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Making good decisions is critical
Jeff Hawkins spoke at Stanford recently as part of my favorite podcast, the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders class. I’ve heard him talk about his theory of working smarter, not harder before, and I agreed with the concept, but he added a new twist, which unified some thoughts I’ve had about how to work. I’ve given a lot of thought to the notion that the biggest problem in any startup is working on the wrong thing/waste. I’ve seen surveys, blog posts, videos, etc about it. If you’re in a startup, think back about how company resources have been allocated, and think about what percentage of those were wasted. It’s huge. So, how do you avoid waste? This is where Jeff’s talk comes in – you make good decisions. It seems stupid and simple, but in my experience, it’s really hard to make good decisions. In my opinion, the best decisions are made when people with different opinions and data are able to add to the shared pool of knowledge. However, this rarely works – people anchor themselves on their opinions, data gets ignored, there are other political forces present, people get emotional, etc. So, companies move forward with less-than-optimal decisions and hope that things work out despite them. That’s OK in a big company, to a point (General Motors). In a startup, a few bad decisions mean you’re out of business. Back when I was running First Person Software with Brett Levine, I remember we had long talks about critical decisions trying to collaboratively come up with the best choice. We’d game out various scenarios like a chess game, and come to the best decision. This was a huge advantage for us, as whenever it was time to actually make the decision, we were better prepared, and our collaborative approach led to a much better decision than a solo one. Jeff talks about Nokia being a rubber boot company for a really long time, and then someone started making decisions which led them to become what they are today. Could you be making better decisions in your life? Not that I’m making bad decisions, but I’m sure that if I improved this ability across everything I do, things would be better.
I'm not trying to get ahead
In general, it seems like people are always trying to "get ahead". What or who are we trying to get ahead of? Probably most people would say that they want more money, so that they will be ahead of their peers or someone else. I don't really want to get ahead, I want to have "enough". Of course, the big question is "what is enough?". Probably the best answer is to have enough to be able to do what you want to do. Right now, I don't have "enough" because Mary Ann and I want to be able to live in Marin and raise kids there, with Mary Ann staying home with them when they're young. By my estimates, in order to have reasonable access to jobs and pay to raise kids in decent schools, one needs an annualized income of around $250K. That could go up after Obama takes office since he'll raise taxes on those "rich" people. Back on point, I feel like my peers who are "ahead" of me financially, on the average, aren't necessarily ahead of me in terms of happiness or generally enjoying their lives. Working hard can definitely let you earn more money, but at some point, there are seriously diminishing returns - you end up working all the time and not enjoying your life, sort of like the redhead in the Sex and the City TV show. I love working at home, making cool stuff, learning things and working with smart people all around the world. I hope that I never have to retire from doing that. Now, if I can just get it to pay at least $250K/yr, then personally, I'll feel like I'm WAY ahead!
How to be successful
I listen to a fair number of talks on entrepreneurism and effectiveness and the like, and I've noticed that there a few themes that keep repeating themselves as the keys to success from all these disparate people. - Be truthful. I think Stan Christensen gave the best advice on this one: Wherever you are on the truthful scale, try to move just a little bit more toward the truthful side. I think this makes it easier to implement. I have been doing this, and it's harder than it sounds, mostly because you usually are not truthful when you screwed up, and so you have to put your ego aside and have some humility.
- Apologize. Randy Pausch summarized this well: an apology has 3 parts:
- Say you're sorry
- Take responsibility for screwing up
- Ask what you can do to fix it.
This one is closely tied to the truth one. Pay attention, most people will try to hide their screwups and won't try to fix them. Steve Young talked about following this framework in his marriage. That's a great place to practice it since it's all upside, no risk in getting it wrong. It really works, and it works in the workplace too. If you apologize and ask to fix it, people will really let you off the hook. Bill Clinton and Martha Stewart could have benefited a lot from listening to this one! - Work hard and do the right thing. This one comes in many different forms, but I hear it consistently. If you just work hard and try to do the right thing - you know what that is - then you will have success. I think that Google's "do not evil" company culture is a good manifestation of this. Facebook seems to be trying to make their app platform's rules actually enforce this, which has the double benefit of helping their company, which I find very cool. This one is why I don't like contracts all that much - if I have to pull out a contract after I've done business with someone, then probably they're not someone I should be doing business with anymore. I'd rather do business with someone who is honest and dependable, will do the right thing, and not later screw me on a deal.
OK, go out and be successful!
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