The little thing on the top right is the ever-powerful and rarely-changing search box. There have been also near-infinite designs and forms that a search box can take but all of them ultimately do the same thing.

So why would anyone or any company obsess over it?

Well, for us, it’s because we simply do. Search is becoming not just a solution for the errant and lost internet wanderer but a invaluable part of the navigation structure of any website.

So we took a look at what we should put in the text box in terms of starting text. We also thought about having a “Search” button or to do away with it.

We opted to do away with it. Even the blue-ish glow around the box matters. Will anyone notice? Probably not, but that doesn’t matter – they will notice it if it disappeared after they’ve been using it for a while.

Check out the actual results page too:

Giving our users a natural breadcrumb to help someone navigate or remember their bearings as well as a light green callout for the actual results was all taken into consideration.

Note, that these implementations are available currently in our WordPress.com implementation.

But one of neatest things coming down the pipe is integration with native Google Search for our self-hosted users in the upcoming v3.

I can neither confirm nor deny that it’ll actually make launch but you can be sure we’re investigating it fully – and for those that understand the power of having Google power your internal search will be super-happy that we did.

You use search. I use search. We all use search so gosh-darn much these days that it needs to be highly considered in terms of your publishing needs (and your reader’s actual experience). It’s sad that many other WordPress Themes out there don’t give it the love and attention it rightly deserves!

But we do.

This image is exactly how I feel at times when I consider the challenges of technology and leadership. And especially with a team that works in this space we’re constantly introduced to new products, services, solutions, and other crazy-fringe pieces of technology that may or may not be valuable to explore.

I also see this as our battle cry as well – this is the value that we bring to our customers. Our job is to make the infinitely complex extraordinarily easy, simple to use, and intuitive. I have to remember that things as simple to us (like FTP’ing a file) is near-impossible for some of customers.

It is our job, then, to make sure that the distance and frustration is either muted or vanishes entirely from their wherewithal.

We won’t get much credit for all the time spent into boiling it all down but we’ll know that our customers will feel the results, whether they can put it into words or not.

Are you making this type of leap for them? Are you filling the gap of knowledge and expertise in a way that’s helpful for your clients, customers, and those that you serve?

Or are you making the complex simple and making sure that they see it at the same time? No, don’t do that. Make it invisible.

I work with some of the brightest technologists in the world (at least I think so). And with all that brainpower you’d think we’d be able to forecast at least something pretty accurately, right?

One of the tensions we feel constantly is being able to provide incredible value today while pretending to know what our customer will need 3 months from now – and it’s easier in some of the other industries but not in high-tech; it’s simply a luxury that we can’t afford (or that’s really even available to us).

What we can commit to is staying relative and knowledgeable in our space and on top of the trends that appear to happen daily. 5 year tech plan? Please. You wouldn’t want that anyways. By the time that rolled around that plan would look so outdated you’d laugh at us.

In fact, we wouldn’t be around at that time if we adhered to those washed up policies and thinking.

The challenge of leading technologically is that as a leader in a technology business (and working with leaders) you desperately want to see the future better than anyone else and you know that the future in technology is completely unknowable.

This tension, which is necessary, is one of our greatest assets – it keeps us humble and yet at the same time wholly responsible and in a position of absolute authority. The way in which we leverage it will be our organization’s salvation or our own pretty nasty demise.

A pie chart today won’t help – only clarity in the very few things of excellence will do.

We insert fun wherever and whenever we can.

We’ve been spending a bunch of time brainstorming the future of our company and the various different options for bringing incredible value to our customers, both our current ones as well as the ones that we continue to gain every single week.

It’s an exciting time as the options and choices are incredible – we can do almost anything we want and yet at the very same time we can’t. It’s a tension we feel every single day as many of us are extremely high on the cognitive and abstract scale and thinking of new ideas to explore is as natural as breathing.

What we’ve discovered is that as we begin to hone and sink our teeth deeper into our passion for publishing we realize that our customer base isn’t as varied technologically as we once thought – or that we need to serve.

This makes sense as we isolate even greater our core focus and value to them – and they ultimately appreciate this hyper-focus because they get the winning side of the ticket. The result is smaller waste and greater contact points for our products and their needs.

It would be a terrible thing for our customers to have a bloated product where a good percent of it is never really used – we can’t possibly operate in that environment and the temperament of consumers has changed to a point where simplicity is valued greater, and complexity is demonized.

Except, we’ve been doing this since Day 1. We’re glad that people are catching on.

Even for myself I realize that I need less and less to accomplish more and more – it’s an apparent paradox but it really shines when you understand craftsmanship - our desire to see incredible results out of consistency, dedication, and a boatload of hard work and investment.

As a result, naturally, we want to work with people like this as well. Kevin, a talented IT engineer, visited the office the other day providing one perspective of how we might continue our roll towards world domination.

We choose what’s best because we know what our customers need and what they don’t – we also choose to work with people who are unashamed of who they are and what they bring to the table and are ok stepping aside, checking their ego at the door, and receiving instruction.

Sometimes what the absolute best is for an organization is you (and me) just shutting up and watching excellence occur in real-time.

This comic from Dilbert couldn’t be more accurate as to how some organizations “manage” technological challenges and issues.

The challenge that you face as a leader is to make sure that systems, not people, do most of the technology management while the people spend most of their time managing humans and their unique roles and responsibilities.

Many leaders that I know unfortunately get this a bit twisted at times and since leadership most always goes from top to bottom the rest of the organization naturally follows suit. The result? A culture that becomes a slave to their technology rather than masters of it.

What’s nice is that our organization is nothing like that. We aren’t even bottom-up: It’s completely flat.

We have own our global technological challenges but also our own independent ones – and we’re not dogmatic about how to manage the latter, only the former.

Freedom, flexibility, and creating a culture of innovation and leadership is vitally important to what we do. We couldn’t do it any other way.

You can come into a new situation like the invading army and aggressive jerk that you are but the best technology leaders are those that balance the tension between knowing the answers and knowing the people.

This doesn’t just apply internally; this applies externally as well with your customers.

The truth is that your customers were there way before you even were. They were existing, doing great work, and managing on their own before you stepped into the picture.

Paint them such an incredible alternate reality, now that you’re here, that they can’t help but want to work with you. Give them such an incredible gap of value that they wonder how they could ever live without you. Serve them in such a way where they would never leave you.

Knowing the people will inevitably give your answers to their problems credence, long-standing value, and sustainability while simply knowing answers may solve the problems (sometimes quickly) but not give you any platform to stand on long-term.

You’re a servant to all before a leader to some in your business. You’re a servant to all before a deliverer of goods in your market.

One of the things that makes me proud of our team is the fact that we always have an “open seat” policy in our office. This is both physical and metaphorical at the same time as we invite anyone, at any time, to join us here and get work done.

At some point, when we move out of our small-ish office space we’ll have even more room to play with and it has been our hope and desire to create an environment that’s attractive to more than just the few of us that spend a lot of time there – that it’ll be open to the public for collaboration, fun, and productivity.

It has crossed our minds, more than once, that we should go into the coworking business – heck, I’ve been visiting nearly all of the Atlanta Coworking spots that I can find over the last 5 months! Now wouldn’t that be neat!

But more than that we keep an “open seat” in our minds about new products, services, and the way we approach a problem. The flexibility that we have to problem solve is what makes us successful. It’s our own concoction of creative genius that affords us our unique solutions.

This even works out in our relationships with our clients, customers, and those we hope to serve. We know their needs are as diverse as anything else out there and yet we’re trying to create an environment and solution that caters to all of them.

A near-impossible task, right?

This at times means that we have to “fire our customers” in order to serve the greater good. This isn’t an easy task and it should never be, but it’s absolutely essential to a growing bootstrapped business where the right customer can become a boon of value while the next can sink the ship entirely.

We try to keep an open seat in our minds just like the open seat in our office. Sometimes it’s filled with the right things and sometimes we need to ask them to leave.

We decided to spend a bit of time in a dark room with other people today (wait… how is that different from any other day…? … hmm…) by opening up our team activity to go see The Avengers.

Matinee baby, $6.00 – this is the bootstrap way!

So, without any of my team’s permission (or opinion) I have decided to attempt to match them up with what I feel is their Avenger-counterpart.

#LOL

(If feelings are hurt, then… sorry. … … No I’m not.)

(We use Meetup for our gatherings – you should come!)

Tom:

I have decided that Tom is Thor. I mean, see the resemblance? So sexy!

Chris:

This one is easy: Chris is Black Widow. He’s so pretty! I have no justification for this choice except that she’s a girl and Chris has long hair. Do what you will with that correlation.

Jared:

There is only one real choice when it comes to Jareduardo – The Hulk. Beneath the cool exterior that is Bruce Banner lies a monster of awesomesauce (and jean shorts that “somehow” manage to not fall off when he changes into a green monster).

Michael:

Michael is Iron Man. Human, but has incredible skills to make him appears superhuman! It’s also because Michael, like Tony Stark, is, in fact, a billionaire playboy with tons of gadgets and 10,000 luxury cars.

… … … … … #delusional

But really it’s because Tony likes tasty drinks (and so does Michael):

Eric:

He is… Captain America. Because he lives in Italy and is American. That makes no sense, whatsoever, but that doesn’t matter.

I’m not sure what Eric carries around with him when he’s visiting the sites and scenes over there on the other side of the planet but I’m sure it’s a shield. Positive.

Me:

I am Hawkeye. Because I so desperately want to be cool like everyone else and have my own solo movie but my skills are so generally unimpressive that I need to team up with other stars to look good.

Kind of like my startup.

LOL!

Ok, here are some real shots from the day:

What a great time. Love my team…! And thanks to the few that were able to join us for the movie and lunch!

Oh, and that guy in the middle… just got engaged. Go congratulate @fenner403 and @leggybirdphotos!