(really) entrepreneureal

I just read an article about Mike Rowe (of Dirty Jobs fame) in the latest issue of Outside magazine.  Other than the fact that I love Rowe’s quirky, aw-shucks sense of humor and general approach to life and all things feces, I was struck by one of the quotes highlighted in the article (which happens to come from a FastCompany article):

‘Follow your passion’ is the worst advice you can give someone… Had I ever even bothered to define what that was, this never would have worked out.

Definitely an interesting thought, especially because us Gen-Y-ers are consistently egged on to follow our passion and hearts wherever they might take us (and chances are that won’t be any of the dirty jobs Rowe gets to try out).  This is interesting, too, because it turns the “find your passion and you will be happy philosophy” on its head.  Rowe goes on to point out that every single person he profiles, from the gourd maker to the fish farmer to the sewer cleaner to the ostrich raiser, first found something they could do well, and then, with a dollop of time and a pinch of patience (and oftentimes poo), built a solid passion around it.

What’s so contrary about this statement is that it re-imagines passion as something to be nurtured over time. Not as the flash-in-the-pan, go-down-in-flames-with-nary-a-care-in-the-world passion that we read about in books or see on the silver screen.

I, for one, am not sure whether Rowe has it right.  Sure, he became really good at one thing (off-the-cuff humoristic monologues on any topic under the sun) and managed to turn it into something meaningful, but his story does creak a little under scrutiny: first, the dirty jobs he takes as proof-positive that a seemingly dull task can engender passion envision a future where everyone does menial work.  So, what, that ex-day trader should take up goat castrating because he happens to be good with a blade? I exaggerate, but the point needs to be made: well-paying labor that is at first blush a little boring does not necessarily make sense for the average person (or, indeed, passion make).  Second, it took Rowe 47 years to “make it”; how is that for a lesson to teach others? Wander along aimlessly for half a century and then you might find your passion?  There has to be a better, potentially faster, way.

For the time being, I’ll stick with passion for passion’s sake.  How about you?

The latest issue of Inc chronicles the meteoric rise of Tony Hsieh and his now uber-successful and well-known company, Zappos.  The gist of the story is that Hsieh has managed to create a culture that rewards independent, creative and most importantly, empathetic behavior.

I spent the first part of the article skeptical that such an open, daring and, frankly, risky, culture is even possible.  In a company where the CEO takes vodka shots with new hires to test their mettle, you’ve got to wonder how long everything will last until there’s a lawsuit, or someone who takes offense at this kind of behavior.

Once I had accepted the reality that such a fun culture indeed is possible, and helps a company and its people thrive beyond belief, I spent the rest of the piece wondering if Hsieh can do all this only because he’s successful.  He was successful (financially) before Zappos, and my assumption is that when you have a lot, losing a little isn’t a big deal so you don’t mind taking risks.  But then I realized that the more successful Hsieh becomes, the more he technically has to lose – so there goes that theory.

In the end I came away a little ashamed that I kept trying to find reasons for why Hsieh built a company the way he has.  Financial reasons, critical reasons.  The truth is that when I get down to it, I totally understand Hsieh’s approach and would definitely rather risk offending a potential employee than dread waking to a company I don’t love.

Forget the dread, a vodka shot hangover will do me fine.

Emergency Rooms have a really bad rap.  Drab, barren of any comfy furniture whatsoever, filled with sick people and, worst of all, usually painted an awful green color.  How fitting.  So when I hit the ER this past week for some stitches to the chin, I wasn’t exactly expecting to have a great time – but just how bad a time, even I would never have guessed.  And interestingly, it had nothing to do with the people – the admin people, nurses and doctor were all more than amiable – but more with the seeming total disregard for basic tenets of design that had gone into the place.  Here, in chronological order, are the design problems I encountered over the course of the evening:

7:35pm

I enter through the front of the hospital from the regular parking lot.  No need for real ER parking, since I’m not about to keel over.  Unfortunately, this means I have to “sign in”.  A quick gesture to my chin grants me automatic access, and I’m off into the bowels of the hospital.

7:37pm

I finally find the ER, which is so unremarkable that I almost miss it.  No sign in desk here, just a huge security desk that is so high I can’t tell if someone’s behind it.  Reminds me of a kids play fort.  Overall, it does nothing to make me feel safe, since I wonder what the security is meant to protect me against.

7:38pm

After looking around the micro waiting room, I eventually notice an unmarked door Read the rest of this entry »

Startup funding, in many respects, buys you freedom.  The freedom to work away unfettered by daily concerns like paying the bills and keeping the lights on.  The freedom to hire the very best and keep them.  The freedom to focus 100% of your attention and energy on one thing and one thing only: making your business work.

That said, funding also imposes restraints.  Accountability to investors means no more slow going, opportunistic growth.  There might be a little less fun to be had, too, since your major decision filter is now “will this help the business (make money)?” And if you want to work with people who are as passionate as you are, a good salary has a way of making it difficult to tell the committed apart from the ladder climbers.

So what to do – would you take the money?

This idea of connective tissue has started popping up of late. For example, while we tend to focus on the things that are easy to see and recognize (successes, failures, Black Swans, Purple Cows), sometimes it’s the space between, the things we don’t see, that are most important.

The current financial crisis shows this particularly well: look at what happens when nobody pays attention to the connective tissue binding the economy.  Trust without accountability.  Lots of money changing hands without transparency.  The end result is a system built on a web of connective tissue that destroys rather than positively reinforces.

The same goes for everything around us.  Failing personal relationship?  Probably aren’t paying enough attention to the connective tissue (i.e. love, trust, honesty, individuality).  Struggling at work?  Be mindful of negative work relationships, habits, and the fact that the work you’re in might not actually be suited for the connective tissue that makes you happy.  A friend of mine left the hedge fund world because she couldn’t stand the duplicity, stress and backstabbing – sounds like the connective tissue wasn’t the kind she needed.

All this can also be much simpler than financial systems, personal relationships, and work environment: what do you do with your “connecting” time?  Do you sit on the bus listening to music on an iPod every day, or do you sometimes take the time to read something, strike up a conversation with someone new, or think positively about the future?

What does your connective tissue look like?

Seth has totally hit the nail on the head (again).  He notes how networking events often end up being filled with useless interactions (like lectures, which are essentially one-way conversations), when everyone knows that the networking, the one-on-one brainstorms over coffee, a pee break, or a stale muffin, are what everyone really values.  These interactions he calls “hallways”, because this is generally where the conversations happen.  Ironically, with all the money spent on events, the banquets, tables, AV team and whatever, it ends up being the hallways that provide the connective tissue of the event. Read the rest of this entry »

I just spent two days helping facilitate a design charrette for a client.  The idea was to put a range of interesting people and potential partners in the room and get them to weigh in on the client’s new business concept.  We purposefully chose a diverse group for the meetings in order to get a good spread of opinions and ideas, and to create a unique networking opportunity for everyone. I think we succeeded on every front.

Halfway through the second day, though, it occurred to me that I was in a room chock-full of “weak ties”; which, if you read my last post, you’ll know should make for interesting results.  It also struck me as having an awfully powerful effect given that every single participant was being exposed to something new: a unique business model, a novel technology, a different growth trajectory.  There was nothing linking people in the room other than that they were all in a thoroughly unique context – and loving it.

In discussing the phenomenon with one of the participants, we came to the conclusion that people don’t change their contexts often enough, or even realize that there are other options out there!  An organization hires consultants to identify weak spots (because it can’t get out of its context), or someone goes to a therapist for guidance and support.  There are examples of how contextual shifts can be beneficial, but overall it seems we are poorly conditioned into acknowledging that all we often need is a change of context, pace, or perspective to come up with new ideas and solutions to life’s challenges.

So this might work fine for the savvy businessperson, or the 20-something who is able to soak up change like a sponge – but how can we begin to think about teaching context-changing to everyone, from 2 to 92?  How do we design concerted contextual change on a large scale?

Thoughts, ideas?

The term “cloud computing” is, in my view, an anachronism.

This doesn’t mean that it isn’t timely or relevant, or a reflection of what’s happening in the world, because in many ways it is. However, it is a term that’s definitely based on dated views of the way that technology works – and should work – and frankly, it’s totally handicapping the conversation about what cloud computing actually means.

Picture this: a large system of “nodes”, where content flows freely between them.  If one node moves, or disappears, the system reorganizes itself to maintain content flow. The overriding organizing principle? No concrete boundaries, shifting hierarchies, and a focus on organic growth and adaptation.

Replace the word “content” with “information”, or “data packets”, and you are basically describing our current technologically connected world.  Sure, concrete boundaries certainly exist in the form of physical computing platforms, operating systems, mobile handsets; hierarchies don’t shift so much as dictate how content flows, and technology is hardly “organic” in the purely abstract sense.  As long as the world is based on a binary string of 1’s and 0’s, at least in their current configuration, we’re far from the interconnected system described above.

But that’s exactly the point.  Cloud computing isn’t just another fad, or a better way of organizing data, engaging in “utility computing” or service delivery.  Sure, these are individual outputs of a more interconnected world, but they definitely aren’t the end game.

While cloud computing theory suffers from an unfortunate level of myopia, there really isn’t a better alternative.  Should we look to Emergence, which offers an intriguing look how systems reorganize, but is highly impractical? Or maybe traditional social networking theory from the likes of Granovetter?

Or do we need a more futurist, contextual, and ultimately radical approach to viewing our world?

As the global economy tanks, I’m struck by the number of clients and partners who express frustration with their inability to alter the status quo of their business environment, due either to bureaucratic inertia, lack of motivation, or perceived general helplessness.  This is an issue that is particularly poignant for small companies, because they often intersect with much larger organizations on a regular basis and are forced to deal with the momentum and weight of the “status quo” each and every time.

This sense of frustration isn’t new.  Business tales abound of the small contractor/company/consultant fighting to get things done for a large(r) client, and the endless frustration that usually follows.  Indeed, there are thousands of companies that make a great living by challenging the internal status quo of larger institutions (these folks are generally called “consultants”, which elicits much the same sentiment as that other term, “lawyers”) because these larger organizations grew at the expense of what (I assume) made them great to start with.

My advice is usually this: give yourself the freedom to make choices that stay true to your identity as an individual or company.  Because at the end of the day, if we don’t own the freedom to make the right/best/most creative/most effective/game changing choices, then we’ll never be able to say that we’ve done enough and truly tried our best.  This could mean something as simple as choosing a different tack with a client, or on the extreme end, even turning a client down.  Whatever the case, it simply isn’t helpful to point to the bureaucracy, or the “higher ups”, or the “status quo”, as reasons for not trying something new, or making sure that you get the job done to the ultimate satisfaction of the number one client – you.

On the positive side, that people are expressing frustration at all means that they are re-evaluating things, and perspective can never hurt.  It is funny to see, though, how many people are quick to shrug off the advice of “owning freedom” as trivial.  Sure, it certainly isn’t easy and will take a load of practice, but the end result in more than worth the effort.  It’s almost as if feeling free to live the business and life that we want has been drilled out of us.

Time to get it back.

I recently spent a significant amount of time on Continental’s airplanes (a round trip, SanFrancisco-Houston-Sao Paulo-Rio de Janeiro flight will do that) and came away with a few thoughts.

Firstly, I’m impressed at Continental’s new fleet.  Honestly, the plane for the long haul was cleaner, quieter and more well put-together than any I’ve seen of late.  Unfortunately, the plane is no roomier.

Second, if you can get 3 seats in the middle to yourself, you can fashion a pseudo lie-flat bed and pretend you’re living the high life.  That said, I doubt the bigwigs in Business First have seat belts strangling their middles, armrests digging into their kidneys, and a constant fear of being decapitated by the next meal service.  In any case, it sure was nice to stretch out.

Finally, I have one gripe (which I know isn’t a new one): why the hell don’t airlines (and plane manufacturers) just make everything as roomy as Business class (not the lie flat configuration, just the wider seats with more legroom)?  Well, there are obvious answers to this question, such as the size/space-to-cost ratio, lost revenue from having expensive seats, potential safety considerations (though I can’t think of any right now); in short, there are loads of reasons NOT to supersize economy seating…

…or are there?  Let’s take a look:

On the typical Continental 767-400ER (the plane I flew on), the longitudinal space occupied by Business First fits in 7 rows of seating.  In economy, the same stretch of plane squeezes in only two more rows, coming in at 9.  Therefore, it seems like there wouldn’t be too much lost revenue for quite a lot more legroom.
Of course, this makes less sense when you multiply the number of rows across the “columns” (or letter seats, such as 16 A/B/C): Business First fits in 35 seats, while the same area in coach squeezes in an amazing 63 tuna-can knee-knockers (BF comes in with 5 columns, while economy has 7).  That’s 80% more seats in cattle class, folks, certainly a substantial increase.  So what can be done?

Well, I have a hard time believing that cutting back on one row and one column over the same longitudinal section as occupied by Business First would hit the airlines too hard.  That would mean a reduction of 16 seats – down from 63 to 47 – with what I would guess is a corresponding increase in customer satisfaction that more than offsets costs.  Further, Continental could charge a little more for coach seats to keep its margins on the mark, though my sense is that “more for the same cost” goes across much better than “more for more”.  If customer loyalty and perception means anything, this is something to consider.  Just a thought.

If I ran the airlines, though, I would do something drastically different: make all coach seats the same size as current Business First seats – thereby reducing the number of seats in coach – and turn all of Business First seats into the amazing lie-flat variety found on Virgin and Emirates.  Of course, there would need to be some thought put into which routes this makes sense for, how much more to charge (if at all), and how to boost the offerings available in the new First Class to justify potential cost increases.  Honestly, though, if it were truly up to me I’d keep prices the same for coach goers, and up Business by a marginal amount – if you can afford a $3000 ticket, chances are you won’t feel a $200 increase.

If anyone knows anything about revenue generation comparisons between first and coach, please weigh in; my guess is that economy still brings in more money, higher costs of Business notwithstanding.  Interestingly, the empty seat problem might lessen with fewer – nicer – seats in coach.

In the end, though, all of this juggling conceals an ugly truth about the flawed design of the airline business: scheduling methods are outdated and ill-suited to travel patterns, resulting in a less satisfactory customer experience due to the airlines’ need to cover their asses during down periods (as well as the odd empty seat).  I would take a lesson from DayJet (before they got clobbered by the current financial crash) and figure out the on-demand travel puzzle; the one to do that while simultaneously offering customers more during flights – room, amenities, value, quality, etc. – which would be possible due to less waste and better margins, will become the travel king.

Any takers?

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