I’ve just come across a few very interesting articles which I would like to share with you.
The first one is The Death—and Reinvention—of Management: Part 1 by Steve Denning. The main points are:
- The world has changed and is more competitive. A company’s first and foremost goal now is to delight its clients.
- In our era of knowledge economy, a manager needs to be an enabler.
The second article is also by Steve Denning: What economists don’t see: the real jobs crisis is that most jobs suck.
True. Jobs suck a lot. In the past, I have worked at DCDM Consulting, at the Mauritius Chamber of Commerce and Industry and at the University of Mauritius. All of those jobs sucked… You know why? Because we are not meant to have a boss.
[Now that I am my own boss at Knowledge Seven, the situation is better. But not yet perfect: I am still looking for 1-2 partners — not employees.]
In fact, the third article I stumbled upon was On not hiring by Gabriel Weinberg.
Working in a startup is great. It a small team, no one cares about what you’re wearing and you can tweet and blog while working without feeling dirty. The difficult part though is making sure you don’t employ anyone full time without being 100% sure that you really need to do this. Full-time employees cost a lot and they need to be managed most of the time. Some people like to manage. Some like me prefer doing real things. That’s why I wrote above that I’m looking for 1-2 partners. I would despise getting 1-2 additional employees in my startup.
The last article I discovered has a beautiful title, The Economics of Stripping, and is written by Micah Baldwin. The author observes what happens in a strip club and relates that to businesses. And his analysis rocks:
- Be attractive to new clients.
- Make clients feel special.
- Know your market.
- Don’t waste time on clients who don’t want to buy.
- Always be generating internal value i.e. for every dollar you pay someone, make him/her generate three.
Priceless.
