Category Archives: Startups

Books, Startups

Do more than is required of you

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Last and final excerpt from an old leather-bound book from 1926 called “As A Man Doeth”, that belonged to my grandfather. It’s the collected Monday morning motivational writings of William Danforth, the founder and president of Ralston Purina, of animal feed fame, I found it digging through some stacks.

Do More than Is Required of You; Do Twice as Much

Here’s another Bruce Barton story. He is a perfectly fascinating fellow, and it pays to listen to him.

“I was traveling from Chicago to New York on the Twentieth Century Limited. We were due in the Grand Central Station at nine-forty, a nice leisurely hour, and three of us who were traveling together decided to make a comfortable morning of it. We got out of our berths at a quarter after eight, shaved and dressed, and half an hour later were making our way back to the dining car.

A door to one of the drawing rooms was open, and as we walked by we could hardly keep from looking in. The bed in the room had been made up long since; a table stood between the windows, and at the table, buried in work, was a man whose face the newspapers have made familiar to everyone. He had been Governor of New York, a justice of the Supreme Court, a candidate for the Presidency of the United States, and was at the time, practicing law and reputed to be earning more than a hundred thousand dollars a year.

My companions and I were young men; he was well along in middle life. We were poor and unknown; he was rich and famous. We were doing all that was required of us. We were up and dressed, and would be ready for business when the train pulled in at a little before ten. But this man, of whom nothing was actually required, was doing far more. I thought to myself as we passed on to our leisurely breakfast, ‘That explains him; now I understand Hughes’.”

This is a Monday morning thought which ought to carry through the whole week.

This is great advice for someone, especially early in their career. Develop a reputation for going above and beyond and you will be on everyone’s list to recruit or promote.

This is also one of my favorite interview questions. I am a big fan of “Behavioral Interviewing” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_interview#Behavioral_questions) – if it’s not in your arsenal already as an interviewer, it should be. Rather than ask people to theorize about how they’d respond to a hypothetical circumstance in the future, you ask them to relate how they tackled things in the past. It is amazing what kinds of information you get when you insist on a specific answer with real past behaviors (both fantastic answers that sell you on a candidate and awful answers that effectively end the interview).

“Tell me about the last time you went above and beyond what was required. Why motivated you to to do it? What did you learn?”

Books, Startups

Get The Thirst for Digging (more lessons from a long-lost book)

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So, I’m down visiting my parents and helping out by doing a bunch of house cleaning, including rummaging through some old books (my favorite kind of cleaning). As I mentioned yesterday, digging through the piles I found an old leather-bound book from 1926 called “As A Man Doeth”, that belonged to my grandfather. It’s the collected Monday morning motivational writings of William Danforth, the founder and president of Ralston Purina, of animal feed fame. Here’s another fun note he wrote.

Along the magnificent semi-circular harbor of the Mediterranean Sea on the coast of Northern Algeria lies the picturesque little town of Bone. Nearby are some ruins of the ancient city of Hippone, where around 400 A. D. Saint Augustine lived and wrote his “Confessions” and his “City of God.” Some thirty years ago, a farmer was ploughing in the fields close by and his plow kept striking a stone. He decided to remove the stone and started to dig it out. But instead of a stone he found a marble column that dated back 1500 years and was part of an ancient Roman palace. Digging down still farther he discovered priceless mosaic floors of the Fourth Century. Then, his appetite whetted, he dug still deeper and found more mosaic floors of the first century. Still not content, he kept digging and unfolded huge stone piers that had once been a Phoenician embankment built about 800 B. C.

Here’s a discovery we all can make:

That stone or obstacle in our lives may have been put there by Providence to make us dig. Unheeded and unconquered it will worry us all the days of our lives. But if we go after it in a determined way, and dig it out, we will discover hidden wealth underneath.

So dig, Brother Purina Men, dig deep!

I just find it wonderful that a man making “Purina Horse Chow” tells stories about St Augustine and the Roman empire to inspire his workforce.

Curiosity is a powerful force. It’s one of the key traits I interview for when I’m recruiting. Curious people figure things out; incurious people don’t. More generally, I think it is far more important to interview for intrinsic personality traits than skills. Skills can be taught or self-taught. It’s very hard to teach curiosity or passion or work ethic or creativity.

Books, Startups

Are you having fun?

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So, I’m down visiting my parents who are ailing a little bit, and helping out by doing a bunch of house cleaning. In addition to the usual cleaning tasks, this also includes rummaging through some old piles of books that need to be put up. If you know me, you know that’s my kind of cleaning 8).

Digging through the piles and run across an old leather-bound book from 1926 called “As A Man Doeth”, that belonged to my grandfather. It’s the collected Monday morning motivational writings of William Danforth, the founder and president of Ralston Purina, of animal feed fame. I open the book to the first page, sneeze a few times from the dust, and encounter this:

Oh Texas!

“One Deputy Sheriff trailing you,

and another hid in the bushes in front of you,

Say! That’s Living!”

This was an exclamation of Texas, a bootlegger in Alice Brady’s play, “Zander the Great”. Texas was a bootlegger, but it wasn’t the profits that attracted him; it was the game.

Is business to you an adventure and a game? If not, check up; you are slipping. Our business, with its problems and its responsibilities, is to me the greatest game in the world. I wonder if in your week’s work there aren’t dangers trailing you, and obstacles hidden in the bushes at every turn. Lack of initiative, lack of self confidence, laziness, or inattention – sly, insidious foes ready to arrest your progress and deter you. But, in overcoming your obstacles, remember what Texas said,

“ Say! That’s Living!”.

 

If the man making dog food can feel this way about his work, I bet you can too. Life’s too short not to love what you do. If you don’t love what you’re doing, do something else.

 

Books, Favorites, Goby, Startups

Leadership lessons from the ancient Greeks (Part II of II)

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This post is a continuation of a previous post, Leadership lessons from ancient Greece. You’ll want to read that first if you have not already. Let’s pick up our discussion on leadership tactics, this time inspired by Tides of War, the story of the mercurial leader of Athens and Sparta, Alcibiades.

1. Challenge your team members

When he [Alcibiades] wished to honor a man of the fleet, he dispatched meat or wine with his compliments to that officer’s mess. He distinguished others by inclusion at his table.  But to those he wished most to esteem, he sent not boons but trials. He singled them out for the most perilous duties, for in these, he said, he sent out lieutenants and got back captains. [Tides of War, p. 258]

When you have tasks to be done, as a leader, don’t think “how quickly can I get this done?”, think, “can I use this opportunity to develop someone?”. The corollary to “challenge your team members” is “teach, don’t do”. When times get busy, there’s a natural tendency to want to move quickly and just “get things done”. Fight it. The second implication of this rule is that you have to let people do things their own way, and possibly make mistakes you could have prevented. The CEO of my first company, Dave Evans of Evans & Sutherland, had a great saying. He’d say: “There’s two ways to do things, my way, and the wrong way.” And then he’d pause, his eyes would twinkle, and he’d say: “And if you want to get anything done, you have to let people do things the wrong way.”.

The next two rules go together hand and glove.

2. Don’t give orders; make suggestions or ask questions.

[Alcibiades speaking]:  …if force must be employed with a subordinate, take care that it be minimal. If I command you, “pick up that bowl”, and set a swordpoint to your back, you will obey but no part will own the action. You will exculpate yourself, accounting, “He made me do it, I had no choice.” But if I only suggest and you comply, then you must own your compliance and, owning it, stand by it. [Tides of War, p. 258.]

Your goal as a leader is to get people to own problems and not rest until they’ve cracked it. The more you give orders, the more you own the problem and the less they do. Further, you deny them the growth and plain fun of figuring out the right thing for themselves.

3. Assign the goals, not the means.

Corollary to the principle of minimal force was that of minimal supervision. When Alcibiades issued a combat assignment, he imparted the objective only, leaving the means to the officer himself. The more daunting the chore, the more informally he commanded it….

Always assign a man more than he believes himself capable of. Make him rise to the occasion. In this way you compel him to discover fresh resources, both in himself and others of his command, thus enlarging the capacity of each, while binding all beneath the exigencies of risk and glory. [Tides of War, p. 259]

A common refrain I’ve heard (and said!) is “let me do my job!” – the best people want to be free to choose the best means at hand to accomplish the objective, and not have it all presented to them. And the more you make a particular kind of decision, the more you’ll have to continue to make those decisions. When Alcibiades is offered the kingship of Athens, he replies, “Tyranny is a splendid roost, but there is no step down from it.”. Once you start deciding things, even trivial things like what pizza is for lunch, people will expect you’re going to continue to make those decisions. Don’t make decisions you don’t want to keep having to make.

4. Don’t hoard your person.

As he chastened men with banishment from himself, so he rewarded them with access. He loved to have his officers about him, particularly late at night as he worked. “Bear in mind, my friends, that access to your person is a mighty incentive to those in station beneath you. A smile, a kind word, a nickname spoken with affection…Don’t hoard your person, gentlemen. Money cannot buy the prize of your attention, and the men know it.” [Tides of War, p. 260]

In the fray of conferences, meetings, financings and customer visits, it’s easy to get caught up in “working”, and not spend time with people. Particularly if you have introverted tendencies, as many software people do, there’s a natural tendency when time gets short or events overwhelming, to retreat a bit and need “alone time”. Fight this urge. Spend less time doing things (delegate that), and more time working and talking with people. Don’t be that CEO that nobody ever sees, but is “off doing things”. People don’t follow ghosts.

5. Command emulation (and by the way, drink!).

Three and half years later, before Byzantium, I attended a nightlong drinking bout. Someone had put the query “How does one lead free men?”. “By being better than they,” Alcibiades responded at once. The symposiasts laughed at this, even Thrasybulus and Theramenes, our generals. “By being better”, Alcibiades continued, “and thus commanding their emulation”. He was drunk, but on him it accounted nothing, save to liberate those holdings nearest to his heart. “When I was not yet twenty, I served in the infantry. Among my mates was Socrates the son of Sophoroniscus. In a fight the enemy had routed us and were swarming upon our position. I was terrified and loaded up to flee. Yet when I beheld him, my friend with the grey in his beard, plant his feet on the earth and seat his shoulder within the great bowl of his shield, a species of eros, life-will, arose within me like a tide. I discovered myself compelled, absent all prudence, to stand beside him. A commander’s role is to model arete, excellence, before his men. One need not thrash them to greatness, only hold it out before them. They will be compelled by their own nature to emulate it.” [Tides of War, p. 250]

Now, does this mean that every software CEO should be writing software on a day to day basis? No. But people should believe that you *could*, if you needed to. And at the same time as you can discuss the ideas behind a key algorithm, if you can talk about market dynamics or business techniques, your best people will be inspired to seek a similar breadth of knowledge. If you can’t do those things, your team should at least believe you are interested in the details [and to paraphrase my good friend Mike Troiano’s comment on establishing warmth [http://scalableintimacy.com/how-to-sell/], if you want people to think you are interested, it helps to be interested]. Model those traits you wish people to exhibit, and they will as well (or at least, most of them).

And by the way, drinking with your team or with particular individuals is a time-honored way of really getting to know them, what they care about, and what they really think (and vice versa). That kind of bond, and that kind of knowledge, isn’t gotten in meetings.

6. Build leaders; don’t hire them.

Alcibiades: As we seek to make our enemies own their defeats at our hands, so we must make our friends own their victories. The less you give a man, and have him succeed, the more he draws his achievement to his heart. Remember we may elevate the fleet in two ways only. By acquiring better men or making those we have better. Even were the former practicable I would disdain it, for a hired man may hire out to another master, but a man who makes himself master stays loyal forever. [Tides of War, p. 259]

and

When Panegyris and Atalanta were mauled at the Nine-Mile Cove and their trierarchs blaming themselves had made their spirits disconsolate, he called the pair to his tent and, stripping before them, commanded them to regard the many wounds upon his body. “I’d rather have a man who has closed with the foe and bears the scars than all the bronze-and-brightwork of the regatta. I can find unscathed captains anywhere. But where will I get brave men like you and your crews?” [Tides of War, p. 260]

As you are growing your company or team and hiring, it’s tempting to look for the senior people who have all the answers and all the experience, and bring them in to leadership positions. And in fact, sometimes that is the right or necessary thing to do. But wherever you can, hire smart, passionate people early in their careers and have them led by the team that’s gotten you to where you are.

7. Write to people (real writing, not emails) – and include families where you can.

Correspondence. He [Alcibiades] posted a hundred letters a day. Entire watches were consumed with this, amid rotating shifts of secretaries, often through night and morn and into the next night….To him these letters were not chores but men. There were other missives, the main in truth, whose lines he dictated late or scrawled in his own hands. These were the widow letters, the commendations for the maimed or fallen – then, twenty, thirty a day. He directed these personally to the recipient himself if he were still alive, but often as well he had the rolls dispatched to the father or mother or wife without the honored man’s knowledge. [Tides of War, p. 257]

Email is impersonal. Words are cheap. But a handwritten note – you don’t get many of those. And it means the person who wrote it took the time to sit and write it. If someone has been through a tough project, or achieved something impressive, write them a note. Ideally, mail it to their house so family members might see it. At Endeca we had one particularly grueling project (we had the customer disaster and the project wouldn’t die and every day there was a new showstopper bug and….you get the picture). The “all-hands-on-deck” phase lasted months. When we finally drove the stake through the heart of the release, I took the team out to dinner, and gave them a copy of Gates of Fire (which seemed symbolically appropriate), along with a personal note recognizing the particular part that person had played in making the release happen. Two years later one of them mentioned how much that meant to them, and how great the book was. Email doesn’t work like that.

Also, families are important – they’re your support infrastructure, and after all your team is working to support them. Find ways to include them at dinners or parties, and to recognize people in front of them.

Last: Laugh.

It is that peculiar soldier’s humor which springs from the experience of shared misery and often translates poorly to those not on the spot and enduring the same hardship…..The more miserable the conditions, the more convulsing the jokes become, or at least that’s how it seems. [Gates of Fire, p. 68]

Find ways to laugh a lot. There’s a certain kind of black humor that soldiers have, and you see variations of it in software companies too. I encourage it. The main thing is to laugh and have a bit of fun. In the end we’re not fighting a war, we’re doing something we love and it should be fun! A little bit of laughter solves a lot of issues. If you don’t have a sense of humor, hire somebody with one. 8)

I’ve lived with these rules informally for some time, and more recently have tried to approach them in a thoughtful, planned manner. Here’s a few last things I’ve learned.

These rules work best if you hire the right kind of people. In the end, a lot of being successful boils down to hiring well. Soldiers can be ordered around; employees don’t take so well to it, at least for long. Hire people who have demonstrated initiative, achievement and curiosity, and the skills (for example what programming languages they know) will take care of themselves.

Remember you are optimizing for the long run. Following many of these principles means accepting suboptimal execution in the short run for the longer term gain of higher performing teams. Trust that it will pay off down the road. If you are trying to adopt some of these principles and you are in middle management, make sure your manager understands what you are doing and why you are doing it. I once had one of managers prepare and perform a high stakes presentation as part of their growth strategy. I later learned that my (new) manager at the time thought I was either lazy or lacked vision myself, as I had one of my managers do it. Communicate upwards, especially when you’re taking risks.

Fictional characters make a tough bar to live up to; aspire to that level of performance, even if you can’t actually do it, and one day you’ll wake up realizing you are that thing you aspire to.

These last two posts wouldn’t have been possible without a few people. Thomas Jensen introduced me to these books, and has been a friend and mentor for 25 years, and reviewed a first draft. Jim Fell and Ed O’Donnell also reviewed an early draft. Thanks also to Jim Baum, Steve Papa and Andy Palmer for teaching me a lot on the subject over the years. Thanks all!!