Posts Tagged: business culture

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7
Mar 10

Fighting Fires instead of Owning the Problem

Jeffrey Phillips: Why is fighting fires more valuable than avoiding fires?

“For some reason we believe that sweeping in and fixing a problem has more drama, and gains more attention, than doing the work to predict and avoid problems.”

I think the problem is also a blame game. If we acknowledged that there were ways we could avoid the fire, then we would implicitly own the problem and more so, be responsible for avoiding the next occurrence. But when the next fire comes, implicitly we’ve now failed. The goal was to avoid the fire, not react quickly. This requires strategic thinking.

So if we never acknowledge there is a change that could make things better, then when the fire comes, we just block and tackle — it is happening to us, not caused by us. No one is to blame for the fire, and thus our only measure of success is our reaction speed.

Blocking and tackling is easy. Strategic thinking is hard.

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12
Feb 10

Decisiveness

Herding Cats Quote of the Day:

If I had to sum up in a word what makes a good manager, I’d say decisiveness. You can use the fanciest computers to gather the numbers, but in the end you have to set a timetable and act.

—Lido Anthony (Lee) Iacocca

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4
Jan 10

We Trust You

Matt from SvN on control via trust:

A lot of companies seek to control employees. They have handbooks and policies. They monitor emails. They make rules about what’s allowed and what’s forbidden. [...]

Imagine an employee handbook that just said: “We trust you. Be mischievous.”

This makes a lot of sense to me. If the company trusts you with corporate secrets, company property, and access to production servers … maybe the policies on appropriate use of YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook are misplaced.

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11
Dec 09

Courage to Catch Up

Seth wonders about companies falling behind in social media and the web: Is it too late to catch up? He suggests some things to get your company back on track, and in a hurry. Some highlights:

  • Start an email newsletter using Mad Mimi or Mail Chimp. Give the responsibility for the newsletter’s creation and performance to one person and offer them a bonus if they exceed metrics in sign ups and in reducing churn.
  • Offer a small bonus to anyone in the company who starts and runs a blog on any topic. Have them link to your company site, with an explanation that while they work there, they don’t speak for you.
  • Have the president post her (real) email address in every invoice and other communication the company sends out, asking people to write to her with comments or questions.
  • Do not approve any project that isn’t run on Basecamp.

Just like software, in the end it isn’t a lack of access to tools or high startup costs. It’s just plain courage to do it.

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23
Nov 09

Stop using the word: innovation

Scott Berkun in the SpoolCast: Innovation Beyond the Buzzword talks about how to approach innovation in a methodical way.

He says the first step, is to stop using the word, and instead use a phrase that better represents what you mean. He typically finds that people mean one of these three when talking about “innovation”:

  • Having new ideas
  • Taking more risks
  • Making things radically better

Other advise: “[Scott] tells us you have to be opportunistic and start small. High-priority challenges may be a temping place to start, but he suggested looking first at low-hanging fruit. You can build momentum for positive change by racking up a number of small wins that together move the project in the right direction. Having these small successes under your belt gives you more influence when attempting larger changes later on.”

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