Archive for the 'Management' Category

A soft touch

Published
by
jason
on October 6, 2008
in Management and Photography
. 4 Comments

I hated going to the dentist. I have great strong teeth, have only had 2 cavities in my life, but I hated going to the dentist. Why?

Because the dentists I had seen before were almost universally nasty. Nasty and condescending. Every time I would go, despite having no cavities and brushing twice a day, I would get the shaking head and the sucking of teeth about my “dedication” to gum health. Or what about my “sincerity” in avoiding tooth decay?

Last week I went to a new dentist. A phone call to let them know I was running a few minutes late led me to the knowledge that there had been a snafu when my appointment was made, and I wouldn’t be able to get the cleaning I was expecting. I could, however, still see the doctor.  Grumpily, I made my way to the offices of The Family Dental Group. The office is nothing special from the outside, a little gloomy actually. I walked to the door ready to do battle (I hadn’t been to the dentist for nearly 4 years).

I announced myself to the receptionist, and a moment later, the hygienist walked out and announced that her next appointment had just canceled. She looked at me, asked if I was Jason, and proceeded to fend of the doctor saying that she would rather get me a cleaning today as opposed to having me wait over a month for the next appointment. One point for the hygienist.

The cleaning was a bit rough, but really not all that bad. The amazing thing was that throughout the 30 minute process she apologized and cooed over how much it probably hurt. Not once did she give me the sidelong threat of future pain that I was expecting if I didn’t resolve my “irresponsible” lack of office visits. She knew that I knew that had I made regular office visits this process would have been less onerous for BOTH of us. Her approach, however, was so far from what I expected that she actually got my attention. I cared what she had to say afterward when she handed me the toothbrush, floss, and gum stimulator and explained how to use the last as though I already knew but, “just in case I needed a reminder”. I have been following her instructions, and I have already made my next appointment. The doctor who filled my small cavity followed with much the same openly caring attitude.

The humanity of the service was unexpected. It was remarkable. Every other dentist, and their hygienists, that I had visited previously behaved in the same supercilious way. The Family Dental Group changed my perception. Just another example that going to the edges can change the game. The Family Dental Group isn’t the cheapest, it isn’t the closest to my home, but I don’t dread the idea of my next appointment. For that, I am willing to pay extra and travel further, and all they had to do differently was show genuine care for me (not just my teeth).

I can’t help but think, “how hard would it be to show a little extra concern for our customers?” We already treat our customers well, but I am taking this as a personal challenge. If everyone took a little extra time, showed a little more genuine care, I bet life would get a lot more pleasant in a hurry.

The trouble with nostalgia

Published
by
jason
on September 30, 2008
in Management, Rant and Photography
. 1 Comment

I have been caught many times by the feeling that things used to be simpler, sweeter, or better. When enveloped by the warm blanket of memory, I recall all of those wonderful little details of the holidays with family, or the rampant productivity in the weeks prior to the launch of a new project. This feeling comes on most strongly when I am faced with a problem or frustration with something that seems all too similar.

The trouble starts with the remembering. The human mind has an incredible ability to fool itself into believing that it is recalling or observing with a very high level of detail. Your eyes are only high resolution at the very center. As a result, your brain has to splice together the images from your rapidly moving eyes into a single coherent, seemingly high resolution, image.

For fun, take a moment and look at one spot about 20 feet away from you. Concentrate on not moving your eyes, and think about how much of what you see is actually in focus. Very little.

If this is the input for our memories, how do we imagine that our memories can serve to help us recall what really happened? Even if you argue that there are all sorts of other sensory and emotional inputs that help to capture a more complete picture, think about your favorite birthday. Great, right? Think hard now; was it all great? Did you get annoyed because someone was 10 minutes late? Did your Mom get you a stupid gift? But, you also got a promotion, raise, and the coolest birthday present ever from your best friend. The emotional quotient for the day is a weighted sum. Not all of the events mattered in the same amount, and so the memory is like our vision experiment, very clear on a few details and everything else is pretty fuzzy.

Where this gets us in trouble is when you try to apply the wisdom of your nostalgic memory to your current problem.

The last time this went really well. What was different? Instead of this we had that. Instead of doing that we did this.

In my experience, success is usually not specifically repeatable. If it were, Microsoft would have major successes beside Office and Windows. They have been applying the specific strategies that they learned about what made those products successful over and over again with arguably limited success. In most cases, if things went well last time, you have already internalized the important parts of that success. The processes, work styles, tools, and attitudes that worked then are now just how you do business. It is so easy to make the mistake of thinking “If I could make right now more like back then, it would auto-magically make things better.” But, you probably have a new problem, and you almost certainly have an imperfect recollection of what made stuff so much better back then.

The solution? Treat your current problem like it is brand new.

Its scary to think of each problem as new because that means you don’t know the answer. But I find myself asking, so what? That only matters because I am afraid to fail. A little fear/uncertainty combined with a new problem are the perfect conditions for an innovation. If you try something new and fail, you have brand spankin’ new information about what didn’t work and a chance to understand the why of it. Not a bad worst-case scenario.

Interesting but not remarkable

Published
by
Jason
on September 22, 2008
in Management and Photography
. 0 Comments

On Sunday, I took a walk through a nearby town with my wife and our dog. The main street is littered with dusty antique stores. You pass dozens of them in a matter of minutes and there is really nothing to help you distinguish between them.

Then I came upon this hat. I stopped and stared for about 10 seconds and snapped this photo. The hat was interesting because it was incongruously new looking and colorful. I guess it isn’t surprising that the feeling of “cruftiness” inside the stores spills out into their street displays. The sad part is that I have no clear memory of what the store sold. I wouldn’t know the name if it weren’t in the photograph.

Why not try being remarkable instead of merely interesting?

  1. Hire a high school student to wear the hat and welcome people to the store, or just say hello to people on the street.
  2. Have her give away free lemonade to passersby on hot days.
  3. Have a box of dog treats and fresh cool water for all of the people who bring their dogs. Don’t just leave the bowl there on the sidewalk. Be seen refreshing the water, and personally deliver the treats.

With so many of those antiques stores coming and going, its a wonder that the owners don’t try something a little different.

A culture of creation

Published
by
jason
on September 20, 2008
in Management
. 0 Comments

I was asked recently why it seemed as though 37Signals did nothing BUT create interesting products, and quickly at that. Interestingly, my answer came quickly and I suspect it is not far from the truth. 37Signals has made the act of creation a goal, and not just something that you do on the way to achieving your goal. The company is organized to encourage and support the creative process from its core. The company systematically gets out of the way of people being able to pursue an idea and encourages a high level of productivity in all sorts of unusual™ ways (4 day work week, everyone gets a company credit card, they pay for your hobbies). The result is new products/features released frequently, and a feedback loop that gives them the insight necessary to improve and create even newer products and features that solve customer problems.

With so many opportunities out there, it seems as though there are far too many companies taking the classic growth path.

    1. You create a winning product. HOLY CRAP that was hard! Pat yourself on the back.
    2. You listen to your users and slowly add all of the features that they request. People love it! If only you added a toaster oven, 1,000 more people would loooove it.
    3. You hire more people to support/develop the product
    4. You make it more and more mainstream. Change the color scheme! We hear that people like the Windows XP color theme; use that. My great Aunt that lives on a farm can use it now, phew!
    5. You rake in the dough as you watch your market share deteriorate in favor of competitors who are addressing specific market needs that you can’t address.

      The problem for most of the companies like this is that somewhere along the way, they forgot how to make a remarkable product. Think Napster, Yahoo, and a thousand other offerings that started off with fanfare, users at the edges, and quickly moved to the middle. They start “managing” and “maximizing” and avoiding the hard truth that they are slowly losing touch with the ability to identify and exploit a market need. This is the same point at which many of those organizations start to experience management challenges like turnover in key employees and lack of motivation.

      Copilot, as a service, has moved toward the middle. Copilot is still the easiest of any of the services to use, but what it does has been comoditized by a dozen years of technological development. The industry is crowded with huge competitors and everyone is doing the same thing. Feature creep is on the rise. Developers are being hired into the industry by the bucketful. If this product category isn’t already completely ordinary, it is about to be.

      So far, we have avoided the desire to keep adding features to “keep up” with our competitors at the cost of disenfranchising our customers who appreciate the simplicity of our offering. But what still makes it remarkable? The day pass pricing model combined with the ease of use make Copilot the best choice for ad-hoc remote support. But, what do we need to do to double the number of customers? More features? A New product? We’re working on that now, and you can track our progress here: Air Traffic - A blog about Fog Creek Copilot and running a company within a company.

      If you will “never catch up by being the same“, what can you do to jump ahead? Build a culture of creation. Realize that ideas come from unexpected sources at strange times, and be prepared to take small risks often to get concrete feedback on what works and, perhaps more importantly, what doesn’t.

      Here are a couple of the practical things that I am doing now to try to build a personal and collegial culture of creation:

      1. Create a todo list and use it. Software can help here, and I recommend Things. The todo list isn’t a single running list. It is a backlog, a list of next things, and a list of today’s things. Think digestible.
      2. Shorten projects and lengths of activities. Projects no longer than a few weeks (two to four); tasks no longer than a few hours. Think MOMENTUM.
      3. Raise individual accountability by feeding back progress of project participants through clear concise communication. Think Scrum.
      4. Release stuff often. Get it to customers. Even if you are worried that it isn’t perfect. If it solves a real problem, early adopters will help you make it better.

      I will let you know how it goes…

      The Effects of Secondary Markets on Primary Innovation in MMOGs

      Published
      by
      jason
      on March 8, 2008
      in Management and Journal
      . 0 Comments

      Over the past decade, the popularity of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) has led to an incredible amount of development by major game producers. With revenues in the billions of dollars each year, over $1.7B for Blizzard/Vivendi’s World of Warcraft alone (Boyer), this industry has grown to include hundreds of titles.  These numbers have game producers hurrying to figure out the best way to capitalize on this fast growing source of revenue. As with other high growth markets, secondary markets have developed to satisfy the needs of customers in the primary market that either can’t or won’t be met by primary market makers. Not surprisingly, a market this large, approximately $1B (Brightman), has attracted the attention of entrepreneurs looking for opportunities to support or supplement the primary activities in these markets with products and services that enhance the gamers’ experience.

      There are many different forms of secondary markets in the gaming world, some legitimate and legal, and others which have been deemed by game developers to be illegitimate, or even illegal. An example of legitimate secondary market is the host of gaming magazines and websites that offer strategies, content guides, and communities where gamers exchange ideas. An illegitimate market is generally defined as one where people exchange real world currency for characters (avatars), items, or in game currency in ways that violate the Terms of Service defined by the game developers. I will examine how the nature, and implicit goals of a game, affects its interactions with secondary markets. Further, I will argue that the “illegitimate” markets have had a direct impact on primary innovation, shaping current and future game design very quickly to account for these markets’ impact on the value of in-game assets.

      I will focus primarily on Vivendi’s The World of Warcraft (WoW) and use Linden Research’s Second Life (SL) as an example of a vastly different approach. In order to effectively explain the impact, and resulting strategies of the game developers, I will detail how value is created and measured in MMOGs , a brief history of secondary markets in MMOGs, their current revenue models and legal concerns, the vastly different responses from Vivendi and Linden Research, the role and impact of secondary markets on design innovations WoW and SL and , finally, my prediction of the impact these markets will have on future game development.

      Continue reading ‘The Effects of Secondary Markets on Primary Innovation in MMOGs’

      Customer Service as Competitive Advantage

      Published
      by
      Jason
      on August 14, 2007
      in Management and Technology
      . 1 Comment

      In the early part of this year, I read Joel’s 7 Steps to remarkable customer service. The piece resonated with me, and it was one of the reasons that I applied to the SMTP program. Customer service in the world of technology is, generally speaking, an embarrassing and dehumanizing process. Here was a person who believed that there was a better way to do it.

      Shortly after joining the company, I asked the question “Why do we give this information away freely? Aren’t we concerned that our competitors are bound to read it, see the wisdom of it, and emulate it?” At that point, I had about 4 weeks of customer service duty under my belt and was confident that this model could be scaled and replicated. Now, after 6 months and lots of conversations with customers, I understand why it is to our advantage to let people know that this is the way we do things.

      It is hard work.

      Real customer service is emotional labor. You have to dance between being truly empathetic to a frustrated customer’s problem and self preserving as a customer, pushed beyond the limits of human endurance, takes out their frustrations on you directly. The former is the norm and the latter the exception, but both efforts take a lot of energy. Add to that the fact that the problems I am asked to solve are frequently subtly complex technical issues, and I am spent at the end of the day. The payback comes in the form of a tremendous sense of satisfaction from seeing Joel’s suggestions work to make not just satisfied but fanatical customers.

      The problem is, I honestly don’t think most of the people that apply for customer service jobs could do it. Either they don’t have the people skills, but are excellent technically, or they don’t have the technical skills. This is not to say that I am a phenom, by any means. It is proof positive of the draw of the promised career advancement once the customer service stint is over. I am willing and motivated to work hard because these are the same customers that I hope to be serving as I move on to QA and Marketing and, eventually, to management. Understanding them, and their needs, gives me the information I need to make decisions and trades-offs about the products on which they rely. If you ask most customer service people what they do, I bet they would say “I answer email and telephone calls”. Customer advocacy is my job. It is the best way to keep customers happy and continue to increase our revenue

      You have to get the environment right.

      To get people motivated and give them the tools they need to do the job of customer management takes real effort. While Joel’s steps are conveniently broken up to make them more understandable, combined they create the environment necessary to make my daily efforts possible. The entire company is oriented toward the customer. We are constantly evaluating how what we do and what we say will affect our customers.

      This is hard to believe for some customers because they have been asking for this one feature (or that one) for 2 years, and we haven’t implemented it. Although it is easy to imagine us in our ivory tower laughing with scorn at your feature request, I can honestly say that we agonize over our decisions as to which features to implement when. We honestly feel badly about not getting to your suggestion, but we can’t cloister ourselves for 10 years writing the next version, so we need to choose.

      Our incredibly lenient return policy allows me the freedom to say to someone “Try it, if you don’t like it you get your money back immediately, no questions asked” and “I can’t recommend that you buy FogBugz because it isn’t going to do everything you want” and “I am really sorry that we couldn’t get you connected, here is your money back and a free pass for your next connection”. All of this is intended to show that the second reason we aren’t at risk is that it is almost impossible to replicate this environment without tremendous effort, and true belief that it is worth it.

      By telling customers that this is how we do business, and actually sticking to it, we make our customers confident in our ability to make them happy. We get more risk takers and advocates that push our products into markets where they might otherwise go unnoticed. And my life is better because when customers call or email, they (mostly) treat me like a human being that wants to help them, instead of their worst enemy.

      We aren’t at risk at all; we have a distinct advantage, a differentiator. While other service organizations understand that these are good ideas, they aren’t able to implement them (the environment isn’t right) or they won’t implement them (don’t want to do the hard work). In the rare cases that I come across one that is able and willing, dealing with the company is such a pleasant departure that I find myself liking them, even if they are one of our competitors.

      Management experience without leaving your living room

      Published
      by
      Jason
      on July 28, 2007
      in Management and Technology
      . 0 Comments

      Management acumen is a oft sought after but rarely found talent in all industries. The lack of available talent makes companies desperate and leaves many vulnerable to the shills. The company I work for decided to do something about this by creating a management training program. An expensive endeavor, it seeks to give the participants all of the relevant experience required for management in the real world of technology. Much of the “training” has to do with understanding customer needs, learning to manage laterally and vertically, and making rational trade-offs between features, design, and income. What is much more difficult to come by, in a company full of very smart and dedicated people, are the hardcore people management skills.

      Enter World of Warcaft. A well know international phenomenon, WoW has gotten attention for being an addictive money making machine. You may have also seen it appear in Wired when, in an interview, it became a source of common ground and led (indirectly?) to a job offer. For outsiders, even with the well written explanation, it is difficult to conceive just how this game could really help you develop relevant skills for business. The Wired article compares Warcraft to other simulation games that have been used explicitly to train people (e.g. flight simulators). What interests me is something a little more subtle in the virtual world that Blizzard/Vivendi have created. They have created a virtual reality in which organizations (guilds) of upwards of 40 people are required for continued success, and simultaneously remove most of the barriers impeding an individual’s ability to change organizations (or quit altogether).

      By way of confession, I have over 200 days played (200×24hours) in the world of WoW. I have two maximum level characters, and I am a member and officer of Bad Blood (a guild in the top 300 in terms of progression in the US). To get where we are, we raid 4 hours a night 5 days a week. In addition, to give us the best chance of success we have to put in additional time each week gathering materials and completing activities that give us access to progressively more difficult content. We are challenge junkies. A group of geeks who get their kicks from figuring out just how much additional damage, to the tenth of percent, they will be able to do if they pick up a particular piece of digital gear. For an idea of the level of complexity and coordination take a look at this video, prepared by another guild, designed to help people understand one of the encounters we recently mastered. At our level of play it takes 25 people, acting in unison, to get things done. If one person screws up, everyone fails. And we do this, without ever meeting each other.

      Imagine for a moment, that you never had to meet any of the people that you work with. You have no opportunities to share passing conversations about the kids, your favorite sports team, or what you did last weekend. All of those informal measures of the quality of your co-workers being masked by anonymity. I know many of my colleagues, who have had experience with consultants, have an idea how difficult it is to get work done in this type of environment. Now take away the friction created by your, and your colleagues’, dependence on a salary, and reduce the cost of switching organizations to almost zero. It starts to give new clarity to the phrase “herding cats“.

      It makes every moment that we spend together important. It means that frustrations and outbursts need to be managed carefully. It requires an increased sense of unity of purpose. It applies in immense amount of pressure to leadership, and forces them to identify and jealously guard talent. My experience has given me insight into the true value of positive feedback. When a kind word, spoken honestly, is basically the only currency that you have, other than success (which is unpredictable), you are forced to use it carefully. I have had to learn to listen carefully to what people mean, and not what they say, or type. I have been forced to learn to express myself clearly and concisely under pressure. If I can’t get an important message across quickly, it can mean hours of wasted effort. It is effectively the equivalent of condensing weeks or years of people management experience into 20 hours a week.

      As remarkably unlikely as it may seem, I have tried to avoid exaggeration and hyperbole wherever possible. Still, I can imagine my readers’ incredulity. To that end, I will leave you with one more question that may help to highlight the value of this experience: how long does it take to explain a difficult concept to an audience of people you work with on a tele-conference, and how many people retain it afterwards? The limitations placed on communication on WoW make those skills extraordinarily important, and ultimately, a key factor to your organization’s success.