But often in our organizations we set these type of goals without understanding the path and dependencies required to reach the goal.. we try to go from "crawling" to "running" and forget we don't know how to "walk" or even worse we proclaim we are going to run a marathon..

Back to the example,  so what are some levels of maturity and their order for Humans:

Maturity Levels: Infant, Toddler, Child, Adolescent, Adult, Senior

Now there are also probably some dependencies and capabilities between the levels. For example, an Infant doesn't have the capability to be "Independent" they are in contrast "Dependent" their capabilities are fairly limited they eat, sleep, pee, poop and have basic communication skills (cry or silence)… anyhow so the point which I hope is obvious is that over time as the Infant "Matures" through the various levels they are "capable" of more and more. Also each level usually has dependencies around things being "mastered or accomplished" in the previous levels.

Just as we don't expect our 4 year olds to bring home an Income we shouldn't have similar unrealistic expectations in our business, technology, architectures, organization and processes.   I'm not saying don't have "bold goals" or "grand visions" (both favorites of mine personally) but my point is in order to accomplish things you have to work on understanding where you are currently at (Maturity level) and the the path and dependencies to move forward and reach success.

Although it seems obvious.. next time you have that project that just seems to never go away.. or is struggling to make progress.

Take a step back.. and make sure your not trying to run before you can walk.

I received a funny email from one of my co-workers with the subject “Failing a Test with Dignity” it had a bunch of images like the two below which were my favorites.

Anyhow, I found the email very amusing.. but in all seriousness it also reminded me of a belief I have.  That there is much Value in individuals who are creative, imaginative and are risk takers.  Now maybe, the students below were just trying to be “funny” in creative ways but being “funny” can also be risky.

Great talk by VC Fred Wilson on principles to create successful web applications.

The 10 Golden Principles of Successful Web Apps from Carsonified on Vimeo.

1. Speed

2. Instant Utility

3. Software is Media

4. Less is More

5. Make it Programmable

6. Make it Personal

7. RESTful

8. Discoverability

9. Clean

10. Playful

I agree with them all it is a great list I would call 5.) Platform First… but I guess “Make it programmable” is a little easier to understand.

There is a question at the end of the video about Mobile.. however, I really think that once your app is “Programmable” then the types of devices it can be consumed on is really limitless.  However, there are some Mobile qualities that could be useful like being “Location Aware” although not sure if it would qualify at a generic principle level.

The list is a good list because in my mind is primarily a combination of things that Seth Godin, Dion Hinchlffe and the guys from 37signals have said many times over.

One I would stick in there is “Play well with others” specifically in regards to Authentication, Authorization and User Data via the leverage/support of emerging/standards like OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial, FaceBook Connect etc… What do you think is missing ?

The point of this post isn’t about how to be  Authentic and certainly it’s not about being fake.

It is about being:
Genuine: free from hypocrisy or pretense

Being genuinely fake is a choice that is perfectly alright since your not purposely deceiving.

What I dislike the most is when something tries to be and is conveyed as Authentic but is not Genuinely Authentic. This can be people, processes, strategies,  rules or products that are conveyed as authentic but clearly are not and everyone knows it.

One example would be a rule that is strictly enforced but not in all cases, but instead of being transparent as to why there are those cases folks simply pretend they don’t exist.

Shark Attacks are an interesting thing.. people worry about them but they really are not that common.  One of my old developers/architects use to use the saying/analogy all the time he would say that’s a “Shark Attack” meaning that’s something in the code/design folks want to worry about but really shouldn’t be until we really have to e.g. we actually have the problem.

In my experience Developers/Engineers love Shark Attacks its in our nature to think of how to solve every scenario.  Same holds true for most architects and senior technologists.  One of the things that usually falls into this category is “Scaling”… that is scaling a web site, web service etc..  I so often hear folks discuss scaling, “we need Internet scale” or “how are we going to scale” of course this is prior to even knowing whether anyone is going to visit the site or use the service.   I think the scale that wonderful modern hardware (HP of course) can provide is more than sufficient or using shared hardware is sufficient for most sites on the Internet. 

Worrying about the “Shark Attacks” of what we are going to do when we create the next “ebay, facebook, google etc” distracts from more important areas.

So I am not sure who originated the saying Shark Attack in Internet Software engineering, I thought it came from the guys at 37 Signals with their Getting Real book.  However, upon a quick search it does seem to come from them, but from a blog post back in 2006 (Fear, shark attacks, and “Will it scale?”).

Fear: It won’t scale
Truth: You’re not going to be Google overnight.

Fear: Too many bugs
Truth: As long as they don’t wipe the database, you can live with most bugs for a while.

Fear: Too few features
Truth: You can always add features later.

Fear: Never go down
Truth: Once-in-a-while downtime won’t scare people away.

Fear: It’s too simple
Truth: Simple solutions are fine if they get the job done.

Fear: They’ll copy us
Truth: It’s about the execution, not the idea.

Fear: We must sound serious
Truth: Trying to sound serious all the time makes you bland and unremarkable. It’s ok to be playful and have personality.

There are also two chapters(pages) in the Getting real book that relate to notion of shark attacks really well:

It’s a Problem When It’s a Problem
Scale Later

So next time you find yourself worrying about something, ask yourself  “is this a Shark Attack ?”.

I often state to friends, family and colleagues "I just want a chance to fail…"  because one thing is for sure if you don’t try you won’t succeed.

Famous Failures

Eventually, this happens so often that your manager and his peers get decision atrophy because everyone has to wait to get their manager managers approval/decision. This is especially true with an outspoken mid-level manager.  So this “style” if you can call it that really annoys me as it slows down decision making, it doesn’t reinforce trust and it doesn’t empower individuals. All things that I believe are foundational to building great teams full of leaders.

There a great HBR podcast that touches on this topic and others:

HBR IdeaCast 85: Keep Your Ideas to Yourself

In the podcast the commentator mentions a discussion with a CEO who says the hardest lesson he has learned as a leader is @2:20:

“my suggestions become orders”, the biggest lesson I have learned: Stop and breath and ask yourself, is it worth it?

This is true regardless of the level you are at… just the scope of your power is different.  But nonetheless, you need to stop and think how will this impact the team I am speaking to? Is it worth expressing my belief, idea etc. is worth bringing up the discussion now.. maybe I should validate some things offline before I make a statement ?

As a leader, remember your words have power and sometimes you should simply keep them to yourself for the benefit of your team/organization. So if you just finished up a meeting with your direct reports and your relieved because you think you “caught” some bad decisions and they are now correct.  You shouldn’t be.. you should be asking yourself, what led the smart people on my team down the path to make that poor decision and what can I do to fix it.  If you don’t and you consistently catch these “bad decisions” then you are simply reinforcing to your direct reports that they need to come to you for decisions to be made, the problem with that of course is… you will not always be there.

Paul Graham, of Y Combinator wrote an essay “The Other Half of “Artists Ship” is great at reminding us about hidden or soft costs and their negative impact to many large organizations. TechCrunch wrote a related article as well entitled “The Cost of Prudence”.

“Whenever someone in an organization proposes to add a new check, they should have to explain not just the benefit but the cost. No matter how bad a job they did of analyzing it, this meta-check would at least remind everyone there had to be a cost, and send them looking for it.”

The essay is a good reminder that everything has a cost be it a clear fixed cost, operational cost or an opportunity cost. Our Leaders and/or Managers are usually merely trading-off these costs when they put in place new processes or governance. The problem as mentioned in the essay is the trade-off being made can often have clear costs but the hidden costs or soft costs can often produce a net negative impact as well…

Nice mention and overview article by ReadWriteEnterprise on the 2.0 adoption council’s recent Enterprise 2.0 study.  As a member of the 2.0 Adoption Council and essentially these days working on “enterprise 2.0” adoption in my day job I thought I should mention the post and encourage anyone who has interest in Enterprise 2.0/Social Computing to check out the reports.

Enterprise 2.0 from a technology standpoint is really fairly simple and is really about social collaboration features.  I agree with Chris Anderson in that “Social is the Feature not the Destination”.

Most these features like commenting, micro-blogs, tagging, social bookmarking etc.  are not not technically complicated and given this these features will increasingly be adopted by standard “enterprise” software vendors first within collaboration and productivity tools and then into ERP type tools like CRM, HR.  This is already happening in many cases be the upcoming SharePoint 2010 or Salesforce.com chatter platform recent announcements.

Anyhow, this notion of the feature not the destination is the “pickle” as I like to say for dedicated Enterprise 2.0 vendors.  Their feature set is pretty much already commoditized and easily duplicated by vendors who already have a foothold in most enterprises.  The vendors that will win will be the ones who differentiate via intelligent content filtering (filtering the noise to what is important) and/or be able to work as the glue that connects the ecosystem of features instead of requiring total adoption of one platform.