I’ve been surprised to find myself thinking so much about business lately.

Having so many irons in the fire has given me the opportunity not only to reflect on their similarities and differences, but also reflect on the work I have done in the past. Since I have been in leadership since before leaving university, there is lots to think about.

So I have developed (or under-developed?) a number of high-minded theories about leadership, management, corporate culture, customer service and the like.

Lest anyone reading this think that I believe myself irreproachable, these theories have been developed as much by those things I look back on as failures as those I look back on as successes. Many of the ideals I will sharing here are not always the experiences my past employees have had with me, and that’s precisely the reason I will continue to write them.

Getting distance has helped make sense of these experiences, and hopefully this will help someone else as well.

I am perpetually amazed how many businesses make the mistake of promoting people who are good at their job.

I’ll cross reference the Peter Principle here if you want a slightly different take on the issue.

It seems that somehow we’ve run out of ways to tell our employees that they’re kicking ass and we really appreciate it. We toss them an assistant management title and and force them to do busywork instead of the stuff they’re so good at. What kind of recognition is that?

Promoting people is the fastest way to get them doing something they’re not cut out for. Don’t promote because someone is doing a good job, or because they’re been with you for a long time.

When to Promote

They’re Already Doing It

This is a no-brainer. If you have a team member who is already coordinating work, helping people, doing ad-hoc training, taking responsibility, then you’re got someone who’s not at the right level in your organization. But, you did already recognize this potential in your employee, didn’t you?

You’ve Prepared Them

An employee shouldn’t be put into leadership cold. Once you’ve recognized the potential and cultivated those skills and given the employee the opportunity to grow, let her go. This is a little harder than the first situation; they’ll need more active development from you. But then, that’s your job, isn’t it?

They’re a Better Coach Than Pitcher

Sorry to use a sports metaphor, but in a small group you probably have a “generalist” who, as the team grows, will be replaced with several specialists. In many businesses, this is the natural order of things. And a generalist is typically a much better leader and decision maker than a specialist.

They’ll be Better at Your Job Than You Are

This is the hardest to admit. But if you’re a leader, you’ll do it.

What are the alternatives?

Stay Flat

The Chicken/Egg dilemma of promotion within a business is that if you have “middle management” positions, you’ll fill them. But if you feel compelled to promote people, you’ll also create positions you don’t have. Both are mistakes. Mandate the maximum depth of your organization and do not violate it.

Just Pay Them More

The best reason to promote someone is because you want to recognize the awesome work they’re doing. But if you promote an Engineer to a leadership position, you may be promoting that Engineer right out of a core skillset. If your Superstar isn’t a leader, don’t force it. More money is always welcome recognition.

Perks

Perks are the most underutilized tools in a manager’s tool chest. In most cases perks are more meaningful and cost effective than any other solution. Vehicle allowances, a (nice) company laptop, more vacation days, and so on.

The Most Important Thing?

Be Genuine

If your organization is bloated and inertial none of this will work for you; everyone knows that the plaques and certificates you issue are not heartfelt. If your culture does not value people, you’re already losing this battle. Which means you’re also losing your best people.

It has been a long time since I posted, and not without reason. I am changing my editorial tack with this site, and that change is reflected in the new layout. If you’re using a feed reader, click through.

As you can see, things are simpler and I removed a lot of crap from the site. And I also turned off comments.

New Direction

I had been struggling to post new content because I was trying to write about topics for which I had no definitive answers and publishing articles–even on a personal blog–with no conclusion bothered me. I was liberated from this self-imposed editorial tyranny when I realized that this was not in keeping with the intellectual curiosity that was driving me to blog

Like every human, I believe I am right nearly all the time and have made my mind up about a good many things. However, there are many issues so complicated, deep, and mysterious that I can never hope to fully understand. Demanding that I have answers before blogging means I could never write a word about them.

So I am giving myself permission to explore these topics here in the same way I do in my private thoughts: questioning. You will increasingly read here articles that are inconclusive, frustrated, confused and confusing; rather than having conclusions for everything I write, I will have mostly questions.

New Tumblr

I signed up for a Tumblog Tumbleblog Tumbr. The thinking here is that short (and funny, sarcastic, mean) thoughts will go on twitter, fuller thoughts will go on Tumblr and longer thoughts will go here. If you want to follow everything I think that is fit to post, follow all three. If you just want to laugh, follow me on twitter.

New Commentlessness

I first enabled comments on my blog because I figured I had to and certainly, since I had, legions of readers would leave pithy comments on my blog. This didn’t work out, and while wondering what to do about it, I heard Merlin Mann say that whether you have comments or not, you need to know why. Which I knew deep down I but didn’t have the cojones to step up to the plate. Why did I turn off comments right when I’m going to start writing articles that are mostly questions? And tackling more difficult topics in more detail? Wouldn’t people be more apt to comment?

Who cares? Seriously.

I do hope that people read what I write here, and I do value ideas and discussion, but posting a paragraph on a webpage is pretty meaningless when you think about it.

If the topics I choose, or what I write about them is interesting, compelling or thought-provoking, then I don’t want you to fill out a web form. I want you to get together with friends, open some Gin, or Wine, or Beer, or Water, and talk about the things that captured your attention. Comments don’t change anything. People do.

The wonders of the internet recently brought me this fantastic article: Beyond beyond beyond beyond “Beyond embiggens and cromulent” by Heidi Harley of HeiDeas (if there’s a better example of blog name synchronicity out there I haven’t seen it).

Its part of an annual collection of linguistic jokes on The Simpsons.

You’re welcome.

Between conferences, webex demos, conference calls and vendor meetings, in the last 2 months I’ve sat through 24 presentations. Of course with few exceptions, they were all full of imbecilic PowerPoint presentations, composed strictly of bulleted lists that were either obvious or irrelevant and punctuated with distracting, inappropriate animations.

Listening to “expert consultants” give me list after list of how to be successful doing something they do not do is a sure fire way to send me to my happy place. Fortunately, while there I was able to codify an idea that had been hounding me for some time.

While a particular “expert consultant” was detailing Vogue-style for me the 10 Things That Will Cause A Creative Venture to Fail and the 4 Quick Fixes for Something Something Not Listening I wrote this, my only note from the presentation, on a note card.

Everything Works. But Not for You.

Listening to practicing experts is great, and I do it as much as I can. But every project, every venture, every artist, book, blog, website, podcast and business is unique. Listening to the lists pushed by Snake Oil Salesman and Industry Pundits will have you imitating the success of someone they’ve only read about, and you’ll fail because you are not that person.

Everything works. But that doesn’t mean it will work for you. Your situation is unique, so don’t fail by trying to follow the lists you found on the internet. Brew some coffee, sit down with a sharpie and blank sheet of paper and try something crazy.

This post is as much for me as it is for you.

In April 1968, Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis, just a few hours by car from my home. I didn’t live through it, and I didn’t read deliberately (that is, outside of school) about Dr. King’s life until I was an adult, but even at 31 years old and 41 years after the event, I find it horrifying and desperately sad. I hope to visit the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis this spring.

But Even Today…

I see everyday the remnants of segregation, overhear lingering discrimination of all sorts, and live among the great-grandchildren of slaves. As someone known for his stoicism, I may shock you when I say it is still painful after a year. Old habits, it seems, die very very hard; native sons and daughters of The South born and raised in this culture do not see their behavior and understand their prejudices in the same way I do, and as the rest of the nation would.

While I do believe that reconciliation is possible, and that one day these egregious wrongs can be made right, I am still a pessimist; I believe that the only realistic outcome in the longer-near term will be that society moves on to the next great horror and our national guilt is assuaged only in redirection.

The Great Fear

Which brings me to the great fear that is the center of this short article. Reading of the great movements of the 1950s and 1960s I fear we may never see another Dr. King to lead us to next mountaintop. To develop this point briefly, the social movements of the 1960s grew out of a specific soil - the culture and ideas, the history, etc. If full civil rights and citizenship had been instituted after the abolition of slavery, Rosa Parks would never have been asked to move.

The social and media fabric of the time were just two of many necessary ingredients that leavened the bread. The media revolution that has occurred since, and continues even now, may be the new ingredient that spoils the dough.

The Media Revolution

The steady change in media since the 1950s, easily observable in the last 10 years, has been the diversification and fragmentation of media of every sort. TV stations, radio stations, websites, podcasts, newspapers, magazines, blogs and every type of media have multiplied in quantity exponentially since Dr. King was assassinated. It seems this makes it much more difficult for a broad movement to take root in the soil of our time. Because we now have hundreds of channels for the consumption of news, and humans tend to select sources which reinforce existing ideas, getting broad exposure is harder at the same time we are told our attention spans are shortening. Can the next, nationwide Civil Rights movement grip an entire culture in such an environment? Would millions march on Washington when they could just join a Facebook group?

The Hope?

My only hope is that the same revolution that multiplied the available channels (in the broad sense) has also multiplied the power and awareness of individuals and small groups, and has multiplied the diversity of ideas. If the United States is unable to produce another Dr. King, perhaps this new power, used for good, can make each of us in a very small way a Dr. King.

I’m going to go out a limb here. If this were an industry blog, or if any nerds actually read it, this post would incite some lively debate. Since neither of those things are true, we’ll just consider this a tip between friends to help you figure out what all these nerds are talking about. Here’s the God’s Truth on the tech topics du jour.

Cloud Computing

There is a lot of fuss around about Cloud Computing. If you want a definition, go to wikipedia. While you’re there, look up grid or cluster computing, client/server computing, desktop computing, mobile computing, web 1.0, web 2.0, and virtualization. Or just let me explain them ALL to you right now. There are only two ways to “compute” and they are as follows: (1) access the network or (2) don’t access the network. The rest is implementation details.

Social Media

Of course, no one will shut up about social media. Here’s the truth about social media: All media is social media. The only “media” that isn’t social is the media inside your head. The evolution of communication on the web has multiplied the reach and power of, well, everyone. But everything possible with “social media” was possible 100 years ago, it just took longer and used different tools. Humans Beings use technology, and media is a technology, for one of seven purposes: Finding a Mate/Reproduction, Extending/Ending Life, Food, Shelter, Clothing, Entertainment, and Communication.

Netbooks

A netbook is a small notebook. That’s it. In the 90’s we called them Sub-Notebooks, but the internet wasn’t around so we couldn’t add “Net” to something and make it cool. Unsurprisingly, computer companies realized that in the bullet-point marketing world, you can’t sell a notebook with a 9″ screen against one with a 15″ screen. So they named a new category. If a netbook is all you need, you should get one. But they’re just a computer, nothing revolutionary. They’ll probably be the first PC segment to die as computing moves away from dedicated (unspecialized) hardware.

What’d I Miss?

Those are the big ones bugging me. If you need a term demystified, let me know.

I’ve been thinking about Free lately. NoiseTrade offers a service that costs money. Similar services with more flexibility but fewer features (and no way to make money yourself) are available for free. In the middle of thinking about his, @jasonfried linked to an old Mashable article where Pete said “…I do think moving to a paid-only model is a supremely stupid business decision.”

Oh Really?

No offense to Pete, but I’m of the opinion that NOT having a pay service is stupid.

Ultimately if people aren’t willing to pay money for what you’re doing, then you don’t have a business. Hell, you don’t even have customers. You have users that will fall into one of three categories, none of which make you money:

• Pay Nothings who want your service but wouldn’t pay for it no matter what. They only use you because you’re free. Fortunately in the web world, they only cost you bandwidth. In the physical world, they cost a lot more.
• Do Nothings who have a lot of time on their hands. They’re looking to burn some time and that is all. They’ll be gone shortly.
• Care Nothings who aren’t interested in what you’re doing. They’ll sign up for anything and everything free, just because it is free. Do they care about sharing photos online, uploading trail waypoints, or whatever? No. Not at all.

The Conclusion

If you aren’t creating something that people are willing to pay for, then what are you actually trying to accomplish? If you’re giving away something that isn’t worth buying, you’re wasting everyone’s time.

Creating something worth buying and then giving it away doesn’t make a lot of sense either, but as part of an overall marketing and customer acquisition strategy, at least it has a shot at being sustainable.

While I was editing this brief article, another relevant article from Good Experience presented itself in Google Reader. “If you can’t get people to pay for what they love, we’re all out of business.”

Aside: I do not have an iPhone, I am the last of my friends to be stuck using a internet-less, regular-toothed, rotary-dial, steam-powered, hand-cranked flip phone. This post is not about about why that is ($$) or a revelation that I am caving (again, $$).

Disclaimer

I know nothing about the Mac Business Unit within Microsoft, I don’t know anyone at Microsoft anymore, and have no inside information related to the topic of this post.

January 2007: Apple Announces the iPhone

What a fateful day it was. A cell phone. From Apple. That ran “Mac OS X,” whatever that meant. Then thousands of voices cried out in unison, “No Third Party Apps!” A sentence which most reasonable people knew was succeeded in Steve Jobs’ mind by the word “…yet.” [Press Release]

October 2007: Steve Jobs Announces iPhone SDK

Steve shares in an open letter that there will be an SDK, third party apps!

March 2008: SDK Released

SDK, App Store, much rejoicing. [Press Release]

July 2008: App Store is Open for Business

The biggest orgy since the iPhone hit the shelves.

February 2009: Still No Word, Excel, or PowerPoint for iPhone

It’s been nearly a year since the official release of the SDK, and even before that it was clear that the iPhone was a smash hit and likely to be the standard against which mobile handsets would be judged for a long time to come. Microsoft had plenty of warning.

I don’t know who at Microsoft has a black turtleneck phone that connects straight to Steve Jobs’ old office, but if I was that person I would have spent a lot of time on it between October 2007 and July 2008 making sure that iPhone Office Companions were some of the first apps out the door.

Instead, Office is not represented on the most influential OS in the most coveted market with the most projected growth in the technology industry. That’s crazy. People are downloading iPhone-Ocarinas and farting applications, yet there is no Microsoft Office.

Microsoft could sell 1 Million copies of a $0.99 app that did nothing but sync and view Office files with no editing capabilities at all. Throw in basic editing and charge $10, or just include a code for a free license when you buy Office for the desktop. This isn’t rocket science.

The iPhone economy, as they call it, is instead slowly developing replacements and workarounds. It won’t be long before this won’t matter because no one will need Office for the iPhone. Which is good for users, but bad for Microsoft. Considering Office 2008 for Mac wasn’t worth buying, I don’t know how they’ll be able to hang on to any customers.

21st century economies will be powered by smart growth. Not all growth is created equal. Some kinds of growth are more valuable than others. Where dumb growth is unsustainable, unfair, and brittle, smart growth is sustainable, equitable, and resilient.

-Umair Haque on HarvardBusiness.org

I’m glad someone else is talking about this. I mean, besides my paranoid, raving tirades on Porch Night en Studio (Hi guys!).

The Problem Is…

The ingrained business culture in America is based on rules for a system that hasn’t existed for a long time. We manufacture very little, outsource a lot, subsidize too much, and send (for all practical purposes) all our raw materials overseas.

As long as this makes financial sense it will happen, but that doesn’t mean it is good for our economy in the long-term. We’ll soon have “too many chiefs” as they say; if we eliminate the domestic intellectual, creative, and skilled-worker “classes” who will be left to afford college, go out to eat, and buy the things we manufacture and ship back from Taiwan? There is a limit to this growth that in my mind is approaching faster than we think.

The Solution Is…

We can change direction, restructure large segments of our economy, or realize too late that we were being short sighted and foolish. I personally think the last option is the most likely.

The Reality Is…

Culture, regulation, and “mindsets” are always years behind fundamental changes in the way we do things. Just as the average American harkens all civic and scientific knowledge back to primary education, despite intermediate progress in those fields, the average business person harkens business understanding and operations back to their “formative” years in business. Changing ingrained knowledge, understanding, and practice is very hard. This a phenomenon I call “Being a Human.”