Terry Blanchard

Imagine a completely normal paper clip. How many ideas can you generate for what else it can be used for? You have 2 minutes. Go.

This exercise is one of the classic creativity tests to determine how skilled you are at brainstorming. The more ideas, the better. But how innovative are your ideas?

There is a very clear connection between the time you use to find ideas and the quality of them. So how do you make the most of the time you’ve been given? First, empty your mind of the ideas that you know about – they naturally come first. Now you have the space to think in a more lateral and untraditional way. If you use another two minutes on the above test, how many more ideas can you generate? What separates the last list from the first?

In the 60’s, many creative theories tested the connection between time and the quality of ideas. The results of the tests were not surprising. To generate good ideas, it takes time. This can be extra minutes, hours, or days.

Enter the “good enough” culture. It’s about making do with the ideas that come first. This is usually masked in ideas that we already know about. Traditional, safe ideas. We don’t take the time to invest in the more creative, new thought out ideas. We rush to move on. As long as it fulfills the minimum requirements, or is the first idea to generate unanimous approval, then it is obviously good enough. Time is up. Next!

In my posting about What is Great Design, Alan Cooper states that first-to-market is no match for best-to-market. Innovation and new thinking is crucial in today’s tough competitive environment. The challenge today concerns time and courage. Courage to focus on more than just performance and results. Courage to deviate from the norm. Courage to actually invest the right amount of time required to elevate to the next level. Courage to be better than just good enough.

Written by Terry Blanchard \\ tags: Brainstorming, Interaction Design

Congratulations. You’ve accepted a new job.

Now take a deep breath and prepare yourself for the challenge ahead. Even though you may be floating on cloud nine now, there are a lot of emotional and logistical hurdles still to clear.

The job-changing process arouses all sorts of feelings. Starting with your acceptance to the first month or two after you’ve started your new position, the emotional limbo you’ll experience will be especially acute.

Why? Because suddenly, reality kicks in. After all this time, the changes you’ve been contemplating are in motion and actually going to happen.

This powerful realization will be followed by a sense of guilt. Damn, I’ve been cheating on my present employer. Having an affair is one thing, but this is divorce, right? I never knew it would come to this!

Enter the fear of reprisal. My boss is gonna crap, I just know it. They’re really going to make me suffer. And if the fear of guilt doesn’t give you enough to worry about, consider the buyer’s remorse you’ll probably feel. What if I made a mistake?

Shhhh. Breathe deeply. Everyone who changes jobs is plagued by these demons. It’s natural. Find, and go to your happy place.

Rather than dwell on the past, imagine for a moment that you’re in your new job. Isn’t this great? Think of all the changes you’re making, and how your new life is a huge improvement compared to what you had before. Think of the new people you’re meeting, the new skills you’re acquiring, and the new opportunities you have to advance your career.

Now, are you going to let your fears unravel everything you’ve accomplished in the way of self-evaluation, planning, resume writing, and interviewing? No way. You’re not the type of person who’s going to allow cold feet to put the chill on changing jobs. You’re a person of action, and you seize the moment. You know that those who back away from golden opportunities may never get another chance.

Self-affirmations like these can do wonders for maintaining your positive energy. And by projecting all the beneficial aspects of your new job into the present tense, you’ll ward off the demons that can distort your judgment, and make you vulnerable to a counteroffer attempts.

If your intention to make a change is sincere, and a counteroffer by your current company won’t change your decision to leave, you should still keep up your guard. A counteroffer attempt can be potentially devastating, both on a personal and professional level. Unless you know how to diffuse your current employer’s retaliation against your resignation, you may end up psychologically wounded, or right back at the job you wanted to leave.

The best way to shield yourself from the inevitable mixture of emotions surrounding the act of submitting your resignation is to remember that employers follow a predictable, three-stage pattern when faced with a resignation:

They’ll be in shock. “You sure picked a fine time to leave! Who’s going to finish the project we started?” The implication is that you’re irreplaceable. They might as well ask, “How will we ever get the work done without you?”

• Answer this challenge by replying, “If I were run over by a truck on my way to work tomorrow, I feel that somehow, this company would survive.” or put it back on them and say, “That implies there was a good time for me to leave? Is there something I should know?”
• They’ll start to probe. “Who’s the new company? What sort of position did you accept? What are they paying you?” Here you must be careful not to disclose too much information, or appear too enthusiastic. Otherwise, you run the risk of feeding your current employer with ammunition they can use against you later, such as, “I’ve heard some pretty terrible things about your new company” or, “They’ll make everything look great until you actually get there. Then you’ll see what a sweat shop that place really is.”

They’ll make you an offer to try and keep you from leaving. “You know that raise you and I were talking about a few months back? I forgot to tell you: We were just getting it processed yesterday.” To this you can respond, “Hmmm… Today you seem pretty concerned about my happiness and well-being. Where were you yesterday, before I announced my intention to resign?”

It may take several days for the three stages to run their course, but believe me, sooner or later, you’ll find yourself engaged in conversations similar to these.

Written by Terry Blanchard \\ tags: Business, Employment, Resigning

Non-compete agreements seem to be one of those documents you must sign when starting with a new employer. They throw it in with the rest of the benefits and NDA paperwork you are expected to sign when starting out on your very exciting first day. It’s usually buried near the bottom of the pile when psychologically, you’re in the “I’m sure it’s all good, I’ll just sign everything” mood.

So what is a non-compete agreement? A non-compete clause is a term used in contract law under which one party (the employee) agrees to not pursue a similar profession or trade in competition against another party (the employer).

In less legalese, this usually comes in the form of you not being allowed to go to work for a “competitor” for some period of time after leaving the company. 6 months is fairly typical.

However, in California the Business and Professions Code make these agreements unenforcable and non-binding agreements.

BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONS CODE SECTION 16600-16607
16600. Except as provided in this chapter, every contract by which anyone is restrained from engaging in a lawful profession, trade, or business of any kind is to that extent void.

Even though non-compete clauses or agreements may be unlawful and unenforceable in California, many employers still make employees sign them because they are willing to gamble that:

1. Most employees will not question the validity of the agreement.
2. Most employees will assume non-compete restrictions are valid.
3. Most employees will not challenge or question the employer about the agreement.

At the end of the day, the employer or business will reap the benefits of an illegal non-compete agreement because employees will assume it’s valid and abide by it.

This is analogous to the homeowner who posts a “Beware of Dog” sign, but does not have a dog. Or the business owner who displays a sign that warns “Premises Alarmed” when in fact there are no alarms. In both examples, the owners keep burglars and trespassers away for the price of a few plastic signs. Employers benefit in the same manner. The illegal non-compete agreement is equivalent to a cheap plastic sign. While ultimately unenforceable, the employer benefits by giving it to employees.

California’s law gives its workers “the right to work” and prevents employers from preventing you to work for yourself or anyone else to sustain your income. While this is a very good thing for employees, it is not a free ticket to be an idiot. Regardless of how good a person you are, and no matter how big a jerk your ex-employer is, you cannot steal company property or information.

If you have stolen company information to hold hostage during severance or employment departure negotiations, or if you misappropriated trade secrets in retaliation, or took the material to set up your own shop, you are a criminal in the eyes of the law.

In summary, you can work for anyone you choose and your employer can’t stop you. But don’t be a moron and share trade secrets or take IP that belongs to your previous employer with anyone else.

I am not a lawyer by any means, nor do I play one on a television show, so don’t base your legal defense on this posting.

Written by Terry Blanchard \\ tags: Legal, Non-Compete

I found this great list of entrepreneurial proverbs from Seth Goldstein’s web site. I’ve reproduced it here.

Starting

• It’s good to be king – being an entrepreneur is the best job I’ve had. Every day your job is new and different; you constantly have to push yourself in new directions. You no longer have to say, “Well, I’m just an engineer, but…” — you have a great excuse to take an interest in everything. Working in an environment you shaped to your own beliefs about how a company should be run is incredible (and humbling!). And of course there are sometimes financial rewards, although it’s still a great job regardless.
• Losing sucks – shutting down a company is unbelievably difficult. It affects your home life, your health, your job prospects, your financial stability. Professional investors are grown-ups, but it’s still extremely disheartening to lose the money people invested based on belief in you. If your backers include friends or family, it’s extremely difficult to have to tell them the company is closing and their money is gone. Most entrepreneurs fail several times before succeeding, too, so losing is both terrible and nearly inevitable. Fight as hard as you can against it.
• Building to flip is building to flop – this is taken from Jason Fried, and he’s right. People who start out with only one goal, to sell to a big portal, will find their options are too limited. Plan as many paths to success as possible for your company, and always have a Plan B when acquisition (or whatever path you choose first) doesn’t work.
• Prudence becomes procrastination – it’s great to research your market and talk to potential buyers about your ideas. It’s terrible to let an excess of this become a impediment to getting started. Too much prudence edges away from research and into procrastination.
• Momentum builds on itself – just start. Do whatever you can. Draw a user interface. Write a spec. Make something, anything, that people can see and touch and try. A prototype is worth ten thousand words. One you start moving, you will find that people start to carry you along.
• Jump when you are more excited than afraid – lack of fear is irrational, and too much fear is debilitating. Make the jump into your business when you have considered the fear, and come out more excited than afraid.

The Idea

• Pay attention to the idea that won’t leave you alone – this is taken from Paul Hawken’s Growing a Business. Sometimes an idea catches hold of you and you find you can’t put it down. Pay attention to that! Just start working on it. Can’t get yourself to do anything on it? Move on. Find yourself waking up out of bed to write down new ideas about it? That’s a good one to choose.
• If you keep your secrets from the market, the market will keep its secrets from you – entrepreneurs too often worry about keeping their brilliant secrets locked away; we should all worry much more about springing a surprise on a disinterested market (anyone remember the Segway?). To quote Howard Aiken: “Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.”
• Immediate yes is immediate no – does everyone immediately tell you your idea is great? Run away from it. If the idea is that obvious, the market will be filled with competitors, and you’ll find yourself scrambling. One good test: when the New York Times Magazine puts out its annual “Year in Ideas” issue, is your idea in it? Then don’t do it. You’re already too late.
• Build what you know – this is the most basic advice of idea generation: scratch an itch you have yourself. To make a great company, stop and ensure that your need is broadly felt, and that your solution is broadly applicable — not everyone spends their life in front of a computer, remember.
• Give people what they need, not what they say they need – interviews are tricky. People will swear up and down that they would buy a product you describe if only it were available, and then fail to do so as soon as it is. Likewise, in conversation an idea can sound terrible, but in actualization the idea can become a compelling product. You have to sherlock out the truth of the interest people express, and “yes/no” questions are usually less useful than “how much” or “how bad” questions.
• Your ideas will get better the more you know about business – engineers hate to hear this, but you can generalize up quite far from here: the more you know about everything, the better all of your ideas will get! If you want to start a business and your strength is in development, learning about pricing, sales, marketing, finance, and yes, even HR, all of it will make your product ideas stronger and better.

People

• Three is fine; two, divine – having too many co-founders makes decisions hard to reach; if you’re on your own, you have to bear all of the stress and worry about the success of the company. In my judgment, three people can do well together, but having two founders is best.
• Work only with people you like and believe in – I once heard Eric Schmidt say something along the lines of, “The older I get, the more I think all that matters is working with people you like.” If you’re smart and talented, you’re probably going to like a lot of smart and talented people. Working with people you like is so much more fun, and often more productive, than fighting against someone who may be smart and talented but just isn’t a great fit for you.
• Work with people who like and believe in you, just naturally – maybe you are very persuasive, and can talk people into working with you against their better instincts. Especially for co-founders and early employees, don’t try that hard. Find the people that naturally want to work with you, and nudge them into the roles where you need them. You’ll have more fun and get more done.
• Great things are made by people who share a passion, not by those who have been talked into one – a corollary of the last; you can spark a passion in someone, but you can’t do it without some fuel to catch. Better to wait, and find the person who is already inclined to believe in your cause. You may talk someone into co-founding a company with you, but will they stick with it through ups and downs if they had to be persuaded that hard?

Product

• Cool ideas are useless without great needs – this is the classic engineers’ entrepreneurial mistake (or at least I’d like to think so, since I’ve made it). Techies love tech, and a new technology can produce a lot of companies that don’t really meet a need. Better to start with the need, and then see how what you know can produce a better answer to that need. (Marketers tend to have the opposite problem: real, pressing needs with completely unworkable solutions.)
• Build the simplest thing possible – engineers have the hardest time with this, with not over-designing for the need they’re addressing. Make the simplest possible product that makes a significant dent in that need, and you’ll do far better than you would addressing two or three needs at once. Simplicity leads to clarity in everything you do.
• Solve problems, not potential problems – you can waste a lot of money implementing solutions for problems you don’t have yet, and may never have. Work on the biggest, most pressing problems today, and put aside everything else.
• Test everything with real people – it’s unbelievable how helpful this is. Go find civilians, real people who use computers because they have to and not because they love to. Find them in Starbucks, or at the library, or in a college computer lab. Give them $20 for 20 minutes, and you’ll be paid back a hundred times over.

Money

• Start with nothing, and have nothing for as long as possible – small budgets give big focus (probably another line I’m stealing from Jason Fried: it sounds like something he’d say…) Don’t go out and raise a ton of money right away. Instead, give yourself just enough to get going, and use the limits that imposes to motivate yourself.
• The best investor pitches are plain-spoken and entertaining (not in that order) – think about what this implies. A plain-spoken pitch is the surface of a very solid business. If you have to fudge and lie to get investors interested, why is that? If you’re running a great business, it is not hard at all to lure investors into it; the worse your business, the bigger (and more odious) your fundraising task is. Entertaining implies a fun person to work with, and VCs like working with people they like as much as the rest of us do. If you don’t bring the funny, bring the person who brings the funny.
• Never let on that you’re keeping a secret – telling an investor “I don’t want to talk about that” is terrible. It’s the natural converse of being plain-spoken. It’s good to be aware, though, that some potential investors will listen to you and then share your information with your direct competitors, and not always because they’re invested in those competitors. Knowing that, you have to keep some secrets — but be as diplomatic about that as possible. Respond to the idea behind the question, without giving away more than you feel comfortable discussing. Learn to steer the conversation in the way you want it to go. And then give up more information as you become more comfortable with the potential investor.
• No means maybe and yes means maybe – you should never take a “no” from someone you want to work with. Accept the no, ask for feedback, and then just keep sending them updates on how much butt you’re kicking in the market. During one company, three of the five term sheets I collected came from VC firms that told me “no” originally. Conversely, though, the only money in the bank is actual money actually in the bank. Everything else is just a possibility, and you have to treat it as such. Don’t stop fundraising until you have a firm commitment for the funding you need, and don’t accept halfway promises like, “We’ll fund you if another firm comes in.” Keep on driving until the wire transfer is complete.
• For investors, the product is nothing – the classic engineer’s VC pitch has ten slides about the product and two about the academic achievements of the founders. That’s a terrible pitch. One slide should be about the product, while the rest cover the market, competitors, financials, funding history, and the relevant experience of the team. The product matters far less to most investors than the reactions of customers, the properties of the market, and the credibility of the team. Obsess about the product on your own time; present your business in all of its parts.
• The best way to get investment is not to need it – if you have a running business with real customers and you’re paying all your bills, you are much more likely to get a funding round than if you need the round in order to survive or succeed. The pitch that goes, “We could accelerate our growth with more money” is much more compelling than, “I need your money or our doors will close.”

Written by Terry Blanchard \\ tags: Seth Goldstein