John P. Luginbill’s office at The Heavyweights is void of a desk. Most of
Luginbill’s work is done standing up. His computer sits on a ledge. His only furniture is a chair and ottoman, which he uses for reading, and a bar-style table.
“I read in a piece of sales material that 20 percent of people think faster standing up,” said Luginbill, who founded The Heavyweights in 1991.
Recently, Luginbill removed the couches in his office to limit meeting times. Luginbill spurs creativity from his employees by relocating their offices every four to five months.
“The whole idea is you change perspective. You see the world different when you are sitting in another place,” Luginbill said.
When The Heavyweights moved to the Stutter Building at 1010 N. Capital Ave. in 1999, Luginbill hired local set designer Christine Gentry to lay out the space. The walls are either slanted or curved, maybe both. Offices don’t have doors in an effort to inspire creativity and show clients that their thought process isn’t uniform.
“The ideas we come up with are generally disruptive,” he said. “This reflects our culture and our values of keeping people uncomfortable and growing, and potential team members know immediately that we value creativity.”
How did The Heavyweights start?
I was working in marketing for a company that went out of business in the early 1990s. I wasn’t worried about it cause I thought I could find another job easily. I didn’t find another job. I had some people I had worked with ask me to show their portfolio to some people. Pretty soon, I started putting projects together.
Tell us about the globe with quotes.
We try to stay focused on different aspects of our life and how our work works. These are the favorite things people say. “Be interested not interesting.” “You have to have a work-life balance.”
Tell me about the kitchen timer.
This is not a tomato. It’s a pomodoro, which is Italian for tomato. Francesco Cirillo created what’s called the Pomodoro Technique to maximize productivity. You work in 25-minute chunks of time. The idea is if you can do four incredibly focused hours of work a day, you’d do more than just floating through a regular eight-hour day. It’s incredible the amount of work you do.