You heard it right.

Foolapalooza.

What the heck is that?

No, it’s not a musical festival, although it does sound like one.

It’s our annual business meeting. But it’s not like any other annual business meeting that you’d likely conjure up in your mind. And it’s not like any other business trip or annual retreat you’ve likely ever heard about.

It’s the time of year again when we gather as Foolish employees and take time to look at the year before and the year ahead. We want all employees to see where we have gone in a year’s time as a business.

But for us, it’s more than that. It’s more than knowing the numbers that drive our business. It’s more than knowing what we’d like our business to become in the upcoming year. And, it’s more than knowing what to do and what not to do as we progress through the next 12 months.

To us, Foolapalooza is also about getting to know each other better.

While we have endless stories from past Foolapaloozas, you won’t here them here. (I guess you could say that it’s a bit like the phrase, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”) If you are a Fool, you will likely hear them for the next few months, or even years, to come. You may even be cracking up right now thinking of a Foolapalooza memory in your head.

But I can let the broad audience in on a small secret – all of these memories have one thing in common … they start with the people we see every weekday.

For us, Foolapalooza is about the Fools that attend the event. We don’t invite spouses, families, or significant others – unless they also work at the Fool. We don’t invite friends…Okay, okay, who are we kidding? Fools are our friends. … But we have a reasoning behind this bit of seclusion and isolation – it’s a time for us to revisit or even get to know for the first time how Fools unwind, how they play, and a bit of what they do outside of the office. We are getting to know the person behind the employee. We get to see what makes them tick.

Why would we do this?

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again – knowing each other better helps us work better together. The theory is as simple as that.

So while the kayaking and basketball playing may be fun, we know at the end of the day that it’s not the what we are doing that makes Fools happy they are Fools. It’s the who with that matters.

But I didn’t.

And here’s why – that would have been exactly what most of the people in that room would expect of a millennial.

Millennials: this younger workforce generation (also known as Generation Y and born mostly between the late 1970s and early 2000s) that is so hard to understand, and one that is full of people only in it for themselves.

As I sat in a room with a few hundred other people in the human resources profession, I thought to myself – if this is what is being said about all of the people in my generation, this has got to be a joke.

Let me debunk the theory that millennials are not fit for the current workforce. They are. In fact, many of us have great qualities that transfer nicely to the workforce.

Here at The Motley Fool, about 25% of our employees are millennials.

So you want to know how to recruit and retain this new scary generation? Allow me to take a few of the thoughts in the presentation I attended and talk you through them:

1)      Millennials are goal-oriented.  Why wouldn’t we be? Since the time we were in the womb, we had to prepare for college and/or the job market. We couldn’t wait until senior year to really take a look at our past academic experiences and figure out what was missing. We had to prepare from middle school on, if not before, and our goal was to get into college or to find a good job. And we all know what type of economy we were experiencing when this happened. Finding a job when most of us exited high school or college was about as hard as finding a needle in a haystack, and for those of us who found jobs we actually liked – well, we hit the lottery.

Possible Solution – Set expectations for millennial employees, and give them feedback often. We may be the generation that needs praise – trust us, we’ve heard that one a time or two – but what employee doesn’t like to be recognized for good work? Here at The Fool, we check in with our new employees at the 30, 60, and 90 day marks, and we have 360 feedback (meaning that anyone in the company can comment on how you are performing at your job) starting at 6 months. Even with this, managers are encouraged to meet with their employees on a routine basis to make sure expectations are set.

2)      Millennials expect more.  Again, why wouldn’t we? Our parents told us from a young age that we could do anything that we put our minds to. But is ambition bad? Within reason, no; name me a company that wants someone to just sit and do the minimum amount of work required, and I will name two that want more out of their employees.

Possible Solution – Ask millennial employees what they expect to get out of their jobs this year. While you may not be able to get them everything they want, you will know where their minds are. Many millennials have skill sets that employers won’t even know about until they ask the employee, and many of us are able to roll with the punches far easier because of our skill set. At The Fool, we take a look at our high performers and ask them what projects they’d like to work on, and whom they’d like to work with. We try to match up our employees’ strengths and passions to their jobs and the projects they work on.

3)      Millennials march to the beat of a different drum. This one surprised me the most at the conference; when the presenter asked the crowd who really wanted their employees to “march to the beat of a different drummer,” I was the ONLY person to raise my hand. Yes, the only. So does that mean that everyone else in the room wanted their employees to be the exact same and to essentially be robotic? Doubtful, but what made them NOT raise their hands?

Possible Solution – Encourage managers to hear out their employees. Even if his or her idea doesn’t fit well into the business or doesn’t add value, explain to the employee why it doesn’t. Millennials crave knowledge. The Fool loves and wants to hear ideas for our business from within. We hold brainstorms all the time, and our executive team holds a meeting every week where they hear new ideas and help to develop the ones that make the most sense to the business.

4)      Millennials want to make a difference. Our ambition, endless questions, goals, and overall out-of-the-box existence shape us into a generation that wants to do something that matters. If your company has a goal and a mission that employees believe in, it is likely that productivity is higher there than at companies whose employees don’t believe in or really care about what the company actually does. Take for example another keynote speaker at this conference – Blake Mycoskie. He founded TOMS Shoes about 6 years ago with a goal in mind: to help give children shoes so that they could go to school and earn an education. And here’s another element to that – he hired people from successful, big-name companies because of his mission. Here at The Fool , we help people invest better, and educate, amuse, and enrich along the way. Helping people to financial freedom is inspiring.

Possible Solution – Show your millennials how their jobs help the company as a whole. Let them know where they fit in. Sometimes millennials get knocked for not enjoying menial work – and here’s why – menial means that what we are doing doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. We want to feel like we are a part of something bigger than ourselves. Here, Fools know where they fit in with our company roadmap, and how success at their jobs transfers to a more successful business.

We realize we do things a bit differently at The Motley Fool, and we also realize that we love the fact that our employees think outside the box. Our culture is about entrepreneurship, trying stuff, and yes, in some cases, making mistakes. But if you don’t try, how do you ever know if an idea will succeed or fail?

Millennials may just be those employees that will help push a new idea into implementation because that’s what we have been used to in our lives – we don’t do the things that previous generations always did before us.

In fact, that’s why most employers don’t understand us, and in turn, aren’t able to concentrate and utilize our skill sets.

Here’s my ending thought for you: give millennials a chance. We have here at The Fool, and we will continue to do so.

What millennials bring to the table may just surprise you.

In 1997 a group of Fools sat down to write our Fool Rules, the first draft of our Fool Handbook.   Individuals from across the company pitched in to write different sections, creating our vision for what life inside our office is like. This was before Netflix touted its unlimited vacation policy, and our no dress code “rules” were unheard of in the Washington DC area: “No more than three colors not found in nature, no viking helmets with strapless dresses”

Inc. magazine did a story on our handbook in 2000, quoting Fool Founder David Gardner:

“Keep in mind that we never planned to start a company in the first place. We were just cranking out a newsletter. The idea that someday we would have employees, not to mention an employee manual, never even occurred to us. One day we looked around and said, ‘Gosh, we have people working here.’ Sometime around 1997, we realized we should have something in writing that explains what we do, how we behave, and what we believe in.”

Recently we’ve enjoyed taking a look at some other great workplaces’ handbooks, such as Valve Software. An employee handbook doesn’t necessarily have to be a list of rules and regulations. A well written one can tell you a lot about what your business values.

I guess really we could ask if they ever truly were. I have noticed a resurgence in our office in the recent weeks, and am reminded of the business value behind them. Yup, I said business value behind NERF wars.

There certainly is no value in the act of a NERF war. Inevitably someone gets hit int he face with an errant shot. There are disturbing screams of joy, satisfaction, or fear. NERF darts are found in random places like coffee cups and trash receptacles. So, where is the business value, again?

Foam attacks?

My take on it:

1) Camaraderie. Bands of Fools teaming together to attack one another. We are in this together.

2) No Hierarchy. A great reminder that no one is a sacred cow.

3) Laughter & Fun. It seems just when I am taking myself or my day too seriously, I am reminded that we should always be having some fun.

4) Inexpensive. I don’t always need big bonuses or fancy parties. A random NERF gun war is fun, collaborative, and gets the energy up in the office.

I am off right now to search Fool.com to see if NERF is a public company. I think they are making a comeback.

We’ve sent Fools out on what we call Expeditions in Learning to well-known companies like Zappos, REI, and Whole Foods. But some great places to check out might be right in your own backyard – or in my case, down the street. BicycleSPACE is a bike shop in my up-and-coming DC neighborhood that has quickly become a center for the city’s cycling community. The owner graciously spent time with me recently, and here’s what I learned:

1. Hire the best people and take care of them: BicycleSPACE’s mechanics, combined, have decades of experience building and maintaining bikes. I’ve had my bike tuned up there, and have sent friends there when their own bikes needed repairs. After meeting the staff, I wouldn’t send my bike anywhere else. Usually winter is a slow time for bike shops, but to keep their staff working (and bringing home paychecks), BicycleSPACE offered a Groupon for tune-ups. They didn’t make much money off of the deal, but it kept the shop busy and morale high.
2. Know your Business: The mechanics, as I mentioned, are extremely skilled. The buyer has been a self-proclaimed bike nerd since childhood. The owner works with the DC city council on bike advocacy issues. They don’t just sell bikes to whoever will pay for them – they know and stand behind the products they sell, they understand how city politics can affect their business, and they understand their competition. That said…
3. Don’t sweat the competition: Do what you do best, and the business will come. In the case of cycling, competition is a good thing. The more bike shops there are, the more biking becomes a normal part of life in DC. This ultimately benefits BicycleSPACE in the long run.
4. Be welcoming to everyone: In the U.S., most cycling is done for sport. Walking into a shop as a newbie can be intimidating – the gear, the $3000 road bikes…if you’re not a triathlete, you feel like you just crashed a party. BicycleSPACE aims to make everyone feel like they belong. If you tell them you’re buying your first bike since childhood, and you want it to be red and have a wicker basket on the front handlebars, they congratulate you and hook you up with a bike that fits your needs and budget. At The Fool, we know investing is an intimidating thing for people to do for the first time. If they think they missed the boat and started too late, we just congratulate them for joining us and help them get started!
5. Build a community: BicycleSPACE offers informal rides, yoga classes, and other events that generate word-of-mouth publicity and create new customers. It’s also a great way to market toward women because women really value community. At The Fool, our community is a rich source of investing information, and a pool of people we often hire from.

I learned all of that in one hour! If you have the time, I encourage all of you to take your own Expedition in Learning. Interview the owner of a local business, or check out a company headquartered in your hometown. You never know what you can learn or what idea the visit may spark.

Well, I can’t give you all of the secrets, but I can tell you that it is one full of mischief and passion for everything that you could imagine. As a member of Office Ops – please see the previous post titled “Ode to Office Ops” if you’d like – we make it our team goal to make Fools happy. We go far beyond ordering office supplies and lunch. In fact, the Ops team strives to create memorable experiences to enrich Fools’ lives.

How do we do that? We make people feel comfortable in their office setting, welcoming newbies at events when they may not know a ton of Fools yet, making sure people have healthy food to grab if they are having a busy day full of meetings, and managing schedules for in-house relaxation benefits – insert the oohs and aahs about our subsidized massages, manicures, and pedicures here. We also plan monthly events – including outings like zip-lining, going to a DC United game, or taking the day to go to Kings Dominion. And we also have in-house events quite frequently – including happy hours, international food day, chili cook offs, and pizza and cake days.

We don’t just do this to make it the absolute best place to work in the universe. That’s a given. We do it because we want Fools to have memories with their fellow Fools, with their families, and possibly even with trying things outside of their comfort zones. Some Fools work on a day-to-day basis with other Fools on projects, but it is hard to work with every Fool – so these activities provide the place and time to interact with each other without the actual work getting in the way. We here at The Fool feel that the better you know Fools – their names, jobs, and personal strengths – the better you can navigate your projects, and the more successful and efficient those projects become. Knowing everyone creates an omniscient collaboration. And as we continue to collaborate and get to know each other personally, we figure out hidden talents – like who can handle a grill, and who can win a Kinect dance off. Being able to pinpoint what makes Fools excited about life only makes all of our work experience that much better.

And if we get to partake in a few pieces of cake, and maybe even a massage, in the meantime – well, then, that’s nirvana.

This year, our joke was that our company was going public!

Check out the video from April 1st here: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/04/01/the-no-1-reason-to-invest-in-the-motley-fools-ipo-.aspx 

Our April Fool’s Day joke provides some giggles and  teaches important lessons about investing and business.

We talk more about our joke and about those lessons here: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/04/02/revealed-the-motley-fool-isnt-really-going-public-.aspx?source=ihpsitth0000001

This simple formula is a reminder to socialize your ideas before you complete them.

Most of us focus on quality and will work heads-down without any input whatsoever.  It feels good to create a quality product; it also feels good to know that you have figured it out by yourself.  Yet, we are left scratching our heads when our high-quality work doesn’t get the traction that we want, or what we feel that work deserves.  Frequently this is because we have spent too much time on the Q and not enough on the A.

Acceptance and buy-in are crucial to success.  Let’s take the formula at face value and add some numbers to it.  Let’s assume that each hour of time is equal to one unit of Quality or Acceptance.  So if you spend an hour working, you can put that hour into either by getting the project perfect or by gaining buy-in.  If you have 10 hours to spend on the project, let’s look at how you would maximize the project.

Scenario 1 – Put all of your time into creating an excellent project.  Perfect it, and then perfect it again.
Q=10 and A=0; so here is our formula: 10 x 0 = 0.  Wow!   Such high quality and such a miserable failure.  I don’t get it?

Scenario 2 – Put most of your time into quality but leave an hour to socialize the idea.
Q=9 and A=1; so our formula is: 9 x 1 = 9.  Much better!  The output isn’t quite as perfect on quality, but it can move forward because it has advocates.

Scenario 3 – Split your time equally.
Q=5 and A=5; so our formula is 5×5=25.  WHAT?  I spent half the time on the quality of the project, and 5 hours wagging my jaw, but got 25x the results.  How can that be?

I see several of you dismissing this formula already…..

BUT WAIT…

I encourage you to try it!

Well, what are you waiting for?

The next time you are frustrated because you have a project that is stalled, and you are tempted to work from home to “fix it”, instead set up 3 different discussions with key stakeholders and socialize it before you “fix it.”  Post your results here.  I’m telling you, you’ll be surprised.

When fellow Fools took time on a Sunday to support me, I realized a really awesome thing about this company: We’re each other’s biggest cheerleaders!

Fools don’t just care about what our coworkers can do for us during the work day. We’re multi-dimensional people – actors, dancers, artists, writers, athletes, photographers, world travelers, and musicians. We have outlets for expressing ourselves in our free time that make us more creative, more innovative, bolder Fools at work. What’s more, Fools are welcome to share their passions at work, either by teaching a class or leading a club. Fools cheer each other on at marathons, check out each other’s art shows, and rock out at each other’s concerts. They teach each other how to knit or fill out an NCAA March Madness bracket. We always say we’re a learning culture – part of that is teaching new software, or running investing cohorts so Fools can experience the same stock-picking decisions our members make – but another part of that culture is teaching each other about the fun things we love to do in our spare time.

Sadly, a lot of companies have a culture where employees are looked down upon when their lives outside of work spill into the office. At the Fool, we take an interest in our coworkers’ hobbies, families, and friends, and we love to have a great time with lots of laughter. With improv, we got the best of both worlds.

Lydia Dishman from Fast Company asked some Fools about our Fool’s Errand and our vacation policy. Take a look down the page to read what they said about it all:

Unlimited Vacation Doesn’t Create Slackers–It Ensures Productivity

By tossing the two-week standard in favor of an honor system with unlimited time off, some companies are seeing an exponential rise in productivity. Now, they just have to be mindful of staff burnout.

Sharon Rosenblatt confesses she suffers from self-diagnosed workplace paranoia – and even her company’s unrestricted vacation policy sometimes (negatively) affects her psyche.

A contractor who serves as communications and accessibility support at Accessibility Partners, Rosenblatt operates under the edict, “as long as you get your work done, it doesn’t matter where you do it.” Sounds nice – but what it can mean is checking email multiple times per day on weekends and on vacation. “I once wrote part of a federal proposal response while I was stuck in traffic on the George Washington Bridge because my client extended our services into my vacation time.”

Sound familiar?

Though Rosenblatt asserts her guilt trips are self-generated, a recent study of more than 5,600 workers conducted by CareerBuilder found that 12% of participants say they feel guilty that they’re not at work while they’re on vacation.

Of the majority of workers planning some time away from work, three in 10 aim to take the office with them on vacation. Thirty percent reported they will contact work on their time off, up from 25% in 2010, according to CareerBuilder.

Is it any wonder then, that plenty of businesses like Accessibility Partners, IBM, and Netflix have sent their vacation policies packing? The concept unlimited time off hasn’t reduced workplaces to chaotic anarchies. Instead, it’s created more efficiency, at least according to Dharmesh Shah, cofounder and CTO of Hubspot.

Shah says Hubspot doesn’t track anyone’s time off, so it’s hard to know if the policy makes people more or less wary of taking vacation. “One thing we are pretty sure about is that it’s a less stressful way to manage it,” he says. Rather than hoard days for times when they really need it, then scramble to take days at the end of the year (or fight for extra pay for time not taken), Shah says Hubspot’s open, unlimited vacation policy makes all of these problems go away. “Employees take the vacation when they need it and we don’t have a spike of vacations at specific points of time,” he explains.

Rosenblatt points out that Accessibility Partners employs many people with disabilities. “I feel that it only increases productivity because it allows people to work when they’re able, and not in a conventional 9-5, five days a week schedule.”

Hubspot’s had this plan (or lack thereof) in place for two years, thanks to CEO Brian Halligan’s desire to disrupt the dinosaur corporate culture depicted in Bravo TV’s Mad Men. Laura “@Pistachio” Fitton says that since HubSpot implemented the policy, the company has been ranked as the #2 fastest-growing software company on the Inc. 500.

GoHealthInsurance.com also implemented an unlimited vacation policy, in keeping with the company’s free-spirited culture, which includes a (hopefully tongue in cheek) “no pants and purple hats” dress code, i.e.: no policy at all. With a business model similar to Priceline, the company recorded a 200% increase in growth this year.

Michael Mahoney, vice president of Consumer Marketing and seven-year veteran of GoHealthInsurance.com, says it actually was a deciding factor when he took the job. “I think it really helps instill in new employees the same values we had during the first years at our company,” he says. Mahoney contends employees schedule vacation more strategically based on their workload. “When you consider when you can best take vacation as opposed to when you must, you end up able to take time off without affecting performance.”

Which often means people are actually on the clock more than ever. Shah admits that he works from home “a lot,” often putting in odd hours: “Until about 2 a.m. every night, and just about every weekend.” Fitton, founder of the Twitter app store Oneforty, which was acquired by Hubspot, was actually using a day off for emergency childcare during this interview–hardly a day at the beach.

Likewise, Mahoney says, “I’m working harder than ever, but I probably will take a few more days off this year,” though some of his colleagues have taken weeks off to go overseas. While Rosenblatt has taken “off” over a month, she says, “I always feel pressure to work even harder when I get back, even if there isn’t more work.”

Worker bees may be buzzing happily, but eventually everyone needs a real break. That’s why the 17-year-old Motley Fool, a multimedia financial-services company, established “The Fool’s Errand” five years ago. Spokesperson Alison Southwick says it’s a monthly ritual where, at a meeting of all 250 employees, one name is drawn from a hat. That person must take off two consecutive weeks sometime in the ensuing month. Southwick says it’s purpose is twofold. “First, it helps make sure that people ARE taking time off, clearing their heads, and recharging their batteries. Second, it helps us fight against single points of failure within the company. When you suddenly take two weeks off, you need to make sure that other people around you understand what you do so that the company doesn’t come to a screeching halt if you’re gone,” she explains.

But, mostly, it is fun. “Imagine being told you must take two weeks off right away. It’s two weeks to do whatever you want: tackle a life-long dream, learn something new, or just relax at home,” Southwick says.

The Motley Fool’s Head “People Fool” Lee Burbage asserts, “The idea of vacation days is a flawed concept from the start. Fools have the freedom to plan their lives how it works best. We trust them to understand the demands of their role and plan accordingly. If you have a big deadline or target date for a project, then you probably know that would be a good day to be at the office.”

Mahoney agrees. Unlimited vacation fosters productivity and loyalty because it favors results over input. “We don’t judge employees based on the number of lines of code they write, but instead on the impact their innovative ideas have on our users,” he says. “If we trust employees to make the right decisions with the time they spend at work in pursuit of our aggressive goals, we can trust them to make responsible decisions about when they choose to take time off of work.”

Mahoney maintains he “absolutely loves” what he does, so you’ll always find him working. “I think that holds true for most of our employees. As a fast-growing technology company, we do work extremely hard in pursuit of very aggressive goals and timelines. That said, when employees want to take time off, we want to help them do that in any way possible.”