Super Volatile

So, “product guys:” nobody is going to believe you or take you seriously until you prove it. If you start talking about mobile local social software as a service (MOLASSES), you will be laughed out of the room. You are not, fundamentally, a product person until you actually build products.

Product people, viewed by programmers like me, often function in their own reality distortion field and thus are difficult to figure out. Sometimes they lead to a catastrophe, sometimes to a great product. I still haven't figured out the way to tell one group from another early enough. The delivery (or the lack of it) is the ultimate verification, but that happens quite late in a process. Not to mention the importance of pure luck and chance.

However, following the advice from the article to learn and understand how things work will at least give you some credibility if you want to be a “product person”.

First, in a new book, Teresa Amabile, of Harvard Business School, studied what motivates employees and teams within organizations, what makes them most enthusiastic about their work. She finds that it isn’t money, recognition, interpersonal support or clear goals. Instead, employees are most positive when they make progress. And it is almost redundant to say that persistent, efficient, proactive CEOs make the most progress.

The article's author argues that it's not about whether a leader presents “soft” or “hard” management style. It's all about the execution of goals. Again.

In the weeks since his death, Jobs has been compared to Einstein and Edison. Maybe so. But the problem with using his interpersonal style as a management role model is that the rest of us, to parrot Apple advertising, will assuredly blow it. In business, the control freak boss—the emblematic Jobs model—is a recipe for unintentionally delivering your best employees as new hires to your closest competitors.

Whenever I read articles like this, I wonder if it is possible to deliver as great results as Jobs without the obnoxious personality traits he displayed. I hope it is, but I don't really know.

What we learned is that adding a dedicated manager and creating a hierarchy is not the only way to create structure. Instead, we decided to let the team be entirely self-managed. There's still a team leader, but that role rotates among the team every week. Each week, a new leader sketches out the agenda, writes up the notes about problems and performance, and steps up to handle any troubled customer interactions.

Being among the cool kids that despise growing big, 37signals is still yet to discover hierarchy. I wonder how much time it will take before than happens. In a meanwhile, they have an interesting take on keeping 26-people organization flat. Rands describes a different solution to that problem, though he seems to be more realistic. But he is also a man who has worked for more than one company...

Trust me

Rands asks his Twitter follower about worst management advice they have received. There are some gems there.

I understand why the top students in America study physics, chemistry, calculus and classic literature. The kids in this brainy group are the future professors, scientists, thinkers and engineers who will propel civilization forward. But why do we make B students sit through these same classes? That's like trying to train your cat to do your taxes—a waste of time and money. Wouldn't it make more sense to teach B students something useful, like entrepreneurship?

Scott Adams shares the story of his college education.

I've had a chance to work for and with a number of visionaries that most would consider "assholes" when they were managing huge growth engines - Marc Andreessen, Steve Blank, Mike Homer (Netscape), Larry Ellison, etc. I think it comes down to the gift and curse of being a true visionary. Until you've worked with one of these folks it's a bit hard to explain, but I'll give it a shot.

Great answer to the title question. I just hope that Jobs-wannabes of different caliber won't use it as an excuse to emulate his style, instead of the essence.

Management that runs a Widget Factory is easy to spot just by paying attention to the way these people talk. They are likely to be on about resources (including when referring to team members), processes, operating efficiency, uniformity, repeatability, strict control over use of resources, clear-cut job roles and defined process inputs and outputs.

It's good to occasionally remind oneself where one should NOT be.

Deceptive bosses, it transpires, tend to make more references to general knowledge (“as you know…”), and refer less to shareholder value (perhaps to minimise the risk of a lawsuit, the authors hypothesise). They also use fewer “non-extreme positive emotion words”. That is, instead of describing something as “good”, they call it “fantastic”. The aim is to “sound more persuasive” while talking horsefeathers.

Useful, at least until this knowledge becomes common.

"Apple doesn’t believe in playing the "feature game" with [its] product," says Agarwal. As in, the company focuses more on its goals for its own products, rather than comparing itself to competitors' and trying to outdo them on the same levels.

Some interesting management observations from former Apple employee and Posterous founder, Sachin Agarwal. These may sound cliche, but I've seen them being broken on regular basis.