How not to run a business (Part 6): Coding Edition
So… you decide to open a business to write and sell software. Your business can choose from several different software development methodologies and strategies to help you get that software off the ground. You can choose the waterfall approach or use an agile approach. There are many approaches that can work, but all approaches have both benefits and drawbacks. Depending on the type of business your company is in, you need to think through how each type of coding method can affect your customer. Note that the goal behind most methods of development is to drive the process to completion, not so much to provide quality. With either Agile or Waterfall, both approaches can let you down if you’re not actively driving quality all along the way. Let’s explore.
Don’t choose a software development strategy just because you think it will allow you to complete the software on time. Any strategy you employ must make sure quality is number one or you face customer problems. Simply getting the software done and on time is not enough. Quality has to remain at the top for any software your team writes.
Don’t let your customers become guinea pigs. Software development is for your customers’ benefit. Thoroughly testing code is important. Don’t let this fall through the cracks or your customers will suffer the consequences and end up as beta testers.
Don’t employ only happy path programming efforts when writing code. Coding solely for the happy path leaves your customers vulnerable to the unhappy paths. Coding for happy path is equivalent to intentionally skipping big pieces of testing. Your customer will pay the price when they fall into an unhappy path trap. Your staff then has to respond by spending time doing data fixups, writing patches to fix holes missed and your sales/support teams will be on the phone to customers giving false reassurances.
Don’t miss crucial QA steps just because you ran out of time. If time is the most important thing when coding, then the code quality will suffer and and so will your customer. Again, do not use your customers as guinea pigs unless you like them walking away from your business.
Let’s understand more why the above is important!
The Happy Path is not happy for your customers. Utilizing Happy Path coding is solely for the convenience and benefit of your programmers in getting work done rapidly. Getting things done rapidly, but poorly is not good for your business or your customer. Happy Path software development simply doesn’t work.
As an example, imagine walking down a block in downtown NYC. You walk the block from corner to corner without any diversions or problems arising. Let’s call this the Happy Path. Now, let’s say you walk that walk again, but this time you stumble over a manhole and fall. You were so focused on the destination, you didn’t pay attention to the manhole cover that wasn’t fully closed. This is an unhappy path. Let’s say that the next time you walk this path, you know the manhole over isn’t fully closed and you avoid it. Except this time you were so focused on avoiding the manhole cover, you walk into a tree. Yet another unhappy path.
Now, imagine this is your customer. Each time they try to navigate down your Happy Path, they fall into one trap after another because your software doesn’t handle these pitfalls. Writing code solely for the Happy Path is definitely not your business friend. Your customers will become frustrated and eventually find another company with a more stable product. It doesn’t matter how good the features are, it matters that the software is stable. A customer places trust in your software, but that trust is broken when the software breaks often.
Coding for your customer
Your customer is the most important thing you have in your business. They drive your revenue and keep you in business. You should never play games with them and you should never use them as paid beta testers. But, writing code that only utilizes the Happy Path intentionally leads your customers and your company into unhappy pitfalls. Wouldn’t you rather have your team find these pitfalls before your customer does? When your customer finds the bug before you do, it makes your team and company look inept. This is never a good position to be in, especially when you are trying to establish yourself as high quality software company.
The Happy Path may only provide between 20-50% tested code paths. The other 50-80% is left to be tested by your customer while they pay for and use your product? The Happy Path only leads to unhappy customers. Instead, if your software developers test a Robust Path all along the way, your software should catch at least 80-90% of the bugs leaving very small percentage of edge case bugs for your customers to find. So, instead of having your team working on constant bug fixes and/or constantly fixing or restoring customer data, your team can focus on the next product release features. Unfortunately, customer fixups and customer phone calls over these issues are big time wasters. Wasted time that can be completely avoided by writing the code correctly the first time.
The reality is when writing software, your team can either spend their time on crash proofing code up front or spend even more time crash proofing the code after it’s already in production and making the customer unhappy. Either way, the problems will get fixed. It’s just that you, as a company owner, need to decide whether it’s more important to have happy satisfied customers or a fast development cycle. You can’t really have both. Customers become especially disenchanted when they’re paying a hefty fee to you for your service and end up beta testers. Customers are always expecting solid robust code. They don’t pay to be beta testers.
Customer Churn
Keeping the customer happy should always be your number one priority. Unfortunately, you can’t do that if the code that’s being written is crashing and generally providing a less than stellar experience to your customers. You have to decide if you want your team to spend their time bug-proofing the code or have even more of your staff spend their time after the release smoothing out customer dissatisfaction issues in combination with bug fixes. So, not only is your sales team’s and customer care team’s time spent making the customer happy again, your engineering team’s time is being incorrectly spent having to rewrite code a second, third or fourth time to fix bugs. Depending on your SLAs, you might even be violating these by having certain bugs.
This can mean at least three times more work created for your staff than simply having your developers write robust code from the beginning. Sure, it might require a month longer development cycle, a bigger QA test cycle, but that extra time will pay for itself in having happy satisfied paying customers and fewer customer incidents. Customer satisfaction keeps your development team focused on the next feature set, keeps your sales team focused on new sales and keeps your customer support team educating users about how to use your product. Quality is the key, not speed.
Bug Fixing after a Release
I’m not saying there won’t be bugs to fix or unhappy customers. Bugs will be found even if your team appears to write the most perfect code. However, writing high quality code from the beginning will drastically reduce the cycle of bug fixing and patches. This means making sure your development staff are all trained and knowledgeable about the languages they are required to use. Introducing new programming languages without proper training is a recipe for problems. Learning a new language on the go is the best way to write bad code. Properly trained engineers will usually provide much higher quality code. Don’t ignore the Quality Assurance team’s role in making sure they have a full and complete test suite and solid full test cases. Unit testing works okay for developers, but once the code is all assembled, it needs a full QA test suite.
Also, if your feature set doesn’t cover your customer’s needs properly, satisfaction can also drop. This can happen if your business is fighting bad code rather than listening to what your customers want. Of course, this is a somewhat separate issue which I will discuss in another installment.
Java
I want to take a moment to discuss using Java for applications. Using Java is, again, a convenience to support speed coding efforts. More and more companies want it done ‘fast’.
With more and more compressed timelines, too many people seem to think that writing software in Java is easy, quick and simple. This is a fallacy. It isn’t. While writing the code may appear simple at first glance, the whole JVM adds a huge level of operating complexity that engineers and management fail to understand or simply overlook. In theory, you should be able to deploy your .jar file and be done with it. It’s not that simple. The JVM has heap space sizing issues and garbage collection that can easily turn what seems reasonable code into a nightmare for your operations team to support and a nightmare your customers. Basically, the JVM is an unpredictable beast.
Let’s understand this better. The JVM tries to make coding simple and easy because it’s interpreted. That thinking is a trap. From a coding perspective, it does make coding a whole lot easier as there are lots of frameworks that can be used and code examples to be had. Unfortunately, nothing ever comes for free. There are always strings attached. Java does a whole lot of internal housekeeping so the coder doesn’t have to. This ease of writing the code is completely negated by the JVM itself. To help the coder to not deal with extra coding of freeing up variables and objects, the JVM takes care of all of that. But, the price paid is the Garbage Collector. So, instead, of coder doing this work in code, the Garbage Collector (GC) allegedly does this for you. We won’t even get into just how ugly and horrible the JVM logging is when you’re trying to determine what went wrong.
In reality, the GC can end up spending so much time doing all of this extraneous cleanup work that no actual code work gets done. The reasons behind this issue can range from bad java code (e.g., object leaks, memory leaks, file descriptor leaks, etc) to huge swings in memory usage (creating GB sized objects and freeing them up often). As Big Data is becoming more common place, the JVM really was not designed to properly handle Big Data objects strictly because of the overhead of the GC. That means you need to have someone who’s extremely knowledgeable about tweaking the JVM’s heap sizes, GC frequency and other tweakable parameters inside the JVM so that it doesn’t get into this condition. It also means much more precise monitoring to determine when it is in this condition.
In some Java use cases with big data, using Java may not even work. If you really need to move big data around fast, you should really consider a compiled language first.
In essence, the engineering team has now pushed the normal robust coding and cleanup work off onto the operations team to manage via the JVM container. Now the operations team have to become experts in JVM management through managing and tweaking Java to keep it properly tuned and working. Worse, they now have to understand the code to even begin to diagnose a root cause of failure. In other words, it requires your operations staff have a much higher level of knowledge about java, java coding and JVMs than when using languages that don’t require Java.
Using C, C++ or other compiled languages
Even though compiled languages can require a much longer development cycle and more explicit handling of objects, they do two things for your company: 1) Forces your development team to write better code and 2) Gets rid of interpreted languages (and containers). Even above the tremendous speed gain your application will see from being compiled, the operations overhead to manage the application is drastically reduced. Writing a UNIX daemon to handle an operational task might require a simple configuration file and a ‘service’ script to restart it. No knowledge of a JVM container, of GC or of heap sizes is required.
Memory usage is always a concern, but not in the same way as Java works. In fact, it’s far far simpler to both troubleshoot and manage compiled applications than it is to troubleshoot and manage JVM container apps. If a compiled app goes off the rails, you know for certain that it was the app that did it. If a JVM contained app goes off the rails, you don’t know if it was the app itself or the JVM container that spiraled out of control.
When a JVM contained app fails, you’re left trying to determine if it was a bug in your company’s code running in the container, if it was a bug in Oracle’s Java version itself or if it was a third party component problem. This leaves too many variables to try and diagnose at once. With compiled languages, this troubleshooting is almost always far less ambiguous and is usually as simple as ‘strace’, ‘top’ or reviewing a core dump.
Business Choices
Whatever approach your team chooses, quality must remain number one. When quality is sacrificed for the sake of development speed, your customers will suffer and, in turn, so will the bottom line. Some customers may be willing to deal with a bug occasionally. But, if bugs are continual and constant after every release, eventually they will go find another service. Stability and reliability are the key to making sure your company continues to succeed no matter whether your company provides an iPad app or if your company intends to become the next Google. Innovation keeps your customers coming back from more, but you can’t innovate if your team is constantly fighting bad code.
← Part 5 | Chapter Index | Part 7 →
iPhone Risk: Your Employer and Personal Devices
So, you go to work every day with your iPhone, Android phone or even an iPod. You bring it with you because you like having the convenience of people being able to reach you or because you listen to music. Let’s get started so you can understand your risks.
Employment Agreements
We all know these agreements. We typically sign one whenever we start a new job. Employers want to make sure that each employee remains responsible all during employment and some even require that employee to remain responsible even after leaving the company for a specified (or sometimes unspecified) period of time. That is, these agreements make you, as an employee, personally responsible for not sharing things that shouldn’t be shared. Did you realize that many of these agreements extend to anything on your person and can include your iPhone, iPod, Android Phone, Blackberry or any other personal electronic device that you carry onto the property? Thus, the Employment Agreement may allow your employer to seize these devices to determine if they contain any data they shouldn’t contain.
You should always take the time to read these agreements carefully and thoroughly. If you don’t or can’t decipher the legalese, you should take it to an attorney and pay the fee for them to review it before signing it. You might be signing away too many of your own personal rights including anything you may be carrying on your person.
Your Personal Phone versus Your Employer
We carry our personal devices to our offices each and every day without really thinking about the consequences. The danger, though, is that many employers now allow you to load up personal email on your own personal iDevices. Doing this can especially leave your device at risk of legal seizure or forfeiture under certain conditions. So, always read Employment Agreements carefully. Better, if your employer requires you to be available remotely, they should supply you with all of the devices you need to support that remote access. If that support means you need to be available by phone or text messaging, then they should supply you with a device that supports these requirements.
Cheap Employers and Expensive Devices
As anyone who has bought an iPhone or an Android phone can attest, these devices are not cheap. Because many people are buying these for their own personal use, employers have become jaded by this and leech into this freebie and allow employees to use their own devices for corporate communication purposes. This is called a subsidy. You are paying your cell phone bill and giving part of that usage to your employer, unless your employer is reimbursing you part or all of your plan rate. If you are paying your own bill without reimbursement, but using the device to connect to your company’s network or to corporate email, your device is likely at high risk should there be a legal need to investigate the company for any wrong doing. This could leave your device at risk of being pulled from your grasp, potentially forever.
If you let the company reimburse part or all of your phone bill, especially on a post-paid plan, the company could seize your phone on termination as company property. The reason, post-paid plans pay for the cost of the phone as part of your bill. If the company reimburses more than 50% of the phone cost as part of your bill, they could legally own the phone at the end of your employment. If the company doesn’t reimburse your plan, your employer could still seize your device if you put corporate communication on your phone because it then contains company property.
What should I do?
If the company requires that you work remotely or have access to company communication after hours, they need to provide you with a device that supports this access. If they are unwilling to provide you with a device, you should decline to use your personal device for that purpose. At least, you should decline unless the employment agreement specifically states that they can’t seize your personal electronics. Although, most employers likely won’t put a provision in that explicitly forbids them from taking your device. Once you bring your device on the property, your employer can claim that your device contains company property and seize it anyway. Note that even leaving it in your car could be enough if the company WiFi reaches your car in its parking space.
Buy a dumb phone and use that at work. By this I mean, buy a phone that doesn’t support WiFi, doesn’t support a data plan, doesn’t support email, doesn’t support bluetooth and that doesn’t support any storage that can be removed. If your phone is a dumb phone, it cannot be claimed that it could contain any company file data. If it doesn’t support WiFi, it can’t be listening in on company secrets. This dumb phone basically requires your company to buy you a smart phone if they need you to have remote access to email and always on Internet. It also prevents them from leeching off your personal iPhone plan.
That doesn’t mean you can’t have an iPhone, but you should leave it at home during work days. Bring your dumb phone to work. People can still call and text you, but the phone cannot be used as a storage vehicle for company secrets (unless you start entering corporate contacts into the phone book). You should avoid entering any company contact information in your personal phone’s address book. Even this information could be construed as confidential data and could be enough to have even your dumb phone seized.
If they do decide to seize your dumb phone, you’ve only lost a small amount of money in the phone and it’s simple to replace the SIM card in most devices. So, you can probably pick up a replacement phone and get it working the same day for under $100 (many times under $30).
Request to Strike Language from the Employment Agreement
Reading through your Employment Agreement can make or break the deal of whether or not you decide to hire on. Some Employment Agreements are way overreaching in their goals. Depending on how the management reacts to your request to strike language from the Employment Agreement may tell you the kind of company you are considering. In some cases, I’ve personally had language struck from the agreement and replaced with an addendum to which we both agreed and signed. In another case, I walked away from the position because both the hiring and HR managers refused to alter the Employment Agreement containing overreaching language. Depending on how badly they want to fill the position, you may or may not have bargaining power here. However, if it’s important to you, you should always ask. If they decline to amend the agreement, then you have to decide whether or not the position is important enough to justify signing the Agreement with that language still in place.
But, I like my iPhone/iPad/iPod too much
Then, you take your chances with your employer. Only you can judge your employer for their intent (and by reading your employment agreement). When it comes down to brass tacks, your employer will do what’s right for the company, not for you. The bigger the company gets, the more likely they are to take your phone and not care about you or the situation. If you work in a 1000+ employee company, your phone seizure risk greatly increases. This is especially true if you work in any position where you have may access to extremely sensitive company data.
If you really like your device, then you should protect it by leaving it someplace away from the office (and not in your car parked on company property). This will ensure they cannot seize it from you when you’re on company property. However, it won’t stop them from visiting your home and confiscating it from you there.
On the other hand, unlike the dumb phone example above, if they size your iPhone, you’re looking at a $200-500 expense to replace the phone plus the SIM card and possibly other expenses. If you have synced your iPhone with your computer at home and data resides there, that could leave your home computer at risk of seizure, especially if the Federal Government is involved. Also, because iCloud now stores backups of your iDevices, they could petition the court to seize your Apple ID from Apple to gain access to your iDevice backups.
For company issued iPhones, create a brand new Apple ID using your company email address. Have your company issued phone create its backups in your company created Apple ID. If they seize this Apple ID, there is no loss to you. You should always, whenever possible create separate IDs for company issued devices and for your personal devices. Never overlap this personal and company login IDs matter how tempting it may be. This includes doing such things as linking in your personal Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Yahoo or any other personal site accounts to your corporate issued iPhone or Apps. If you take any personal photographs using your company phone, you should make sure to get them off of the phone quickly. Better, don’t take personal pictures with your company phone. If you must sync your iPhone with a computer, make sure it is only a company computer. Never sync your company issued iPhone or iPad with your personally owned computer. Only sync your device with a company issued computer.
Personal Device Liabilities
Even if during an investigation nothing is turned up on your device related to the company’s investigation, if they find anything incriminating on your device (i.e., child porn, piracy or any other illegal things), you will be held liable for those things they find as a separate case. If something is turned up on your personal device related to the company’s investigation, it could be permanently seized and never returned. So, you should be aware that if you carry any device onto your company’s premises, your device can become the company’s property.
Caution is Always Wise
With the use of smart phones comes unknown liabilities when used at your place of employment. You should always treat your employer and place of business as a professional relationship. Never feel that you are ‘safe’ because you know everyone there. That doesn’t matter when legal investigations begin. If a court wants to find out everything about a situation, that could include seizing anything they feel is relevant to the investigation. That could include your phone, your home computer, your accounts or anything else that may be relevant. Your Employment Agreement may also allow your employer to seize things that they need if they feel you have violated the terms of your employment. Your employer can also petition the court to require you to relinquish your devices to the court.
Now, that doesn’t mean you won’t get your devices, computers or accounts back. But, it could take months if the investigation drags on and on. To protect your belongings from this situation, here are some …
Tips
- Read your Employment Agreement carefully
- Ask to strike language from Agreements that you don’t agree with
- Make sure agreements with companies eventually expire after you leave the company
- NDAs should expire after 5-10 years after termination
- Non-compete agreements should expire 1 year after termination
- Bring devices to the office that you are willing to lose
- Use cheap dumb phones (lessens your liability)
- Leave memory sticks and other memory devices at home
- Don’t use personal devices for company communication (i.e., email or texting)
- Don’t let the company pay for your personal device bills (especially post-paid cell plans)
- Prepaid plans are your friend at your office
- Require your employer to supply and pay for iDevices to support your job function
- Turn WiFi off on all personal devices and never connect them to corporate networks
- Don’t connect personal phones to corporate email systems
- Don’t text any co-workers about company business on personal devices
- Ask Employees to refrain from texting your personal phone
- Use a cheap mp3 player without WiFi or internet features when at the office
- Turn your personal cell phone off when at work, if at all possible
- Step outside the office building to make personal calls
- Don’t use your personal Apple ID when setting up your corporate issued iPhone
- Create a new separate Apple ID for corporate issued iPhones
- Don’t link iPhone or Android apps to personal accounts (LinkedIn, Facebook, etc)
- Don’t take personal photos with a company issued phone
- Don’t sync company issued phones with your personally owned computer
- Don’t sync personal phones with company owned computers
- Replace your device after leaving employment of a company
Nothing can prevent your device from being confiscated under all conditions. But, you can help reduce this outcome by following these tips and by segregating your personal devices and accounts from your work devices and work accounts. Keeping your personal devices away from your company’s property is the only real way to help prevent it from being seized. But, the company could still seize it believing that it may contain something about the company simply because you were or are an employee. Using a dumb prepaid phone is probably the only way to ensure that on seizure, you can get a phone set up and your service back quickly and with the least expense involved. I should also point out that having your phone seized does not count as being stolen, so your insurance won’t pay to replace your phone for this event.
Mass Shootings vs Entertainment: What’s to blame?
Note, my heart goes out to those who were hurt by Adam Lanza’s violent act at Sandy Hook. This article in no way intends to diminish anyone’s loss that day.
After Adam Lanza killed 27 people at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut, congressional leaders are now aiming their sites on video game violence as a cause. This knee jerk reaction came about because Adam Lanza was a ‘gamer’. What child of his generation hasn’t played at least one video game at some time? I would have been more surprised to learn he had never played video games. Video games are ubiquitous at this point. They are as ubiquitous as TV, the telephone and the Internet. In fact, video games are on telephones. Video games are not in any way a small industry that only a small segment of children play. No.
In fact, most big video game titles like Skyrim, Call of Duty and World of Warcraft today gross far in excess of the proceeds that even the biggest films gross over their cinematic run. Most children today play video games in some way or another every day, whether it be on their iPhone, personal computers, a console (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, etc), Facebook or on a handheld like the PS Vita, PSP or Nintendo 3DX. Video games are everywhere.
Violent Games versus the Real World
Video game violence has been in games since the early days of video games on computers, like playing Ultima on the Apple II to Nintendo’s Zelda series to Plants vs Zombies to today’s most sophisticated pc and console games like Call Of Duty. Video game violence is what it is and it’s here to stay. But, there is nothing at all that feels real about playing a video game or in participating in video game violence. Yes, video games can become an immersive experience at times, but it is so far removed from reality that anyone who is sane and rational can tell the difference between a game and reality. Note, I did say that anyone who is ‘sane’ can tell the difference.
With Adam Lanza (as with many of the other shooters), there are questions regarding mental state, which brings up a whole separate topic that is unrelated to video games. We’ll explore that in just a bit. However, I have been playing games since the Atari 2600 days. I’ve sold video games and video game units and I’ve owned practically every video game system ever made. Suffice it to say that violence in video games has never once prompted me to pick up a gun in the real world nor carry or point said gun at anyone (nor any other kind of weapon for that matter). Not one video game has conditioned, persuaded, caused or in any other way influenced me to do anything violent. Okay, I have to confess that I have thrown my game controller across the room because the game did something stupid and frustrating.. like crash and lose my game making me start over. And, throwing the controller across the room was not prompted by the content in the game, but because the game itself was badly designed and caused me to start parts of the game over wasting a lot of my time. I’d also never throw the controller at someone. Breaking the controller in half, that’s one thing. Hurting someone using a gun, that’s something totally different. Personally, I don’t even own a gun and that’s also my own choice.
Gun Rampages
Let’s discuss some causative factors involving Adam Lanza’s actions. Note, I cannot speak from personal experience as I did not know the Lanza family personally. However, based on what I’ve read in the media, here are the issues as I see it.
- Adam Lanza may have had Asperger Syndrome or some other form of Autism. This is a form of mental distress. That is, without a certain level of proper management of the condition, an autistic child can either withdraw and/or act out. This is the first problem in a series of problems that led to Adam’s actions.
- Adam was legally an adult at the time.
- Adam’s mother was apparently an active gun owner. She had purchased guns from a local gun shop several years prior to Adam’s actions. One thing, however, I am not certain of is how actively she managed keeping those guns safe. Apparently, however, she didn’t keep them locked up safe enough as Adam was certainly able to gain access to them, load them and carry them to Sandy Hook.
- Nancy Lanza apparently thought that teaching her mentally ill son how to shoot guns was a smart idea.
- Adam’s mother had been having some mental distress of her own, perhaps in just simply managing her son’s condition.
The question remains, were video games involved? Was any type of entertainment media involved? Unlikely. So, what did prompt this? Let’s explore Aspergers just a little.
Asperger Syndrome
Here is an explanation according to Wikipedia:
Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger’s syndrome or Asperger disorder, is an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that is characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction, alongside restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests.
Basically, these repetitive patterns keep the mental distress of the person to a minimum, the patterns give the person structure and order and allows the person to function in a mostly normal way. If new things are introduced, the Asperger’s sufferer can act out, withdraw or produce violent acts. Let me say that again, without proper management of Asperger’s, the person can act out violently.
I could see, however, an Asperger’s sufferer turning to video games to relieve the condition. That is, most games are extremely repetitive. The more repetitive, the better for this type of person. So, I could easily see how any repetitive video game could provide comfort and stability for someone with Asperger’s.
Access to Guns and Mental Distress Disorder
If any one thing played role in Adam’s actions, it was easy access to Nancy’s guns. Any mental distress can easily place a person into a state that is surreal or unreal. That is, they can’t easily tell the difference between reality and delusion. Once the line between reality and delusion has been crossed, the person may not have any conscience left to understand any actions that may be acted out. With Asperger’s, something must have changed in Adam’s life that upset his everyday repetitive balance and he acted out. Apparently, first on his mother, Nancy Lanza three days before Sandy Hook. Then, killing her on the day of Sandy Hook and then killing 26 people at Sandy Hook.
Nancy, unfortunately, provided him with access to the necessary weapons to make his own fantasy become a reality. So, off Adam went toting Nancy’s guns to Sandy Hook to commit his violence.
Were Video Games involved?
Let me start by saying that I’ve never played a video game where someone stocks up with guns from their mother’s gun stash, visits a school and opens fire. So, I would have to say that getting this idea from a video game is definitely not possible. Where Adam got the idea is anyone’s guess. Perhaps he watch a documentary on the Columbine massacre? Who knows? But, it’s clear that the main problem did not stem from a video game plot.
Gun ownership and mental distress?
Instead of wasting time pointing the finger towards entertainment media as a ’cause’, we should point the finger towards where it belongs, at the gun safe located in a house with a person of mental distress. Guns and gun ownership comes with a price (and not just a monetary one). It comes with the price that you are responsible with what happens with the guns that you buy and store. If you buy guns and store them in a house with someone that has a history of mental issues, then you are responsible for what happens after. Of course, in Nancy’s case, she’s now dead along with the 26 other people from Sandy Hook.
Gun laws and gun background checks should include checking the background of anyone living in the home (or in proximity) with the person who wishes to buy, own and use the gun. Anyone who is close enough to have access to the gun needs to also be background checked. If any one of those persons has a history of mental illness, the gun purchase should be denied. It’s quite clear that gun access in combination with mental distress is the most likely reason these children rampage schools with guns. If they hadn’t had the access to the guns, they wouldn’t have rampaged the school with said guns as they wouldn’t have been able to buy the guns as children.
It’s fairly clear that gun ownership laws need to change. These laws need to prevent gun ownership by anyone who is the legal parent or guardian over anyone with a history of any mental condition or illness. I also believe that gun ownership should be denied to parents who have children that are not yet legally adults (and especially of children during teen years). It should also be illegal to store guns in a home of children between the ages of 8 and 17 at minimum, but preferably children of any age. Of course, if someone has guns already or they were handed down because of a will or other ‘gift’, then these are situations where guns can become present in the face of someone with mental distress. For anyone purchasing a gun that will live in proximity to anyone of any age, the laws should require mandatory gun safety training for anyone who intends to touch, use or gain access to the weapon. In fact, gun safety and storage training should be required to even get a permit to own a gun. It should also be illegal to teach anyone with mental illness to hold, use, access, touch or otherwise handle a gun (or any other weapon).
Clearly, though, there is no real answer to completely prevent this problem. Allowing any gun ownership can lead to another Sandy Hook. Gun laws can only do so much without outright banning guns, but that cannot be done in the US because of the US Constitution’s second amendment which guarantees the right to ‘keep and bear arms’. So, without repealing the second amendment, there is no real answer to the issue of these mass violence events. Even if violent video games and other entertainment were banned tomorrow, the violence would not stop as gun ownership and mental conditions would simply continue to be influenced by other means (news, TV shows, movies and the like) and people would still act out.
Prevention?
Could Sandy Hook have been prevented? Maybe. Maybe not. If Nancy had recognized the signs early enough (as in 3 days earlier when Adam acted out on her), she might have had him arrested or otherwise detained. However, since Adam was an adult at the time, that issue brings up an even more serious question about mental illness. However, the US does so little to actively manage people with mental illness, especially when they reach adult age, I’m not sure this could have been completely prevented. It’s clear, though, that guns and mental illness do not mix, especially those with Asperger’s, but any person with paranoid delusions could act out violently. We need better means to determine just who is in a state that could lead to such violent acts. Unfortunately, doctors just want to medicate and send people on their way. That doesn’t fix the problem, it just delays it. We need better from the medical community than, “take 2 pills 3 times a day”.
How not to run a business (Part 5) — Meeting Edition
In this edition of ‘How not to run a business’, the topic is meetings. Do they help or hurt your business? Let’s explore. I’ll start this one out with a ‘Do’.
Do set up meetings between sales staff and prospective clients
Sales meetings are entirely out of the scope of this article. Sales meetings are the only truly critical and needed business meetings. Sales meetings are also part of a salesperson’s job. So, for sales meetings, bring in anyone who is needed to ensure a deal is closed. If that means bringing in technical staff, then do it. If that means bringing in the CEO, do it. Of course, the personnel involvement level also depends on the size of the deal. If it’s a $10 a month deal, this is probably not worth involving everyone in the company. If it’s a $300,000 a year contract, then by all means create meetings with whomever it takes to close this deal. Sales meetings are the only type of meetings where some of these rules below do not apply. So, keep this in mind when reading through this article. The only other piece of advice I will add that’s outside of the scope of this article is, don’t oversell. That is, your sales team is there to help close deals you can actually support. Your sales team should never close a deal based on something that doesn’t presently exist as a product. Selling vapor products is a huge corporate no-no.
Don’t create a meeting based on personal opinion
Meetings are about communication transfer, not about personal opinions. Yes, we all have opinions, but business meetings are not the platform to express your opinion. You can do this in email or stopping by someone’s desk. Opinions impart no useful information about an objective. Getting the job done and whom handles specific pieces of that job, that’s a valid reason to gather a meeting. Discussing why you don’t like something about the business, that’s opinion and irrelevant to the job at hand. If you have an opinion that leads to a fundamental design change that works to solve a problem, then by all means create a meeting involving the design change, not involving your opinion.
Don’t expect productivity from employees while in meetings
Meetings quite simply halt employee productivity. When an employee is away from his/her desk in a conference room listening to someone discuss something irrelevant to their job at hand, then that is quite simply lost productivity. As a manager or business owner, you hire your employees to be at their desks doing the job you hired them to do. However, if they are continually being required to attend meetings, they cannot be at their desk doing that job you hired them to do. This means that for every minute of time the employee spends in the meeting, that’s minutes you paid for that employee to not do their job and not be productive. Meetings often solve nothing which leads to completely lost productivity.
Don’t expect your employees to make up for productivity lost while in meetings
If an employee spends half or more of their day attending meetings, don’t expect that employee to put in overtime or spend after hours time making up for lost productivity in those meetings. This is a completely unfair work life balance request. You have then asked them to sacrifice their personal time (either on or off the clock) to make up for that lost time spent in the meeting on the clock. This is not fair trade and is not be expected. If you expect this, you will eventually lose the talent it took you so long to actually find and hire.
Don’t call meetings with people who do not need to be there
Invite only the absolute minimum people you need to any meeting. Everyone else can learn from someone else. So, if a manager has 10 staff, only bring in 1 or 2 staff to attend a meeting and leave the rest at their desks working. Don’t invite all 10 of those staff simply because you want to have a staff meeting. You can rotate your staff through the staff meetings weekly so that each of them participate in a staff meeting at some point, but they don’t all need to be there every single time. Alternatively, sit with your staff at their desks one at a time and spend 5 minutes or so catching up on expected completion times for projects or other deadline work.
Don’t hold hour long meetings
Meetings should be as brief as possible. Fifteen (15) minutes is long enough time to impart most necessary information and simultaneously short enough to prevent the meeting from degrading into a pissing match between several people or other non-related discussions. At the same time, it prevents employees from being away from their desk and not being productive. Productivity is the key to your business success. The more productive your employees are, the more productive your business will be. Lack of productivity can be directly attributed to useless meetings among other time wasters.
Don’t hold (or allow your staff to hold) useless meetings
What exactly is a useless meeting?
- Meetings that rehash existing topics and add no new information.
- Meetings that are simply platforms for employees to express opinions.
- Meetings that discuss extremely distant possible future projects without knowing any exact information.
- Holding excessive numbers of meetings in a single day (leads to meeting overload).
- Meetings that are overly long and overly verbose.
- Meetings that degrade into unrelated topics.
- Meetings that end up with multiple groups dividing and talking at once.
Meetings need to be as long as is necessary to explain a given topic, short enough to limit productivity loss.
Don’t hold meetings every single day of the week
Employees want to work at their desk, not sit in conference rooms doing no work and listening to someone else chatter. You hired your employees to do a job, having too many meetings is wasteful and also means you’re paying these employees for sitting in meetings rather than doing the job you hired them to do.
Don’t allow staff to hold meetings that consume nearly every work hour
When a company gets to a certain size, usually above 100 employees, meetings start becoming excessive. People begin scheduling meetings to discuss any and everything. I’ve been personally pulled into meetings that have consumed every single hour of my work day including, no surprise, the lunch hour. Granted, free food was supplied, but that doesn’t make up for all the work that didn’t get done. This is meeting overload. At the end of the day, you walk away from work knowing you got nothing done and, at the same time, feel like the meetings accomplished nothing. So, it was a completely unproductive day. But, my employer paid me nonetheless. Then the employee comes to the realization that they have about 3 due tasks the day after that meeting stretch. Meetings should not pull in staff who have critical deadlines the next day.
Don’t hold meetings during lunch hour without supplying lunch
If you plan to hold a meeting that spans through the lunch hour, then supply lunches to your staff. Don’t expect them to take a late lunch or skip their lunch as they might be tied up getting other work done and have no time to take a lunch after that meeting. This is both unfair to the employee and can get your business into legal hot water if any employees file a grievance. If at all possible, let your employees leave for lunch and reconvene the meeting after lunch is over or, alternatively, expect to order lunches for meetings that span the lunch hour.
Don’t let your meetings run long
Meetings need to be a predetermined length. Many times, meetings can degrade into a pissing match between one or several people over a single thing. Nip that behavior out quick. Have these employees table the discussion for later or have them take the discussion out of the room. The rest of the attendees likely don’t need to hear or even want to hear those discussions. Additionally, if you are unable to impart all of the information you expected to and the meeting is at an end, schedule a followup meeting for later, but not the next day. Let the people digest what they’ve heard. By the time you reconvene, there may be new information that would have invalidated your extra information (or even the entire meeting). If you can cut your meeting short, then do so.
Don’t feel obligated to use all of the reserved meeting time
If you have reserved a one hour slot, but you are done with what you need to say in 10 minutes, leave the conference room. Do not continue to hold the meeting after 10 minutes simply because you have the meeting room reserved. Let your employees get back to their desks as fast as possible. You hired your staff to do a specific job, let them do it. Remember that keeping people in extended meetings takes employees away from their desks.
Don’t schedule excessively long meetings
Schedule only the maximum amount of time you need to impart the information required. Don’t write a novel sized agenda, set up a 4 hour meeting and expect many attendees. Business meetings need to remain short. The shorter the better. Fifteen minutes is the optimal time. Long enough to get done what you need, short enough to get people back to their desks to become productive.
Don’t expect great things out of meetings
Meetings are a mixed bag. Sometimes they work, sometimes times they fail. I’ve been to many meetings where nothing was accomplished. That is, we were no better off after attending the meeting than before we joined the meeting. If you suspect (or know) your meeting will not bear fruitful results, then bring in the minimum people. If you didn’t realize your meeting would be fruitless, then you will need to understand why the meeting failed before setting up another meeting of that same topic. Don’t continue to press a failed topic if it’s not going anywhere. Drop the topic and move on.
Don’t schedule a meeting between two people
Meetings are intended for 3 or more people unless it happens to be an interview. Two people conference room meetings are a waste. Send email, call them or stop by their desk to ask your questions. Don’t go through the motions of reserving a conference room for two people.
Don’t expect as much produced from a meeting as can be produced from someone at their desk
Employees know their jobs. They know what they are doing. Or, at least they should know what they are doing as that’s why you hired them. Meetings are generally designed to discuss unknowns (how do we do this, how can we fix that, what happened with this, where are we with regards to blah, etc). Some of these questions can be asked one-on-one to the individuals involved and do not necessarily need 20 people together to ask this single question and get this single answer. Taking a number of people away from their desks for extended periods means that the employees are getting further behind in their work for topics that could be better handled in other ways. So, those employees now have to make up that one or possibly several hours of dead time for work that they were unable to do while sitting in a conference room. So, pull in only the people who absolutely must be there. Don’t bring in people who have no participation in that discussion.
Don’t use a meeting as a public whipping post
Meetings are and should be about business topics. That is, topics that further the business along. Meetings are not intended to be used as subterfuge to get people in a room for group tongue lashings. If you need to chastise an individual or group for failing to perform, do this one-on-one with each individual. If you need to have a group fail discussion, then produce an improvement plan. That is, design a ‘Here’s how we can do better next time’ approach. Chastising people without a way to correct the issues is fruitless. This type of meeting only serves to demoralize the team without anything productive from the meeting. Again, if you need this type of meeting, then bring in something positive to the meeting by discussing how to correct the issue and with improvement points for each team member to work through. Putting together a fail meeting solely chastise employees can open your business to legal hostile workplace issues, so be careful with these types of meetings.
Do encourage other communication methods for meetings
With GoToMeeting, Skype, Hangouts, IM and SMS you can easily talk to people in many other ways than holding a physical gathering in a room. Find alternative methods to keep people at their desks. At the same time, they can attend and participate in the meeting when they are needed. Otherwise, they can be productive at their desks. Taking your staff away from their desks for conference room gatherings is the fastest way to lost productivity that you are actively paying your staff to produce. Keep the people at their desks rather than sitting in a conference rooms listening, but producing nothing.
← Part 4 | Chapter Index | Part 6 →
Amazon Kindle: Buyer’s Security Warning
If you’re thinking of purchasing a Kindle or Kindle Fire, beware. Amazon ships the Kindle pre-registered to your account in advance while the item being shipped. What does that mean? It means that the device is ready to make purchases right from your account without being in your possession. Amazon does this to make it ‘easy’. Unfortunately, this is a huge security risk. You need to take some precautions before the Kindle arrives.
Why is this a risk?
If the package gets stolen, it becomes not only a hassle to get the device replaced, it means the thief can rack up purchases for that device from your Amazon account on your registered credit card without you being immediately aware. The bigger security problem, however, is that the Kindle does not require a login and password to purchase content. Once registered to your account, it means the device is already given consent to purchase without any further security. Because the Kindle does not require a password to purchase content, unlike the iPad which asks for a password to purchase, the Kindle can easily purchase content right on your credit card without any further prompts. You will only find out about the purchases after they have been made through email receipts. At this point, you will have to dispute the charges with Amazon and, likely, with your bank.
This is bad on many levels, but it’s especially bad while the item is in transit until you receive the device in the mail. If the device is stolen in transit, your account could end up being charged for content by the thief, as described above. Also, if you have a child that you would like to use the device, they can also make easy purchases because it’s registered and requires no additional passwords. They just click and you’ve bought.
What to do?
When you order a Kindle, you will want to find and de-register that Kindle (may take 24 hours before it appears) until it safely arrives into your possession and is working as you expect. You can find the Kindles registered to your account by clicking (from the front page while logged in) ‘Your Account->Manage Your Kindle‘ menu then click ‘Manage Your Devices‘ in the left side panel. From here, look for any Kindles you may have recently purchased and click ‘Deregister’. Follow through any prompts until they are unregistered. This will unregister that device. You can re-register the device when it arrives.
If you’re concerned that your child may make unauthorized purchases, either don’t let them use your Kindle or de-register the Kindle each time you give the device to your child. They can use the content that’s on the device, but they cannot make any further purchases unless you re-register the device.
Kindle as a Gift
Still a problem. Amazon doesn’t recognize gift purchases any differently. If you are buying a Kindle for a friend, co-worker or even as a giveaway for your company’s party, you will want to explicitly find the purchased Kindle in your account and de-register it. Otherwise, the person who receives the device could potentially rack up purchases on your account without you knowing.
Shame on Amazon
Amazon should stop this practice of pre-registering Kindles pronto. All Kindles should only register to the account after the device has arrived in the possession of the rightful owner. Then, and only then, should the device be registered to the consumer’s Amazon account as part of the setup process using an authorized Amazon login and password (or by doing it in the Manage devices section of the Amazon account). The consumer should be the sole responsible party to authorize all devices to their account. Amazon needs to stop pre-registering of devices before the item ships. This is a bad practice and a huge security risk to the holder of the Amazon account who purchased the Kindle. It also makes gifting Kindles extremely problematic. Amazon, it’s time to stop this bad security practice or place more security mechanisms on the Kindle before a purchase can be made.
How not to run a business (Part 2) — General Don’ts 2
As a second article follow-on to the first part of the series How not to run a business (Pt. 1), I will keep the momentum going. So, without further adieu…
Don’t keep non-producers on the payroll longer than 3 months
Three months is enough time to understand if the person you’ve recently hired can do the job for you. If they are not producing within 3 months, they are either in over their head, they simply don’t understand the job or they don’t really want to do the work. Whatever the problem, performance plans to improve probably won’t help. If you’re a small business, you can’t really afford having non-producers on the payroll for long periods of time. However, for longer term employees, that leads into …
Think twice before letting people go without warning
While I know that it’s common to reduce your payroll burden by letting people go, think twice before you do this. More specifically, don’t do it unless you fully understand the consequences of that change to your business. Letting certain people go can cause short-term damage if that person is entrenched in certain aspects of your business. Basically, make sure that your knowledge base is well spread out. This means, making sure that if you have a software engineer who is the only person who understands a crucial bit of code, that this person does a proper hand-off to another person before they depart. I know that it’s common to let people go without warning to them or to anyone else, but this is the worst way to handle letting people go for many reasons. First, you may lose a brain-trust you didn’t know you had or that your company needed. Second, you’re opening your company up to wrongful termination lawsuits. Both of these can be short term damaging to your business. Third, surprise firings don’t always go over well. You don’t know who is capable of temperamental outbursts and who may show up at your doorstep with a firearm ready to take retaliatory measures. Workplace violence is on the rise, be careful whom you let go and how. In the long term, your business will likely recover, but in the short term your customers may feel the pain. It’s entirely up to you to determine if that pain is worth the hassle of walking people to do the door without warning.
The best plan for non-producers is to give them one chance to step up and begin producing. Explain in very explicit terms what you expect to see in the next 30, 60 and 90 days. Set goals and expect improvements. Make it completely clear that this is their only chance to rectify their performance issues or they will be asked to leave. Basically, give the person fair warning in writing, document it, have them sign it, give them a copy and place the original in their personnel file. So, if they choose not to improve their performance issues, you have a documented copy of what you expect and that they failed to meet those expectations. This also means that when you do walk them to the door, this is not a surprise to them. It also gives you the opportunity to hedge your bets and hire someone to be trained by this person. If they refuse to train anyone, explain that it is part of their performance improvement plan and their job. If they choose not to train someone, then explain that they have failed their performance improvement plan and they need to pack their belongings and leave the premises. You can’t make someone do the work, but you can encourage them. If they choose not to work even after you have asked them to, it’s time for them to leave.
Don’t buy email marketing lists and don’t send spam
The quickest way to tank your business on the Internet and give it a bad reputation is by buying lists of people whom you have never met. If your business is important to you, find people who are interested in your services in other ways than by sending spam email. One of the best ways is by using services like D&B to locate companies that might have need of your services. Then, have your sales people cold call them. Note, that while cold calling isn’t always warmly received by many, it is more favorably tolerated than sending email spam. Cold calling is only between you and the called party. Spam, on the other hand, ends up not only between you and the other party, but all parties in between that delivered the email. The recipient may forward the email to other parties which then involve even more people. This is how reputations get ruined. The bottom line is, don’t send email spam and, more specifically, do not buy email lists.
On the other hand, attending trade shows is a great way to initiate interest in your product or service, is a way to collect email addresses and is the primary way to build your email list. Other ways to build your list is by blogging and simply by selling your product on the web.
Don’t acquire companies without fully understanding what they bring to the table
In the start-up phase when there’s lots of capital floating around, it is tempting to bring in what appears to be a good marriage of technologies into your company through acquisition. There are lots of reasons why you should think and rethink any acquiring plan. While you may bring in technologies you don’t otherwise have, it does a lot of other things at the same time. The merging of two companies is a pretty severe culture shock for the company being acquired. Their business methodologies, sales strategies, employment practices, dress code and lots of other subtle culture issues may clash with your current culture. Bringing in a new company can bring with it things your company may not be ready to handle.
Additionally, it well increases the workload for people who may already be overworked. For example, pulling in a whole crew of new staff requires human resources to hire these people in. It requires adding them to payroll and to benefits. It requires IT staff to procure assets like computers, phones, desks, logins, ID cards, etc. The new company will have accounting books that need to be folded into the parent company’s books. There’s all of the duplicated staff that are probably not necessary (finance, IT, operations, marketing… both personnel and management) that will either have to be let go or given alternative positions.
On top of the logistics of simply folding in one company to another, which requires a substantial amount of time and effort from staff, the products themselves also have to be rolled into your current core business that have yet to be determined useful. For example, if your company is primarily a Business to Business seller and you acquire a Business to Consumer company, you need to understand if that marriage works for your present business model. The questions you need to ask yourself… “Am I planning to sell B2C now?” “Can this acquired company’s technology be used in the B2B space?” “Will this new company provide the revenue needed to justify the purchase?” These are all important questions that materially impact whether you should or should not do the deal. Don’t jump into buying a business solely because it appears to be a ‘hot new technology’. The technology itself does not indicate that that product or service is long-term sellable, viable or, more importantly, sellable to your B2B customers and prospects. Yes, having a vision does help here, but remember that Business to Consumer products generally don’t generate near the amount of revenue that Business to Business products do. Also recognize, as in this example, that selling Business to Business is an entirely different beast than selling Business to Consumer. So, this also means learning curves and retraining for those folks tasked to manage both sales models.
Basically, this single section could fill an entire book. There are lots of considerations when contemplating the acquisition of other businesses. Unless you are completely certain that you are gaining something that your company desperately needs, it may be simpler and cheaper to hire people to construct a similar technology without the additional hassles of folding two companies together. In other words, it may take longer and be more costly to fold together both the companies and the technologies than it would have cost to hire engineers and construct a similar technology yourself. Weigh the costs, think about the outcome and determine if acquisition is truly the right choice.
Don’t give away something you can sell
I’ve seen this so many times now that I’ve lost count. Good will is an important aspect of the sales process. It makes the customer feel like the are getting a good deal. I understand this aspect of the sales process. So, discounts, incentives and giveaways are all good methodologies to managing a prospect’s ‘feel good’ aspect of the deal you are proposing. However, remember that you are in business to make money. You’re not in business to give good will gestures, that is unless your company happens to be a charity or non-profit. Assuming that you are a for-profit entity and not managing a charity, you should never give away things you can sell. This is true of not only goods, but services as well. I know it’s easy to think that your professional services team’s or other team’s time is not worth much, but don’t give professional services away for free. Controlling your sales staff, however, is another matter. Don’t allow your sales team to make deals without understanding the deal and someone in management signing off on the deal. Never allow sales persons to make deals without a managerial approval process. When sales people can make deals without approvals, they will make bad deals for your company that you will have to support for years to come.
Worse, giveaways encourage future giveaways. Basically, once you’ve given something to a customer for free, they will expect it for free at subsequent renewals. Don’t set that precedent. Always charge for every line item. Discount it by a small percent, but never discount anything by 100%. Once you agree to any freebie, you are saddled with that freebie for the rest of that customer’s contract with you no matter how much you find out it is really costing you. Believe me, freebies can easily become some of the most costly parts of a business.
Don’t believe everything you hear from prospects or clients
Prospects are good at finagling the best deal possible. One of the most common tactics is to suggest that your direct competitor gave away a service for free that you are selling. They are then expecting you to give them this service for free. So, here’s the common problem with this scenario. First, you are placing 100% trust into what they are saying should you decide to comply. Don’t do this. Check and double check any statements made by prospects when they ask for freebies. Second, when you cannot find that their statement is true, be prepared to take a hard line with them and discount it by only a small percent. Do not give it away for free. If they decline the deal, you may be better off. Don’t do a deal with freebies simply because you need the deal. In the long run, that contract will become unsupportable. Further, any freebie you do agree to will become a permanent never ending freebie. You cannot undo a freebie once done. Take your business seriously and charge for everything. Again, remember that to make money is why you are in business. If you give away any freebies, five years later you will still be giving that freebie to that customer. Don’t believe everything you hear.
Don’t do giveaways, trips and other incentives for the sales team alone
At least, don’t do it without including the rest of the company in the incentives. It’s quite common in many companies for the sales team to be offered trips, giveaways and incentives to close deals (or whomever gets the most deals). So here’s the problem. You’re already paying your sales team commission on deals they’ve closed (and hopefully after the checks have cleared). This is already an incentive. If they close a $1 million deal (or $1 million in deals) and they get 10%, they’ve gotten a $100k check out of that. That’s a lot of money for a sales person in addition to whatever salary you are paying them. Why are you trying to incent them further by flying them to Barbados or by giving them an iPad? It’s their job to keep up the sales. Giving them trips and giveaways sends the wrong message to the rest of your company’s departments who aren’t involved in these incentive programs. It’s also a very exclusionary practice so that most other parts of the company don’t get these incentives. Yet, these other departments work equally hard at their jobs. If you’re planning on offering these types of incentives, involve the entire company, not just your sales team (which, as mentioned, already have incentives in the form of commission).
Don’t plan releases of products or services on company pre-designated holiday weekends
So while this one may not apply to every single business out there, it is a general rule that applies to most businesses. Let’s talk about which businesses to which this doesn’t apply. If you are a consumer product, like an iPad or the latest cell phone, releasing on a holiday weekend is probably a good idea. Unless, however, your product falls into this category (which most businesses do not), do not release your products and services on national holiday weekends. Do it either the weekend before or the weekend after. Why? Nationally respected holiday weekends has nearly everyone out on that holiday. If your service is business to business, for example, no one will be around to review the changes you’re making. So, if your release breaks something crucial to your customers, they won’t know about it until after the holiday. Specifically, it will be too late for them to fix any problems that may have arisen over the weekend. For example, if your release doesn’t work correctly and sends out a bunch of email unintentionally to a list of your customers’ people, this may end up with a lot of angry people on your hands. Your customers won’t find this out until days after the incident occurred.
Out of common courtesy for your customer’s holidays (let alone asking your staff to hang around on a holiday weekend to release), delay releases to weekends that are not holiday weekends. Asking people to give up a holiday weekend (whether customers or employees) is most definitely not good for morale. Additionally, if you do ask employees to give up their holiday weekend, then expect to make up for that weekend through comp time on another weekend later.
By expecting people to give up a holiday weekend without any payback, you are setting your company up for huge morale issues, staff will come to disrespect you and your decisions and the company will become known for these unnecessary practices in the industry. It also means that employees will see that your company doesn’t respect their home family lives. What you do with your employees does get around the industry and can easily make it a challenge when it comes time to hire new qualified staff. Basically, word of mouth gets around quickly and people simply will not look at your company when looking for employment. Small things like these make a huge difference to your staff, especially to prospective employees and recruiters. These are also the types of actions that prevent your company from being placed on lists like Forbes top 100 places to work. Your company must respect the home and family lives of your employees. Forcing people to work company designated holiday weekends is like handing the employees a cookie and then unceremoniously yanking it back moments before they can grab it and quipping, “just kidding”. Don’t do this. Respect your employees more than this.
Don’t use the company to pay your personal bills
Being the CEO, CFO or any other C-level exec doesn’t entitle you to use the company as your own personal bank account. While there is nothing but your own personal moral compass stopping you (and adamant finance employees) from using the company in this way, eventually this information will leak out to the rest of the company. Some things just can’t be kept a secret, especially the longer your business runs and the more personnel changes that happen. So, unless you want your employees to know that you’re paying $6k a month for your house or $3k a month in car payments or $2k a month in child care costs, pay your home expenses from your own personal checking account. Don’t use the accounts payable people to pay your personal bills for you. Note, to those entrepreneurs who don’t understand computers, technology or the internet, yes, there are banks now that have automatic bill pay that you can set up online.
← Part 1 | Chapter Index | Part 3 →
How not to run a business (Part 1) — Don’ts
While there are tons of articles out there describing exactly what you need to do to start and operate a business, here are tips on what not to do when operating your business. I come from a background of years working in IT and, thus, this article is born from that perspective. Please view the index page to view all parts in this series.
Don’t treat your customers as burdens
So many businesses see only dollar signs next to a customer’s account. They’re more than dollars, they are your livelihood. Without them, you don’t have a business. Always treat your customers with respect and never as a burden. With that said, some people are difficult to manage in their mannerisms, manners, speech or phone etiquette. These types of people can be difficult. If you know that you cannot work with a given customer or client based on their behaviors, you may have to let them go as a customer. There is nothing that says you have to continue to do business with everyone that comes to you for services. If the client cannot show your business and your staff the same level of courtesy, respect and professionalism that you show them, then they don’t deserve to use your products or services.
On the other hand, your staff should always remain professional, courteous and friendly at all times. Word gets around quickly when your people are rude, improper or treat customers disrespectfully. Don’t do it and make sure your employees don’t.
Don’t burn your employees out
It’s very easy to lose sight of what your employees are doing day to day. If all you are seeing is the work being done, but you aren’t understanding how that work is getting done or by whom, you need to stop and smell the roses. In other words, find out what they are doing. Don’t assume that you have enough employees simply because the work is getting done. What you may not see is that your employees could be working after hours and on weekends to get the work done that couldn’t be done on shift. This is both unfair to your employees and causes burnout. Eventually, the employee will leave and you’ll be forced to hire and train someone new.
You’ll also find that after hiring someone new, the work output dramatically drops because the new person won’t carry the same work load as the person who left. Don’t blame the new hire, don’t chastise them and don’t expect the same level of work. You’ll only end up with a revolving door. If your ex-employee was doing the work of two, you need to find that out and hire the appropriate amount of staff to cover the expected workload. You should never expect the same level of work output from a new hire, especially if the person who left was using their own time to finish the work.
Treating your employees fairly and understanding their workload is how you get better productivity. Cracking the whip and expecting immediate results only pushes other work aside for your fire drill. As more and more fire drills result, the less and less other work gets done. This then means the employee is backlogged with some work that will never get done. If getting all work done is important, make sure that you understand the ramifications of a fire drill before you start it.
Additionally, you may have spent a fair amount of time recruiting the talent to your business. If you’ve got talented employees doing a bang-up job, but they are way over worked, they’re eventually going to leave. You don’t want to have to replace that brain trust. It’s expensive, time consuming and can leave your business vulnerable until you find someone and get them trained. It’s cheaper to keep your existing talent by treating them right the first time out. Keeping track of and managing your employees’ burn level goes a long way towards employee retention.
Do not categorize every customer issue as a fire drill
This goes back to the point above. Every customer issue isn’t a fire drill. Be professional, be courteous, but most of all, be realistic with your customers. Don’t promise immediate results when it’s not possible. Doing so throws employees into fire drill mode and other work gets pushed aside. Fire drills result in much lost productivity. Learn to triage and manage these customer situations appropriately.
Don’t expect professional results from fire drill mode
When employees go into ‘fire drill’ mode, all productivity stops. That is, all productivity stops for each employee consumed by the fire drill. The only thing that a fire drill employee is focused on is in fixing what caused the fire drill whether or not they have the tools to do so. Worse, as employees jump into fire drill mode, they also enter the get-it-done-as-fast-as-possible mode. This mode is problematic on many levels. It can leave the issue only partially resolved or temporarily resolved. This means that someone will have to go back later and fix the problem properly and permanently.
Moving too fast can cause mistakes or lead to even bigger problems later. Moving too fast can bypass rational and critical thinking. Moving too fast can halt logic thought processes and prevent people from seeing the bigger picture. These are all important aspects to realize of fire drills. For example, is the problem just for a single customer or is it impacting all customers? Is the problem something that the product or service caused, is it caused by the customer interaction or is it something introduced by a third party vendor? Getting thrown into fire drill mode keeps some of these thought processes from materializing and, instead, employees tend to put blinders on instead of rationally thinking through the entire issue from top to bottom.
Fire drills burn people out rapidly. Eventually, employees get fed up with the fire drill mode and they leave the company. Don’t expect to keep employees for longer than a year or two if your entire business runs on fire drills daily. Note, successful businesses do not operate in fire drill mode all of the time. Yes, fire drills happen, but not all of the time. Treating every issue as a fire drill leads employees to feel unproductive and eventually they burn out and leave.
Don’t expect perfection from employees
We are all human and we are all fallible. Running a business, you have to expect occasional mishaps. That’s not to say that you can’t strive for your employees to reduce mistakes. But, it does mean that you need to set your expectations accordingly to avoid thinking that perfection is the way the company should run.
On the flip side, do treat your employees with proper and necessary fringe benefits. For your business to be considered on Forbes top 100 best places to work, you need to offer a whole lot of perks to your employees. Perks can be costly, but happy employees keep the productivity flowing. Unhappy and dissatisfied employees do the minimum and go home. Employees that are happy to work for your company will turn in a lot more carefully completed work than employees who are dissatisfied or are getting burned out.
Don’t play games with your website
If you intend to do business on the Internet (and who doesn’t at this point?), your web site is the new storefront. It shows off your business and how it works. It is the single most important portal for both your customers and prospects. Without a solid well designed web site, don’t expect high quality traffic or even the right traffic. This means, let professional design firms design your site tuned to the correct keywords. Don’t build the web site yourself from scratch (unless you happen to also be a well known web designer). Let professionals do this work and provide your site with a fresh look. Additionally, trust your web designer. Don’t think you know better than your web designers (unless you happen to have a degree in commercial art). Yes, flaws in the way something works on the site, these need to be corrected. For the look and feel, trust that they know what they are doing. If you are uncertain of a certain image, flow or feature on your web site, do an A/B test (your idea vs the designers’s idea) to find out which one your visitors like better. Visitors always speak loader than you. Treat your visitors with the respect they deserve. Don’t assume that because it’s how you want it that it’s the correct move. Note that that goes for everything in your business, not just websites.
Additionally, once you establish a web site with reasonbly high ranking in Google, don’t up and change it just because ‘it’s old’. Don’t do this unless you are absolutely certain you know what you are doing. If you roll the site out incorrectly, you can easily lose all page rankings you have in Google. If your intent is to target new keywords, then maybe that’s what you want. But, if you had a page 1 or page 2 ranking, by changing key words and content incorrectly, you can expect to drop down to the 20-50 page area (or lower). This is immediately damaging to any business. Note, page rankings move down far faster than move up. So, you’ll pretty much lose your rankings overnight, but your new keywords might take a year or longer to get even close to page 4. You’ve lost a lot of ground and you’ve lost a lot of visitors because your new site is now ranked very low. You can always pay for AdWords to help your business, but pay-per-click is very costly and may not help your page rankings in any substantial way.
Don’t use content management systems for your web site
I know, I know. A lot of people are using WordPress for their home pages. This is way overkill for a home site. Why? First, your content doesn’t change that often on your home site. It’s mostly static. WordPress and other content management systems are designed for adding new content often and rapidly (just like this very blog article you are reading). Corporate web sites don’t change frequently enough to justify all that’s necessary to run a CMS (i.e., Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP for starters). On top of that, WordPress requires you to build the graphics inside of a specially designed theme which requires specialized coding knowledge. Additionally, for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP, someone will also need to understand all of these technologies for when things break and when redundancy is required. This means hiring someone knowledgeable to manage the CMS site, not to mention someone who’s knowledgable with WordPress management.
Second, there’s page delivery speed. For each additional technology layer you add, there’s a performance hit to deliver that page to the browser. The slower the page load, the lower the Google page ranking. Statically designed web sites are the fastest to load. Why? No databases to pull data from, no PHP to interpret and process commands, no extra layers of networks to pull data through, etc. The pages and content are immediately there to download rapidly. Ultimately, a CMS is simply delivering an HTML page to the browser. So does a static web site. The less layers involved, the faster a page can deliver. The faster the delivery, the higher the page ranking. Of course, you can also throw super fast hardware and caching mechanisms in front of your CMS to help speed up delivery, but that can cause other issues for some types of content and, at the same time, cost you more money. The only downside to static web sites is management and deployment. However, tools like Dreamweaver can solve some of these deployment issues. It’s also far easier to hire someone knowledgeable about HTML and Apache alone than it is to find someone who additionally understands PHP and MySQL databases and permissions, let alone WordPress.
Don’t send mixed messages to your customers and prospects
The worst thing you can do is have a muddy browsing and sales experience. Customers want to know what things cost and what they will get in return for that money they spend with you. If you don’t have a clear and concise list of your products or services, then define them before ever allowing a salesperson on the phone. Mixed messages are the quickest way to lose prospects before getting to stage one in the sales process. Clearly define what you offer before getting any prospect on the phone. Additionally, mixed messages can come from different sales people also. For example, based on commission rates, one sales person might offer once price while another offers another. Keep your sales people consistent on pricing. If a prospect calls and is given pricing, make sure that pricing is documented in a quote somewhere. If the prospect calls back, even a different representative who answers the phone can find the pricing they were given.
Don’t overhire
This is a huge problem in Startups. Startup companies tend to overhire in places like sales and under hire in critical technical positions needed to support those sales properly. So, you might have 50 sales people all closing deals, but you have one or two operations people to enable and train those 50 (or more) new customers each month. This goes back to, don’t burn your employees out. Lopsided hiring is a phenomena that upper management rarely sees or chooses to ignore, but continues to be a problem in nearly every startup I’ve seen.
Don’t pay out commissions before receiving customer payment
We all know that closing a deal is great. However, the trap that many startups fall into is paying out commissions on the close of the deal rather than after the customer’s check has cleared. This is a problem for so many reasons. First, it allows your sales staff to game your commission system by finding any deal to close and closing it even if it never has hope of actual payment. This means they will always get their commission, but new the customer never actually makes any payment. Second, you’ve paid out commission to the salesperson, but you’ve never collected a dime from the customer. Don’t do this. Always pay out commissions only after the customer’s check has cleared the bank and only based on the length of the term only after the payment is received. If it’s a 12 month deal paid monthly, pay the employee commissions after receipt of payment by the customer and only pay the sales person on what the customer has paid. If it’s a 10% commission, they will get their 10% of that monthly check after the check has arrived and cleared. Never pay any commissions before the check clears. Never pay out the full commission payment on the deal until all customer monies on that contract have been collected.
Paying commissions in this way does several things at once. It forces the salesperson to make sure the payment is properly received, it forces the salesperson to accurately document the contract to get the correct payment amount from the customer, it prevents paying out commissions without receiving payment by the customer first (which means you aren’t dipping into cash reserves to make payroll), it reduces the amount of work necessary by your receivables person, it prevents claw backs through salary reduction of future pay checks from sales persons if deals fall through after-the-fact, and it just plain makes good business sense. Running your sales department’s commission program based solely on when deal closes is just ripe for major cash flow problems.
You know, you’d think this specific Don’t would be a no-brainer in the business world. In fact, it isn’t and I don’t know why that is. I’ve worked for multiple startups that have chosen this money-burning commission approach. I know, some people have said, “Other startups do it this way”. This is a non-argument and offers no justification for this stupid practice. This rationalization also doesn’t make it sane for your business or the bottom line. It just means the insanity runs deep in other companies. Because another business chooses a high cash burn approach to their sales operations doesn’t mean you need to follow that same cash burn approach. Instead, save that money and invest it places that bring money in rather than lose it. Your sales people don’t need to become millionaires off of bad commission practices. Sure, you can use claw backs to get the money back, but only if the sales person is still working for you. It doesn’t work if the employee has quit and left with money in hand.
Don’t let your sales people promise things that cannot be delivered
Your sales people are primarily working for their commissions. That’s why they are sales people. Once you acknowledge this fact, you can do the things to protect your business from dire sales mistakes. Basically, your sales people are looking for 10% of that million dollar deal. They are not concerned whether your product or service actually is capable of doing what they have sold. Overselling is one of the biggest problems that any organization faces, especially growing startups that have little experience. It takes work, training and proper management to keep this problem in check. Don’t turn a blind eye to this part of your business. Yes, your sales people do bring in the business, but they need to bring in the business based on what is currently offered, not what can be built. This goes back to fire drills. If your sales people are constantly selling vapor products, your business will always be in fire drill mode trying to build something a sales person has promised. Don’t get into this mode or you’ll never get out of it.
When a sales person sells something that doesn’t exist, their commissions should be eliminated for that sale. This immediately deters sales persons from selling non-existent features (even if it’s part of a larger deal). If even part of the product doesn’t exist, neither does their commission on that sale. Commissions are like rewards. Don’t reward your sales people for promising things that are not possible and then rushing to try and fulfill that promise by building something really fast ‘to cover the promise’. This is a bad bad business practice to fall into.
Don’t play games with the books
With Sarbanes-Oxley in play, it’s rather difficult to do… especially in public companies. However, in private companies, all bets are off. If you (or any of your staff) play games with the books, you may never be able to recover from this if you intend to IPO. The quickest way to tank your company is by playing games with the books. It’s pretty simple, hire an accountant, a CPA or someone who’s honest and is willing to do the right thing. At the same time, keep close tabs on your books (payments in, out and general ledger). If you are a C-level exec, don’t use the company coffers as your own personal bank account. While this is extremely tempting, unless you intend for the company to close its doors at some point, don’t do this.
Don’t hop around trying to find the next big idea
It’s great to explore new things, but don’t abandon your tried and true services thinking you have the next big thing. If you have something that’s selling well, keep it in play. Don’t get rid of it simply because you think you have a new idea that is better. Make sure you market test all new ideas before you dump services in replacement for that new idea. You may have dumped your bread and butter for an idea that doesn’t work. Your customers will tell you that really quick.
Don’t rely on self-service business models to sustain a large corporation
Self-service is an adjunct to your business and is not intended to be used to sustain the business itself. If you plan to be in business and sell business-to-business services, don’t expect self-service pay-by-credit-card services to win over large corporations. First, most corporations don’t (and can’t) pay by credit cards and, instead, they prefer net 30, 45, 60 or 90 day terms. Credit cards are almost always intended for small transactions, usually under $1000. Although, some consumer cards allow charges up to $3-4k. Some business cards can go even higher. Yes, some cards like the government P-cards have high limits, but most cards don’t. For the most part, though, credit cards are intended primarily for small transactions. If you are looking for $30k-$1mil contracts, cards are not really the place for this size of transaction. You will need salespeople, you need to extend credit and set up payment terms and you need to hire a finance team to send invoices and collect and book payments.
Second, big corporations expect some level of spoon feeding with regards to the sales and support processes. Expect to assign salespeople to corporations as single points of contact. Corporations expect to talk to the same salesperson each and every time they call. If your sales people change constantly, be sure to do proper turnover and have your new sales people contact those corporations explaining the transition. If you prefer not to assign salespeople to accounts, you may do more harm than good for your business, so don’t do this. Corporations want to feel like their accounts are being handled properly. For the amount of money that a corporation is spending on their contract to your business, this is the least you can do to secure their peace of mind. This goes back to treating businesses and people with respect and courtesy.
Don’t think email invoices alone suffice as for notification of outstanding debt
Email invoices, while convenient, are not always admissible in court. Always send a paper bill for second notices to pay. Yes, this means printing and mailing paper invoices, but that’s just one cost of doing business. Expect to incur this cost.
Don’t think your employees know how to act
Write an employee handbook. Not only is this book a great reference for how to act, how to dress, how to conduct business and simple business etiquette information, it is also a good place to set expectations so when you do have to let someone go, you have a document that states unacceptable conduct. You can also state things such as ‘at will’ terms so that employees know exactly where they stand with their employment with you. Employee handbooks are good places to keep all kinds of information not otherwise easily documented. Sure, you can use a Wiki or other digital media (PDF) for this information, but printing this document to paper and placing it on every employee’s desk with a page to ‘read and sign’ means that at least they cracked open the book enough to read and sign the signature page. Digital documents are not always enough for this. This is a way to protect your business from employee issues when you need to let someone go for inappropriate behavior or when performance issues are at work.
Don’t become fascist about the use of electronic devices
Employees carry iPhones, iPads and portable electronic devices. They’re going to carry them whether you like it or not. It’s a way of life today. You’re not going to change that behavior by mandating a no-cellphone policy in the office. People rely on cell phones for critical personal communications. Don’t expect that you can take away cell phone privileges from them and they’ll be happy working for you. This goes back to perks. Let that be a perk for your employees. You can mandate in the employee handbook (discussed just above) about over usage of devices. Basically, let employees exercise common sense on usage (for example, on breaks, at lunch time, etc). But, if it consumes their day and they’re not productive, that’s a problem that needs to be discussed and addressed.
Some employees also like to listen to music while working, so allowing this is also a perk. If an employee is more productive while listening to music, let them listen. If it allows them to tune out other office noises such as other phone conversations, ringing phones, typing, printer noises and other distracting office sounds, all the better. Of course, if the person happens to be the receptionist, use of headphones may not be an option. Note that anything that calms an employee, let’s them remain happy at work and helps them to concentrate is never a bad thing.
Don’t expect people to give up their weekends for your business
This goes back to burning employees out. If you have so much work that one person cannot get the job done or it requires weekend work to get things done, expect to offer extra salary or comp time. Comp time costs you nothing additional. It’s a straight trade. One weekend day for one weekday off. Don’t expect your employees to work 6-7 days on a 5 day a week salary. Eventually, you may find yourself in a lawsuit for backpay. Don’t do it.
Don’t expect technology to solve every problem
Technology is made by humans. It is, therefore, fallible. It has bugs, it crashes, it doesn’t always work as expected. It doesn’t matter if the software is from your developers or from Apple. Nothing is perfect, expect that it will become a problem at some point. This goes back to fire drills above. Take failure in stride and work through it. Don’t pressure your employees for 5 minute fixes when things go wrong. Let the employees work through the issue properly. The question is, do you want it done right or do you want it done fast? Fast may get you a fix, but it may not be a fix that you’ll ultimately like several days later. Giving enough breathing room to let the technical employees work through a proper fix is critical to ensure proper resolution to problems. Expecting fast fixes only leads to more problems later. This even goes for writing code. Pressing to get software releases out the door ‘fast’, especially if you are a software company, is the only real way to tank your business. If you’re a software business, your brand is built on quality, not quantity. You want your software to work as expected. Rushing to get software out the door, more often than not, leads to failure somewhere along the way for someone. It means your developers have missed critical edge cases that can make the difference between being known for mediocre software and being known for high quality software.
If you think that there’s a way to write speedy software that’s high quality, you’ve deluded yourself. Quality software comes only from producing code that covers 98-99% of every edge case out there and that simply takes time to produce. Basically, this requires bulletproofing the software so that no matter how a user may use the software that it always does what’s expected. Increasing speed of software delivery reduces the ability to test edge cases leaving dangling code that doesn’t always do the correct thing under error conditions. This means the code could run wild, do the wrong thing or, worst case, corrupt data irrevocably. This situation puts technical staff in fire drill mode. Again, you cannot run your business in constant fire drill mode. You hired your technical staff to write high quality code, let them. Yes, by all means set delivery dates, but if a feature is too complex for a release, pull it and release it later. Don’t rush them to get that feature into any specific release.
Don’t let the sales team drive your business
Your sales department is your front end the public. It’s how you sell and do business. But, it is not what drives your business ahead. Your products and services drive your business. The solutions that you create are what become the face of what your business is and does. As an entrepreneur, you may have forgotten that the reason you went into business is to solve a problem. You wrote a piece of software or designed a product to solve a business problem, perhaps even for yourself. Then, you realized you could sell that solution to many different people. It’s the solution that drives the business, not your sales team. Basically, your technical team’s ability to deliver a functioning solution is what matters. The sales team is irrelevant in this equation other than the fact that they answer the phone, make the sale and take payment. Far too many businesses rely on the sales department to drive their business forward. This is the wrong approach and uses wrong thinking. Sure, the sales team is the one reaching out to prospects and locating interested new parties. That’s the sales team’s job. But, when sales begins selling a square peg to fit a round hole that’s where problems begin. This goes back to overselling. The solution is what sells, not the sales team. The sales team is the mouthpiece for the solution, not the other way around. So, the sales team must be trained to sell what is there, not what isn’t. It is not the sales team’s job to make up new features or imply that a feature a customer may be looking for exists. It’s the sales team’s job to understand the solution offered and find prospects where that solution fits their problem.
In this goal, always have a technical person who knows the limits of the solution on every sales call. They are the voice of clarity to keep the sales team from overselling. The technical person can step in and say, “That’s not exactly correct, our product doesn’t do X yet”. This sets customer expectations. However, if X feature is important, it should be added to the list of new features to be added into a future release.
Your business and you
As the owner and/or CEO of your business, you are the champion of your business. Only you can do the right thing for your business. Stop, think and use common sense. Rushing employees to get things done fast is not the answer. Slow down the pace. Let the employees catch up and catch their breath. Let them finish critical projects. If you’re consistently compressing time lines, some tasks will never get done. Compressed time lines are usually driven by customers and this, in turn, is usually driven by a salesperson over promising. These are all practices that must be tempered. Setting the correct pace for your business is the only way your business will succeed. Too fast a pace and your business will never be known for quality. Too slow and the competition will outdo you. Critical, of course, to your business is having creative thinkers on your team. You need a constant flow of new ideas to keep the business fresh and keep your products and services new and innovative. Without critical thinkers producing new fresh ideas, your business will keep wrapping pretty new bows on old ideas. Keep your old ideas the way they are. Don’t wrap pretty new bows into them. Your customers will appreciate that you respect them. Wrapping pretty new bows on old ideas can be insulting to old customers if you’re trying to play it off as a new service. This is the quickest way to lose customers. Keep your existing customers happy and don’t insult them by playing off something old as something new.
Start | Chapter Index | Part 2 →
When Digital Art Works Infringe
What is art? Art is an image expression created by an individual using some type of media. Traditional media typically includes acrylic paint, oil paint, watercolor, clay or porcelain sculpture, screen printing, metal etching and printing, screen printing or any of any other tangible type media. Art can also be made from found objects such as bicycles, inner tubes, paper, trash, tires, urinals or anything else that can be found and incorporated. Sometimes the objects are painted, sometimes not. Art is the expression once it has been completed.
Digital Art
So, what’s different about digital art? Nothing really. Digital art is still based on using digital assets including software and 3D objects used to produce pixels in a 2D format that depicts an image. Unlike traditional media, digital media is limited to flat 2D imagery when complete (unless printed and turned into a real world object.. which then becomes another form of ‘traditional found art media’ as listed above).
Copyrights
What are copyrights? Copyrights are rights to copy a given specific likeness of something restricting usage to only those that have permission. That is, an object or subject either real-world or digital-world has been created by someone and any likeness of that subject is considered copyright. This has also extended to celebrities in that their likenesses can also be considered copyright by the celebrity. That is, the likeness of a copyrighted subject is controlled strictly by the owner of the copyright. Note that copyrights are born as soon as the object or person exists. These are implicit copyrights. These rights can be explicitly defined by submitting a form to the U.S. Copyright office or similar other agencies in other parts of the world.
Implicit or explicit, copyrights are there to restrict usage of that subject to those who wish to use it for their own gain. Mickey Mouse is a good example of a copyrighted property. Anyone who creates, for example, art containing a depiction of Mickey Mouse is infringing on Disney’s copyright if no permission was granted before usage.
Fair Use
What is fair use? Fair use is supposed to be a way to use copyrighted works that allows for usage without permission. Unfortunately, what’s considered fair use is pretty much left up to the copyright owner to decide. If the copyright holder decides that a depiction is not considered fair use, it can be challenged in a court of law. This pretty much means that any depiction of any copyrighted character, subject, item or thing can be challenged in a court of law by the copyright holder at any time. In essence, fair use is a nice concept, but it doesn’t really exist in practice. There are clear cases where a judge will decide that something is fair use, but only after ending up in court. Basically, fair use should be defined so clearly and completely that, when something is used within those constraints, no court is required at all. Unfortunately, fair use isn’t defined that clearly. Copyrights leave anyone attempting to use a copyrighted work at the mercy of the copyright holder in all cases except when permission is granted explicitly in writing.
Public Domain
Public domain is a type of copyright that says there is no copyright. That is, the copyright no longer exists and the work can be freely used, given away, sold, copied or used in any way without permission to anyone.
3D Art Work
When computers first came into being with reasonable graphics, paint packages became common. That is, a way to push pixels around on the screen to create an image. At first, most of the usage of these packages were for utility (icons and video games). Inevitably, this media evolved to mimic real world tools such as chalk, pastels, charcoal, ink, paint and other media. But, these paint packages were still simply pushing pixels around on the screen in a flat way.
Enter 3D rendering. These packages now mimic 3D objects in a 3D space. These objects are placed into a 3D world and then effectively ‘photographed’. So, 3D art has more in common with photography than it does painting. But, the results can mimic painting through various rendering types. Some renderers can simulate paint strokes, cartoon outlines, chalk and other real world media. However, instead of just pushing pixels around with a paint package, you can load in 3D objects, place them and then ‘photograph’ them.
3D objects, Real World objects and Copyrights
All objects become copyrighted by the people who create them. So, a 3D object may or may not need permission for usage (depending on how they were copyrighted). However, when dealing with 3D objects, the permissions for usage of 3D objects are usually limited to copying and distribution of said objects. Copyright does not generally cover creating a 3D rendered likeness of an object (unless, of course, the likeness happens to be Mickey Mouse) in which case it isn’t the object that’s copyrighted, but the subject matter. This is the gray area surrounding the use of 3D objects. In the real world, you can run out and take a picture of your Lexus and post this on the web without any infringement. In fact, you can sell your Lexus to someone else, because of the First Sale Doctrine, even though that object may be copyrighted. You can also sell the photograph you took of your Lexus because it’s your photograph.
On the other hand, if you visit Disney World and take a picture of a costumed Mickey Mouse character, you don’t necessarily have the right to sell that photograph. Why? Because Mickey Mouse is a copyrighted character and Disney holds the ownership on all likenesses of that character. You also took the photo inside the park which may have photographic restrictions (you have to read the ticket). Yes, it’s your photograph, but you don’t own the subject matter, Disney does. Again, a gray area. On the other hand, if you build a costume from scratch of Mickey Mouse and then photograph yourself in the costume outside the park, you still may not be able to sell the photograph. You can likely post it to the web, but you likely can’t sell it due to the copyrighted character it contains.
In the digital world, these same ambiguous rules apply with even more exceptions. If you use a 3D object of Mickey Mouse that you either created or obtained (it doesn’t really matter which because you’re not ultimately selling or giving away the 3D object) and you render that Mickey Mouse character in a rendering package, the resulting 2D image is still copyrighted by Disney because it contains a likeness of Mickey Mouse. It’s the likeness that matters, not that you used an object of Mickey Mouse in the scene.
Basically, the resulting 2D image and the likeness it contains is what matters here. If you happened to make the 3D object of Mickey Mouse from scratch (to create the 2D image), you’re still restricted. You can’t sell that 3D object of Mickey Mouse either. That’s still infringement. You might be able to give it away, though, but Disney could still balk as it was unlicensed.
But, I bought a 3D model from Daz…
“am I not protected?” No, you’re not. If you bought a 3D model of the likeness of a celebrity or of a copyrighted character, you are still infringing on that copyrighted property without permission. Even if you use Daz’s own Genesis, M4 or other similar models, you could still be held liable for infringement even from the use of those models. Daz grants usage of their base models in 2D images. If you dress the model up to look like Snow White or Cruella DeVille from Disney’s films, these are Disney owned copyrighted characters. If you dress them up to look like Superman, same story from Warner Brothers. Daz’s protections only extend to the base figure they supply, but not once you dress and modify them.
The Bottom Line
If you are an artist and want to use any highly recognizable copyrighted characters like Mickey Mouse, Barbie, G.I. Joe, Spiderman, Batman or even current celebrity likenesses of Madonna, Angelina Jolie or Britney in any of your art, you could be held accountable for infringement as soon as the work is sold. It may also be considered infringement if the subject is used in an inappropriate or inconsistent way with the character’s personality. The days of Andy Warhol are over using celebrity likenesses in art (unless you explicitly commission a photograph of the subject and obtain permission to create the work).
It doesn’t really matter that you used a 3D character to simulate the likeness or who created that 3D object, what matters is that you produced a likeness of a copyrighted character in a 2D final image. It’s that likeness that can cause issues. If you intend to use copyrighted subject matter of others in your art, you should be extra careful with the final work as you could end up in court.
With art, it’s actually safer not to use recognizable copyrighted people, objects or characters in your work. With art, it’s all about imagination anyway. So, use your imagination to create your own copyrighted characters. Don’t rely on the works of others to carry your artwork as profit motives are the whole point of contention with most copyright holders anyway. However, don’t think you’re safe just because you gave the work away for free.
Contacting Amazon.com support — where is that number?
Phone numbers have been updated for easy dialing. Click or tap to dial.
More and more, companies are hiding their support phone numbers behind layers and layers of web pages. They simply don’t want you to call in. They seem to think that their automated systems are so bulletproof that there is no need ever to talk to a human being. Well, Amazon has taken this to the extreme. Amazon is now so hands off, even their Amazon Web Services site has no sales phone number. As if the automated signup and sales process is so fool-proof that you won’t fall into any kind of trap… what a joke!
So, the question begs, how the heck are you supposed to ask questions about their services or about charges on your cards? Clearly, a company can’t do business like this long term. Customer Service is everything and hiding your support people behind layers of web pages is so completely counter to sales and support, I don’t understand how these companies even stay in business.
What are consumers to do except get more and more frustrated? Instead of getting frustrated, this article is here to expose these hard-to-find phone numbers for all to see and use.
Amazon’s Customer Service line:
- 1-866-216-1072 (they can transfer you to other departments, just ask)
- or 1-888-280-4331
- or 1-888-280-3321 (3321 may be discontinued in 2018)
- International customers: 1-206-266-2992. Charges may apply.
- For AWS subscribers, call the above number(s) and politely ask to be transferred to the AWS support team since there is no direct number for AWS.
- Keep in mind that you will need a paid phone support contract with AWS to talk to a representative. Without a contract, they may not talk to you.
- 1-866-540-3229 — Note, they require one-time use pin codes or press # if you don’t have it. It will likely expedite your call to set pincode up from the link. You’ll need to login to do this.
- 1-888-221-1161 — Note, need to login and set up one time-use pin code, but you may be able to skip this step when calling without one. It will probably expedite your call if you set one up.
Rakuten.com:
- 1-888-BEST-BUY (1-888-237-8289)
Frys.com:
- 1-800-856-9800
- International: 1-408-350-1484
- Sales/Customer Service Fax: 1-408-487-4700
- Email: service@cs.frys.com
Netflix.com:
- 1-866-716-0414 — Note, faster if you use the express code from your account
Redbox.com:
- 1-866-REDBOX3 (1-866-733-2693)
Hulu.com:
- 1-877-485-8411 (For Hulu Plus Subscribers)
Virgin Mobile:
- No Contract Plans / General: 1-888-322-1122
- Broadband2Go: 1-877-877-8443
- Assurance Wireless: 1-888-321-5880
Wells Fargo:
- Online Banking: 1-800-956-4442
Airlines:
- Delta
- Reservations: 1-800-221-1212
- App Support: 1-888-750-3284
- International Reservations: 1-800-241-4141
- Skymiles: 1-800-323-2323
- Disability Assistance: 1-404-209-3434
- 711 for hearing or speech assistance
- Frontier
- Reservations and Support: 1-801-401-9000
I’ll add more as I find them. Of course, if you find any new numbers that need to be here, feel free to comment. If any of these stop working, please comment as well.
Enjoy!
Random Thoughts - Randocity! 
leave a comment