Howard Aiken said "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."

And yet it's the bold ideas that generate the biggest returns. Any really good new idea will seem bad to most people; otherwise someone would already be doing it.

 

 

 

Passion-based businesses

 

No one owes you anything.  You owe yourself everything.

 

Create what you love and wish existed, and like-minded people will find you.

 

 

Zero Customer Acquisition Costs

enabled by layers of the onion, patience

 

 

Find your passion

Find your voice

Help your audience find you

 

 

Ebb & Flow

- Everything ebbs and flows 

- Learn when to let go and let it ebb, and when to work on it when its ready to flow

- Have multiple projects/methods, so as one is ebbing another will always be flowing

 

 

TRUST

Transparency increases trust

Self-determination increases trust

Engagement increases trust

 

 

What really holds people back: attachment to time.  "I need to have ___ by the time I'm ___ years old"

 

 

The more certain you are of your intentions and vision, the less it matters when it happens.  Trust eliminates the fear.

 

Always have a reason for something - if you explain WHY something is important, you'll get better quality work.

 

 

before the internet...

* You had to physically keep up biz momentum, calls, visits.  If they didn't happen, nothing did.

* Now the internet makes it possible to have people find you. you don't need to WORK at maintaining everything, at constantly pushing. create conditions for pull

 

Misc Notes to Organize

How do you maximize intrinsic motivation? In teams and companies?  In a way that scales systemically?

-Other people are driving.

-We're building an airplane.

-The airport sysem isn't built yet for us, but people have tested prototypes (semco, lawler...) -We just need to stand on their shoulders and put the existing pieces together into a system.

 

Klia:

- Reduce the stress, the reasons that make starting a business unpleasant

- Get part-time work to make baseline $, then focus all other energy on future opptys. 

- Remove the stress that distracts you from enjoying your work.

 

Transparency

transparent board meetings, publish slides, Invite people, Have at office, Publish financials

 

Values exercise

People rank them...show them the push for money is distorting their supposed control over their life

We should all do what we love and what we're good at

Pay you salary to do a job.  Now I have to pay you more to do it right?

 

Values

Employee success, Customer success, Transparency, Trust, Acceptance, Self-determination, Ownership, Intrinsic motivation, Just Do It, Bite-sized Chunks, NO SURPRISES

 

Intrinsic Motivation

- What if everyone was as motivated as morelli all the time? 

- What if they had a common vision they channel that energy to?

- Think about a day when you were totally motivated and excited about work.  What conditions created that motivation?

 

Conditions

-Ownership

-Transparency

-Voice

-Aligned vision (personal, company)

-No long-term sacrifices (health, family) -trust -permission to fail

 

How can you obsolete or outsource low-value tasks?  Eliminate them?

Eliminate

Automate

Outsource

 

MAKE THE owner responsible. They own their fate.  But they can't leave their team in the dust

 

If you make employee intrinsic motivation primary, and you slign vision and priorities, the results will follow

Take away time pressures. Put on productivity and happniess pressures

 

After 3?-6 months, choose whatever title you want.  After 3-6 months, they'll be indoctrinated (or not)

No formal titles.  Choose your own.

Choose your own salary

Team chooses own competitons and incentives...make them generous and surprises

 

Company profit distribution

Have can you help everyone appreciate each others' successes, to be incented to see each other succeed?

Hive-mind, Emergent company, Semco practices

Expense what you want, but its public. Trust people's judgment.

 

When you're comped on specific goals, you tend to ignore anything not related to those goals.

 

TIME BLOCKS

The daily drumbeat's the most important time block.  You should do things every day that you like to do, that make you happy and healthy.  These things should be aligned towards bigger goals and visions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

VALUE ADD

* Connecting with people of shared values, interests Investing in yourself (sleep, exercise, vacation, learning)

* Producing work appreciated and used by others

* Letting your mind wander to make new, unforced connections

Pacing

 

 

a) creating products and features (or information/tools/documents…) that are actually used by customers, and

 

b) removing or changing ones that aren’t

 

 

 

NON VALUE ADD

* Meetings, emails, phone calls that don't lead to the above

* Maintaining arbitrary relationships, or ones with people who don't share your interests/values/trust

* Producing work that isn't appreciated or used, or is only meant to attract-short term attention (most press releases)

* Rushing

 

 

*building product/documents/etc that aren’t used by customers

 

 

 

HOW TO KNOW VALUE VS NON-VALUE?

 

Sometimes it’s hard to tell.  I find if you let it simmer, the waiting time usually brings extra insight, and that extra insight is FAR more valuable in determining how to move forward than if you had just pushed ahead without consideration and wasted time and money.

 

 

 

 

LETTING IDEAS SIMMER

 

When you let non-urgent things sit for a week, they often

 

- go away

 

- take shape in your mind and you can be more effective when you do tackle them

 

 

 

 

PROJECT SERENDIPITY

 

- broad, extended networks of trusted, relevant people with triggers

 

- Trev's network chart (investors, co-investors, fellows, advisors, acceleration partners, limiteds, educational partners, strategic advisors, gap fund, civic outreach, research relationships/academic, portfolio leaders/execs

 

 

 

 

 

 

TITLES

 

People worry about status.  But status is a fixed pie in any one organization...if you promote one person, it implicitly demotes everyone eles.  It's a zero-sum battle for the people as a whole.

 

 

 

The biggest risk I saw:

 

Getting trapped on the career track, and then not being able to fulfill my dreams, held down by a too-big mortgage, a stressful job...

 

 

 

Working harder is a distraction from passion.  Work with more passion, not with just more work.

 

 

“Working harder” is limited: there are very defined limits.  Working more productively (working ‘on’ the business) is infinitely scalable.  If amount of work was the determining factor, farmworkers would rule the world.  It made sense for farmers: the more you planted, the more you reaped.  But for knowledge workers, the more you code <> more success.  For salespeople, the more you call <> more success (ryth).  In fact, Drew probably makes fewer calls. 

 

 

Activity can be a cheap substitute for understanding.  I saw this at salesforce.com.  People who were confused substituted more calls, activities and work as an investment in understanding.

 

 

It’s passion, not amount of work.  This has people confused.  If you’re passionate about work, you’ll want to do it a lot, and you’ll get better results.  If you aren’t passionate, more work doesn’t equal more progress….just more stress.  Which then leads to worse results, and a downward spiral.

 

 

Box.net: “working harder is not a differentiator”

 

Aaron feels the need to RUSH everything, work hard.  There are 40 competitors and they are all working hard, so working hard is not a differentiator. 

 

 

 

 Paul Graham:

points out why pebblestorming is the future

 

 

http://www.paulgraham.com/webstartups.html

“Starting a startup is hard, but having a 9 to 5 job is hard too, and in some ways a worse kind of hard.  In a startup you have lots of worries, but you don't have that feeling that your life is flying by like you do in a big company.  Plus in a startup you could make orders of magnitude more money.”

 

 

 

 

 

A life blog? What did I learn today about balance and productivity?

 

 

 

At one company, being busy was a badge of honor in the pecking order.

 

"People would show how busy they were by showing up late to meetings"

 

 

 

 

 

TOPICS

 

* business mashups

 

* the 5th option (corporate, consultant, artist, entrepreneur...what's the 5th option?)

 

    - chart of risk vs reward...with passion as the size of the circle

 

* making it easier to start a pebble -

 

    * partner- it's easier with a partner, test, mashup, patiencem, no maintenaince operations (keep it virtual)

 

* avoid creating a beast to feed

 

* Trust is not 8 hours, it's 24 hours (scott caruso, talking about going on vacation with the flywheel partners)

 

 

 

 

 

 

USE TRIGGERS - set triggers, pay attention to them

 

ex in wired: "eat 5 servings of fruit/veggies a day" had no impact, but "there should be 5 fruits/veggies on your cafeteria tray" did

 

 

 

Warning sign: you behave differently at work than at home or out of work

 

 

 

Motivcation MUST extend beyond the economics

 

 

 

 

 

PEBBLE PHASES

 

- Idea (<$1000)

 

- Mashup test ($10,000)

 

- Company

 

 

 

 

 

 

MORE AT-BATS = MORE SUCCESS

You can't predict ahead of time what will succeed or take off (else VCs would have 100% success rates).  You can control how you invest your time and energy, and into what ventures.  More at-bats will increase your likelihood of success.

 

 

Plant more seeds...

 

- ideas

 

- relationships

 

- product ideas

 

....and see what flowers over long periods of time.  Pay attention to what comes back to you and be ready to receive it.

 

 

 

Passion cuts through the noise.

Find a way to let everyone know what your passions are!  And be specific...the more specific and unique you are in describing it, the easier others will be able to connect other people or opptys to you.

 

 

 

Specificity cuts through the noise..but SUPER SPECIFIC.   

 

   - simple example: 'we need a director of marketing'

 

    - vs 'we need a director of marketing with saas and internet advertising experience'

 

    - if you had to be overly specific, how would you describe it?

 

 

 

 

 

TYPES OF STORMERS

 

- Idea people  (LOTS of ideas)

 

- Bridgers/Shapers (Special forces - grab the beachhead)...(multiple ideas, 2-7)

 

- Growers (infantry)...1 principle idea + contribution to others?

 

- Managers (Policemean) 1 principle idea + contribution to others?

 

- Connectors (hon luu)

 

 

 

(other tipping point people?)

 

 

 

 

 

Tie decision-making to values.  When someone is trying to decide whether to work on a project, how do they know what to do? 

 

2. use the "passion first, then leverage, then money"

 

 

 

 

HEALTH SITE TYPES

 

Navigators/connectors/diagnosers

 

Practicioners

 

Clients

 

 

 

I can only be productive for 4 hours per day, on a long term average (?)

 

 

(tim ferriss blog)