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Management today review of 37signal's "Rework"

managementtoday.co.uk

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Re: Management today review of 37signal's "Rework"

#61

Post by blasdel »

neilc wrote: post #53
blasdel wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parsed charitably, he means that they aren't serial businesspeople — they ["don't want to", "won't", "can't"] start new independent businesses. It's a variant of the lifestyle business epithet.

That sounds like a " serial entrepreneur", not a serial businessperson: a "business person" doesn't necessarily ever start a new business, let alone a string of them.

His point is more that they're really Web Developers, not businesspeople. That their expertise is from direct experiential practice with an extremely narrow type of software business.

He's a business school type, so this rankles. His whole world view is based on broadly applicable business practices, grounded in theory and hypothesis, backed up with data.

His kind of "business person" doesn't even necessarily start one business, even if they might see opportunities everywhere — they get brought in as management. But if they start one, they're probably going to start more.

Re: Management today review of 37signal's "Rework"

#62

Post by rimantas »

foldr wrote: post #55
mburney wrote: post #49

"In reality, good meetings are good and bad meetings are not good". Yeah, because we'd rather read a book of tautologies than some actual points.

I think you're missing his point. He's saying it would be more helpful if the authors explained what it is about bad meetings that makes them bad, rather than issuing a blanket condemnation on all meetings.

Authors do explain. They even provide some guidelines how to make productive meeting. It's just the reviewer who chooses to ignore that.

Re: Management today review of 37signal's "Rework"

#63

Post by rimantas »

davidw wrote: post #32
mflinsch wrote: post #30

Seriously, this is a rather typical old-economy response to a well understood concept at this point: Simple works. Coming from the inside of the enterprise web publishing world I'd suggest it's not 37signals that is missing something. Of course the author (of the review) did found a chain of restaurants...

"Simple works". Which is why they created everything with Forth on Rails. Oh wait... it's Tcl on Rails. No... Ruby? Ruby is not simple . It's actually a nice mix of elegance, simplicity and, where called for, fancy ways of handling complexity. And they host everything on DOS. Because it's simple! No? I think this stuff goes both ways... you can't just wave "simple!" around. If you really wanted simple , you'd use a p…

Uhm… How about trying to see the difference the product and implementation details? Cars are simple you know: turn a key, step on the gas and you ar going. Does anyone claim that those dozens of CPU hidden under bonnet and AT gearbox is simple?

Re: Management today review of 37signal's "Rework"

#64

Post by davidw »

rimantas wrote: post #63
davidw wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Simple works". Which is why they created everything with Forth on Rails. Oh wait... it's Tcl on Rails. No... Ruby? Ruby is not simple . It's actually a nice mix of elegance, simplicity and, where called for, fancy ways of handling complexity. And they host everything on DOS. Because it's simple! No? I think this stuff goes both ways... you can't just wave "simple!" around. If you really wanted simple , you'd use a p…

Uhm… How about trying to see the difference the product and implementation details? Cars are simple you know: turn a key, step on the gas and you ar going. Does anyone claim that those dozens of CPU hidden under bonnet and AT gearbox is simple?

Some stuff is simple, some isn't. Trying to make it simpler is a good goal in many cases, except for when it isn't.

What I disagree with is "business by platitude".

Re: Management today review of 37signal's "Rework"

#65

Post by shin_lao »

rimantas wrote: post #58
benl wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think approaching your work from the standpoint of "Learn from success, not failure" is a sure path to succumbing to confirmation bias and becoming a one-trick pony. The 37s guys have done some wonderful work. But to me they are pretty much the embodiment of what I think of when I remember Paul Buchheit's great quote: "Limited Life Experience + Overgeneralization = Advice"

I think approaching your work from the standpoint of "Learn from success, not failure" is a sure path to succumbing to confirmation bias and becoming a one-trick pony. And the stats mentioned show, that approaching work from standpoint "learn from failure" is a sure path to being zero-trick pony. The stats in question show, that those who failed previously have the same success rate as those who never even tried, and…

It doesn't tell anything, as you don't know why people failed in the first place and if they learned from their mistakes.

Maybe, people able to learn from mistakes are able to recover them before their business fails...

Re: Management today review of 37signal's "Rework"

#66

Post by rythie »

blasdel wrote: post #48
rythie wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ROR is free and so are most of the competitors and there a lot now. The BBC is doing a good job, it's news coverage is certainly one the best and most respected in the world and that's got nothing to do with it being free - people would certainly pay if they had to for it.

British Residents do directly pay for the BBC, and not via normal taxes like the US's PBS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_Uni...

That's a good point and since I pay it, I should have thought of that. It does seem more like a tax, since you pay it for having a T.V. regardless of weather you watch it or not.

Re: Management today review of 37signal's "Rework"

#67

Post by bearwithclaws »

Well you can't blame the reviewer. The whole MT's business philosophy is the antithesis of 37signal's. As somebody said (it's a famous quote, forgotten its origin though):

"Don't expect somebody to learn something when his stomach depends on him not learning it"

Re: Management today review of 37signal's "Rework"

#68

Post by foldr »

rimantas wrote: post #62
foldr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing his point. He's saying it would be more helpful if the authors explained what it is about bad meetings that makes them bad, rather than issuing a blanket condemnation on all meetings.

Authors do explain. They even provide some guidelines how to make productive meeting. It's just the reviewer who chooses to ignore that.

He doesn't ignore it, he just points out that the slogans contradict the actual advice, which is pretty run-of-the-mill.
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