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I like this very much: "In reality, process is not my problem. It’s what discussions around new processes often preview within a company. Lack of focus. Peacet

I like this very much: "In reality, process is not my problem. It’s what discussions around new processes often preview within a company. Lack of focus. Peacetime thinking. Complacency." I recently wrote a small book for small startups called "One on one meetings are underrated; group meetings waste time" and I have gotten a lot of pushback regarding my emphasis on intuition, pragmatism, and favoring direct action over process. And over and over again, people reach out to me with some variation of "So you think the people who run Google are stupid? You think the people who run Apple are stupid? You think all of these brilliant people are actually idiots?" And my defense has been: "No, I just think those companies are large, and my advice is for small startups. Small startups are different." It should be common sense to say that small startups are different, and need to operate by other rules. But I have noticed, there are some people in the tech industry who seem to think that the way a small startup becomes a huge tech giant is by imitating that huge tech giant exactly, including all of that tech giant's "best practices." But what is "best practice" at a huge company will not work at a small startup. In fact, many of those processes would be fatal, at a small company. They'd cause you to move too slowly, and they'd also cause you to give up the few advantages that you actually have as a small company, such as the ability to trust one another (when the whole team is just 5 people, it is easier to trust one another than when you've a company of 10,000 people).

p0larboy 5y ago
Any chance we get to see that book? I constantly trying to improve my company process (we are small, < 10 people) and I like to see how others are handling operation.
doctor_eval 5y ago
While my experience matches yours exactly, I just wanted to add to this point: > "One on one meetings are underrated; group meetings waste time" My rule of thumb is, “up to 5 people is a meeting; more than 5 is a presentation.”
- mark_undoio 5y ago
  > My rule of thumb is, “up to 5 people is a meeting; more than 5 is a presentation.” I like this. I do think it's possible to still have an effective meeting with more people (up to, I don't know maybe 8-10?) but it becomes increasingly important to have tight rules around how the meeting runs and what it's supposed to achieve.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    Big meetings are often like everyone takes a turn to talk because they’re supposed to, and a few people argue poorly over some point derailing any plan. I’ve often been in them in the baffling position of seeing two people try to discuss something in a way that’s abundantly clear that neither of them understands what the other is saying in more than a very basic way. You can definitely have useful big meetings but it gets harder with increasing size. Rules are one defense, but having a room of people actually good at communicating is much better. And really, do everything you can to kill the meetings where it’s just an obligatory “everybody figure out something to say”
    - mark_undoio 5y ago
      > Big meetings are often like everyone takes a turn to talk because they’re supposed to, and a few people argue poorly over some point derailing any plan. Yes! The meetings where a small number of people are just having a debate with spectators are particularly awful for everybody concerned. > You can definitely have useful big meetings but it gets harder with increasing size. One of the most frustrating meeting dysfunctions I've seen is where large numbers of people are mentally checked out of discussions they're actually needed for - they keep needing stuff to be repeated, which results in others mentally checking out. Eventually it's like a punishment from Hades in which your meeting can never achieve anything but will never end until it does. In the past I've actually run a (somewhat) larger meeting by applying pretty tight time constraints. Actually saying "we're going to get this process fully done in X minutes" focuses minds and makes it become true. > Rules are one defense, but having a room of people actually good at communicating is much better. Back when we were in a physical office I also experimented with banning use of laptops in larger meetings - I think it did actually improve the quality (and speed) of communication in the meeting. But, generally, building that habit of good communication in a team feels really hard. And the shift towards massively more remote working over the last few years has changed the landscape a bit - it seems much easier to stay silent or check out of a video conference. Any suggestions from HN for good principles / reading materials on this?
pjc50 5y ago
There's a lot of survivorship bias. For any given process or practice, it can be hard to tell whether Google is successful because of it or despite it. A profitable or well-funded company in an uncompetitive market can afford to waste staggering amounts of time and money indulging the whims of senior managers, or even just weird internal cultures.
- mgkimsal 5y ago
  > A profitable or well-funded company in an uncompetitive market can afford to waste staggering amounts of time and money indulging the whims of senior managers For a while, even in a competitive market, they can waste money. I'm reminded of a friend who worked for a large national book seller in the late 90s. He was placed on a project to investigate the company branding (and possibly producing) their own wine, for sale in stores. In-store cafes were such a hit, upscale wine sales (and profits) would be huge right? This was green-lit from some sr management who... coincidentally, was a wine buff, and they put a team together to go research the wine industry (which meant... travel to wineries for research, etc). This project never got off the ground, but the team learned a lot about wine and retailing wine for about a year, then was disbanded. The company started losing a lot of ground within a few years, and was defunct shortly after. Rather than pursuing better ways of accommodating the coming internet wave... they squandered whatever chance they may have had on ... lunacy. Another couple of contacts I had there were showing me their own skunkworks "personalized reading lists" (think barebones 'goodreads' system in 2000). Projects like that were frowned on and not supported, in favor of "wine exploration".

p0larboy 5y ago

Any chance we get to see that book? I constantly trying to improve my company process (we are small, < 10 people) and I like to see how others are handling operation.

doctor_eval 5y ago

While my experience matches yours exactly, I just wanted to add to this point: > "One on one meetings are underrated; group meetings waste time" My rule of thumb is, “up to 5 people is a meeting; more than 5 is a presentation.”

mark_undoio 5y ago
> My rule of thumb is, “up to 5 people is a meeting; more than 5 is a presentation.” I like this. I do think it's possible to still have an effective meeting with more people (up to, I don't know maybe 8-10?) but it becomes increasingly important to have tight rules around how the meeting runs and what it's supposed to achieve.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  Big meetings are often like everyone takes a turn to talk because they’re supposed to, and a few people argue poorly over some point derailing any plan. I’ve often been in them in the baffling position of seeing two people try to discuss something in a way that’s abundantly clear that neither of them understands what the other is saying in more than a very basic way. You can definitely have useful big meetings but it gets harder with increasing size. Rules are one defense, but having a room of people actually good at communicating is much better. And really, do everything you can to kill the meetings where it’s just an obligatory “everybody figure out something to say”
  - mark_undoio 5y ago
    > Big meetings are often like everyone takes a turn to talk because they’re supposed to, and a few people argue poorly over some point derailing any plan. Yes! The meetings where a small number of people are just having a debate with spectators are particularly awful for everybody concerned. > You can definitely have useful big meetings but it gets harder with increasing size. One of the most frustrating meeting dysfunctions I've seen is where large numbers of people are mentally checked out of discussions they're actually needed for - they keep needing stuff to be repeated, which results in others mentally checking out. Eventually it's like a punishment from Hades in which your meeting can never achieve anything but will never end until it does. In the past I've actually run a (somewhat) larger meeting by applying pretty tight time constraints. Actually saying "we're going to get this process fully done in X minutes" focuses minds and makes it become true. > Rules are one defense, but having a room of people actually good at communicating is much better. Back when we were in a physical office I also experimented with banning use of laptops in larger meetings - I think it did actually improve the quality (and speed) of communication in the meeting. But, generally, building that habit of good communication in a team feels really hard. And the shift towards massively more remote working over the last few years has changed the landscape a bit - it seems much easier to stay silent or check out of a video conference. Any suggestions from HN for good principles / reading materials on this?

pjc50 5y ago

There's a lot of survivorship bias. For any given process or practice, it can be hard to tell whether Google is successful because of it or despite it. A profitable or well-funded company in an uncompetitive market can afford to waste staggering amounts of time and money indulging the whims of senior managers, or even just weird internal cultures.

mgkimsal 5y ago
> A profitable or well-funded company in an uncompetitive market can afford to waste staggering amounts of time and money indulging the whims of senior managers For a while, even in a competitive market, they can waste money. I'm reminded of a friend who worked for a large national book seller in the late 90s. He was placed on a project to investigate the company branding (and possibly producing) their own wine, for sale in stores. In-store cafes were such a hit, upscale wine sales (and profits) would be huge right? This was green-lit from some sr management who... coincidentally, was a wine buff, and they put a team together to go research the wine industry (which meant... travel to wineries for research, etc). This project never got off the ground, but the team learned a lot about wine and retailing wine for about a year, then was disbanded. The company started losing a lot of ground within a few years, and was defunct shortly after. Rather than pursuing better ways of accommodating the coming internet wave... they squandered whatever chance they may have had on ... lunacy. Another couple of contacts I had there were showing me their own skunkworks "personalized reading lists" (think barebones 'goodreads' system in 2000). Projects like that were frowned on and not supported, in favor of "wine exploration".