Friday, November 24, 2006

Business growth and preservation of quality

Today, I realized one of the key challenges facing small business: growing while preserving the quality of service.

For a business selling goods, there's mass production: leave it to the machines. But in the service industries which still require high levels of skill, this is a little trickier. It's something we've still got to figure out.

I thought of this today as I went to see Douglas, a mechanic friend of my dad. He's a good mechanic, and he set up shop for himself in Mountain View a couple of years ago. My family goes to him every time we want to fix our cars — not only because he's my dad's friend, but because he doesn't charge through the roof, because he won't charge for trivial things, and because he does a thorough job. His customers have been known to bring him pizza and other treats out of gratitude.

Every time I go to his shop, all the bays are full, with several cars queued up waiting for each bay. I asked him if he ever thought about putting up an online tool to show his schedule so his customers could know which times were less busy. In response, he told me that he recognizes the growth potential, but wanted to keep his business small so that his customers could get the best possible service.

If he were to grow, he'd have to hire more people, and it would become much harder to consistently ensure the high quality of service he's offering now.

A business can start off with a handful of great people. It can provide great service to its customers while it maintains its small size. But in order to grow, it has to somehow systematize its greatness and turn it into a process. Now I ask myself: how in the world do you systematize going above and beyond? How do you mass produce a mindset geared towards going the extra mile?

It's possible. That's how great companies come about. In their respective fields, they know how to foster greatness: being honest, thorough, and taking pride in their work. Growth is wonderful. But it's not always so easy--in some fields, it may not even be possible: how do you create a huge company defined by great mechanics or great designers? Let's step back and give credit to those who can say no to growth, to those who can stand their ground to provide something great even though it means staying small.

Monday, November 20, 2006

The beautiful side of arguing

There are many reasons why I prefer not to argue with people. The two biggest reasons for me are that I don't want to waste my time, and I prefer not to rock the boat by creating personal unpleasantness. After thinking about it, though, I've decided that it's good to argue.

As someone who has worked well on my own for a long time, I'm finding that working closely with a team and putting myself in a leadership role requires that I look beyond my personal productivity and look at how to build up the team. By avoiding arguments, I save myself time from explaining myself, but alienate the rest of the team by not involving them in my thought process. In economic terms, they are forced to operate on imperfect information — and the fault of this lies squarely with me because I have an aversion to heated arguments. Because I don't take the time to argue, I also force myself to operate on imperfect information. Yes, the argument can be unpleasant, but when people listen, it all boils down to an exchange of information, and when it is resolved, the team comes away with a more unified sense of direction. Arguing not only serves to inform, but puts personal biases and misconceptions through a trial by fire. If a point cannot be backed up with good reasons, it's not a very good point.

Even keeping this in mind, however, there's the personal unpleasantness associated with heated debate. But really, there's no need to take disagreement personally. If you argue with yourself, with the entity inside your own head, how much more should you argue with those who are outside so you can come to a consensus? Of course people are going to differ in how they think. They'll differ, hash out the reasons, and come to a conclusion. The many sides of my mind will always be fighting with each other, and it's perfectly fine. It's healthy! It's the same with those around you. So speak up, get ready for a fight, and enjoy it.

Friday, November 03, 2006

Introduction

Dictionary.com defines blue-collar as "of or pertaining to wage-earning workers who wear work clothes or other specialized clothing on the job, as mechanics, longshoremen, and miners." That's all pretty manly-sounding, and as much as I may like to pretend I'm a tough guy, I am a web applications developer working in an office. It's about as white-collar as you can get.

The only kind of mining I've done is data mining, so why pretend?

My buddy Steve and I have both done blue-collar things growing up. We've put in drywall, hauled trailers full of trash to the city dump, wired up electrical systems on houses, dug up front yards to install sprinkler systems — basically, lots of other things like that. But to us, "blue collar" is also a mindset: rolling up your sleeves, doing the work, clinging to the idea that you've got as good of a chance as anyone else to rise up, and not feeling bad about it when you achieve success — because you've worked for it.

Thomas Edison once said, "Opportunity is often missed by people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." With this sobering thought in mind, our aim is to use this blog as a place to share our insights and to organize our thoughts with others who are willing to roll up their sleeves and put in the work. Let us know what you think, whether you agree or disagree, and maybe we can figure out how this ever-changing world works.