Creative Destruction

 If you believe the pundits, we will soon experience a great transformation, shifting in the next 3-5 years to a workforce composed of fewer people and more robots and agents.  I, for one, welcome our benevolent computer overlords.  The implicit promise is that the robots and agents will remove the drudgery of my work and leave me with only the higher order functions and responsibilities.  I certainly hope that is true. If true, this should be highly motivating for the people who remain employed, but I don't think it addresses all of the factors of motivation.  In fact, I'm not sure most companies truly understand what it is that motivates people in their work.  I'd like to spend a few minutes today writing about what I think is true about motivation and engagement in the workforce and why companies get it so wrong.  More importantly, if we do end up with a smaller workforce that is providing more value, getting motivation right will become more import...

 I've been fortunate to have been on the management team of several funded startups, raising close to $40M dollars (closer to $100M in today's dollars) across several software companies and one services company.  Along the way, I have also been an advisor or consultant to some other startups and VC backed companies.  Lately, I am also an investor, putting some small portion of my earnings back into younger founders who are starting new businesses.  This experience of trying to grow a startup, from the inside, assisting startups as an advisor or consultant, and reviewing startups to determine whether or not to invest has taught me a few things I thought I'd pass along.  There are others who have more experience and better financial chops, so my advice is going to be more qualitative than quantitative.  If you are familiar with the Serenity prayer (help me accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the di...

 As a kid, one of my favorite cartoons was the Jetsons .  The Jetsons had it all, living in orbit, with a robot maid and flying cars.  They had Zoom long before the idea was realized in the real world.  The future from the viewpoint of the 1960s and 1970s was bright.  Now, I look longingly at the Jetsons.  I still don't have a robot house cleaner or cook, still haven't been to orbit, and certainly don't have a flying car.  What we thought about innovation and what would be different in the 60s and 70s were products and locations.  What we missed were miniaturization and software gains.  Now we have free SaaS solutions, doomscrolling social media and better games, but still operate with gasoline powered cars.  Back then, it seemed like we'd conquer space and have better physical products.  Instead, we are further than ever from space (it is a dangerous place after all) and our software and services are frequently better than our phys...

 My last post, written as a partial review of the book Powered by Projects , considered the idea of organizing around projects rather than traditional hierarchical structures.  You are welcome to review that post if you are interested.  There are some really interesting ideas about organizing around projects, and the author goes to great lengths to describe how important it is, if you are organizing around projects, to be more agile, flexible, nimble, responsive, and... you get the picture. Today, as the title of my blog post suggests, I am going to talk about building a company, and the considerations we need for a modern organization.  In the past, we would talk about building a company, thinking about the headquarters or a location, a physical office.  We'd talk about hiring people in specific roles and functions.  We'd organize for manufacturing or distribution, hash out a business model.  Eventually, we'd have an organizational structure, a physic...

We are all familiar with the protracted Ukrainian war, once thought to be a rapid advancement by the Russians, now looking like a science fiction version of the Somme.  Further, we've witnessed the US attack on Venezuela.  Both of these incidents portend a further action by an uninvolved party - China - but perhaps not in the way you think.  Both Ukraine and Venezuela are targets of a large nearby neighbor who nurses anger or grievances and thinks that taking ownership or at least overtly influencing the politics of its neighbor will resolve old disputes or open new opportunities.  The differences are that Russia has already invaded Crimea and continues to try to win in Ukraine, while the US under Donald Trump has decapitated the Maduro regime but seems to have no follow-on plan in place, mostly to take possession of the largest oil reserves on the planet. All the while, China watches these two actions carefully, as the last large country with an open and long-runnin...

 I'm currently reading a book that I like quite a bit called Powered By Projects .  I like it because it confirms a lot of what I believe, so there is some recognized confirmation bias in what you'll read here. The author believes that projects, rather than functions like marketing or finance, should be the organizing principle of businesses today.  Throughout the book and with some interesting case studies, he makes it clear why he thinks this way. Currently, most organizations are structured in a top-down, hierarchical framework that we've inherited from the railroads and from the military.  In other words, siloed organizations based on command and control from the top down, where information flows up and down, and control flows down the siloes.  Most organizations are structured this way, because the structure reinforces command and control, efficiency, and provides stability.  This structure is over 150 years old (in the corporate world) and thousands o...