Years ago, during the first dot com boom, I worked at a little web company in Toronto. That company made the decision to bring in some old school boys to run things. Some guys who know how to efficiently operate a growing organization. Is there a ‘tongue in cheek’ emoticon? That particular experience didn’t exactly inspire my confidence in the old guard. I butted heads more than the opposite.

One case that came to mind was office layout. With a few new hires coming in the door, we’d outgrown the layout of one of our floors. There was some heated discussions with some people having strong opinions about how things should be laid out, where their “office” should be, who should sit near who, etc, etc, blah, bored, blah…

So the part that really blew my socks off? Our man in charge at the time took it upon himself to stay late that evening and draw up the new office layout with no real consultation with the people involved. The next day he handed the new office layout over to the office manager for implementation.

Occurrences like this drove me bonkers and I generally got nothing but cow-eyes when I’d raise my concerns with the ‘powers that be’. Stereotypical managers actually view this kind of useless crap to be their job. At this time, this guy would have been one our highest paid people and he’s being paid to write seating plans for grown ups?

In this case my only question for ‘the man’ was “how old are your children? Does their teacher issue them a seating plan at school or does she trust those 6 year olds to figure it out themselves?”

I recently read something from Ricardo Semler, speaking about exactly this issue. Obviously he has pretty much the polar opposite take on it…

“Sure, I’m the main shareholder, so I always have a loaded gun in a drawer and the right to fire it, but understanding the benefits of our system is my self-restraint. I know that there’s only one bullet in the gun, and if I fire it off in a fit of pique, I’ll only get one shot at overriding a popular decision, after which I’ll be disarmed. At that point, I’d lose everything I’ve worked for..”.

If you’ve only got ONE bullet, do you really want to use it on a seating plan issue??

Ricardo Semler, writing about what’s left once you reach the realization that mission statements and credos are bullshit:

“Quite a lot, starting with what we stand for, the way we do things, the facts on the ground, the we are perceived, and the satisfaction and success of those involved. In other words, judge us by what we do, rather than what we say we do. Judge us by standards drawn from a peaceful, civilized, cooperative, and humane society of equals..”

I wish I’d written that and like to think that somewhat describes what we’re up to at boc. Sure it’s hi falootin stuff but so what?

PS, I have some istockphoto credits that are expiring hence the unrelated image. Check out that guy’s shadow, I think he’s Australian?

Quote from IDEO founder David Kelley about their guiding philosophy,”enlightened trial and error outperforms the planning of flawless intellects”.

Quote from Hard Facts referring to the single most important quality of a leader, advisor, or team. To travel “through life with an attitude of wisdom - the ability to act with knowledge while doubting what you know”.

Timothy Ferriss is getting a load of press these days for his recent book. He also has a nice preview of the book available in the form of a ChangeThis manifesto.

I haven’t read the book so I can’t comment on it directly. I do know that one of his key suggestions is to take control of email. I’m in complete agreement with him on this, however, I’ve managed to drift away from the practice in the past two years.

The basics? Close your email client. Only open it once or twice a day at explicit times.

I first began practicing what is essentially the same thing Timothy suggests back in my MKS days. I was inspired to do so after reading The Tyranny Of Email, written back in 2003.

In short, I’m working my way back towards this. The migration is less about my email habits than it is people’s expectations of my habits. Everyone’s used to me responding almost instantly so I need to work them towards a new pattern. Or technically an old pattern that I somehow abandoned.

If you’re in a rush to get back to your email, Ole has a great summary:

1. Turn your email client off. Pick the moment at which you’ll be interrupted.
2. Never criticize anyone in email, and avoid technical debates. Use face-to-face meetings or ‘phone calls instead.
3. Be judicious in who you send email to, and who you copy on emails.
4. Observing some formality is important.
5. Don’t hesitate to review and revise important emails.
6. Remember that email is a public and permanent record.

Good list and I agree with pretty much all of it. It’s the parts you don’t predict that are the most surprising, like the Dilbert comment and being hard to say no.

Anyone who knows me knows that when I was in an office I was fairly in tune with the ‘politics’ around me. I really never thought I’d get to a point where friends in an office would complain to me about common annoyances and I really wouldn’t get it or have much to say. Well I’m at that point now and have a lot of those “oh man, I forgot all about that crap” conversations. That’s a great thing.

I suppose when I return to a traditional workplace I’ll be like a home schooled kid showing up for the first day of high school.

In reading about strategy in Hard Facts, it’s clarified where I think Band of Coders should be heading “strategically”. That is to be a company that tries different things in order to learn through the process of experimentation. Evaluate what works and continually develop our competencies and skills as we evolve as a business.

Sure is easy to say.

In Jeffery Pfeffer’s recent book Hard Facts, John Sall, a cofounder of SAS Institute, talking about MBA programs and strategy:

“The MBA program is a two year program correct? Why should it take two years to teach such smart people the secret to success: listen to your customers, listen to your employees, do what they tell you.”

His bottom line point, and the SAS strategy? It’s more important to “hear true things than to say smart things”.

Is any one else confused about this whole idea of work/life separation deal that’s in the press these days? I realize it isn’t new but it seems to be in the press a lot more these days. It was the topic on the CBC this morning.

The gist? We’re losing control of the work/life separation as the companies are taking over our home lives. I understand this but I also maintain that this is partially a new concept isn’t it? New as in since the industrial revolution.

These days I’m committed to the exact opposite, that is thinning and eliminating the work/life separation. It makes my life simpler if it’s just all one and I don’t have to think about if I’m working now or I’m living now.

Mark’s got a piece he wrote available here. I often think of some of these fringe workstyles that I’m currently involved in as less of a destination than a protest of sorts. A lot of people are clearly not happy with the way companies are being operated. They may, or may not, have voiced that opinion but ultimately they’ve decided to leave and create their own community.

I fall into that category and I’m disappointed in myself because in a lot of ways that’s the easy way out. I left a toxic environment instead of sticking it out and helping to repair it. It’s the same reason two tiered school systems are a challenge. If all the passionate, concerned parent’s are pulling their children out of public schools and placing them into private ones then who’s fixing the public system?

There are a lot of people working independently these days. I don’t think the answer is that corporations will no longer exist and we’ll all be freelancers. I think the longterm answer is that companies will learn from what we’re doing and right themselves. At some point the smart companies will have to start asking themselves what they need to do to attract these people back or keep the ones that will otherwise leave in the near future. Or they could just phone us and we’ll tell them?