The little thing on the top right is the ever-powerful and rarely-changing search box. There have been also near-infinite designs and forms that a search box can take but all of them ultimately do the same thing.
So why would anyone or any company obsess over it?
Well, for us, it’s because we simply do. Search is becoming not just a solution for the errant and lost internet wanderer but a invaluable part of the navigation structure of any website.
This image is exactly how I feel at times when I consider the challenges of technology and leadership. And especially with a team that works in this space we’re constantly introduced to new products, services, solutions, and other crazy-fringe pieces of technology that may or may not be valuable to explore.
I also see this as our battle cry as well – this is the value that we bring to our customers. Our job is to make the infinitely complex extraordinarily easy, simple to use, and intuitive. I have to remember that things as simple to us (like FTP’ing a file) is near-impossible for some of customers.
It is our job, then, to make sure that the distance and frustration is either muted or vanishes entirely from their wherewithal.
I work with some of the brightest technologists in the world (at least I think so). And with all that brainpower you’d think we’d be able to forecast at least something pretty accurately, right?
One of the tensions we feel constantly is being able to provide incredible value today while pretending to know what our customer will need 3 months from now – and it’s easier in some of the other industries but not in high-tech; it’s simply a luxury that we can’t afford (or that’s really even available to us).
What we can commit to is staying relative and knowledgeable in our space and on top of the trends that appear to happen daily. 5 year tech plan? Please. You wouldn’t want that anyways. By the time that rolled around that plan would look so outdated you’d laugh at us.
In fact, we wouldn’t be around at that time if we adhered to those washed up policies and thinking.
We insert fun wherever and whenever we can.
We’ve been spending a bunch of time brainstorming the future of our company and the various different options for bringing incredible value to our customers, both our current ones as well as the ones that we continue to gain every single week.
It’s an exciting time as the options and choices are incredible – we can do almost anything we want and yet at the very same time we can’t. It’s a tension we feel every single day as many of us are extremely high on the cognitive and abstract scale and thinking of new ideas to explore is as natural as breathing.
What we’ve discovered is that as we begin to hone and sink our teeth deeper into our passion for publishing we realize that our customer base isn’t as varied technologically as we once thought – or that we need to serve.
This makes sense as we isolate even greater our core focus and value to them – and they ultimately appreciate this hyper-focus because they get the winning side of the ticket. The result is smaller waste and greater contact points for our products and their needs.
You see this thing? This long pointy thing pointing towards heaven, looking all awesome?
This comic from Dilbert couldn’t be more accurate as to how some organizations “manage” technological challenges and issues.
The challenge that you face as a leader is to make sure that systems, not people, do most of the technology management while the people spend most of their time managing humans and their unique roles and responsibilities.
Many leaders that I know unfortunately get this a bit twisted at times and since leadership most always goes from top to bottom the rest of the organization naturally follows suit. The result? A culture that becomes a slave to their technology rather than masters of it.
You can come into a new situation like the invading army and aggressive jerk that you are but the best technology leaders are those that balance the tension between knowing the answers and knowing the people.
This doesn’t just apply internally; this applies externally as well with your customers.
One of the things that makes me proud of our team is the fact that we always have an “open seat” policy in our office. This is both physical and metaphorical at the same time as we invite anyone, at any time, to join us here and get work done.
At some point, when we move out of our small-ish office space we’ll have even more room to play with and it has been our hope and desire to create an environment that’s attractive to more than just the few of us that spend a lot of time there – that it’ll be open to the public for collaboration, fun, and productivity.
It has crossed our minds, more than once, that we should go into the coworking business – heck, I’ve been visiting nearly all of the Atlanta Coworking spots that I can find over the last 5 months! Now wouldn’t that be neat!
We decided to spend a bit of time in a dark room with other people today (wait… how is that different from any other day…? … hmm…) by opening up our team activity to go see The Avengers.
Matinee baby, $6.00 – this is the bootstrap way!
So, without any of my team’s permission (or opinion) I have decided to attempt to match them up with what I feel is their Avenger-counterpart.
#LOL
(If feelings are hurt, then… sorry. … … No I’m not.) Continue Reading…
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