Am terminat de citit Rework, o carte scrisă de cei de la 37signals, care au realizat mai multe softuri utile dedicate companiilor mici și mijlocii, Basecamp fiind probabil cel mai cunoscut.
Contrar impresiilor inițiale, Rework nu este o carte dedicată doar managerilor sau antreprenorilor. Nu, cartea e utilă oricărei persoane care muncește mult și conștientizează faptul că trebuie să existe o altă cale de a face lucrurile. Rework pune la îndoială toate ideile despre muncă și productivitate cu care ne-am obișnuit și vine cu concepte noi, rezultate din experiența acumulată de autori în cadrul propriei companii.
Mi-a plăcut limbajul direct, simplu, fără cuvinte de umplutură și faptul că orice idee este susținută de exemple practice. Cartea e ușor de citit, în câteva seri o terminați, plus că e o lectură interesantă, s-ar putea să vă schimbe viața sau măcar modul în care priviți relațiile cu colegii și definiția cuvântului productiv.
O să vă las cu câteva pasaje extrase direct din carte, dacă ar fi să traduc s-ar pierde sensul unor cuvinte.
Despre învățatul din propriile greșeli
With so much failure in the air, you can’t help but breathe it in. Don’t inhale. Don’t get fooled by the stats. Other people’s failures are just that: other people’s failures. If other people can’t market their product, it has nothing to do with you. If other people can’t build a team, it has nothing to do with you. If other people can’t price their services properly, it has nothing to do with you. If other people can’t earn more than they
spend … well, you get it.
Another common misconception: You need to learn from your mistakes. What do you really learn from mistakes? You might learn what not to do again, but how valuable is that? You still don’t know what you should do next. Contrast that with learning from your successes. Success gives you real ammunition. When something succeeds, you know what worked–and you can do it again. And the next time, you’ll probably do it even better.
Despre planurile pe termen lung
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.
Despre extinderea unei companii
People ask, “How big is your company?” It’s small talk, but they’re not looking for a small answer. The bigger the number, the more impressive, professional, and powerful you sound. “Wow, nice!” they’ll say if you have a hundred-plus employees. If you’re small, you’ll get an “Oh … that’s nice.” The former is meant as a compliment; the latter is said just to be polite.
Maybe the right size for your company is five people. Maybe it’s forty. Maybe it’s two hundred. Or maybe it’s just you and a laptop. Don’t make assumptions about how big you should be ahead of time. Grow slow and see what feels right–premature hiring is the death of many companies.
Despre cei care lucrează prea mult, workaholicii
Not only is this workaholism unnecessary, it’s stupid. Working more doesn’t mean you care more or get more done. It just means you work more.
Workaholics miss the point, too. They try to fix problems by throwing sheer hoursat them. They try to make up for intellectual laziness with brute force. This results in inelegant solutions.
Workaholics aren’t heroes. They don’t save the day, they just use it up. The real hero is already home because she figured out a faster way to get things done.
Despre întreruperile care apar atunci când lucrezi
If you’re constantly staying late and working weekends, it’s not because there’s too work to be done. It’s because you’re not getting enough done at work. And the reason is interruptions. Interruptions break your workday into a series of work moments.
Forty-five minutes and then you have a call. Fifteen minutes and then you have lunch. An hour later, you have an afternoon meeting. Before you know it, it’s five o’clock, and you’ve only had a couple uninterrupted hours to get your work done. You can’t get meaningful things done when you’re constantly going start, stop, start, stop. Instead, you should get in the alone zone. Long stretches of alone time are when you’re most productive.
Despre marketing
Do you have a marketing department? If not, good. If you do, don’t think these are he 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.
……………………
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 vents. It’s the sum total of everything you do.
Despre CV-uri și angajări
We all know resumes are a joke. They’re exaggerations. They’re filled with “action verbs” that don’t mean anything. They list job titles and responsibilities that are vaguely accurate at best. And there’s no way to verify most of what’s on there.
If you hire based on this garbage, you’re missing the point of what hiring is about. You want a specific candidate who cares specifically about your company, your products, your customers, and your job.
So how do you find these candidates? First step: Check the cover letter. In a cover letter, you get actual communication instead of a list of skills, verbs, and years of irrelevance. That’s why the cover letter is a much better test than a resume. You hear someone’s actual voice and are able recognize if it’s in tune with you and your company.
Eu cred că o să vă placă cartea. În România Rework poate fi comandată pe Okian, versiunea tipărită în limba engleză costă 67 de lei. A mai citit-o cineva pe aici? Cum vi s-a părut?