Category Archives: Web/Tech

What Business Plan Software Shouldn’t Do

Business Planning, Productivity Software, Technology

The ideal business plan software doesn’t write your text or do your numbers. Instead, it helps you with the mechanics of managing the links between the different numbers, and the main topic outline, laying out the page if you need to print it, and giving you ideas, questions to answer, and suggestions.

Broken_Lightbulp_Flickrcc_snail_race[1] I just saw another blog post by somebody who ought to know better, knocking business plan software for writing people’s text. What would a programmer know about your business or what should be in your plan, the blog asks.

This is the logical equivalent of saying that word processing software isn’t a good tool for writing a letter, because what would a programmer know about the content of your letter? It’s a tool, for heaven’s sake. Done right, it doesn’t write your text. Of course not.

I get the feeling that people who have never used business plan software guess what it’s doing and then criticize their guess, instead of the actual software.

Or maybe it’s that they’ve seen those stupid ads all over the Web for business plans that write themselves, or just fill in the blanks and get financed, and similar dumb claims. That’s not business plan software any more than a purchased term paper is research or writing software.

(Image: Snail Race via Flickr cc)

Zen Habits and the Art of Focus

Weblogs, Writing,

Every so often I’m struck with the beauty and eloquence of simplicity. Like this blog, this post, this simple look and feel:

I particularly liked this post, but it reminded me that the blog itself, zenhabits, is a wonderful example of how well focus actually works within a real business, small business, context. As the tag line suggests, it’s about “simple productivity.” I love how much both the design and the actual content reinforce the “simple” focus. It’s surprising how rarely that kind of deep conceptual integration actually happens.

This is a great example. You might also try 30 Things to Do to Keep From Getting Bored Out of Your Skull at Work, or 20 Things I Wish I Had Known Starting Out in Life. Or any of the other posts on this blog.

Are You Kidding Yourself About Tools and Productivity?

Personal Productivity, Productivity Software, Technology, , , ,

Is this you?  Over and over again, you fall off on regular consistent organizational practices like to-do lists, emails, planning, backing up your computer … then you run across some cool new tool. You jump on the bandwagon enthusiastically, promising yourself that you’re finally going to get organized and stay organized. You spend happy hours reorganizing everything to fit the new tool. Then, over time, as the novelty wears off, you end up right back where you started, with the same problems.

And then you find a new cool tool and run the same cycle over again.

I will tell you that this is definitely me. I’ve done this all my life. I veer off to a new organization system like a dumb fish following a shiny new lure in the water. And I see other people doing it too, all the time, all around me. You don’t need a new spreadsheet, or to-do list software, or project planning system; you need to use what you have regularly.

I end up wasting the time it takes to reorganize to the mindset of the cool new tool, repeatedly, instead of managing to follow up on any one thing consistently over a long time.

And what works in the real world is not the tool, not any of the damn tools, but rather the following up. It’s the human behavior that matters, the good habits, consistently applying methods, not getting bored with it, not rationalizing out of it.

I apologize for mixing metaphors with this, but I can’t resist referring to the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, with “Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.” Given the world we live in, computers and the Web, it’s something like: “tools, tools everywhere, and not a drop of productivity.”

What, Me Listen, Errr, Do I Have To?

Business Stories, Technology, Weblogs, , ,

I liked Sonia Simone’s refreshingly put The Surprising Old-School Secret to Blogging Success on Copyblogger yesterday. She’s talking about blogging, specifically, but the lesson applies all over the new world. I liked it when she starts with this…

About 80% of your blog’s success comes from “ass in chair” time. That’s the time you spend writing posts, editing posts, finding the perfect image, connecting with fellow bloggers, answering comments, and shaping up your SEO…

… because that’s my style. I don’t mind working long hours, particularly doing stuff I like, such as —  on the good days —  writing stuff on this blog. Give me a keyboard and an empty room and I’m happy to be the life of the hypothetical not-really-there party.

But real people, in real conversation? I don’t like it when Sonia reveals her hidden message:

Believe it or not, you can actually replicate this phenomenon by physically locating yourself in close proximity to another person, with each of you taking turns speaking. This is called a conversation.

Ugh. Where’s my keyboard? And, to make it worse, she rubs salt on that wound with this:

Spend enough time in these “real world” conversations, and you actually trigger the growth of new neural connections. You come up with new ideas. You challenge your existing ideas and take them in new directions. You learn.

This phenomenon is improved by another old-school technique, called listening. It’s like lurking, except the other person can see you standing there, so at some point you should probably say something.

I have to admit, I liked it better when success was 90% just showing up. I’m good at showing up. But listening? You’re asking a lot.

One of the funniest – and, like it or not – truest pieces I’ve read lately was Call Me! But Not on Skype or Any Other Videophone in Time Magazine a few weeks ago (and, happily, also posted online, which is why I linked to it here). Joel Stein nails it on what’s wrong with Skype: you have to pay attention to the other person. He says:

Skype breaks the century-old social contract of the phone: we pay close attention while we’re talking and zone out while you are.

As soon as you begin to talk, I feel trapped and desperately scan the room for tasks I can do to justify the enormous waste of time that is your talking.

How embarrassingly true that is. And now we have experts on Copyblogger, one of the best blogs about blogging, telling us the secret to blogging success might be actual real conversations with live people instead of keyboards. And listening?

Brave new world? Maybe not. Maybe just that same old world, but with more people than ever.

Say it Ain’t So Joel

Advice, Business Strategy, Weblogs, Writing, ,

This is disturbing on several levels. No, I don’t know Joel Spolsky but I feel like I do because I’ve been reading his work for years. He’s not just an expert on software development, he’s a very good writer and thinker. I’ve quoted him a lot.

So what’s disturbing? In Let’s Take This Offline Joel’s saying he’s going to stop blogging. That’s bad enough, because there aren’t that many thoughtful eloquent software developers around. But what’s worse is his reason (quoting):

The truth is, as much as I’ve enjoyed it, blogging has become increasingly impossible to do the way I want to as Fog Creek has become a larger company. We now have 32 employees and at least six substantial product lines. We have so many customers that I can’t always write freely without inadvertently insulting one of them. And my daily duties now take so much time that it has become a major effort to post something thoughtful even once or twice a month.

The best evidence also suggests that there are many other effective ways to market Fog Creek’s products — and that our historical overreliance on blogging as a marketing channel has meant that we’ve ignored them. I realize now that blogging made me, and Fog Creek, a big fish in a very small pond. As a result, we have the undisputed No. 1 product among the 5 percent to 10 percent of programmers who regularly read blogs about programming. Meanwhile, we’re almost unknown in every other demographic.

I think that’s a real business mistake. As I write this and as you read it, of course, we should both recognize that I know absolutely nothing about the specific business of Fog Creek software, so I’m probably way off base here. But then, in defense of what I’m about to say, I am relying on Joel’s own words. I’m taking him at his word.

The mistake here is related to one of my favorite quotes: “I don’t know the secret to success, but the secret to failure is trying to please everybody.”

I think every company needs to recognize its strengths and weaknesses. Sure, you try to bolster the weaknesses over time, but never give up a strength. Here’s my message to Joel:

Joel, your blogging is your stronghold. It’s all about focus. You can’t do everything. Having a clear and well-identified strength is really important. Keep it. Use it to defend your business while you expand elsewhere. You don’t have to give that up in order to broaden channels. You’ve got a business going, you have revenue, you can hire people to do those other things, open those other channels. If you look, you’ll find people who know how to do that, and can do it better than you will. Keep your writing and build on it.

5-Step Late-Business-Meeting Recovery Plan

Weblogs

It seems so simple: punctuality is a matter of respecting other people’s time. Be on time for meetings and appointments. This is obvious. Right?

Still, in many organizations it’s a cascading problem. Lag times creep up from five to 10 to 15 minutes. clockPeople hang back, composing one more email, because they know the meeting will start late and they have a lot to do. Nobody wants to be on time and then sit in a conference room waiting while others tick off their to-do lists.

I learned a good lesson from an experienced teacher years ago, when I was a tour guide during vacations from my real job. I took groups around the world (yes, a stroke of luck for a 25-year-old working stiff, but how that happened is a different story).

The trips I did took a month each. I traveled with the group and connected with local guides for local tours in each destination. The advice I got was:

On the morning of the first day in the first destination city, with the very first city tour, leave a few people behind. If you do, your group will be on time for the rest of the month. If you don’t, they’ll get later and later throughout the month.

And that advice turned out to be spot on. I know, because I did it wrong the first time around. Once I’d waited five minutes on the first day, there was no way to not wait five, 10, 15 minutes on other days. I’d waited for so-and-so, why not for this other one too? And the second time I did it right. I left without four of about 70 people for the first city tour because they weren’t in the lobby at 9 a.m. Bingo. Everybody was on time for all the other tours.

Realistically, how do you apply this simple lesson to a business environment?

  1. If you don’t have the highest ranking people in the organization on board, forget it. It’s not going to happen. You have to be the boss or the owner or have total cooperation of the boss or the owner. If that’s not the case, stop here. Do not continue reading. Give it up. If it is the case, call that person the leader.
  2. Make sure meetings are generally well organized and efficient. Invite nobody who doesn’t have to be there. Keep only the agenda points that apply to everybody invited.
  3. Use a memo or a company meeting or something else to communicate to everybody that you’re implementing this change. Use just a few words. Make sure it comes from the leader.
  4. The next few meetings are critical. The leader has to establish the precedent. Meetings have to start on time, of course.
  5. If you can possibly find a way to reward those who are there on time, do that. Give them the better assignments. Or assign the volunteer tasks to those who are late. Show the video or distribute the software first.

If you can follow these steps, you’ll have a more productive work environment. Think about it: if everybody is waiting for a few minutes after the specified meeting time, and nobody is on time, how much time is lost? Why not just schedule the meeting for 9:15 then, instead of 9 a.m.?

By the way, if you happen to be a consultant or outside expert, you obviously have less control over the meeting style at the client company. But you can talk about your meeting punctuality policy with the main client. You might find that she or he is grateful for a chance to introduce this topic into the organization.

(Image: Ebtikar/Shutterstock)

Business Plans are Never Done

Business Planning, Weblogs, ,

If your business plan is finished, your business is finished.

I’d like to think that this is obvious, but a lot of people don’t get it. A business plan isn’t supposed to be finished, ever. If it’s useful to your business, then you keep it alive. You review it regularly. You check assumptions and how they’ve changed. You compare plan versus actual results and make course corrections.

It’s supposed to be like the farmer’s axe: the handle’s been replaced 10 times and the blade three times, but it’s still the same axe.

Like that axe changing its parts, expect your business plan to change. Parts of it will be replaced as reality rears up its ugly head and messes with assumptions. But the plan goes on and on.

For example, Palo Alto Software is 22 years old. The business plan has never been finished. We take a fresh look at it once a year, and review plan versus actual results every month. When we discover that assumptions have changed, we review the changes and the impact of the changes, and adjust the plan.

Maybe 10 or 15 times in 22 years, we’ve had to dress up the plan and send it to somebody outside the company. We did that to get the merchant account initially, to set up a commercial line of credit with a bank, and when we were looking at possibly taking on investors. Each time we needed to present a plan, we took the real plan — the live plan — and we reviewed, edited, formatted, and produced a document. And that document, once produced, is no longer the plan. It’s just the dressed-up view of the plan as it existed that particular day.

So the plan lives on. Unfinished. 22 years later.

Will Your Business Sink in a Technology Ocean?

Technology, Web/Tech, , , , ,

Geology is fascinating. If only we could speed up time, we could see mountains rising and being eroded into peaks and valleys, oceans ebbing and flowing, continents breaking up and moving around. Earthquakes. Volcanoes. Glaciers. Landscape in action. Great spectacle. Or it would be, if we could speed up time.

How about continental drift? Speed up time. If you click the image here to the right you’ll go through 650 million years in 1 minute 20 seconds.  Watch the continents pull apart. It’s a fun animation.

And technology is just like continental drift, but roughly 25, 50, 100, maybe a million times faster. And accelerating.

For example, mobile technologies. And what if the big blob there on the right were labeled “iPhone,” and other blobs labeled “Android,” “Windows Mobile,” and so on?  That’s a changing technology landscape. And in that case, the splitting of the continents represents maybe a year or two. Right? Call it two years, and that would make it 325 million times faster than continental drift.

The pace of technology’s changing landscapes is speeding up. The technological continental drift in personal computer operating systems common for business use took maybe 10 or 12 years to go through the cycle from CP/M in 1980-1982 or so, followed by the MS-DOS world (we called it PC Compatible), with Mac and then Windows, lately Linux and friends. Or maybe that was 25 years?

We all have to choose platforms. I’ve seen it from a software developer standpoint since 1984, so 26 years now. Then there’s hardware manufacturing, consulting and expertise, and also just plain using the technology. Do you use Windows or Mac or Linus? iPhone or Android or Treo or Blackberry? You’re making choices.

Make the wrong choice and you end up like my polar bear friend here to the left (with apologies for changing the simile abruptly from continental drift to ice sheets breaking up, but it does sort of show it, doesn’t it?) You’re on a shrinking platform. Of course the polar bear can swim long distances. Users can jump platforms, but it costs time and money. Developers and manufacturers can jump platforms too, but it costs more time, and more money.

I’ve seen a lot of businesses rise and fall to the ebb and flow of these technology platforms.

This is tough, but important, strategy management. Businesses get stranded on shrinking platforms all the time. Businesses went down with the ship of CP/M, Apple II, MS-DOS, SONY Betamax, HD vs Blue-Ray… it’s happening all the time. Yahoo Instant Messenger vs. Microsoft Messenger vs. whatever-they-called-it-on-AOL and so on.

Where are you in social media? Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Buzz, somewhere else?

Ideally you want to jump to the next continent in time to ride with it as it grows. But damn, it’s hard to guess right all the time. You’ve seen what happens. You’ve seen some businesses try to mitigate the risk by developing into multiple platforms, then lose focus and fall apart. You’ve seen businesses stick to dwindling platforms and eventually fade away.

What are you doing about this?

(Image credit: Jan Martin Will/Shutterstock)

Smoggy Mourning in Mexico City

Weblogs, ,

That’s not a misspelling in my title; it’s on purpose. The play on words: morning because Mexico City is usually smoggiest in the mornings; and mourning because it used to be such a great place to live, and isn’t at all anymore.  Sure, everything changes, but Mexico City has gone from being a delightful place to live, in the early 1970s —  safe, manageable, full of trees and music and good food and friendly people — to being very dirty and downright dangerous.

It’s a night-and-day change. Who would believe it, but  when I first moved there as a young man in 1971, Mexico City was safer than any major U.S. city. It was almost like Tokyo in that respect.

My wife and I used to go out for dinner and a movie on a Friday night and take the freeway (periferico) 15 miles in 15 minutes to get to a movie theater in the north of the city. We’d watch the movie, go to dinner in the downtown area, 10 or so miles and another 10 or so minutes away, and then get home (another five or so miles) in 10-15 minutes.

We were always safe taking a walk after dinner. There were some rumored neighborhoods where that might not have been true, but just about anywhere in the main areas of the city were safe. We never worried.

Often, at night as I drifted off to sleep, I would hear the distant wistful sound of a camote vendor who used a distinctive whistle to attract customers to his rolling baked sweet potato cart. And on weekends we might find a rolling corn on the cob (elote) vendor, with a different whistle, selling boiled corn on the cob served bathed in lemon, salt, and powdered chile. Those are great memories.

When I first arrived in Mexico City there was no word in the vernacular for smog. They had some on particularly bad days, but it was nothing like, say, Los Angeles.

Boy, has that all changed. Today, that Friday night itinerary would be about three hours’ driving time. People are very careful about where they choose to take an evening walk. Most of the trees are gone. Restaurants are still spectacularly good in Mexico City, but they’re a lot harder to get to. And the smog and traffic are terrible.

Not long ago, Forbes.com published a list of the 25 dirtiest cities in the world. Mexico City placed fifth in that category.

And this is not just idle criticism of somewhere far away. I earned the right to say this. I lived in Mexico City for 10 years. It’s my city-in-law, in a sense, because my wife was born and raised there. We have three children who were born there.

And for anybody out there who thinks this is the natural result of some sort of social inferiority, forget that please. It’s not just corruption, although that’s a factor. And it’s not just the drug cartels, although they too are a serious factor. No, it’s a combination of disadvantaged economic development for centuries, an unlevel playing field, plus corruption and drugs. And don’t forget what causes the drug problem: the people who create the market by buying and using the drugs. The providers wouldn’t be there if the market weren’t there.