Thinking Outside of the Box is Neither Cheap or Easy
This is a good article about pushing boundaries for how a company is supposed to be operated. What struck me most, and what I think about Cheezburger often, is how “living outside of the box” takes intentional effort and commitment of resources. For example…
What [37Signals] learned is that adding a dedicated manager and creating a hierarchy is not the only way to create structure. Instead, we decided to let the team be entirely self-managed. There’s still a team leader, but that role rotates among the team every week. Each week, a new leader sketches out the agenda, writes up the notes about problems and performance, and steps up to handle any troubled customer interactions.
I will assert that this didn’t happen organically or automatically. 37Signals management intentionally thought about how they wanted their company to be operated, and was willing to devote the resources to develop, train and operate the company that way. I promise you that it was not easy or cheap. You get what you pay for, right?
I think a lot of companies want to be outside of the box like this, and give it a lot of lip service. Many are intentional about the organization, but lack the will to devote the resources. In other words, to mix metaphors, when the rubber meets the road they’re hesitant to put their money where their mouth is.
Every week a new leader……
Pondering on that, especially as a single founder of a 2 1/2 year old startup, the value in letting others run the show, let others delegate, good stuff.
I have a theory I’m calling the 2nd order, and goes like this. If I own a computer store, I don’t market computers, I market service you get after buying one. If I have a site about taxes, I market what you can do with the return $. If I have a problem I do a search for how to solve x. But when I land on a site, I’m not looking for x, I’m actually seeing if I might get y and z.
When I took karate as a kid, I didn’t aim to hit the front of the bag, I aimed to hit the back and when the front stopped my path it was met with a lot of force.
My advice, don’t think about what you can do right now. Just think about what you want to do tomorrow and you see how today’s fall into that plan almost automatically.
Scott
17 Jun 11 at 8:20 am
[...] to subscribe my blog. Here's the Top 5 Reasons Why You Should!TweetFrom last week’s post on thinking out side of the box, a commenter (also named Scott) left this very insightful thought… I have a theory I’m [...]
A Theory Called “The 2nd Order” at Scott Porad
20 Jun 11 at 9:57 am