Like any entrepreneur, I am often far too close to what I’m working on. The most common result is the glazed/confused expression on people’s faces when I explain what I’m up to. Fortunately (IMO) , my co-founders seem to share my taste in cool-aid, so within the company at least we all more or less make sense to each other. But third parties take a bit more work…
Our rather excellent Advisory Board has consistently (and appropriately) given me a hard time about this as I write and re-write our business plan and pitch. Steve and Sam have both been especially merciless — thank you gentlemen!
I feel as though we’ve finally reached a point where we can explain ourselves to normal folks without inducing too much glazing, and the current incarnation of the business plan finally reflects that.
Having written a fair volume of copy, plans and other documents in my time, I’m well aware that heavily revised documents tend to suffer from typo creep… Things slip in and don’t get caught by the author. On Friday, it was time to call in the ultimate proof reader, my Mum… She’s reasonably computer literate, uses email, eBay and a variety of Microsoft Office products, but she’s also been a lifelong admin person and is excellent with spelling and grammar.
Apart from some funny Americanisms that are now firmly part of my vocabulary, the document passed with mostly flying colors. But what was interesting was the conversation that ensued afterwards.
First of all, the plan made sense to her. Now of course I’ve been on about this for a year or so now, so she had some background, but it was good to hear that the plan seemed to be in readable English.
But then she shared some recent experience that made a lot of sense within the context of what we do. The gist of it was this (Mum: please excuse the paraphrasing). A non-profit she had worked for had gained a computer for every member of staff. While everyone was glad to have a computer, they had an organizational nightmare on their hands because everything was stored locally and everyone had their own way of organizing their data, ranging from a fairly sophisticated hierarchy of folders to "saving everything in C". This lead to some real problems when they needed to collaborate, or when they needed to access data without the author being present.
Now in the not too distant past, administrators tended to be the creators of documents within companies, and they certainly had control of most if not all of the information within a company. Managers would dictate letters etc to their Secretaries and Administrators, who would then create the documents, go through an approval cycle, send the document to its destination and file a copy.
So the group that created the documents for the whole company also filed and organized them. But they did so as a unified team with a common system and set of goals.
Since administrators had experience with this sort of thing, they could quickly create efficient filing systems for all the documents. Once a document was created and stored, they’d act as gatekeepers. Anyone who needed the document would just ask an administrator. And it was usually in one of just a few filing cabinets.
Since the authors controlled the organizational system it was a nice closed loop. The volume of data wasn’t that large and nobody really minded having to work with an admin, because it sure beat learning to type and figuring out how to file things…
Fast forward to today. Almost no-one has a Secretary (in the traditional sense) any more and everyone is an author. The volume of data has exploded, but company-wide, there are no gatekeepers to turn to. There is no common system based on common goals (unless you’ve spent a fortune on a Content Management System). And a handful of filing cabinets just isn’t going to get the job done anymore.
So one of the side-effects of the computer is that we’ve all become our own admins.
If you’re like me, you have a way you like to organize your files, and that method works for you. But I can state with some certainty that my system would not work for 90% of the folks out there. So if I want to collaborate with someone else with today’s tools, I have four choices:
- Force everyone else to use my system
- Suck it up and use someone else’s system
- Agree on a compromise system that all parties hate to some degree
- Give up on organization and do it all by email — let the inbox sort it all out
Now (1) is great for the ego — flex those CEO muscles! But it leads to a less than ideal solution for everyone involved except me. (2) is bad for me, and bad for anyone else that wasn’t the creator of the system. (3) sucks for everyone equally — this is a win because no-one is happy and we have a common drop in productivity :-). Then there’s (4), and plenty of companies work that way.
We think there’s a much better way to do this: let everyone organize their data however they want, but if two or more folks have to collaborate don’t force them all to use the same system.
And it’s nice to know that even your Mum can find a use for the product you’re building…