Category: Work

Making it Count: Threads of Belief, Questions and Answers

This is the third post in a series called Making it Count about getting things done and using our precious hours wisely1.

It’s been a while since the last post in this series. I have a whole list of things that I want to say, but based on feedback from from several smart people who know me well, I am compelled to write a post that dives a little deeper into the topic of belief. The last essay2 discussed the mechanics of belief as they play out in a given moment. Here’s an excerpt:

If action flows from belief, we need to be very careful about what we believe so that what we do will put us on the path we want.

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as setting the bearing once and letting everything take care of itself. Humans don’t work that way. We are good at deciding on what we want our destinations to be (“I want to be a good parent,” “I want to get better at writing,” etc.), but our fickle minds and hearts, along with the circumstances in our lives, constantly throw us off course. While we might value our commitment to an end goal, we often choose to believe things contrary to that goal because of convenience, stress, success, failure, personality—fill in the blank.

Why write another philosophical post? 

I am writing this post because talking about belief in the context of a given moment, while extremely valuable, doesn’t paint the whole picture of what I believe about those systems, or why our minds and hearts are so fickle.

Also, for those who can’t help but ask additional questions, talking about my beliefs in a given moment simply won’t close the philosophical loop that the topic opens. So, yes, a bit more philosophy before we dive into the practical; don’t worry, we will get there!
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1. You can read more about the series and view links to additional posts here.2. Read the last essay, called “Values, Beliefs and Precious Hours.“

Letters to the Company: Disagreements

When success happens, people tend to view the path leading up to that success with rose-colored glasses.

For those who actually experience the victory, forgetting the past can be blinding. For outside observers, the the tendency is to assume smoother sailing than actually happened and idealize a parts of a story that aren’t rooted in reality.

Any healthy company will walk a path of difficult discussion at some point, and The Iron Yard is no different. Here’s a letter I wrote explaining this to our team:

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A Visit to Zappos in Las Vegas

This week I’ve had the unbelievable privilege of spending time with a handful people from the Zappos team. Yes, that included Tony Hsieh and Fred Mossler. Peter, John and I had a drink with them last night. (No, I didn’t take any pictures with/of them. That would have been extremely awkward.)

Here are a few highlights from our adventures yesterday:

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There’s Nothing New: “Empowered Consumers”

I’ve always loved this bit about empowered consumers. Reads like it was written yesterday:

The dimensions of the latest trends in consumer behavior were outlined in an overview in the Harvard Business Review. This new zeitgeist, the august publication explained, is being fueled by “the efforts of consumers themselves,” who have lately “become articulate.” One of the defining features of this fresh paradigm is the new consumer’s “demand for information.” They are banding together, becoming “better educated and better organized,” with a “growing familiarity with the mechanics of advertising” and the endless range of gimmicky sales tactics. They have “suffered from deceptive and stupid advertising” long enough, and it is only inevitable that power should shift to them in an economy that has moved from scarcity to abundance. “These changes,” the article summarized, “have tended to make consumers more critical and to enhance their importance.” Such was the state of things . . . in 1939.

—Dr. John Kotter, Buy In

If You Want to Work in a Startup, Get Used to Everything Breaking All of the Time

Startups attract people for different reasons. Freedom, control, decentralized authority, loving your job, making a difference, the allure of potential wealth, the sheer energy of the whole thing—take your pick. This world is a wild and wonderful roller coaster that ruins some and makes kings of others. If you have the constitution for it, entrepreneurship can be addicting.

Startups can also be the most frustrating thing in the world, either because they won’t take off or because when they do, scale is incredibly good at breaking things.

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The Best Plan is the One That’s Happening

I have a fair amount of experience in the world of agency and client work. One thing that always struck me as interesting about both worlds is the need for a perfect plan.

A majority of the system is built around carefully crafted and detailed plans and, equally as, if not more important, the sale of those plans to the client. To some extent, this is understandable: Why would you give someone money if you didn’t know exactly what they were going to do with it?
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Midnight Oil (and Owning a Company)

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Lots of people have asked me what it’s like to own a company. Here’s what I generally say:

Making your own schedule is great. Leading people is a wonderful adventure. But at the end of the day, when something absolutely has to be done, you and the partners are ultimately responsible, no one else.

Tonight that means writing code and content until the wee hours of the morning.

Letters to the Company: Sales, Storytelling and The Iron Yard

When I have the opportunity, I write letters to our company. They are generally attempts to either encapsulate our collective philosophy on a certain subject or remind our team why we do what we do (and why we are who we are).

Recently everyone on the team sprinted (successfully) through an intense marketing push as we approached launch in two cities simultaneously. On some level, everyone felt like they were part of a gigantic sales force, which was both fun and challenging.

When the dust settled, I wrote a letter to our team about sales as storytelling.

Continue reading Letters to the Company: Sales, Storytelling and The Iron Yard