blogger2ghost - Convert Your Blogger Blog to Ghost One

As I would love to move my blog away from Blogger I took the first step towards that and wrote a converter. blogger2ghost simply takes data provided by Blogger and munges it into Ghost compatible format. Simple as that.

Ghost advertises itself as a new age blog. It has been implemented in Node.js and features a very nice Markdown editor. The platform is still very much work in progress but surpasses Blogger in many ways. And it looks nicer too.

In case you are on Blogger and want to give Ghost a go, maybe this is your chance. It won't solve all your issues. I still have to set up Disqus work on Ghost and migrate the comments there and you might run into similar problems.

Business - Is It Possible to Separate a Company from Its Culture?

Each company has a culture whether it develops one consciously or not. You could say it's the soul of the company. It is something driven by core beliefs and principles of the company. Many companies claim to have values but how many of their personnel actually apply them in practice? Even that is a reflection of culture.

Culture describes how the organization behaves and how it reacts. It helps to describe how the company is structured and how it operates. It is something that unites the people of the company and makes them associate themselves with it. It is possible to end up with an accidental culture, especially in a startup context, if you don't take the meaning of culture seriously enough.

Cultures attract or abhor. This is the reason why culture fit is so important when recruiting. Even if you had someone who looks good on the paper, it doesn't mean the person will fit your culture. Perhaps your values are just too far apart and it won't work out. Learning skills is possible but changing your whole world view is a notch or two harder or even impossible.

To answer the original question, I would say it's impossible to separate a company from its culture. Different companies might have a similar culture but you simply cannot have a company without one. It is there regardless of how explicitly it has been codified in belief or principle statements. W. L. Gore's statement provides a nice example.

You could say culture is a crucial part of a company's DNA. This doesn't mean it cannot change, however. Semco is a very good example of a case where the culture had to change as a response to external threats to the organization. Some people had to go but the company remained and is doing well despite the challenges.

Business - Everyone Should Be an Executive

Uxmal by Steve Bridger (CC BY-NC-ND)

People have been building pyramids of all kinds for thousands of years. It is strange how cultures separate from each other end up replicating the same structure. Just take a look at what Mayans, Egyptians and Thais built on their time for instance. There is something very fundamental about it and we still see it everywhere, particularly in organization structures.

We have been conditioned to such organizations since we're born. You will always look up to an authority to tell you what's right and what's wrong. Whether that be the parents, teacher, drill sergeant or professor. This depends somewhat on the culture but often there's someone with the authority. Conformity with the masses is rewarded and those that do not conform are seen as exceptions.

Conformity and pyramids belong to the industrial world. These control structures have been designed to produce consistent, predictable results. The whole purpose of the educational system is to produce citizens fit to wield the machines of the industrialist. This line of thought doesn't scale to the dynamic world of today.

People don't talk about careers like they used to earlier. In the olden days it wasn't uncommon for people to spend their time within one company. These days it is common for people to move from position to position. Jobs get destroyed and created in an instant. In short the work life has become fragmented and more dynamic. As a result the way we think has to change.

One of the most fundamental things we can change is the way we structure companies. The age of pyramids is over.

An Alternative to Pyramid - Satellite Dish

Satellite Dish by Michael John Villanueva (CC BY-NC)

In "Why Employees Are Always a Bad Idea" Chuck Blakeman proposes another way to structure companies, a satellite dish. It overcomes some main issues of the pyramid and yields a more effective way to run a business while delegating the decision power to those who actually can use it the most efficiently.

The main problem of a pyramid is that when you are at the bottom you always look up for direction. Especially in a big organization this is wasteful and you get to deal with issues like silos and office politics. Each middle manager has a turf to defend. What makes the higher levels competent in making decisions in behalf of the lower levels?

There is an information asymmetry here. Those at the bottom actually know the issues the best and have likely the best idea on how to deal with them. How can someone higher up empathize? You can actually see this effect in action in Undercover Boss. If you watch an episode, you'll see just how clueless the CEO of the company might be. As a result of the CEO touring around improvements are made. But it doesn't have to be this way. If you fix the underlying system, there wouldn't be such issues in the first place.

A satellite dish provides an entirely different way of governance. Rather than expecting someone higher up to make the decision for you, it delegates the responsibility to those who are the most competent to make the decisions. That is where the name satellite dish comes from. The person making the decision is right at the center of the dish. Depending on the situation this can be a different person.

In an organization and culture like this there are no higher ups. Everyone is an executive and has the power to make decisions. This doesn't mean everyone is equal or that anyone can make decisions that could sink the ship. The amount of power depends on the amount of contribution to the whole and expertise on the subject matter at hand. Issues with possible company sinking consequences, or "below the waterline issues" as Bill Gore calls them, are best discussed with others.

Conclusion

Doesn't this sound refreshingly different? It's not an utopia. Companies all over the world have adopted this less rigid structure and have developed their company culture accordingly. Rather than treating their employees as children and maintaining adult day cares, they treat them as adults, stakeholders.

Besides being a more responsible way to run a business, these companies also do comparatively speaking very well compared to their pyramid brethen. Remember, everyone can, and should be an executive.

Book Review - Why Employees Are Always a Bad Idea

What if I told you most knowledge we take for granted about business has been built upon a shaky foundation? That is, knowledge inherited from the industrial era. We are simply used to having careers, enjoying a pension after it, going to work from nine to five, taking weekends off and so on. We separate work and fun. We make sure to respect the authority and assume the superiors are always right. They are superiors after all. Sounds familiar?

It doesn't have to be this way, though. There are already countless companies out there that have acknowledged the traditional way of doing things isn't necessarily the best way. Thinking in terms of short term profit doesn't lead to good long term results. Treating employees as replaceable resources, building the pyramid and pleasing shareholders isn't enough in the dynamic world we are living in. The times are changing and only those most able to adapt will survive in today's business climate.

Pyramid by Peggy2012CREATIVELENZ (CC BY)

Chuck Blakeman's "Why Employees Are Always a Bad Idea", or just WEAABI, discusses just these issues and provides a more humane alternative known as Participation Age. It is built upon the concept of significance. After all we are here to make significance, not work. The book is a natural successor to Chuck's first book, "Making Money Is Killing Your Business" (MMIKYB). You could say it is a more philosophical take on the topic. MMIKYB operates on a more concrete level and helps you understand how to get a better grasp on your business. WEAABI provides philosophical backing for that journey.

So why are employees a bad idea then? It seems to me the problem lies in subordination. You are expected to look up to someone else for instruction. This stems from the basic assumptions of the industrial age. Taylorism expects that people are lazy by definition. Hence they will need to be managed. As it happens this one particular assumption is particularly destructive. If you expect the worst out of people, that's what you are going to get. As Chuck calls it, this is "management by the lowest denominator".

What if we could do something different and expect the best out of the people? Maybe there aren't there to sabotage your business after all? Chuck resolves this problem by turning employees into stakeholders. For this to happen just calling the pot a kettle won't do. The whole company culture and command structure has to change as well. In addition people have to be rewarded for their efforts. Therefore profit sharing is essential.

Salarymen rising to the top by Alex E. Proimos (CC BY-NC)

If you are used to working in a standard company, I know most of this will sound heretical. But I think Chuck is onto something here. Work doesn't have to be "work". Work can provide us a way to significance and allow us to contribute in a meaningful manner. That is what Participation Age is all about.

In case you want to blow up your assumptions about the way business should work, you should read the book, preferably both. But in case you are happy to live inside the bubble, nobody blames you for that. Reading these kind of books can be dangerous and give you all sorts of weird new ideas after all.

To get an idea of what sort of heretical material there is, you should check out the sample chapter that explains why managers are a bad idea. If you are a manager, prepare for a mental breakdown. Others, carry on. Chuck has also covered lots of the material over at his blog too so that's another resource you might want to visit.

Wealth - What Is It and Why Should I Care?

Usually when people talk about wealth they mean riches. But that isn't all there is to it. As Chuck Blakeman aptly puts it, it's possible to become a prisoner of your own riches. To quote him wealth is all about freedom to choose. If riches enable you to do this, so be it. If you are rich but are too busy to actually do what you want to do, does it really matter? Even a poor person can be wealthier when you think about it this way.

Monopoly by MTSOfan (CC BY-NC-SA)

If you could choose what to do, would you be doing what you are doing right now? If yes, you are likely amongst the wealthy ones. Congratulations. For me this is what wealth is all about. And it seems Daniel Tenner thinks so too.

This also ties in together with Dan Pink's thoughts about motivation. After certain limit monetary rewards don't work and can actually impede performance. To quote Chuck Blakeman again, time is the new money.

Besides time and money, Chuck adds third dimension to the discussion, significance. Are you making a difference? Why do you do what you do?

It is very easy to answer what a business is doing. Why is the more important and consequently different question. Incidentally this is at the center of Simon Sinek's "Start With Why". And then there are techniques like the five whys that get to the root of it.

Anyone can build a business and become a hostage to it. In order to get to the next level you will have to ask the difficult question, why, and start doing things for the right reasons. Are you living a life of significance? Are you making an impact? Would you rather leave behind a legacy than a pile of money?

Lifestyle - Italy as a Winter Destination?

Even though Finland is a fine place, I haven't ever really enjoyed winters. It wasn't that much of an issue before but during the last few years I have started to question it. Especially in a bad winter like this when you barely get any snow and it is just too warm, you start to ask yourself are there any alternatives.

Finland - Dreary Winter, Amazing Summer

I love winter sports, particularly skiing, but if there's not enough snow, there's no way to ski. And even if there was the midwinter cold is still painful as you rather stay inside than go out and face the -30 C (-22 F). That's even a bit much for cycling and not that healthy even.

It's the darkness that's the real issue. It brings your mood down and saps energy. Exercise helps somewhat but it's still very dreary. You likely have to experience it yourself to understand. It's a bit like living in a cave. If you get lucky, you might see the sun shining once per week for a brief period of time.

Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't trade the summers of Finland for a thing. They are just perfect. It's usually not too warm (around 15-20 C) and the amount of light is almost overwhelming. Even sleeping rhythm changes. During winter I sleep casually around ten hours per night. During summer I get by with something around seven or eight. And the energy levels are greater during summer!

Italy - A Winter Alternative?

I have visited Italy a couple of times during the fall. The sceneries are just stunning and I don't have anything to complain about weather. As far as I understand it can get painfully hot during the summer, though.

Given my work situation (a freelancer), it doesn't make much difference where I work from as long as I make enough money to get by. I'll be trying something a bit different during this winter. If everything goes well and the flights work out, I'll be moving to Italy, Sardinia tomorrow. I plan to spend at least a month there and keep it as a working holiday.

The weather doesn't seem overly bad, at least compared to Finland. There are of course a lot of question marks and I'll lose the familiar culture. On the other hand perhaps you have to lose your cultural context for a while in order to be able to appreciate it?

This will be a good time to reflect and think about the future. Contracting isn't the way to go. I will need to come up with more sustainable ways to generate wealth. Perhaps this is the perfect time to clear up some projects from my personal kanban and find a direction.

Conclusion

I'll try to blog a bit on-site. This means the nature of this blog will change for a while but I hope you don't mind. The whole trip is a big challenge for me and perhaps a turning point towards something better. Now just to hope everything goes well. :)

Social Media - Getting Most Out of Twitter

I have to admit I'm not the greatest fan of social media. In my eyes it's a very polarizing and even anti-social venue that encourages gaming. On the other hand maybe that is the greatest advantage of it? At least you have a lot of eyeballs and if you do things right, there's plenty of influence available.

Twitter is a very good starting point. It has gone to mainstream and it is a simple medium to understand. In this post I hope to go through some of basic points you should keep in mind when trying to establish a presence there. I have been moderately successful there although an account of mine has yet to reach the magical barrier of thousand followers. Maybe I should apply some of my own advice better. :)

Basic Tooling

Besides blogging I am quite active at Twitter (see @bebraw). That said my personal account isn't particularly popular. But I don't really care. I mostly tweet so I can write blog posts (those linkdumps) later. For me it's just a part of a larger strategy.

Buffer

I use Buffer to schedule my tweets and aim to get at least two tweets out per day. Buffer comes with a browser plugin so whenever you notice something interesting, just hit the button, compose a tweet and add it there. It will get sent eventually. Buffer also provides simple analytics (do people actually click?) and provides multiple targets beyond just Twitter. Of course that's going to cost but if you are in it professionally perhaps it's worth it.

TweetDeck

In addition I use TweetDeck to keep track of it all as Twitter's default UI isn't particularly efficient. The greatest thing about TweetDeck is that it allows me to manage multiple accounts at once. In addition I schedule @jsterlibs tweets there. TweetDeck isn't perfect but it's just fine for something like this.

Cron and Client

In case of @cdnperf I use different kind of automation. As you might know, cdnperf.com keeps an eye on performance of public JavaScript CDNs. Hence it's very natural to generate a daily tweet based on the data. I have set up a simple cronjob that does that.

Examine cdnperf source for exact solution. I ended up using simple-twitter client. For scheduling you could consider using my library, taskist. It is fairly simple to integrate into a project and allows configuration driven scheduling definitions.

Twitter API

The Twitter API is quite versatile and it is simple to build automation against it. Besides just tweeting you could easily build following automation (ie. follow on follow) although I suggest being careful with these kind of things. It is very easy to end up spamming your "activity" making it look really bad for your followers. Also things like analytics (link through proxy) are feasible. Imagination is the limit.

Tactics

Just having some nice technology available isn't enough. It can make your life easier but cannot guarantee success. As social networks are, well, networks that means network effects apply to them. In effect this means hubs will develop and dominate over the rest. The bigger you get, the faster you can grow. This also explains why it is so difficult to grow when you are small.

Goals

Growth doesn't have to be the only goal. If it was, people would just buy followers. Yes, that's possible but also morally somewhat shady. What's the point in inflating some arbitrary figure?

I know this might sound cliché but your goal could simply be connecting with people. Some companies use Twitter as an effective feedback tool. In fact it is very simple to get connected to very known people. They are just one tweet away after all. Of course whether or not they answer is another story but you might get surprised.

In my case it's more about archiving observations and links I find interesting. This in turn allows me to create content myself. In JSter's case I also maintain a mailing list based on the data and use it also at the blog. That way I can guarantee a continuous stream of content and work on it further. Simple observations lead to something more substantial sometimes.

Resonance and Focus

I think it all comes down to one concept - resonance. The better your marketing and message resonates with your target audience, the better. You can almost feel it. Sometimes you just manage to hit the nail and favs (favoriting) and RTs (retweets) will follow. Of course followers too.

I believe this is also the reason why my personal account has grown so slow and @jsterlibs has grown so fast in comparison (from 0 to over 600 in a year). It comes down to resonance and focus. My personal account doesn't have a clear focus and I'm totally fine with that. On a more commercial setting you'll want to optimize resonance.

@paintFACT is a very good example of focus. The guy, Marco Bucci, tweets roughly once per week. That's enough. There is likely some celebrity factor involved here. But let's face it. The content is so good and focused it's easy to relate to if you are interested in digital painting. Also the lax schedule means you won't get spammed with content.

Tweet Schedule

That said maybe a tweet per week isn't quite optimal for everyone. If Marco was more aggressive with this, he would try a tweet or a couple per day. On the other hand the quality might suffer. But this would allow him to reach larger audience perhaps.

I have settled around two tweets per day myself. I still have to work a bit to keep the content flowing but I find it somewhat manageable. If I spend a while digging ten good links and quotes, it will keep me good for almost a week.

RTs, Favs, Interaction

Some say fav is a poor man's RT. The ultimate insult. I wouldn't go that far. But there's a definite difference. I for instance favorite content which I find interesting but don't want to share with my followers for a reason or another. Perhaps it's too obscure or just something only I would find interesting.

When RTing it's important to keep in mind that it's also an opportunity to gain a follower. People like to get mentioned. Mentioning provides a nice way to let people know you are there. This in turn may lead to conversion in case they find the content you are producing useful. So when RT:ing, please try to mention the source (ie. via @bebraw) so the original author gets pinged. Simple yet powerful. And you just might make someone's day. Yes, we are that shallow.

In addition commenting on some tweet may lead to interesting results. In some ways Twitter is a very conversational medium. Anyone can pitch in at any time. That's both a blessing and a curse. Sometimes things get blown out of proportion due to the strict character limit. It is difficult to communicate nuances in a limited medium sometimes and irony can be lost in translation. Also your jokes probably sound less fun than you think they do.

Hashtags

It is very important to be aware of hashtags (ie. #javascript) that are related to your account. You should keep track of those and use them in your tweets to gain visibility within the hashtag. That will help in gaining visibility and make sure the right people are seeing your message. This is yet another nice way to gain RTs, favs and all that good that follows.

Following

Maybe it's just me but the whole term "follow" sounds a bit creepy. Oh well, that's what we are stuck with. That said sometimes the easiest way to gain a follower is simply to follow someone. And if you get followed, consider following back out of courtesy. If I notice someone I follow is spamming my activity view, I don't think twice to unfollow, though. That is the cost of automation I think. If you do automation wrong, you'll just piss people off.

Maintaining a Presence

As I mentioned earlier tools like Buffer and TweetDeck are somewhat invaluable. In addition it is possible to develop some simple automation on your own. It all depends on your goals. TweetDeck is fine if you want to adopt a more interactive tactic. If you just want to get that tweet or two out per day, perhaps Buffer or a custom hack is the way.

The nice thing about Buffer is that it allows you to send the message to multiple platforms at once although that comes with a cost. If you can afford it, perhaps it is worth it. But on the other hand it might be equally attractive to develop something similar on your own. It's not rocket science.

Besides getting content out it is important to spend some effort on design. Make sure your Twitter image looks good. Same goes for the profile page and description. Small things that make a big difference.

Conclusion

I hope this post gave you some idea on how to approach Twitter. It is a valuable medium that can be a powerful marketing tool when applied right. Personally I want to move more towards automation. I am also interested in working on analytics to know which content resonates and what doesn't. Maybe tweet timing can be optimized somehow. In addition it would be somewhat interesting to make it easier to generate quality content (ie. analyze popular tweets and such) but that's another story.

It would be very cool to hear what kind of approaches you are using. Is there some specific technique you would like to share?