Rework

Introduction

This book has been sitting on my shelf for quite a while unread and I finally had a chance to get through it. If I remember right, this was recommended by one of Seth Godin's books Seth has a quote on the cover of this book so that also seems to make sense. The structure of the book is certainly familiar and matches Seth Godin's book This Is Strategy almost to a "T". I think the only real difference is that Seth's book doesn't have an index and Rework does.

The mini chapters in this book are organized by topic and are listed in a nice index. Some examples of the topics are:

• Takedowns
• Progress
• Evolution
• Promotion

This organization is somewhat helpful, but mostly the mini chapters just fly past quickly and the topics don't help much. I found the content of the chapters to be very opinionated, and very high quality.

I had never heard of Jason Fried before this book, but David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) is a name I'd heard in various software and tech related areas before.

Another cool tie-in is that the authors were working for 37 Signals which has a special place in my heart.

I know that organization as being connected to Merlin Mann. I saw a presentation that Merlin Mann did for Google on Inbox Zero pretty early in my career and it influenced me heavily. First, because it taught me a great way to manage my email box that I still use today. It also taught me a presentation style I still use today. Merlin's style follows the Guy Kawasaki style of very little text, large images, and driving focus on the speaker. I found this style refreshing and far superior to the bullet-point heavy presentation styles I had seen at work up to that point. I credit that video/talk with my lasting hatred of PowerPoint-centric / text-heavy presentations and content cultures which still holds in my mind today. When mixed with the document-heavy culture at Amazon described in Working Backwards it is still driving my behaviors and beliefs today.

Similar to my review of This Is Strategy, I'll go through a couple mini-chapters which were particularly impactful as I read through the book.

Out Teach Your Competition

I really liked the lesson on this one. They're essentially making the case that you should spend some resources and effort giving away information to your customers and competition as both a service and a marketing strategy. If you spend the time to teach people you'll start to become well known as a source of authority on subjects relating to your business. I love this as I'm both a proponent of lifelong learning as well as producing content that is useful to both myself and others (this website and these book reviews) are a good example.

All of the small side businesses I've had were based around the idea of teaching people and/or teaching myself... often both. I think this idea of teaching as a company as part of your competitive advantage is really solid and a great way to differentiate yourself.

Say No by Default

The authors talk about how it's easy to always say yes, but it leads to much larger problems down the line. Instead you should have the slightly uncomfortable up-front talk declining the new feature and prevent bloat or features that no one wants. They liken it to many customers telling a chef their food is salty (the chef should agree and fix the problem) vs one person asking for bananas in the lasagna which you the chef should politely (or violently) decline.

This reminds me of a lesson that has stuck with me for many years around the idea of "have the little fights." After my divorce, my therapist talked about this idea at length and how it likely contributed to "my 50%" of the divorce. I tended to avoid little fights to keep the peace, but ignoring them would lead to much bigger fights later. Ever since, I've found many places where the concept of "have the little fights" holds true and is good advice.

Planning Is Guessing

In this section the authors make the claim that long-term planning in a business is basically nothing more than guessing. To pretend it is any more accurate is dishonest at best and manipulative at worst.

They explain that guesses get turned into plans and plans let the past "drive the future." These plans are often at odds with improvisation. Finally, they say that improvisation is where you can read today's situation and decide "we're going to do something differently than what we planned." Their push is to drastically shorten your planning cycle (think days-weeks) if needed to let you adapt and adjust to changing times. In fact they even say, "It's OK to wing it."

I'm maybe not 100% on board with this, but I love the sentiment and overall concept as a challenge against big, bloated planning cycles. In my current company we certainly spend an enormous amount of time, energy, and effort on 5-year plans and other strategy sessions. Some are necessary, but finding the balance is critical.

Wrap-Up

This was a pretty quick read that was full of good information from two legends in the industry. Not all of the lessons are going to be implemented as-written, but it was really useful to challenge some long-held beliefs and ingrained ideas. Give it a read if you're interested or if you like books in the mini-chapter style of presentation.