the conversation rather than the desk (or, worse, the computer parked on it). And with attendees' ease of motion, Townsend and other facilitators can break down barriers by moving people around frequently.
Townsend stimulates interaction further with icebreakers. People divide into groups of two or three and discuss "an organizational story that contributed to their success"—an anecdote about, say, a time they were coached that was particularly helpful, the best team they ever worked on, or a powerful leadership experience. Afterwards, as participants share their stories with the group, she's busy making a list of best practices from these accounts. "That builds positive energy in the room," she notes—and by the end of the meeting, attendees have a valuable takeaway.
The exercise works even in larger groups; Townsend recently facilitated a meeting with 60 participants—and no tables. But the first time she did a table-less get-together, she recalls, the facilities manager balked at removing furniture: "He said, 'You want no tables?' " Now, this same man has embraced the technique—as chief of his local fire department, he recently introduced table-less firehouse meetings. Says Townsend, "He told me, 'The meetings are going so much better now—I'm really seeing a difference!' "
The Ring
For a five-day conference last July in Phuket, Thailand, Townsend bowed slightly to convention. She used tables, but—as always in her meetings—they were round tables, which are "more conducive to having a discussion," she says.
The gathering, known at Gore as a "sales enterprise conference," brought together 180 Gore associates from the company's Asia-Pacific region. Working with Peter Puljas, a Gore sales leader based in Germany, Townsend designed much of the meeting so that associates could get to know one another.
For one after-dinner activity, she and Puljas divided the group into teams of eight or 10 people that maximized their diversity—of countries and divisions represented, length of service, and so on. Seated at their (round) tables, people were asked to introduce themselves, discuss what strengths each brought to the team, and choose a team name and captain. This was all done in a vacuum: "We didn't tell them that the teams were for the Gore [beach] Olympics later in the week," says Townsend. "That added to the suspense."
Afterwards, Townsend and Puljas went to each table with a microphone and asked people what they'd decided and how. "We had Gore associates from Korea, Australia, China, Singapore—a real blend of international cultures," says Townsend. "People were laughing and really enjoying it."
For the next day's brainstorming sessions, when attendees were planning for future business needs, Townsend divided people into small breakouts of five or six and deliberately gave them low-tech tools: "When people are rolling up their sleeves and working, we put them around a flipchart," she explains. "Instead of a PowerPoint presentation, a flipchart lets people's ideas get captured and gives them something to do. That adds energy. Even the colors of the Magic Markers add energy. All this keeps people engaged and encourages dialogue."
Although a Gore meeting may sound more fun than your typical corporate get-together, it always has a serious side. Says Townsend, "It has to help the business or we wouldn't be doing it. It's not just for fun." But, she adds, "If attendees have fun at the same time, I guarantee they'll learn more, and we'll achieve better business results."