Information Technology Dark Side

Disclaimer
Look, I’m a 37Signals fanboy. Why deny it? I’ve been reading their blog for years, and the stories behind their success with products such as Basecamp and Highrise inspired me to launch TroopTrack.com, which will be two years old pretty soon. So don’t expect me to be all critical. Just sayin’.

Here are five things I learned by reading this book that really stuck with me. They are simultaneously very intuitive feeling to me and also in diametric opposition to the strategies and approaches I observed in the ten years I spent in corporate IT.

1. Apologize like a human
Everybody screws up. The way we deal with our mistakes can either endear us to our friends, customers, and colleagues or alienate us as cold and unfeeling. Which would you rather have happen? Rework give solid advice to help you avoid non-apology apologies and it inspired the following apology to my TroopTrack users:

Over the weekend I attempted to improve the single-sign-on feature between TroopTrack.com and TroopTrack Help Desk. Sadly, I didn’t do it right and caused two problems:
1) A brief outage over the weekend that impacted some of you.
2) Many of you are now unable to access the help desk.

The first problem was fixed within a few minutes, but it was still a pain for those of you who were online when it happened. I’m sorry about that.

I’m still working on the second problem. Hopefully it will be fixed soon. In the meantime, if you are having trouble accessing the help desk and need support, please email me directly or call me.

Thanks for understanding. Software is hard – I learn something new every day. Unfortunately sometimes I’m learning from my mistakes!

2. Fire the workaholics
This chapter was kind of bitter for me. If I follow this advice I have to fire myself! Sometimes I forget about the role I have in building the culture of a workplace, and I appreciated this reminder of how workaholics put a lot of pressure on their colleagues while impairing their own productivity by working too much.

I don’t want to fire myself, so I’m just scaling it back instead. Sometimes that’s hard, but it has already made me feel better.

3. Don’t be a startup
Startups are all about the exit. Yesterday I watched a video by Steve Blank explaining why founders are forced out in the transition from a startup to a big company and it reinforced this lesson to me, although I don’t think that’s what Steve’s intention was. You don’t need venture capital. You don’t need an exit strategy. You need a business. So be a business, not a startup.

4. Learning from mistakes is over-rated
Learn from your successes. Focusing on what not to do is far less valuable than focusing on what to do.

5. Don’t be in a hurry for huge growth
This is one of the mistakes I made when I first founded TroopTrack. I built up growth expectations that created a lot of pressure to deliver a “finished” project in a short period of time. That was a hard pill to swallow when reality set in – TroopTrack needed to be a much better product if it was going to grow quickly.

Today I don’t advertise. I don’t buy a single Google ad word. I add roughly one trial account per day, and lately a little more than 10% of them convert to paying customers.

That’s not much growth, but it doesn’t bother me. In fact, it’s become a powerful asset to me. I’m not as nervous about breaking things as I would be if I had 10,000 troops paying to use TroopTrack. I’m able to interact with my customers at a reasonably friendly level and they are pretty tolerant of my mistakes. Many of them are excited to see the little improvements I make on a daily basis, and if I unintentionally make a feature worse there is no outraged mob on my virtual porch in the morning.

This small user base has gone from being an emotional drain (why isn’t it growing more rapidly? when will I generate enough revenue to hire someone?) to being a source of creative freedom. I can perfect the product at a sustainable pace, tackling each problem I encounter without killing myself or impairing my ability to perform my real job well.

Buy this book
The advice in Rework feels emotionally healthy for me. I’ve been building TroopTrack.com based on a lot of the things I’ve learned from the 37signals blog, and the more I use the advice from authors Jason Fried and DHH the more confident and optimistic I feel that I can make TroopTrack successful. It also helps me see ways that I can make my day job better for myself and others.

Buy it. Read it. Try it.

Have a nice day.

Stumble it!