Do you remember comments like this about the photocasting product called FilmLoop when I posted my TechCrunch party pictures?
This “FilmLoop” outfit is doomed. The scrolling thingie in the browser is cute, but when I click on a picture, I want to see the PICTURE, not a link to download an app that does the same thing that half a dozen apps I already have can do. Frankly, it comes across as a sneaky kind of spamming.
If these clowns are venture-funded, then that will be one more example I’ll cite in years to come of VCs wasting money on stupid ideas. I guess the magic VC hypnosis trigger these days is saying “Web 2.0,” right?
Now when you click on a picture, a new browser window opens, and people can see the pictures without a download and installation. The primary use of the downloaded client is the creation of the loop, not the viewing of it.
Try clicking on the large picture in the window below to see how it works.
If you’re a blogger or a webmaster, you would download the client and create a loop of pictures. Then you can display your photos in your blog or on your site in formats such as portrait (single picture at a time) and ticker (strip of moving images).
If you don't have a blog or web site and want to share your photos, you’d just send people an URL. When they go to the URL, they will see all the pictures. Again, they do not have to download or install anything. For example, the URL for this loop is:
Not a day goes by when I don’t ask myself, “Why do smart companies do such dumb things?” We all know companies that cook the books and throw outrageous parties at one end of the spectrum to sell lousy products at the other. A sweeping answer is that companies are run by smart people, and smart people do dumb things as we’ve learned.
However, when smart people assemble in companies, they are still capable of doing dumb, if not even dumber, things. Wouldn’t you think that groups would provide checks and balances? Let’s tap into Why Smart People Do Dumb Things again because it’s a cornucopia of ideas, recommendations, and provocations that can explain why smart companies do dumb things.
Consensus. When it comes to doing dumb things, the sum of the parts is less than the whole. Throwing more minds at the problem means more data, more perspectives, more possible solutions, more critiques of these solutions, and more minds (and hands) implementing the solution, right?
Possibly, but there’s also the downside of more people: once consensus starts to build, it’s harder to alter a decision. It’s one thing to argue against a few people; it’s much more difficult to argue against the wisdom of a crowd. Individuals who hold out, question, or disagree are labeled as clueless, uncooperative, and not team players.
Conviction. Consensus rears its ugly head during the decision-making process. The situation can get worse once implementation occurs because the organization marches along with a firm belief in what it’s doing. At that point, a decision takes on a sacred life of its own, and a company cannot see flaws.
Conviction is not inherently bad, and truthfully, it’s an important component of success. The trick is to combine conviction with open eyes and open minds to reduce the likelihood of having a conviction in the wrong thing.
CEOs. There is one kind of consensus that is particularly powerful and dangerous: a CEO (or any top executive) who provides cues about what she likes. (CEO=Consensus Executive Officer?) Then, disagreeing takes on the gravity of career risk; however, smart people don’t necessarily turn into thumb-sucking dweebs just because the CEO likes something, so what gives?
It could be that people, no matter how smart, rearrange reality. They do not simply follow the dumb cues of the CEO. Instead, there’s an intermediate step: they see the cues, rearrange the facts in their mind, and then conclude that the CEO is right. The result is the same, though.
Experts. If there’s anything smart people worship it’s other smart people. For example, you don’t know much about geography, so you hire an consultant who’s an expert in geography, and he tells you that the earth is flat. It’s touch to be strong enough to not defer to an expert.
Most experts have a tough time accepting surprises that are outside of their comfort zone. For example, if you come to me with a marketing problem, I will usually tell you that evangelism is the answer. :-)
Good news. A company, any company, is constantly assaulted by its competition, customers, governments, and schmexperts (schmucks + experts). Faced with this onslaught, good news is an addictive, illegal, and dangerous drug. It makes you crave more good news, and you refuse to communicate bad news up the chain of command. Ultimately, it may even make you refuse to hear bad news at all. How many commanders-in-chief of armies has this phenomenon probably brought down over the course of history?
Lofty ends. Lofty ends can justify all sorts of weird and inappropriate means. Look no further than the quests for peace that produce mayhem and violence. Or, the desire to make a profit (something that is genuinely good for shareholders and customers) that warps a company’s code of ethics even though the company is made up of smart, honest people. Companies trying to achieve a lofty goal can start believing that any means to achieve it is okay.
In addition to what the book discusses, I’ve noticed three additional factors that make smart companies do dumb things.
Budgets. Ideas take on a life of their own in the form of convictions. That’s bad enough, but then the implementation of ideas can also take on a life of its own. This is called a budget. It is a holy document that takes the place of management, observation, decision-making, and analysis for an entire year. Then the flawed thinking of the budget serves as the basis for the next year’s implementations. You’ve heard of stem cells. You can think of many budgets as stupid cells.
Greed. You’ve heard of concept of “good to great” by Jim Collins. There’s also “good to greedy,” and greed usually trumps intelligence. When a company wants it all, it usually doesn’t let rules, regulations, and common sense get in the way.
Arrogance. This is greed’s twin brother. Arrogance sets in when a company claims success as if it’s a God-given right. Arrogance also means that a company believes it’s above the law—that no one and nothing has claims against it.
Here are my thoughts on ways to prevent or minimize doing dumb things:
Say, believe, and act in a way that convinces employees that differences of opinion and diversity of thoughts are good things. Frankly, a couple of curmudgeons is a good thing for a company.
Don’t be in a rush to meet consensus. In particular CEOs should not rush into a decision even though the image of decisiveness is so seductive.
Spell things out. It’s not enough to say, "Plug this leak in our company" and assume that it will be done legally. You should say, "Plug this leak in our company by using only legal, ethical, and reasonable methods." That’s when you’re done.
Move the crowns. When employees go around saying, "We need to do it this way because Bill/Steve/Carly/Larry wants it this way,” you’re in trouble. It means that employees are making decisions based on what they think will make kings and queens happy—as opposed to what’s right for the customer, employees, or shareholders. Good CEOs put the crown on the heads of customers, not themselves.
Restrict the use of experts to narrow areas. Never use experts to create your product roadmap or marketing plans unless you want MBAs who have never run anything larger than a school snack bar to decide your fate.
Ask for bad news. Don’t assume it will find you—you have to find it. You should allocate a time that’s specifically for communicating bad news.
Don’t shoot the messenger who brings the bad news unless he caused it.
Don’t reward the messenger who brings good news unless he caused it.
Approach budgets as working guidelines, not policies set in stone. If your budget doesn’t change for the whole year, you’re either clairvoyant (there are probably easier ways to make money if you are) or clueless.
Squash arrogance and greed. I’ll be honest: I don’t know how to do this. If I figure it out, it will be the topic of an upcoming blog.
Nisan Gabbay brought his blog, Startup Review, to my attention. He writes analyses (“The study of such constituent parts and their interrelationships in making up a whole.”) of successful online companies. I hope he can keep his blog going because it provides interesting and useful information. After a while, he may run out of successful companies to profile. :-)
How did you end your summer? A nice barbeque at the beach or maybe a quiet afternoon with the family? Mountain biking? Surfing? Bloggin? Playing in a hockey tournament? Go ahead: Ask me how my summer ended.
On Saturday, September 2nd, I got up and found that my MacBook’s hard disk was quasi hosed--not totally hosed like “Accept fate--there’s nothing you can do, it’s dead.” I could somewhat access files and even come close to booting the MacBook. So unlike millions of other people, I ended my summer cajoling, coercing, and cursing my MacBook’s hard disk assisted by Data Rescue II (which got back some files I thought I’d never see again).
The $64,000 question is, “Why didn’t I have my MacBook completely and currently backed up?” During this weekend of aggravation, I read a book (at the suggestion of my buddy Bill Meade) called Why Smart People Do Dumb Things by Dr. Mortimer Feinberg and John J. Tarrant, and it answered this question.
Truly, the book answers much deeper questions than why I was too dumb to backup my MacBook, but the concepts are the same. The authors list four reasons why smart, famous, powerful, and rich people who should obviously know better end up crashing and burning:
Hubris. Pride to the point that you no longer feel shame, no longer believe that you are subject to public opinion, and no longer need to fear “the gods.” Examples: Gary Hart’s involvement with Donna Rice that ended his run for the presidency and the Dennis Kozlowski’s (Tyco) $2 million toga party.
Arrogance. From the Latin word arrogare: “to claim for oneself.” Arrogant people believe they have claim to anything and everything they want--they are “entitled” to it. King David, for example, felt entitled to the wife (Bathsheba) of one of his soldiers. Modern day King Davids feel entitled to corporate jets and an entourage to tell them that their keynote speech rocked.
Narcissism. Self absorption to the point that you are blind to reality. The world only exists to provide you gratification. Examples: Richard Nixon and Watergate; the Clintons and Whitewater—really just about every politician and CEO who falls from grace.
Unconscious need to fail. If you think failing is hard, try winning. The questions that go through people’s minds when they they are on the doorstep of success are: Do I really deserve to win? Do I want the pressure of constantly having to win in the future? Can I really handle success? Perhaps this explains why professional athletes still take performance enchancement drugs even after watching their colleagues get busted.
The authors go on to discuss maturity (the “capacity to make constructive use of our inmost feelings”) and what they call the “Six Basic Principles of Maturity.”
Accept yourself. “You’re on the road to maturity if you can begin to appreciate yourself without trying to be what you cannot possibly be.” The CEOs who failed at Apple did so because they wanted to be another “Steve Jobs.” They couldn’t accept themselves and their own, different capabilities and shortcomings.
Accept others. “Your relations with other people are a basic test of your maturity. If you don’t get along well with others, it’s not because you’re not smart enough, or because you’re smart and they’re dumb. It’s because you still need to grow up in some vital centers of your being.” For example, there are companies in Silicon Valley that maintain a “tyranny of PhDs” where only the advanced degreed are held in high esteem and marketing, operations, and others are fodder.
Keep your sense of humor. “Your humor reflects your attitudes toward people. The mature person uses humor not as a bludgeoning hammer but rather as a plane to shave off rough edges.”
Accept simple pleasures. “The capacity to get excited over things even when they seem ordinary to others—this is a sign of a healthy personality.” For example, some tech entrepreneurs have yachts that can barely pass under the Golden Gate Bridge. (I’d just be happy if I could skate backwards.)
Enjoy the present. “Emotional grown-ups don’t live on an expectancy basis. They plan for the future, but they know they must also live in the present. The mature person realizes that the best insurance for tomorrow is the effective use of today.”
Welcome work. “Appreciation of work is a hallmark of mature people.... Immature people are constantly fighting certain aspects of their work. They resent routine reports, or meetings, or correspondence. They allow these annoyances to grate on their nerves continually. Satisfaction in doing a good job is blocked out by the dust speck in the eye of resentment over trivia.”
Good stuff, huh? You could photocopy this posting and slip it under the corner-office door of you-know-who. There’s so much material in this book that this may turn into Feinberg-Tarrant Week. But back to my wasted weekend. Why didn’t I, a seemingly smart person with a computer background with difficult-to-replace files, not back up my hard disk?
Hubris: I no longer feared the hard-disk gods.
Arrogance: I was “entitled” to a trouble-free hard disk. Even if it did fail, I have enough connections for some company to jump through hoops to recover it for me.
Narcissism: Hard disk failure cannot happen to me, Guy Kawasaki. Now let me get back to admiring myself.
Unconscious need to fail. This, honestly, doesn’t apply to me. :-) Although, perhaps I had a conscious need for my hard disk to fail so that I wouldn’t have to answer my backlog of 300 emails.
As I learned from reading this book, whether you’re talking about business, politics, or your hard disk, it pays to be mature. The first thing I’m going to do is change my backup strategy....
Addendum: I am surprised by the reaction to this posting. I wanted to communicate a message about the corruption of power, money, and fame. However, people have focused on backup experiences and strategies. :-)
Be that as it may, Ross Williams pointed out a very funny site about the Tao of Backup. You must check it out.
