“Take risks, but keep your overhead low.”

“Crowdsource ideas, but work in stealth mode.”

“Work in an open floor plan to keep communications open but leave your developers alone.”

Is it me or does most business advice feel contradictory?

Here’s my theory:

1.) Specific approaches are valid at specific circumstances in the company.

So perhaps it’s valid to take a risk on a new project, but not take a big risk on a new hire. Fine, I get that.

2.) Advice evolves as the people’s judgement evolves.

So while I was rash and foolish in my youth,  these days my experiences have taught me to be more prudent. Or perhaps my definition of “rash” and “prudent” have evolved, and years from now I’ll look back and say “now I know better…”

I wonder if I’ll ever know “best” – Like, the optimal decision to make for any course of action.

In any case, we see that this matter of contradictory advice, and therefore decision-making, can severely undermind one’s leadership. No one wants to follow a waffler; and no one can really lead without a coherent message. So when a break from a previous stance happens, it’s imperative that the leader realizes that he/she is breaking from the previous course of action and communicates that effectively to their team. Otherwise….it’s just going to look like you have a schizophrenic leader who doesn’t know what he/she is doing or why.

 

“We, the unwilling,led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.” 

— Mother Teresa

I remember first reading that quote when I was 16. In the past years I’ve seen it quoted by army personnel, sports teams, business leaders, religious groups – seems like everyone who struggles feels this way, sometimes. I always thought it was a denigration of spirit. To me it sounds like people are enslaved to a cause rather than liberated it, and by the opportunity to Do Good.

I don’t want people who are unwilling doing anything.

I don’t want to be led by people who are unknowing. If they don’t know, at least they should believe in a cause that’s worth the struggle.

Doing the impossible for the ungrateful is a given: no one can care more than you in the act, unless they’re doing the act.

Having done so much, for so long with no resources, does qualify you with a sense of mettle and purpose but not necessarily the skills to win.

I’d like to re-write this

“We willing, led by the believing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now strong enough to face anything with nothing at all.”

Just a thought for everyone else out there. I hope you are willing, I hope you are led by leaders who believe, and I hope you struggle enough that you’re not afraid to face the impossible with no resources.

 

 

My father taught me that if you have enough will and enough time, you can out-last any opposition. If I see one problem with startups, is that they lose heart too quickly. They cave, they balk, they don’t have the battleship armor of emotional strength to weather the numerous setbacks that will inevitably happen.

Every business plan I’ve ever read (including the ones I wrote) have the same ending:

And when all this happens, we’re all going to be RICH!

Who writes a business plan that says otherwise? No one writes  “And when all this happens, there will also be unforeseeable and heart-draining frustrations, and we’ll all be hovering above survival…”

With D&T, we’ve been unbelievably lucky. I brushed off the original business plan and nearly lost it when I read  that the original goal was to become profitable by year #2, and to hire our first employee by year #3. We’re in year #3 now and we have 23 awesome employees. But this tremendous growth has its own trials – growth this fast “feels” harder than struggling with just a few people. It takes another kind of emotional endurance to figure out how multiple parties, in several cities, can work together.

Emotional endurance is a lot like physical endurance  – you need to train yourself rigorously to be ready for whatever comes. For me, I read as much as I can from others who faced challenges. Right now I’m on Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. Here’s a great quote that I read today.

Words that everyone once used are now obsolete, and so are the men whose names were once on everyone’s lips: Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Dentatus, and to a lesser degree Scipio and Cato, and yes, even Augustus, Hadrian, and Antoninus are less spoken of now than they were in their own days. For all things fade away, become the stuff of legend, and are soon buried in oblivion. Mind you, this is true only for those who blazed once like bright stars in the firmament, but for the rest, as soon as a few clods of earth cover their corpses, they are ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ In the end, what would you gain from everlasting remembrance? Absolutely nothing. So what is left worth living for? This alone: justice in thought, goodness in action, speech that cannot deceive, and a disposition glad of whatever comes, welcoming it as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from the same source and fountain as yourself.

I think of Steve Jobs’ legacy, Packard’s and Moore’s, and the other great technologists and this feels so prescient. We feel like today we are doing such important things, and yet when we look at the past it’s easy to flag in passion because we cannot possibly live up to the past glories. But here’s the silver lining that I think Marcus was getting at, the last portion –  So what is left worth living for? This alone: justice in thought, goodness in action, speech that cannot deceive, and a disposition glad of whatever comes, welcoming it as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from the same source and fountain as yourself.  

 That to me gives me the emotional endurance to outlast any adversity. Well, at least for today.

 

 

Coming to New York in 2001, I realized that the city had(has) a lot of energy. So much energy that I found these things out:

1.) You’ll lose an hour off your regular sleep right off the bat

2.) You’ll find a desperate craving to drink everything from coffee to clamato juice constantly, sometimes simultaneously

3.) You will have that “thing” or “things” which will ground you through the stress.

That “thing” is anything from exercise, drinking , sex, shopping, eating, smoking, video games, watching movies, gambling, artwork, writing, reading the Economist, etc. The list goes on and on, but what all these activities have in common is that they don’t have ANYTHING to do with the stress in your life, and they’re all relaxing or at least engaging in a different way.

Obviously some of these activities are better for you than others. I have a theory that you, and your body, don’t really care if it smokes or if it joins an indoor soccer league to relieve stress. Smoking is definitely easier and the reward is quicker, so sometimes that’s a more obvious choice. But at the end of the day, your body is just looking to relieve stress. Regardless if it’s vices or virtues: your body will gravitate to whatever it thinks will help take for you to get from A to B.

On my personal journey, I realize that if I’m going to make it for the long-haul, I need to replace my personal vices with activities that get the stress-relief portion of my day done, and will give me the energy to endure 12-hour days long-term. So for the past 3 months I chose exercise. I work out 4-5 days a week and recently took up biking to the office (now that the weather permits…)  I take a kickboxing class once a week. This summer I’m looking at doing gymnastics with my brother and (perhaps) some Ultimate Frisbee. I gained 25 pounds since starting this company in 2009, and I’ve decided to lose all that weight. Right now I’m down 9 pounds in 3 months. Which is progress, I’ll take that. Plus, it’s great with the stress.

Everyone already has their “thing” for stress relief. I’m concerned that a lot of people aren’t aware of their “thing” and so instead of choosing their solution, people falls into the activities that may not be ideal in the long-run. Diabetes and unhealthy diets plague both sides of my family. The primary reason is that a good portion of my family deals with stress via over-eating and drinking.

If I had one thing to encourage people: make a list of the things that are stress-reliefs and start assessing which ones you want to focus on and which ones you want to de-emphasize. Personally, I found that you can replace on activity for the other quickly, and realize you didn’t really miss the previous activity.

 

 

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.

 

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.”

 

 

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…”