Constraints have a wonderful way of focusing us. Constraints are the fence around the yard where we can plan. Constraints are the guard-rails put up around the top floor of a building that is under construction.
In order to be the best in the world, I need to define the world that I will be best in. To this end, the business software business that I want to build will operate within some very specific constraints.
When we start to talk about constraints, it helps me focus on both the benefit and the business model that these constraints will require. It helps me define who the company is ‘for’ and what the company is ‘for.’
JOHN V SOFTWARE is for:
Businesses which have one to four employees (1 – 4 employees)
Retail, Social Service, Health, or Non-Profit organizations.
Businesses that use Windows computers.
People who are ok using desktop applications.
People who want to purchase their software once, and not pay rent (subscription fees) every month.
Testing The Hypothesis
The great thing about being clear about the boundaries on your game-board is that you can swap out different constraints if one doesn’t seem to be working. You shouldn’t swap out all of the constraints at the same time, but it is easy to make small but significant changes to see if it makes things better or worse. For example, if desktop apps aren’t selling, I can keep all of the same technology, approach and audience – but build mobile apps for the same group. I can change one thing and see if there an improvement.
Quote of the Week
“Constraints drive innovation and force focus. Instead of trying to remove them, use them to your advantage.” 37 Signals
This week, I’d like to introduce myself a little more.
Any business is a reflection of the founder.
It is an interesting phenomenon, but it makes sense. The founder attracts people who share their vision for the world. The company attracts customers who need someone to think like the founder and the company is thinking. So, the good things that the founder offers are amplified. It is, in fact, what makes the company successful.
Let’s look at a few examples of companies reflecting the founder:
Bill Gates is very driven, competitive, and smart. He will do anything to win, but he wins by constantly learning new things and exploring new ways to beat everyone else. The company he founded, Microsoft, reflects his personality.
Steve Jobs was passionate about making technology easy and enjoyable to use. He would be very nitpicky about ensuring the customer would enjoy every aspect of his company’s products. You may remember Steve Jobs as the founder and returned CEO of Apple. He was in the driving force for delivering the iPod, iPhone and iPad, which are the types of devices that no one had experienced before. I often forget that he was also responsible for creating PIXAR, the digital movie company that gave us movies like Toy Story and Wall-E. Both PIXAR and Apple were companies that reflected Steve Jobs’ passion for making beautiful experiences for customers.
JOHN V SOFTWARE
I expect that JOHN V SOFTWARE will reflect my personality.
First and foremost, I want people to experience safety and significance in everything they do.
Safety: Beyond physical safety, I want people to be safe and be who they are called to be. I want people to express themselves and share themselves fully without fear of being hurt. This means psychological, creative, and thought safety. I want safety for everyone. If one person’s safety causes another to feel threatened, we need to adjust so everyone can feel safe.
Significance: Every person has a contribution to make that matters to the world. It is my job, and it is OUR job, to make sure that people make the contribution they are created to. Every person matters because we need everyone to be their full self in the world. Significance isn’t something that is assigned; it is something that is inherent to each person.
My “Working Genius”
Patrick Lencioni’s company has developed an assessment which determines 6 key areas which you may have strengths or weaknesses in. Wonder, Invention and Enablement are tied as my top ‘genius.’ I am constantly trying to look at the world in a new way, and then thinking of ways that I can build something new so that people can experience safety and significance.
Tenacity and Galvanizing are my “working frustrations.” When I first saw the assessment, I thought that tenacity wasn’t a frustration for me. I can spend hours on a single problem when inventing something. Long after the lights are off and the janitor has gone home, I am happy to continue trying something new so that someone is enabled to have a better life. So, tenacity in creating things isn’t my frustration. BUT – tenacity in continuing to repeat processes once they are defined is where I get bored. Once I define a new process (a Zero to One, as Peter Theil talks about in his book), I want to hand it off to the person who can move it from one to one thousand as soon as possible.
This actually made me realize that sometimes I have to be comfortable with getting less recognition. I make it possible to create 10 million widgets. But once I’ve created a repeatable process and produced the first 5000, I’m happy to let someone take over and produce the next 995,000. I used to think this was humility: I’m happy to let others take glory for being able to repeat what I can put in place. I now realize that my joy is in the process of creation. It is still important that 10 million widgets are made – but I don’t have to touch most of them.
Quote of the Week
“What important truth do very few people agree with you on?” Zero To One – Peter Theil
Links and Resources
The Books That Made Me: This is a list of the top 10 books that make me into who I am today. These books are the template for who I am and how I approach my work and management.
Welcome to the newsletter that I am calling Hope: The Journey.
I am embarking on a journey to start a business. I hope it survives at least ten years. This newsletter is my chance for you to watch a business be built from the ground up. Or it may be a chance for you to watch a business that doesn’t succeed. (1 in 5 small businesses close within the first year.)
Why I Want To Write This Newsletter
This newsletter won’t be a series of epic (and/or exaggerated) stories about my journey. The newsletter serves a clear purpose:
To share lessons and resources that I discover that help me build my [small] business.
To chronicle my steps and missteps in creating a business so that others can learn from my mistakes and milestones.
To provide a path that others can follow if they are starting their own business.
Why do I want to make my start-a-business journey public?
It is pretty simple: I feel entirely inadequate** to embark on this journey to build a business. But in writing about my work, even if I don’t succeed completely, I hope that someone else will benefit and build on what I share. If what you learn from me helps you go further than I can – I have succeeded.
(** I need to note: I don’t feel inadequate as a human or a professional. The ‘starting a business’ quest makes me feel inadequate — You’ll learn more about me in the coming weeks.)
If there are steps I take to garner success, then anyone can copy them. You can even copy every aspect of my business and become my competition. There is plenty for all of us. The more seeds we plant, the greater the harvest for all of us.
What If I Fail?
What if the business ultimately fails? Won’t it be embarrassing for me to do so publicly?
Failure for me takes on three perspectives:
Perspective One: Failure as a step to growth.
You tried something, and you didn’t succeed. This will be the failure you might notice if the newsletter stops coming in the middle of the year, or my website goes offline, or I just declare that I am quitting. Even though this might be a painful failure, I will be a better person if I fail because I didn’t have the strength or knowledge to succeed. This failure will be painful, but:
I will know that I tried my best
I will have learned something
I will have left a path for others to follow and examine so that they can avoid the pitfalls that led to my failure.
Perspective Two: “Failure” is the current state of my future vision.
In software engineering, there is a development methodology called Test-Driven Development. Test-driven development starts by defining what you want the code to do and then writing a test to see if the code does it. This is before writing any other code. Since you haven’t written any other code, your test fails. The next step is to write code to make the test pass.
I’m starting with my future vision. See my dashboard below. But the test fails if you test my future vision against current reality. My next step is to build the ‘code’ (systems, audience, etc.) that will make the tests pass.
Perspective Three: Failure as a way to build strength.
When you lift weights, you lift until you can’t lift anymore. This is called the point of failure. And when you hit that point, your muscles grow.
When an Olympic medalist stands on the platform, they may be happy. But their next thought quickly becomes the next accomplishment. How can I win the next championship or medal? They are acutely aware that they will only return to the podium if they do something they have never done before. And that means growth.
If I’m not failing in some way or making mistakes, then I probably am not dreaming big enough or working hard enough. Failure is an expected part of the journey.
Newsletter Format
Each week, I will talk about my journey and what I have learned. It will include:
A story of what I learned or have been reflecting on this week.
A quote I love or spoke to me
Links to two interesting resources, articles, or tools.
My dashboard of my most important measurements.
Each week’s posts will be between 500 and 750 words long. They’ll arrive in your inbox on Thursday mornings.
Uniqueness Bias: Why It Matters and How To Curb It – A great academic journal article detailing why your project (and this business) isn’t unique. The authors remind us not to get stuck in a spiral of thinking everything we do is unique. This helps us stand on the shoulders of the ‘giants’ who come before us to get a head start.
The Three Elements of Trust – Relationships, Judgement, Consistency. I hope that my business will be worthy of your trust.
Nobody expects the sound check to be a full concert. So please don’t expect this to be an insightful post. This is a ‘sound check’ to make sure that the posting and delivery system is working. If you’ve signed up for the Hope: The Journey newsletter already, you may get this. If you signed up later, we’ll see you later.
The lesson that I’ve learned, and I will share time after time is test your work. Try it out as if is a real situation. And so, here’s a post.
This quote helps us explain why change is so hard. Any time we encounter a pattern in life we don’t understand, it is just noise. And we are wired to move away from noise, and towards order that we understand.
Humans are pattern-seeking beings. Because the world is so complex, our survival depends on our ability to determine patterns and use shortcuts to get through our day. When you get dressed in the morning, you know which drawer your socks will be in. But imagine if there was no pattern to where you stored your socks. You would have to look through each of your drawers to find your socks, if your socks were even in a drawer.
But when we can’t see a pattern, we only see noise. Here’s some examples:
The first time you listen to a new genre of music (ie jazz if you haven’t heard jazz before) it sounds confusing and disorienting. Usually people won’t like it.
When you listen to a politician take a stance that you don’t like, you may feel that they are illogical or wrong: because you don’t see a pattern that matches with your worldview.
The first time you learn something (a new language, how to ride the subway in a new city) everything seems confusing and like noise. You simply aren’t familiar with the patterns that are there.
Change
There are two insights about change that the statement “Noise is any pattern we don’t understand” gives us:
Any change proposed will initially look like noise. Always. To everyone. The definition of change is a shifting of a pattern. It may not feel like a pattern shifted for you, but it is likely that you simply have gotten used to the new pattern, even as everyone else now has to catch up.
To enable change focusing on helping people see the new pattern will increase the likelihood of making a lasting change. This is why Simon Sinek’s premise that we should always “Start With Why” is so powerful. Starting with “why” provides a pattern for people to follow, even if the patterns of what and how change regularly.
In his book See, Solve, Scale, Danny Warshay reminds us that “a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow.” This is a very important concept, both in terms of business revenue and when considering the value your project is providing.
A Dollar Today vs a Dollar Tomorrow
If you are given $100 today, and you can invest it at 5% interest, you will have $105 next year. So the dollar you have today will be worth a dollar and five cents next year.
If you are given a dollar in a year. It will be worth a dollar.
A Working Solution Today vs a Better Solution Tomorrow
You must understand your project delivery in the same way. It is more beneficial to start with a working solution than always strive towards the perfect solution.
If you deliver a project that saves an employee an hour a week, one year after you implement the solution, the employee will have saved 52 hours of time.
If you choose to shoot for a better solution and it takes you a year to implement it, even if your solution is twice as good, there is no benefit after by the end of year two from when you started. At the end of year 3, you will have gained 52 hours.
But there is a lot of ifs in taking the ‘twice as good’ approach.
You assume that you can build a solution in two years that is twice as good as what you can produce in one year. Often it is easy to find a big gain in efficiency, but harder to double that gain. Pareto’s Principle tells us that we can find 80% of the total benefit with our focused 20% of the work. Why spend precious time on minimal gain.
The longer your project goes on, the more variables you must satisfy. If you allow the project to linger for too long, you will likely have scope creep and even changes in objectives.
In our ever-changing world, it becomes less likely that you will complete the project.
Good Solution Today. Even Better Solution Tomorrow.
This doesn’t mean you should deliver a simple solution today and stop there. You should deliver a simple and complete solution today—something that can be used right now. Then, you should build on top of that, delivering another simple and complete solution that builds on the current project.
The present value of a working solution is worth more than the dreamed value a future solution will provide.
The next time fear stops you from doing something, change the conversation in your head. When we are afraid of something we often start thinking through “what if?”
What if I get sued because of my software product?
What if I put in all this time miss another opportunity?
What if I don’t have the energy or no-one cares?
But Instead of thinking about “What If?” change your thinking to “Even if”
Even if I get sued because of my software product. . . .
Even if I put all my time into this and miss an different opportunity . . .
Even if I run out of energy or no-one cares. . . .
When you can change your thinking to “even if” then you have a solid foundation for continuing. If you decide at the beginning that “even if” all of your fears come true, then you will continue. A bigger benefit is that you don’t have fears any more, you have predetermined that you will continue on. “Even if. . . ” something happens, you will continue your work.
[Credit: This idea is not my own. It was shared by a speaker at a church event. I don’t have a link or a name that I can share, but I appreciate her insight into addressing fear.]
I began with the idea that my legacy is something that will be left behind after I die that everyone can look to. This permanent contribution to society is the legacy that others will be able to build on.
But my perception is shifting because of recent reading I’m doing.
Now I’m starting to toy with the idea that the legacy I leave is how I live the journey. It isn’t the permanance of what I leave behind that matters. How I respond to God in the moment and how other people are affected by my response is what is important.
I am reminded of this as I watch my neighbour shovel the snow from my sidewalk. He is retired, and will often continue shovelling his sidewalk until he reaches our driveway. This is almost double the work than if he only shovels his own.
In August next year, no one is going to say, “Nice shovelling – it looks great.” There is no permanance to the contribution. At least not in a way where I could point to his legacy of snow shovelling. But his legacy isn’t in something that I can physically point to.
The legacy that my neighbour leaves when he does this act is:
We will always have our kindly neighbour in our heart. Because of his act, I will consider what it means to be a neighbour to my future neighbours.
I have a picture of a fruitful and full retirement life. Not only the activity of being able to continue to shovel snow late into life, but also the willingness to enjoy serving others.
The permanance of the legacy I leave might not be visible – but how I act can leave a mark on the world. And it is leaving the mark on someones life that matters.
The question for myself, and you, is:
Will the mark I leave be something that helps someone else leave their mark on the world?
There is one thing in the world that you wish with all your heart would happen.
Maybe:
Someone reaching out to ask you to be their friend
A chance to start the right business with the best customers
A job offer that you can’t refuse
An invitation to be part of a crowd that you wouldn’t expect to be part of
A new and creative outlet
I hope that all of these things will happen to you. But chances are slim that they will.
In this game we call life the chance that someone does the one thing that you wish, for you. Just with you in mind. Just the way you want it to be, is slim. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have to happen.
If you are wishing for it, then someone else probably is. And if someone else is wishing for it, they are waiting for someone to do something for them.
This is your opportunity. Give someone the thing that you have always wanted. They want it, but they won’t expect it. Because the chances of the ‘one thing you wish for’ happening are slim. But you can change that.
You go first.
Because the one thing in the world that you wish with all your heart would happen is what someone else is wishing too.
People reach for Gravol when they are nauseous and they want to stop feeling that way.
You don’t reach for Gravol when you are going to the beach for the day. You don’t reach for Gravol as a snack. You don’t reach for Gravol to take away a headache.
You reach for Gravol when you feel like throwing up. And you want the feeling to stop.
There are three lessons that the product Gravol give us:
Find a discomfort that you can take away. Then do a good job of taking away the discomfort. If you do this, people will seek you out when they need you.
Don’t try to sell your product to people to people who don’t have the discomfort that you solve. You can’t convince a healthy person to take Gravol – they just don’t need it. Don’t waste your time where you can’t help.
Clearly communicate how you relieve the discomfort. Gravol could be the most amazing sickness reliever. But if I have never heard of it, or if I don’t realize that it can help me: I will never go looking for it. It is your responsibility to help people know what discomfort you will take away from people. They won’t ‘just know’ if you don’t tell them.
Focus on the people who can be helped by your product. Don’t worry about everyone else. Focussing on the wrong place is just a waste of time and energy.
