Reworking the way we do business
If you’ve been on this blog before, then you already saw a few mentions about 37signals, creator of Basecamp, Highrise and other great products. They recently launched a book: REWORK. It’is the logical sequel of their first book “Getting Real”, where they were exploring the key concepts which they have learned and used to build their products. That first book was focusing on building an application more then anything else. But many of the concepts they were applying at building a great product, they also applied at a higher level, management a successfull business. So a few years later, it was time for REWORK to go out, a summary of pretty much every interesting concept they explored in their blog “Signal vs. Noise”, in their talks, their conferences, etc…
I’m biased, I know. I simply love pretty much everything they do. But that book was seriously awesome. It is so refreshing to see a company NOT following the “usual” path of doing business. You know, the one we see everywhere, the one they teach in business schools, the one the boomers are convinced is the only way to do business. The one with a 5 years marketing plan, and a sales VP and 200 sales representative, and 100 project managers to manage 100 developers. The one where the executive don’t talk to the “simple people”. The one where profit is the ONLY reason you do things. The one where you need a board of directors, because you brought in venture capitalists, and where you have your exit strategy all planned. The one where, to be able to give 1 million dollars bonus to the CEO, they needed to cut 20 jobs. The one that do not care about its clients. The one that tells you your call is important to us. The one you need to fight to be heard, as an employee or as a client.
It’s funny because when I started my company in 2003, (yes, a little bit younger and a lot more naive 
, I had this belief: the only reason you should be in business, is to help people. That concept got me some rolling eyes from many people, probably thinking I was just another teen still lost in the Romantic age who should have read more business books and less Victor Hugo.
But I was deeply convinced of that. If your primary focus is not to solve problems, help people, make their life, their family, their business better, then you are doomed to fail, one day or another, whether it’s in 10 months or 10 years. And yes, I know, that concept can not stand alone, it needs to be backed up by a second one which is: you have to make profit. Because if you don’t generate value, if you don’t create profit, then you are equally doomed to fail, and much more earlier!
37signals is doing all this, and in a beautiful way. They create great products that solve problems, they create great value and generate profits. They have encapsulated all that they believe in, all that they have learned since their beginning into REWORK. I totally recommend this book to anyone interested in learning how to do things differently. Because yes, it is possible! You can do things a better way. And you should !
Tom Peters summarized this in a phrase in his book: “In search of excellence”:
Take care of the customer and the business will take care of itself.
Absolutely. Gary Vaynerchuck said the something similar in chapter 9 of Crush It. The chapter is called “The best marketing strategy ever”. And the entire content of this chapter goes like this:
I think it says it all
That’s been at the heart of our floral and landscape business – we love what we do and when traditional ‘business’ gets in the way, the fun goes out of it.
I listened to a recent 37Signals podcast and they push back on the suggestion their methods are radical – what they say is radical is sitting in endless meetings, tying up thousands of dollars in salaries during those meetings instead of getting stuff done.