

Management today review of 37signal's "Rework" - tomh-
http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/rss/article/985294

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gte910h
I'm currently reading the book, and he amusingly left out the stats supporting
their conclusions or the rest of the sentence which tempers the strong advice.
This is obviously intentional.

They say "Don't make plans" and end the sentence with "Before you start, you
don't know anything then".

They say "learn from successes, not failures" and back it up with stats about
how people who failed at a prior business endeavor are no more likely than
first time starters (23% of succeeding), but people who've succeeded at prior
business have a much greater chance (forgot that number).

Uneven smear job a stuckup business writer.

~~~
benl
I think approaching your work from the standpoint of "Learn from success, not
failure" is a sure path to succumbing to confirmation bias and becoming a one-
trick pony.

The 37s guys have done some wonderful work. But to me they are pretty much the
embodiment of what I think of when I remember Paul Buchheit's great quote:

"Limited Life Experience + Overgeneralization = Advice"

~~~
rimantas

      I think approaching your work from the standpoint of "Learn
      from success, not failure" is a sure path to succumbing to
      confirmation bias and becoming a one-trick pony.
    

And the stats mentioned show, that approaching work from standpoint "learn
from failure" is a sure path to being zero-trick pony. The stats in question
show, that those who failed previously have the same success rate as those who
never even tried, and those who succeeded previously have success rate higher
by third.

~~~
shin_lao
It doesn't tell anything, as you don't know why people failed in the first
place and if they learned from their mistakes.

Maybe, people able to learn from mistakes are able to recover them before
their business fails...

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tomh-
It's important to realize that this "Rework" book is about the stuff that
worked for 37signals and might work for you if you have a similar business.
The review points out that this is not always the case from a management
perspective and it's not always applicable to other business'.

~~~
pvg
From the inside flap - "REWORK shows you a better, faster, easier way to
succeed in business. Read it and you’ll know why plans are actually harmful,
why you don’t need outside investors, and why you’re better off ignoring the
competition."

Note that the claim is not 'Rework shows you a better, faster, easier way to
succeed in a business that is similar to 37 signals. Maybe'.

~~~
jasonfried
It depends. Maybe. Sometimes. Your milage may vary. Reasonable people
understand these apply in most (but not all!) situations.

~~~
pvg
No doubt. But what the what the OP is trying to do is weasel away from a
critique of the book by saying 'Well, it's really mostly about 37 signals. If
you don't like it/doesn't work for you, well, that's just, like, your opinion,
man'. I imagine you wrote the book with the notion that it is broadly (not
universally) applicable, just like most books in the genre. And it's perfectly
sensible to review it in those terms, just like this and all other reviews
I've seen so far have.

~~~
jasonfried
I do think a lot of our ideas can apply to a very broad spectrum of
businesses.

I've personally heard from thousands of business owners in just about every
industry who've told me many of the ideas we espouse work beautifully for them
in their businesses.

But, no of course I don't believe any idea applies to everyone.

~~~
mixmax
Thousands? That's one for every working day ten years in a row.

No need to exaggerate to make your point.

~~~
starkfist
_Thousands? That's one for every working day ten years in a row._

Or three days worth of email

------
grandalf
Management is an interesting concept. My personal view on it is that I don't
want to work with people who need to be managed.

So don't call it management, call it leadership instead. If you're on a team
of peers and you're the natural leader who helps motivate everyone and makes
the idea a reality, you are essentially the manager... the PHB, but you are
doing it artfully.

In lots of businesses, one is not fortunate enough to be able to hire self-
motivated employees, and so management is akin to being the old lady on the
school yard with a whistle.

But more broadly, management is the science of motivating people... and anyone
who is a "founder" and can't do the project alone must fill those shoes to
some extent.

Maybe what I'm trying to say is that there is no such thing as management,
only mismanagement.

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absconditus
"I am not sure these guys are real businesspeople."

What exactly are "real businesspeople"?

~~~
blasdel
Parsed charitably, he means that they aren't _serial_ businesspeople — they
["don't want to", "won't", "can't"] start new independent businesses.

It's a variant of the _lifestyle business_ epithet.

~~~
neilc
That sounds like a " _serial_ entrepreneur", not a serial businessperson: a
"business person" doesn't necessarily ever start a new business, let alone a
string of them.

~~~
blasdel
His point is more that they're really Web Developers, not businesspeople. That
their expertise is from direct experiential practice with an extremely narrow
type of software business.

He's a business school type, so this rankles. His whole world view is based on
broadly applicable business practices, grounded in theory and hypothesis,
backed up with data.

His kind of "business person" doesn't even necessarily start one business,
even if they might see opportunities everywhere — they get brought in as
management. But if they start one, they're probably going to start more.

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tbgvi
I have a feeling this writer has no idea who 37signals is. He's probably
realizing right about now that he's stepped on a land mine with exploding
37signals fanboys.

Edit: No offense to fans of 37signals (I read svn). This guy is about to get a
lesson in how many fans of 37signals there are.

~~~
Emore
The book's target audience is obviously "business people," so I'd say he
really doesn't need to know details about 37signals specifically.

The review was wonderfully British -- "What is it about Americans that they
think 10 years is a long time?" -- which probably is the main reason behind
the criticism. Real business people according to the author are probably those
with a degree from LSE.

~~~
po
"What is it about Americans that they think 10 years is a long time?"

What is it about the British that make them assume short term thinking is
coming from an American? One of the two authors are Danish, not American. Does
working in America for four years make you an American these days?

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conorgil145
from article "I have the pleasure of working with real businesspeople who care
about doing a good job, not talking about doing a good job."

Well, I don't know if he did research about the software that 37Signals has
made, but I consider Ruby on Rails a "good job". I haven't used any of their
other products (Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack, Campfire), but I would bet that
the 3 million people using them would consider those products to be a "good
job" too.

~~~
mattmcknight
Yes, by the review author's logic, no one should ever write a business book,
because they are too busy doing a good job.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Of course, the reviewer neglects to note that writing a book and then selling
it successfully and profitably is a case of a businessperson doing a good job.

------
mattmaroon
"The book is written by people who, I think, would rather be celebrities than
businesspeople."

To a large extent celebrities are businesspeople nowadays. 37s has done
nothing if not figure out a brilliant way to turn being web-famous into making
money. While I think I'd take their business advice with a mound of salt
(mostly because it's all expressed in such absolute terms as to be inherently
meaningless) you have to admire the way they've used blogging and internet
celebrity to turn a nice profit out of a product you could build in 2 weeks.

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tome
The author suggests that 37signals shouldn't "try and make a name for [their]
software company by issuing such over-heated generalisations".

Is this book is about making a name for 37signals? Is the Rework Readers ->
Basecamp Buyers conversion rate expected to be high?

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mtarnovan
"Maybe in a low-risk software company you can 'just do it', but if, like a
restaurant chain, you have capital expenditure, or you are moving a factory,
you had better make sure you plan the move, the stock-build, the overtime, the
working capital and service implications."

The author of the review is the "co-founder of Leon Restaurants". Maybe he
sees everything from this perspective, and that's why doesn't agree with
anything in the book. I think the book is about advice meant for (tech)
startups, not restaurants.

"And perhaps if the authors had followed the advice about 'build half a
product, not a half-assed product' and 'underdo your competition', the book
would have been a deal better."

Is he really trying to say that 37signal's apps are bad ?

All in one I found the review biased and hypocritical, but I'm yet to read the
book, so until I do I'll refrain from further comments on the topic.

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rythie
I imagine the book is really only relevant industries where the real resource
is the people and the profit margins can be massive. It seems that Jason's
main point would be that in a tech. business you shouldn't squander that main
resource (i.e. the people).

The closest analogy I can think to the tech. industry would be the music
industry, since it's possible to make a record on virtually no money and have
it sell millions. Now, you wouldn't expect Lady Gaga or Jay-Z to sit in
endless meetings that they weren't needed in, when they could be making more
records, would you?

Lots of other businesses are not really about the people in them like
restaurants, bars, manufacturing etc. and that is what the reviewer is getting
at. Though the reviewer doesn't seem to know the difference.

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pclark
old guy doesn't approve of 37 signals, shocking.

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mflinsch
Seriously, this is a rather typical old-economy response to a well understood
concept at this point: Simple works.

Coming from the inside of the enterprise web publishing world I'd suggest it's
not 37signals that is missing something.

Of course the author (of the review) did found a chain of restaurants...

~~~
davidw
"Simple works". Which is why they created everything with Forth on Rails. Oh
wait... it's Tcl on Rails. No... Ruby? Ruby is not _simple_. It's actually a
nice mix of elegance, simplicity and, where called for, fancy ways of handling
complexity.

And they host everything on DOS. Because it's simple! No?

I think this stuff goes both ways... you can't just wave "simple!" around.

If you really wanted _simple_ , you'd use a pencil and paper.

~~~
rimantas
Uhm… How about trying to see the difference the product and implementation
details? Cars are simple you know: turn a key, step on the gas and you ar
going. Does anyone claim that those dozens of CPU hidden under bonnet and AT
gearbox is simple?

~~~
davidw
Some stuff is simple, some isn't. Trying to make it simpler is a good goal in
many cases, except for when it isn't.

What I disagree with is "business by platitude".

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steveplace
I couldn't see his point through the smog of ad hominem.

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armandososa
I think that in their last podcast, where they talk about Rework, the guys at
37s say that this book is written with entrepreneurs in mind.

Maybe that's why old "real" enterprisey business persons can't understand it.

<http://37signals.com/podcast/#episode9> (wow! that's a lousy permalink)

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bearwithclaws
Well you can't blame the reviewer. The whole MT's business philosophy is the
antithesis of 37signal's. As somebody said (it's a famous quote, forgotten its
origin though):

"Don't expect somebody to learn something when his stomach depends on him not
learning it"

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chubs
Wow: this review, and now these comments, what a microcosm of the generation
gap...

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mburney
"In reality, good meetings are good and bad meetings are not good". Yeah,
because we'd rather read a book of tautologies than some actual points.

~~~
foldr
I think you're missing his point. He's saying it would be more helpful if the
authors explained what it is about bad meetings that makes them bad, rather
than issuing a blanket condemnation on all meetings.

~~~
rimantas
Authors do explain. They even provide some guidelines how to make productive
meeting. It's just the reviewer who chooses to ignore that.

~~~
foldr
He doesn't ignore it, he just points out that the slogans contradict the
actual advice, which is pretty run-of-the-mill.

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omarchowdhury
I'll read the book and formulate my own opinion on it. Thank you.

~~~
tome
One of the points of a review is to suggest whether you should or should not
spend your valuable time reading a book in the first place.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
In that light, it's useful to compare reviews of books you have already read
with your own assessments of those books. That way you can get a sense of
which reviewers are more likely to write future reviews that will dovetail
with your own values and expectations.

