infowreck

How Not To Do Business

patrick — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 01:57:00 -1600

TechCrunch's long-running dispute with Fusion Garage over the CrunchPad is one of the more perplexing business scenarios I've encountered recently. There are probably two sides to the story, but here's my high level takeaway. Whether right or wrong, as far as Fusion Garage is concerned, that's no way to do business.

Growing up in the era of the RIAA suing it's most devoted fans, I try to approach business with a pretty simple rule - don't treat your customers as criminals. Regarding the CrunchPad, I can see how I might have gotten in trouble like Mike did. A corrolary to not treating your customers as criminals, is don't treat your partners like criminals. Apparently, one of the big issues in this whole case is there was never a formal contract between TechCrunch and Fusion Garage. But, from my perspective, complex, intractable 50 page contracts are a form of treating your partners like criminals. Granted, you want to protect yourself, but assuming your partner will screw you over from day one is hostile in it's own way.

A commentor added "I think honest dealings are the default American position," and I agree. There's almost no way to truly protect yourself if, from day 1, your business partner has ulterior motives. That's part of living in a free society, and applies to business, friendships, and relationships. I think Mike Arrington did what I would have done, focused on the product, and assumed your business partner had the same attitude toward business as you.

One thing I would worry about, though, is that TechCrunch responds by making all contracts more onerous and formalizing all relationships. In some ways, a better strategy would be to spend more time upfront making sure that, for all new partners, the company cultures mesh. Sort of like Zappo's approach to hiring, one round technical, one round culture.

Of course, a Memo of Understanding never hurts.

Starbucks Efficiency

patrick — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 13:04:00 -1600

Yesterday evening, about 8pm, I was in a Starbucks in Mountain View. I ordered a decaf, and was surprised when the cashier informed me they had none. He explain, "We've been tracking decaf drinks sold after 2pm for the last 2 months, and discovered that, on average, we sold 2 a day. Given we have to re-brew every 30 minutes, we found we were throwing out hundreds of cups of coffee. Can I get you a decaf americano instead?"

I was pleasently surprised that, even in the trenches, Starbucks employees are finding ways to cut costs and improve efficiency, using intelligent metric tracking as a tool.

However, I wasn't as pleased when he charged me for an Americano instead of a decaf - the good will toward the company and employee for efficiency and conservation was dashed by $0.20. Weird.

Email Overload vs. Information Overload

patrick — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 13:03:00 -1600

I unfortunately missed the 2008 IORG conference, but it sounded really interesting. Here are some stats offered by Jonathan Spira in his keynote:

The cost of unnecessary interruptions plus recovery time (time spent getting back to where you were, if indeed you do get back there) to the U.S. economy is $650 billion as of 2007.
Most interruptions are neither urgent nor important (but we think they are as we go and interrupt people anyway).
The above represents 28% of the knowledge worker’s day.A mere 12% of the knowledge worker’s day is spent in thought or reflection.
We spend 15% of the day searching for things and 20% in meetings.

But, is this really information overload? Email and meeting overload, definitely, but these stats reflect knowledge worker's daily tasks, not necessarily their consumption and management of information. In some ways, these stats reflect the connection between productivity and email overload, just as serious a problem.

Information Overload, in my mind, is a peer, rather than superset, of email overload. Tools for dealing with information overload address searching and displaying data, while tools for dealing with email overload address bad emailing habits, and email efficiency. Email overload is connected to productivity, while information overload is connected to executive.

Organizational Ability and Productivity

patrick — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 13:01:00 -1600

If you've spent even 5 minutes skimming gtd.alltop.com, you'll probably understand why I've been thinking about the connection between organizational ability and productivity. Honestly, blogs on productivity are notorious in that they're generally more about how to organize and track your tasks than about how to be more efficient.

Productivity is a measure of work accomplished - the amount 1 person can do in their 8 hour work day. This may be measured by units assembled, lawns mowed, or more recently, emails per hour. The connection between the amount of work an individual can accomplish and their organizational ability is tenuous - some people may require a high degree of organization to complete their tasks, others won't. What I was really looking for, but didn't find, was a blog on how to handle more information, more tasks, more email, and be more productive. Maybe there are components of the different GTD blogs that touch on true productivity, but for people that aren't organized, maybe there's something more out there. Just a thought.