“I’m not a businessman, I’m a business man”

Jay-Z is interesting to me.

I found this Wall Street Journal piece about his new book and the wider growth of his entrepreneurial empire exciting.

I like his purpose, and how he frames it within a sense of culture and advancement and responsibility.

Bookshelves of the future

I suddenly began to think about the books that we have on the bookshelves at NixonMcInnes.

Each one that I have read represents a mini-journey, sometimes just a step and sometimes a leap.

Each one is remembered for its key ideas, the time and place that it was read in – each book tagged with memories and expectations.

And together they represent more – an aggregate, a narrative of the journey particularly because we were reading them to learn and directly inform the company’s early development. Part of our ‘street MBA’, to borrow from a Spanish colleague on a recent course.

Which got me to bookshelves.

Bookshelves as containers for memories.
Bookshelves as stories.
Bookshelves as trophy cabinets.
Bookshelves as personal or group manifesto.

Now, with my Kindle clutched, what will my bookshelf be or do?

Now, with content and ideas fragmenting and my learning happening just in time, facts fetched by search engine and feeds gather by reader, links stumbled upon in social networks, how will I curate my own bookshelf?

How will I remember what I got from where? Most importantly to me how will I share what I’ve found and enjoyed?

I wonder.

Now-ists

Suddenly, probably just to me, it seems like the world is awash with futurists.

Thinkers, futurologists, labs, institutes and ‘tanks.

But the other current ripping under this visible tide is the makers, the do-ers.

Do lectures, inspired by and inspiring people that do. Makers faires and hacker spaces and Etsy. Hexayurt and Global Guerillas. Not so much futurists as right-fucking-Now-ists.

With the world spinning as it is towards a very different way of being I suppose we need both.

But when the revolution comes I know who I’ll want on my side.

Behold the Golden Cockroach!

This gorgeous cockroach came to me as a metaphor when talking recently with the team about how well our little business is equipped to fare in the continuing global financial ‘long bath’ double-dip recession.

I love cockroaches. And foxes, seagulls, rats, honey badgers, that kinda thing – animals that thrive in changed circumstances. (I think this value is also why I love the Hexayurt, and keep going on about it).

Survivors.

There’s a lotta shit written about the future of business. And some of it is good shit. Particularly enjoying Makers by Cory Doctorow at the moment which speaks directly to this vibe too.

I hope that in our efforts to be different that we are designing NixonMcInnes to be a special kinda cockroach – our bejewelled Golden Cockroach. If it needs to, it will survive whatever comes next 🙂

Applied

I am absolutely loving the word Applied at the moment. Or not so much the word alone, but the idea – the word is my symbol, the trigger.

Over the weekend I read the excellent nuggety plain wisdom that is ‘A Technique for Producing Ideas’ by James Webb Young. This simple sentence really struck me:

So the idea of Applied is what gets me – or *my* idea of what Applied means.

For me it’s the promise of something done, something next, that brilliant possibility but actually made real.

I think it was Steve who first recently reinvigorated the idea of Applied for me, when we were chatting about the name for his practice – Applied Technology was the result, and it was Steve who reached for and produced the nub of Applied in this sense. Thanks Steve 🙂

It’s not the technology or the idea alone, but the practical implementation of it, the rubber on the road.

(As a related aside, using the word ‘practical’ here makes me think of Practical Action, who we’ve done some work with – an apt name for a genuinely inspiring organisation).

When I hear the frustrated growls and howls in conversations, at conferences, on Twitter and elsewhere, about the social media echochamber and the cycles of mindless drivelling about how excellent the same old cheerleader brands are, it makes me think about a lack of Appliedness.

When I feel angry or confused about the gap between what is in the world for most people and what could be in the world for most people, it makes me think about the need for Appliedness.

(Another related aside – Hexayurt is positively dancing with Applied and is just to me incredibly exciting.)

When I see the energy for maker spaces and Arduino and hackdays and MAKING STUFF I feel my personal bonfire for the idea of Applied get a boost of oxygen.

The future contains more Applied.

More digging for victory, more grow your own, more DIY, more Makers and reworkers and ‘necessity is the mother of invention’-ness.

At my grandad’s funeral, my dad told an incredible touching story about his father – a Scot, who was an engineer in the war and a printer for the rest of his life – who would always be fixing. Always Be Fixing! A new mantra for a new dawn? Maybe ours was the disposable generation and the next goes back?

Would it be over-dramatic to say that what the world needs most right now is more Appliedness? Probably. But that’s what I feel.

Fears of a small company MD

NixonMcInnes is a tiny company. Teetering on twenty people, we are but a teeny sliver in the global economic market-thingy-bob.

And yet for those of us engaged in this endeavour, and certainly for me as a founder, this small company is *a very big thing*. A big thing in our lives.

As the company matures, I have stopped worrying as much about some things, at least in a detailed and weekly way – cashflow, the administration of our work, if not the results – stuff that is well looked after by team mates much better at it than me.

But there are always things to worry about, a bit like parenting I guess.

The fear I’m snuggling up with the most in more recent times is the fear of getting in the way, of stifling this brilliant thing, and blocking and filling all the spaces that better people and ideas could fill.

This is my new favourite fear, and I feed it with good evidence I have seen and heard of in my travels about agency-land in the last couple of years.

It is both horrible and deeply instructive to hear about well-intending and successful entrepreneurs getting in the way once their companies get to a certain phase or place, and to hear bitter recriminations about ‘how things really get done in company X’.

Given this awareness, I feel I know what I need to do but doing it will be hard.

I feel I need to balance giving what I have to give and being there with consciously making room for the other talented and grown up people in our team to have their impact, make their decisions – good and bad, and live out their ideas.

It is increasingly common that I find myself thinking ‘sheesh, the only difference between me and Tom and some of these guys is that we had the room to make a decision and put it into action’ when asked for my opinion on the right way to approach a problem. This isn’t coming from a critical or patronising point of view for the person asking for advice, but quite the opposite – it comes from a total confidence in their ability to make as good a decision as we ever could.

Given that I intend on being around for the next couple of years at least, this isn’t a problem for today so I can probably stop worrying about it and find something more productive to attend to.

But when the time does come balancing things won’t be simple.

When it is time to get out of the way, if I make way too soon, I risk moving too fast, leaving people feeling abandoned or uncared for, or leading to questions about my real intents or commitment. ‘Does he just want out?’.

And if I move too slowly, I risk poisoning everything that has been good about what we’ve built together. That would be truly sad…

I am completely committed at NixonMcInnes for its next phase of evolution, and having more fun than I ever have, learning more, and often feeling fulfilled. These are, touch wood, good times.

But my small company MD fear-du-jour is of spoiling the thing I worked so hard to forge by not knowing when to get out of the way. I must remember this when the the time comes.