Tag Archive for 'business'

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The American Beauty of Small Giants

Published on July 6, 2010 in business. 11 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

I believe in the American dream, the one that tells us that we can become anything we want to be with enough hard work and character. Dreams don’t always come true, but in America there is no king who orders our lives, no class structure that limits how far we can advance in society. Truly, our place in the world is not confined by our blood-relations but by how useful we become to our fellow citizens.

Entrepreneurs embody that American dream.  They take on enormous risk and devote time and money to offer goods or services that will, it is hoped, be valuable enough to sustain a business.  In the process they provide jobs, revenue, and training to the community where they operate.

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As long as we Americans remain free, we will continue to seek out all kinds of ways to better ourselves by improving the lives of others. Tragically, though, when profit at any cost becomes the only guiding principle of a business, it corrupts the very ideals that made the business possible.

For every irresponsible company like Enron, WorldCom, Massey, or BP  the pressure to regulate business grows, and if there is anything that a bureaucrat enjoys it’s fattening up the law books with more regulations.

Never forget, noble reader, that in some societies, sprawling government bureaucracies entirely dictate the ways their citizens live their lives.  Watch The Lives of Others if you want to see what that looks like.

Fortunately there’s a solution.  It involves just 15 minutes a day doing some simple, relaxing exercises.  Actually, those are the instructions for the AbMaster 3000, if I remember correctly. Sorry about that.

You know, you read one article about how great abs are an essential element of a vigorous foreign policy, and sometimes that’s all it takes to get your solutions mixed up.  I mean that hypothetically, of course.  I’m not the sort person who reads those articles or uses AbMasters, at least not on a daily basis.

Anyway, more regulations won’t prevent corrupt businesses from harming others.  It’s the good guys, not the bad ones, who follow the rules, after all.

What we do need is a reminder that it’s possible to succeed at work and still do right by your community.   That’s why I’m asking you to read Small Giants, written by Inc editor Bo Burlingham.
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As far as I’m concerned, it’s the definitive text on how to be both a good business person and a caring citizen.   You see, the book celebrates businesses who refuse to sacrifice excellence and character in the name of growth and profits.

Whether you are involved in small or big business, whether you work for yourself or do volunteer work, I promise you’ll find something to appreciate in the book.  If you don’t, then please let me know, and I will pay for your copy of the book.  I’m serious about that.

In the book Mr. Burlingham profiles a few companies that have what he calls “mojo,” something special about the way they do things that has to be experienced to be understood.

What is it that gives a company mojo?  As Geoffrey Rush’s characters likes to say in Shakespeare in Love, “I don’t know. It’s a mystery.”  It’s one of those things that is hard to define in concrete terms, but Mr. B does give us some clues.
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Photo credit: flickr.com/h-k-d
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For one thing, the people at the business really believe in what they’re doing. It’s not just that phony reiterate-the-mission-statement-and-tap-dance-for-the-boss kind of thing.  It’s real. It costs something to live up to ideals, and if the company ideals are there just to sound impressive then no one will sacrifice for them.  When the business leaders are making the sacrifices for the things they value though, that’s when others start paying attention.  It’s contagious if you do it enough. One of the companies Mr. Burlingham profiles is Ani DeFranco’s music label: Righteous Babe.  He tells of how they put together a folksy newsletter, meant to read like a personal conversation with Ani DeFranco herself.  It’s free, but the label wants it to be so good that others would willingly pay for it.

That’s a lot of effort to pour into something that could be dismissed as just another platform for selling records, but the Righteous Babe people want to let the fans know that Ani is a different kind of musician.

Apparently word gets around.  Mr. B reports that people travel from across the country to visit the studio and experience the difference.

Photo from babevillebuffalo.com, home of Righteous Babe Records
Another profiled company is Zingerman’s Delicatessen in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  The owners turned down the opportunity to go national; they felt that would adversely affect the dining experience they could offer.  Instead, they expanded into new business ventures that allowed them to offer more to the neighborhoods they serve.
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A different example of that is Hammerhead Productions.  They’re an effects company founded by four guys who were at the peak of their careers.  The guys wanted to be able to work in a friendly environment and pick their own projects, so they formed Hammerhead.Now they have the leverage to turn away projects that don’t feel right.  Sure, they want to make money, but not at the cost of doing work they don’t respect or under circumstances they won’t enjoy.
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On the other hand, you have some celebrities who will endorse anything for the right price, even if they don’t use the product they endorse.  As if those types really need more money. It’s not always about an endorsement. Sometimes it’s about the compromises they’ll make in the hope of winning acclaim.

Being surrounded by flashy beguilers, we’re conditioned to accept selling out as a notable way of life.  (To be fair there are some decent-minded celebrities who bank on excellence.  It’s just that bad apples are good at spoiling the barrel’s reputation, don’t you know.)

Photo credit: flickr.com/jef_safi

I get discouraged when companies and people I once admired compromise on quality or virtue in the name of more money, more power, more whatever. Don’t you? It adds some resistance to doing things the right way, and who really needs that?

I understand people make mistakes, and there’s always pressure to get results.  I am far from a perfect person, so I’m not here to point fingers.I’m just asking you to stand for more than just supersizing yourself. (You know, you could do worse than looking to a God for that…) Zingerman’s Delicatessen takes pride in the quality of their sandwiches. They don’t ration out the meat in hopes of saving money.  

They want to make a masterpiece that astonishes you.  As a result people line up outside the store and endure long waits to experience the magic.

One company like that is enough to counterbalance 10 soulless ones.  It stands as a beacon of hope, reminding us of what community-oriented greatness can be.BREAK

By now you may have noticed that I’ve used the word “community” a few times.  That’s not an accident.  It is a concept that keeps resurfacing in the book.

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When work is just about the bottom line, the bosses treat their employees like profit-making machines, the employees loath coming to work, and the customers must endure meaningless headquarters-approved soundbites uttered by the unhappy employees.  How awful for everyone involved.  But, when you actually care about why you’re there, then you’ll be more likely to care about who is there.
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Photo credit: flickr.com/seeminglee

The Righteous Babe folks care about their Buffalo, NY community.  They do everything possible to buy supplies from local vendors and hire people who live nearby.  Sometimes that means having to pay more, but in doing so they can give back to the locals who support them.

Ober Tanner of O. C. Tanner Manufacturing, another profiled company in the book, is quoted as saying “I feel responsible for everyone here.” He is the kind of employer who says he wants his employees to receive happiness from their work and means it.  The enthusiastic employees who treat him like a hero are the proof.

The Clif Bar company shows commitment to their community by paying their employees to do a few hours of volunteer work.  The most intriguing part is that they let their employees pick the charities they’ll each get paid to help. Instead of streamlining the process, the Clif Bar executives want to give employees the freedom to support the causes they value.

As Mr. Burlingham explains, that sort of thing happens because Small Giants are companies whose first priority is serving the people inside of the company. The customers come second.

The idea is that you treat your people so well that they will fight for the things that matter to you.  They’re not just coming in to get a paycheck. They’re doing their best for their family at work.  It makes a difference.

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Since we’re talking about Clif Bar,  now would be a good time to mention their site: clifbar.com.  It’s unique and conveys personality, and it’s another reminder that the company stands for something. That’s what good design can do.

Thanks to the Small Giants book, I’ve come to value the Clif Bar brand so much that I plan to buy their energy bars even if they cost more than the competition.  Price isn’t everything.

There’s no way I could do justice to all the book’s ideas here.  If you want to learn more, give the book a chance.  It’s an easy read, even if you’re not normally into business books.

As a bonus, the witer practices what he preaches:  Although it would probably be cheaper to print in China, the book is still printed in the USA. That’s not a fact Mr. Burlingham mentioned.  I know it only because I checked.

“It’s not what we do. It’s who we are.” That’s the slogan for the Small Giants Community, a forum for entrepreneurs who want to live out the ideas in Mr. Burlingham’s book. Put differently, you don’t have to be part of a small business to be a Small Giant.   You can work for a big business or you can go it alone.

It is mostly a matter of taking pride not in what you get from the world, but in the special things that only you can give. Do that while benefiting everyone involved and sustaining the endeavor, and you’ll really have something!


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If you think that sounds a little idealistic, you’re right.  But then, our country was founded on ideals, and there is something inherently American about being a Small Giant. When you’re blessed to live in a free society, you can take risks, dream, and dare to do things your own way, assuming that you follow the laws of the land. (Let us pray the laws do not devolve further into crippling monstrosities.)

Don’t listen to the politicians.  America does not need more government control.  We need more hardworking, character-driven Small Giants who are excited about sharing something special and profitable with their communities.

Let’s end with a quote from the author,   “Having a great business is one way of making a better world.”  Cheers to that.

Dirty Hands and Cleaner Souls

Published on September 11, 2009 in business. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

A few weeks ago I read a book called Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford. It has the audacity to suggest that work our society tends to undervalue, the kind that often involves dirt and sweat, is actually good for the soul.  The ideas in the book are compelling, so let’s explore them.

photo from flickr.com/hiddenTreasure

photo from flickr.com/hiddenTreasure

Before going further, let me apologize for the length of time since my last update.  In addition to my day job, I’ve got a role in a play, and I’m working on another creative project that I am racing to finish.  I’m also developing some other stories for this blog that involve more research.  I still care about those of you who trust me with your time by reading my posts, and I want to get better at posting more consistently.  I mention this because I value transparency and because I don’t believe in the idea that a good worker is by definition as consistent as a well-oiled machine.

Pursuing excellence in challenging fields can sometimes involve months and even years of training and experimenting with little apparent progress.  Nassim Nicholas Taleb makes a compelling case for valuing that kind of unpredictable work in his book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. It’s a good book to read if you care more about long-term achievement than about short-term benchmarks.

Speaking of a well-oiled machine, Matthew Crawford celebrates the unpredictable nature of mechanical work. Sometimes a problem can be solved in minutes.  Other times it takes hours or days.  It depends on the complexities of the task at hand.  The quality of his work is not measured by some abstract set of metrics; his mission statement doesn’t compel him to produce industry-leading results while maximizing stock-holder value.  He just has to fix the damn thing in a timely fashion.
photo from flickr.com/a-mon

photo from flickr.com/a-mon


Wrestling with physical things to get them to do what you want involves a bit of humility, Mr. Crawford explains.  It’s one of the most original points in the book.  When you have to deal with particulars that have their own attributes, you cannot just force your ego on them.  The broken crankshaft doesn’t care if you graduated from Harvard or that you once appeared on the cover of You Are Awesome! Monthly.  If you don’t take into account the physical laws that make it work, then the crankshaft will not keep your engine running, no matter how much indie-rock street cred the scene kids give you.
photo from flickr.com/a-mon

photo from flickr.com/a-mon

These scene kids might think you’re cool, but that’s not going to persuade your broken car to start.

Mr. Crawford started his career in a think tank, so he has first-hand experience with the knowledge economy.   He started the work with a sense of idealism, but he soon found himself sacrificing the quality of his research in order to meet weekly performance goals. To his dismay, he realized that he was no longer doing something useful to help his fellow man.  He was manipulated stats to keep his managers happy and was distorted facts to serve the mission statement of his think tank.  Doing this pumped dissonance into his soul, dissonance that kept building pressure until it became the catalyst that led him into automotive repair work.

By the time he opened up his own repair shop, Mr. Crawford had sanded away any desire to ever return to his old information-driven job.   That doesn’t mean he now disdains knowledge.  Quite the contrary.  His book references philosophers, prominent research, and current events.  Besides, the book itself is an engaging, enjoyable read, and you can’t write that kind of book if you don’t take some delight in organizing information.   It was the facade that his job induced, the pursuit of meaningless metrics and half-truths, that  drove Mr. Crawford out of the think tank.

photo from flickr.com/chrysti

photo from flickr.com/chrysti

Mr. Crawford’s ambivalence toward the information economy  makes sense in context of his background.  According to Mr. Crawford, the problem starts with our education system.  Most of what we learn in school prepares us to sort information, Mr. Crawford argues.  Think about it: A typical school test will measure how well someone can find the right answer and not how well someone can build something or apply a practical skill to a real-world situation.

The emphasis is on learning general skills that can someday be applied to specific situations, someday but not any time soon, because, Mr. Crawford explains, our society doesn’t want to limit a child’s possibilities.  After all, suggesting that it takes time, effort and focus to become a master at something might hurt someone’s self esteem.   Is it any surprise that the old, but highly-effective, practice of having a master train a young student as an apprentice has become almost non-existent in our society?

Let’s not forget about  the social stigma of vocational classes offered in school. When I was in school, there was this sense that vocational classes were for those weren’t good students and who weren’t going to college.  Maybe that very mentality explains why so many schools are cutting back on their vocational programs.

Based on my own educational experiences and those of friends and family, I conclude that knowing the stages of photosynthesis is an essential quality of a good citizen, but being able to fix things, either as a job or as a service to the community, doesn’t matter very much.  During my school days, I learned about photosynthesis in one mandatory class after another, but I never learned how to build a shelf.  I can assure you that I’ve never run into a real-world situation that made me think, “ah hah, that’s the effect of the Calvin-Benson Cycle at work!”  In contrast, there have been several times in my life where I wanted to build something, but I didn’t know how.

The  information-oriented people who our schools like to produce tend to be more voracious consumers, Mr. Crawford declares.  Such a person can clearly see that 15 megapixels is more than 12, and that the newer camera has more features, for example.  On top of that, there is an unstated assumption in our information-age that anything new is generally of more value than anything old.  (To test the wisdom of this assumption, talk to all the guys who dove head-first into the unsteady arms of Windows Vista.)  The correct and obvious answer to the consumer is to buy the newer camera.
photo from flickr.com/danstrange

photo from flickr.com/danstrange

On the other hand, the folks who get their hands dirty doing the work that needs to be done are more likely to use, and modify if necessary, the tools at hand.  The specs and the branding of a product aren’t as important as the product’s usefulness to these individuals, and since their self-image isn’t derived from the information that advertisers provide, they don’t feel as compelled to buy the latest and greatest stuff.  They’d rather put their time and money into producing more useful things.

Striking a more optimistic note, Mr. Crawford reminds us that the do-it-yourself sensibility is growing, even though this sensibility doesn’t always make economic sense.  For most people, buying the raw materials and then building a sofa costs more money and takes longer than just buying an affordable sofa from the furniture store.  And yet, a certain number of people still choose to make their own furniture.  These folks aren’t fools.  They just appreciate the inexplicable sense of pride that comes from crafting something useful with their hands.  It may not be good for the bank account, but it might be just what the soul needs, at least that’s what Mr. Crawford wants us to conclude.

When I was growing up, I got caught up in the whole information thing.  I would cram facts into my head not because they were useful but because they might help me get a better grade on a test.  Only after I tried to build meaningful relationships and seek significance beyond the classroom did I realize that there is more to life than just knowing the right answers.

Sometimes the doing is more important than the knowing, and you don’t have to be a mechanic to appreciate that. Does that mean working with your hands will save your soul?  Well not necessarily, but maybe it’ll keep you humble and out of trouble for a while, long enough for you to hear the things that God wants to whisper to you.   I can’t speak for your experience, so I’ll talk about mine.  If I can get myself to just show up ready to do my best, create and listen, then I have a better chance of prevailing against the self-destructive inclinations that encroach upon the day.

Am I extending the metaphor too far?  Perhaps, but consider this: Jesus was a carpenter, and Stalin was a politician.   Curious details, don’t you think?

photo from flickr.com/cobalt

photo from flickr.com/cobalt

Matthew Crawford had to open his repair shop and focus his labor on improving the lives of others before he discovered a heightened sense of community.  That’s a good enough reason for me to take his ideas seriously.  Now enough contemplation: Let’s go make something!