Are you able to rework?
Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson are two guys from 37signals.com. They have written a book named Rework where they question widely-known rules and assumptions to do business. In my opinion this book is easy and quick to read, something everyone should find time to read wheter they are entrepreneurs or not.
Lessons I learned were these:
1.don't think about establishing a start-up company instead of it start a business
2.know your product and try it at home
3.remember to leave something out
4.communicate with your customers
5.think what you want before doing and
6.be ready to make decisions.
Start-up companies usually wait for something big to come. They don't usually use their own money or question growing consumption because they don't have to. If you start a company with your own money and clear vision where you're heading, you can build a healthy company. Fried and Hansson don't say that there shouldn't be start-ups but most of us should start straight forward and don't waste time to search for risk funding, make beautiful websites or think too big. We should start companies with first customers and the product and growing will follow. Some companies certainly should stay small instead of building too risky strategies to employ new people and rent great office buildings. A small might be enough.
Companies start with an idea and product. You can't underestimate testing your ideas or products: if you can use it at home, it has market. When it comes to leaving something out, these guys give an example from museums: they have curators who pick right pieces of art work to be on the wall and more important is what they leave out. Many times we forget that our product shouldn't always be better than others in the market. Sometimes customers don't need too fancy products. Apple is a good example of this because their products don't gimmick with too much technics and at Apple they focus on user experience and benefits of their products. People who wait for a large amout of details are able to buy something other.
Communicate with your customers and teach them with your products. The world famous cooks usually write books and have own tv shows where they give advice. This doesn't keep their restaurants empty because a taste is still unique. It isn't necessary to hire a marketing officer or pay huge amounts of money to a pr agency if you continously communicate with your customers, your biggest audience. From Finland I could give an example how you shouldn't make business. A mining company Talvivaara had recently an enormous environment disaster when their process water slushed to lakes nearby and made it impossible to use water for drinking or bathing. Their strategy was partly to hide problems and communicate as little as possible to public – wrong! They could have had better results if they had started it at first with openess and communicated to the public and officials straight. A good example or also an example how to apologize comes from Thai airways. I bough a connecting flight ticket with restrictions to change or refund. The company changed flight schedule and it was impossible for me to get the flight. I emailed them and explained and they gave me a full refund unless they could have say me unfortunately your ticket isn't refundable. To my mind they have a nice company policy where they give people right to play sometimes out of the ticket rules just to keep a customer satisfied. Their customer service is also one of the best I know, they answer quickly and help customers to pick a right ticket or look for possibilities if customer's needs are something they can't offer.
In 37 signals they have found working solutions for recruiting: they try themselves tasks they are planning for a new employee and if those tasks are important, they hire a new person; they also think twice before recruiting a new one if somebody leaves the house, this makes in every step rethinking possible (is this really needed); and they test in small projects if the person they are planning is suitable for their culture. Nowadays and especially in public sector it's difficult to rethink before hiring. Sometimes it's important to get anyone unless a suitable person is available not to loose any positions from next year's or two plans and budgets.
In my view this book underlines highly an ability to make decisions. Some people have this and some don't so it's important for you to be the one who can. It's also important that you have enough time to work. Don't stay in meetings that are unnecessary and think twice before you waste other people's time if a meeting is only for discussion and there aren't possibilities to get decisions out. An efficient working time is usually only 2-4 hours a day and there isn't any idea to keep people overtime. Why there's only a little efficient time? Usually we have to stop our work when somebody calls or we have these useless meetings. I have found a good way to avoid this: I work sometimes out of the office of my own and stay instead some other office where I have only a little colleagues present. Also it's possible to mute phone but usually this happens only when I forget to turn muting off. After all these work for me.
