Can-Do vs. Can’t-Do Culture
recode.net
recode.net
If you ask many people an audacious "Can we do X?" their response is usually along the lines of "No, because [valid reasons]". They're not wrong, but the basic attitude is to shoot down what doesn't seem to fit with one's own view of the world. These are "no, because" people, and big companies are often full of them.
Much rarer and infinitely more valuable, especially for an entrepreneur, is the person who hears "Can we do X?" and responds, "Yes, if... [possible solutions]". Their response is one of problem-solving instead of confrontation, seeking to find a synthesis of the new perspective and their own. It seems like a small thing, but it is a very significant shift in mindset. Thinking like a "yes, if" person can unlock so much potential.
A friend of mine, one of the most talented and knowledgeable game programmers around, could easily have shot down many of the ambitious ideas that came his way. Instead, he greeted them with enthusiasm, often saying, "It's software! We can do anything!" Wouldn't you like to set out to do amazing things with that person on your team?
these "no because," people are a common resistance to new ideas. In engineers, they're almost the default. It's much easier to say no; to say yes is to deal with an increasingly larger amount of resistance. However, that resistance is also what makes the idea go far.
Technically my answer was more "yes if we dump some other pieces of software, and we try to be the best player at this new idea".
- Don't say no to clients "crazy" demands, just calculate what it would actually cost, or what you would need to do what they ask, and quote them that.
- A good price is when you are OK either way: You're OK if they say yes, and OK if they say no.
Edit: typos, missing word
With "No, unless ...", it's a different story. Then success is dependant on the conditions mentioned and they're much more likely to do their part in making sure those conditions are met. If you said "Yes, if" they'll often just remember you promised you could do it and leave it at that.
I had the misfortune of working with a salesperson who only read the "yes" part in an email and sold a lemon to a client for not enough cash.
I protested immediately after the sale (when I was informed of the technical specification) that all the conditions were meticulously described but ignored and presented the email. Management decided to take the risk of going forward. The project failed. I was still blamed for it because by then I was an easy scapegoat.
Never received an apology and lost a good chunk of my reputation at the time. I haven't been an employee and have been my own salesperson since then (15 years ago). Less politics and ass covering between my ears.
Tiny little things like this can make or break you.
In my opinion, most people will be "Yes, if..." people given the right cultural conditions; this looking at people as dichotomous types set-in-stone is dangerous and in my experience incorrect. It is as divisive and ineffective as the current US political climate. If someone has become a No person, it's likely because they're being moulded into that by their management, or has been in the past. Fix the environment and create an innovation-positive management structure and they'd probably jump at the opportunity to take more risks. I have seen this happen first-hand.
W. Edwards Deming, 8th point: "Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
And individuals can turn everyone else into mindless drones by constantly saying "no, because of XYZ."
Blaming "management" is so fashionable, and so counterproductive.
In an article about Can Do vs Can't Do culture, it piggybacks on an insightful top comment that takes an optimistic approach and provides the kind of cynical pessimism and tries to shoot down the Can Do nature of the OP's comment. But the best part of it, the most beautiful part, is that it places the blame on the cause of all problems for hackers: the manager. Literally, managers are the only reason the world isn't amazing, they're the ones that shoot down all my brilliant ideas.
The entire idea of "can do vs can't do" is such a platitude anyways, it's not even remotely interesting. It takes all nuance away from communication. As if just because someone has to make their position clearer than a statement like "yes, if" in order to manage the expectations of others that they just don't have a "can do" attitude and by implication are destined to fail.
I think the entire point is that they say the same thing while projecting a completely different attitude.
The way that someone responds to the question of "can we do this" is very important.
We typically call this middle management.
Regardless I'm not really interested in the blame game on who's responsible management or engineering. Both are irrelevant to this discussion. "Can" or "can't", as the article discusses, is an issue of leadership in a business. If it isn't there, it isn't going to matter whether the engineer says "how high?" whenever their asked to jump.
Cynics always have scapegoats. It's always everyone else's fault. Dumb colleagues, idiotic managers, stupid customers. Just remember you control your situation and how those around you interact with you.
The 'Yes, if' thing is one of the major reasons I love startups.
The only thing that could top your comment is mine; now we're two meta levels deep, not even discussing the original article anymore.
I prefer "yes, if" but reality says that the "ifs" will never be made part of the planning and then blame will come back to you because you said "yes"
I find it similar to the "estimates" of when we'll finish something, that get turned into hard delivery deadlines once the project scribe commits them to the first draft of the project plan.
You don't have to accept that. The general excuse, "Managers man... they suck", is something that really bothers me.
Why not stand up for your idea, insist upon the Yes, IF... and hold management accountable?
Document concerns and don't be shy about raising them. In my experience I have seen people make the assumption that management will not listen and therefor not act more often than I've seen management ignore feedback.
That's not to say that management wouldn't ignore you, or dismiss negativity in favor of the "yes", but the defeatist attitude as it relates to 'management' troubles me.
Again, Michh, not to give you a hard time. Maybe I'm naive.
If we just deal with the issue of X and solve the Y problem, then yes, we can most certainly do it. I have some ideas on how to deal with X and I think that if we bring Marketing into the discussion then we should be able to make a plan to address Y.
The above paragraph is still "can do" and it is arguably a better way to answer such questions because it is not as easy for a listener to misinterpret it.
And to be honest, most projects actually go way out of time and budget. The realist would have said no, because the scope was not realistic. Now if you wilfully or just by ignorance accept the terms and scope thinking you can always stretch other peoples time and budget, that's in my book immoral, but then again, those people will end up getting the jobs i decline.
If anything, there's a problem with too much optimism in project management. If there isn't enough budget and schedule to let a project slip by 10%, then the answer shouldn't be "yes, if we're lucky". It should be "No, let's pick something with better margins." or "Yes, because even losing money on this is worth it for strategic reasons."
:-)
Example:
Yes, if the '"yes, if" attitude' is defined as 'never disagreeing with anyone ever, since no one ever attempts to abuse positive-thinking engineers.'
But the real question is like the programming language question - what's the most expressive and useful in a given situation? Sometimes an idiom is not a good fit.
I always responds 'yes, if' -- to people I know won't abuse it.
That's most of the people I work with. But some entrepreneurs, Project Managers, clients and so forth are simply not to be trusted with a "yes, if."
The goal is to avoid those kinds of shady operators, crappy projects, and hostile clients. But sometimes you end up working with them, at least as bit players in a business relationship that is a good fit. Especially as a freelancer, I don't know anyone who can avoid it 100% of the time.
For instance: even when working with a great organization, some project could have a weak link in a project management role. It will happen to you. And all you can do is try to do good work while extricating yourself as soon as possible.
What should I tell one of those not-very-trustworthy people if they ask something ridiculous?
Does compiling it to Yes-If prove more expressive?
Examples:
Yes, if the laws of space-time, human nature, physics and the combined sum of human experience weren't arrayed in battle order against you and your terrible idea.
Yes, if I could trust that you, a non-software PM who shifted into this job from Accounts with no training heavier than that provided by Clippy, have correctly assessed the stakeholder requirements and risk around this new feature that you think is required by 'EOD Thursday.'
Sometimes, there is an answer, and it is No. Because.
Sometimes you should signal risk and danger in your response, because risk and danger are present in their requests, and you must be sure that they are weighing those dangers. 'No, because' (or 'I'd advise against it, but here's what it would take', which is closer to what I actually say in those situations) definitely has its place.
NOTE: this is not non-technical PM hate. I may currently have two PMs, on projects for two separate fortune-50 companies. Both PMs may be non-technical, but one might know how to be a PM, and specifically on a software project, and the other might not.
If you let "Yes, if" evoke a different emotional response than, "No, because", even though they provide more or less the same information content, what does that say about you?
They may not be proper synonyms, but a listener that's forgiving of input errors can interpret them as synonyms, at least until proven otherwise through further conversation.
In my opinion, a better approach for an engineer in typical real world conditions is to be a problem solver while controlling the message. "Yes, if" gives up control of the message. Instead of saying "yes" rephrase and reformulate the idea into your own words while adding the necessary constraints. It's a small difference, but it allows you to take full ownership and control of what you're signing up for.
So the answer is "no" to people in "suits" until they prove they aren't going to be abusive and nuance-free.
After all, they want a simple "yes, we can". If they hear about the half a dozen other problems that need to be solved first, they think "oh, yeah, that would be great, haha. But we won't do it because we want to focus on solving E, not A, B, C and D"...
Are there really only two answers you can offer when asked whether we can do X? Am I still allowed to say "It depends on A, B and C" or "Maybe, but I don't think it's a good idea because of P and Q" or "It would be great, but how do we solve Y and Z?"
I can't help feeling that you people are all arguing about which Oldspeak word to abolish in Newspeak.
And as it relates to the business of building software, which is a tricky and hard thing to do, having a positive outlook and focusing on the end possibilities rather than oncoming challenges is a better attitude for long term success. If you're the type to get caught up in the challenges of implementing stuff, you spend a lot more time saying no and less time finding clever ways to make it a yes.
"I think words are abstractions, and abstractions become expressions that frame our understanding of our experiences, expectations, culture—everything. Language is an interface, and if an interface can mold behavior and perception, than language does that to your life."
I used to be in the No, because ... camp when I first got out of college, until I met a mentor who led by example with a "Yes, if ..." attitudes, and I am now firmly in the second camp. Usually comprises and trade off needs to be made, but stop thinking about the problem definitely doesn't help.
I disagree. I've worked as a consultant for many years and I used to be a "no, because" person, and I noticed a very clear shift in my demeanor and that of clients when I started saying more "yes, if"s.
Initially I didn't know what I was doing so every project was fraught with the fear I'd be found out, this meant that on really difficult things, I'd try to talk myself and the client out of doing them, because I didn't know enough and thought something simpler (that I could do) would be better. As I became a much better software developer, all of a sudden, nothing was impossible, and it translated into my speak with clients.
Instead of presenting problems, I could tell clients exactly how to do what they wanted and how much it would cost them technically and monetarily.
I'll just tell you from experience. People respond to "yes, if"'s a whole lot better than no-anythings
Now, let's discuss the deadline...
"My friend Andy Grignon worked for Steve Jobs and was on a very small team building the original iPhone. Steve told him "sorry, you can not hire anyone who has worked on a phone before."
Why not? For exactly the reasons laid out here. He didn't want his team to find out what they were attempting to do was "impossible." Andy learned that when he went to AT&T to pitch them on what became visual voice mail. Andy and his team thought it was possible. The AT&T folks thought they were nuts. It took lots of work by Steve Jobs to convince AT&T to try."
While they may be successful they miss the concept of "Spirit of Service" in whole.
[1] http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1356&dat=19760728&id=p...
The great thing about "yes, if..." is that the discussion continues. People drill into the "if". "No, because ..." tends to end the discussion. "Oh, that will drain battery life? OK, lets not consider this any further."
http://blog.historyofphonephreaking.org/2011/01/the-greatest...
And picking those jackpots and their critics ignores the majority of crazy ideas that indeed fail - "They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
Here's some criticism of a crazy idea that actually failed (CueCat): http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000037.html
Obviously there is a lot of criticism for the sake of proving oneself smug. Unfortunately sounding smug does not automatically make one wrong.
All managers were like 'be like apple' and 'we must release iPad app' and 'PC is over'. Programmers on other side wanted to rewrite some critical parts, introduce automated tests and fix some very old bugs.
I was speaker for programmers, soon I became 'tablet hater' (kind of funny since I had Android tablet). Latter we even bough some iPads for developers to learn, those were locked in managers office :-). I left company shortly after that.
So for me 'Can-Do vs. Can’t-Do Culture' is just sort of bullshit to mask real problems. Sure Jobs made iThinks, but he pulled massive resources towards the problem. Apple actually bought factories for touch screens before iPhone was made.
On the desktop, the Vader printer seems pretty dangerous to have in a home (plus, possibly being vaporware). Then there's the Mini Metal Maker which uses clay, but you need a kiln. And actually there is an arc welding RepRap now, but the parts are low quality and again dangerous.
Even then, 3D printing is just weird enough, outside the scope of the experience of most people, that unless you've done hand-on work in it, it's hard to see the value.
Previously, items made of plastic had to imitate some other existing thing for them to be accepted. Notebook covers had to imitate leather, complete with fake stitching. Telephones had to look like the older ones made of Phenol resin. And so on.
3D printing is at that stage right now. We're using it to imitate items made in traditional ways, and not treating it as a new process in it's own right. But given time, people will adopt it as something totally distinct from subtractive manufacturing.
I see strong parallels to the early history of inkjet printers. From the 1976 IBM 4640 "ink jet" to the Thinkjet took 8 years, but the technology shows a clear lineage. Inkjet printers struggled with many of the same teething issues. See this 1985 article explaining the challenges: http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1985-05.pdf
I recently mounted a 3D printer, because I had a need for it. Now, some parts for my design are stopped at customs, so I still didn't use it (except for a small fixing at home), but I already have a new project that will need the printer.
The smart choice is obviously a happy medium. Too much of a "can do" attitude is just as harmful as too much of a "can't do" attitude. We all need reality checks.
And this is why diverse teams and groups are so important -- one person says "of course we can't do", another says "of course we can do", and everyone hashes it out until they've come up with a realistic assessment that is neither clouded by overly optimistic nor overly pessimistic thinking.
More audacity and innovation, less audacity-lacking "innovation" of the form, how to get users to click ads more often and exit this company for a multiple ASAP.
> Cherrypicking. A great majority of startups fail and their ideas are proven as unworkable or impractical, so it is not unreasonable to summarily dismiss most of them.
Clearly read the article but is trying to justify his own negativity in the past and undoubtedly.
>Would love to see a post on how you define "great" in this context, Ben.
Who the fck, address someone they don't know by their first name like that?? Ending the statement with his name also seems a bit passive aggressive.
Enlightening check out the comments and see how many people actually respond to the article. All too often when reading articles or listening to other people, instead of listening or understanding, the goal is: 'let me read until I think think of something I can say'. This really hurts that person and just isolates people in their own point of view
(note this post could be ironic. Its not though, the article was freakin awesome! I will try to change my mindset towards a more positive one after reading and rethink what it means to innovate)
This blog post claims that the quote is fake: http://blog.historyofphonephreaking.org/2011/01/the-greatest...
Slate says it "may" be fake and is awaiting verification: http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2014/01/02/why_p...
We notice this same thing here on this site, where every new idea seems to get immediately piled on with negativity. The feeling is that it didn't used to be this way, and many of us old timers will remember a time when new ideas were mostly met with encouragement and constructive criticism.
But I bet if you look at the threads today and then, you might find that the absolute number of constructive, encouraging comments hasn't changed much at all. Rather, they are simply lost in a sea of negativity spouted out by the peanut gallery that seems to have washed in from other places where people dump all over tech news. We used to be conspicuously entrepreneurial here. Now we're a lot more representative of the tech world at large.
So yeah, I think that there are still plenty of people with the right entrepreneurial mindset out there. It's just getting harder to find them.
Maybe we're just slowly reaching a more realistic equilibrium.
If a startup founder is an asshole, let's not excuse the behavior because they are building something worthwhile.
If a startup makes a mistake due to lack of concern about its users (i.e. Snapchat and their security hole), they should be criticized.
All told, I'm all about "can do" culture, but let's not use it as an excuse for boorish behavior or bad business practices.
I'm all for helping technical people negotiate from a strong position... but personally, were I able to send messages back in time to advise myself before going in to it? I would advise taking on a business person.
It's a lot of work, and perhaps more importantly, while business people /say/ they have this "give 110%" or "can-do" attitude, in reality? if it looks like you aren't going to make money, they are gone in a flash. And frankly? that's a good thing.
Is it not reasonable to suppose that it was an idea before its time, and useless in the particular historical context and implementational form in which it appeared?
There has always been utility for mechanical computation, but it's entirely possible that the world simply did not have an application for The Analytical Engine in the 1830s-1840s because other sectors of technology and the economy simply hadn't evolved to a level where they could effectively utilise it, especially given its physical properties--its size, scale, and energy consumption.
I don't know that for a fact, and can't effectively gauge the merits of my own suggestion, as I am neither a mathematician nor a competent historian of the intellectual, scientific and commercial zeitgeist of that period. But, for the sake of argument, is it not possible that this invention fell into the "interesting, novel, but useless" category?
Now, as for the telephone:
1) From the point of view of the telegraph establishment, it was a competitor;
2) Unintelligible voice really is useless. They just weren't far-sighted enough to see that the voice quality could improve, and indeed, it was a quite a long time before it did. Local loop quality improved first. Long-distance toll voice really didn't begin to sound good until digital trunking came along. Ask your grandparents or great-grandparents what coast-to-coast long distance phone calls sounded like in the era of analog lines and waveguide-type multiplexing technology;
3) In the heyday of the telegraph era, deploying lines was an extremely expensive and capital-intensive process, and it wasn't until other technological advancements that made possible various multiplexing and aggregation schemes (frequency-division, and later digital TDM) came along that the idea of running a copper line into every home really got to be realistic[1]. I agree that Western Union was a bit shortsighted in turning down this patent, but one could hardly blame them for thinking that universal telephone service wasn't economically possible. That's like selling a business idea today that relies on everyone having a 10 terabit fiber cable run to their home. Yeah, it's possible, and I have no doubt someone will make fun of me in a decade or two for naysaying it in any way, but would you invest $2bn in a related patent today?
What mistake did all these very smart men make in common? They focused on what the technology could not do at the time rather than what it could do and might be able to do in the future.
I don't disagree, but that needs to be fleshed out. No viable entrepreneurial venture can succeed solely on the basis of what it is logically possible for the technology to someday do, or what it could, in principle, in theory, one day. There is a need to realise a return in a usefully short period of time that is also unanimously acceptable to a coterie of investors with varying needs in terms of payoff time frame and patience.
Thus, you need a practical plan for getting to point B, making the technology do X. Even the most far-fetched, high-risk, R&D-driven ventures entail a proposal to concretely deploy and commercialise technology in a period that is usefully short and politically palatable, and that means everyone involved is somewhat constrained to what can be practically envisaged in terms of today's possibilities. One can make some leaps of faith, some intelligent extrapolations and some prescient forecasts, but ultimately, it's something expressed largely in the observational language and ontology of today.
Thus, I can't bring myself to fault someone for doubting, in 1995, that the consumer web is going to be what it is today, or even be what it was six or seven years later, in the early 2000s. It was possible--perhaps even reasonable--to suppose so, but would you have bet the farm on it? Your retirement savings? I'm not sure I would have (not that I have a farm or retirement savings, pero bueno).
[1] http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=451163...
In Airy's case, the benefits of the Analytical Engine may not have been realizable in the area extending to the horizon of his ability to make recommendations. Had he been making recommendations with a 100-150 year timeframe, perhaps he might have been more generous.
The telephone case is more damnable, and reads like a combination of a short horizon for ROI combined with Innovator's Dilemma.
A lot of pragmatic negativity is simply evaluators making very rational recommendations based on a time horizon in which they are both technically correct and for which they are given incentive to be correct. Extend the horizon (stretch the time) or change the incentive (change it from spending today's cash flow to an investment for the long term) and the evaluations may change as well.
I think it was a bit simpler than that. I really don't think they understood how much more enabling voice[1] was over morse code. It really seems like they didn't get the model would change via voice because you didn't need the morse code operators.
1) they mentioned voice quality in the report and it sounds like they weren't willing to be fix it as part of a NIH mentality
I think the real trick here is to learn how to distinguish between objections that are just examples of people not getting it, and objections that really do point up a fundamental problem you will have to overcome or find a way around in order to succeed. This can be trickier than it sounds.
A common mistake advocates for new technologies make is to fall in love with their new toy and dismiss any skepticism of its prospects as examples of cluelessness -- often with glib responses like the one in the OP, "don't hate, create" (ugh). Not everyone who comes to you with a critique is a "hater." Some of them are coming to you because they have learned something through hard experience that they think will be helpful to you. Ignoring those people can lead you to walk right into the same well-hidden minefields that have blown up countless other bold explorers over the years. So there's value in learning how to spot the one guy in the crowd of people telling you to watch where you step who's sporting a peg leg.
It'd be nice if the tech startup community looked like the OP imagines it, with innovative companies boldly challenging ingrained assumptions and disrupting conventional wisdom with forward-thinking solutions to hard problems worth solving.
I think a lot of the "hating" is directed at the latest pump-and-dump social plugin or other VC-funded sausage party. The lack of mood emoticons on Twitter is not a problem worth solving, and failure to see its utility is not for a paucity of vision or ambition.
Also, "VC-funded sausage party" is a great phrase. Pokes fun at brogramming while hinting at the gender-imbalance. +1
There's a world of difference between skeptics and haters, with the latter not deserving comments.
Some skepticism may be indeed healthy and comes naturally with experience. But it's also easy (particularly for the curious and well educated types, like the HN crowd) to become overly skeptic and jaded with time.
The problem with skeptics is that they tend to default to "yeah, saw that before", which makes you more conservative and ready to shut down others' ideas y. That's why innovation is often associated with people with limited experience in the field, as the Steve Jobs no-people-with-phone-experience-on-the-iPhone-team story above.
The hard part (for me, at least) is to always balance a healthy dose of skepticism, and still think outside the conventional way, and keep a can-do attitude.
You cannot shoot down the (positive or negative) evaluation of all ideas as "hating," for that would be incorrect. Ideas may be evaluated independently, and some people are quite good at it.
With that accepted, the argument for what types of evaluations are valid must become more complex and again, nuanced. This blog post does not achieve that, instead trying to argue for the rather extreme position that all negative evaluation is disadvantageous to everyone.
It just ain't true.
So, yes, as anyone with half a brain knows, jaded "hating" and constant skepticism are poor excuses for intelligent evaluation. Even knowing that, the extreme emotional responses to any idea always get the most attention, and are often amplified out of proportion. A balanced measured evaluation is rarely noteworthy, even if it's right, so it may seem as though the startup community or workplace trends toward the negative. The psychology of crowd mentality is the fascinating angle here, not the end result. Find the source of the problem and change the systems which motivate this sort of behavior and we might have a chance.
You're totally right though: as with most worthy pursuits, the extremes are easy pits to fall into, but the balance is both correct and difficult.
Over the past few years I've learned to never try to shoot down someone's passion.
At most I'll acknowledge that what they're trying to do is going to be difficult, but the brunt of my communication will be focused on what I believe will give them the best shot at achieving their objective.
Unless they're betting the house, bank or their marriage on a truly hare-brained scheme of course.
I disagree - Multiplexing didn't play a significant role in the local loop until the 1980's. There were multiplexing techniques for toll lines prior to the paper you cite - look up phantom circuits. [1]
If you want to check out about what drove the creation of the telephone network check out "Universal Service: Competition, Interconnection and Monopoly in the Making of the American Telephone System" [2], its a great book on how local toll traffic (among other things) drove the creation of the telephone network.
Western Union didn't see the future in the telephone network because it disagreed with its existing model - wich is to say office to office messages - also their network was multiplexed from very early, telephones for practical reasons couldn't be until the invention of the vacuum tube.
Oh, but it would have been very useful! Recall that one of the first uses of mechanical calculators was to produce tables for aiming artillery. They certainly had artillery in 1830! And precision aiming would surely have been valuable.
Other uses are likely as well -- astronomical calculations for navigation, perhaps; tables of logarithms and trigonometric functions, which were already being produced by hand; probably more.
Maybe in 1500 it wouldn't have been so useful, but by 1800 I'm quite certain it would have been very useful indeed.
What's the real data here? From a practical standpoint, isn't it just risk vs reward? Can-do's probably get a bigger reward than can't do's, but they fail more. A can't-do gets smaller reward, but succeeds more.
In short, disruption seems scary when you are part of the powers that be.
I think it's useful to be optimistic when it comes to visions of the future and how a business can accomplish it. Electric cars for everyone? Sure, give it a try. All that can be lost is a little money, and maybe you make a huge fortune and change the world. Isolated government programs can be a similar story -- e.g. NASA, which is unlikely to lose anything but a small amount of money but can be really inspiring or create some great things.
However, when it comes to government policy, the downside can be utter disaster. It pays to be a little skeptical that the "help the poor" bill (or whatever other utopian title) will actually deliver as advertised. Or skeptical that a war will be a simple in-and-out proposition.
Or some things just have little upside. We see this all the time in engineering. Someone wants to use a fad technology or model of some kind, or wants to reimplement something to be a little faster, or whatever. There's huge project risk that it could derail other projects and destabilize the entire product -- which is fine if you're going to change the world with it, but not fine for a 10% speedup on some specific workload.
Moral of story: optimism and "can do" attitude is good when the upside is huge and the downside is contained (like in a startup). Not exactly a profound revelation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreessen_Horowitz#Investments
"In February 2011, Andreessen Horowitz invested $80 million in Twitter,[2] becoming the first venture firm that holds stock in all four of the highest-valued, privately held social media companies: Facebook, Groupon, Twitter and Zynga"
Otherwise its a great article.
The lesson that I took home: I always held that asking/questioning of assumption is also of value; but this article told me that I have to be careful here, and that style of communications is often also very important - style determines how a person is evaluated by others.
So you know, it's a trade-off.
Well I think that's a bit harsh!
In my experience, most people are 'won't-do'. I haven't encountered many who aren't open to doing new things, but why would they do so without an incentive?
Particularly in the workplace, where people are already over-loaded with tasks, there can be an agreed list of 'great ideas' but no-one has time or freedom to tackle them.
The first stage of innovation should use "Yes, if" approach. This is similar to brainstorming session, where negativity should be kept to minimum. This mentality lets people find ways around the obstacles.
When the idea is ready for evaluation, it should be evaluated in light of resource constraints and similar. In this phase "No, because" approach should be used to identify all possible downsides. If the answer is "No", the idea can be either retired or returned to brainstorming session, until it is ready for re-evaluation.
So it is not a question of Yes/No, it is a question of appropriate answer in appropriate moment.
A side note is that people telling you they will or won't pay for something can be quite misleading. The act of talking is quite disconnected from the act of actually paying you.
The short-sightedness of the people cited in the article doesn't just come from critics, but from the potential market as well.
How does one foster a successful "Should-Do" culture instead of a "Can't-Do" culture?
I firmly believe, that its a practical thing, that with time, most people who aren't way successful become pessimist, yet.. their kids always have the fresh start.
It is upto the young generation, to carry the baton of HOPE! If young people won't dream, who will?
what if you bought it at any other time during the few years it exists?
anyway that was not the point. The point was people failing to see the innovation and seeing only the problems. Which was the point of this article.
I do not bring a weapon. I am the weapon. -- Michael O. Church
I like the overarching theme of what the OP is saying. Good companies provide multiple ways to succeed. Shitty firms provide multiple ways to fail, and only one way to succeed. That's why closed allocation is such a pile of 9/11 nukular buttfail: because it's founded on the idea that a person is only admitted one avenue for success (but there are numerous ways a person might lose face).
Good institutions provide multiple ways for the people within them to succeed. This encourages creativity. Bad companies lay down multiple ways to fail, and only admit one way to succeed. It is known.
I don't think this is only an artifact of company size. I've seen small companies with that negative, embarrassment-averse culture; I've also seen large companies create pockets of the positive, open-allocation type culture.
Hardly a day goes by where I don’t find something in my Twitter feed crowing about how a startup that has hit a bump in the road is ”fu&%@d,” or what an “ash%le” a successful founder is, or what an utterly idiotic idea somebody’s company is.
I am all for product risk and innovation. If someone tries to cure cancer and fails, I'm going to praise her to the moon for trying. On the other hand, moral failure (asshole founders) I cannot support. There is a huge difference between a scientist who tries for 20 years to cure cancer and falls short (but probably delivers a lot of useful research along the way) and an Evan Spiegel, who fails morally. "We're a startup" has been used too many times to justify reckless management and moral bankruptcy. Well I say: fuck that shit.
I am all for removing the stigma against good-faith failure. The problem in the VC-funded startup world is all the bad-faith failure that is out there. When someone gets fired with no severance because his 24-year-old, inexperienced, technically incompetent manager turns out to be a wad, no one should congratulate the company for "taking a risk". Recklessness, the defining trait of the current crop of VC-funded cool kids, is not a virtue.
It seems like there is a movement to replace today’s startup culture of hope and curiosity with one of smug superiority.
That "culture of hope and curiosity" is long gone. Snarky people like me are working our asses off in the effort to bring it back. We do it by taking down the Evan Spiegels and Lucas Duplans of the world. We need to take out the trash so there is some fucking space for the good guys.
Some people would like to turn the technology startup world into one great big company with a degenerative Can’t-Do Culture.
That's VC-istan, not in some future dystopia but right now. With all of the co-funding and note-sharing and collusion, VC has degenerated into a feudal reputation economy that behaves like a large and dysfunctional company where people are too busy padding their resumes and manicuring their reputations to even consider doing anything remotely ballsy. That's exactly what has already happened.