BrainBreach

Hello, you've reached my Business Bliki (blog meets wiki kinda). In 2006 I co-founded a multi million dollar company, and then went on to start my very own. Bixly is where my time is spent right now. It's multi-locale software shop based in Fresno California. Also, it's been doubling every year in this down economy. I hope some of the writings you find will help your organization do the same.

I prefer to learn from books really, and kept things short and juicy for folks that are share my preference. I don't want to take all your time with these interweb-articles, but rather help promote great ideas and practices that require further study. More importantly, it's a way for all those who work with me to understand what the heck I am thinking.

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 Simplexity is the prefect marriage of simple and complex.  It’s accomplished by creating many simple parts, that create a larger complex system. Miguel Cunha is golden if you don't know. He has a fascinating, although rough draft, article on Simplexity. There are many parallels for business, software, and life in the idea of simplexity, but he focuses on Business. It’s worth a read if you can find the time, otherwise, here are my notes:

• Ashby’s Law: only complex organizing – rather than complicated organizations – provides enough complexity to cope with environmental turbulence.
• Basically, only complexity can cope with complexity
• Unintentional Complexity : Complexity is the cumulative by-product of organizational changes, big and small, that over the years weave complications (often invisibly) into the way work is done. pg 7
• It is fought with intentional simplicity. Jack Welch turned around GE with his simplification process.
• Unintentional simplicity is a problem also. It encourages exploitation over exploration. pg 8
• Loosely coupled organizations can better handle the unexpected. pg 17
• Only the complex organizing provided by simple structures – rather than complicated organizations – is flexible enough to cope with environmental complexity. pg 18
• Complexity, top-down hierarchy, overdeveloped systems and processes seem to turn workers into machines. A hive-mind mentality should foster creativity.
• Organizations need to create designs that favor alertness and capacity of response, triggered wherever the information is. pg 19
• Although the behavior that emerges is complex, the rules that guide it are necessarily simple. In fact it is their simplicity that creates the freedom to behave in complicated adaptive, and surprising ways. pg 20
• One of the potential results of deliberately simple organizing is the creation of a developed collective mind, or what Weick and Roberts (1993) described as heedful interrelating. The concept refers to a developed attentiveness and caring about the actions of the other organizational members, in such a way that individual know-how is made subservient to group processes. pg 22

• Simple infrastructures may result in complex behaviors because they support and facilitate a number of processes that encourage rich and mindful interactions. pg 22
• in his Mann Gulch study, which showed that training and specialization may actually hamper the variety of behavioral repertoire. Again, complexity may block learning and adaptation. pg 25

This read was particularly reassuring for me. It’s the collective intelligence of the company that can really make a great company, not just mine. That’s great! Now the leader’s role is to facilitate such an atmosphere.

Well, ok, let's get into it then. I am in the process of relating this concept to my company in a practical way. There are my helpful folks at work that have plenty of plans that I find myself rejecting because they don't seem to compute with the idea of simplicity, or simplexity.  Here's a work in progress, that I hope can be a filter for any proposed change to the company.  We would discuss these talking points when considering a change:

• are you solving a problem that many people care about?
• is it necessary, and/or does it greatly improve the situation?
• are you are prepared to discipline those who ignore it?
• does this hurt creativity?
• what would this take to work perfectly?
• if this were to work perfectly, would the extra effort outweigh the benefits?
• how many of your past changes are still in play and useful?
• are you doing this in place of firing a bad employee?

It's not elegant yet, but it's a starting place.  I had to write this down because nearly every meeting I am a part of these days, because of the growth of the company, someone wants to change things.  Planning a change is so simple. It's like an idea, those are cheap and mean very little.  The hard part is the rest.  Translating a plan into a perfect implementation, and THEN getting perfect adoption, and THEN keeping perfect adoption, that's a trick. So I am not afraid of change, I am afraid of the wrong kind of change. The kind that cripples the company, and steers us towards the bureaucratic mess some of our big competitors are slogged down with. 

Resources

• http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/28/ge.html
• http://www.complexityandeducation.ualberta.ca/COMPLICITY1/pdfs/Complicity11b_Intro.pdf
• http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=350654#show1032599

 I was looking for a cheap way to study flash cards.  Well, cheap, and not bulky, e.g. not paper. How brilliant would it be if there was a simple app (or "Active Content") that I could purchase for a few dollars that would convert popular sites like FlaschCardExchange or Quizlet flash cards to the Kindle! So I searched...and searched....and searched. 

Nothing. No one is doing this. So many folks are going for Kindle Fire, or have some other touchpad that have plenty of flash card options. Me, I just don't want to carry around that much entertainment, with that low of battery life.  I love the E-ink Kindle BECAUSE it is less powerful, more focused, cheap, and has a gargantuan battery life. 

So I created one. Well, I had one of my talented developers create one. It was functional in his first 8 hours of development. It's rough around the edges, but so extremely useful, it can't be overstated. This is an amazing way to study a never ending source of flash cards. Any flashcards you find on Quizlet.com can be exported immediatly to .mobi, and transferred right into your documents folder on your kindle. That's it!

Go here to use it: http://kindle-convert.bixly.com/

It's a free tool, so please send over a message if you enjoy using it. Currently, you can only use Quizlet flash cards, but later on I will probably add others, should the tool get popular. 

Can someone please get excited about this? I am geeking out about it.  This is easily the best method of studying on your E-ink Kindle. Otherwise, you are stuck buying the many one-off flashcard apps on the Kindle shop that are about $3 per subject, and not flexible. 

Austrian economics is simply a philosophy towards money, policy, and it can even apply to business.  The core tenants can have a powerful effect on business in fact, and that's why it interested me so much. I think if you understand some of the basics, you won't be able to ignore their application to your business. Here are some of the major points:

The effect on all groups

Bad economics, bad policy, bad management has this in common: It expenses one group to the benefit of another.  And, the group that gets the benefit is the one that is most visible.  Let's consider the Christmas Tree Tax proposed in 2011 to perfectly illustrate this point. What we have here is a group of people (Christmas tree growers) that have spent four years trying to force money from another group of people (the Christmas tree buyers).  

Here's the breakdown of the two groups:

Christmas Tree Growers

• Small group
• Easily and quickly impacted by a small tax on others
• In a declining market

Christmas Tree Buyers

• HUGE group
• Small impact if charged an extra $0.15 tax on a tree purchase

President Obama is shortly seeking a re-election in 2012, so a new tax against his name isn't going to help him, and they were pretty quick to clog up this bill. But politics aside, let's look at the reality of this tax. Of course, some don't want to call it a tax, but that's just semantics. If the government is forcing you by law to pay anything on top of a purchase, we will call that "tax". 

So there's a little background. You might be inline with the current administration, and think to yourself, "Gee, it's worth $0.15 to save a market. I would happily pay that to rescue my brothers and sisters in this business". That's exactly what the administration was thinking also.  Heck, I used to think that way.

Now, there's a huge list of downsides that start to surface by denying the market it's freedom. First of all, if you improve the real Christmas tree market, will that be at the expense of the fake tree market? They have families also. Can we next assuming that another $0.15 tax will rescue their industry?  Second, the people have already voted for the appropriate market to succeed with their most powerful vote: What they decide to purchase.  If they don't want a real Christams tree, it doesn't mean they hate tree farmers, it means they wanted a fake one, and that's their decision. It's the very definition of progress. 

Some markets have to go away

Personally, I purchased a fake tree because it's really cheap in the long run to do that. I spent $60 5 years ago. Compare that to a $40 tree, every year, it's a $140 savings. Guess what I did with that $140 dollars, and guess what everyone else did with it? They spent it in other markets. They voted with their cash.  If the Real Christmas tree market stays alive, it should be because the entire group of buyers voted that way.  Otherwise, you risk meddling with a system that works really well to produce things we want, when we want them. 

This idea is best summerized by a concept Hayek layed out:

To give everyone the same opportunity, you must treat people unequally. 

The scary thing about that is SOMEONE must be the judge. They must practice judgment on who needs what, and who it should be taken from.  The problem is, the crowd will every agree on something like that.  Plus, you might argue it's not fair.

The long run over the short run

The second thing about this tree policy that's hurtful is what's not seen.  Let's take that $140 I saved over 5 years. The various places I spent that are undetectable really.  I spent it at various shops or services, each time voting with my cash. Let's put my new sushi knife on the list. $35, and it's killer. It's a Victorinox knife. Because of their reputation, and great reviews, I couldn't pass it up.  Let's say for example, that I was pursauded, 5 years ago, by an government sponsored commercial to purchase a real tree.  Let's then say I didn't have the budget now to purchase my knife.   The Tree Board would have succeeded in forcing business away, at an unfair advanted, from Vitorinox. Do you see the problem?

The point is that the purchases people will NOT make are spread over years, and thousands of industries. Just because no one can track it, doesn't mean it's not happening. So, the long run shows us that various OTHER industry will be hurt, at the expense of one industry that forced it's way, through taxation, to a higher place. What started as a good intention, created a huge mess that will never get blamed on the tax that caused it. 

The mess

It gets worse. If you are a Christmas tree grower, you now have to spend extra time paying this new tax to the government. The tax specialists have to spend more time training on the subject. The IRS has to spend more time processing it, and the bueurcrats have to spend more time spending it.  Let's say that tax goes to commercials: Some add agency has to spend time making the commercial (recieving the tax money), while they could be making a commercial for a market that is truly growing, and not propped up. If that ad agency suddenly loses this extra contract, they might go out of business.  Should we then create a small tax to keep them in business? "Talented Ad Agency Support Fund". And the cycle happens again. 

For this one good intention, a small mess has be made, and spread throughout the entire economy.  

As a manager, you have to understand what this will do to your bottom line. The issue will be different, but the concepts will be the very same.  You can choose to regulate a new expense, add a new rule to the books, train the folks how to handle it, and so on. Or, you will have the option to let it be. It will take me a while, over various articles to show how these concepts can be applied to helping your business but I can summarize it for you this way: Good management takes into consideration all parties that will be effected by the choice, and over the long run, no matter how small. 

If this tax was to be forgotten, think of what will happen. The Christmas tree industry will shrink.  The fake tree market will probably grow.  The fellows that used to busy themselves with farming Christmas tress can now find another living that creates value that everyone wants to pay for.   Does that seem harsh to you? If so, I would like to announce the Horse Carriage Fund For Workers Displaced By Automobiles.  I accept Paypal and all forms of credit cards. 

Personally, I am interested in seeing what these farmers will do next to make a living.  I vote for selling fried turkey's in the empty Christmas Tree lots for Christmas and Thanksgiving. That would be a $40 well spent!

It's probably strange to see this topic on a business blog. I would think so. However, the subject of brutality plays a role in my business, strangely. Not a blood lust, but a something more subtle. 

Brutality is something that we think we can get away from, and is certainly something we would never inflict, right?  I, just like you, and all the other sane souls, take no pleasure in destruction.  However, let me throw this terrible hypothetical at you:

 Would you take the life of a loved one that is close to you right now, with a knife, if you **knew** it would save the live of two ordinary, perfect strangers, on the other side of the world, 20 years from now?

Take a little time to think about it. Tick tock. 

Regardless of your answer to this question, did you wonder anything like: who are these other people; will they die quickly; will a family starve because of this loss.  Probably not.  I am guessing your reasoning went like this: I don't want to make this decision. I can't kill anyone. I certainly couldn't kill anyone close to me. Would anyone know that I didn't take action?

 I just pulled from my own reasoning, so I am not here to insulting you if you had the same thoughts. I picture my wife or kids in this scenario. Forget about it, I can't even picture it. Terrible, and brutal. 

 Now here's the interesting part. The decision that we made isn't a logical one. Logic didn't play any role whatsoever. If it had, your reasoning might look very different. Let's be academic about this for a second and get logical, and dissect this. Can you refute the soundness of this logic?

See, the point is that the logical thing would be to take the life of a loved one. No one would argue, form a logical perspective, the opposite.  But from a human perspective? Could you ever ask this of anyone?

Would you sacrifice a loved on for three unknown strangers? What about 50 or 1000?

This is just a hypothetical, and it's a terribly uncomfortable one that I won't trouble you with anymore. Lucky for us, we don't have to make this decision, because we would certainly make the wrong one. It's not because our logic is flawed, it's because we consciously decide to ignore logic when emotion has captured our heart. It's the debate had between many a action scripted rivals. "Kill her, she's bit, she will turn into a Zombie" says one. "We can't kill her, we will be like them" says the other.

While we will never face this situation in real life, we will have many situations that require the same emotions, on a different scale. For example, let's say you have an employee that isn't doing great for the company. She's costed you business that's hard to quantify. That's not all though. She just had her first child, and has been with your company for 10 years. You have tried her in a couple of different roles, but it keeps getting worse. 

There is a time when brutality, that is, ignoring some part of your humanity, is absolutely required for progress. Can you fire her? Let's say you don't. Her unproductive nature and attitude start to spread like a cancer in the organization.  'A' players are turned off and start looking for greener pastures. Not only are you paying her salary, but you are trying to make up for lost business, and other numerous unintended consequences a bad employee will generate. 

Let's say things keep getting worse for your struggling company, and it fails. By keeping her on, not only has she lost her job anyways, but the entire workforce has. Your human emotions that are essential to personal health, have now destroyed much more than you intended to even protect. It's an extreme case, but the argument is the same regardless. 

 You will be confronted with situations that, if not dealt with brutally, will undermine your good natured attempt. In other words, by not acting brutal now, you have become exponentially more brutal, under the guise of good will. The difference is the illusion we call time, and we love to fool ourselves into thinking we can handle it later on.  

As difficult as this lesson is, logic has to weigh in here. Though I can't ask anyone to be ruled solely by it, it's something to honor. You must know Where you stand on the scale of logic vs. humanity.  Are you able to live with tough decisions that are right in a big way, but seemingly so wrong in another, immediate way?  Brutal.