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Teague Hopkins

Mindful Product Management

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Productivity

Aug 29 2012

Good Enough Technology

Most people don’t need the cutting edge. If you do audio production, you might need top-of-the-line monitor speakers or pro headphones, but most people are content with the earbuds that come with their iPods. If you make your living trading stocks in real time, you might need a blazing-fast and redundant internet connection, but most people are perfectly happy with their garden-variety DSL or cable internet connections. If your business is large-format photo printing, you probably need to invest in the best printers you can afford, but for most people, a standard inkjet or laser printer is all they need.

What You Really Need

So what do you need for those activities that are not part of your core? If your business is feeding the homeless or providing a safe space for victims of domestic abuse, you still have office needs. You still need to coordinate your team and file your paperwork. You could invest in high-powered ultraportable notebooks, a dedicated server, and a fat data pipe. In fact, some technology consultants will tell you that these investments will pay for themselves in increased productivity. They may, but that doesn’t mean they are the best investment for your organization.

Pareto principle

Photo by Mary-Kay G

The Pareto Principle, named for Vilfredo Pareto, and nicknamed the 80-20 Rule, states that roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers; 80% of the world’s income is controlled by 20% of the world’s population; 80% of healthcare resources in the USA are consumed by 20% of the patients.

How to Leverage Pareto

If the Pareto principle holds true for technology spending (and in my experience, it is close enough to be a good estimate), it follows that your organization can have 80% of the existing cutting-edge technical capacity for 20% of the potential cost. Cloud hosting services, Google apps for business, and internet connections that are fast enough for almost all organizations can all represent significant savings for you and help focus on using your resources to serve the organization’s mission.

What will you do with the 80% of the cost that you have saved? If technology is not core to your business there is probably a much more powerful point of leverage for that investment. Get your good-enough technology, and put the rest of your investment towards your organization’s core mission.

Written by Teague Hopkins · Categorized: Main · Tagged: Business, Customer, Pareto principle, Productivity, Technology, Vilfredo Pareto

Jul 30 2012

Measuring Productivity

When you zoom out, the measure of productivity often changes.

Photo by Neys
  • For a single-minded programmer, productivity might be lines of code committed.
  • For a development team, productivity might be working code.
  • When you zoom out to a product view, working code that implements a feature no one uses is waste, but implementing features that people use is productivity.
  • Zoom out further to a business level, and it’s not just about using the feature, it’s about that feature making the customer more likely to pay for your service or product.
  • Zoom out again to an ecosystem (or, for you MBAs, value chain/system) level, and it’s not just about what people will pay for, but what adds value to their lives. And not just any value, but adds more value than the cost of providing said value. (N.B.: people are not rational actors, and will sometimes pay for things that don’t add value to their life.)

Now we’re in the realm of things that are hard to measure. And zooming out once again to a global level doesn’t make it any easier. What does productivity look like on a global scale? Even if we are creating value for people at a direct cost lower than the amount of value produced, are we factoring in the negative externalities to our productivity? If we are introducing pollutants, or stress, or social inequality into the world, are we truly being productive?

I don’t have the answers, but I’d love to start a conversation.

Written by Teague Hopkins · Categorized: Main · Tagged: Business, Customer, Economics, Productivity, Technology

Sep 28 2011

The Startup Primer

[box]Welcome to the Startup Primer – a collection of 55 articles about the challenges of startups. If you are launching your startup, preparing to start, or if you’re already on the way to living the entrepreneurial dream, you need to read these articles.[/box]

Table of Contents

  1. Before You Start
  2. On Founders
    1. Just for Non-Technical Founders
  3. Team
    1. Starting the Team (Co-Founders)
    2. Building the Team
    3. Keeping (and motivating) the Team
  4. Boards and Advisors
  5. Marketing
    1. Social Media
  6. Product

Before You Start

  • A startup is an organization formed to search for (not execute) a repeatable and scalable business model – http://bit.ly/f5qcGv
  • So you want to do a startup, eh? – http://slidesha.re/iQrovv
  • 5 things you should know before starting a company – http://bit.ly/ql9xcj
Top

On Founders

  • How Great Entrepreneurs Think – http://bit.ly/fbewnn (Hint: Effectual Reasoning)
  • How Running A Business Changes The Way You Think – http://bit.ly/qVzb8W
  • The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur: 47% of successful entrepreneurs have at least a Master’s degree – http://t.co/kj4WICE
  • 5 Surprising Traits Of Successful Entrepreneurs – http://huff.to/nuHzPu
  • What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology – http://tcrn.ch/gOxnNf
  • 13 Things You Must Do Every Week As A Startup CEO – http://bit.ly/gLuaCK
  • Before product-market fit, find passion-market fit – http://bit.ly/qvczRJ
  • “The notion that working longer hours is correlated to better business results is a pernicious social pathology” – http://bit.ly/peikcO
Top

Just for Non-Technical Founders

  • Tips For Getting Started For The Non-Technical Web Entrepreneur – http://bit.ly/juR4ZG
  • How to pull your weight as a non-technical co-founder – http://bit.ly/ne66h1
  • Please, please, stop asking how to find a technical co-founder. “You don’t find a technical co-founder, you earn one.” – http://bit.ly/j9K54Z
Top

Team 

Starting the Team (Co-Founders)

  • The Co-Founder Mythology – http://bit.ly/ksqNiA
  • How to pick a co-founder – Venture Hacks – http://bit.ly/fwZddI
  • 10 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Picking a Business Partner – http://bit.ly/pXfVxr
Top

Building the Team

  • The Best Resources on Hiring for Founders – http://bit.ly/jCikuW
  • One of the best essays on recruiting a high performing team for your startup – http://bit.ly/fYcqj9
  • What to look for in a UI designer – http://bit.ly/ecXnfM
  • Hiring Developers: You’re Doing It Wrong – http://bit.ly/gbNFxs
  • Why Engineers Distrust Business People – http://bit.ly/lS4rVk
  • How Designers Want to be Contacted – http://bit.ly/p9dPQN
  • Don’t Hire Senior People, Hire People Who Punch Above Their Weight Class – http://read.bi/ibVrw6
Top

Keeping (and motivating) the Team

  • Reminding your team “why?” can double productivity. Why does your organization exist? – http://bit.ly/fn4MYk
  • Bored People Quit – http://bit.ly/ofhvwn
  • Do it Without Titles – http://bit.ly/pNqAF3
  • 5 Reasons Why Your Business Should Embrace The Virtual Office – http://bit.ly/oTBAJj
  • Caring – http://bit.ly/mItMB6
  • Three Signs You Have A Management Problem, And That Problem Might Be You – http://read.bi/eBBwxZ
  • How to Build a Bootstrapping Culture – http://bit.ly/gNmzdL
Top

Boards and Advisors

  • It’s Time to Reinvent the Boardroom – http://bit.ly/pVShG9
  • The Benefits Of The Perfect Independent Board Member – http://t.co/8P5juNX
  • How to ask for help – http://bit.ly/kSx2gH
  • Don’t hate on VCs; Generalizing is dangerous – http://awe.sm/5Ilib
Top

Marketing

  • 17 Mutable Suggestions For Naming A Startup – http://bit.ly/pfGuNZ
  • The New Rules of Branding Your Business Online – http://bit.ly/egoqGS
  • The 5 Minute Guide To Cheap Startup Advertising – http://bit.ly/ih8O24
  • “My Friends” is Not a Market Segment – http://bit.ly/lT04Qy
  • How Engineering-Based Marketing can “beat the stuffing” out of Traditional Marketing – http://bit.ly/pZD9cb
  • Do Not Build Your Startup Messages for Your Grandmother – http://bit.ly/oYB01O
  • Email Is (Still) Important And Here Is Why – http://bit.ly/q2oVOg
  • When failure is cheap, why not give it a go? – http://bit.ly/gqLlBx
  • The real reasons why startups go into stealth mode – http://bit.ly/gW3dsV
Top

Social Media

  • How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business – http://bit.ly/eIoANf
  • 5 Tips To Make Your Startup’s Twitter Account Stand Out – http://t.co/YUI03lc
  • Why I Will Never, Ever Hire A “Social Media Expert” – http://read.bi/kwh0b3
  • Gary Vaynerchuk: “99.5% of the people that walk around and say they are a social media expert or guru are clowns” – http://tcrn.ch/kctz9Q
Top

Product

  • How to start your startup in 4 steps – http://bit.ly/l4KuQZ
  • Never say “no,” but rarely say “yes.” – http://awe.sm/5Iix1
  • Personas: The Foundation of a Great User Experience from @uxmag – http://bit.ly/hivV32
  • Crash Course: Design for Startups – http://bit.ly/g8Chci
  • Business Objectives vs. User Experience – http://bit.ly/dYDnZk
  • Good Software Takes Ten Years. Get Used To it – http://bit.ly/gavKUj
  • Launch your site too soon – http://bit.ly/kyUsdX
Top

Special Bonus: Equity and Funding

    This primer is not intended to be a comprehensive resource for those seeking investors but these articles should give you a starting point for exploring your options.

  • Intro to Stock and Options for Startup Employees and Founders – http://bit.ly/U5Ro6z
  • Where to Look for Different Amounts of Funding – http://bit.ly/lSsHfp
Top

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Written by Teague Hopkins · Categorized: Main · Tagged: Business, Culture, Entrepreneur, Failure, Management, Marketing, Productivity, User

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