The Little Idea of good.simple.open

I’ve spent most of my professional life frustrated by jobs that couldn’t live up to their promise. If the product was cool, the work ethic was hell. If the environment was boring, the final product was bad. What I’ve realized as I worked these jobs was that some wanted to create good work so they set that “good” as their target and ran roughshod over employees, process, hours, deadlines, and general sanity to get that good end. They thought that good end justified those terrible means.

Other companies (their owners really) didn’t care about the quality of their products, because their ultimate goal was profit. They’d rather get there in the cheapest way possible. That meant not spending time on infrastructure and doing things right. That assured that the work wasn’t good.

I’m not really motivated by money. (And if you really think about it, you probably aren’t either.) I am motivated by the opportunity to do good work. I’m energized by working with other energized people to achieve something great. And I don’t want my job to screw up my life.

I realized in these bad job experiences that there is a simple equation to get to good work. It is:

good = simple + open

If you want to do good work, you have to do it simply (both in your methods and results) and you have to do it openly (both transparently and open sourced). You can’t aim at good work and expect to achieve it. Your methods have to pave the way for the good work. Simple and open are an effective recipe for good.

You can’t institute open without simple (nor can you institute simple without open) and expect to achieve good. Open without simple insults your users by giving them a load of data and saying, “you mean you can’t figure this out?” Open without simple is a data dump with no friendly interface.

On the other side, simple without open traps your users by giving them only a usable exterior. Users need to be able to opt out. They need to be able to own their data and take it when they leave. Simple without open is a social network focused on the user interface of their product while practicing contempt for their users who can’t simply leave the service, take their data, and remove their presence.

And just to make something clear, your users are your customers and your employees. Being simple and open isn’t something you practice publicly when your company culture is complex and closed. It’s all going to come out in the wash. You’ll never make a truly simple product if your internal process is complex. Be simple and open inside and out.

good.simple.open is a book about doing better work by focusing on simplicity and openness. It is only $5 on Kindle, or $10 in paperback.