As the first book I’ve read on entrepreneurship, The Republic of Tea tells the true story of the birth of a business, from an idea to launch. Chronicled through exchanged faxes, personal notes, illustrations, and business plans, it was exciting to read how co-founders Bill Rosenzweig and Mel & Patricia Ziegler (founders of The Banana Republic retail clothing stores), developed the company over two years.

The concept and business plan needed to mature at its own pace without any force or rushing. In the beginning, this entailed a concrete brand purpose, market research, and product development, then progressing into operations, distribution, funding, and financial analysis.

What I found most interesting was how much research (market & operations) was involved from beginning to end, a journey that led Bill from being an excited newcomer, to nearly an industry expert at 4 months before the company launched.

Although you or I may never be involved in launching a product company, it will give you appreciation for the process and what it takes to get there: patience, perseverance, curiosity, a critical mind, and a team of smart partners and advisers.

Recently, I attended an event at Meetup.com headquarters in Manhattan. They have a separate office just to host small groups that they support, including beer and soda While there, I noticed a sheet outlining the qualities of a potential team member or manager. This type of cultural info is often interesting to see, and thought I’d share.

But first the obligatory photo of me by the big sign!

And here’s the qualities…

I always love hearing about Method Products. Their mission, their marketing, their product design. In this presentation at the Better by Design CEO Summit 2010 conference in New Zealand, co-founder Adam Lowry speaks about these topics and how design principles are integrated throughout their organizational culture and operations.

[Video Link for Email/Other Subscribers - 11min]

Marty Neumeier is a recognized thought leader in brand strategy, innovation, and design whose insight helps transform businesses from the inside out. His mission is to “incite business revolution by unleashing the power of design thinking.”

Some great points he brings up is the importance of having a vision. Going beyond mere analysis of reality and what has been. Secondly, he describes how design/innovation thinking has an expanded continuum of applications, as I’ve illustrated below:

Lastly, I liked how Marty described the brand advantage of being “good and different” in comparison to other 3 potential brand position quadrants. Standing out from the crowd while providing an excellent functional experience may take some time for people to get used to. Adoption and sales will be slow at first, but theoretically should pick up momentum as marketplace differentiation and a unique brand personality begin to be liked.

[Video Link for Email/Other Subscribers - 13min]

What a great presentation on execution, having the right team members aboard, leadership, and fostering a healthy organizational culture. Worth it! Here’s Robert’s bio:

“Robert is Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford and a Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He studies innovation, leaders and bosses, evidence-based management, the links between knowledge and organizational action, and workplace civility. His books include Weird Ideas That Work, The Knowing-Doing Gap (with Jeffrey Pfeffer) and The No Asshole Rule.”

[Video Link for Email/Other Subscribers - 15min]

Early last month, I met up with Bastian following an online invitation I took him up on. Knowing he was German and being a digital entrepreneur, I just couldn’t help myself from the opportunity to chat a bit in my second tongue and about the prospects for the future of digital media and creative production.

About 4 years ago, Bastian left his work doing programming and decided to venture out with a purpose: Connect creatives and clients together through a community platform that produces the best deliverables, faster, and without an agency. Jovoto was born.

Exciting! Two value innovation forces were in action: Crowdsourcing and Disintermediation. After all, creative agencies can promise the world to their clients seeking production work, but having the best available talent for the client is really a marketplace challenge. Either they can source that talent at the right price and time availability, or not. As brokers, there’s also an information acquisition, comprehension, translation, and transmission time and competence involved, for which they may not be best qualified or be able to turn around fast. That’s just for talent agencies.

For the branding/design agencies, it’s an even more complicated affair because they’re trying to build a long-term relationship with clients to sell them on additional work, and then uses these relationships and associated portfolio pieces as agency identity material. But in the end, they’re just adding more costs and turnaround time to clients who already know what they want, and don’t need help with positioning, messaging, and other complementary services.

So the neat thing about Jovoto is the 3-tiered membership model. In the first, creatives can contribute parts of a project challenge, and the participants then decide how much each person should be monetarily compensated. With participation and approved work, creatives earn karma points which signify talent, reliability, and so on. The second and third membership tiers are for members with higher karma points, and for which greater monetary compensation along with tighter project coordination and clients relationships are possible.

There are certain types of defined work that whether low- or high-skilled, can be readily sourced through brokers. This is a commodity market.

Creatives don’t deserve that kind of treatment. Efficient marketplaces can match brands’ unique needs with the best talent available through crowdsourcing or individual selection. Jovoto aims to do just that, being the most transparent, least-intrusive, intelligent hub, while improving the experience for everyone involved. Rock on!

Excellent presentation on what to avoid in business operations for practically any type of consultancy. I’ve made some errors in my time, but wasn’t always burned on them. But could have been. David points out the mistakes and what to do instead, maintaining an objective and fair working relationship with clients. Enjoy!

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As much as I’d like to take credit for writing this, I can’t. That goes to someone at Quirky, a fun startup I recently visited in NYC that hosted a party. So is this then a Creative-Commons Attribution work? Well damn, I just snapped a photo of the poster and changed a few words around when the company name was mentioned, so that it could be universally applicable to any team. My buddy wanted an 18″ x 24″ poster of it, so I made it this afternoon. Shoot me an email, and I’ll send you a PDF.

GET SHIT DONE

You Accomplish Amazing Amounts of Important Work. You Demonstrate Consistently Strong Performance So Your Team Can Rely on You. You Inspire Others with Your Drive and Output.

FUTURIST

You Anticipate Future Needs. You Think About Trends, Opportunities and Threats, and How They May Impact Our Business. You Use Creativity and Imagination to Develop New Ideas That Ensure We Thrive in the Future. You Create Plans So That We Build a Rock-Solid-Foundation That Supports Future Growth.

IMPATIENT

You Urgently Search for New Ways to Improve Our Company. You Don’t Wait to be Taught Something – You Figure It Out. You Are Paranoid About Us Staying Ahead of the Competition. You Make Decisions Quickly. You Understand That Slow Companies Fail.

EMBRACE CONFLICT

You Encourage Constructive Debate About Improving Our Weaknesses. You Hold Others Accountable for Their Behaviors and Performance. You Challenge Ideas Not People. You Are Known for Candor and Directness. You Say What You Think, Even if it’s Controversial. You Never Hide Bad News.

AGILE

You Expect and Embrace Constant Change. You Listen Carefully to Our Customers and Suggest Ways We Can Quickly Adapt to Meet Their Needs. You Keep Us Nimble By Minimizing Complexity and Finding Time to Simplify.

SELFLESS

You Seek What is Best for Us, Rather Than Best for Yourself or Your Group. You Don’t Care About Titles or Where You Sit in an Org Chart. You’re Willing to Throw Down to Help Other Departments. You’re Willing to Quickly Switch Roles and Priorities. You Listen Fully and Respectfully to Everyone’s Ideas.

I love the idea. Increased interpersonal communication, transparency, using kindness and objectivity to differentiate and be more responsive to stakeholder needs…it all links up part of Peter Senge’s vision for the learning organization. Here’s the official video description:

“A more open and transparent world challenge us to rethink the way we do business, the way we organize and the way we lead. Globalization, Tranparency, Social Media, Collaborative software – all part of a social revolution that forces companies to engage in Social Business Innovation and Open Business Leadership. What can we learn from LEGO, Google, Starbucks, Proctor & Gamble and Nike?”

via Logic+Emotion

Not knowing much about U.S. General George Patton, except being a controversial figure, I decided to watch the 1970 film about his service in World War II, played by George C. Scott. Afterwards, I read the Wikipedia article which gave further details about his character and additional experiences during the war. An inspirational figure to say the least!

Based on my passion for sustainability, objectivity, and a “middle path” in enterprise growth & effectiveness, allow me to relish in some greater perspective.

Much has been said about the cut-throat, militaristic style of business management that takes no prisoners and pursues supremacy. Having gained admiration during the 1980s and 90s when raiding and hostile takeovers were in vogue, and emblematic industry titans such as Jack Welch and Lee Iacoca were admired for their pure objectivity on financial health, this mindset began losing its luster after the turn of the century. Pursuing maximum operational efficiency and treating employees and partners as expendable assets had their costs, and it increasingly began to show in an interdependent, global economy where product/service commoditization and fickle customer loyalty became the norm.

Although I’m an ardent supporter of the compassionate style of management that encourages distributed leadership, kaizen, employee development, innovation, and a long term orientation, there are some distinct elements of the “tough guy” approach that are so appealing. Here are my thoughts following  some reflection after the movie and article.

Fight Mediocrity

Is the concept of War applied to business inhumane to you? It shouldn’t. Throw out any pre-existing conceptions you may have, and think about this: The marketplace for products, services, and talent has been commoditized in terms of functions and price, and it’s resulted in a lot of mediocrity. Both great talent and managers are hard to find and keep. Culture matters. While there are rules and ethics to be followed, every organizational department can pursue greatness and strive to be competitively better. It’s a team effort. If you can’t deliver an exceptional product and customer experience, analyze where the shortcomings are by studying the industry, yourself, and seek to value innovate to change the business model. If there’s evidence that one can’t significantly improve, cut your losses, and reinvest in another product or process that’ll yield greater performance. Easier said than done, but trust your intuition and fight with grit. The cost of morale and money matters.

Apply Discipline

We’ve probably all experienced how lax environments can be comforting, but likely decrease human productivity, motivation, and total operational performance. Overly disciplined environments can feel degrading on the spirit, weakening morale and encouraging an “us v. them” mentality. Yet fair rules, communicated well, reduce mistakes and help everyone get their job done more effectively. You can probably think of a variety of operational and tactical rules that are relevant for a business process or industry. Discussing those will be too subjective. But I will advise you to examine all the microbehaviors that in the long-run increase process and turnaround time. Which activities are providing little value, while taking people away from the front lines? Question everything. Many organizations’ troops are working in a metaphorical swamp because of the horrible effect of multitasking and distractions (social, technological). Increase personal productivity to increase happiness, and the positive business effects will follow. Lastly, consider various approaches to dealing with insubordination. Both system conditions, capabilities, and diverse psychological (personal, social) reasons can be at play. Observe, gather feedback, and act accordingly. But remember that sometimes rules can be bent IF they provide benefit to the customer experience, increase operational performance, yield principled cost savings, and DON’T negatively impact other system processes.

Admit Weaknesses

On an humanistic level that is. Both leaders and individuals need to recognize excessive pride, shortcomings in interpersonal communication, being too pragmatic, whatever it is. Patton recognized and admitted to being a prima donna, for which he accepted having to be reassigned or laying low while others played on. He loved the game, sought victory and glory, but recognized the importance of the entire allied team’s performance and acted respectfully when told to hold back. Emotional intelligence? You betcha.