Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

The challenge for companies that do not have the creative freedom to begin at square one is how do we create that same culture of innovation? How do we build an environment where we are comfortable at chipping away the things that no longer add value?

How many systems would we switch off as opposed to trying to integrate them with the new? How much complexity in our processes could we design out to create something that is elegant and simple?

For me, this feels very different from how most large organizations function. But if we are going to create magnificent works of art within our day-to-day working lives, we need to embrace the concept of curation – of removing the superfluous and keeping only that which is beautiful in its simplicity....

But Medium isn’t just taking a revolutionary approach to digital publishing — it’s changing the way companies operate too. As one of the fiercest and most faithful adopters of Holacracy – a radical new theory of corporate structure — Medium is experimenting with a completely management-free environment that’s laser focused on getting things done. Stirman couldn’t be more thrilled with the results: the freedom, the momentum, the productivity are all unparalleled, he says.

But companies don’t have to go all-in on Holacracy to reap the benefits. If his transition from Twitter to Medium taught him anything, there are always more tactics to try to make things work better. Below, he shares his lessons from taking the leap....

There aren’t many leaders who would disagree with the idea that a healthy, productive culture is a defining element of business success. Yet I’ve seen so many companies with lofty-sounding “mission statements” and “core values” that have the most toxic workplaces imaginable.

I’ve met so many leaders who are brilliant when it comes to product design and capital structure but who treat the people in business as an afterthought, a matter of sound administration as opposed to daring innovation.In other words, so much of our thinking about organizational culture has become so bland, so unobjectionable, that it is on the verge of becoming meaningless.

What follows, then, is an attempt at culture shock — five hard questions about the “soft” side of business that leaders must be able to answer if they hope to build a workplace that works....

We are about to launch our second product (HookFeed), but it’s not our second launch. We’ve been doing countless mini-launches (alpha versions) for months now with both HookFeed and Minimalytics — and we keep making the same damn mistake:

Giving users too many choices…Below, I’ve illustrated our mental excursion from key iteration to key iteration across both products in search of simplicity.

TLDR: We’ve been reminded (brutally) that as product people we need to make the hard choices up front if we want any of our products to succeed. The vocal minority isn’t usually right and ultimate flexibility isn’t really what people want or need....