Entrepreneur: Day 3

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With the weekend wrapping up I’m finally, back home. With all partners present and working for the entire weekend I can honestly say this much: there’s a great chemistry between us. To me, that’s the most important part – we can overcome anything but personality conflicts. They’ll rot the team and you’ll get nowhere but pissed off. The “no asshole rule” is now in aeffect.

On the drive back I had a good three hours to get more of the business plan worked out. The financials are pretty much done at this point with the exception of building out staffing. The prototype is up and running – needs some more work but it’s coming along nicely. One thing I’m trying NOT to do is have more of the business plan complete than the product.

I also had time to finish Seth Godin’s Poke the Box. Typical of Seth, I got about $5k of value for about 5 bucks in the Kindle store. One thing that really stood out was the contrast he drew between “flux” and “risk.” Flux is all the stuff going on around us. Risk is the potential of failure. He goes on to explain that the real risk is in not doing something new, of not jumping into the flux and building something. Anything. And do it now. I highly recommend the book and it’s only a few bucks.

Even on a limited budget for the next 18 months I went and splurged on a Keurig. I figure between my girlfriend and I we spend about $6.31/day on coffee most days, on some days we’re as high as $10. The Keurig was on sale at Macy’s for about $140 so I should be at break-even between 14 and 22 days.  Not only that but it takes me about 10 minutes to get to Starbucks and back so I’m also saving an hour a week that I can put towards getting the company up and running.

Entrepreneur: Day 2

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Weekends are work days too. Covered multiple business models and worked out next steps and timelines. All without Starbucks and a shower. Oh, I’m learning how to go cheap on everything too.

Entrepreneur: Day 1

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Up at 5 AM, plowed through all the emails from friends and family that were wishing me luck. As I’m writing this I’m heading for north Florida to work on fleshing out some additional opportunities. It’s 2PM. Left at 10. I think I’ve hit every Five Guys Burgers on the way as well as The Hard Rock Casino. Not the best use of time to be sure. To make up for it, I paid off my car. I started updating the business plan, the Executive Summary, Market Opportunity, Financial, and Bio’s were mostly completed last week. The three partners, including myself, had also worked out the initial number of shares, their value, and when we would file an 83(b). If you’re not familiar with the 83(b) then grab a copy of Do More Faster and take a look at the “To 83(b) or Not to 83(b), There is no Question” by Matt Galligan. There’s a great explanation of what your exposure may be and how to deal with it early on.

Entrepreneur: Day 0

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This morning, after 11 years at Cox Target Media, I resigned my position as Digital Innovation Strategist. After becoming more involved in the entrepreneurial community that’s building in Tampa and St Pete, and after seeing what USFSP’s Gazelle Lab is doing to support innovation and entrepreneurship, I felt that I could no longer sit out and watch everybody else building cool stuff. After taking a close look at my finances I’ve got about 18 months to make something happen. And at 43 I’m still young enough to recover from a catastrophic screw up if it’s turns out that I’m a complete idiot. I’ve got a number of concepts ready to go and two great business partners with a huge amount of technical experience and creativity. So from today on, for the next 18 months, I’ll be posting daily about decision points, planning, progress, successes and failures. If I don’t post then I’m too busy but I’ll try to get at least a sentence in for the day. Obviously I can’t share everything about what we’re working on and who we’re talking to but I will share as much as possible. I’ll also follow up with the results of the decisions I made and whether or not I made a good decision or a bad decision and how and why I’d do it differently in retrospect. Hopefully it will help somebody else in their startup.

Oh, and by the way – focus replaces fear after you decide to jump.

Rewards & Incentives

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For those creative individuals that are submitting new cost cutting or product ideas, the incentive may not be strictly financial. That may be a portion of it, but the overall thrill of creating something may be from getting an opportunity to participate in bringing the idea or product to fruition. Money and schwag are great but can be a fleeting experience. I contend that people will get a greater sense of satisfaction, will last longer and spread further through the organization if you reward them with the ability to contribute to the project. If you haven’t done so already, poll your organization to see what they consider to be the best rewards. You’ll probably find that it’s more money and more time off. However, there is an alternative – not everybody is in it for strictly monetary rewards. There are many who want to participate in creating something new and exciting so give people the opportunity to say “I built that” and you may be surprised at how engaged your most creative people become.

Empowering Workspaces

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Last night I was watching, yet again, The Pixar Story from ’97. I’ve seen this a number of times and each time I usually get something new out of it. This time wasn’t any different – I picked up on something Jobs said about creating spaces to foster ‘unintended collaboration” for the staff and artists at Pixar. The interesting thing here was that although everyone has an office there were also massive open areas to meet. I also picked up on the phrase ‘…offices are like blank canvases…’ In my opinion the environment you work in, that you create in, and that you are supposedly generating your best work in, should be areas that are comfortable and make you NOT want to go home. If your office isn’t comfortable, if it doesn’t reflect your perspective or your point of view, then you’re going to be out of sync. Research has shown that offices and meeting rooms with higher ceilings tend to create loftier ideas. Lower ceilings promote more constrained thinking. I’ll go so far as to say that if everyone’s office looks the same then everyone will be generating the same ideas. Great if you’re a CPA firm or a law office. Bad if you’re creating new products or trying to change the world. Give people some freedom to create an area that reflects their personality.

Build Experts

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Or… Allow your employees the latitude to become experts on their own.

For those rare and truly passionate people who’s outside interests and daily jobs mesh – giving them latitude to grow and be recognized as team, corporate and then industry experts grows you and your business as well. It creates a positive feedback loop and if you help these people through honest commentary, attending conferences and eventually having them speak at those conferences, the amount of credibility flowing back to the organization will be phenomenal. Not to mention the expertise that these individuals develop and bring back with them. Expertise is what helps organizations separate themselves from their competition and should be developed as a strategic imperative. When you marry an employee’s passion with objectives of the company – you’ve got a killer situation – but only if you listen and allow it to develop.

How do you recognize these individuals? Talking to them is a great place to start. Reading their blogs, is another. Watching them in meetings, how they contribute, which meetings they tend to participate more in – all are signs of what their interests are.

How else can you help build experts? If you’ve got the space then let them host an event on the campus. Demonstrate your support by sponsoring an event or even go so far as to help these individuals put on an event. Keep it small if this is their first one and and allow them to prove themselves. As long as it all ties back in some way to the corporate strategy and objectives. All of this leads back to thought leadership and it’s the social currency that’s driving a lot of individual contributors who want to stand out. Do this for one person and soon you may have several stepping up. Once that begins to happen you may see a lot more resumes, and business, coming your way.

Innovation Furnace. Execution Engine.

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In reality, the 80/20 rule is 90/10 when it comes to innovation. Only 10% of “ideas” that are generated could be considered in the “good” category. However, of the entire population of ideas, 1% would be considered “great.” The difficult part to begin to grapple with is that of all ideas that a team comes up with, only .001% will be in the “fantastic” category. That’s it, 1 in 1000. For some, just coming up with that 1/1000 is enough of a thrill. All too often that’s the extent of it. There is no follow through, no attempt to build a consensus of opinion, and no attempt to prioritize and take the “idea” all the way to the “product” stage. For some, “I thought of that” is enough. But that doesn’t create sustainable business and it doesn’t create effective people and teams. What does create a business is follow through. After reading Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky, it’s clear that a process is needed to move things from the innovation stage to the execution phase.

As Scott puts it…

Only through organization can we seize the benefits from bursts of creativity.

So how do you move repeatedly from idea to launch? In my experience the easiest way to make this happen is to create a simple project plan and set milestone dates and stick to them. For example…

  1. Brainstorm, conceptualize and refine the idea for 30 days.
  2. For the following 3 days we will review objectives and prioritize.
  3. In 15 days we’ll have a working prototype.
  4. For 10 days following that we’ll review results and have a working solution.
  5. In 5 days we’ll launch in specific pilot areas.

Keep going from there. Put a process together that you can follow. Not too detailed just a general sense of what everybody is doing. If it’s more complicated than a football play then you need to stop and rethink because nobody can follow it. Pick a project manager to oversee the process. No Gantt charts, just clear and simple markers to show where you are as opposed to where you should be. When dates slip, ask “why” not “who?” If the “why” is associated to the same person every time then the “who” will answer itself. It also polices your process. You should also let the people following the process police it as well. In my opinion, anyone that is a part of a process should have the responsibility of calling “bullshit” on any portion of the process that impacts them directly. They should also be required to offer a workable solution, not just complain that the process is broken or too difficult. Once the issue and a potential solution are voiced, the rest of the team following the process needs to have a say in changing the process. Whatever you do, don’t wait to make the change if everybody approves. Make it now. Test it. Do a dry run and see what happens.

Once you’ve got one team up and running with this, split off a smaller team and move new people into the original team. Add people slowly so they can get their feet under them and get accustomed to the culture. Have the teams work on different cycles, one conceptualizing and the other executing. Create a pool of the top 10% of ideas to draw on and see if they can be enhanced. The two teams should get together at regular intervals to discuss what they’ve learned about each other and about the process. Have ONE process. Not one for EACH team. Shuffle people around from time to time to avoid group think. Mix things up again by having a different person lead the initiative. That gives people experience at leadership and making decisions without all the facts available. That type of experience will prove to be invaluable to your people, your teams, and your company.

Brainstorming 101

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If you’re setting out to brainstorm new ideas and concepts, here’s some things I’ve experienced over the past few years that may help.

1) Get a great facilitator. Someone that’s open minded, will keep people on track and will get people to contribute.

2) Put a great question together and figure out how to answer it. It helps if you can define what you’re trying to do as much as possible. Free form brainstorming rarely turns into anything of value and usually leads to something that you probably can’t execute anyway. Make the question as specific and restrictive as possible. “How do we solve problem (x) with (y) dollars, (z) time, and existing skill sets?” You may be surprised at how many ideas you can come up with. You may get a lot of resistance at first like “You’re limiting us” but to get really creative you usually need to deal with the realities of the situation. [I forgot to include a very important point here – if somebody is telling you that your approach to the problem is wrong or suggests a different way of approaching it, listen to them. It’s possible that they’re lateral thinkers, these people make all the difference in innovation. Lateral thinkers are game changers.]

3) Put a time constraint in place. Give yourself a limited amount of time to generate ideas and the ideas you generate MUST address the question asked in #2. Don’t go over, stop on time and move on. However, people may go home and think about it a little longer. They may also have an epiphany. Make certain that you account for this as answers to problems are rarely straightforward. The subconscious may chew on it for a while and come up with something spectacular.

4) Isolate yourselves. Set aside a time and place where nobody knows where you are or what you’re working on. Turn off cell phones and focus on what you’re doing.

5) If it’s not coming together, say so. You can’t force people to come up with ideas to solve a problem. But you can create an environment where people feel comfortable and willing to participate. If it’s just not working for whatever reason then reschedule. Or move to a different location. Or get different people.

6) Create follow-up tasks, delegate those tasks to individuals and put dates and times in place to get them resolved. The task may be to do market research, speak to your target audience or get a patent attorney. Set concrete and measurable tasks that have a specific owner. Leave no latitude as to who should be running with which item.

That’s it at it’s most basic implementation. Before you get started on any session make sure you’ve got the essentials. Whiteboard, pizza, cokes, etc. The facilitator should set and enforce the ground rules and only let people deviate when it’s in the teams best interest.

If you have other experiences, things that worked in the past, things that didn’t, don’t hesitate to comment here.

Iron Maiden

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It’s official! Just got my tickets last night to the last US date for Iron Maiden’s 2011 tour before they head to Europe. I’ve been a fan since Killers came out but never got a chance to see them live. I think the last concert I went to was… Front 242? Either that or Sisters of Mercy.