Following on the heels of my recommending 37signals‘ Basecamp last week, I’m now going to plug their new business book, Rework. It’s a short collection of essays from the company’s blog, Signal vs. Noise, that you should be able to finish in one sitting. It looks deceptively simple since half the book is pictures, but the ideas really struck me as true and important and long overdue. Rather than review the book as a whole (you can find plenty of better reviews than I can write on Amazon), I want to emphasize some of the most important takeaways I got from Rework.
- “Why grow?” – The theme of the book is basically to ask the questions that you’re not used to asking in business, and growth is an excellent example. Why should a successful business grow? If you do something, do it well, make a profit, and have a satisfied customer base, why should expansion be looked upon as a given? I wish Georgetown would ask this question…
- “Workaholism” – Rework dispels the image of the noble, martyr workaholic. If you can’t get your job done working 9-5, then you either aren’t working efficiently or there’s a greater company-wide issue at play.
- “Enough with ‘entrepreneurs‘” – I actually said the exact same thing in a meeting a few months ago, namely why do we insist on labeling entrepreneurs as a special class, to the exclusion of others? Rework advises throwing out the entrepreneurial vocabulary and opting for a simpler moniker: “starters.”
- “Start a business, not a startup” – I run into this issue all the time working with nonprofits. They make companies and draw on the ‘startup’ label as an excuse for not succeeding, ignoring the fact that their business model is neither profitable nor sustainable.
- “Meetings are toxic” – Well they are, as I complained about last week. I like the book’s ideas for diminishing the damage, such as setting a concrete cap on meeting length, inviting as few people as possible, and gathering at the site of the problem, not in a conference room.
- “Good enough is fine” – I run into this one a lot, too. Essentially, a client demands a perfect, comprehensive, expensive solution and won’t settle for anything less, ignoring the fact that while s/he quixotically quests for such a remedy, there is no solution in place, whatsoever.
- “Build an audience” – The internet has enabled business and customers to interact in entirely new ways. Mass marketing (read: spam) isn’t necessary anymore. Instead, if you say something worthwhile and say it consistently, your customers will come to you.
- “Marketing is not a department” – Last year, I had to take Marketing 101, and I could not understand why it was a class. Everything is marketing. Every phone call, every email, every flyer, every receptionist, every business suit (or there lack of). It made no sense to me why anyone would attempt to restrict marketing to a simple class.
- “Hire great writers” – Maybe my favorite piece of advice from Rework. Basically, a good writer is a good thinker is a good organizer is a good communicator. Resumes can be fabricated and “experience” is too vague to have meaning, but good writing shines on its own.
- “Own your bad news” – Applicable to so many disasters today…BP…the finance industry…the US government…Georgetown University. When the only one who denies that you messed up is you, lying only digs you deeper.
Rework is $12 on Amazon, and free at your local library, so there’s no excuse to pass on this essential text!
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