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Friday, August 31, 2012

On the Importance of Business Values

I met a really interesting fellow yesterday, a great storyteller and a businessman. I learned a bit about something on how to value your products and how to pick your clients (pro tip: not all clients are equal). I guess the most interesting anecdote had to with the core values of Kone corporation.

Kone is one of those Finnish heavyweights well known all over the world. You have likely used one of their products yourself. They define themselves as "dedicated to people flow". In short, they produce elevators, escalators and automatic door solutions.

According to my source the current leadership of Kone has developed the company based on three distinct values: position, direction and openness. If you look at their current values page, you'll notice they haven't been phrased this bluntly. I think these three values manifest themselves better in their strategy.

What makes these specific three interesting in my opinion is that they seem like basic values each company should instill to their employees. These values are something that apply on macro level as well. A company should definitely be aware of its position on market and where it's headed (direction). Being open doesn't hurt either.

It is important to know your position in the company and how it contributes to the whole. In some cases an employee can even be thought to be an entrepreneur inside a company. Sometimes these folks are also known as intrapreneurs. This sort of thinking definitely has some serious implications on the role of an employee. Instead of being just a passive worker, there's something more. A sense of ownership and pride.

And then there's the concept of direction. A company and an individual has to know where they are headed. This will give meaning to effort. Each task performed takes the company closer to its goal.

Direction is set by vision. In Kone's case the vision is clear. They want to provide world class solutions to make people flow. All parts of Kone (machine in Finnish) are dedicated to this effort.

Openness is the vital ingredient that makes sure progress is possible. If you are struggling, it's better to struggle together rather than suffer alone. As lean principles have taught us, problems tend to cascade. Small issues lead to bigger ones when left unchecked. Openness is the ailment that helps us battle this problem.

Do you know the values of your business? If not, is there something you can do about it? If the employees don't know your company values, what's the point of having values at all?

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Monkeys on My Back

It's better not to have too many monkeys on your back. They slow you down. Tasks undone tax you mentally even if you really don't notice it. If you want to achieve something great, you have to focus and get rid of the taxing stuff. It's poisonous.

I struggled a bit with my thesis for a few years. In retrospect that was something I probably should have gotten off my back earlier. Since I got the thing out of my back I have been somewhat productive and managed to get a lot done. There are still some things brewing.

I feel like I'm in some kind of a positive, self-reinforcing loop right now. The more I get things done, the more it seems to feed the doing. For each action there is some kind of a reaction. Even small things, when done properly, may lead to big gains later on. In my case this has manifested itself as various opportunities I would have otherwise missed altogether and led to some new, interesting acquaintances.

Don't let the monkeys wear you down. There are various techniques that can help to deal with this sort of issues. Personal Kanban is perhaps one of the most intriguing ones I've come upon. I have visualized my goals on a simple Google Docs based document. Just having them visible helps somewhat. If you want to set up one, feel free to use my template. Just hit "File -> Make a copy" and off you go.

If you want to climb a mountain, the only way is to do it a step at a time. No way around that. Visualizing your problem is the first step in solving it. It is definitely worth it to pay off your mental debt, no matter how small the individual issues might be. They add up. Don't let the monkeys wear you down.

Orangutang by suneko (CC BY-SA)


Friday, August 24, 2012

Sneak Peek at Project Elovalo

Elovalo is a project I have been involved in since the Spring. The goal of our project is to build a couple of led cubes for a week long event held in September. We will place these cubes on pedestals at a central park in Jyväskylä. So far it has been an interesting project. We have tackled most of our technical woes. Still some assembly left.

I've primarily focused on 3D and effect side. I build a small simulator that allows us to render effect code via Blender. The simulator matches actual output somewhat well and has helped us in effect development. It allowed us to design API and develop before we actually got hardware ready. After we tackled our hardware woes, the effect code just worked. You can get some idea of the simulator output by checking our demo video. The real thing looks like this:


There is more information available at the project site. We haven't polished the documentation yet or anything but if you want to build a led cube, that might give you some idea how to do it.

Linkdump 11 - Art, Business, Design, ...

Time for another linkdump. It's always nice to compose these posts while you have some real content brewing. Given it has been half a year since I last made one I have quite a few links to share with you this time. If you follow my Twitter feed already, you have probably bumped on a few of them already. If not, good for you. Anyway, here we go.

Art


Business


CSS



Design


Gaming


Hardware


JavaScript


Kitchen


Software Development


Typography


UX & UI


Web Design




Web Development