Becoming Better
Reading this old letter (circa 2005) from prolific but otherwise anonymous writer/programmer/artist Why the Lucky Stiff, I’m reminded of the simplicity and playfulness that’s always driven me.
Sometimes I “get serious”, and I find that those are the times when I lose sight of what I really care about.
Anyway, you say you want to become better. I mean that’s really all you need.
_why points out to this aspiring programmer that all he needs to get better is to never lose the desire to get better. Everything else is experimentation to figure out how to get yourself there.
When I was speaking to a Drexel Alum group earlier this year, somebody asked me “why I chose to be an entrepreneur”. Frankly I’m not sure it’s something I chose, but my answer was off the cuff and still pretty accurate.
Every major decision in my life has been fueled by my unwavering intolerance of the status quo, for the static, and for the unchanging. I don’t just want me to get better, I want to be surrounded by things that are getting better all the time. My motivation to make everything around me better, even just a little bit better, and never forgetting that as my primary motivation – I’ve gotten better myself, even just a little bit better, as a result.
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More Like This, Please
Posts like these give me hope that Philadelphia’s startup community has a chance to be something special.
The Jack White School of Business
I’m noticing that the guys behind the blog that covers the Philly Startup Scene tend to have a better grasp on business fundamentals than some of the “startups” included in their coverage. I’m guessing it’s a blend of their own savvy, the fact that they’re learning from the successes and failures of industry they’re covering, or some combination of the two.
Either way, TechnicallyMedia co-founder Sean Blanda has a rock-solid post about the things he’s learned about his own priorities in business from musician and creative businessman Jack White.
Blanda focuses on the value of constraints as creative fuel, the importance of taking ownership of your work, and a focus on simplicity. The whole piece is a a worthwhile read, and is peppered with White Stripes videos for extra taste.
Startup Therapy Talks Trust
A new group of Indy Hall members have been self-organizing for the last few weeks for a self-titled meetup dubbed “Startup Therapy”. I’m excited to see what sort of antidote this group is able to provide for curing some of the most troubling issues I (and many others) have with Philly’s startup culture.
One of the members, Brian Glick, penned a brief post inspired by a conversation the group shared at last week’s meeting regarding selling into big companies. He mentions an article with some things to consider when selling to the BigCos. But I smiled as I read the next part:
One thing that this article overlooks (or maybe assumes) is that you need to build personal relationships based on openness and trust. Big companies are made up of real people.
If you’ve been following along here, I’ve been writing a lot about the importance of trust (1, 2, 3).
Startup trends come and go, but the causes and effects of trust in business are age-old. I don’t think the article assumes anything, I think that on the whole people forget the significant impact of this simple priority. Brian’s attitude towards building trust and authentic relationships is one I wish more people made a part of their public dialogue.
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It’s harder to think that way
…you have to build up the reasoning from the ground up from first principles, as in the phrase that’s used in physics. So you look at the fundamentals and construct your reasoning from that and then see if you have a conclusion that works or doesn’t work. And it may or may not be different from what people have done in the past. It’s harder to think that way, though.
- Elon Musk
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1000 reasons not to try
Excuses.
Everybody has excuses. For every idea, brilliant or terrible, somebody will come up with at least one reason not to bother in the first place.
I hate excuses. Hate is a strong word, but excuses are really the one thing that my tolerance levels have dropped to zero for.
When I’m critiquing something, I’ve tuned my focus to be on identifying the things that can or should be better rather than the things that can’t or shouldn’t ever be.
Chris Lehmann wrote a blog post titled “A School I’d Love to See“. It’s the most inspiring thing I’ve read all day.
Near the end, he says:
I’m sure there are 1,000 reasons not to start this school… 1,000 reasons this might not work. But isn’t interesting to, instead, wonder if it could?
Chris and I share an affliction. We know that those reasons – those excuses – exist. But rather than be inhibited by them, our affliction is to be inspired to search for the one reason to try anyway.
When you’re presented with 1000 reasons not to try, take it as a cue to find the one reason to try and – if you can find that one reason – go for it..
JFDI.
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I don’t think we’re solving
a “cubicle problem”
With my coworking “trendwatching” hat on, I notice a lot of patterns of the changes in focus of coworking. One thing I’ve noticed come up and become prominent, is the “battle against the cubicle”.
Battling against the cubicle is a reflection of our time, and a valiant effort for sure. But I’m often reminding myself and others that while on the surface, coworking may appear to be the white knight leading the crusade against the cubicle, that’s only the battle.
There’s a war to be won.
Business. Is. Broken.
Especially in America, where capitalism and a free market economy have shown their best and worst sides, business has overwhelmingly fallen victim to the transaction. Because business and commerce are often synonymous, and many of us (or our parents or grand parents) lived through an industrial revolution where the invention of the assembly line changed the bottom line of business, things have changed.
In the last 50+ years, business in America has become fixated on maximizing transaction. Even moreso in the last 20-30 years.
While profits soar, industries with soaring profits crumble. Dotcom. Housing. Banking. History repeats itself – every time transactions are “maximized” by some newly invented math, another element of business is suffering.
The “lost art” of business is caring. The “lost art” of business, is relationships.
I’m not talking about the misbegotten way that “social media” has re-presented relationships to business, either. Social media has completely borked the first opportunity for businesses to really operate on relationships again by generating transactions – followers, tweets, likes, votes, and calling them “community” and “friendship”.
I’m talking about real, honest-to-goodness relationships. The ones that take time.
I noted this excerpt from the business etiquette section of the Fodors guide to Barcelona:
The reigning philosophy is that, first we get to know each other, and then we might do business together. So the eating and drinking, wining and dining part of the transaction, far from a waste of time, is the most imporant part of the encouter; because if you flunk that part, the deal’s not happening no matter what conditions are offered.
In Japan, business deals are often preceded by weeks if not months of social interaction, for the same reason.
I believe that restoring this concept, and this skill, to American business is the #1 long-term value of coworking.
All of the other benefits of coworking aren’t inhibited by this focus. In fact, they are improved.
When relationships are the focus, people earn trust. And a lack trust is at the core of every bit of brokenness in corporations, including but not limited to those pesky cubes.
I’ve wondered to myself, what is the ultimate impact that Indy Hall can have on the world? Not just Philadelphia – but the world. And I don’t think that showing companies an alternative to cubes is good enough.
I think that by continuing to focus on relationships, and working to restore the understanding and desire for relationships to be at the heart of every business and organization, we can have a profound impact on business and the world it operates in.
My hope isn’t for everybody to work from a coworking space. It’s simply not practical, and it’s selling something to lots of people who not only don’t need it – they don’t want it.
My hope, my genuine honest to goodness hope, is that by growing Indy Hall the way we do, and helping others to do the same, that there’s an increased possibility that the business leaders of tomorrow have worked from a coworking space like Indy Hall at some point in their careers.
Working from a place like Indy Hall can have a fundamental impact on how you value relationships as a part of getting work done. If by operating coworking spaces, we can help re-introduce the priority of relationship building to business, the mega-businesses of 5 years, 10 years, 20 years from now will operate in a fundamentally different way.
In a way that changes the interactions between bosses and their teams. In a way that changes the interactions between companies and their vendors. In a way that changes the interactions between companies and the cities they provide opportunities to.
In a way that changes the way that makes the world a better place to work, live and play.
The funny part is that having worked on this for the last 5 years, I’ve seen how natural it is. We’ve worked so hard to create an unnatural business experience, it’s time to undo the damage.
If you’re interested in building better businesses and disrupting the commercial “status quo”, I highly recommend Umair Haque’s The New Capitalist Manifesto. He can be a challenge to follow on Twitter, but his book does an amazing job of capturing the damage we’ve done/are doing by pretending that the current mode of operation is actually working, and presents cases and examples of businesses “reinventing capitalism”. In fact, I’d posit that they’re returning to the roots of capitalism, rather than operating in the bizzarro-reality we’ve made for our business selves.
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