Jason Fried is the founder and prez of 37 Signals, makers of Highrise, Basecamp and other award-winning business tools-you-can-use. Fried’s video interview stands on its own, but if you’re pressed for time here are the highlights:
On productive teams:
- Getting things done is the key metric.
- Eight people working without interruptions can kick ass. (I’ve posted previously on Interruptions and recommend the Infomania manifesto assembled by the Intel team.)
- Stay away from each other as much as possible. “Proximity is an invitation to interrupt somebody, and interruption is the biggest enemy of productivity.”
- Meetings are interruptions in people’s flow, and should be a last resort.
Why to emulate drug dealers:
- “We give people a little taste for free, and then they want more, and they upgrade.”
- People are always willing to pay for things that they find valuable.
- Nail the basics that the user wants - and couple it with a great user experience and a fee-for-value scheme that’s not greedy - and you’re in business.
Why small is beautiful
- “I’d like to see smaller and smaller companies.” There’s very little advantage anymore (in software) being the number one company.
- Great teams should not be limited by geography. “I don’t want my talent limited by geographic region. If there’s a really talented person living in California, I want them working for us, and they can stay in California.”
And my favorite quote of the interview: “We’re not into increasing head count. We’re into increasing influence.”
Here’s another blog on ROWE (Results Only Work Environment). ROWE - and leaders like Fried - are markers of Next Companies, workplaces that engage great talent and deliver knock-your-socks-off business results. And who doesn’t want to work in an environment like that?
