Entries Tagged 'business' ↓

A friend recently showed me a Ground Effect catalog and I was instantly impressed. This New Zealand-based company makes clothing for mountain bikers that is well designed and focused on the part of the market that still likes to pedal up hill.

But what I like best about this company is that they come out and admit where they’ve fallen short in their products. It was refreshing to see the Products that Bombed section of their company history (scroll down a half page). Nice touch.

This is a section from Seth Godin’s latest book Linchpin. In the context of this quote, I believe that ‘art’ can be replaced with product, idea, design, brand or service.

Passion is caring enough about your art that you will do almost anything to give it away, to make it a gift, to change people.

Part of the passion is having the persistence and resilience to change both your art and the way you deliver it. Passion for your art also means having a passion for spreading your art. This means being willing to surrender elements that you are in love with in order to help the other parts thrive and spread. And at the same time, passion means having enough connection to your art that you’re not willing to surrender the parts that truly matter.

It’s a paradox, of course. In order to be true to your art, you must sacrifice the part of it that hinders the spread of your art. Deciding what to leave out and what to insist on is part of your art. And if the ideas don’t spread, if no gift is received, then there is no art, only effort. When an artist stops work before his art is received, his work is unfulfilled.

The tech world’s current trend of anti-planning blog posts is approaching cliche status. It makes me throw up a little bit.

In a comment follow-up to his blog entry, Matt Linderman posted: “It’s not that all planning is always bad. It’s just we give it disproportionate value compared to what it’s actually worth. And often, we use it as an excuse because it’s easier to talk about stuff and write stuff down than it is to actually build something.

This is absolutely true. Many people value planning more than it’s worth. But it doesn’t follow that therefore plans are worthless.

Fixating on a plan as a guaranteed solution is a mistake. But assuming that there are human beings over the age of 12 who think a plan is a minute-by-minute blueprint of the future is ludicrous.

Like it or not, 37signals plans just like everybody else. Once upon a time, someone at 37signals decided, “We’re going to build a simple project management tool.” That’s not very detailed, but like it or not, it’s a plan. It redirected the status quo and changed the future. That’s what plans do.

How many world-class athletes do you know that have never used a periodized training schedule and diet plan? How many world-class musicians do you know who didn’t cut their teeth on twinkle-twinkle and then follow a typical progression from there to mastery?

Whether you call them plans, intentions, direction or progression is irrelevant. Looking at where you are today, imagining where you want to be — and then deciding on the first step in between — is a plan.

I have a bad habit. I tweak. Constantly.

I suspect that my type-A fascination with improvement is frustrating to my family and co-workers, perhaps nauseating, curious at best. I feel it too. Sometimes I feel like I can’t escape my OCD-esque brain.

But I am intrigued by making straight lines straighter. Even a laser beam has a margin of error. Continuous improvement is the gravity that attracts me to the activities and tools that I love: business, climbing and technology.

Which is why I am always surprised when I meet someone who does not want to change, does not want to improve. Typically, I am shocked into silence.

And it’s especially confusing when that same person craves change in the outside world, but doesn’t want to commit any of their own resources to the cause.

Then again, why would they? That would be uncomfortable.

Craving change, improvement or a better life, but not being willing to get outside of your comfort zone is the equivalent of wanting to be a millionaire, but not wanting to work. Or wanting to be fit, but not wanting to exercise. Or wanting to be a Formula One racer, but being fixated on using a Model T.

It just ain’t gonna happen.

The cost of change is temporary discomfort. The cost of status quo is not being successful, not being fit, not being fast. Worse yet, when viewed relative to the modern world that moves so blissfully fast, status quo puts you in a declining state. Forever.

Isn’t a little discomfort today (maybe even every day) worth all of the rewards that improvement will bring?

I have recently returned to Ambler after a year away working in a completely unrelated field. This last year has been one of my best for many reasons; primarily because it was the year of my first child’s birth. Besides that mind-expanding and life-altering event, I have had the chance to learn some great new things about myself and about business.

The biggest lesson learned is actually something I was introduced to in 1984 at the age of 6 by a guy you probably know, Mr. Miyagi. The Karate Kid had an impact on my young life at the time and this year I was reminded of the importance of Mr. Miyagi’s cornerstone lesson; ‘wax on, wax off’.

Before Mr. Miyagi’s karate protégé, Daniel, could actually get a chance to block a kick or throw a punch he had to perform what seemed to be endless chores for Mr. Miyagi around the house. Painting the fence, sanding the deck and waxing the cars in Daniel’s mind were a waste of time and energy and were getting him nowhere closer to his goal of kicking ass.

I found myself doing the chores of daily life and grumbling about how it wasn’t leading me in the right direction and how I can’t believe that this is what I’m doing with myself. But that’s when I heard Mr. Miyagi’s voice and it made me realize that if I don’t master the actions and intentions of my daily, routine tasks then I will never kick ass at anything. Waxing on and waxing off perfectly with both hands taught Daniel the exact actions he needed to block a kick when it matters most.

Perfect execution of the not-so-important tasks is what teaches us the characteristics of perfect execution in general. So that has literally brought me back to Ambler, a place where people really enjoy doing things right. I have started sanding the deck and painting some of the fence and I know that it is leading me as an individual and Ambler as a company to becoming masters at what we do.

For the past month or so, I’ve been investigating a potential new business, one that would be entirely web-based. (Years ago two paths diverged in a wood, and I chose to live in my car and climb full-time rather than learning HTML…)

The details are irrelevant to Ambler, but what I’ve learned about the Internet in the past few weeks is hugely relevant if Ambler wants to thrive in the future: People entrenched in the web world (even those that have never met each other) can know a whole lot more about each other than the rest of us do. And one day the rest of the world is (hopefully) going to catch up. Continue reading →

What most people think of as lonely people hiding behind computer screens will soon be a new world order. And it’ll soon be a powerful business advantage in all industries, not just among web professionals. Or it will be a huge disadvantage if you’re a late-adopter.

The texting teens, tweeting twits and pimply-faced nerd stereotypes will soon be upgraded to mansion-owners and Ferrari-drivers when more of those same folks become Presidents, PhDs and CEOs. And those that still use fax machines are going to be left in the dust.

The “nerds” — a positive term, I think, for a group of which I proudly consider myself a neophyte member — are winning because of three distinct advantages: asynchronous communication; the productive, personal nature of text; and most importantly, knowing when to use what. Continue reading →

Sooner or later, something fundamental in your business world will change.

We live in an age in which the pace of technological change is pulsating ever faster, causing waves that spread outward toward all industries. This increased rate of change will have an impact on you, no matter what you do for a living. It will bring new competition from new ways of doing things, from corners that you don’t expect.

It doesn’t matter where you live. Long distances used to be a moat that both insulated and isolated people from workers on the other side of the world. But every day, technology narrows that moat inch by inch. Every person in the world is on the verge of becoming both a coworker and a competitor to every one of us, much the same as our colleagues down the hall of the same office building are. Technological change is going to reach out and sooner or later change something fundamental in your business world.

— Andrew S. Grove, former President & CEO of Intel, from his book Only the Paranoid Survive (preface)