Interrupt your rhythm and spend a few days with me and 80 people in a hurry to make a difference. Over the years I've discovered that these seminars work.
You can details and a link to apply right here. It's March 6, 7 and 8 just outside of New York City.
Having people apply for a seminar is an interesting choice. It certainly takes a lot more time (for you and for us) and also makes it more difficult to promote. In this case, I think it's worth it. The people in the room with you are as important (sometimes more important) than the person on stage. The connections and support and inspiration you get from those around you have a significant impact on who you will become.
We're limiting applications to 200, on a first-come, first-served basis, and then alerting successful applicants after a day or two.
The goal is simple: to create a posture of forward motion, a platform you can use to elevate your work, your company and your team.
You can find the details (and some photos) on this page. It's not inexpensive, and it's not for everyone, but for those that can find the time and urgency to step up and come, I hope it will be a turning point for you.
January 22, 2015
Optimistic time seems like a good idea. "We'll ship in January." "The conference will start at noon." "I'll be there in ten minutes."
The hope is that the expectation of completion will raise our expectations and increase the chances that something will actually happen.
In fact, though, there are huge costs to optimistic time. When you announce things based on optimism, the rest of the world you're engaging with builds plans around you and your announcement. And the cost of the person who doesn't have your software or is sitting around a meeting room for hours waiting is high indeed.
The alternative is honest time. Time without recourse or negotiation. The Metro North train leaves at 5:52. Not 5:55, no matter how much you want it to wait.
The software ships, the conference starts–at precisely when we say it will. So the world plans on it and depends on it and effectiveness grows.
It doesn't ship because it's ready. It ships because it's due.
(Amazingly, this rule makes things ready a lot more often).
It's a point of view and a contract with yourself. It ships when I said it would.
Where should great programmers choose to work?
[I say 'choose' because anyone who has worked with programmers understands that the great ones are worth far more than the average ones. Sometimes 50 times as much. That's because great programmers are able to architect systems that are effective, that scale, and that do things that other programmers can't imagine until after they're done.]
While this is a post about people who work to become great programmers, I think it applies to most fields, including sales and design.
Many programmers are drawn to famous, hip, growing tech companies. There are literally tens of thousands of programmers working at Apple, Google and Facebook, and each company receives more than a thousand resumes a day.
It might not be a great choice, though. Not for someone willing to exchange the feeling of security for the chance to matter.
The first challenge is freedom: Not just the freedom to plan your day and your projects, but the freedom to try new things, to go out all the way out to the edge, to launch things that might not work.
A key element of freedom is control. Controlling what you work on and how you do it. If you are part of a team of a hundred people working on an existing piece of software, you will certainly learn a lot. But the areas you have control over, responsibility for, the ability to change—are small indeed.
The team that built the Mac (arguably one of the most important software teams in history) was exactly the right size for each member to have freedom and control while also shipping important work.
Alas, when an organization gets bigger, the first technical choice they make is to build systems based on programming jobs that don't need brilliant engineers. The most reliable way to build a scalable, predictable industrial organization is to create jobs that can be done by easily found (and replaced) workers. Which means less freedom and less control for the people who do the work, and more freedom and more control for the organization.
When faced with the loss of freedom and control, many talented people demand an increase in security and upside. That's one big reason (irony alert) that fast-growing companies go public—so they will have the options currency to pay their team handsomely, which puts the future of the company in the hands of Wall Street, which will happily exchange stock price growth for the banality of predictable. This, of course, leads to programmers losing even more freedom and even more control.
It's entirely possible that an industrialized organization is going to change the world, but they're going to do it with you or without you.
The alternative, as talented outliers like Marco Arment have shown us, is to take a good idea (like Tumblr or Overcast) and make it into something great.
The challenges here are that finding a great idea is a lot of work (and a distinct skill) and making it into a company that succeeds is a lot of work as well. Programmers who do both those jobs are often left fighting for the time to do the programming they actually love to do. (Mark Zuckerberg decided to give up serious programming at Facebook, Dave Filo chose not to at Yahoo).
The alternative? Be as active in finding the right place to work as great founders are in finding you. The goal might not be to find a famous company or even a lucrative gig. Instead, you can better reach your potential by finding the small shop, the nascent organization, the powerful agent of change that puts you on the spot on a regular basis.
This is a lot of work. Not only do you need to do your job every day, and not only do you need to continually hone your skills and get ever better at your work, but now you're expected to spend the time and energy to find clients/bosses/a team where you are respected and challenged and given the freedom and control to do even better work.
If I were a great programmer, I'd be spending the time to figure out what I'd want my day to look like, then going to events, startup weekends, VC firms and other places where good idea people are found. The best jobs might be the most difficult to find.
Bernie Taupin needed Elton John as much as John needed Taupin.
You can't get away with this strategy of self-selection if you're simply a good programmer. It won't work if you don't have a point of view about your craft and if you need management supervision in order to ship great code. You need to build a trail that proves you're as good as you assert you are. But those are all skills, skills worth acquiring in an age when they are worth more than ever before.
Once you have those chops, though, the onus is on you to choose not to be a cog in a well-oiled machine that will rob you of freedom and control, not to mention the personal development and joy that come with a job where you matter.
To be really clear, it's entirely possible to be a great programmer doing important work at a big company. But those companies must work overtime to create an environment where systems-creep doesn't stifle the desire and talent of the best people on the team.
The naive person wonders, "how come so many great architects build iconic buildings early in their career?" In fact, the truth is:
doing the work that earns a commision for an iconic building makes you into a great architect.
Michael Graves and Zaha Hadid didn't wait for someone to offer them a great project. They went and got it.
[If this resonates with you, I might have precisely the right gig for the right programmer. You can read the details here. If you know someone, please share.]
January 21, 2015
Tribes build sideways.
And the connection economy depends on that simple truth. If you care about something, you must not wait for someone in charge to organize everyone else who cares about it.
I'm not sure if Timothy Leary understood the urgency of his words. Today, when it's easier and faster to connect people who are waiting to be connected, inaction is the same thing as opposition.
Ten by ten by ten is a thousand. Do it twice and you're at a million.
January 20, 2015
Today is as good as any to read this essential essay about action and justice. [Audio fans might want to check out this 2015 group reading of the letter, organized by Willie Jackson.]
And now, Acumen is offering a free small-group course/discussion about the letter. All you need to do is find two or three colleagues and sign up here.
"But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word 'tension'."
"Wait" has almost always meant 'Never'."
Taking action is a choice.
Speaking up is a choice.
And yes, standing on the sidelines is a choice.
January 19, 2015
What if you had a big blue phone on your desk, and whenever you needed to, you could pick it up and instantly be connected with a smart and caring tech support expert (from your internet provider, your web host, the airline you use the most…)?
What are the chances you'd ever consider switching to a competitor that didn't offer similar service just to save a few bucks?
The current model of big company support is to throw undervalued, undertrained, underpowered human beings at perplexed customers, frustrating and disrespecting them enough that they shrug and give up.
These are the chat rooms staffed by people who merely repeat what's on the website.
The phone trees that bury 'talk to a human' at the very bottom of the options (or hide it altogether).
The reps who are rewarded for a short call and punished for escalating you to someone who can help.
And yes, the email correspondents who send notes from addresses to which you cannot reply.
In industries with drive-by customers, people you'll never see again, customer churn is no big deal. But in businesses where the lifetime value of a customer exceeds $15,000 (I'm thinking cable, phones, travel, banking), it's insane to blow someone off so you can save $17 in customer support isn't it?
How to execute this shift? Start with this: Use the conference call functionality built into every phone to create a team of customer advocates. They can even work from home with a cell phone you provide. Your best customers call an advocate, and then the advocate's job is to start calling internal resources until the problem is solved. Reward advocates not for short calls, but for delighted customers.
Start with six advocates and 600 customers and see what happens. The advocates will get smart, fast, about who to talk with and what to say, they'll start to see what works and what's broken, and they'll work to change the organization into one that keeps score of the right things.
Any customer that walks away, disrespected and defeated, represents tens of thousands of dollars out the door, in addition to the failure of a promise the brand made in the first place. You can't see it but it's happening, daily.
I wonder how these companies would act if every day, someone piled $100,000 in cash in the parking lot and lit it on fire. For many companies, the 'please go away' strategy is more expensive than that.
January 18, 2015
For that new video, or that new brochure, or anything you create that you're hoping will change minds (and spread):
What's it for?
When it works, will we be able to tell? What's it supposed to do?
Who is it for?
What specific group or tribe or worldview is this designed to resonate with?
What does this remind you of?
Who has used this vernacular before? Is it as well done as the previous one was?
What's the call to action?
Is there a moment when you are clearly asking people to do something?
Show this to ten strangers. Don't say anything. What do they ask you?
Now, ask them what the material is asking them to do.
What is the urgency?
Why now?
Your job is not to answer every question, your job is not to close the sale. The purpose of this work is to amplify interest, generate interaction and spread your idea to the people who need to hear it, at the same time that you build trust.
You will rarely achieve this with one fell swoop, so be prepared to drip your way through countless swoops until you've earned the privilege of engaging with the audience you seek.
January 17, 2015
I have a friend who can always be counted on to have a great book recommendation handy. Another who can not only tell you the best available movie currently in theatres, but confidently stand behind his recommendations.
And some people are eager to share a link to an article or idea that's worth reading.
Most people, though, hesitate. "What if the other person doesn't like it…"
The fear of being judged is palpable, and the digital trail we leave behind makes it feel more real and more permanent. We live in an ever-changing culture, and that culture is changed precisely by the ideas we engage with and the ones we choose to share.
Sharing an idea you care about is a generous way to change your world for the better.
The culture we will live in next month is a direct result of what people like us share today. The things we share and don't share determine what happens next.
As we move away from the top-down regime of promoted movies, well-shelved books and all sorts of hype, the recommendation from person to person is now the most powerful way we have to change things.
It takes guts to say, "I read this and you should too." The guts to care enough about our culture (and your friends) to move it forward and to stand for something.
We'll judge you most on whether you care enough to change things.
January 16, 2015
[UPDATE: You guys are amazing. Check out what's been posted (so far) ]
Winnie failed.
Winnie Kao, who has been leading special projects over the last few months in my office, has something to share. You can check it out here.
She's running a mutual support sprint to help people get on track (or back on track) with their habit of shipping. Here's how it works: Participants commit to posting 1 blog post every day for 7 days. The goal is to practice shipping with a like-minded community and to push yourself to simply start.
Check out her site and the video where Winnie explains the inspiration for the event and details on how to submit your posts. There'll be a Tumblr page featuring everyone's posts, a daily chat room at noon to connect, tweets with #YourTurnChallenge, and an audiostream broadcast at the end to celebrate.
This is a chance to practice shipping for one week within a community. It might be hard but it’s doable and it might change you. I hope you'll give it a shot.
PS it works even if you haven't read my new book yet.
PPS of course, Winnie didn't fail at all. She's succeeding, because connecting, leading and doing the work are precisely what we all need to do.
January 15, 2015
Explosive action. Training by jumping from a standing start. Not worrying about getting up to speed, but going from standing still to flight.
Not everyone needs to be good at this, but you can bet that most organizations need people who are.
Not, "I'll think about it," or, "I'll ask Susan what her take is," or, "Let's reconvene tomorrow…" but, instead, words like, "go," and "now."
Plyometrics is an attitude, the willingness (the bravery) to try things on small groups, in controlled situations, to say, "here, I made this."
It's not a slipshod way of doing business for your core customers (that's another form of hiding). No, it's the posture of urgency.
Will you leap?
