Built to Last (2): Clock Building, Not Time Telling

Had started reading "Built to Last" since a while; and realized that it's not just about building a company that would last for couple decades, but also it's about building a "Personality" & a "Nation" that could last for decades as well.

So, I thought I should keep some notes/excerpts

Part 1 here

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Imagine you met a remarkable person who could look at the sun or stars at any time of day or night and state the exact time and date: "it's April 23, 1401, 2:36 AM, and 12 seconds." This person would be an amazing time teller, and we'd probably revere that person for the ability to tell time. But wouldn't that person be even more amazing if, instead of telling time, he or she built a clock that could tell the time forever, even after he or she was dead and gone?

Having a great idea or being a charismatic visionary leader is "time telling"; building a company that can prosper for beyond the presence of any single leader and through multiple product life cycles is "clock building".

The primary output of visionary companies builders efforts is not the tangible implementation of great idea, the expression of a charismatic personality, the gratification of their ego, or the accumulation of personal wealth. Their greatest creation is the company itself and what it stands for.

Waiting for "The Great Idea" Might Be a Bad Idea:
If you are a prospective entrepreneur with the desire to start and build a visionary company but have not yet taken the plunge because you don't have a "great idea," we encourage you to lift from your shoulders the burden of the great-idea myth. Indeed, the evidence suggests that it might be better to not obsess on finding a great idea before launching a company. Why? Because the great-idea approach shifts your attention away from seeing the company as your ultimate creation.

The Company Itself is The Ultimate Creation:
 We had to shift from seeing the company as a vehicle for the product to seeing the products as a vehicle to the company. We had to embrace the crucial difference between time and telling and clock building.

The builders of visionary companies were highly persistent, living to the motto: Never, never, never give up.But what to persist with? Their answer: The company. Be prepared to kill, revise, or evolve an idea, but never give up on the company.

If you're involved in building and managing a company, the shift to seeing the company as the ultimate creation, has significant implications for how you spend your time. It means spending less time thinking about a specific product lines and market strategies, and spending more of your time thinking about organization design. It means spending less of your time being time teller, and spending more of your time being a clock builder.

The continual stream of great products and services from highly visionary companies stems from them being outstanding organizations, not the other way around. 

The Message For CEOs, Managers, and Entrepreneurs:
 One of the most important steps you can take in building a visionary company is not an action, but a shift in prospective. We're asking you to think less in terms of being a brilliant product visionary or seeking the personality characteristics of charismatic leadership, and to think more in terms of being an organizational visionary and building the characteristics of visionary company.

You don't have to sit around waiting until you're lucky enough to have a great idea. You don't have to accept the false view that until your company has a charismatic visionary leader, it cannot be a visionary company. There is no mysterious quality or elusive magic. Indeed, once you learn the essentials, you -and all those around you- can just get down to the hard work of making your company a visionary company.

No "Tyranny Of The OR" (Embrace The "Genius of The "AND"):
Visionary companies do not oppress themselves with what we call the "Tyranny of the OR" - the rational view that cannot easily accept paradox, that cannot live with two seemingly contradictory forces or ideas at the same time. The "Tyranny of the OR" pushes people to believe that things must be either A OR B, but not both. It makes such proclamations as:

• "You can have change OR stability."
• " You can be conservative OR Bold."
• "You can have low cost OR high quality."

A visionary company doesn't seek balance between short-term and long-term. It seeks to do very well in the short-term and very well in the long-term. 

Build to Last: The Best of The Best

Had started reading "Built to Last" since a while; and realized that it's not just about building a company that would last for couple decades, but also it's about building a "Personality" & a "Nation" that could last for decades as well.

So, I thought I should keep some notes/excerpts

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What is a visionary company? Visionary companies are premier institutions - the crown jewels - in their industries, widely admired by their peers and having a long track record of making a significant impact on the world around us. The key point is that a visionary company is an organization -an institution. All individual leaders, no matter how charismatic or visionary, eventually die; and all visionary products and services - all "great ideas"- eventually become obsolete.

12 Shattered Myths:

• Myth 1: It takes a great idea to start a great company.
  Reality: Visionary companies often get off to a slow start, but with the long race.
• Myth 2: Visionary companies require great and charismatic visionary leaders.
  Reality: They sought to be clock builders, not time tellers.
• Myth 3: The most successful companies exist first and foremost to maximize profits.
  Reality: Visionary companies pursue a cluster of objectives, of which making money is only one -and not necessarily the primary one. Yes, they seek profits, but they're equally guided by a core ideology -core values and sense of purpose beyond just making money.
• Myth 4: Visionary companies share a common subset of "correct" core values.
  Reality: The crucial variable is not the content of a company's ideology, but how deeply it believes its ideology and how consistently it lives, breathes, and expresses it in all that it does. Visionary companies do not ask, "What should we value?" They ask, "What do we actually value deep down to our toes?".
• Myth 5: The only constant is change.
  Reality: a visionary company almost religiously preserves its core ideology -changing it seldom, if ever. Yet, while keeping their core ideologues tightly fixed, visionary companies display a powerful drive for progress that enables them to change and adopt without compromising their cherished core ideals.
• Myth 6: Blue-chip companies play it safe.
  Reality: Visionary companies have judiciously used BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) to stimulate progress and blast the comparison companies at crucial points in history.
• Myth 7: Visionary companies are great places to work, for everyone.
  Reality: Only those who "fit" extremely well with the core ideology and demanding standards of a visionary company will find it a great place to work.
• Myth 8:  Highly successful companies make their best moves by brilliant and complex strategic planning.
  Reality: Visionary companies make some of their best moves by experimentation, trial and error, opportunism, and -quite literally- accident.
• Myth 9: Companies should hire outside CEOs to stimulate fundamental change.
  Reality: Home-grown management rules at the visionary companies to a far greater degree than at the comparison companies (by a factor of six). Time and again, they have dashed to bits the conventional wisdom that significant change and fresh ideas cannot come from inside.
• Myth 10: The most successful companies focus primarily on beating the competition.
  Reality: Visionary companies focus primary on beating themselves. Success and beating competitors comes to the visionary companies not so much as the end goal, but as a residual result of relentlessly asking the question "How can we improve ourselves to do better tomorrow than we did today?". They never think they've done "good enough".
• Myth 11: You can't have your cake and eat it too.
  Reality: Visionary companies embrace the "Genius of AND" - the paradoxical view that allows them to pursue both A AND B at the same time.
• Myth 12: Companies become visionary primary through "vision statement".
  Reality: Creating a statement can be a helpful step in building a visionary company, but it is only one of thousands of steps in a never-ending process of expressing the fundamental characteristic we identified across the visionary companies.

The Secret Sauce: Khaled Bichara at TEDxCairo

Maping a Domain Name to a Hosting Account

Two most essential things that you need to get started with your own website are a valid domain name and a web hosting account.

Domain name with .com, .net, .org or other such extensions (technically known as TLDs) can be booked with domain registrars like GoDaddy.com and Limedomains.com.

Hosting space for your website can be booked either through the same provider, or an altogether different company.

Once you have purchased both (a valid domain name and a web hosting account.), you will need to configure your domain name details, so that it points to the hosting space that you booked for your website. All of this may sound complicated so far, but the steps given below will allow you to map your domain name very easily:

Step 1: Define the Name Server details for your host with domain registrar

Your domain registrar will identify the path of your website host through the name servers. Details of the name servers are usually sent by the web hosting provider through an email, after you purchase the web hosting account.

A typical name server would look like NS1.<hosting provider site name>.com and NS2.<hosting provider site name>.com. For example, for Fatcow.com, which is a popular web hosting provider the name servers are NS1.fatcow.com and NS2.fatcow.com. You must copy these details and keep them ready for the next step.

Step 2: Update the Name Server Details through Domain Manager

Domain manager is a secure page, provided by your domain registrar, to access and configure domains purchased by you through them. You will need to login to the domain manager page by using the credentials you receive during domain registration.

You will see your domain name listed, on the main page of domain manager. The page that opens when you click your domain name, will show you details such as Administrative and Technical contacts for the domain as updated on the global WhoIs Database.

You will also find two fields pertaining to the Name Server. You will need to update this with the Name Server details of your host that you noted in step 1. When you save it, Domain Name Servers around the world will start updating themselves with the new destination of the domain. Although this process is quite fast, a safe time estimate stated by the domain registrar is 24 hours.

While this is happening, you can immediately go back to your host and complete the domain mapping process.

Step 3: Configure the domain through Hosting Control Panel

You will need to login to the control panel of your website host through the login details provided during hosting registration. In the control panel, you will see a link to Domain Manager or Domain Central. When you click on this, you will need to further select “Add new domain”. When you do this, you will be prompted for the Domain Name that you wish to map to the hosting account, and a folder path on your host that will serve as the root folder for your domain name.

Once you have entered the details, upload the contents of your website in the configured folder. You will find your website go live very shortly.

Note that in some cases it may take up to 24 hours for Domain Name Servers around the world to update the name of your website. So, be patient.

Reference:
http://www.serverschool.com/server-configuration/how-to-map-a-domain-name-to-a-hosting-account/

A Newbie Entrepreneur Quotes!

Have just turned 24 years old, with 6 months experience in entrepreneurship, and I found myself tweeting a pretty cool twits about start-ups & having your own business. So, maybe it's not a bad idea to have them all in one place ;)

1) To be #creative, u must be with #creative people! Otherwise is nothing but a west of time! #IRealized

2) I was so wrong evrytime i went where road leads instead of going where there's no road&leave my own trail #iRealized 

3) #No is the best ever invention humans invented,just after #Coffee!I'm grateful for everytime I said NO to someone or something!A7mduleAllah! 

4) On Day One, a #start-up is a #faith-based #initiative built on #guesses. #ILearned #Entrepreneurship 

5) #Smart #startups pivot or change their #business model based on results.It’s not a crisis,it’s part of road to #success. #ILearned

 

9 Deadliest Start-up Sins

Whether your venture is a new pizza parlor or the hottest new software product, beware: These nine flawed assumptions are toxic.

1. Assuming you know what the customer wants

First and deadliest of all is a founder’s unwavering belief that he or she understands who the customers will be, what they need, and how to sell it to them. Any dispassionate observer would recognize that on Day One, a start-up has no customers, and unless the founder is a true domain expert, he or she can only guess about the customer, problem, and business model.

On Day One, a start-up is a faith-based initiative built on guesses. To succeed, founders need to turn these guesses into facts as soon as possible by getting out of the building, asking customers if the hypotheses are correct, and quickly changing those that are wrong.

2. The “I know what features to build” flaw

The second flawed assumption is implicitly driven by the first. Founders, presuming they know their customers, assume they know all the features customers need.

These founders specify, design, and build a fully featured product using classic product development methods without ever leaving their building. Yet without direct and continuous customer contact, it’s unknown whether the features will hold any appeal to customers.

3. Focusing on the launch date

Traditionally, engineering, sales, and marketing have all focused on the immovable launch date. Marketing tries to pick an “event” (trade show, conference, blog, etc.) where they can “launch” the product. Executives look at that date and the calendar, working backward to ignite fireworks on the day the product is launched. Neither management nor investors tolerate “wrong turns” that result in delays.

The product launch and first customer ship dates are merely the dates when a product development team thinks the product’s first release is “finished.” It doesn’t mean the company understands its customers or how to market or sell to them, yet in almost every start-up, ready or not, departmental clocks are set irrevocably to “first customer ship.” Even worse, a start-up’s investors are managing their financial expectations by this date as well.

4. Emphasizing execution instead of testing, learning, and iteration

Established companies execute business models where customers, problems, and necessary product features are all knowns; start-ups, on the other hand, need to operate in a “search” mode as they test and prove every one of their initial hypotheses.

They learn from the results of each test, refine the hypothesis, and test again—all in search of a repeatable, scalable, and profitable business model. In practice, start-ups begin with a set of initial guesses, most of which will end up being wrong. Therefore, focusing on execution and delivering a product or service based on those initial, untested hypotheses is a going-out-of-business strategy.

5. Writing a business plan that doesn’t allow for trial and error 

 Traditional business plans and product development models have one great advantage: They provide boards and founders an unambiguous path with clearly defined milestones the board presumes will be achieved. Financial progress is tracked using metrics like income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow.

The problem is, none of these metrics are very useful because they don’t track progress against your start-up’s only goal: to find a repeatable and scalable business model.

6. Confusing traditional job titles with a startup’s needs 

Most startups simply borrow job titles from established companies. But remember, these are jobs in an organization that’s executing a known business model. The term “Sales” at an existing company refers to a team that repeatedly sells a known product to a well-understood group of customers with standard presentations, prices, terms, and conditions. Start-ups by definition have few, if any, of these. In fact, they’re out searching for them!

The demands of customer discovery require people who are comfortable with change, chaos, and learning from failure and are at ease working in risky, unstable situations without a roadmap.

7. Executing on a sales and marketing plan 

Hiring VPs and execs with the right titles but the wrong skills leads to further trouble as high-powered sales and marketing people arrive on the payroll to execute the “plan.” Executives and board members accustomed to measurable signs of progress will focus on these execution activities because this is what they know how to do (and what they believe they were hired to do). Of course, in established companies with known customers and markets, this focus makes sense.

And even in some start-ups in “existing markets,” where customers and markets are known, it might work. But in a majority of startups, measuring progress against a product launch or revenue plan is simply false progress, since it transpires in a vacuum absent real customer feedback and rife with assumptions that might be wrong.

8. Prematurely scaling your company based on a presumption of success
The business plan, its revenue forecast, and the product introduction model assume that every step a start-up takes proceeds flawlessly and smoothly to the next.

The model leaves little room for error, learning, iteration, or customer feedback. Even the most experienced executives are pressured to hire and staff per the plan regardless of progress. This leads to the next startup

9. Management by crisis, which leads to a death spiral 

The consequences of most start-up mistakes begin to show by the time of first customer ship, when sales aren’t happening according to “the plan.” Shortly thereafter, the sales VP is probably terminated as part of the “solution.”

A new sales VP is hired and quickly concludes that the company just didn’t understand its customers or how to sell them. Since the new sales VP was hired to “fix” sales, the marketing department must now respond to a sales manager who believes that whatever was created earlier in the company was wrong. (After all, it got the old VP fired, right?)

Reference:
http://steveblank.com/2012/05/14/9-deadliest-start-up-sins/