Excerpts From Rework

INTRODUCTION

The new reality

TAKEDOWNS

Ignore the real world

Learning from mistakes is overrated

Planning is guessing

Unless you’re a fortune-teller, long-term business planning is a fantasy. There are just too many factors that are out of your hands: market conditions, competitors, customers, the economy, etc. Writing a plan makes you feel in control of things you can’t actually control.

Why don’t we just call plans what they really are: guesses. Start referring to your business plans as business guesses, your financial plans as financial guesses, and your strategic plans as strategic guesses. Now you can stop worrying about them as much. They just aren’t worth the stress.

When you turn guesses into plans, you enter a danger zone. Plans let the past drive the future. They put blinders on you. “This is where we’re going because, well, that’s where we said we were going.” And that’s the problem: Plans are inconsistent with improvisation

And you have to be able to improvise. You have to be able to pick up opportunities that come along. Sometimes you need to say, “We’re going in a new direction because that’s what makes sense today.

Why grow?

Workaholism

Enough with “entrepreneurs”

Let’s retire the term entrepreneur. It’s outdated and loaded with baggage. It smells like a members-only club. Everyone should be encouraged to start his own business, not just some rare breed that self-identifies as entrepreneurs.

There’s a new group of people out there starting businesses. They’re turning profits yet never think of themselves as entrepreneurs. A lot of them don’t even think of themselves as business owners. They are just doing what they love on their own terms and getting paid for it.

So let’s replace the fancy-sounding word with something a bit more down-to-earth. Instead of entrepreneurs, let’s just call them starters. Anyone who creates a new business is a starter. You don’t need an MBA, a certificate, a fancy suit, a briefcase, or an above-average tolerance for risk. You just need an idea, a touch of confidence, and a push to get started.

Make a dent in the universe

Scratch your own itch

Start making something

No time is no excuse

The most common excuse people give: “There’s not enough time.” They claim they’d love to start a company, learn an instrument, market an invention, write a book, or whatever, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day.

Come on. There’s always enough time if you spend it right. And don’t think you have to quit your day job, either. Hang onto it and start work on your project at night.

Instead of watching TV or playing World of Warcraft, work on your idea. Instead of going to bed at ten, go to bed at eleven. We’re not talking about all-nighters or sixteen-hour days—we’re talking about squeezing out a few extra hours a week. That’s enough time to get something going.

Once you do that, you’ll learn whether your excitement and interest is real or just a passing phase. If it doesn’t pan out, you just keep going to work every day like you’ve been doing all along. You didn’t risk or lose anything, other than a bit of time, so it’s no big deal.

When you want something bad enough, you make the time—regardless of your other obligations. The truth is most people just don’t want it bad enough. Then they protect their ego with the excuse of time. Don’t let yourself off the hook with excuses. It’s entirely your responsibility to make your dreams come true.

Besides, the perfect time never arrives. You’re always too young or old or busy or broke or…

Draw a line in the sand

Mission statement impossible

Outside money is Plan Z

You need less than you think

Start a business, not a startup

Building to flip is building to flop

Less mass

PROGRESS

Embrace constraints

Build half a product, not a half-assed product

Start at the epicenter

Ignore the details early on

Making the call is making progress

Be a curator

You don’t make a great museum by putting all the art in the world into a single room. That’s a warehouse. What makes a museum great is the stuff that’s not on the walls. Someone says no. A curator is involved, making conscious decisions about what should stay and what should go. There’s an editing process. There’s a lot more stuff off the walls than on the walls. The best is a sub-sub-subset of all the possibilities.

"It's the stuff you leave out that matters. So constantly look for things to remove, simplify, and streamline. Be a curator. Stick to what’s truly essential. Pare things down until you’re left with only the most important stuff. Then do it again. You can always add stuff back in later if you need to.

Zingerman’s is one of America’s best-known delis. And it got that way because its owners think of themselves as curators. They’re not just filling their shelves. They’re curating them.

There’s a reason for every olive oil the team at Zingerman’s sells: They believe each one is great. Usually, they’ve known the supplier for years. They’ve visited and picked olives with them. That’s why they can vouch for each oil’s authentic, full-bodied flavor.

For example, look how the owner of Zingerman’s once described Pasolivo Olive Oil on the company Web site:

I tasted this oil for the first time years ago, on a random recommendation and sample. There are plenty of oils that come in nice bottles with very endearing stories to tell—this was no exception—but most simply aren’t that great. By contrast, Pasolivo got my attention as soon as I tasted it. It’s powerful, full and fruity. Everything I like in an oil, without any drawbacks. It still stands as one of America’s best oils, on par with the great rustic oils of Tuscany. Strongly recommended.

The owner actually tried the oil and chooses to carry it based on its taste. It’s not about packaging, marketing, or price. It’s about quality. He tried it and knew his store had to carry it. That’s the approach you should take too."

Throw less at the problem

Focus on what won’t change

Tone is in your fingers

Sell your by-products

When you make something, you always make something else. You can’t make just one thing. Everything has a by-product. Observant and creative business minds spot these by-products and see opportunities.

The lumber industry sells what used to be waste—sawdust, chips, and shredded wood—for a pretty profit. You’ll find these by-products in synthetic fireplace logs, concrete, ice strengtheners, mulch, particleboard, fuel, and more.

But you’re probably not manufacturing anything. That can make it tough to spot your by-products. People at a lumber company see their waste. They can’t ignore sawdust. But you don’t see yours. Maybe you don’t even think you produce any by-products. But that’s myopic.

Our last book, Getting Real, was a by-product. We wrote that book without even knowing it. The experience that came from building a company and building software was the waste from actually doing the work. We swept up that knowledge first into blog posts, then into a workshop series, then into a .pdf, and then into a paperback. That by-product has made Basecamp more than $1 million directly and probably more than another $1 million indirectly. The book you’re reading right now is a by-product too. And in 2017, we came up with yet another by-product: a podcast based on the principles in this book and Getting Real.

The rock band Wilco found a valuable by-product in its recording process. The band filmed the creation of an album and released it as a documentary called I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. It offered an uncensored and fascinating look at the group’s creative process and infighting."

"Kingsford Charcoal, the top charcoal maker in the U.S., was created after Henry Ford figured out how to make charcoal briquets out of the scrap wood generated by manufacturing the Model T.

Software companies don’t usually think about writing books. Bands don’t usually think about filming the recording process. Car manufacturers don’t usually think about selling charcoal. There’s probably something you haven’t thought about that you could sell too."

Launch now

When is your product or service finished? When should you put it out on the market? When is it safe to let people have it? Probably a lot sooner than you’re comfortable with. Once your product does what it needs to do, get it out there.

Just because you’ve still got a list of things to do doesn’t mean it’s not done. Don’t hold everything else up because of a few leftovers. You can do them later. And doing them later may mean doing them better, too.

Think about it this way:

If you had to launch your business in two weeks, what would you cut out? Funny how a question like that forces you to focus. You suddenly realize there’s a lot of stuff you don’t need. And what you do need seems obvious. When you impose a deadline, you gain clarity. It’s the best way to get to that gut instinct that tells you, “We don’t need this.”

Put off anything you don’t need for launch. Build the necessities now, worry about the luxuries later. If you really think about it, there’s a whole lot you don’t need on day one.

When we launched Basecamp, we didn’t even have the ability to bill customers! Because the product billed in monthly cycles, we knew we had a thirty-day gap to figure it out. So we used the time before launch to solve more urgent problems that actually mattered on day one. Day 30 could wait.

Camper, a brand of shoes, opened a store in San Francisco before construction was even finished and called it a Walk in Progress. Customers could draw on the walls of the empty store. The company made merchandise displays out of inexpensive plywood and shoe boxes. The most popular message written by customers on the walls: “Keep the store just the way it is.”

Likewise, the founders of Crate and Barrel didn’t wait to build fancy displays when they opened their first store. They turned over the crates and barrels that the merchandise came in and stacked products on top of them.

PRODUCTIVITY

Illusions of agreement

Reasons to quit

Interruption is the enemy of productivity

Meetings are toxic

The worst interruptions of all are meetings. Here’s why:

They’re usually about words and abstract concepts, not real things.

They usually convey an abysmally small amount of information per minute.

They drift off-subject easier than a Chicago cab in a snowstorm.

They require thorough preparation that most people don’t have time for.

They frequently have agendas so vague that nobody is really sure of the goal.

They often include at least one moron who inevitably gets his turn to waste everyone’s time with nonsense.

Meetings procreate. One meeting leads to another meeting leads to another ...It’s also unfortunate that meetings are typically scheduled like TV shows. You set aside thirty minutes or an hour because that’s how scheduling software works (you'll never see anyone schedule a seven-minute meeting with Outlook). Too bad. If it only takes seven minutes to accomplish a meeting’s goal, then that’s all the time you should spend. Don’t stretch seven into thirty.When you think about it, the true cost of meetings is staggering. Let’s say you're going to schedule a meeting that lasts one hour, and you invite ten people to attend. That’s actually a ten-hour meeting, not a one-hour meeting. You're trading ten hours of productivity for one.

Good enough is fine

Quick Wins

"Momentum fuels motivation. It keeps you going. It drives you. Without it, you can’t go anywhere. If you aren’t motivated by what you’re working on, it won’t be very good.

The way you build momentum is by getting something done and then moving on to the next thing. No one likes to be stuck on an endless project with no finish line in sight. Being in the trenches for nine months and not having anything to show for it is a real buzzkill. Eventually, it just burns you out. To keep your momentum and motivation up, get in the habit of accomplishing small victories along the way. Even a tiny improvement can give you a good jolt of momentum.

The longer something takes, the less likely it is that you’re going to finish it.

Excitement comes from doing something and then letting customers have at it. Planning a menu for a year is boring. Getting the new menu out, serving the food, and getting feedback is exciting. So don’t wait too long—you’ll smother your sparks if you do.

If you absolutely have to work on long-term projects, try to dedicate one day a week (or every two weeks) to small victories that generate enthusiasm. Small victories let you celebrate and release good news. And you want a steady stream of good news. When there’s something new to announce every two weeks, you energize your team and give your customers something to be excited about."

Don’t be a hero

Go to sleep

Forgoing sleep is a bad idea. Sure, you get those extra hours right now, but you pay in spades later: You destroy your creativity, morale, and attitude.

Once in a while, you can pull an all-nighter if you fully understand the consequences. Just don’t make it a habit. If it becomes a constant, the costs start to mount:

Stubbornness: When you’re really tired, it always seems easier to plow down whatever bad path you happen to be on instead of reconsidering the route. The finish line is a constant mirage and you wind up walking in the desert way too long.

Lack of creativity: Creativity is one of the first things to go when you lose sleep. What distinguishes people who are ten times more effective than the norm is not that they work ten times as hard; it’s that they use their creativity to come up with solutions that require one-tenth of the effort. Without sleep, you stop coming up with those one-tenth solutions.

Diminished morale: When your brain isn’t firing on all cylinders, it loves to feed on less demanding tasks. Like reading yet another article about stuff that doesn’t matter. When you’re tired, you lose motivation to attack the big problems.

Irritability: Your ability to remain patient and tolerant is severely reduced when you’re tired. If you encounter someone who’s acting like a fool, there’s a good chance that person is suffering from sleep deprivation.

These are just some of the costs you incur when not getting enough sleep. Yet some people still develop a masochistic sense of honor about sleep deprivation. They even brag about how tired they are. Don’t be impressed. It’ll come back to bite them in the ass.

Your estimates suck

Long lists don’t get done

Make tiny decisions

COMPETITORS

Don’t copy

Decommoditize your product

Pick a fight

Underdo your competition

Who cares what they’re doing?

EVOLUTION

Say no by default

Let your customers outgrow you

Don’t confuse enthusiasm with priority

Be at-home good

Don’t write it down

PROMOTION

Welcome obscurity

Build an audience

Out-teach your competition

Emulate chefs

You’ve probably heard of Emeril Lagasse, Mario Batali, Bobby Flay, Julia Child, Paula Deen, Rick Bayless, or Jacques Pépin. They’re great chefs, but there are a lot of great chefs out there. So why do you know these few better than others? Because they share everything they know. They put their recipes in cookbooks and show their techniques on cooking shows.

As a business owner, you should share everything you know too. This is anathema to most in the business world. Businesses are usually paranoid and secretive. They think they have proprietary this and competitive advantage that. Maybe a rare few do, but most don’t. And those that don’t should stop acting like those that do. Don’t be afraid of sharing.

A recipe is much easier to copy than a business. Shouldn’t that scare Mario Batali? Why would he go on TV and show you how he does what he does? Why would he put all his recipes in cookbooks where anyone can buy and replicate them? Because he knows those recipes and techniques aren’t enough to beat him at his own game. No one’s going to buy his cookbook, open a restaurant next door, and put him out of business. It just doesn’t work like that. Yet this is what many in the business world think will happen if their competitors learn how they do things. Get over it.

So emulate famous chefs. They cook, so they write cookbooks. What do you do? What are your 'recipes'? What’s your 'cookbook'? What can you tell the world about how you operate that’s informative, educational, and promotional? This book is our cookbook. What’s yours?

Go behind the scenes

Give people a backstage pass and show them how your business works. Imagine that someone wanted to make a reality show about your business. What would they share? Now stop waiting for someone else and do it yourself.

Think no one will care? Think again. Even seemingly boring jobs can be fascinating when presented right. What could be more boring than commercial fishing and trucking? Yet the Discovery Channel and History Channel have turned these professions into highly rated shows: Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers."

"It doesn’t need to be a dangerous job, either. People love finding out the little secrets of all kinds of businesses, even one that makes those tiny marshmallows in breakfast cereals. That’s why the Food Network’s Unwrapped—which explores the secrets behind lunch-box treats, soda pop, movie candy, and more—is such a popular program.

People are curious about how things are made. It’s why they like factory tours or behind-the-scenes footage on DVDs. They want to see how the sets are built, how the animation is done, how the director cast the film, etc. They want to know how and why other people make decisions.

Letting people behind the curtain changes your relationship with them. They’ll feel a bond with you and see you as human beings instead of a faceless company. They’ll see the sweat and effort that goes into what you sell. They’ll develop a deeper level of understanding and appreciation for what you do.

Nobody likes plastic flowers

Press releases are spam

Forget about the Wall Street Journal

Drug dealers get it right

Marketing is not a department

Do you have a marketing department? If not, good. If you do, don’t think these are the only people responsible for marketing. Accounting is a department. Marketing isn’t. Marketing is something everyone in your company is doing 24/7/365.

Just as you cannot not communicate, you cannot not market:

Every time you answer the phone, it’s marketing.

Every time you send an e-mail, it’s marketing.

Every time someone uses your product, it’s marketing.

Every word you write on your Web site is marketing.

If you build software, every error message is marketing.

If you’re in the restaurant business, the after-dinner mint is marketing.

If you’re in the retail business, the check-out counter is marketing.

If you’re in a service business, your invoice is marketing.

Recognize that all of these little things are more important than choosing which piece of swag to throw into a conference goodie bag. Marketing isn’t just a few individual events. It’s the sum total of everything you do.

The myth of the overnight sensation

HIRING

Do it yourself first

Hire when it hurts

Pass on great people

Strangers at a cocktail party

If you go to a cocktail party where everyone is a stranger, the conversation is dull and stiff. You make small talk about the weather, sports, TV shows, etc. You shy away from serious conversations and controversial opinions.

Hire a ton of people rapidly and a “strangers at a cocktail party” problem is exactly what you end up with. Everyone is unfailingly polite. Everyone tries to avoid any conflict or drama. No one says, “This idea sucks.” People appease instead of challenge.

You need an environment where everyone feels safe enough to be honest when things get tough. So hire slowly. It’s the only way to avoid winding up at a cocktail party of strangers.

Résumés are ridiculous

Years of irrelevance

Forget about formal education

Everybody works

Hire managers of one

Managers of one are people who come up with their own goals and execute them. They don’t need heavy direction. They don’t need daily check-ins. They do what a manager would do—set the tone, assign items, determine what needs to get done, etc.—but they do it by themselves and for themselves.

These people free you from oversight. They set their own direction. When you leave them alone, they surprise you with how much they’ve gotten done. They don’t need a lot of hand-holding or supervision.

How can you spot these people? Look at their backgrounds. They have set the tone for how they’ve worked at other jobs. They’ve run something on their own or launched some kind of project.

You want someone who’s capable of building something from scratch and seeing it through. Finding these people frees the rest of your team to work more and manage less.

Hire great writers

The best are everywhere

Test-drive employees

Interviews are only worth so much. Some people sound like pros but don’t work like pros. You need to evaluate the work they can do now, not the work they say they did in the past.

The best way to do that is to actually see them work. Hire them for a miniproject, even if it’s for just twenty or forty hours. You’ll see how they make decisions. You’ll see if you get along. You’ll see what kind of questions they ask. You’ll get to judge them by their actions instead of just their words

You can even make up a fake project. In a factory in South Carolina, BMW built a simulated assembly line where job candidates get ninety minutes to perform a variety of work-related tasks.

Cessna, the airplane manufacturer, has a role-playing exercise for prospective managers that simulates the day of an executive. Candidates work through memos, deal with (phony) irate customers, and handle other problems. Cessna has hired more than a hundred people using this simulation.

These companies have realized that when you get into a real work environment, the truth comes out. It’s one thing to look at a portfolio, read a resumé, or conduct an interview. It’s another to actually work with someone.

DAMAGE CONTROL

Own your bad news

Speed changes everything

How to say you’re sorry

Put everyone on the front line

Take a deep breath

CULTURE

You don’t create a culture

Instant cultures are artificial cultures. They’re big bangs made of mission statements, declarations, and rules. They are obvious, ugly, and plastic. Artificial culture is paint. Real culture is patina.

You don’t create a culture. It happens. This is why new companies don’t have a culture.

Culture is the byproduct of consistent behavior. If you encourage people to share, then sharing will be built into your culture. If you reward trust, then trust will be built in. If you treat customers right, then treating customers right becomes your culture.

Culture isn’t a foosball table or trust falls. It isn’t policy. It isn’t the Christmas party or the company picnic. Those are objects and events, not culture. And it’s not a slogan, either. Culture is action, not words.

So don’t worry too much about it. Don’t force it. You can’t install a culture. Like a fine scotch, you’ve got to give it time to develop.

Decisions are temporary

Skip the rock stars

A lot of companies post help-wanted ads seeking “rock stars” or “ninjas.” Lame. Unless your workplace is filled with groupies and throwing stars, these words have nothing to do with your business.

Instead of thinking about how you can land a roomful of rock stars, think about the room instead. We’re all capable of bad, average, and great work. The environment has a lot more to do with great work than most people realize.

That’s not to say we’re all created equal and you’ll unlock star power in anyone with a rock star environment. But there’s a ton of untapped potential trapped under lame policies, poor direction, and stifling bureaucracies. Cut the crap and you’ll find that people are waiting to do great work. They just need to be given the chance.

Rockstar environments develop out of trust, autonomy, and responsibility. They’re a result of giving people the privacy, workspace, and tools they deserve. Great environments show respect for the people who do the work and how they do it.

They’re not thirteen

What do you gain if you ban employees from, say, visiting a social-networking site or watching YouTube while at work? You gain nothing. That time doesn’t magically convert to work. They’ll just find some other diversion.

And look, you’re not going to get a full eight hours a day out of people anyway. That’s a myth. They might be at the office for eight hours, but they’re not actually working eight hours. People need diversions. It helps disrupt the monotony of the workday. A little YouTube or Facebook time never hurt anyone.

Then there’s all the money and time you spend policing this stuff. How much does it cost to set up surveillance software? How much time do IT employees waste on monitoring other employees instead of working on a project that’s actually valuable? How much time do you waste writing rule books that never get read? Look at the costs and you quickly realize that failing to trust your employees is awfully expensive.

Send people home at 5

Don’t scar on the first cut

Sound like you

Four-letter words

ASAP is poison

CONCLUSION

Inspiration is perishable

We all have ideas. Ideas are immortal. They last forever.

What doesn’t last forever is inspiration. Inspiration is like fresh fruit or milk: It has an expiration date.

If you want to do something, you’ve got to do it now. You can’t put it on a shelf and wait two months to get around to it. You can’t just say you’ll do it later. Later, you won’t be pumped up about it anymore.

Inspiration is a magical thing, a productivity multiplier, a motivator. But it won’t wait for you. Inspiration is a now thing. If it grabs you, grab it right back and put it to work."