The True Enterprise

This Saturday my son and I had a nice boy’s day out. The day started off with a nice breakfast at the restaurant followed by a visit to the bookstore. We staid there a while and headed out to see the new Harry Potter. On our way back home, my son chatting along sitting in the back of the Jeep, I realized what my life’s true Enterprise is. My son. It’s ironic that we often call a new business “your baby” – you nurture it and give it all you have to make it grow and succeed. Although I will be spending much of my life starting businesses, the one and only true enterprise is my child – to help him grow and better himself, to go beyond imaginable borders, to succeed, to live a wonderful life.

I raise my hat to all dedicated parents out there. Never forget what your true enterprise is.

Another World

It’s early in the morning in Sydney. Spring has just begun; the air is chilled and slightly humid. I’m walking towards St Leonards railway station on my way to our client’s office. I hear new strange sounds, chirping birds. It otherwise feels very familiar and right, as if it was meant to be. Like a puzzle slowly falling into place. I can’t just yet see the big picture but I know it’s right and I know I’m moving in the right direction.

Some streets remind me of California with the mix of palm trees and flower bushes while the train stations remind me of the UK. The brick walls and layout radiate a distinct English feel. I’m here at the other end of the world, yet it all seams so similar, the new reality of an international era. It seems we’re losing a sense of uniqueness, losing a piece of heritage, a soon to be uniform “global culture”, the sad reality of globalization.

As I walk towards our client’s office campus, I once more hear a loud and strange noise. I look up and see a large white parrot perched at the top of one of the buildings. A beautiful sight, not something you would see everywhere. The architecture is modern yet well blended with the environment.

It’s now lunch time and head out for one of the campus restaurants. I pick up sautéed basil chicken with rice and we head for one of the gardens. There’s a live musician just across from our table. I’m told this is how it is every Wednesday. Live music, good restaurants, nice gardens, and an architecture that you would only expect to see from a modern museum. Yet, this is a corporate campus, where thousands of employees come to work everyday.

How to put out a fire with oil

Once upon a time there was a business that constantly tried to put out fires using oil. The company didn’t know that oil doesn’t put out fires and it constantly wondered why the fires kept raging. So the business kept throwing more and more oil at its fires hoping that some day they would cease.

Sounds familiar?

This seems to be a prevalent syndrome in companies. Managers often attempt to solve problems by adding more resources, assuming that having more people on a team will, without any doubt, resolve all problems. When in reality the root of the problem is in the company’s management itself – not the team, not the project, not the customer, not the government, not the delivery boy, not the competitors, not the coffee – but management.

Adding more people to a disorganized project can only lead to confusion, reduced morale, dissatisfaction, and failure. With newcomers on the project, the existing team is implicitly told by management that “they can’t do the job, so we need other people in”. The newcomers on the other hand have no background information and history on the project, making their usefulness questionable, and leaving them also with lower morale in the long run. In the end, you’ll have disgruntled employees that no longer feel like contributing to the project and that will question their role in the company.

Management that fails to see this will end up “burning down the place”, because you can’t put out a fire by adding more oil to it. If the fire does get put out, it just means there is not a single bit of fuel left; all has turned to ashes.