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Silicon Valley is full of companies with great stories. We’ve all heard of them, Google, Facebook, Apple, Netflix, some have even been made into great movies like Jobs and The Social Network. These stories inspire people to try and create their own success stories. The sad fact is that 90% of startups fail and those are the ideas that even make it the startup stage.
Movies have a unique way of creating reality. I was watching John Wick 2 last night where they are in a very decorative hotel lobby in Rome, where in reality it’s actually the bar of an upscale hotel with statues added. I remember being in Venice and trying to hunt down a church from an Indiana Jones movie. When I found it, it turns out they only used the outside for the film and the interior was all created on a film set with no link to reality at all. There are many differences from the Social Network and the real Facebook story, by the director’s own admission they were more interested in telling the most interesting story rather than telling the real story, which is why Mark Zuckerberg refused to help them with it. My point is, live the book, write the movie. When you are thinking about starting your own company you must forget about success, forget about the movie. That’s for Future You to worry about, if and when you make it. You don’t hear many stories about the failed startups. History is written by the winners, so you can see why history sounds so rosey. The few failure stories out there are usually still written by the winners. How they failed so much before they succeeded. You hear how Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates all dropped out of school or college. These are some of the few successful people who dropped out and made it. Most people that dropped out did not become billionaires. The reality is, it’s hard work, really hard work, with a lot of sacrifice needed to even have a chance of success. For the fairy tale to exist, one must have eaten a few poisonous apples. The problem is that we all want to be an overnight success. As Jeff Bezos said, Amazon’s overnight success took 10 years. If you want guidance on how to be successful you need to focus on what you’re doing and not on the outcomes. Ignore the day to day results at first because success doesn’t just happen like in the movies. You need to work your arse off, and you need to do it everyday. Have a vision, a goal. Work out what you want, clearly define it and work out why you want to achieve this vision. What were you born to achieve? When you are passionate about this vision and you know you can make a difference, it becomes more than that, it becomes a calling. A calling is something you owe the world and you cannot stop until you deliver it. When you have a clear vision, the work becomes easier. Hard work becomes less effort. Once you have that vision, don’t let people put you off. So many people will tell you it’s too much hard work or your dreams are too big, ignore them. Believe in yourself. Before Roger Bannister ran the 4 minute mile it was impossible. Once he broke it, it was broken again the same year. Once a goal becomes real, suddenly people believe and commit to trying harder. Suddenly it’s not impossible Above all else, work your arse off. Success does not come easy. Yes there will be late nights, and so much coffee you’ll have wished you'd bought stock. There will be failures and close calls. There will be stress and sacrifice. But if you have a clear vision and you are committed, you can succeed. You won't succeed by half assing. You won't succeed by giving up. If you want something take it. Be prepared to give it all and more. After all, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it. Don’t become another statistic, live the book and then we’ll make your movie.
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A theme that has infiltrated many areas of business these days is the iterative process. Yes, it has been around for a long time when it comes to Agile development but it is so much more than that these days and there are many other business areas that are benefiting from it.
A core benefit of Agile development is the iterative process. It was the reason I moved across from Waterfall development, I wanted to know how to get faster feedback. I was frustrated by the fact that it took a long time to get my software in the hands of the user and by the time it was, it was either outdated or I found out that the requirements I had been given were not entirely accurate; when I had , in my eyes, already finished development. Being able to get a regular feedback loop in place significantly improved this process. At first I felt it was restrictive as I was not releasing my software as quickly as before. Bugs or previously unthought out criteria being found by QA, meant that I wasn’t able to consider things done as quickly as before. However this frustration soon subsided after I found that my software wasn’t coming back to me after I had considered it done. This is when I really started to appreciate the fast feedback loop of the iterative process, despite the extra work it needs in the short term.
So what other business areas can benefit from this approach? Company objectives and personal objectives when approached using OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) can follow this theme. Doing away with the annual performance goals for employees and the months of planning that goes into setting company goals that are usually over a year out of date by the time they are delivered, can be a thing of the past. By setting quarterly goals for both the company (departments) and employees, we can add more flexibility and focus on delivering meaningful goals. If the climate changes, the goals change. Budgets are set accordingly so we are not wasting (insert currency of choice here) on outdated requirements. Whatever the most important area of focus is for employees can be adjusted for the quarter. Heck, you can even adjust them within the quarter if you are feeling that crazy! We should not be getting to the end of the year or even the quarter with questions over progress. The company, the employees, the managers, should all know what the current status of progress towards the goal is. There should not be surprises at the end of the year, where a company or employee finds out they didn’t do enough or the effort they put in was great but due to xyz, what we set out to do was no longer the game changing priority it was when we committed the company budget to it. Over the last couple of years working closely with CS (Customer Success), one of my pet peeves has become not knowing if a customer is happy. At the outset of the relationship CS works with the customer and Sales team to establish what they are paying us for and off we go. Under no circumstances should the next time we talk to the customer be when we are reviewing their contract renewal. All this leads to is panic, running around fixing things and and building out last minute features to make sure a Save Plan is fulfilled. To avoid this unnecessary panic, customer QBRs (Quarterly Business Reviews) are the answer. If you have thousands of customers then meeting all of them quarterly might not be realistic. This all depends on your business model. I’m not expecting Netflix to call me anytime soon to make sure I renew. If you have lots of customers then maybe reserve the QBRs for the biggest contracts. But if you value a relationship, and by value I mean you can’t afford a nasty surprise at contract renewal time, then make sure you have QBRs. These will make sure you are delighting the customer, your business is providing tangible value to their business, and your roadmaps are aligned to create a meaningful partnership. So, the answer to no surprises is, if you want to ensure you don’t have a job that slowly kills you or bruises that won't heal, make sure you have an iterative feedback loop in your process. |
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