On Collaboration
In Silicon Valley, Collaboration is critical to success. I saw that in a number of ventures. I wonder how many NZ companies have a collaboration strategy. Some great quotes to round this point out.
When you obsess about the customer, you end up defeating your competition as a byproduct,” said K.R. Sridhar, the founder of Bloom Energy, a fuel-cell company. “When you are just obsessed about the competition, you end up killing yourself” as a byproduct — “because you are not focused on the customer.”
Sure competition here is sharp-elbowed,” said Reid Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn. “But no one can succeed by themselves. Apple today is totally focused on how it can better work with its [applications] developer community.” It cannot thrive without them. “The only way you can achieve something magnificent is by working with other people,” said Hoffman. “There is lots of co-opetition.” LinkedIn competes with headhunters and is used by headhunters.
As a side-note, I wonder how many politicians have a list of critical issues they are willing to collaborate with the competition on.
Read more over at the NYTimes…
Managing Performance without Performance Management
A great read from the MIX team. Nice work.
150 Relationships
So how many relationships can you maintain – and for how long can you maintain them without face-to-face contact. 150 and six are the numbers. The Dunbar Numbers:
For Dunbar, there’s a simple explanation for this: In the same way that human beings can’t breathe underwater or run the 100-meter dash in 2.5 seconds or see microwaves with the naked eye, most cannot maintain many more than 150 meaningful relationships. Cognitively, we’re just not built for it. As with any human trait, there are outliers in either direction—shut-ins on the one hand, Bill Clinton on the other. But in general, once a group grows larger than 150, its members begin to lose their sense of connection. We live on an increasingly urban, crowded planet, but we have Stone Age social capabilities. “The figure of 150 seems to represent the maximum number of individuals with whom we can have a genuinely social relationship, the kind of relationship that goes with knowing who they are and how they relate to us,” Dunbar has written. “Putting it another way, it’s the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar.”
Are Books Dead?
I really struggle with this one. At the low-end of the market, for sure. And all those self published eBooks and their cousins are unlikely to make it into print. But for the rest of the market, there are plenty of opportunities to stay in print and win. Cooking, art, boats – all categories I buy in and all in print.
E-books, in other words, may turn out to be just another format—an even lighter-weight, more disposable paperback. That would fit with the discovery that once people start buying digital books, they don’t necessarily stop buying printed ones. In fact, according to Pew, nearly 90% of e-book readers continue to read physical volumes. The two forms seem to serve different purposes. – WSJ
At the same time, I think we need much better packaging of music. Reading Paul Kelly’s incredible biog made me realize it. Chapters begin with a set of lyrics that are just amazing. It made me realize how much we’ve lost when we can’t sit and revel in the words and story behind them.
What do you think?
Up And Atom!
Get up early.
Get up at the same time every day.
Adjust the time you go to bed if tired. Not the time you get up.
Do the most important thing first. Do not do email.
Invest in yourself first – meditate, work-out, journal, walk…
Make it a habit.
Pretty straightforward really. Do this and good things happen. Building rewarding habits are life changing.
You can read more on this, or you can test it for yourself.
