(really) entrepreneureal

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.

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 »

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?

Although I seem to focus heavily on the importance of design, whether it be graphic, process, organizational or whatever, I assure you that it is entirely due to my daily experience (unfortunately so, at times).

Case in point: remote working.  A friend of mine gave me a perfect example of what not to do when working remotely, from which I will draw today’s material.  The situation?  She had a document to write with her boss due at the end of the week, but he was out of town and with almost no connectivity under the day of the deadline.  Rather than go into the details of the process (boring), or how frustrating it all was (very), I’ll stick to the lessons she learned:

1. Don’t collaborate if half of the team members don’t actually know how or want to.

Seems pretty basic, but before trying to work remotely, never mind in person, it might make sense to figure out if collaboration is even possible.  In this case study, half of the team (ie: my friend’s boss) has a history of not working well with others – big surprise that it didn’t work over distance.

2. Set a plan for when to stay in touch – and stick to it.

Part of my friend’s problem was that there was no structured schedule for when to stay in touch, and what was due when.  The end result was that even when they did get on the phone with one another (which they did once over the 5 day period), they weren’t on the same page, comments and feedback were unstructured, and deadlines were unclear.

3. Choose how to stay in touch (and make sure it fits the need).

Too often people use phone calls and teleconferences because they don’t think a video meeting, or Go2Meeting-style web conference is worth the extra effort.  Trust me, it is.  Going through textual changes over the phone assumes everyone is looking at the same document, which is usually never the case given PC-to-Mac compatibility issues, software glitches and the like.  All the more reason to both actually see the changes being made, the thought process behind them, and make the visual link wherever possible.  If this type of interaction isn’t possible and a phone is all you’ve got, make sure you’ve got plenty of time (see Lesson 4 below).

4. Make time work separately – and together.

This goes beyond just getting in touch, because a simple 5 minute phone call to review a 10 page document will hardly suffice.  Taking the time to work separately, but more importantly together, is crucial in order to keep both minds on the same page.  Short interactions lead to crossed wires and quick judgment, neither of which help, and both of which are exacerbated by the absence of face time.

5. Iterate.

Stick to the formula (be willing to collaborate, set a plan and keep to it, and make time to work separately and together), and do it as many times as possible.  The old days of you-write-a-big-chunk-which-I’ll-then-review-over-time are gone.  The new model is write quickly, review even faster, and do it all often.  Sure, this might be difficult for people who are used to taking too long to do everything, but there’s a case to be made for focused interval work in iterations (here, here and for the same case applied to fitness, here).

I found out something fascinating today about the U.S. government.  For a lumbering bureaucracy long criticized for its impregnable walls, poor internal communication, and miles and miles of cubicle heaven, there is one office within the fortress that would seem to have a step up on the others: LPA.  Since LPA refers to a current client of mine I certainly can’t disclose the full name here, but if you did a simple Google Search you might be able to guess at which office I have in mind.  For the time being I’ll call it the office-that-shall-not-be-named.

How did I figure out just how powerful this little backwater of the U.S. federal government is?  Well, I have previously referred to an ongoing design project, replete with its hiccups and speedbumps, and was – until this morning – under the impression that the main management team had agreed on a color schema for a core piece of the project (rhymes with “no-go”).  Turns out that the office-that-shall-not-be-named took offense to one of the colors in particular because it did not fit in with the ‘branding guidelines’ of the overall organization.

This in spite of the fact that the explicit mission of the project was to remove it far as possible from the main organization in terms of content, voice, branding, and identity – and the color schema was designed precisely with this in mind.

Of course, there is a certain logic to having LPA oversee branding and marketing materials: because if every project needed its own identity, the main organization would soon look like a horrible Frankenstein of mix-and-match parts, held tenuously together by little more than duct tape and accountants.

Or would that really be the case?  Maybe LPA has authority over visual branding because it’s the easiest (read: only) aspect of the thousands of projects in the ether that it can possibly hope to control.  But does it really make sense to link projects by color scheme?  Does it make sense to link them at all?  Maybe the strength of the organization should come from a core ethos that is translated through every project, regardless of what colors it flies under.

One can dream…