Book Short: Choose Voice!
Book Short: Choose Voice!
I took a couple days off last week and decided to re-read two old favorites. One –Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead — my fourth reading — will take me a little longer to process and figure out if there’s a good intersection with the blog. One would think so with entrepreneurship as the topic, but my head still hurts from all the objectivism. The second — Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, by Albert O. Hirschman — is today’s topic.
I can’t remember when I first read Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. It was either in senior year of high school Economics or Government; or in freshman year of college Political Philosophy. Either way, it was a long time ago, and for some reason, some of the core messages of this quirkly little 125 page political/economic philosophy book have stayed with me over the years. I remembered the book incorrectly as a book about political systems, and I think it was born consciously in the wake of Eugene McCarthy’s somewhat revolutionary challenge to a sitting President Johnson for the Democratic Party nomination in 1968. But the book is actually about business; it’s just about businesses and their customers, not corporations as social structures (the latter being more of an interest to me). Written by an academic economist (I think), the book has its share of gratuitous demonstrative graphs, 2×2 matrices, and SAT words. But its central premise is a gem for anyone who runs an organization of any size.
The central premise is that there are really two paths by which one can express dissatisfaction with a temporary, curable lapse in an organization: exit (bailing), or voice (trying to fix what’s wrong from within). The third key element, Loyalty, is less a path in and of itself but more an agent that “holds exit at bay and activates voice.”
You need to read the book and apply it to your own circumstances to really get into it, but for me, it’s all about breeding loyalty as a means of making voice the path of least resistance, even when exit is a freely available option (few of us run totalitarian states or monopolies, after all). That to me is the definition of a successful enterprise, both internally and externally.
With your customers: make your product so irresistible, and make your customer service so deep, that your customers feel an obligation to help you fix what they perceive to be wrong with your product first, rather than simply complain about price or flee to a competitor.
With your employees: make your company the best possible place you can think of to work so that even in as ridiculously fluid a job market as we live in, your employees will come to their manager, their department head, the head of HR, or you as leader to tell you when they’re unhappy instead of just leaving, or worse, sulking.
With your company (you as employee): make yourself indispensible to the organization and do such a great job that if things go wrong with your performance or with your role, your manager’s loyalty to you leads him or her to give you open feedback and coach you to success rather than unceremoniously show you the door.
Ok, this wasn’t such a short book short — probably the longest I’ve ever written in this blog, and certainly the highest ratio of short:actual book. But if you’re up for a serious academic framework (quasi-business but not exclusively) to apply to your management techniques, this short 1970 book is as valid today as when it was written. Thanks to David Ramert (I am pretty sure I read it in high school) for introducing it to me way back when!
It’s a Sad Day When the Lawyers Take Over
It’s a Sad Day When the Lawyers Take Over
With all due respect to lawyers, of course, Google’s recent decision to start making a legal fuss when people in the media use the word “Google” as a verb is NUTS. Someone, get Marketing on Line 1 — and make it snappy. Steve Rubel wrote about it, as did Jeff Jarvis, and the source material is here.
For the record, anyone who wants to use any of the following words or phrases as a verb, noun, or any other part of speech, may do so at any time: Return Path, Sender Score, Authentic Response, Postmaster Direct. Oh, and then there’s ECOA, the service we pioneered in 2000 that *is* occasionally (in some very small circles) used as a verb!
News Travels Fast
News Travels Fast
Fred’s post was Day 1 of the currently-seems-silly TSA ban on liquids on airplanes. One day later, today, I had the pleasure of traveling from Idaho Falls to Boise and back (one metropolis to the next!), and I noticed almost no difference in security and passenger behavior at either airport.
Most people in line zinged out one bit of sarcastic resignation after the next about the silliness of banning all liquids. My favorite was “next thing you know, we’re going to have to travel naked” — yikes — YIKES! — but as terrorists find new and exciting ways to terrorize us, and as our now-nationalized airport security staff doesn’t seem to understand the phrases “anticipation” or “long-term planning,” this seems like a not-so-silly comment.
Hopefully this hysteria will die down at some point. I do remember for a few weeks after 9/11, security personnel were removing nail clippers and disposable razor blades from unsuspecting passengers, as if somehow we were going to shave the pilot to death. Then again, the phrase “death by 1,000 cuts” must come from somewhere.
But the element of this whole thing that left the biggest impression on me was the difference between this and 9/11 — in the weeks after 9/11, passengers still showed up at the airport not knowing that Swiss army knives were contraband. Within 48 hours of this incident, every single person I could hear at both small regional airports in Idaho were 100% informed and had not a single bottle of liquid on their person. Perhaps one more reminder than in the Internet era, news travels super fast?
Feeling Less Like a Luddite: Welcome, Meebo!
Feeling Less Like a Luddite: Welcome, Meebo!
As I’ve written about on occasion (here, here), it’s easy to feel like a Luddite with the rapid pace of change of the web these days. Anyway, I’m feeling slightly less like one today with the addition of Meebo to my blog.
I read about Meebo in David Kirkpatrick’s Fast Forward column last week, and it was such a cool idea, I had to install it right away. Basically, it adds a widget to the right sidebar of my blog which allows readers to Instant Message me any time I’m online if they’re reading my blog (anonymously, I think, and regardless of whether or not they have a Meebo account, although I needed to create one in order to install it on OnlyOnce).
Having a Meebo account is also basically like having a web-based version of Trillian, so I can get on IM from any computer with a browser at any time.
Should be an interesting way to hear more from readers. We’ll see. Meebo Me!
The Same, But Different
The Same, But Different
Mariquita and I spent several hours on the dueling laptops this evening. It turned out, we were both working on OD things (Organization Development).
Mariquita’s project, for her Masters’ Program at Amercan U — was writing a lengthy paper on data collection and feedback as a major function of OD, as applied to a specific case of a startup going through growing pains (not Return Path…a case given by the teacher). Her main comment — “they’ve got problems, man.”
I was working on an overhaul of Return Path’s management structure and what I call M/O/S (management operating system), based on the results of this year’s 360 Review process. My main comment — “we’ve got problems, man.” Well, not exactly in the same way, but we certainly have some major things to think through and change about the way we operate if we want to get the business to the next level. The main topics were around preparing our organization — in terms of attitude, development, structure, and culture — to be 4x larger than it is today within a few years.
Interesting comparison. Both valid uses of OD, totally different applications.
Maybe I Should Shave My Beard
Maybe I Should Shave My Beard
I just couldn’t resist. I’d apologize to Mel if he weren’t such a jackass. Not that I don’t love the Lethal Weapons and other fine films, mind you. But if anything in the last four years has nudged me towards shaving my beard, or at least keeping it neat and trim, it’s this stark comparison:
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Social Computing: An Amusing Anecdote About Who is Participating
Social Computing: An Amusing Anecdote About Who is Participating
We learned something about Wikipedia tonight. Mariquita was reading an article on Castro on CNN.com entitled “Castro Blames Stress on Surgery” about his upcoming intestinal surgery.
[Quick detour — I’m sorry, Castro blames the surgery on stress? Isn’t it good to be the king? And he’s handing the reins of government over to his oh-so-younger brother Raul, at the tender young age of 75?]
Anyway, we were debating over whether Castro took over the government of Cuba in 1957 or 1959, so of course we turned to Wikipedia. Ok, so Mariquita was right, it was 1959. But more important, we learned something interesting about Wikipedia and its users.
There were three banners above the entry for Casto that I’ve never seen before in Wikipedia. They said:
This article documents a current event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses.
This article or section is currently being developed or reviewed. Some statements may be disputed, incorrect, biased or otherwise objectionable. Please read talk page discussion before making substantial changes.
The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page.
That’s interesting of the editors, and it made me rush to read the entry on our fearless leader, George W. Bush. It only had one entry, a bit different from that of Castro (who, at least in my opinion, history will treat as a far more horrendous character than Dubya):
Because of recent vandalism or other disruption, editing of this article by anonymous or newly registered users is disabled (see semi-protection policy). Such users may discuss changes, request unprotection, or create an account.
Well, there you go.
links for 2006-07-29
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It’s kind of a “Let Them Eat Cake!” response — which kind of makes sense, given our recent trip to India.
Your Goal: Professional Nirvana
Your Goal: Professional Nirvana
Brad wrote a delightful post the other day entitled "My Work is Play to Me." His theory about how to achieve it is worth reading. I, too believe that my work is play (under this definition), and that has been one of the things that’s kept me going as an entrepreneur for nearly seven years now. And you don’t have to be a VC, or a CEO, or be working remotely to achieve the state.
This is reminiscent of the Fish books (here, here, and here), although in a more fundamental, philosophical, internally-generated way. Those are good, quick "airport" reads — at least get the first one, which is the story about the famous Pike Place fish market in Seattle, which is a great place and experience.
This is easy. Repeat after me:
If you have a job, your goal should be to make your work play.
If you manage other people, your goal should be to make work play for anyone on your team.
links for 2006-07-27
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Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence Founding Fathers, Patriots, Mr. T. Honored (From The Onion — hilarious)
links for 2006-07-25
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Fred has a good posting on some of the downsides of having managed through the bubble bursting. I wrote about this (a little bit) last year in Ratcheting Up is Hard to Do (/2005/01/ratcheting_up_i.html), but Fred’s posti