The less I know, the better the company works.

I mean, at least it seems that way. I’ve tried both ways – micromanaging and completely hands-off. I tend to err on the side of  “find the right person for the job and then let them do it.”  It’s the Jim Collins approach: “First Who, then What.”

Here’s an excerpt from JC hizzelf. I know I usually stick with quotes, but JC can have as much space on my blog as it takes…

Disciplined people: “Who” before “what”

You are a bus driver. The bus, your company, is at a standstill, and it’s your job to get it going. You have to decide where you’re going, how you’re going to get there, and who’s going with you.

Most people assume that great bus drivers (read: business leaders) immediately start the journey by announcing to the people on the bus where they’re going—by setting a new direction or by articulating a fresh corporate vision.

In fact, leaders of companies that go from good to great start not with “where” but with “who.” They start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.

Don't mess with Mookie

I’m bolding the hell out of that last part. The right people, doing the RIGHT things.

At my company we have these problems

1.) A person doing too many things and the work is rushed or dropped into limbo.

2.) A person in the right area, but doing things beyond their capabilities/talents.

Problem #1 is one I’m more familiar with, as I’ve been guilty of trying to do too much (and as I said before, screw trying...)  There you need to figure out how to delegate responsibilities so that you’re overseeing the process, but not the details. I encourage people to be AWARE of the issues – you should ALWAYS be up-to-date with the matters – but that information should be synthesized and distilled to the high-points with the administrator or middle management.

Problem #2 is a tough one because it takes a deeper insight on the process. The questions I tend to ask is

• can the person grow their capabilities in that area?
• Do they want to?
• Do you have the time for them to do so?

If the answer is No at any of these, you’ve narrowed down the options significantly. A line cook may never be an executive chef. Not a problem – the world needs line cooks. Just make sure you’re expectations  (and theirs) are on the same level of understanding. If the answer is yes, then you need to hone in on their passion and build a process to get that person from point A to point B

But once you have those problems  locked down, you’re in a position where you’re free to actually PLAN, STRATEGIZE, and think long-term. That’s the goal. Get that process running and most of the day-to-day stuff you’ll be blissfully “in the dark”

Excerpt from an interview with Charles Bukowski:

Charles: ‘What do you do? How do you write, create?’ You don’t, I told them. You don’t try. That’s very important: ‘not’ to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It’s like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks you make a pet out of it

I hate wasting time trying to do something. Trying is for the liberal arts majors and the bored. At this stage in life, you know if you can do it or not. Stop – stop – stop fuckin’ trying to do anything, ever. People will waste a day picking at a piece of work that they just don’t know how to do. They’ll fret over an email response to whoever, paralyzed with indecision or worry.  There’s too many people who use the term “trying” as a blanket reason for why they’re not doing anything.

Reasonable excuses:

• Some things are hard and need time to think through.
• Some things require trial and error.
• Some things are so important you need to get them right.

My brother Dom came up with a great response for people trying too hard: there has to be an easier way. Sounds stupid right? No – it’s actually very true. If you’re struggling at something, anything, I am 95% confident someone, somewhere has an easier solution and you probably haven’t found it. For the love of all things sacred, some people approach a problem like it’s going to define their life’s purpose. You don’t spend  half a day’s work researching travel tickets, and that’s a decision where you pick an aluminum tube to throw your body into the air 30k feet and hurdling to the ground at mind-numbing speeds.  No one who truly knew the dangers of planes would ever rationally take them (I take them all the time, but I’m not feigning being rational).

Find a book, find a website, find a colleague – find whatever it is you’re going to need to execute. But don’t just try to get it right. And know what you’re capable of and what you’re not.

I remember when I had a real job, like when I was totally unqualified and could potentially get fired.  – me explaining to an employee why I hated my work-days after college.

I don’t ever want to work for a living again. Working for a living is extremely stressful. In fact, I hate the word “stressful” because the word does not describe the hopeless world of  numbing fear, depression, and impotency I endured, when I worked twelve-hour days at an vile-spirited law firm in mid-town manhattan.

If I ever find myself answering to such depraved souls again, I will grab a sword and “take care of business”.

There’s a joy and purpose in waking up every day to true living. Building anything is strenuous, difficult at times, frustrating, but it’s not what I would call “work.” Or at least, it’s not fair to call what I do daily “work” and what I did at law firms “work.” Frankly, I was just trying to punch a clock, stay out of responsibility, and get as much money as I could for doing as little as possible. Calling both “work” is the equivalent of describing  a one-night stand and the relationship with my fiance both “love.”

What is best in life? "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women." - Conan

There is no button to press to make someone press a button.

Read that again.  It makes sense the second time around.

No matter what kind of software you buy, new process you implement, or vision you give to make your team efficient, unless they have the will to DO you’re stuck in the water.

You can motivate your team through inspiration and charisma.

That will get people to push the buttons.

You can threaten, cajole, and demand.

That will get people to push the buttons.

You can just push the button yourself and try to leverage “leading by example”.

You can…eliminate buttons altogether?

As a manager of people, getting someone to push the button themselves without guidance or convincing is my #1 challenge on the job. I spend a lot of time using every tool in the toolbox to figure out how to “push the button” forward. My advice to managers who interact with their team daily: you should be spending 75% of your day thinking about this. My advice to employees: you should spend the same as well. For both sets of people, it’s your career: you should know why and how to do it.

Here’s a post I’ve wanted to do for a while

From the movie Good Fellas:

Henry Hill: [narrating] Now the guy’s got Paulie as a partner. Any problems, he goes to Paulie. Trouble with the bill? He can go to Paulie. Trouble with the cops, deliveries, Tommy, he can call Paulie. But now the guy’s gotta come up with Paulie’s money every week, no matter what. Business bad? Fuck you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? Fuck you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning, huh? Fuck you, pay me

“Fuck you, pay me ” is my favorite business policy. It originates with clients or partners who owe you money, but I find it applies with SO MUCH MORE. You do good work, you deserve to be recompensed. You hold up your end, you’re expecting reciprocity. And if you mess up on delivering your end, excuses valid or not won’t mean a damn. Or at least, if you’re going to run a successful business founded on excellent customer service, excuses won’t mean a damn. You can’t have responsibility without accountability. If your name is on the contract, the dates are binding, the product is binding, the price is binding.

PS. “Good Fellas always scares the bejezzus out of me…”

Eating with a Dinero has a 73% probability that you're going to get killed.

A talent somewhat above mediocrity, shrewd and not too sensitive, is more likely to rise in the world than genius.
Charles Horton Cooley

I pride myself in being exceptionally un-exceptional in just about everything I do. I’m a passable dancer, I’m not particularly clever,  I wouldn’t be your first-pick on any sport you know, I have a third-grader understanding of physics…the list goes on.

There’s nothing I can point to and say “hey, I’m really good at THAT!”  I’m actually grateful for my lack of skills.

Here’s why….

Talented people can get into a rut

 I’ve met a lot of people who were VERY exceptional at a few things, and they made those few things the “reason for living.” So what happens to the dancer who can no longer get on heels? Or the doctor who becomes bored at her work? Just because you’re good at your profession, doesn’t mean you’ll love it (although there’s a high correlation between the two). But if you’re not very good at any ONE thing, you can average your way through a bunch of weird and interesting jobs. Plus, there’s a segment of jobs that it’s hard to tell the difference between “mediocre” and “great”, which make for good jobs for people with mediocre skills e.g –  Librarians, dolphin-trainers, and most administrative positions in any industry, ever.

Life make most skills obsolete eventually

If you’re an professional athlete, you have a set time-limit on your skillset. After age 40 you’re probably going to need a new career (sports anchor anyone?) That sucks. How are your awesome guitar skills going to help you when you’re raising a family? Better to pick up new skills as quickly as old ones become irrelevant. Mediocre-ly talented people such as myself are used to this: we just accept that we’ll need to learn more stuff, and aren’t sentimental on not being able to do the old stuff (we weren’t very good in the first place, ya know)?

Most stored knowledge is wonderful but unnecessary. 

I have a strong basis that it’s more important to “learn to learn” and to be able to aggregate most information  rather than memorize information in an attempt to become a biomass library. You’re just not able to store the info, and recall it better, than a computer. No worries. In life you need to know different things as you get older.  While you can read and debate Nicomachean Ethics for several years with your peers, and yes it’ll definitely make you a better person, it probably doesn’t solve 90% of the issues that crop up in the course of Life. Being mediocre-ly skilled means being willing to be practical on the learning, get what you “need to know” and move forward.

Notice this: you can be an awesome person, but still have mediocre skills. Mediocre skills does not make you mediocre. Also, just because you’re not skillful doesn’t mean you need to be disdainful of those superbeings. Finally, just because you don’t know a lot, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be constantly learning. Read/discuss/see as much as you can! As P-Diddy says….

It’s funny how ideas long thought dead come back, blinking awake again. One of the challenges I find in StartUpLand is trying to kick habits that produce tangible results short-term at the expense of long-term growth. Tendencies like making an employee multi-task on various roles – i.e my developer answering the phones, helping pitch projects, as well as coding. This was “necessary” when we were lean and tight-knit and in the early stages of getting it done, son!  These days, the budgets are bigger, the roles are more specialized, but I still find this zombie-idea rise up again in the conference room.

Let's keep up these Scrum sprints! Yo, that sh*t works for EVERYTHING!

It’s hard to put to rest old habits like these because they’re part of the recipe of what made the company a success today. But sticking these old methods will only lead to disaster. I’m making a concerted effort to think how the company should be six months from now, and laying the groundwork for that structure TODAY. It’s the only way I can think to kick these zombie habits. As FakeGrimlock says BUILD FOR TODAY GUARANTEE YOU OBSOLETE BY TOMORROW.

Here’s my hookah-liquor induced epiphany:

A startup is a chance for people to clear the air and work together in a new way.

Think about it! Matrix-model businesses, scrum methodology, agile-management: these are (relatively) new ways of getting things done. These ways of working didn’t exist 50 years ago. We don’t have to work the same way everyone’s worked for centuries. And if we don’t work the same way, then maybe how power is structured, and thereby how compensation is structured, don’t have to work the same way.

I’m not talking a Marxist movement of the workers seize ownership of the means of productions, or that we rule by committee.

Brilliant idea of the week:

Alka-seltzer soft drinks.

Alka-seltzer has caffeine, pain-relievers, and carbonation. But it tastes horrible. Why not make a soft drink with caffeine + pain-relievers that tastes good? It’ll be the Four-Loko of pain-killers! Have a hangover? Pound a six-pack and you’re good to go. Feeling a stomach-ache coming on? Head over to the vending machine for relief.  This would go great for the elderly, who get prescribed Ibuprofen to thin their blood. This will do that and give’em the pep to get a move on.

Of course, if someone drinks too much of this soft drink, they might overdose and cause serious damage to their body.  And the litigious society will bury anyone who tried this endeavor. Consumer advocates would demand the boycott of this product before it even got to the shelves.  In fact, this’ll never fly as a viable product.

But c’mon – i definitely had you convinced for a second there, right?

Most great and disastrous ideas start off that way: they sound great, but when you dig deeper you find a whole host of reasons why they won’t work. Usually these ideas are solving a problem. The problem solved by Alka-selter Soft Drinks is this: the present-day medicine is effective but tastes horrible.

Most entrepreneurs will tell you in order for a new business to succeed, your new service/product/business is supposed to solve a problem exists.  That’s a good place to go, but I don’t think it’s 100% true. I don’t know if Twitter*, 24/7 news channels, most video games or Oreo Cookies “solve a problem that exists”. So I’d qualify that presumption with “build something that solves a problem or hits someone’s pleasure button.”

We call these “luxury items/services”. In theory, since they’re non-essential they should be victims to fickleness of the crowd’s attention-span or to the economics of the world. But here’s the thing: luxury items and services actually hold up well in the marketplace. You don’t actually need to do something useful to make money! That means my Alka-seltzer Soft drink, which is potentially useful, may get beat by something completely useless but is entertaining (or luxurious)….like Pinterest.com. Of course, is’s probably better to be both.

So good luck with your next brilliant/disastrous idea: hopefully it’ll be both useful AND entertaining (and let’s face it – most new products/services are….)

*if you think Twitter is useful, then please substitute the example with the following: Stuffed monkeys, Yogurt-covered raisins, or buttons….any kind of buttons.

Sorry I ranted about employees being screwed.

One thing I hate to do is rail against the injustice of something and then not follow-up with a proposed solution or course of action. I prefer to act as if I have agency in the situation, mainly because I think people feel better when they “think” they have control over their lives and slightly because I’m a control-freak.

Here’s some follow-up thoughts:

1.) How employees at startups are screwed

Job security’s an illusion in any company. FedEx, Home Depot, all the big brands are doing layoffs, and you can lose your job quickly there as you could in any startup.  In this day and age, the only guarantee for jobs is that your skills are relevant and you’re not a creep.  And sometimes, the latter doesn’t matter. The great thing about startups is that you MEET A LOT OF PEOPLE and you’ll find your network expands tremendously. One day your client becomes your next business partner, or your new source for freelancer talent, or an angel investor, or referrer of new biz. It’s pretty great.

2.) The company’s health.

I firmly believe that your health, the health of your co-workers, and management will dictate 90% of the results of your company. Companies are not people, as Romney will tell you; but without people there are no companies. There have been plenty of times when I didn’t know the future of my company clearly, but I KNEW that if I kept the morale of the people in the company high we could weather most downturns. It’s a tribal mentality.

3.) How I’m taking advantage of employees

It’s still my opinion that the game is rigged. It’s true that managers/Founders take most of the risk, the burden of management (there’s a LOT), and reap the bulk of rewards for the risk and pressure.  But it’s also true that employees are doing tremendous work, and they are RISKING as well. They’re taking a risk to be working with you. Founders can’t get fired, employees can. Founders can give themselves a bonus, or shut down operations, or re-structure benefits….but employees can’t.  Here’s my advice for employees – have frank and frequent conversations on how to get stock options/equity/or compensated fairly for your efforts. And do those conversations when you, the employee, is ready. Don’t let the employer make the first consideration – the framework of negotiation is pre-set at that stage then.  Better to be pushed down from a high number than claw up from a low.

So hopefully that puts a better perspective regarding The Whole Story.