Conceptual Clarity

I was reading BRW Magazine this week and noticed a quote from Scott Farquhar, co-founder of Atlassian

Hire young people.  Staff enjoy working in a young company.  No one says, “Wow, I work in a company with lots of old people”.  Young people are flexible and have no baggage or pre-conceived ideas - they are cheaper and they grow with the business.

Scott Farquhar, BRW July - September 2007

Now if you’ve read some of my previous articles you’ll know I’m a fan of what Atlassian is doing, both with their software and for Australian IT.  I’ve met their team on a few occasions and their company culture is something to be envied.  But, while I know quotes can often be taken out of context, I couldn’t help but get a little upset at Scott’s quote.

At only 26 I’m a fully fledged, card carrying member of Gen Y.  Yet, I’ve had the invaluable opportunity of working with many older (I won’t call anyone old) people, at Ephox, Ephox’s partner organizations, other business connections and through my MBA.  Those older people have excellent ideas, are definitely flexible and can bring a wealth of experience to many situations.  Conversely I’ve met many younger people who can be stubborn, close minded and naive.

While it may sound cliched, I believe the kind of age that Scott is talking about is truly only a state of mind.  I don’t think anyone ever wants to be perceived as “old” and certainly not the kind of “old” that carries around baggage and a wealth of preconceptions.  However, I think there are many organizations out there who artificially “age” their employees.  Organizations whose culture kills innovation with processes and cost efficiencies.  Organizations who don’t support their employees and cannot see the value in suggestions from those at the coal face. 

If you want innovative people, if you want your people to be unafraid of baggage and to discard their pre-conceived ideas then you need to support them, whether they are young or old, through the culture of your company.  If you think I’m crazy then check out the work of Ricardo Semler at Semco and see what a huge difference a supportive company culture can make.  Whether the people in your organization are young or not-so-young, if your culture enables them to think freely and is supportive of continuous innovation and improvement then to me that is more of a recipe for success then hiring any number of young people.

Hire the best people, independent of their age.  Support those people and their ideas throughout your organization.  Listen to them and appreciate the perspectives and experience they bring whether they are young or old.  Encourage them to be flexible and to challenge preconceptions.  In return provide your staff with flexibility, understanding and challenge your own preconceptions.  Your business and it’s people will grow together.

Damien Fitzpatrick, Conceptual Clarity - August 2007

A couple of weeks ago I had to lay a floating wooden floor at our new house.  This put me in a bit of a difficult situation as I am not exactly what you’d call “handy” with anything other than a computer.  So I turned to someone who I knew I could rely on to help me whatever situation I found myself in - my dad.  While Dad (Paul to the rest of the world) knew nothing about laying floating wooden floors, he was still a great foreman and I really appreciated his help, I couldn’t have done it without him.   However, I found it difficult to really convey to Dad how much I appreciated his help.

This caused me to think about all those other people that I rely on both in professional and personal capacities.  I couldn’t get through an average day without having to work with people and indeed rely on many of them.  As a knowledge worker it’s really people that enable me to achieve what I have to at work.  Despite this, sometimes I find it’s easy to forget those who enable me to do my job.

As I reflected on this I realized how much my success and even the success of Ephox depends on the relationships we have built over time.  There are people who I know I can call and indeed rely on to get something done, get it done to the best of their ability and get it done well.  After looking back on my experiences in laying the floor though, I began to wonder if we really recognize the importance of those every day relationships.   So a big thank you to all of you, whether you’re in the Ephox engineering team, a partner organization or even my father, I appreciate the help, and don’t let me forget how much you’ve helped me out.

It's been a while since I last wrote a post, in fact it's been almost two months.  However, despite the lack of posts things have been quite busy for me and, unfortunately, I just haven't managed to blog recently, despite having the intention to.  So this morning I promised I'd write a post and here it is.

I'm going to try and get back to posting every couple of days with something interesting, but before I get into that, here's a run down on what's been happening.

Role Changes

• The biggest news is that I'm no longer the EditLive! Product Manager, that title now goes to Rob (and he's doing a great job so far).  I am still at Ephox and I am still a product manager, only the products have changed.  I am now heading up our efforts with both IBM and a new initiative called E2.0.  For now I'm going to let that remain a mysterious code-word but you can be certain that there will be some more blog posts about that shortly.
• I'm also no longer in charge of non-IBM integrations with EditLive!.  That job now goes to Adrian.  This is an area where my attention was often lacking and I think that Adrian is going to do an excellent job.

Travel News

• I spent most of April in the USA talking with clients and attending conferences and came home with a suitcase full of shopping, great feedback on E2.0 and some interesting experiences in capital raising.  This time I was in the Bay Area for the whole time which made a nice change from my usually hectic travel schedules.
• I visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium whilst there and I must say it was amazing.  If you're ever in the Bay Area and can take the drive from San Francisco down to Monterey then I highly recommend visiting.  A few tips though:
  • Visit during the week, it was incredibly crowded on the weekend
  • Don't go when it's raining

Business News

• I've spent some time recently helping out a few friends with some business ideas.  Now, I know from meeting a lot of people in "The Valley" that I'm no business guru, but I do like to help where I can.  This has really opened my eyes to a few things and I hope to have some interesting posts about that in the coming week or two.
• I attended the Web 2.0 Expo whilst in San Francisco and was a little awed at the level of attention various technologies were getting.  I was excited by some of the demonstrations I saw, while many others had me wondering if another bubble was emerging - I guess time will tell.
• After talking with clients and with many a representative of Enterprise 2.0 startups I was amazed at the growing dichotomy in business software between traditional and cautious approaches to business software and new, innovative and consumerized approaches. Both approaches certainly have benefits and both approaches have often vocal proponents and opponents.  We are certainly living in interesting times and I'm going to be very interested to see what level of success Enterprise 2.0 startups (Ephox included) are going to have amongst the traditional enterprise customers and vendors.  Whatever happens I'm more convinced than ever that it's going to be a fun ride for the next few years and I'm glad that I'm on board.

School News

• Finally I am back at university, taking a business law subject to get that much closer to finishing my MBA.  I've only had one class so far, but it appears that Australia's legal framework may not be quite as dry as I once thought.  Certainly having an interesting lecturer helps on that front so a heads up to Gavin Nicholson (unfortunately I couldn't find if Gavin has a blog, so I've just linked to his QUT staff profile).

Mike from Atlassian recently responded to the obvious derth of Australian startups on the software scene.  It's an interesting, complex and somewhat disappointing issue and it lead me to think about the issues facing software companies in my home state of Queensland, Australia.  Disturbingly though I think that the issues I'm seeing might be a little more fundamental than a lack of startups.  It appears that Queensland is, or soon will be, experiencing a lack of people to start those startups.  Put simply, I think we will soon be running low on IT graduates.

Queensland is currently riding the wave of Australia's mineral boom, a great thing for the state's economy.  Here in sunny Queensland we have enormous coal, alluminum and other mineral reserves, all of which are adding to the economy, offering jobs and attracting investment in spades (excuse the pun).  However, there is bad news in the offing for some other industries, including IT.  I've heard that IT-related enrolements are significantly down in two of Queensland's key universities, the Queensland University of Technology and the University of Queensland.  They are down so much that QUT has dramatically reduced the size of its IT faculty and UQ is preparing to locate IT teaching at one of its secondary campuses outside of central Brisbane.

Further to this one of the Australian Fairfax papers recently published an article indicating that this is a national trend (it's quite an interesting article, so give it a read), with IT enrolements down at many east-coast universities.  For interest sake I also did a quick survey to see if jobs were also down, but they aren't.  A quick survey shows there are many jobs with IT staff of all kinds - from the help desk through to product management - in good demand all over Australia.

So there's not been a reduction in the number of IT jobs, nor does there appear to be a reduction in salaries, if anything they've increased.  Indeed as the flow-on effects of the economic boom kick in surely there will likely be more positions available with good salaries.  Though, from Ephox's experience in recruiting it is becoming harder to find the right people to fill IT positions and I expect that this is being felt throughout the industry. 

As an industry we should be asking ourselves how we can make this industry more attractive to young people seeking a career.  When I was at university I had never heard of product management and I never expected to be travelling the globe visiting clients, the industry has definitely delivered all I expected and then more.  We need to do a better job of articulating the opportunities within IT, the deversity of roles available and the fact that while the bubble burst, IT never went away and is a much needed part of business and our daily lives. 

Today I had an issue with one of of Australia's telecommunications companies and needed to call through to their customer service center.  This company is not particularly well known for it's customer service and support, but I must say that today I was pleasantly surprised.  They solved my problem quickly and cheerfully and I went on my way a happy customer.

This really got me thinking about the role of client support and service within companies today and how those people working tirelessly in support are the unsung heroes of many companies.  I know quite a few people in this kind of role and I realize that it's certainly not the most glamorous of roles in a company and it can be pretty thankless at times, so let me start by thanking all those of you who work in support and especially those supporting Ephox products, both at Ephox and at client sites.

Computer related customer support has long had a stigma about it.  I am sure many of you have seen parodies of unhelpful technical support staff and maybe even been unlucky enough to have had a bad experience or two.  Certainly in this day and age of globalization and the internet, as consumers it's often the case that we never speak with, personally e-mail or interact with representatives of the companies whose products we are using.  Customer self service has greatly increased - purchasing airline tickets or ordering a Dell PC are great examples of this - and with the introduction of self-service many have been under pressure to further reduce customer support costs, particularly post-sale - after all the money is in the bank right?

However, take a look at support from another angle and it becomes immensely more valuable and more important in today's marketplace, particularly the Internet marketplace.  As social beings people basically want to make connections with people, yet in situations where products are bought and sold online interactions between your clients and your staff can be few and far between.  In fact, its likely that most of those interactions are going to be through your support desk.  It's those experiences of your company that your clients are going to remember and theres a good chance they will tell their friends and colleagues about them.  Indeed, it's those experiences that your company may well live and die by, at least in the eyes of your clients.  Though perhaps even more importantly, these experiences give us within companies the opportunity to learn more about our clients - what do they want, what features they are using, what we can improve, what do they find difficult, what do they wish the product could do or, from one person to another, whether they are having a good day or not.

If I was to look at support in this context I would say that the challenge is not "how do we reduce our support costs?" but rather "how do we make our support more valuable to our clients and to our company?".  The value is definitely there, the challenge is to realize that value!  As a member of the software industry I think we still have a long way to go.  I make support calls to our clients today and often they are surprised that I've called them and that the response is so fast but at the end of the day it is me who should be thanking them, for taking the time to share their experiences with our software and their real-world use cases for it, each call is a valuable learning experience for me (so thank you if you're a client reading this!).  There are glimpses of brilliance in the support field out there though.  An example of a company who is doing this right is Atlassian.  Their promise and delivery of Legendary Service shows that they really understand the importance of supporting their clients.

Finally thank you once again to everyone in any kind of support role out there.  Sometimes it might be tiring, often it may be thankless, but trust me, we couldn't do without you and to some of us you're worth your weight in gold.