Reading Google Anything, So Long as It's Not Google - New York Times I was impressed... for a company that values open access to information above all other virtues this seems out of character.
"Last month, Elinor Mills, a writer for CNET News, a technology news Web site, set out to explore the power of search engines to penetrate the personal realm: she gave herself 30 minutes to see how much she could unearth about Mr. Schmidt by using his company's own service. The resulting article, published online at CNET's News.com under the sedate headline "Google Balances Privacy, Reach," was anything but sensationalist. It mentioned the types of information about Mr. Schmidt that she found, providing some examples and links, and then moved on to a discussion of the larger issues. She even credited Google with sensitivity to privacy concerns.When Ms. Mills's article appeared, however, the company reacted in a way better suited to a 16th-century monarchy than a 21st-century democracy with an independent press. David Krane, Google's director of public relations, called CNET.com's editor in chief to complain about the disclosure of Mr. Schmidt's private information, and then Mr. Krane called back to announce that the company would not speak to any reporter from CNET for a year."
Apparently it isn't unusual, Apple and IMB have both punished companies for when they didn't like how their CEO was presented (or revealed) but considering it was Google itself that offered up this information, considering that they have one of the most cohesive cultures I've ever seen, in which a core value is information access, this is odd.
The article is worth a quick perusal, before it disappears into the deep archives, because it also raises a larger question. Just because information is out there, and can be brought to a larger circulation, should it be? While security through obscurity is not a wise policy, it's kept a remarkable amount of information safe for a long time.
Even if Eric E. Schmidt's personal contact information was always findable by those who tried hard enough, I'm sure he's feeling the difference between the number of folks contacting him after a search and those who are now enjoying "crimes of opportunity," dropping him a quick note to tell him "google roolz" or "sux". Then again, this is a lesson Google needs to learn as well, and those lessons earned through personal experience are those we remember best.
The problem with having a genuinely brilliant partner is that he'll say something, and you'll think "ah yes, that sounds smart"; but it takes years before you realize how smart. So two years ago when John said the most valuable thing we have to offer is a point of view, I thought, "okay, sure" and moved on thinking about skillsets and attention and mental nimbleness.
Lakoff's work in framing was the first time I started to see exactly how important point of view was. If you could encapsulate your point of view in a frame, and then change others' point of view with that frame, you could essentially control their behavior.
Now Malcolm Gladwell, of Blink and Tipping Point fame, has written an article in last week's New Yorker that illuminates finally why the American health care system has taken such a weird, illogical and unfortunate turn. And guess what: it comes down to point of view.
Policy is driven by more than politics, however. It is equally driven by ideas, and in the past few decades a particular idea has taken hold among prominent American economists which has also been a powerful impediment to the expansion of health insurance. The idea is known as "moral hazard." ... "Moral hazard" is the term economists use to describe the fact that insurance can change the behavior of the person being insured. If your office gives you and your co-workers all the free Pepsi you want-- if your employer, in effect, offers universal Pepsi insurance -- you'll drink more Pepsi than you would have otherwise. If you have a no-deductible fire-insurance policy, you may be a little less diligent in clearing the brush away from your house. The savings-and-loan crisis of the nineteen-eighties was created, in large part, by the fact that the federal government insured savings deposits of up to a hundred thousand dollars, and so the newly deregulated S. & L.s made far riskier investments than they would have otherwise. Insurance can have the paradoxical effect of producing risky and wasteful behavior. Economists spend a great deal of time thinking about such moral hazard for good reason. Insurance is an attempt to make human life safer and more secure. But, if those efforts can backfire and produce riskier behavior, providing insurance becomes a much more complicated and problematic endeavor."
So rather than picturing a whitehouse full of rich folks not caring about poor folks getting sick, which is a common view from the left, we can now see the white house full of rich folks afraid poor folks will suddenly start running with scissors. Or perhaps acting like Logan on Gilmore Girls, enjoying rich man's privileges like jumping off buildings with umbrellas and stealing yachts.
Okay, I may be exaggerating here, but the power of point of view and frames is more clearly demonstrated here than in almost anything I have read. If your interest is more than academic, the frame of Moral Hazard is also nicely refuted in the article as well.
I've naughtily cut and pasted this article below (click "more") which I'll remove once Gladwell posts it to his site (he seems to run a month or two behind the New Yorker). For now, I recommend reading it; and if it affects you as it affected me, forwarding with vigor usually reserved for jokes and juggling videos.
FYI: I had a sudden affect/effect freakout while writing this, and stopped to search for the difference, finding this useful article.
Reading John Battelle's Searchblog: The Times Does the Google Backlash Story
"Now, Google... founders have learned to say the right things in public about past practices (Sergey, for example, told me he regrets the seemingly haphazard way his company hired in the past few years..."
This is another key lesson on how you hire: You must always behave decently throughout the interview.
Often bigger, sometimes arrogant companies see themselves as hiring rather than recruiting, and get a sort of snotty "why should you be allowed to work here" attitute as opposed to remembering it's a chance to enrich your company with talent.
My personal experience: I interviewed at a certain company and they made me so angry I not only declined to move the process further, I ended up at their competitor where I worked extremely hard-- let's say, with personal motivation-- to create a viable alternative to their product. Which, thanks to the humble and talented people I worked with, as well as plenty of motivation, it definately is.
So an interview is not only a place to make friends, it's a place to avoid making enemies.
nuff said.
according to RED HERRING | Magazine Preview: 20 Outstanding Entrepreneurs Under 35.
That makes me a old mogul?
Congrats Scott, ya make us all proud!
Every company is (should be) driven by a vision of what they are, who they are and what is important to being that thing. Typically that vision is shaped at the highest level, by a CEO who either collates or creates that vision, often out of a combination of gut and research.
Start-ups in particular are often born out of a single gut feeling from one person, and that idea is then relentlessly pursued. We have the classic story from the president of Oxo about his arthritic wife, and how that led to a singular vision of tools for people of impaired mobility. And of course, Netflix, born of Reed Hasting's hatred of late fees.
Later, companies frequently form tightly coherent cultures that hold the vision collectively-- think of "the HP way" for instance, or the sometimes cultish Google with their relentless passion for search. Who else would have seen mail as a information retrieval problem?
B2B's naturally form vision in a different way, designing it to please their customers, either from a massive cash-cow, or from a powerful market. Small design shops have sometimes nearly been ruined by their relationships with one big company that feeds them... and tells them who they are.
Recently I've noticed a new way of shaping a vision-- a web 2.0 way, if you wish-- that many start-ups are embracing. Emergent Vision. At a recent SDForum event, I heard the CEO of SocialText speak about his company-- how they launched the technology and let the customers tell them what it was for. This closely echoed words I'd hear at Gel a couple years back form the CEO of Meetup... they put up tools to help people meet not really knowing why people would meet. They didn't predict the political role they played, but they certainly embraced it.
Smart companies have long adapted their course based on customer research. But I think only now we are seeing more companies launching new technologies not really know what they are for, but trusting that someone will. I did a quick 2x2 to illustrate my thinking.. please feel free to add additional companies or ideas in comments and I will incorporate...
Being an entrepreneur is hard. It's a simple fact. Even if you have a partner in your project (and you kinda have to, to stay sane) it's still very lonely. Everyone you talk to tends to make you doubt yourself, everyone seems to have heard of something kinda like yours, or questions an aspect of you b-plan, or wonders about the real market size, or your suitability to do what you are doing. An if no one does, you do yourself as you lay in bed at night, staring at the ceiling (or the bureau in my case.. I have to sleep on my side now.)
So let me tell a little story. A friend of mine who is an engineer build a little engineering widget he really needed for himself, and then he build a little company around this widget. He knew the world need these widgets because he sure needed these widgets. And he was right, and sold the little company to a big company for real money and then bought, among other things, a house and a series of race cars.
At the end of his indentured servitude (when you get bought, the big company also buys you for a period of time, sometimes as short as a year, sometimes as long as five) he decided he wanted to do it again. But this time he wanted to build a big company,a consumer facing company. So he looked at the hot spaces, and choose one. He then figured out what he wanted to build in this red-hot space and started shopping the idea around to VC. VC was lukewarm, because that's what they do. They always doubt you at first (and sometimes always). And he kinda floundered. He lost interest. He still wanted to build his own company because he likes being his own boss, but he wasn't so sure he was building the right company. So he kinda put off reworking his dog 'n pony, and kinda spent his time puttering around when he should be working on the prototype. And things didn't really move forward.
My point is, he never believed in the idea for himself. He intellectually thought he had a very good idea, but his soul never latched on.
Now I can feel it personally... if you don't in your own heart feel like the idea you are laboring on is valuable to you personally, alights on your own interests and desires, it doesn't matter how much money you think you can make, and how good an idea you think you have. You have to feel more than that, you have to ache to bring your idea into the world no matter what. And that faith allows you to roll over to your other side and fall asleep peaceably.
I've seen a lot of blah blah blah on how to hire, who to hire, and etc, and it tends to run the same way, hire better than yourself, hire experience not resumes, hire team players. So I was happy with I saw these gems from Tom Evslin which expound beyond Bernard Moon's often obvious advice (then again, should I criticize? Is there anything more rare than common sense?)
Tom says
"I disagree with Bernard's math when he says "One A-grade hire equals 10 C-grade hires." A C-grade hire is a negative -- especially for a startup. Better to leave the position unfilled. No matter what you multiply a negative by, you still get a negative.Bernard says to hire team players. You need to hire people you can work with but NOT necessarily team players. Team players won't tell you when you're dead wrong; they won't be the only dissenting voice even when they're right and everybody else is wrong. Startups need a team but I think a CEO can mold a team, has to mold a team, from very strong individuals."
Both very true, and not just for start-ups. I especially appreciate his understanding that people come and go, and a hire for today may not be a hire for ten years down the line and that's fine, even desirable. It's part of larger mental model problem most people suffer from, which is a lack of understanding that many decision are contextual in time.
And secret project #2 is still quietly running along under light stealth. I hope to unveil it about the same time we're seeing little wodtke-sarrazin.
