One of my recent projects has been Twitopolis.com. I actually started this site some time ago but then shelved it for other stuff.
Well, I dusted it off, put a UI on it and got it up and running. As you can probably guess from the name it is a Twitter based site. With a community theme, it uses tags, via the hashtag, to organize public tweets into various categories.
So if you want to see whether you want to see what people think about movies, politics, sports, weddings, school, or whatever, they are all there.
You can even respond to a tweet directly from the site. If the site gets some traction I think I will add the ability for a user to customize the site, so that it only show the categories they are interested in.
A change of events has occurred at my regular day job. I am being promoted from a developer to a manager position for what will be a new internet division. As a developer the new division doesn’t have the appeal that would keep me going as there will be little actual application development. The focus will be more on building content sites which is all good and fine, but it isn’t my specialty. I can do pure web stuff and I enjoy it once in a while but not on a daily basis as the challenges aren’t the same as building the type of software that I am used to building.
However as a manager it takes on a whole new perspective for me. This new group is essentially a startup within a larger organization and I am being given almost free reign to build the IT staff, implement processes, set standards, etc. as I would like. That really appeals to me. I could take the idea of “building my kingdom”, but that isn’t it. I have two motives that are leading me to accept this challenge:
Doing It Right
I’ve worked in a few large companies and always had an uphill fight to get our dev groups the tools and processes in place for doing our work ‘the right way’. Now this right way wasn’t always my right way, but what we as a group thought was correct. From having good documentation, the right issue tracking software, build environments, etc., we rarely had the time or support from management.
So, here is my chance to do things the way I always wished it would be done.
Managerial Challenge
Leading a team isn’t new to me. I’ve either been placed into that position or it sort of just happened, but I’ve never been an official ‘manager’. So what does that mean? Well, I’ve always worked to earn the respect of my customers and peers, but what was always missing was the authority for certain decisions. In the past I’ve always had to inform my boss, who was the manager, and they would have to inform whom ever about a decision because they had the title and authority to do so. Now I will be in that role and I can take the decisions of the development staff along with mine and communicate those directly.
Far more important than that however is that I hope to have a larger influence on the sites and certain directions that we take. I have a vision and that vision not only fulfills the business vision, but goes beyond that and also covers a vision for the everything that happens beneath what the end users see. As I told my new boss, great designers will give the end user the visual appeal of the sites and that is all good and fine, but I am also interested in what makes that happen. So when she gets the accolades for high traffic, high revenue, great looking web sites I will be able tell myself and the staff that I work with that everything that makes it happen is of the same high quality, attention to detail that the visuals are. And that is a challenge I am looking forward to.
As for my entrepreneurial aspirations, I still have them but this new position will teach me a lot more of what I need to know to one day have a large company of my own (should I end up down that path). This is a unique experience for me and I plan to capitalize on it!
A couple of weeks ago I asked Alexander of the Chief Happiness Officer blog about a post where he mentioned running an IT company that didn’t use any managers. He was kind enough to elaborate on this in this post.
The approach was very democratic and apparently worked well for his small company. I can imagine what some of those meetings were like. Being in the IT industry, I know how strong willed technical people can be and a lot are quite passive-aggressive in nature. The idea that every vote counted could have the potential to be a strong motivational factor not only for those that want to perform tasks that needed to get done, but also for those that would like to see tasks get done a certain way, but not necessarily do those tasks themselves.
As Alexander eluded to, some of these meetings could easily get out of control. I’ve witnessed this myself on many occasions where the details start to get debated and all kinds of tangents get started. I believe it would take good moderation to keep this kind of process on track and get decisions made in a timely fashion, but the end results could really be great.
Along with employees being benefited with more motivation and a sense of empowerment, a benefit to the company would emerge as employees would express ideas for the business that might otherwise never be heard. Everything from operational improvements to other revenue streams could be presented from anyone in the company that never would have spoken up before because of the all to common practice that upper management makes those decisions and never hears what anyone else has to say.
Alexander has many other good articles as well as a new book on workplace happiness. Check it out.
In my professional life I have served my country, worked for one mom and pop shop, spent time with a small software vendor and worked for 2 big companies and 1 medium size company. In that time I’ve seen really dumb decisions, tough decisions and everything in between. Had a few supervisors who looked out for me, had a few that were only interested in their career paths, and a few that tried to do the right thing. Witnessed a few outright lies to customers and a few creative solutions being offered.
So it is fair to say that I’ve seen just about everything and it constantly amazes me how some companies operate. Through it all I’ve fought many, many uphill battles, fighting against bad vendors, trying to protect the company I’m working for and help it make informed decisions. As a result I’ve had a few successes and many more defeats, but I have always tried to keep my integrity even though I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.
Who cares you say? Well, seeing as I plan to own a couple businesses of my own and who knows some or maybe just one of those will grow large enough so that it has many employees I don’t want to fall in to the same trap. Naturally you can’t please everybody all the time, but I don’t want to make the same mistakes as those I’ve worked for in the past. With that being said, I’m dedicating this category just for marking these occasions when I will look back to remind myself of how I don’t want things to be run.
Let us see if I can steer my ship in the right direction.
