Every business places it’s bets, be it with people, spending, technology or the services that are being provided.
So once a year comes that ugly realization that you’ve simply been wrong. Admitting that to yourself is tough. Getting through it without attempting to resurrect a dead horse is even tougher.
Some people don’t know when to quit. When you get emotionally invested in a particular activity it is damn hard to admit that you’re failing. Even when all the indicators tell you so. Even when you’ve avoided cutting the losses for months.
What makes great companies and great products is the passion of it’s creators. It also makes it very hard to admit when things aren’t going well and dealing with failure is tough.
However, that is just a part of business. Nobody sets themselves out to do a remarkably mediocre job intentionally. Nobody goes about their work without passion (ok, some people really hate their jobs which I’ll argue is still passion) and that which drives you forward can also beat you down.
So sit back and think about all the things you didn’t do right this year and how to deal with it in the past.
First: We never thought it would be this good..
While we expected our hosting business to continue growing we did not expect it to be growing this rampantly. It totally caught us by a surprise. Many of the manual processes that were in place were simply incapable of handling the load, which eventually fell on me and my people. I wish I had committed more resources there because of #2:
Second: We never thought it would be this bad..
The economy. The last thing you ever expect to fail is a bank. Boy has that changed in 2008. The demand for our lower-tier offerings has since exploded – we have done more business on the web hosting and $1 offsite backup side in November of 2008 than we did in the entire 2007.
It even lead to the creation of the cloud storage solutions (read: affordable) plan with our friends from Intelligent Enterprise and Secure My Company.
Ultimately, it lead to the creation of a new company completely separate from OWN in order to address the new market that never existed before.
Times are a’changin!
Third: Role Hires actually work!
It’s like casting people for a movie. You hire based on the ideal match for the role, not their fit with the “culture of the company”
This is perhaps the only reason I am who I am today and why I am not working for Walt Disney. The easiest way to hire people is to try to push them into the mold that you require, break them down until they will conform with what you want them to function as.
Works for the military.
Doesn’t work for relationships. Damn sure doesn’t work for corporations.
This year, as my hiring took a big uptick, I started hiring people who were not like us. I took on people that I would avoid like a plague because some of our clients had the same mindset and I could no longer relate to them. I started hiring cheaper labor. I started hiring people who weren’t true and tried experts and I allowed them to grow in their roles while creatively enhancing us and our partners.
That sounds like something that just fell out of Dilbert so allow me to explain: When you hire exactly what you want and need you end up with exactly what you were hoping for – which does not improve the company at all, it just grows capacity of the same thing.
Some key hires in 2008 allowed us to build products and even a company on top of something we would never have considered before.
Wish I did it a long time ago.
Fourth: Reward Loyalty
Being right sucks, especially when you are right about doom and gloom. Lot’s of IT shops closed their doors this year. Lot’s of IT blogs disappeared. Lot’s of community “fell apart” and lot’s of stuff simply moved around.
2008 was the year to use laser focus on what works and eliminate what doesn’t. It also signified a great level of maturity and novice in our industry. Lot’s of service providers grew – a lot. Lot’s of companies went direct – to the vendor.
This year was the great time to reward people who appreciated your business and your service and a great time to explore new business models. To an extent, we didn’t live up to that and we’re instead moving it to 2009.
What sorts of regrets do you have about 2008 that you’re man (or woman) enough to admit to?
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