37signals is one of those companies that have burned themselves into ones memory. Well, they have in mine whenever I think about effective businesses. They are what — I’m sure not just a few — software companies, entrepreneurs, and designers want to become: A household brand.
Everything they touch seems to turn into gold, every web application they produce an instant success. Not just for this it stands to reason that they would write about and share with the rest of the world what made them so effective and, eventually, so successful.
What I particularly like about this book is that it’s bold. It’s bold, brisk and highly opinionated. And that’s a good thing in my book (no pun) because you sense the amount of passion and dedication Jason Fried, founder of 37signals, with every drop of ink this book has consumed.
What we get to learn about is their philosophy, their idea of what makes good work great, and the particular frame of mind it takes to do what they have done and continue to do.
What we don’t get to learn are in-depth explanations and thorough examinations on how to implement the ideas and methodologies the fine folk at 37signals applied to their way of working.
What to do when the conditions, such as deadlines, firm-specific work ethics, a boss, or any and all factors that need to be accounted for and that you have zero control over, overwhelmingly limit and restrict us in our day-to-day work and design process?
If you’re one of a hundred, have no veto and generally little influence over how you work, then you might as well leave this book on the shelves. Likewise, should you expect to be exposed to an in-depth view on interaction design or given technical instructions and guidance on how to apply the propagated methodologies within long established companies with little incentive to change how they work, then you’re out of luck.
However, should you be a small(ish) company, your team comprising no more than a handful of people, have good control over how things get done, can motivate and enthuse your team members to follow a certain dogma, then this book is more than apt and fitting.
In short; Getting Real is a 170 pages long comprehensive mantra on how to get things done.
Fried suggests that we focus on the big idea, that we build from macro to micro, having the big picture and working ourselves down and getting to the nitty gritty details at a much, much later time in the process.
While we’re at it, should you be one of those hopeless perfectionists... [I aggressively wave my arms in the air, nodding vehemently, and that’s a nose-bleeding heavy nod!] you might as well leave that unwanted characteristica at the door before going any further.
So how does ignoring perfectionism and other astronomic ideals set free the means and devices needed to aid us in our journey to becoming more efficient, more successful business people?
Short answer: By getting real (har, har), by not setting goals and expectations we can’t meet, because they’re either impractical or simply unrealistic.
Well, that’s the short answer. The slightly longer answer goes as follows:
Keeping it Small
The book gives us plenty examples that demonstrate the advantages of keeping things small. A small team can better manage tasks because there are less people to communicate with, less instances or pre-production cycles to overcome. Being small allows you to react to your site visitors, the people who use your product, faster. Being small makes you agile and permits changes, and bug fixes to be done instantly. Being small reduces the distance between yourself and your customers, service and support can be more personal. Many more advantages are explained in the book, so the ones depicted here are a select few.
Focusing on the Essentials and Learning to Say No
Focusing on the big idea does not imply that your product or service must be filled with more features than you can eat. It does not mean that you have to offer everything. It does not mean that you have to outperform your competition, be it in features or in price. Fried suggests that you outperform your competition by underperforming. While that thought might sound strange at first, the book offers sound reasoning why that makes perfect sense and additionally presents us with opinions of some popular voices in our industry.
He even goes as far as recommending that you upload your unfinished product or service. Why? Because you’ll never have it complete — that goes back to the perfectionism thing I touched on earlier — a design, a product, a service, everything is a process, a process of iteration. So why not get it out there, even if it still has a bug or two, needs some code optimization, and no more than barely the essentials?
What you get in return is the most precious thing any of us should value at this very early stage of production - namely the feedback of your customers. The sooner you get your product or service out to the people, the quicker you understand what works and what doesn’t. Those are first-hand reactions to your product. And since those are the people who’ll later be paying for your offerings, it makes good business sense to optimize it to reflect what your site visitors have communicated.
And finally, one more significant aspect of 37signals’ philosophy is that of negation. Saying no, and saying it often, allows your products to stay focused on what is essential, and do what it is supposed do well. By saying no to every feature you think of at the start of a project, you can quickly learn what you really need by simply leaving out everything else. In other words, the book strongly suggests that the competition isn’t mimicked, that we don’t fill our application with everything that we think we need just because someone else has it. We are encouraged to keep things simple, build on the essentials and add features responsibly and only if these really extend the effectiveness of using said product.
To summarise: Less in every shape or form is neither a deficit nor a hindrance to success. Having a small and smart product or service, one that was borne out of ones own needs and was later formed into a product based on what our customers have said, makes for a powerful, user-centric solution. Being small does not hurt either. It can facilitate more agility, allow us to communicate with our customers closely, react to their feedback quickly and submit our iteration fast and conveniently.
