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Peter Gibbons: You see, Bob, it’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I just don’t care.
Bob Porter: Don’t ... don’t care?
Peter Gibbons: It’s a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don’t see another dime, so where’s the motivation? And here’s another thing, I have eight different bosses right now.
Bob Porter: Eight?
Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That’s my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.
Quid pro quo will define the author-publisher relationship
Published on O'Reilly Radar - Insight, analysis, and research about emerging technologies. | shared via feedly mobile
In a recent interview, author and digital book producer Peter Meyers talked about what we can expect as publishing comes into its own in the digital era. He said customized book apps will largely go by the wayside, and HTML5 as a format will be a bit of a hard-sell to consumers. And using his own experience as a basis, Meyers said publishers aren't in danger of becoming irrelevant.
Highlights from the interview (below) include:
Different kinds of books gravitate toward different kinds of formats — Meyers said the majority of books in the future won't be customized apps. The ones that will be apps will be the ones that require interactivity. [Discussed at the 0:19 mark.]
HTML5 is still a wild card — Meyers said HTML5's core question is transactional: Are people willing to pay for web-based content? Consumers have been reluctant thus far, but as HTML5 gets fully supported, we'll see more experimentation. [Discussed at 1:40.]
Amazon's Fire tablet will be a problem for B&N — Even though both tablets are similar in a lot ways, Meyers pointed toward Amazon's ecosystem and said B&N just doesn't match up to Amazon's content and service offerings. [Discussed at 4:54.]
Will publishers become irrelevant? — Meyers said no. Using his own experience as an example, he highlighted the fact that his publisher (O'Reilly) provides a platform to publicize his work and technological support to produce works in particular formats. What he doesn't get — and said few authors do — is hand-holding, individual attention, detailed line editing, cheerleading and so forth. Meyers said authors need to go in with the expectation that they'll have to do as much for their publishers and their books as the publishers do for them. [Discussed at 5:26.]
You can view the entire interview in the following video.
Meyers' new book, "Breaking the Page: Transforming Books and the Reading Experience," will be released in the next couple weeks — you can nab a free preview copy now — and he'll host a workshop at TOC 2012.
TOC NY 2012 — O'Reilly's TOC Conference, being held Feb. 13-15, 2012, in New York City, is where the publishing and tech industries converge. Practitioners and executives from both camps will share what they've learned and join together to navigate publishing's ongoing transformation.
Related:
Stories from the "Breaking the Page" project
HTML5 for publishers: Drawing on the screen
What publishers can and should learn from "The Elements"
feedly. feed your mind. http://www.feedly.com
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But Wilkinson also saw that his appointment offered an opportunity—to both fix broken functions, such as HR, and create new ones, such as quality assurance, that could improve his region’s performance. He developed a plan of action that would involve laying off the top two tiers of managers—about 20 people—and asking them to reapply for their jobs. “You want the elements of your vision to take shape before you start,” Wilkinson explains. “In my case, I was redefining the role of the regional office as a true service center, and managers got the message.”
Most executives know what their next project or promotion will be well before the day it starts, but too few take advantage of their insider status and the time beforehand to prepare well. That is an opportunity lost.
Your next assignment is your next chance to create results—for your organization and for your career. A smart investment of time and effort up front can make the difference between simply getting by and truly excelling, between a dead-end move and a stepping-stone to bigger and better things.
A key factor in your transition will be knowledge—not only substantive information about the project or field, but an understanding of how others inside and outside the organization have tackled similar assignments, what challenges and opportunities lie ahead, and what resources are available and how you can mobilize them to overcome obstacles. Combining insights from our ongoing study of how knowledge is best captured and shared, our experience with consulting and executive search clients, and interviews with successful leaders across different types of enterprises, this article identifies three practical steps for building your knowledge capital to excel in new roles throughout your career. We call them phase zero, learning tour, and affinity groups.
Wilkinson used all three to implement his plan, reinterviewing staff members and translating his network of former peers—the national directors—into a source of feedback. This enabled him to upgrade the HR leadership, add a director of quality, and rapidly fill open positions. Let’s look at each step in detail.
Phase ZeroThis is a chance to use your insider advantage to become familiar with a new unit’s people and performance and to discern the opportunities and challenges of your assignment—before it begins or is even announced. In the weeks leading up to the assignment, carve out and hold sacred at least 30 minutes a day to prepare. You may find ways to increase effectiveness, reduce costs, or even reassess a business model. In phase zero you can identify problems and develop a hypothesis for how to solve them—as Wilkinson did in southern Africa. And your solutions can be tested and adjusted as you move into your new role.
Among the likeliest places to look for objective data in this step are company documents—such as performance reviews and reports on services and operations—and feedback from customers and suppliers. For qualitative input, turn to colleagues who have supervised the role, interacted with it, or previously filled a similar role. Push to understand the story behind the story—for example, ask “What challenges might I encounter that aren’t apparent from the description of the assignment?” Finding these people and getting the information you need, without fanfare, will help you understand expectations and possibilities, think through a plan of action, and prepare personally for the transition.
Consider the experience of Todd Hoddick, who in early 2011 became vice president of the North American entertainment division of Barco, a global visual solutions company based in Belgium, in January 2011. Having joined the firm in 2008 as vice president of digital cinema in North America, Hoddick had developed a strong reputation for building a profitable single-business unit. In 2010 he was approached for the new position, which would add rental and staging, digital signage, home cinema, image processing, and corporate audiovisuals to his plate.
The failure wall was part of our efforts to create a company culture where employees can take risks without fear of reprisal. As NPR's Here and Now reported earlier this year, we started by collecting inspirational quotes about failure. Among my favorites:
One random Thursday night, I returned to our corporate headquarters afterhours with a bottle of wine and a box of acrylic paints. My assistant and I used stencils to paint about three dozen such quotes onto a large white wall in our break room. As first time stencilers, this project itself seemed destined to end up a byline on the (slightly gloppy) failure wall until we gratefully accepted some much-needed painting assistance from my wife.
After we finished painting around 1:00AM, we fastened a dozen Sharpies to the wall alongside these simple instructions: (1) describe a time when you failed, (2) state what you learned, and (3) sign your name. To set the tone, I listed three of my own most memorable (and humbling) failures.
In the beginning, the wall was met with surprise, curiosity and a bit of trepidation. We didn't ask anyone to contribute and we didn't tell people why it was there, but the wall quickly filled up. Some of the entries are life lessons: "After 7 years of practicing, I quit playing violin in high school to fit in. Lesson learned — who cares what other people think." Some are financial mishaps: "I thought buying Yahoo at $485 a share was a good idea." Many are self-deprecating: "My successful failure is working in online marketing when I came to LA to work in showbiz." Some are more than a little amusing: "I thought it was spelled 'fale.'"
I've said this before but it bears repeating: success by failure is not an oxymoron. When you make a mistake, you're forced to look back and find out exactly where you went wrong, and formulate a new plan for your next attempt. By contrast, when you succeed, you don't always know exactly what you did right that made you successful (often, it's luck).
We don't just encourage risk taking at our offices: we demand failure. If you're not failing every now and then, you're probably not advancing. Mistakes are the predecessors to both innovation and success, so it is important to celebrate mistakes as a central component of any culture. This kind of culture can only be created by example — it won't work if it's forced or contrived. A lively culture is nebulous, indefinable, ever-changing. Try to package it in a formal mission statement and you just may suffocate it.
The best way to shape culture is of course to focus on hiring the people who will ultimately make up that culture. Yet this is often overlooked, replaced with corporate values, slogans, and mission statements. It took billions of years to create and define all of the world's great cultures — through failure after failure — so it is with arrogance alone that we executives think we can create and define one for our company. To be blunt, cultures are not created or defined by executives; they evolve around the people who make up a company.
I personally interview every candidate at our corporate headquarters. By the time a prospective employee's resume reaches my desk, the department heads are convinced that the candidate can do the job. But for each person we end up hiring, I still end up interviewing countless other highly qualified candidates who were vying for the job. I'm mainly looking for cultural fit, and there is no more important job for a CEO.
If we hadn't hired people who cherish failures, my entries on the failure wall would be very lonely. Often when interviewing, I poke around and see if I can get the candidate to acknowledge a failure. It's a red flag to me if a candidate can't admit a mistake with a bit of self-deprecating humor. The tendency to dodge direct questions with a Miss America-style answer may indeed be a great asset to someone else's company, but it's not a great fit for success at mine.
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