Category: Principles

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Entrepreneurship Principles Tree.ly

#recalibrate – a new work schedule

Luckily Tree.ly is humming, buzzing, taking off. That feels really good. The entire team and me are putting in a lot of love, passion and effort. After two years we closed the first loop of projects certified, sold first credits, but also brought new investors on board and also just moved to a new office.

Tree.ly at Rossstall (we have space for co-workers)

Humming, buzzing and taking off also means a lot operational tasks and often being driven by urgent things. As we speak I’m using my Saturday morning to work on 185 E-Mails that require my attention, as I took a day off yesterday I have unread notifications and overdue reminders in Slack, a flow of notifications in Trello and more open tasks in Hubspot.

Still I have the feeling for the need to spend more time on important longer term items (pointer to the Eisenhower matrix in case you haven’t heard about it).

So three weeks ago I decided to work from Lisbon for ~5-6 weeks to work more on strategy, but also #recalibrate myself (and not to forget improve my kitesurf skills)

This boi is setting a new habit and promising to keep his schedule

Starting monday I’m setting a new habit and time schedule. Will stick exactly to it for at least for 1 month and then do a retrospective and potentially adapt.

These are the buckets and allocations I came up with initially:

  • Day-to-day operations: 30%
    jumping in where needed and directly supporting the team, e.g. product development, customer service, marketing
  • Sales: 25%
    Directly sell to customers, marketing, PR, networking
  • Strategy: 20%
    Market research, competitive analysis, setting goals, planning
  • Investors: 15%
    work on pitch deck, meetings with impact investors, strengthen relationships with existing investors and angels.
  • Partners & Network: 10%
    Identifying, winning and enable strategic partners, networking, working with influencers, advisors

I’m running a Trello board for each of these categories, where I prioritize and organize them within their own “timebox”.

As for many of us, freedom to work when, where and how I work is important to me. Still I’m a teamplayer. So how do I allocate timeslots that allow focus time, collaboration with others, but also freedom to work out (skitour, hike) if weather is good?

Here’s my first shot! Would love to hear your feedback and experience.

My new work week

Monday

9:00-9:25, #day2day, #meeting: team weekly
we’re a remote-first, distributed team and start into the week with a all-hands team meeting. good mood to start the week with. or a coffee together. We do a team-checkin, Christian, my co-founder and COO and me update on recent developments, set priorities and answer questions the team might have. We close with an checkout.

I highly recommend the checkin generator.

9:30-10:20, #strategy, #meeting: founders weekly
We discuss strategic priorities, important decision-making, and aligning on the most critical tasks to focus on for the upcoming week. Even though these tasks are often operational, the process of deciding what is most important typically requires a strategic perspective.

10:30-11:30, #strategy, #meeting, #monthly: finance
This meeting only happens monthly after the previous month is fully processed by our accountant. This involves reviewing our sales numbers, runway, burn rate and other finance-related topics.

11:30-13:30, #team: cooking/lunch
I’m joining the kitchen team on Monday (except once a month when we do the finance monthly). Cooking and having lunch together is an important part of our company culture. Guests are welcome anytime!

The new Rossstall Co-working kitchen in action

13:30-14:20, #sales, #meeting: sales weekly
The meeting is driven by my co-founder Christian. We scrub our sales pipeline(s) – forest owners, forest project development partners, carbon buyers, carbon resellers. We set priorities for the upcoming week and I identify where my help is needed.

14:30-14:55, #sales, #nomeeting
Most of the times in the sales meeting things that need to be done come up. I like to get them done straight after the meeting.

15:00-15:55, #day2day, #nomeeting
After quite some meetings time to get the most important day2day stuff done. No meetings, as morning was full of them. I’ll work on my own stuff.

16:00-16:50, #partners
Identify and enable partners, both in the forest and carbon buyer space. But also build and strengthen industry relationships in our space. I try to keep a balance between meetings and working on my own on this topic.

Monday tends to be an exhausting day, I try to leave the office not too late.

Tuesday

9:00-9:25, #day2day, #meeting: Team coordinators
CxOs and Team coordinators meet twice a week. We hand over new story proposals, solve impediments and discuss team or other issues.

9:30-12:20, #investors
In the early stage, a significant amount of time may be spent on fundraising. This includes preparing for pitches, meeting with potential investors, and maintaining relationships with current investors.

12:30-13:30, #team: Lunch

13:30-17:00, #sales: ongoing sales & marketing activities
This is the slot where I’m doing active sales as founder, working with parties on both sides: forest owners and carbon buyers. I’m also active in marketing activities such as webinars or writing content.

17:00-19:30, #day2day: scrubbing e-mail inbox and such
Tuesday evenings I usually work longer on mails, errands,… as my wife Manuela also has activities that evening #zumba 🕺.

Wednesday

I keep every Wednesday mornings free of meetings and plan that time flexibly. Most of the time I will start the day working from Kaffewerk Handle. But sometimes I also might do a workout, go for ski/bike or take care of my bees. It’s also the day I meet with other friends/family for lunch.

Wednesday afternoon is for Scrum – review/planning/grooming. It alternates every week.

13:30-15:00, #day2day, #meeting: scrum review and planning 1
15:00-16:00, #strategy
Every second week we run our scrum review meeting, where all team members present what has been achieved over the past two weeks. The meeting is followed by the scrum planning 1 meeting, where the teams commit their stories for the upcoming 2 weeks.
Afterwards I use the time to recalibrate priorities and also (re)set my goals for the upcoming 2 weeks.
In the alternative weeks this time is used for grooming meetings – discussing stories, estimate complexity and business value,…
But this is also one of the slots i wanted to create with the new schedule. I’ll work on longer term, important (not necessarly urgent) stuff. I might initiate calls/meetings, but don’t accept inbound ones.

16:00-18:00, #investors
Same as Monday.

Wednesday evening 19:00 is also the day and time of the week I go for a hike with my friends:

Every Wednesday: The “legendary” hiking group with my friends Stefan, Alexander, Manfred, Christoph, Wolfgang, Jump, Jörg and others.

Thursday

9:00-9:50, #day2day, #meeting: Team coordinators and Team
Like Tuesday morning I start with the Team coordinators sync. Afterwards I’m available for short follow-up day2day meetings with team members.

10:00-11:30 #strategy: Coaching, personal development
This is the slot where I work with my coaches (or on my own).

11:30-14:00, #team: Cooking and Lunch
With our new office and kitchen I want to be part of the cooking team a second time per week. Thursday I’m also going to stay longer in the office (with an afterwork beer afterwards), so an extended break over lunch is definitely beneficial for productivity.

13:30-13:55, #sales, #nomeeting: prepare meeting
14:00-14:50, #sales, #meeting: pipeline scrubbing
15:00-15:25, #sales, #meeting: weekly sales/marketing alignment
15:30-16:50, #sales, #nomeeting
Thursday afternoon is sales focus.

17:00-18:30, #day2day
This is the time where I hopefully reach Inbox Zero the second time in the week.

I like Thursdays – because most of the time I go straight from the office to an after work drink with friends.

Friday

9:00-10:00, #strategy: OKR review/preparation
I want to review where we stand with our strategic initiatives and also identify upcoming priorities

10:00-11:00, #day2day, #meeting: Retrospective
This slot will alternate with the 2-week scrum cycle. The one week we’ll hold a company-retrospective (each team is sending one representative), the other week I’ll work on partners stuff.

11:00(10:00)-12:30, #partners

12:30-13:30, #team: Lunch

13:30-15:00, #day2day
Hopefully Inbox Zero by 15:00, otherwise I might stay a bit longer 🙂

Saturday

I generally don’t work weekends. However it became a habit that – while Manuela is at the stable with the horse – I hang out at Kaffeewerk Handle with my computer. I do stuff I like. Playing with ChatGPT and hacking stuff, reading articles I saved during the week, writing Blogposts.

Thomas from Kaffeewerk Handle

The current stats of this schedule:

Right now 66% of the block – day2day/parts of sales/strategy are scheduled meetings. This might be a problem. But first I’m excited to see how this turns out in the first iteration.

Of course, emergencies, offsites, quarterly OKR blocks, customer visits,… might overturn this schedule now and then. But I’ll try to minimize this. At least until I learnt the new habit.

Also how it plays for the team. Apart from the meeting time allocation I also need to dig deeper into how I work/prioritize within the different categories. ChatGPT has proved helpful to put this together and will also help me getting that done.

I’ll keep you posted and would love to hear feedback! I will edit and document changes as we go.

Updates:

August, 7th: Isa (finance) is picking up kids monday 12, so moved finance slot forward and pushed sales to afternoon. That also lead to slight reshuffling of the day2day meeting.

August, 7th: swapped sales meeting from a.m. to p.m. on Thursdays, so one less context switch.

Categories
Culture Food for Thought Principles

CV des Scheiterns

Die “Scheitern” Ausgabe des Neue Narrative Magazin startet mit den “CVs des Scheiterns” der Autor:innen. Dabei berichten Sebastian Klein, Laura Erler, Paul Fenski, Emma Marx, Taraneh Taheri und Dominik Wagner steckbriefartig über “Erfolglose Bewerbungen”, “Abbrüche & Kündigungen”, “Lücken”, “Fähigkeiten, die ich nicht habe” sowie “Sonstige Niederlagen”.

Ich hatte nach den ersten 7 Seiten Tränen der “Berührung” in den Augen. #connectedness sozusagen. Warum?

Als Unternehmer führe ich seit vielen Jahren (immer schon?) selbstorganisierten Teams. (Manche mögen “Führung” und “Selbstorganisation” als Widerspruch sehen – NEIN! – Aber das ist ein anderes Thema). Dabei habe ich Lauf der Zeit zum Einen tiefe Einblicke in das Leben vieler Menschen bekommen – und zum Anderen viel Kritik und Gegendruck von Investor:innen, Aufsichtsräten und Kollegen für meine Einstellung bekommen.

Beim Lesen dieser Scheitern-CVs wird das Bild der Menschen kompletter und die Trust vs. Performance Betrachtung wird kompletter. Was hat das mit Trust vs. Performance auf sich?

Simon Sinek hat da meine Philosophie auf den Punkt gebracht:

Simon Sinek über “Vertrauen” im Gegensatz zu “Fachlichem Können”

Ich fühle mich durch die Offenheit der CVs of Failure total in diesem Ansatz bestätigt. Und Failure – und Erfolg – das ist für viele nicht vereinbar bzw. ein Widerspruch. Aber darüber zu sprechen und das passieren zu lassen – Das ist für mich ein wesentlicher Anteil für das System “New Work”. Und es braucht noch viel mehr Unternehmer:innen die dafür einstehen und das auch offen sagen.

Failure – vor ca. 2,5 Jahren habe ich “mein” über 7 Jahre aufgebautes System – die Firma Crate.io verlassen und habe seither von aussen mitangesehen, wie es top-down in die komplett andere Richtung umgebaut wurde. Ich sage bewusst anders und nicht falsch. Unterschiedliche (Werte)-Vorstellungen mit dem Vorsitzenden des Aufsichtsrats waren damals der wesentliche Punkt für meinen Ausstieg. Denn ich sah mich nicht mehr in der Lage, mit dem neuen Leadership die Organisation weiterzuentwickeln und dahinterzustehen.

Ich wollte beweisen, dass ein fast-growth Deep-Tech Startup mit einem “Trust” Wertesystem und “New Work” Fehlerkultur kombinierbar ist.

2,5 Jahre später sind in der Organisation noch 3 von 65 Mitarbeiter:innen meines “Trusts” verblieben, davon niemand in einer Führungsposition. Der “Werte-Exorzismus” hat viele Menschen vertrieben und neue Werte haben andere Menschen angezogen. Das hat sehr viel Leid beschert und sehr viel Geld gekostet. Der Erfolgsbeweis ist bisher ausgeblieben.

Ist das mein Failure? Einen Elefanten geholt zu haben, diesen durch “meinen” Porzellanladen ziehen gelassen zu haben?

NEIN. Es ist lediglich eine Niederlage.

Mein CV of failures

Erfolglose Bewerbungen

Ich habe mich als CTO beim Digital-Spinoff (“new mobility”) eines führenden Automobilherstellers beworben. Ich habe mir das lange überlegt und dachte, dass ich da echten Impact haben kann und geile Software auf einem breiten Scale mit viel Umweltimpact bauen kann. Und Deutschland Tesla die Stirn bieten kann. Aber ich wurde nichtmal für ein Interview eingeladen. Das hat mich in meiner Selbstsicherheit etwas geknickt 🙂

Von den 2-3 Situationen in meinem Leben wo ich mich für eine Stelle beworben habe (ehrlich gesagt waren das nur Ferialjobs) war das die einzige Bewerbung in meinem Leben die nicht geklappt hat. Ansonsten war ich immer selbständig.

Abbrüche und Kündigungen

Siehe Text oben. Das war definitiv bitter, 7 Jahre Herzblut zu investieren, also quasi ein Viertel meines Arbeitslebens. Und dann die Kontrolle zu verlieren und gegenseitig zu kündigen.

Ein weiterer Abbruch – weiter zurückliegend – war meine Promotion. Ich hätte noch ca. 6 Monate durchhalten müssen und die finale Defensio vorbereiten und halten müssen, aber habs hingeschmissen. Das bereue ich manchmal ein bisschen. Aber eigentlich nur in Momenten wo ich etwas prahlen möchte :).

Lücken

Während dem Studium bin ichs verhältnismässig locker angegangen. Meine Frau war um 8:00 im Büro und hat das Geld verdient, ich habe ausgiebig geschlafen und auch zwischendurch mal nach der Prüfung Faxe-Dosen am Vormittag im Park gezischt.

Auch im Jahr nach meinem Crate-Ausstieg hab ich Zeit zur Verarbeitung gebraucht, mir Zeit zur Vorbereitung der Zukunft genommen, und von Ersparnissen und Arbeitslosengeld gelebt.

Fähigkeiten die ich nicht habe

Geduld: Ich glaube, dass ich recht geduldig bin. Bin ich aber nicht. Sagt mir auch mein Umfeld. Klassischer Fail von Selbstwahrnehmung und Fremdwahrnehmung. Häng aber auch davon ab, wie ausgeglichen ich bin. #sport #meditation

Anpassungsfähigkeit: Würde an der einen oder anderen Stelle für weniger Reibung sorgen. Ich bin aber auch (noch) nicht bereit, das loszulassen. Weil ich glaube, das brauchts auch manchmal als Unternehmer. Wobei ich “eigentlich” selber weiss, dass das Geheimnis die richtige Balance wäre. #zen

Strukturiertheit: Ich brauche wenig Struktur und kann gut komplexe Dinge in meinem Kopf zusammenhalten. Im zusammenleben/arbeiten mit Anderen, wäre das jedoch manchmal für meine Mitmenschen angenehmer, wenn sie mehr Struktur an der Schnittstelle hätten.

Sonstige Niederlagen

Eine erwähnenswerte sonstige Niederlage ist vor ca. 15 Jahren passiert. Ich habe – u.A. durch nicht-funktionaler Verhaltensweise, Ego, Sturheit meinerseits – große Zukunftspotentiale meiner damaligen Firma nicht genutzt, bzw. diese weggeschmissen. Da muss ich immer wieder aufpassen, dass ich nicht “aus Prinzip” handle und die richtige Balance zwischen “Business machen” und “Recht haben” wähle.

Was meint ihr dazu? Ich freue mich über eine Diskussion auf dem Linkedin-Post!

Categories
Culture Learning Motivation Principles

Fuck the Bread. The bread is over.

HÄNSEL AND GRETEL, BY ALEXANDER ZICK

Please take a couple of minutes and read the fabulous essay Sabrina Orah Mark wrote in her Happily Column. Her Blog focuses on fairy tales and motherhood. Within the many things that resonate in her post, one thing struck me most:

It’s about learning. Why are fairytales so important for learning, and why you need to curse “fuck the bread” sooner or later!

Enter Japanese Martian Art – Aikido. Shu-Ha-Ri is a concept describing the steps to mastery. I came across it a couple of years ago, when Alistair Cockburn took away my Scrum blinders.

shu (守)

protect, obey

This is the very first stage of learning, you apply traditional wisdom, you learn fundamentals, techniques, heuristics, proverbs. Think of children baking their first simple cake. Mine was a marble cake (“Marmorkuchen”). You strictly follow the recipe (If you’re not into baking, watch Karate Kid):

  1. Mix 125g of butter until it is creamy.
  2. Add 3 eggs and 120g of sugar. Mix until creamy.
  3. Add 170ml of milk and half a pack of baking soda
  4. Split in two bowls and add cocoa powder into one half
  5. Fill in buttered cake tin and fill with alternating dough
  6. Bake 50mins at 180°C

It fits like a shu (“shoe”). You do exactly as said, you’ll get a consistent result. It’s like a fairy tale. You walk through a dangerous forest, you don’t leave the path, you are ok.

Scrum is another great example for a Shu recipe. You create a backlog, you estimate and prioritize stories, you do sprintplannings, daily standups, reviews, retros. Timeboxed, with the right roles present. If you follow exactly the rules it’s guaranteed that you’ll have a consistent result.

Ok, we’re done with learning! You’ve learnt a technique. Many people stop here. And like in a fairytale they live happy until the end. But, Oh wait!

ha (破) 

detach, digress

In fairy tales, form is your function and function is your form. If you don’t spin the straw into gold or inherit the kingdom or devour all the oxen or find the flour or get the professorship, you drop out of the fairy tale, and fall over its edge into an endless, blank forest where there is no other function for you, no alternative career.

from Sabrina Orah Mark’s Blog post

No worries. There is more! Sometimes it’s necessary to yell “Fuck the Bread“. And break with the habits. Maybe Hänsel and Gretel walked the forest 100 times. And at some point they dare to take a different path, and guess what – it’s safe as well and more beautiful, and even faster! In this stage, curiosity, or the limitations of the given technique (think of cooking) cause you to experiment. Break with the norms. You’re collecting techniques. It’s the learning stage.

Back to cooking: After dozens of marble cakes (ask my mom!) I gradually left common recipes and I consider myself being a chef at the ha level in most cases – I can comfortably leave the exact recipe, I’m experimenting (and failing) – and in some rare moments I’m creating exciting new things! For complex szechuan recipes or a Ottolenghi masterpiece with dozens of ingredients I might fall back to shu level.

Throughout this stage you gradually separate from the strict form of the shoe “Shu”. Make sure you work on your habits, because:

In the first 30 years, you make your habits. For the last 30 years of your live, the habits make you.

Steve Jobs

ri (離)

leave, separate

At some point you are able to fully detach from the form. You can’t say why you chose a specific technique. You just do it naturally, no recipe, no preparation needed. Martin Broadwell describes it as unconscious competence. The easier you can leave the form, the more often you detach from it, the closer you are to the ri level.

Translated to learning, you now invent and blend techniques. The magic happens at your very own “You at your best” moments, where there are in the flow and time and space disappear.
Earlier I spoke about “Fuck the bread”. You’re past the point where you care about that. But you’re anything else but careless and you’re neither ruthless as well.

Dalai Lama state? Can anything come after? The Shu-Ha-Ri ends here,

but Alistair Cockburn (mentioned earlier) is on the journey to dive deeper and find out what could come after:

Kokoro ( 心)

essence, heart

Kokoro is used in the writings of the 17th century samurai master Miyamoto Musashi to refer to the essence or heart of the samurai. It’s the radically simplified essence of a skill area. The figure below shows how practice starts off simple (Shu, learn one technique), grows more complicated as one learns more techniques (Ha, collect), becomes indescribably complicated at the Ri level (invent and blend), and finally takes on a simple form (Kokoro) when given by the advanced teacher.

Alistair Cockburn “Heart of Agile“

By teaching others you improve your mastery. Kokoro represents the teaching stage of the advanced practitioner. It is characterized by the advice “Just master the basics.”

  • The marble cake.
  • Hänsel and Gretel following the path
  • Following the essential rules of Scrum

“You know what, Mama?” he says. “You’d make a really good teacher.” “Thank you,” I say. And then I show him how to draw a bet.

Closing words of Sabrina Orah Mark in her column

Right now my learning journey is getting better in coaching, active listening, … and I’m glad to learn the basics from masters like Matthias Ehrhardt or Dieter Rösner.

Categories
Culture Entrepreneurship Principles

Why people quit

I received some feedback and questions about my post on leadership decisions at a workplace, and why I believe that many societal and political topics don’t belong to my workplace. (A clarifying side note: I wasn’t saying Basecamp is right or wrong. And banning and forbidding speech is a bad idea in general).

I’ve been chewing parts of this post for a while. But as about one third of the Basecamp workforce left after their leaders Jason/David announced some cultural changes and today Melinda and Bill Gates announced their separation, it was time to push it out.

All of these separations really moved me and over the weekend I spent several hours in reading and researching. It moved me because I can personally relate to that very well. In November I left my previous company (~60 employees like Basecamp) and over the last few month ~25 people – of which most of them I hired personally – left the company too.

(Just to be clear and explicit: I’m not making hints, propose conclusions or draw any parallels to my former company or people involved there. This is rather based being a curious, learning entrepreneur for 30years).

It was the right decision

Companies and their leaders have the right and duty to make decisions. To set their leadership style and their culture. To change it gradually, radically or not at all. And to take the consequences. This isn’t good or bad per se. This is just how it is and how it has to be.

At the point a decision is taken (“Culture Changes”/”Quitting the Job”) – it was the right decision for the corresponding party. At the very moment to decide, everybody will take the best decision this person can take, based on the (limited) facts available.

Software engineers in the tech space are well paid (in Basecamp’s case ~220k/year, paying at the top 10% of San Francisco market rate and will receive up to 6 month of salary if they decide to leave). So they can also decide freely if they want to stay and adopt to the new situation/culture or if they want to move on. It’s also very unlikely they have to pee in bottles while driving delivery trucks or being in physical danger. So it’s pretty safe to assume:

People don’t quit a job, they quit a boss.

It’s a common saying, but i don’t fully agree.

(Among the many articles I read, this HBR article reflected my view best, I’m partially paraphrasing it. Also “What you do is who you are (Summary)” by Ben Horowitz inspired me a lot).

Strong companies are built around strong cultures. And they will be highly individual, but they will share a couple of patterns. Often they are built around the leaders that craft them. I bet you’ve seen this comic:

This comic has been floating around the internet for a couple of years

Organisations need structure and leadership. This is a good thing and isn’t contradictory to self-organisation, empowerment of the individuals,… Modern leadership styles/principles fully embrace that. I’m stressing that because I strongly believe that so much of a happy/fulfilled workplace is dependent on that connection.

Changing culture

It’s as simple as that. Different cultures attract different people. Sometimes leadership changes, and therefore a change of talent follows. Or culture starts drifting away and gets recalibrated, which results in churn.

Nothing to worry about. just to be aware of.

Missing Joy

As leader you need to know what employees enjoy. Where a person can work at their best. People aren’t resources that are slotted into a position. Remember, we spend a good portion of our time awake at work. We need to support everybody to craft their optimal experience at work.

You need to design around them. If people are engaged and come to that energized state that is named flow, magic happens. And magic results are just magic! This is only possible if people are in a safe space, where they don’t have to worry about many things. Without trust a safe space can’t exist. But how to create trust (Yes, mistrust leads to people quitting their jobs)?

Shrinking Trust

Strong cultures are memorable and based on a set of rules. The simpler and more explicit they are, the better. Because if you’re operating on these set of principles reliably it creates trust. An additional benefit of trust is that it makes communication way more effective. Because, if you don’t trust me, all my talking would be useless.

A few of my personal rules that randomly come to my mind: “I do what I say, I say what I do”, “I communicate decisions, as soon as they are taken and don’t hide them.”, “In case of mistakes I’m focussing on avoiding it in future, not on finding who’s guilt it was.”, or to close that heading “Assume every decision is right, as you assume best intentions.”…

Never forget: It’s hard to earn trust and takes time. It’s easy to destroy trust and takes no time.

Lack of Appreciation

A healthy company has a good, diverse mix of individuals. The doers, introverts, fighters, dreamers, caretakers, listeners, thinkers, tinkerers, silent ones, critics,… As leader I often felt like a Zoo director.

The animals in the forest (from MyToys Puzzle)

Assume everybody is doing her/his best. All the time. Therefore everybody deserves their share of appreciation and attention. A “small beaver” can be equally important to a “big roaring tiger” but will leave if he’s not seen and appreciated. No matter how long an employee is with the company, or how important their role is.

Lack of growth perspective

Bill and Melinda Gates separated after 27 years of marriage because they “no longer believe they can grow together as a couple”.
So, if an employee is asking: “What is my perspective at the company?”, you already missed the point of proactively managing that. If these answers are missing, one will sooner or later quit. On the other hand – providing a clear growth path can do wonders!

As Leader, don’t delegate diversity and inclusion. It’s your job. As soon you reach a point, where DEI is done for it’s own purpose you lost the connection to the company culture and this leads to dissatisfaction.

There are assholes out there. They might be inside your company. Manage them well. Recognise that you won’t be able to change them. Make sure they do as little damage as possible. As long you have the power. Don’t look away, act.

People don’t leave companies, they leave people.

Paraphrased from Ben Horowitz’ Book

Oh, btw. I’m about to put together a new team as we speak.

People don’t join companies, they choose the people to work with.

Mail me or call me if you’re ready to make a choice.

Categories
Books Culture Principles

The marks of a rational person

Over the past 6 months I’ve been in the luxury position to take time to further center myself and better live my equilibrium.

Among other things I’ve continued to dive into stoicism (a journey that will never end). Meanwhile the Daily Stoic iBooks meditation is the first and last thing I read in bed every night and morning.

Over the last few days I’ve been thinking a log about this meditation:

These are the characteristics of the rational soul: self-awareness, self-examination, and self-determination. It reaps its own harvest. … It succeeds in its own purpose …

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 11.1-2

As Ryan Singer in the book mentioned above put’s it:

“First, we must look inward.

Next we must examine ourselves critically.

Finally we must make our own decisions – uninhibited or by bias”

I had the opportunity to spend a lot of quality time with trusted people and collect precious feedback. That resulted in positive affirmation for some things I had a gut feeling about.

And that helped me to be clearer in my thoughts and trust my gut feeling even more. So today, when I read the changes at Basecamp David and Jason at Basecamp announced, my heart was jumping to see how they have the guts to make decisions!

And my inner self was smiling because I’m generally strong in making decisions and much of what they decided on resonated with me (and I already had decided on). Partially out of rationale, partly out of gut feeling:

1. No more societal and political discussions … 

The work place I’m responsible for is a work place. It’s no family, and it’s no club. It’s as open and welcoming as possible. Regardless of sex, gender identity, nationality, color, race, religion, ancestry, national origin, citizenship, sexual orientation, age, marital status or disability.

Societal and political discussions are essential! And we should have more of them. But outside and disconnected from the workplace. Still we are one holistic individual, we’re not schizophrenic and turn off one character when we enter the work world. We should be authentic, but be very aware in which context / role we are acting every moment.

2. No more paternalistic benefits. 

I’ve tried to motivate / incentive employees to e.g. do more sports by paying fitness benefits. This felt good and at the time I was proud about it. But these things are highly individual choices and it isn’t the responsibility of the company to influence them.

However, in my personal feedback talks with employees I often referred to the “Wheel of Life” or “Wheel of happiness”. And that I like that concept and encourage people to assess their happiness state. However I made very clear that me and my business can only help in the areas “Business/Career” and partially “Personal Growth” and to some extend in “Finances”. The rest is happening outside work.

(found via google image search and copied from The Start of Happiness)

3. No more committees. 

There is a german saying: “Wenn du nicht mehr weiter weisst, gründe einen Arbeitskreis.”

A lot of committees take speed out of an organisation and discourage decision making. Decision making is vital. It’s up to a leader to take decisions that can’t be taken by individuals or a team. No need for additional overhead, just take a decision (or escalate it).

This is also slightly related to the non-politics or societal discussions at work. Not at my business. Google seems to have a strong culture for that (but also reaches it limits if the wine lovers group starts fighting the breast-feeding-moms or they disagree with the group of people bringing their dogs to work and the pastafarians). I believe in a world where all of these discussions are welcome, but outside the workplace.

4. No more lingering or dwelling on past decisions. 

Let me just quote and repeat what Jason wrote: “It’s time to get back to making calls, explaining why once, and moving on.”.

5. No more 360 reviews.

Yay! Finally. I’m happy I resisted to that trend for so many years. Constant manager/employee feedback it is. I promise, for the near future I’ll continue to stay away from them.

6. No forgetting what we do here. 

I believe in a world where each individual can make it’s own choices (as long it is in accordance with the law and not discriminating/hurting others – also see above). And it’s also everybody’s personal decision which movements to join and where to spend energy. But at my workplace we’re making mostly software and that’s a big enough problem to solve.

Categories
Motivation Principles

Video: On a Tree

A couple of weeks ago my friend “Menze” a.k.a. Gerhard Beer from Hittisau introduced me to the great people from Digital Instinct. As many of us they were impacted by COVID-19 as well. However every challenge also unlocks a lot of potential.

The movie (german) is about you, how you can unlock potentials NOW, just do it. Let yourself be inspired:

On a Tree

There business is to make films for others. However, they decided to finally devote their talent and passion to create a film for themselves. And share it with the world.

I’m one of multiple protagonists. It was great to see the perfectionism and love for detail the team put into the movie. You don’t really see them in the movie, therefor I’d like to show them here:

Thomas Konrad: He’s guiding through the movie
Rainer Palleschitz is the movie director
Philipp Krebs is taking care of the camera

But even for my small contribution we spent close to a full day in the Forest, with my Bees and in the office to capture a couple of impressions.

The result is marvelous! Watch the full movie on the Digital Instict Website.

Categories
Coding Principles

>>> import this

I like a lot of the principles that are built into the programming language Python. Some of the principles are also applicable to “real” life.

They’re a bit hidden and most people don’t know them and have never seen them. They’re easy to get as they’re built into every python interpreter.
Simply start python and enter import this:

The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters

For better readability I’ve formatted (and numbered) them here

The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters

1. Beautiful is better than ugly.

2. Explicit is better than implicit.

3. Simple is better than complex.

4. Complex is better than complicated.

5. Flat is better than nested.

6. Sparse is better than dense.

7. Readability counts.

8. Special cases aren’t special enough to break the rules.

9. Although practicality beats purity.

10. Errors should never pass silently.

11. Unless explicitly silenced.

12. In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.

13. There should be one– and preferably only one –obvious way to do it.

14. Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you’re Dutch.

15. Now is better than never.

16. Although never is often better than right now.

17. If the implementation is hard to explain, it’s a bad idea.

18. If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.

19. Namespaces are one honking great idea — let’s do more of those!