The Cook’s Economist: Functional Publishing Models
Examining the ways in which structure changes what gets published, and why
Clay Parker Jones
I lead Organizational Design at Airbnb. Previously: August, Undercurrent.
Boris Cube
Last week, my lovely and talented colleague Vlad wrote about three steps to eliminate/mitigate risks in strategy – understand, assess, neutralize – and offered a chart that caught my eye. Vlad adapted a piece of HBR chartery that was fundamentally similar to a Boris Cube, something used by aerospace engineers to
Connectedness
Looking at connectedness is interesting. For a post on Undercurrent’s Theory blog, I’m looking at the emailing habits of colleagues as a proxy for the connectedness between people. Every pixel in line width represents 100 emails sent/received between two people. Darker nodes represent individuals that have been
Redefining the Competitive Set
If you’re reading this, you know that digital technology has changed things. You know that in a single year, humans create more information than they have in all of history up to that point. You know that your customers are inundated with more information than their brains can handle.
On Systems & Strategy
High-quality strategies in ecosystems offer four things: loud feedback; flexibility in acceptable outcomes; shared indicators for failure and success; recognized connection points.
Integrating Loyalty
So I’ve been thinking a bit about loyalty over the past few months. More or less, I was thinking that a new, cool perspective on loyalty programs could be made up of three important parts: 1. A part that gets people to do things with and for each other
Building People
Something I wrote but never hit publish on, back in 2011. It’s funny to read this now with the benefit of 10 more years experience and think — yeah, I still mostly believe this stuff!
Skunkworks
To spare you the extreme displeasure of going to the Lockheed Martin site to find the operating principles behind the O.G. Skunkworks, I’ve pasted them below. The bolding is mine. 1. The Skunk Works manager must be delegated practically complete control of his program in all aspects. He
Principles for Pattern Implementation
The following seven principles are from a book called A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander et al., and they describe the method by which builders should implement the “patterns” laid out in subsequent chapters of the book. The patterns used by the book are essentially design guidelines, and they range
Write Issue Trees
Sorta classic that in 2011, I was blogging about diagnosing business problems on Valentine's Day.
Krakatoa and Institutional Anxiety
I got back to reading Krakatoa this week – I’ve been about halfway through the book for a couple years now – and I’ve stumbled across a rather interesting passage. Bold emphases are mine, but you prolly knew that already; can’t think of the last time I saw bold
Make Things for People
This one’s near and dear to my heart. And it hurts when companies get it wrong. So it’s exciting to see it done so, so well. Muji’s just released a set of iPad apps that parallel their products, that align with the values they hold dear, and