This is not an ordinary business book, because the authors are not in an ordinary business. In their own words, their business is a ‘calm’ business – a bootstrap business without outside fund, and with a focus on small business customers.
On balance we’re calm by choice, by practice. We’re intentional about it. We’ve made different decisions from the rest.
We’re serving our customers well, and they’re serving us well. That’s what matters.
Therefore, the entire book is discussing their calm business model, or in my opinion, a business model full of respect - respect for your ambition, for your time, for your culture, for your process and for you business.
Respect your ambition
The startup world always aims to be ambitious, and more ambitious; however, in the authors’ opinion, this is toxic – the exaggerated ambition leads to pressure, to wrong-doings, and finally to failures. In a calm business, the ambition needs to be practical and achievable. Only in this way, the unnecessary pressure will be eased, the wrong-doings can be corrected immediately, and the possible failures can be reduced.
This is similar to lean development in software development: set a small goal, develop fast, test fast, release fast and get feedback fast, then correct fast. In such small iterations, the software is not perfect in each iteration, but becomes robust after iterations. The calm business is likewise, and this echos the authors’ option that their company is a product.
You aren’t more worthy in defeat or victory because you sacrificed everything.
When you stick with planning for the short term, you get to change your mind often.
Goals are fake. Nearly all of them are artificial targets set for the sake of setting targets. These made-up numbers then function as a source of unnecessary stress until they’re either achieved or abandoned.
Respect your time
As a professional organization, a company targets on efficiency, but in fact, it could be the opposite. A number of taken-for-granted practices of aiming for efficiency in companies actually are the murderer of efficiency. Therefore, as a company, it should discourage such practices, instead of encouraging.
The major distractions at work are’t from the outside, they’re from the inside.
At Basecamp, we see it as our top responsibility to protect our employees’ time and attention.
One of the typical examples as mentioned above is quick response. In current work environment, quick response is always regarded as professional. However, this comes with a huge sacrifice of work efficiency. Being quick responsible means that you need stop the work at hand and change your focus to the coming request immediately, and then switch back to your previous work. This focus shift is a killer of productivity, but ironically, is always rewarded.
When someone takes your time, it does’t cost them anything, but it costs you everything.
And if someone does’t get back to you quickly, it’s not because they’re ignoring youit’s probably because they’re working.
But the thing is, there’s not more work to be done all of a sudden. The problem is that there’s hardly any uninterrupted, dedicated time to do it.
Two authors also provided a number of invaluable suggestions of using time:
Being effective is about finding more of your time unoccupied and open for other things besides work.
If you can’t fit everything you want to do within 40 hours per week, you need to get better at picking what to do, not work longer hours.
The number might be the same, but the quality is’t. The quality hour we’re after is 1 — 60.
Focus on your work at hand. That’s all we ask. That’s all we require.
So we borrowed an idea from academia: office hours. All subject-matter experts at Basecamp now publish office hours.
Respect your culture
Two authors introduces their understanding of company culture in this section, and some insights are here.
On leadership
At Basecamp, we all do the work, so influence is most effectively exerted by leading the work, not by calling for it.
If the only way you can inspire the troops is by a regimen of exhaustion, it’s time to look for some deeper substance.
A leader who sets an example of self-sacrifice can’t help but ask self-sacrifice of others.
On personal relationship
It’s charged at 50 percent when people are first hired. And then every time you work with someone at the company, the trust battery between the two of you is either charged or discharged, based on things like whether you deliver on what you promise.
If you want to recharge the battery, you have to do different things in the future. Only new actions and new attitudes count.
On communication
The fact is that the higher you go in an organization, the less you’ll know what it’s really like.
If the boss really wants to know what’s going on, the answer is embarrassingly obvious: They have to ask!
Posing real, pointed questions is the only way to convey that it’s safe to provide real answers.
On expectation
The problem, as we’ve learned over time, is that the further away you are from the fruit, the lower it looks.
The worst is when you load up these expectations on new hires and assume they’ll meet them all quickly. You’re basically setting them up to fail.
What looked like low-hanging fruit was neither ripe nor within reach.
So the next time you ask an employee to go pick some low-hanging fruit stop yourself. Respect the work that you’ve never done before.
The quickest way to disappointment is to set unreasonable expectations.
On time
In the long run, work is not more important than sleep.
With seven days in a week, and work already owning the majority of your waking hours for at least five of them, life already starts at a disadvantage.
On work environment
That work is mostly about the environment, anyway.
Whenever someone joins (or leaves) a team, the old team is gone. It’s a new team now.
Someone who’s a superstar at one company often turns out to be completely ineffectual at another. Do’t go to war over talent.
We hired many of our best people not because of who they were but because of who they could become.
On employee relationship
The thing is, most people just don’t enjoy haggling, period.
Everyone in the same role at the same level is paid the same. Equal work, equal pay.
Our target is to pay everyone at the company at the top 10 percent of the market regardless of their role.
After all, where you live has nothing to do with the quality of your work, and it’s the quality of your work that we’re paying you for.
We’ve vowed to distribute 5 percent of the proceeds to all current employees if we ever sell the company.
If total profits grow year over year, we’ll distribute 25 percent of that growth to employees in that year.
We are’t looking to get the most out of everyone, we’re only looking for what’s reasonable. That requires balance.
On open office
You don’t have to give up on the open-plan office per se, but you do need to give up on the typical open-office mindset.
On people’s departure
If you don’t clearly communicate to everyone else why someone was let go, the people who remain at the company will come up with their own story to explain it. Those stories will almost certainly be worse than the real reason.
That’s why whenever someone leaves Basecamp, an immediate goodbye announcement is sent out companywide. This announcement is written by either the person leaving or their manager. It’s their choice.
If their message to the company does’t include exact details on why they are leaving, their manager will post a follow-up message the following week filling in the gaps.
Respect Your Process
On office chat
Chat is great for hashing stuff out quickly when speed truly is important.
When it comes to chat, we have two primary rules of thumb: Real-time sometimes, asynchronous most of the time and If it’s important, slow down.
Important topics need time, traction, and separation from the rest of the chatter.
On project planning
Without a fixed, believable deadline, you can’t work calmly.
Our projects can only get smaller over time, not larger. As we progress, we separate the must-haves from the nice-to-haves and toss out the nonessentials.
And who makes the decision about what stays and what goes in a fixed period of time? The team that’s working on it.
Likewise, small projects balloon into large projects all the time if you’re not careful. It’s all about knowing where to cut, when to say stop, and when to move on.
We’re not fans of estimates because, let’s face it, humans suck at estimating. But it turns out that people are quite good at setting and spending budgets.
First we finish what we started, then we consider what we want to tackle next. When the urgency of now goes away, so does the anxiety.
On project delivery
Remember: Deadlines, not dreadlines.
We could’t come up with a good reason, so instead of shipping big software updates on Fridays, we now wait until Monday the following week to do it.
And if we’re feeling frenzied for any reason, we delay the release until we’ve calmed down.
Today we ship things when they’re ready rather than when they’re coordinated.
Customers get the value when it’s ready wherever, not when it’s ready everywhere.
On office culture
Culture is what culture does. Culture is’t what you intend it to be. It’s not what you hope or aspire for it to be. It’s what you do. So do better.
Right from the beginning of Basecamp, we insisted on a reasonable workweek. We did’t pull all-nighters to make impossible deadlines. We scoped the work to fit a good day’s work and then enjoyed a calm evening off.
On disagree but commit
If every one of them has to be made by consensus, you’re in for an endless grind with significant collateral damage.
I disagree, but let’s commit is something you’ll hear at Basecamp after heated debates about specific products or strategy decisions.
What’s especially important in disagree-and-commit situations is that the final decision should be explained clearly to everyone involved. It’s not just decide and go, it’s decide, explain, and go.
On good enough
Knowing when to embrace Good Enough is what gives you the opportunity to be truly excellent when you need to be.
After the initial dust settles, the work required to finish a project should be dwindling over time, not expanding.
It’s easier to fuck up something that’s working well than it is to genuinely improve it.
On doing nothing
Doing nothing can be the hardest choice but the strongest, too.
The only way to get more done is to have less to do.
What you choose to spend it on is the only thing you have control over.
On team size
Instead, we hire when it hurts. Slowly, and only after we clearly need someone.
Nearly all product work at Basecamp is done by teams of three people.
You can do big things with small teams, but it’s a whole hell of a lot harder to do small things with big teams.
On say no
No is easier to do, yes is easier to say.
No is no to one thing. Yes is no to a thousand things.
No is specific. Yes is general.
Respect your business
On being profitable
Keeping the show running for the long term is a lot harder than walking onstage for the first time.
Taking a risk does’t have to be reckless. You’re not any bolder or braver because you put yourself or the business at needless risk.
Because crazy’s in the red. Calm’s in the black.
Until you’re running a profitable business, you’re always almost out of business. You’re racing the runway.
On test & delivery
You can test, you can brainstorm, you can argue, you can survey, but only shipping will tell you whether you’re going to sink or swim.
You can iterate from there on real insights and real answers from real customers who really do need your product. Launch and learn.
On promise
Promises pile up like debt, and they accrue interest, too. The longer you wait to fulfill them, the more they cost to pay off and the worse the regret.
On being copied
Besides, copying does more harm to the copier than to the copied. When someone copies you, they are copying a moment in time.
What people don’t like is forced changechange they did’t request on a timeline they did’t choose.
On keeping legacy
For many customers, better does’t matter when comfort, consistency, and familiarity are higher up on their value chain.
Sell new customers on the new thing and let old customers keep whatever they already have.
It also does’t mean you should’t invite your customers to check out your latest offering. But it should be an invitation, not a demand.
On dealing with complaints
When you deal with people who have trouble, you can either choose to take the token that says It’s no big deal or the token that says It’s the end of the world. Whichever token you pick, they’ll take the other.
Everyone wants to be heard and respected. It usually does’t cost much to do, either. And it does’t really matter all that much whether you ultimately think you’re right and they’re wrong.
On keeping team small
We decided that if the good old days were so good, we’d do our best to simply settle there. Maintain a sustainable, manageable size.
So we’ve decided to stay as small as we can for as long as we can.