Paulina Lake, Newbury Caldera

Super Dukie!

Lessons on Managing

Diana Hsieh at NoodleFood posted about an interview with Steve Jobs of Apple. She quotes several parts of the interview, but my favorite paragraph is her own description of the difference between a bureaucratic company and a healthy one:

"A bureaucratic company is a company that doesn't trust its employees to make good decisions. The result is stagnation and incompetence. If a company can't trust its employees to exercise good judgment in doing their jobs, then it needs to fire them and hire better employees. Or it needs to learn to trust them to do what they're capable of doing, including learning from mistakes. Bureaucratic focus on "process" and "policy" will drive away the most productive and capable employees -- or crush them. It's not a mode of business appropriate to rational, productive people."

This really rings true for me as I reflect on the last four years of practicing hiring, managing and, yes, firing employees. Here are a few lessons we've learned that relate to Diana's quote above (in no particular order):

1. Demonstrate the "company culture" you want and then trust your employees to make good decisions within that framework.
2. Create jobs for individuals rather than hiring individuals for jobs (ie. play to employees strengths rather than forcing them to do jobs they aren't good at).
3. Problem employees, whether due to lack of judgment or being poor community members (dramatic, etc - we deal with this one a lot) aren't worth it, no matter how much experience or other great traits they have. Fire 'em.
4. Delegate, delegate, delegate. Assign tasks, train employees and let them complete them with supervision appropriate to their ability - not more, not less.
5. Explain the reasons behind your decisions, especially early on in your relationship with an employee. This lets them know that you think things through and leads to respect and loyalty.

I am still working on all of these and probably will be for the rest of my career! Who ever said being the boss was easy?!

Principled Government and Fall-time in the Wrangells

Amit is on an editorial roll. Here is his most recent acticle: "We Need a Return to Principled Government".

We are enroute from our summer home in rural Alaska back to Bend for the winter. I hope to be posting more regularly as we wind down from the summer. Here's a taste of fall in the Wrangells...

Mears Glacier

This is the Mears Glacier in Prince William Sound. A few days ago I went out on Pangaea's "water taxi" to drop off some day kayakers (and pick them up later) and pick up my friend Laura and her clients from the end of an 8-day trip. Great day! We got right up close to the ice face and there were seals sitting on the icebergs at the base of it. I know it's a small image, but hopefully this gives you some idea of the amazingness of Alaska!

Socializing Japan in the NYT

This morning in my daily New York Times headlines I saw this:

"Victors in Japan Are Set to Abandon Market Reform:
Japan’s opposition party, which has returned to power, pledged a shift away from deregulation and market-led growth, but its economy may in fact need more of that."

The article overall represents the state of the Japanese economy with statements like this:

"Many outdated rules protect inefficient companies, while entrepreneurship is kept in check by cumbersome barriers. Economists say excessive government assistance to small and medium-size companies works to dampen competitive pressure."

On one hand, I was happy to see these kind of statements in a liberal paper like the NYT. On the other hand, the article repeatedly mentions "American-style free-market economics", which makes me feel that the author believes that America still represents this ideal. The article never stated or implied that the US should also be looking out for the dangers of socialism.