Give me spark

37 points by sirbrad 14 years ago | 13 comments

jiggy2011 14 years ago |

True dat. In many companies as soon as there is even the slightest hint of passioned discussion you will get someone who tries to step in "defuse" the situation and remind everyone of the "respect in the workplace" policy or some such.

This will then often lead to the intervening party trying to broker a "compromise" between the two parties where the emphasis is more on how to resolve the dispute without anyone getting their feelings hurt.

As long as the argument hasn't gotten to a point where you think someone is likely to get punched or it has got personal or so far off track that it doesn't look like it will ever end I think it's usually best to just leave people to argue it out.

In the end even the "winning" party is now likely to be more mindful of the potential pitfalls of their idea when it is being implemented.

If you are working with other people I think you should aim to have an argument a day.

mlapida 14 years ago |

Can anyone explain to me how 37signals got all the way up on the high, preaching horse? Aside from a handful of well designed web apps that are used primarily by web dev's and designers, what makes their wisdom worthwhile? I'm sure this will get down-voted into oblivion but I am genuinely curious.

cglee 14 years ago | |

They're successful in the realm of web design/development and are the archetype for bootstrapped startups.

axx 14 years ago | | |

And they're not some stupid VC funded hipster company, that's build in 2 weeks. They sell a few very solid products, not the unusable but shiny new thing everybody talks about for a few weeks and nobody remembers in a year.

Sure, some of their Apps could get some design overhaul here nad there, but they do what they're supposed to do very well.

Because of that success and the technical background (Rails) they build (in my view) a huge credibility, at least for me.

highace 14 years ago | |

With respect to them, do they have a policy where staff members are forced to write blog posts? Because this one looks like it took 5 minutes to think up, and then 5 minutes to write down. And it isn't the first one. Sorry.

jballanc 14 years ago |

I would add this attitude to the long list of "counterintuitive things you should do if you want to be successful in the long run".

Sure, a company where everyone is all chummy and nobody disagrees once a decision has been made, that sort of place might be successful in the short run. They can probably iterate more rapidly when no one argues about a feature. The might be able to implement more features in a shorter time when no one argues about implementation. Ultimately, though, I would bet they end up with an inefficient product that no one wants.

Actually, this reminds me of how Penn and Teller describe their relationship: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYcabRJRG54

absconditus 14 years ago | |

Having a product that no one wants, or that most people actively dislike even, is not much of an impediment for enterprise sales.

Pound6F 14 years ago |

One of the biggest things that can get in the way of a useful debate, however, is pride.

There are a lot of employees that love to argue and, even once it is clear they are wrong, they will still argue for their point and refuse to back down.

This emerges even more around design decision when there is no clear right and wrong and two parties are battling for their ideas. Sadly, it is often said that those two argue the longest are the winners, regardless of who is right.

I would say passion and the ability to challenge everyone's ideas is extremely important, but you must combine it with humility and the ability to back down when you know you are wrong (or at least more wrong than the other).

absconditus 14 years ago |

Corporate American seems to be headed far in the other direction. People seem to be more interested in being friends with everyone (while talking about them behind their back) than doing great work. Any kind of confrontation is seen as a serious issue.

technoslut 14 years ago | |

Corporate always had this problem. If you're not a 'yes man' then you are a potential threat to their job. Small businesses, for whatever reason, seem to react differently.

apg 14 years ago |

I would really love an actual example of what he is talking about. Sure I can use my imagination, but it would make the post more interesting. It's a good point he makes, but concrete details always provide an excellent analytic touchstone.

Incidentally, this is a good trait (IMO) to instill in your kids. I love arguing with mine.

dhh 14 years ago | |

I thought of this after we hired @qrush. He instantly started arguing with everyone about everything from technology choices to feature selection and I thought to myself, "that's so awesome". And then I thought that we've had a long history of hiring people like that and how well it's worked out.

And at the same time, how less than stellar it worked out elsewhere both for myself and others who fell under the spark-on-the-first-day column.

ironchef 14 years ago |

Similar to being able to discern what customers want vs what customers need... or being able to tell a person who wants to buy your product you don't think it's a good fit (and, of course, suggesting an alternative)