We don't need our colleagues to be our close friends, but having deeper relationships is the difference between feeling stymied and knowing how to work together toward a goal. A deeper relationship yields the ability to know when someone is down and pick them back up, to compromise on a tough decision, or to work together to improve your environment. Deeper relationships allow for more of you to show up at work.

Yes. You can leave the suggestions on what to use to spark your next great conversation to Marginal — but you'll need to track down the material yourself. Try your local library, otherwise try supporting a local book store!

While social book clubs are fun – and those casual conversations can even lead to a deeper understanding of the works you read – Marginal is not a take-it-easy kind of experience.

Through Marginal, you'll have the opportunity to dig deeply into our curated library of topics, generating observations for discussion, reflecting, and revising your thinking as you look for ways to practice what you learn. Marginal encourages you to learn and to grow personally and professionally – a little bit at a time. You're still allowed to bring some kombucha – or sparkling fuzzy water – to your discussions, though!

Not all at once! Marginal is structured to facilitate several discussions over the course of engaging with a given topic. It's important to read one section at a time in order to give the material a chance to sink in – and to be able to refine your thoughts as you and your team make your way through reading and getting to know one another.

Marginal automatically splits each book into sections, each with a discussion at the end. Each section generally takes about an hour – to read, and then prepare topics for the upcoming discussion. We also recommend spending an hour in discussion, with a few minutes reserved at the end for reflection. Two hours a week. Marginal is a commitment, but we promise that it's worth the effort.

Some folks find it useful to take notes while they read, but there are many strategies to help keep track of your reading. What's important is that you're able to generate a few thought-provoking discussion topics to share in each discussion.

In addition to old school pen-and-paper, we've heard people:

• Take a picture of a page and paste it in as a topic (with a few extra words to frame the discussion)
• Add discussion topics from bed on their phone – Marginal is mobile friendly!
• Use e-book highlights to email notes to themselves
• Read the section in-depth, and then go back with a chapter-summary to remind themselves about sections while entering topics

Marginal is currently being beta tested and is completely free. Additional paid features may be added down the road but currently we do not collect any credit card information and do not require payment for any of the features or functionality.

Please contact us at hello@getmarginal.com. We'd love to hear from you.