Cross-posted from my I400 class

Kim Lee pre­sented last week about her expe­ri­ences with start-ups even though she has never started a busi­ness. For the most part, her employee per­spec­tive was refresh­ing espe­cially since we’ve talked so much about find­ing tal­ented employ­ees and keep­ing them happy. Her his­tory exposed some flaws and strengths of pasts com­pa­nies that are applic­a­ble to all new busi­nesses. I was a lit­tle wor­ried when she requested our name, email, and cell phone num­ber with­out giv­ing us any expla­na­tion about how it was going to be used. I noticed a lot more of my class­mates put down “N/A” for their cell phone num­ber than was believ­able, but I don’t blame them for not trust­ing her.

I’m per­son­ally not sold on Von­too, but then again this week­end my lit­tle sis­ter imme­di­ately gained inter­est in the AT&T Peb­ble Beach National Pro-Am when she learned that Justin Tim­ber­lake was a par­tic­i­pant. Maybe more peo­ple are sold on hear­ing a celebrity’s voice record­ing than I care to admit.

On to the ques­tions that Mark specif­i­cally formed based on the post-break attendance.

1. Explain the profit chain.

The profit chain con­sists of three links– employ­ees, cus­tomers, and investors. If you have happy employ­ees, they are more likely to pro­duce a bet­ter prod­uct and serve cus­tomers bet­ter. Serv­ing cus­tomers bet­ter makes them happy, and investors like happy cus­tomers. Investors like happy cus­tomers so much that it makes them happy. If the investors aren’t happy, it’s prob­a­bly because they’re hear­ing from the cus­tomers. When the cus­tomers seek out the investors, it usu­ally means they are unhappy because of an infe­rior prod­uct or poor ser­vice. The infe­rior prod­uct or poor ser­vice comes from the employ­ees who don’t care because they hate their job. Keep­ing one end (un)happy usu­ally results in a chain reac­tion for the other links.

2. What would an entre­pre­neur like me think is the most impor­tant part of communication?

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is an exchange of infor­ma­tion. Some­one is giv­ing, another is receiv­ing. It’s how the world works. Mark is a man of action, though, so if he’s going to get his mes­sage across he’s not going to waste his time with words. Actions speak louder than words. Instead of telling some­one how to do their job, show them. Instead of vaguely describ­ing how you want some­thing done, show them. It’s a much more effec­tive way of communicating.

When some­one asks me how to do some­thing on their com­puter, it’s eas­ier for me to show them the actions they need to take by either shar­ing their screen or mak­ing a screen­cast than it would be to write out explicit instruc­tions in a blog post for them to fol­low. When you’re learn­ing to flip a burger, they could waste your time with an instruc­tional video or take 5 min­utes to hold your hand as your grill up your first patty.

If this isn’t what Mark wanted for his most impor­tant part of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, I’m going to go with lis­ten­ing as my sec­ond answer. When you lis­ten, you’re tak­ing in infor­ma­tion that you can later act upon whether it be user feed­back, investor instruc­tions, or gen­eral mar­ket trends.

3. Com­pare and con­trast the dif­fer­ence between “good is good enough” and “good is the enemy of great.”

When I hear “good is good enough”, I think of high school. Noth­ing really mat­ters in high school besides get­ting a diploma and meet­ing the state university’s min­i­mum SAT score. Some peo­ple rel­ish in the fact they had straight A’s all through high school, but the kid who passed with C-‘s is still going to sit next them in finite class fresh­man year at Sta­teU. There are devel­op­ers that won’t let their code grad­u­ate unless it’s absolutely per­fect, but often times it doesn’t mat­ter if it’s per­fect or not. As long as it’s good enough to pass, it’s prob­a­bly ok to let go so they can move on to another task. Spend­ing too much time on one task and for­get­ting about oth­ers is when you need to remem­ber that “good is good enough”.

Going back to the high school exam­ple, the stu­dent that is hell­bent on get­ting all A’s may end up with their mediocre peer in fresh­man finite, but could at the same time be in a greater posi­tion to suc­ceed at the same time. Those A’s prob­a­bly landed the stu­dent a few grants and schol­ar­ships, and their hard work prob­a­bly pre­pared them bet­ter to excel in col­lege. This is where “good is the enemy of great” comes into play. The aver­age stu­dent didn’t need to be “great” to get to the same place “good” would have got­ten them. Their ambi­tious peer, how­ever, isn’t ready to set­tle for good so they are con­tin­u­ing to improve. When a devel­oper or com­pany admits that things are as good as they can be, they won’t get better.

There are times when “good is good enough” prob­a­bly more on a day-to-day basis, but in the long run for a com­pany to be inno­v­a­tive and deliver the best prod­uct “good is the enemy of great”.