Brain Breach

A colleague at work suggested I read The E-Myth . After picking it up Friday, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and finished it Saturday. It’s on my top 5 for business, so far. Here is what I learned.
The E is for entrepreneur. The E myth, which Gerber goes on to dispel, says entrepreneurs are super-human. Only these heroes have the right to start businesses. Really what goes on in the rest of the book is a intro to business development. But that would have made a terribly boring title. What’s so exciting about business development? It’s the fact that you didn’t know you needed it.

Gerber first starts with a bit of psychology. Inside of everyone involved in business, there are three personalities:

• Entrepreneur – This is the dreamer
• Manager – Likes order and predictability
• Technician – Likes the art of the craft, the end product.

According to Gerber, most folks start small businesses because they are a good technician. Technician meaning anything technical; baking pies, programming, styling hair etc. . They make a faulty assumption:

The Fatal Assumption is: if you understand the technical work of the business, you understand a business that does that technical work. pg 13

A clear difference from a bird’s eye view, but this misunderstanding is the most common reason small businesses fail. Each of these personalities has a vital role. For example, you inner technician should be the master of the product, documenting exactly how to reproduce it. You inner manager should implement that system, and be consistent. Your inner entrepreneur should always ask, “what would the customer want?”, and not be contented until they have it.

The enigma with a start up happens after your first couple of employees, when you hand off management by abdication, not delegation. For some reason, the widgets have scratches on them, or they come unglued all the time. In other words, your employees aren’t doing as good as you did when you wore every hat. It only gets worse as you get a larger workforce, until you get so stressed, that you throw your hands up and go back to a one man shop.

So why are the big guys big? The big guys had systems in place to control and reproduce everything worth doing right. Everything! They had a system to teach every employee that process. See, every time you are getting something done, you have to think how can this be reproduced exactly right, thousands more times. A franchise mentality! This is a major shift in thinking for a technician. Many folks start businesses because they don’t want their lame incompetent boss directing their life, and they can make widgets better anyways. The problem is technicians aren’t good at running businesses. Managers and Entrepreneurs are, so you must give them space to work.

My favorite idea found in the E-Myth is not to create a business to work at, but create a business that works. Every piece of your business should be well documented, and adhered too. It should provide a structure for employees to flourish, a “game” for them to play. They can flourish and earn rewards by following the rules. It’s a rule of thumb to document the position well enough for the lowest skilled employee can become great under it. Money saver!

There are more tasty morsels that I didn’t mention, and some good insight on what your system should look like. Worth a read if you ask me.

I love good blogs, and important indicator for me is blog’s insight. Good information is important, but good insight is the ability to communicate the information in a different and compelling way. Insight is the one or two sentences you read the whole book for. One blog that has good insight is YoungEntrepreneur .

This blog reminds me of my previous post, “hire slow, fire fast”. Finding good blogs is similar to finding good employees in that you can find good blogs by reading good blogs, and you always have to fire, or remove the lowest 10%. I guess the parallels stop there.

YoungEntrepreneur is worth the reading just for their Modeling Masters section alone. In this section you get small nuggets of entrepreneurial gold from the masters of business. From Warren Buffet, “The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.” From John H. Johnson “Dream small dreams. If you make them too big, you get overwhelmed and you don’t do anything.”. Tasty, I know! Read the Modeling Masters section alone and see if you aren’t locked on the screen screen for 30 minutes.

I happen to be a young entrepreneur, and they really pegged me good as their target audience. In my opinion, this is a much more useful site, in my current stage, than many other highly touted ramblings.

Thanks for the blog YongEntrepreunuers, and keep the insight coming. Oh, and thanks for not posting about iPhones.

One of the first lessons Lawson Barttell, my mentor taught me was to “hire slow, and fire fast”. What does it mean? Take time on the hiring process and make sure you have the right person. Then secondly fire employees quickly if they give you good reason. The ability to fire folks quickly is a good one to have. It’s one way to save a company from corporate cancer; a non-motivated workforce.

I see two main benefits to hiring slow and firing fast. First, your team quality increases. If you continually shave off your bottom 10%, while hiring the best candidates, your team will really shine. Some of my best employees have come from word of mouth. I wouldn’t be able to say that if below average employees were sending their friends my way. They would be on the same level because folks usually have friends that are similar to themselves.

Secondly, everyone knows you expect excellence, and won’t settle for half-hearted attempts. Fire that deserving employee, and just watch the passions in the workplace grow. Down the road it will lead a higher retention rate.

While this is counter-intuitive and seemingly unproductive in some circles, I try desperately to live it. There are even personal benefits to living this selfless mantra. Think of it this way: how does one climb the social latter? By making others feel special, wanted, liked, important. Now I consider that a lucky side-effect, and not the reason to consider others better.

This mind-frame is difficult, and something I must practice whenever I remember. I find it especially difficult with people that are pompous. Imagine looking at the person checking your food out at the store: he/she probably doesn’t have a great education; I am better paid; I am dressed better and maybe better spoken, yet, they are better than me!

Sure they are better than me. How do I get in this mind-set without just lying to myself? Those are all outward appearances, and I really have no idea what they are capable of. John H. Johnson started with nothing, as did many other business greats. I consider the person in question either better than me at what they are currently doing, and therefore fulling their duty, or, consider them an dormant seedpod, who will hopefully find their inspiration and direction and become great.

Now look how I can treat this person. With the same respect I would give an admired or wealthy personality.

I want to build a team of greats, so I will treat them as such.

ps. Sorry to all the great people I have fired. You will be great for someone else ;)

The fun part about business is the raw challenge of having to face SO many important decisions. It’s not that these are simply a sea of inch-deep and mile-wide decisions, but truly miles deep and wide. It’s like drilling for oil. Look at the decisions you have to make today: you can create a new product, you can re brand your old one, you can expand or change your target audience, you can hire at a low or high wage, you can school or buy books, you can buy books from well established authors or fringe insightful ones, you can get take funding from the big guy, go find a few small guys, or bring your product to market and self fund. I faced all those this month! There is seemingly no clear path. Ambiguity!

To illustrate, consider Microsoft and the Zune. You have to ask yourself, with the billions they spend in R&D, don’t you think some important decision makers in the Microsoft team thought “hmmm, we could make mp3 players much better”, even before the iPod? I am sure of it. However, they didn’t release their mp3 until 5 years AFTER the iPod.

The sea of ambiguity takes style, and intuition to navigate. Microsoft lives in the same world that Mac does, and with way more capital, but the didn’t display the clarity of mind. Maybe all their market research is hurting them! Steve Job’s isn’t big on market research for a reason. I don’t think he is any type of strategic genius, just a great sense of what he wants.

Interestingly, Warren Buffet dealt with ambiguity by lessening it. When living in New York he told reporters he had 100 ideas a day come across his desk, when he only wanted a good one every year. That’s why he moved back to his home town of Omaha. Not a bad system.

Look at so many large companies today that started of with such clarity. Some still have it, others don’t. Ford was maligned for doubling employer wages and cutting hours. That move shortly double Ford’s income. Though, they don’t seem to display that same clarity now don’t you think?

The Success Commandment prevails: Thrive in Ambiguity. Enjoy the sea of decisions miles deep and wide, and know what you want out of it. The folks that can’t will never be seen as powerful leaders.

Grady Booch, a brainbreacher in the software architecture world, put such importance on a programmer’s ability to abstract properly. You can listen to the wonderful podcast by following the link at the end of this article. Booch describes how all complex systems are broken down to become simple through abstraction. Think of abstraction as organizing information. As wikipedia puts it:

Abstraction is the process or result of generalization by reducing the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, typically in order to retain only information which is relevant for a particular purpose.

Have you ever soldered a circuit board? You wouldn’t be thinking of capacitors, resistors and ferrets when you are trying to enter a certain time into the microwave, even though they are involved. If you do, it might hinder your ability to judge the right time. McConnell (book) says maintaining different levels of abstraction and allowing modules only to only communicate to other modules in their strata is called Stratification in software engineering. Perfectly termed! Think of the strata of the sky with it’s troposphere, mesosphere .etc.

Now the ability to abstract, and the importance of recognizing when to abstract is critical for programmers. If your engineer can’t create software with clean and well thought out stratification, you will soon find a mess on your hands when your skilled engineers give you a piece of the their mind. This doesn’t mean if a fellow can abstract any way he will can be a good engineer; I have seen folks that can abstract up well, or down well, and not the other way. This creates problems. If your engineer can’t abstract up in the hierarchy of information, conversations can be very awkward, and design lacking. If they can’t abstract down to the complex, they will never get anything done.

One way to test this is good long technical conversations durring the initial interview. If they can make your nontechnical colleague understand how their system works, we might have some abstraction problems.

Links
Gary Booch podcast
Gary’s Blog
Code Complete 2

Naming a piece of software in a very busy name space (the web), isn’t an easy task. If I was naming a pizza parlor in Fresno California, my home town, I could easily come up with 100 names that wouldn’t step on any toes. Easy! Try such names on the www, and you hit a wall: you are forced to create a great name, or a super lousy one! My current task is to find an appropriate name for SpiceRack .

Difficulties naming on the web

• Instantly can cause problem with other large companies
• Has to be search-able – try and name your product “Audience”
• Needs appropriate domain availability

General Naming guidlines

• Sizzle factor / likability
• Positive image association
• Protect-ability
• International considerations – bad example

Naming Guidelines specific to my software

• Must be Gender neutral
• Should have link to product category

SpiceRack, as a name for desktop slide presentation software isn’t terrible. Among others, one problem lies in that it doesn’t have any association to the product category. This wouldn’t be a problem if I was creating the software for Mac, to be packaged with a well known software suite. Keynote is packaged with iWork. Keynote is a great name in fact, but I don’t (yet) have a multi-billion dollar vehicle to transport such abstract a brand as SpiceRack. Look at the abundance of abstract or arbitrary names found in the dead pool . It certainly can work, but I am playing it as smart as my little brain will allow me. This is a brainbreaching exercise!

After many hours of the naming game and input from my wise mentor, we are left with a couple of nice names: ScreenBird, SlideQ and ScreenDuo. In that order. It’s a close race between SlideQ and ScreenBird for me, but ScreenBird is so brandable, and has such positive image association: flying, soaring, elegance. Slide is a bit more sleek and technical. Check out the logo contest going on for ScreenBird
In addition, all those domains were available for me to purchase. “Let your presentation soar” would be a great slogan, if folks actually cared about those. This is a strong start, and more to come on the subject.

If you should find yourself in this worriment, check these out:
NameBoy
Bustaname
MetaGlossory

Cross platform, open source, modified GNU, decent layout, this project has my attention. After my two day honey-moon phase with it, I have formed a strong opinion.

What InstallerJammer is: an excellent program for run-of-the-mill, cross platform installs.

What InstallJammer isn’t: visually custimizable.

Well, technically it is highly theme-able, but requires an extensive knowledge of tcl, tk, and a tun of global data defined in a few different places. Not exactly point and click. I am not complaining, because this program is given to use freely as a gift by Dameon. An installer should be two clicks tops, more for the advanced options area. This would be VERY difficult to come buy unless it was scripted for me by Dameon himself. It’s sadly this way with most installers.

InstallerJammer is heavily programmed in tcl, 23,000 lines of it, with the help of c, and no object orientation. I am betting we won’t see any substantial releases from now on. Since programming productivity goes substantially down after routines hit 200 lines, and bugs and improvement time goes way up, it’s a safe bet.

You must think I am crazy having such high standards for a simple installer, but that’s the beginning of the user experience for SpiceRack . Why spend years in development, and plenty of cash, and let the customer experience a 10 click, drab install?

Sadly, I shall return to Advanced Installer , after having already tried NSIS and a few other lesser known packages. I will try Installsheild in the future, but products with 30 different pricing structures and hard to use websites generally aren’t well designed.

Update, Jun 08:
Well Damon was sensitive enough to the word on the street, and sent me an email asking for suggestions. That shows desire. He posted a response on his forums

Since this time, I have had considerable brain hemorrhages trying to use Advanced installer. Bleh. I had to switch, so I went back to Innosettup, ISTool. I am not able to theme or simplify it as much as I would like, but considering the the alternatives, it’s the best for me now.

Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s as we know it today, worked 30 years in restaurant supply sales before making his big move. He knew what worked with customers, and was known to give his clients such advice. Such valuable insights he gained from knowing his costumers over so many years. Along came an opportunity to make a restaurant his way, and out comes McDonald’s.

Charles Merrill had a bottom up philosophy, responding to the public’s lack of education about stock ownership, gave them free education through his advertising. Listening to his customers more deeply than anyone else in his market guided the sale of his service.

Cyrus McCormick, inventor of reaper, would tweak, change, and overhaul his product based on product exhibitions and feedback. 70% of America’s workforce was in farming before the reaper.

Maintaining a tight feedback loop allows the product to meet those needs which you can easily miss.

Notice the commandment doesn’t read “Your customer knows best”. They don’t always. Your customer knows best their problems. It’s your job to translate their problems into your product. If folks new what they wanted, they would be buying Ruben Studdard’s cd’s by now. America voted, right?

Too many times do we see business of high status distance themselves from their customer. Consider this: You have a killer idea for your LG phone. An idea that probably hasn’t been thought of, that would add value and simplicity. How many people would it have to go through before it ever reached the product manager’s desk, and in what condition?

Jun 08 Update :  Closely related to this article is the entry onVOC

Also, Cheers to Ohmar Amad of Commapping.com.  He stay’s tight to his customer base, and that’s rare.

Without fail you will be faithful to whomever you are romantic with. Romance isn’t something cheap or quickly reached. It comes from seeing your loved one’s true colors, and sharing special experiences together. Product experiences, although less meaningful, share some of the same qualities.

In the branding pyramid below, notice the order. The lower form the foundation, and the means to the upper. My product must first have good core functionality. This means solid features such as the ability to undo, arrange, save, to have stability. Only then can we move to a killer experience. This takes style, and the discipline not to show off all your teams programming talent just because you can. What is my target customer reaction? “Woh, nice”.

Upon this foundation can we start to coax feeling of loyalty, sometimes irrational preference, and strong attachment. Romance! (Cheesy, I know)