Creative Reaction

Seth Godin has an excellent post on the Art v. Commerce debate. What’s great is that it isn’t polarized. Some things are truly difficult to monetize and some are easier. Sometimes monetizing what you do ends up corrupting it. Sometimes you can try to make money in the same business as something you love, and you can still end up being miserable. Ultimately, there has to be a market for what you love do and you have to execute it in a way that is profitable. Read the post here.

“I make more mistakes than anyone I know. And eventually I patent them.”
-Thomas Edison

Harvard Business Publishing’s Discussion Leader Blog has a post about the value of learning from mistakes, which is an ongoing theme here at CR. (See here, here, and here.) The post is framed by current political discussion of choosing leaders, so for those of you who need a break, I’ve excised the good stuff and brought it here.

In choosing leaders “most people seek a litany of accomplishments that demonstrate sound judgment, and failure is considered radioactive.” This is a shame, as “the character and worldview of leaders are shaped not via their accomplishments but by their setbacks in the crucibles of challenge”.

Shifting gears slightly to look at “mistakes” in a business context, the post points to a Business Week cover story, saying that “breakthroughs depend on failure, and the best companies leverage their mistakes” and that “according to that article, ‘breakthrough innovation… requires well-honed organizations built for efficiency and speed to do that what feels unnatural: Explore. Experiment. Foul up, sometimes. Then repeat.’” (italics mine) This is a business principal known as “intelligent fast failure.”

So experimentation and honest mistakes should be expected and encouraged as many creative breakthroughs are happy accidents. Are we encouraging creativity and innovation in our workplaces through experimentation and fast failure? Or are we stifling creativity by quashing mistakes?

In an NYT article entitled Even the Giants Can Learn to Think Small (free subscription required - don’t bother) we see another nail in the coffin of the “if you’re not growing, you’re dying” mantra.

Part of the “thinking smaller” movement is a desire to provide better service through personalization, and part of it is the need to be leaner in an increasingly global marketplace. In the Times article, Professor Thomas W. Malone of MIT’s Sloan School of Management offers another reason - employees’ “noneconomic goals” like freedom, personal satisfaction and fulfillment. “How much energy and creativity might be unlocked if all the members of an organization felt in control?” he asks. Thinking back, this ties in perfectly to other times we’ve mentioned globalization making good talent harder to attract and keep.

Being smaller and agile has competitive advantages as well; companies as a whole tend to be more entrepreneurial. Philip Rosedale, founder and chairman of Linden Lab (Second Life), says optimizing a company for creativity involves helping all employees regardless of position develop an entrepreneurial spirit. “Most companies erroneously focus on competition and on differentiation from their competitors…the business opportunity lies in turning creativity into productivity.” And as most entrepreneurs know, ideas are worthless unless they are executed.

(If you do read the article, you may pick up on some similarities between Linden Lab’s and Pixar’s philosophies. And if have a really good memory, you’ll remember some similar posts on company and team size here, here, and here)

So, focus on fostering a collaborative, entrepreneurial spirit company-wide, and not growth for the sake of growth, for your business’ success.

*if you are to deliver a breakthrough product or service.

I am not talking about a culture of sloppiness or irresponsibility, but one of difference, change, and creativity. Our society, our educational systems and our workplaces stress rewarding what we do correctly, yet it is experience, and, yes, making mistakes, which allow for the biggest opportunities for personal growth and innovation.

Two items I recently read support the above statements. The first is a ChangeThis manifesto, Turning Learning Right Side Up, a free .pdf report and an excellent read for “students” of any age. The second is an NYT article (free subscription required) explaining the importance of being “growth-minded”; the mindset of lifelong learners and entrepreneurs. If You’re Open to Growth, You Tend to Grow, talks of managers who hire the “best & brightest”, only to hamstring them by placing them in an environment of high expectations and fear (of failure).

The best part of the article details how Scott Forstall, an SVP at Apple, put together the team which developed the iPhone’s software. First, Forstall “identified a number of superstars within various departments at Apple and asked them in for a chat.” During the subsequent interview he explained that though he could not reveal the details of the project, he said to each recruit, “(we may) make mistakes and struggle, but eventually we may do something that we’ll remember the rest of our lives”. It is important to note that these people would be walking away from their previous successes and positions. Those who jumped at the opportunity made the team; Forstall was looking for people willing to stretch themselves, rather than rest on previous successes.

A post I wrote about Google back in September ‘06 also addresses this way of thinking. And 10 Ways to Foster Innovation in Your Company ties the room together.

So… Be great! Encourage greatness!

A drawback of technology is constant connectivity and constant workplace interruptions - to the point that many of us have lost our weekends. I came across Take 48! today in which entrepreneur John Battelle details this very struggle; “The weekend is when I catch up on work I can’t get done during the week, in particular work that requires long form thinking”. The result? “In an odd and most likely not very healthy way, the weekends have become two more workdays.”

Battelle, along with two other senior leaders at his company, have made a step in the right direction; they have agreed to not send e-mail (which they rely upon heavily) from 6 P.M. Friday until 6 P.M. Sunday.

The result? “by golly, it really worked… it felt as if (the company), as an institution, was taking time to breathe, to contemplate, to relax and feed itself.”

Reading between the lines, this company really needs to take further steps, though they should be given credit for recognizing a problem and taking action to solve it.

Let’s all aim to limit the workweek to its M-F boundaries, enabling ourselves and our staffs time to think and work within those boundaries. Having evenings and weekends to spend time with our friends and loved ones, and to take care of our responsibilities is what’s best for all and what’s best for our businesses.

Ed Kless of Verasage Institute has a quick post contrasting empathy and sympathy, the former being a trait that would limit a person’s leadership ability, and the latter being a perfect complement to a person’s leadership ability.

He explains, “Empathy implies that the leader would share in the anxiety of the follower. This would hamper the ability of the leader to lead and therefore not be in alignment with great leadership.” He continues, “Leaders need to be self-differentiated. They need to exhibit a strong sense of self. They need to be autonomous, independent, individualistic, and, yes, sympathetic”.

Managers, take note!

Another great post today by Seth Godin. In Is it worthy?, Seth asks us, given all the opportunities we have, are we putting our best efforts into everything we are doing? It’s always a good thing to take a step back and gain some perspective.

He takes a bit of a detour in the last paragraph, though I like where it goes. “The object isn’t to be perfect. The goal isn’t to hold back until you’ve created something beyond reproach. I believe the opposite is true. Our birthright is to fail and to fail often, but to fail in search of something bigger than we can imagine. To do anything else is to waste it all.”

Good reading.

A book I’ve been meaning to mention has been burning up the blogosphere. I haven’t seen a post about it befitting Creative Reaction until a revolutionary business think tank reviewed the book, putting the book’s premise into perspective.

The book is Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It.

The review is written by Verasage Institute founder Ron Baker.

The way to fix work is to establish a “Results-Only Work Environment” or “ROWE” (both coined by the Why Work Sucks authors), which is an environment where employees have complete autonomy to work wherever and whenever they want, as long as their work gets done.

Ron Baker frames this perfectly; “Firms are struggling with work/life balance, flextime, time management, etc.  But all these are a joke… Work/life balance is not up to firms to define, but rather their team members… they need control over their time.  They need to be trusted to do their work.  They need to be judged on results, not putting in time… After all, if a team member isn’t performing, working longer hours is not going to make a difference.”

Baker asks, “Isn’t this how we all worked in college?  We were responsible for our own schedules, getting our work done, studying for exams, etc.  What makes firms think they need to treat knowledge workers like children after they graduate?” What an apt analogy!

Baker’s own mission, banishing the Marxian “time equals money” fallacy, dovetails perfectly with the premise of ROWE. Again quoting Baker, “Work is what you do, not where you go, or where you are.” Spending hours and hours at work is not the same thing as producing results. (Creative Reaction has touched upon this here and here and here.)

So, read the full review, consider buying the book, reward those who are engaged in their work and show results, let the slackers go, and enable your business to be more creative and more focused on its customers.

This Signal vs. Noise post, Finding the natural size for your company, reminds me of one of my favorite business books, Small Giants, (subtitled, Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big).

David of 37Signals speaks of the “perception that companies must always be growing or they’re dying”. He continues, ”I think that’s a harmful dichotomy that leads to the death of perfectly viable companies in their quest for constant growth”. I’m sure the author of Small Giants would heartily agree.

While the main theme of Small Giants is outstanding customer service, what I find refreshing is its relentless focus on relationships. Quoting (possibly paraphrasing) a passage on some of the characteristics of a Small Giant, “the businesses exhibit exceptionally intimate relationships with customers and suppliers, based on personal contact, one-on-one interaction and mutual commitment to delivering on promises. The founders/leaders take the lead in this regard. They are highly accessible and absolutely committed to retaining the human dimension of the relationships.”

Small Giants is nothing short of inspirational, as it reminds business owners, myself included, of the positive impact we can make on both the individuals with which we come into contact and the communities we serve. In fact, I’ve purchased at least three or four copies to give to clients and business associates.

Perhaps 37Signals will find it’s way into a future edition of Small Giants.

A stunning post on the Mavericks at Work blog on the measures that Zappos (online shoe store) takes to ensure it’s employees are the right people for the company. Zappos is well known for its outstanding customer service, and hiring the best employees is integral to this. So much so, that Zappos will offer cash bonuses to buy (and thereby weed) people out. 

What measures do we have in place to attract and keep only the best talent?

Some interesting thoughts today from Seth Godin. He says, “There’s a huge gap between most how-to books (cookbooks, gardening, magic, etc.) and business books… The gap is motivation.”

“The stakes are a lot higher when it comes to business. Wreck a roast chicken and it’s $12 down the drain. Wreck a product launch and there goes your career…”

Rather than summarize, I’ll just link. It’s pithy and valuable.

Why, it was just a few days ago when I mentioned a company which had adopted a four-day workweek, and today I read in eWeek (print) magazine about Google’s version of this.

(Interestingly, eWeek’s own  - always frustrating  - search engine could not find the online version of the article, even though I typed three very specific phrase in quotes; It was the top result using Google. I always feel lucky.)

Google’s version, as you may already know, is “20 per cent time” - Google’s technical employees are encouraged to spend 20% of their time on projects that interest them. (Yes, they measure it. Google measures everything.)

What I did not know was that cash prizes can be involved. Now some of us might be able to imagine a $10,000 bonus for making some sort of amazing increase to a company’s bottom line. Well how about a $350,000 bonus?! For someone low on the totem pole! As Keanu Reeves is fond of saying, “WHOA!”

Of course, Google has a bigger bottom line; everything is proportional. And, as I’ve mentioned before, Google’s “crazy ideas” make good business sense. This is how they came up with Google News, Gmail, and Adsense.

On our scale, at our companies, what are we doing to encourage BIG thinking? Cash prizes as a tool for creativity? Why not? It’s actually not so crazy.

I know, I know - I just wrote about 37Signals yesterday. Yet their business philosophy continues to challenge and provoke. Yesterday I mentioned their recent move to a four-day workweek and its good results. Today I’d like to commend them for their other “Workplace Experiments“.

Creating a work environment where the employees are “allowed” to have lives, and yes, even encouraged to do so, is a recurring theme here at Creative Reaction, and so 37Signal’s experiment to “fund people’s passions” resonates with me. If their employees want to attend flight school or learn to cook, the company encourages its employees to do so by subsidizing or paying for the lessons.

Another recurring theme here at CR is that of educating and training employees. 37Signals encourages this by giving its employees company credit cards and discretionary spending accounts for books, software, or conferences.

As far as I’m concerned, I think these guys have a shot at replacing Pixar as the coolest-place-to-work-EVER! Bravo 37Signals!

Of course, many of you, dear readers, are in a position to make your own companies just as great. Will you one day unseat Pixar or 37Signals, earning my accolades? You can’t afford not to!

There’s a “green” angle to this Fast Company article, entitled All in a Day’s work, yet there’s no mistaking its message that overworking will also have a negative impact on productivity and long-term health/happiness/social life/family life of employees.

“It’s a myth of modern hypercapitalism that an overworked, sleep-deprived, stressed-out workforce is a necessity. Studies have consistently shown that longer workweeks increase productivity only in the very short term.”

This article connects nicely with this “Urgency is Poisonous” (Signal vs. Noise) post (which I blogged about here) where Jason of 37Signals briefly describes the productivity gains from the company’s four-day work week experiment. The best ideas are often counter-intuitive.

This article from Businessweek on catering to the needs of highly skilled “knowledge workers” can easily be applied to creative professionals. Hiring and retaining the best employees requires a work environment that develops and trains employees. (see here, too.) Though I recommend reading the full article, here are the bullet points:

•Encourage their passion

•Enhance their ability

•Value their time

•Build their networks

•Support their dreams

•Expand their contributions

Some excellent points are made, though I do not think only knowledge workers should receive this kind of treatment; every owner or manager should be willing to do these things for any employee to whatever degree possible. These ideas should be corporate policy.