Awhile ago in the office we had a debate over which super power would be best to have. (Yes we have plenty to do, but these types of debates are apparently just as important as actual work.) I remember hearing an episode of This American Life where the debate was between flying and invisibility. The main argument I remember was one woman saying that invisibility would be the clear winner because you could watch famous people have sex.

We injected a third option into the discussion - mind reading. I think that may make it a lopsided choice as mind reading clearly is preferable to the other two, but maybe that’s just me.

Which super power would you choose if you could?

As you may know as a reader of this blog, we’re a little different animal than most web startups. Not only are we building a portfolio of experiences, but we’ve done it without taking any investment. This is not a new or original concept and most businesses are started this way. It’s called bootstrapping.

One of the weapons in our bootstrapping arsenal is doing consulting. Most often we do user experience, design, and brand consulting. Sometimes we do development as well. We’re lucky that our business has progressed nicely enough that we get to pick and choose which consulting gigs we want to take on (if any). At the end of last year a small company came to us looking to redo their end-to-end user experience - brand, core concepts, user interface, look and feel, etc. They had lots of customers excited about their product, and they had a lot of passion for making that product great.

Not only were we excited about the challenge of helping the Smartsheet and brand evolve into a sleek small team project management powerhouse, but we really liked all the folks at the company. We spent several weeks with them helping coalesce their vision of the product into a new design. And a few short months later they’ve launched their new beta. Their site has improved an enormous amount since we first saw it and will no doubt continue to improve as more folks use it and give them feedback. We’re proud to have been a small part of helping the folks at Smartsheet deliver a great product.

Check it out.

UPDATE: Here’s the interview Scoble did with Brent from SmartSheet. I was drafted into sitting in on that one too.

A few weeks ago Robert Scoble and his trusty producer Rocky came by our offices. They did a great job putting together this interview. Now it’s posted for your edification/enjoyment. Or so you can tease us.

Note: Walter escaped the camera somehow. Next time we’ll get him front and center.

I suppose it’s easy for me to talk about the pitfalls of being a public company given that there aren’t thousands of people lining up to buy shares in Jackson Fish Market (yet ). That said, I will judge anyway…

From the New York Times on the topic of Starbucks recent troubles:

“These people say that the company was so determined to meet its growth promises to Wall Street that it relaxed its standards for selecting new store locations.”

Basically, Starbucks had discipline in selecting store locations but in order to meet their growth targets they became more lax in their approach. The problem of course is that the planet may only support so many Starbucks outlets. And just because some executive set the number higher than that doesn’t mean the economics are suddenly going to change.

Why is it that so many business leaders feel that they have so much control over things? Why don’t they recognize that businesses have an organic size that’s dependent on many more factors than they personally control (or claim to control).

Of course, if CEOs had to admit how little control they have over the physics of their business environment and opportunities then they might have a difficult time justifying their huge payouts.

Instead, CEOs make poor judgments based on hope and the demands of Wall street. Starbucks basically shifted their disciplined decision making from being based on what the numbers told them about a location to what they hoped the numbers would say down the road. Hope doesn’t get people to buy more coffee.

And then there’s the question of growth:

“The potential rewards of rapid growth may have led Starbucks astray.”

It’s not that I am opposed to growth. I’m a fan. That said… there’s the kind of exponential growth that leaders of big business look for and Wall street rewards, and there’s horizontal growth that is unglamorous and doesn’t give the same return to investors. Exponential growth is a “never-ending” hockey stick type curve of new coffee shops being opened (as opposed to the 600 being closed right now by Starbucks). Horizontal growth is growing a solid business to its natural size, having it constantly renew itself to keep its customers and outpace inflation, and then using the proceeds to reward the employees and find new businesses to grow organically.

Mention that to Wall street and they’ll yawn.

I wonder what Jerry Yang thinks these days the upside is of having Wall Street’s priorities decide the fate of his company?

Video gaming has always been a hobby of mine, and though I don’t delve into the game world as much these days, I still get excited about the different news items that pop up from time to time.

I’m particularly keen on old games making a comeback on new systems, although I generally like the experience to stay the same as it was. I am sure there are video game purists on both sides of the argument as to how much needs to be fixed in a great game in order for the younger generation to enjoy it. I, for one, am all for keeping content relatively the same, when a game is updated. However, I still seem to get my hopes up when a game is announced to be revised or renewed, that there will be new characters or a brand spanking new story line, or any way I can milk more playing time from its delicious gaming udder.

That being said, yesterday, I was surprised to see this site: http://na.square-enix.com/ctds . It may seem familiar to some, and to others, it might look like the next big JFM app (it’s called Countdown to Vortex of Doom clock, and it’s one of Walter’s ideas). It actually heralds a renewal of one of the best games of all time: Chrono Trigger. Not a remake, but it has an extra dungeon and wireless multiplayer playability, which will make for some good game-milking later on this year when it comes out.

I’ve been a manager many times throughout my job history. There’s a trap that most managers fall into - the trap of control. Basically, you want to lead your organization and guide them to shared success. What better way to do that than to optimize them around a shared objective? After all, once everyone is on the same page with what you’re trying to accomplish, then you can all march in lockstep to making it happen. And as an added bonus, since you’re one person trying to manage many, there’s a convenience to having one simple goal. You can say the same thing to everyone.

Unfortunately, this approach only goes so far.

You can rally a team this way, you can achieve goals this way, you can even have fun this way… for a time. But, in my experience, it’s not sustainable.

Less obvious, but more effective (in my experience) is the bottoms up approach. This means that your team or company isn’t about the goal of maximizing shareholder value, delighting customers, earning profit, raising the stock price, etc. It means that your company exists primarily to keep its employees happy.

Blasphemy? Yes. The good kind.

How many companies can you think of right now where management is being very clear about the shared goals they all must achieve (a good thing… right?) and yet a significant chunk of the employees are somewhere between discontent and miserable?

Happy employees don’t want to leave a company. Happy employees know the company needs to be profitable to move forward. Happy employees know a company needs financial stability so they can get paid and keep their jobs. Happy employees are happy to work together cause they’re not worried about covering their ass or looking good for an employee review process that pits them against each other.

Given that there are only three shareholders at Jackson Fish who also happen to be the only full-time employees, it’s easy for us to talk about focusing on employee happiness as opposed to shareholder value. Our test will come someday. But we’re not without some current examples.

We’ve come across projects that would have been great for us as shareholders, but not great for us as employees who had to do the actual work. Guess what… we passed. The employees won out over the shareholders.

In the meantime, the folks at WholeFoods and The Container Store are saying the right things:

“Simultaneously we hit upon the philosophy that I think will be the dominant philosophy in business in the 21st century,” Mackey says. “It’s this principle that the purpose of business is not primarily to maximize shareholder value.” That’s a little like saying the purpose of religion isn’t to achieve salvation.

What are your thoughts?

JC Penney’s got a branded UGC site - Rock Your Look. Users can pick from a handful of songs and then make a karaoke video using their webcam. It’s also got a contests element (you marketing guys love contests) that’s connected with the Teen Choice awards. The site isn’t super novel but it’s not bad at all. There are a few things of note:

• the JC Penney branding is not shoved down your throat.
• They keep the site simple. It’s focused on one task and doesn’t distract you with a bunch of random crap.
• There are cute effects you can have on your karaoke video like a silhouette of the crowd in front of you. Neat.

All in all not bad. I wonder if they’ll let the site atrophy after the contest is over or if they’ll develop it further.

Now that we’ve corralled some interns here at JFM (they started 3 weeks ago and are off to the races on their project), we’re trying to shake loose the rust on some actual management skills. Not that there’s much “managing” ever going on around here.

That said, this writeup making fun of a U.S. News article on how to manage 20-somethings was super helpful. My favorite two examples of their “perspective” are:

• Food: Can we get some free food up in here?
• Shut Up: Dude, you are old and we already know how to do this stupid job, so please just shut up.

Is it wrong that I identify more with the blog post making fun than I do with the sage advice from U.S. News? Or would the 20-Somethings just tell me to stop kidding myself.