The failure of the social bookmarking company Ma.gnolia because of database corruption made me think about the dangers of reinventing the wheel.
This won’t be the first business (or the last) to fail because of lost data.
The video of Larry Halff (the founder) explaining what happened shows plenty of contrition. Larry admits he made mistakes and I admire the focus he places on the lessons he has learned.
But maybe the biggest lesson might be to be more open to things that other people have already learnt – in this case over 50 or more years of IT and software development. The primary mistake the company made seems to have been very basic – not testing a backup worked before it was needed.
Larry seems a very bright guy. But I wonder, if I had made the same mistake, what would have stopped me getting the help I needed? Over-confidence and thinking I knew what I was doing, probably. And more specifically, not knowing what I didn’t know.
And, perhaps, being afraid to find out.
Formal education doesn’t seem to do much to encourage us to admit what we don’t know. Assessment, for example, is all about proving what do know, not learning our limitations. But especially in uncertain times revealing the extent of our knowledge, however limited, is surely a powerful thing to do.
A wonderful post by the inestimable Rosabeth Moss Kanter – on the power of old ideas.
Suppressing ideas is an anathema to me. More examples immediately come to mind: of a hard disk manufacturer that had better technology but left it on the shelf while competitors with more open minds leapt ahead. Or of the Lego of old where according to Jake McKeeall ideas became unwelcome.
We need ideas NOW like never before. Let’s not suppress them.
In difficult times, as in good times, I think it’s important to focus on the basics. Perhaps more so.
What are the essentials for a sustainable business? I can feel a list coming on.
Firstly, be agreed on what you are trying to achieve. Knowing this can get you through the toughest times.
Secondly, believe in profit. I know this is a little controversial. Some will say it is obvious. Others will not like the idea of profit as essential.
Profit is such a emotional topic, although mostly we don’t admit that. For many it has a bad name. And on the other extreme, even those who seek it above all else might be feeling a little guilty about it now.
But for a business to be sustained, whether it has a social or a purely economic goal, profit is needed. Profit builds reserves. When reinvested it creates strength – primarily through skills and knowledge. Excess profit can be harmful. But reasonable profit, reinvested, is essential.
Beliefs about profit are often so deeply held they’re hard to shift. But unless everyone in your company shares a positive view of reasonable profit, then you really do have difficulties if you want your business to survive and meet its mission.
Thirdly, everyone involved has to have a can do/will do attitude. It’s easier to believe that if things get hard we can give up. But to succeed we have to believe there is a way to get through – even in the hardest times. And we have to believe that we, and we alone, control our progress.
This is somewhat related to understanding that fear is normal. Fear of meeting people. Fear of doing new things. Fear of failure. And most of all fear of change. Know that fear is normal, and you are part way to overcoming it. If you know it and admit it, then you can ask for help, as just one example.
Being open to learning more generally – not being afraid to look a fool, and being unafraid to duck difficult things – is part of the same skill.
I believe even the strongest among us are afraid of change. We all fear the new and unfamiliar. Some like to change the world; but few are brave enough to change themselves.
But in an ever-changing world, what could be a more essential attribute for a sustainable company or an individual?
Fourthly, do the right thing. This doesn’t mean moralising. It’s more of a felt sense. For me, it mainly means overcoming fear so you can move towards a bigger goal. It’s about knowing what that bigger goal is. And sometimes taking the time to check the goal, so that it doesn’t get too big for its boots.
It also means a sense of proportion in other ways. For most of us in the developed world, it means remembering how lucky we are even when things look bad. Most of our lives contain many good things. Remembering to be grateful for them helps keep everything in balance.
Fifthly, do what you say you will, most of the time. Avoid promising to others; but if you make promises to yourself, then keep them. It’s all too easy in times of uncertainty to let a fog settle over us. And that fog provides the perfect shield to hide away, to let things slip, to quietly drop promises – even the most important ones.
Holding on to and reinvigorating your vision is one way to dispel that fog. Another is simply not to let yourself or others off the hook.
One way we let ourselves off the hook is by failing to “bottom-out” things. To me, this means starting a conversation, but when it gets a little hard, giving up. It means failing to push through the mental pain barrier to get at the roots of a problem.
The antidote might be stopping and declaring a time-out, and admitting one is lost. With no idea which way to go.
Being right, knowledgeable and on the ball is so important to most of us that sometimes we’d rather let confusion reign than admit we are lost.
But if you are wandering around in a mist, you are unlikely to get out of it by just wandering around. You need to get a grip. Work out what you know and what you don’t. Assess your resources. Form a plan. And then move steadily forward.
Another way of saying this? Tell the truth. Not just any old truth. But THE truth. The truth that is true for you right now.
I was planning to post on the topic of purchasing decisions today, when by coincidence I saw Jeremy Litchfield’s interesting post on consumer responsibility. Isn’t it great when things fit together like that?
One aspect of taking this responsibility is whether we decide to buy services or products. I was faced with a choice over the weekend of buying a “thing” or a “service”. Both served exactly the same function (to make some of my data safe).
Products clearly have a quite different environmental profile from services. A product requires energy and raw materials to manufacture and transport. A service, delivered over the internet, for example, has low transportation cost. And the incremental cost of providing it may be small because of economies of scale and the fact I share the tangible components with many other people.
I considered the environmental impact of both – and the service won hands-down. But I still felt myself so drawn to the “thing”. A strong emotional pull that I couldn’t fully locate, but I knew was real. What was this all about?
The thing was nice and shiny and I could imagine it arriving and the fun of unpacking it. The service was a software download – and pretty intangible and almost “grey”, in my mind.
Something about “having” the thing – on my shelf, in my house – was also attractive. I guess this is the same thrill that collectors have. Not something I thought I suffered from, but I when I looked I could really experience it.
There were some additional benefits to the service – the “thing” would quickly become obsolete. Whereas someone else would have the problem of ensuring the service always took advantage of the latest technological advances. And, of course, if the “thing” broke I’d be the one dealing with the problem.
But I also felt some fear around the service – the idea of tying myself into a long-term contract was getting under my skin. My preference is not to load myself with financial commitments. I guess I am not alone in that, especially right now.
In this case the burden of owning the “thing” seemed negligible; whereas I felt I was imprisoning myself in the service deal – probably for life.
In the end, I found another way and bought neither. Hooray for a simpler life!
But my point is that there are habits around this kind of purchasing decision. Perhaps my example was trivial. If we are talking about the difference between car ownership or car sharing, then yes, as Jeremy points out, we need to take responsibility.
But, in my opinion, we need to do that fully: we as consumers, and also the businesses that serve us, need to become aware of these emotional and psychological factors if we are to have any collective hope of changing our behaviour. Some clever people are already looking at this – look at Live|Work’s work for Streetcar, for example.
A new year and a new president. Change is in the air. And as lots of people are saying, now is also the time for a new type of business.
A new type of business needs a new type of purpose. Sustainability is one.
A new type of purpose also needs a new type of marketing. Maybe not exactly a new type. But at least a return to a truer, more authentic type of marketing. Marketing that is about figuring out what people really want and giving it to them.
There’s been a lot written and said about more authentic marketing in the last few years. And in my opinion, social media is one of the opportunities to make that goal of authenticity much more real. What better way, for example, to find out what people really want?
But as well as marketing, every business needs to sell something. So what does a new type of selling, one that’s suitable for a new type of business, look like?
Again perhaps it’s not exactly new. But it’s definitely a change from the used-car salesman type of selling we have come to associate with all sorts of products from financial services to …, well, used-cars.
According to Huthwaite, for example, the new type of selling is consultative. I’m a fan of their approach. Maybe I take it further than they intend but for me most selling techniques they and others suggest can be practiced authentically and honestly.
Asking questions to find out what a customer’s problems are? Don’t invent problems. And don’t project your own or others problems on to them. Instead really listen. Yes, really, really listen. Find out what those real, deep-down problems are, and you’ll find gold.
Asking questions to find out the impact of these problems? Don’t manufacture fear. Don’t scare the customer into buying your solution. Instead, work with them to uncover what the real risks are. Write them down, agree them, quantify them if you can.
There’s absolutely no point in manufacturing fear. As soon as the customer cools off, if they’re half-sane, they’ll go back to a more balanced point of view. And forget any dangers that seemed real during your oh-so-clever sales call. You’ll lose the sale and waste everyones’ time.
Another well known sales technique is to answer a question with a question. In the trade this is called the “porcupine”. A trivial and annoying gimmick, a way to buy the salesperson time? Or a way to better uncover a need?
When people ask questions, sometimes it doesn’t really come from curiosity. Sometimes they have a point to make. So “how quickly does your product degrade?” may really mean “I am concerned about damaging the environment”. Use the porcupine to further understand this concern, in all its depth, and how it relates to the broader set of needs the customer has.
“Always be closing” – the salesperson’s mantra. Isn’t this just another way we recognise pushy sales technique? Another abhorrent bit of behaviour that means that sales people are so low in status that we have to artificially compensate them (with loads of money) for their otherwise valueless job?
Not for me. Good sales people learn to love the word “no”, offered in response to any close. “No” is simply a sign that you haven’t fully understood the needs and the drivers and the circumstances. It means you haven’t found a way yet to give that customer or client what they really, truly and deeply need. You’re probably not even conscious of that need.
But it also means you’re on the way. Keep going, keep working with the “No”s, keep a true heart and you will find the way.
I cheerfully said to the wife this morning “maybe we should set some goals for the year ahead”. After having narrowly avoided a flying saucepan, we then explored our general level of exhaustion, and agreed that our main goal for the year is to have fewer goals.
The trouble with goals, in my opinion, is that they do generate an awful lot of doing. Doing brings more doing (and more stuff as a by-product). Yes, I know there’s all that research about graduates who write down their goals earning more money in later years. But so what? Does it mean they contributed more than the ones who didn’t write down their goals? And does it make them any better people?
By contrast not setting any goals allows you to … just practice being a more pleasant person. That seems a pretty good goal in itself and a lot more relaxing than all those more difficult goals. As someone who loves a bit of peace and quiet it sounds a lot better to me.
But what would not setting any goals look like in a business? Businesses always seem to have goals or milestones or objectives or some such thing. Financial goals, people goals, quality goals … and so on.
If your business didn’t have any goals … could it just practice being a more pleasant business? What would that involve? And would that be a good strategy in these recessionary times?
Well, it might mean you could:
Slow down a bit and listen a bit more – to customers, suppliers,and the team.
Ensure the team speak quietly and respectfully with customers, suppliers, and each other.
Be respectful of everyone – even the government – and start by assuming everyone is trying to help not hinder.
Tell the truth more often (in all your marketing material and all your interactions).
Cultivate good operational habits (and get rid of any bad ones).
Change your habits every now and then.
Honour all agreements and always be fair (even if you have to lose people).
Keep learning.
Do your bit to minimise your company’s impact on the planet.
Tidy up around the place – including your finances.
I don’t know whether this strategy will work particularly well in recessionary times. But I do think it’s a good strategy at any time. It’ll make you friends, repair and strengthen relationships, and keep you out of trouble.
Sounds good to me.
Here’s wishing you a successful 2009.
PS I nicked some of the ideas for this list from the Pleasant Person Act in Richard Carson’s excellent Taming Your Gremlin.
At this time of year I guess we are all thinking about hearth and home. But a conversation with one of the founders of Gossypium, a great little business that started here in Lewes in 2001, got me thinking about the reality of building a sustainable business locally.
Gossypium sells organic and Fairtrade certified cotton, sourced directly from independent farmers in India. This is worthy in itself. But I think one of the things the company has done really well is embed itself in the community.
This isn’t done in a forced way, but simply and authentically. For example, the company supports local initiatives. It’s open to suggestions by local people for local campaigns that matter. It contributes to these campaigns and joins in – both the owners and the team. Generally, and wherever it can, it does the “right thing”.
I think this, and the fact that the business started here, has led to a growing belief that Gossypium “belongs” to Lewes. Gossypium is a business that people who live here seem almost proud of.
I know my wife and I have chosen to shop there this year, and lots of other local people do. It’s probably not the cheapest place in the world. But there’s something special about buying things from a place you know is involved in and supportive of your community.
And the owner told me that this support has really benefited the company, financially as well as in other ways, and she believes it will continue to do so.
Perhaps this is the kind of thing the writers of the Cluetrain Manifesto had in mind. The Manifesto is 10 years old this year. As you may know, the Manifesto sees markets as conversations. And it stresses the importance of talking with a human voice. Principles 34 through 40 are:
To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns of their communities.
But first, they must belong to a community.
Companies must ask themselves where their corporate cultures end.
If their cultures end before the community begins, they will have no market.
Human communities are based on discourse — on human speech about human concerns.
The community of discourse is the market.
Companies that do not belong to a community of discourse will die.
It’s easy to critique the Cluetrain idea. But, for me, the point about community is essentially true.
My friend Nigel of Nigel’s Ecostore (provider of all things eco) gave me a Christmas present this year: 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris. As a huge fan of Ricardo Semler’s Seven Day Weekend I was intrigued but sceptical.
It is fairly easy to rubbish the author’s approach: basically he suggests stopping deferring the good life life now for the fantasy of a great life later.
For him this means jacking in the day-job, setting up a business selling anything (“nutritional supplements” in his case), and automating the running of the business so that you can take advantage of disparities in global incomes and live at South American prices, pay a wage bill in Indian Rupees, and earn income in US dollars.
It’s easy to rubbish because I guess we all hope that disparities in global incomes are temporary; and hence this New Rich lifestyle is not really sustainable, unless you keep hopping from poorer to poorer countries. He puts a complete ban on the whole African continent by the way; too scary perhaps?
Because while Ferris does suggest longer stays than most travel writers (months, not days or weeks) there’s undoubtedly a lot of carbon-generating international air travel involved in the process (who am I to talk: I work with a business travel company amongst others).
And mostly because, while there’s a section at the end about giving something useful back to society, for Ferris that’s a step to take after having lived it up and made your money – it seems to me that’s another form of deferral. Why not get on and do what seems most worthwhile right now, and let money and lifestyle find you?
But that all said I did like the book (so thanks Nigel). Yes, you could say it’s shallow; but then so am I sometimes. It’s well crafted, his youthful enthusiasm is infectious, and it’s full of ideas and practical suggestions. Is it a bad thing that he won Wired Magazine‘s “Greatest Self Promoter of All-Time” prize in 2008? If he uses it to generate money for charities through his LitLiberation project?
Who knows what he’ll do next? The combination of promotional skills using social media and charitable inclinations is probably a good one.
And at least reading the book has made me question some of my assumptions about these things and others, and that is surely always worthwhile.
How can you tell whether an investment is a good investment?
It seems we can’t always trust watchdogs like the Securities and Exchange Commission. A lot of people seem rather upset that the SEC missed signs that Bernard Madoff’s scheme wasn’t all it was promised to be.
Madoff was apparently a former head of the Nasdaq stock market, so had great credentials. And I am sure if I had met him he would have seemed very respectable and would have charmed me like he did so many others.
Would I trust a bank? Perhaps not as much as I might have a few years ago. Does a glossy shop-front, impressive numbers, shiny badges or powerful technology mean that our money is in safe hands? None of these things seems to have stopped some of our banks fumbling the ball.
So maybe it’s better to assume the worst. Human nature being what it is, most of us at one time or another fall victim to greed, or other unhelpful motivations. And it only takes a moment for something to start going horribly wrong.
Past history isn’t always a good predictor of how things will go in the future. My track record helps but it really doesn’t say that much about what I will do tomorrow.
Working together in a community is one way to combat these all too natural human failings. If the community creates, agrees and implements the right checks and balances, then any momentary lapse is much less likely.
And another good indicator seems to me to ensure your motivations are aligned with those in whom you put your trust. If your goal is to look after the planet, and so is mine, then we surely can expect that some of our behaviours will be aligned too.
That seems to me to be a huge and global opportunity. The more we share motivation with others the more likely we are to be able to trust each other. This is good because, simply put, people who trust each other get more done more quickly.
Wouldn’t it be great if we all shared the motivation of making the world a better place. We’d get a lot more done, more quickly, partly because we’d trust each other more. What a lovely, though perhaps impossibly naive, thought.
If it can’t work globally, perhaps it would work locally. And to find out whether we share motivation, we often simply have to ask. I don’t always find it easy to say what my motivations are, probably because they are quite complex. But if you give me time, I’ll certainly give it a go.
And I find people who are honest and open, and who tell me the full and complete story, however much grey there is, much easier to trust. That’s where I’ll always invest my time, and the little money I have.
Lewes, where I live, is a Transition Town. The Transition movement led by Rob Hopkins and Ben Brangwyn and based in Totnes in the UK is a very interesting movement.
It’s different from some environmentally focussed groups in that it’s not a protest group – it’s not against anything. Rather it’s focussed on creating positive solutions in response to climate change and “peak oil“.
It’s different because it’s local too, and is really more about community, and community resilience, rather than looking at the world top-down or from a global perspective. Instead, it’s a truly bottom-up way of looking at the world.
In fact, I’d argue it operates from the real bottom – me. My perspective and my behaviours as a member are the first and most important place where things can change.
I also like the way the Transition network is structured. It is a network not a hierarchical organisation. Each Transition Town, Village or City can choose how it operates locally, as long as it at least considers following the network’s broad principles.
Being involved leads to some interesting local debates, which I believe have resonance with the broader world too.
Firstly, we have debated whether it’s better to take a positive or negative view of global trends, particularly climate change and peak oil. Is changing our lives as a result of these things bad or good? I, for one, think a world with less oil where we care for the planet more could be a lot better, and in lots of ways.
Secondly, there’s an argument about resilience in the face of change. Who is more resilient, us in wealthy surburban Britain? Or people in developing countries who haven’t forgotten how to live simply. I realise there are shades of grey in this debate, but still can’t help wondering what all the real fuss is about for us more wealthy folk.
Thirdly, there is an argument about hysteria, about getting people into a state of panic. Plenty of the rich world’s population appear the opposite – almost frozen and immobile – in the face of the things that are happening to us. Ecosystems in collapse, species (including our own) under threat, and we continue to shop, drive and so on. As if there was no tomorrow.
I am sure there is a place for hysteria in getting people to sit up and take notice. For jogging people out of their comfort zones. But ultimately I think, as the story of the boy who cried wolf suggests, it’s really not constructive.
The world is simply too unpredictable. Anyone who uses hysteria to garner action risks becoming simply unbelievable.
So, what other strategies might there be to shake people from their immobility? A psychologist, and friend of mine, Ben Fletcher, has a suggestion: Do Something Different.
Ben’s suggestion is that people stay the same largely because of habits. Because of habits people behave incongruently with what they believe. For example, we know we should recycle more but we don’t because it’s not our habit.
So randomly and consistently breaking habits should allow us to behave more congruently.
Then all the publicity and knowledge and “facts” which fly around about the environment should properly drive us to take corrective action.
Does it work? Yes, I think so, from having tried one of the DSD programmes. It seems to have the same kind of results as behavioural disputing – where our actions can prove that thoughts we hold to very dearly aren’t actually correct.
Changing our thoughts, beliefs and attitudes allows us to move on – to change our behaviour and create the world anew. That’s a bottom-up change. Something transition is all about.
Conscious-Business.org.uk 