Marcelo Somers

Those are the kind of people that matter most in this new world, because seeing connections where no one else does is the way you can innovate best, and thus the way you can be successful. But just as important, it’s these kinds of people who are passionate about their ideas. They’re the kind of people that will explain to anyone who will listen why what they see (and what no one else does) is true, and they are the kind of people who will see it through from idea to shipping product. And when someone like that is directing a product, there’s soul in it. When you pick it up, you can see the thought that went into each and every part of it. You can feel their work. And that’s worth buying.

Kyle nails it on this blog post in response to Aaron Mahnke’s post. You can’t be average anymore. If you want to be employed through recessions and ups and downs you have to go above and beyond. The 9 to 5 job that you show up, punch in, do your task, and leave is dead, and this is for the better.

My primary concern with this is that you can’t train people to be passionate - a college degree won’t get you that.

Keynesians think that the market failed because of lack of regulation in a dynamic innovative environment. Those with Classical inclinations believe that exactly the opposite is true; that it was ill-conceived regulatory initiatives like the concerted push to expand home ownership in America, underwritten by FANNIE MAE and FREDDIE MAC, and facilitated by easy money, that caused a housing bubble and runaway financial asset expansion. The latter was seriously aggravated by a cartel of rating agencies indirectly created by government licensing requirements and operating with serious conflicts of interest.

Keynesians think that more government-Fed-financed stimulus is needed, and that higher taxes don’t matter. Those who believe in the market believe that permanent significant tax reductions (comprehensive tax reform) and a commitment to fiscal responsibility at the various levels of government is what is needed. This will entail credibly limiting the power of the Fed as well.

Take your pick…

Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice?

If so, do you tell this person he is “too serious,” or ask if he is okay? Regard him as aloof, arrogant, rude? Redouble your efforts to draw him out?

…

What is introversion? In its modern sense, the concept goes back to the 1920s and the psychologist Carl Jung. Today it is a mainstay of personality tests, including the widely used Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Introverts are not necessarily shy. Shy people are anxious or frightened or self-excoriating in social settings; introverts generally are not. Introverts are also not misanthropic, though some of us do go along with Sartre as far as to say “Hell is other people at breakfast.” Rather, introverts are people who find other people tiring. Extroverts are energized by people, and wilt or fade when alone. They often seem bored by themselves, in both senses of the expression. Leave an extrovert alone for two minutes and he will reach for his cell phone. In contrast, after an hour or two of being socially “on,” we introverts need to turn off and recharge. My own formula is roughly two hours alone for every hour of socializing. This isn’t antisocial. It isn’t a sign of depression. It does not call for medication. For introverts, to be alone with our thoughts is as restorative as sleeping, as nourishing as eating. Our motto: “I’m okay, you’re okay—in small doses.”

If you answered yes to these questions, chances are that you have an introvert on your hands

Check Check and Check.

Realizing I was an introvert was one of the greatest things that happened to me. Better understanding how my own mind operates has helped me work better and be more efficient at my own job.

It’s also helped me realize what jobs are *not* for me - like sales jobs. So the standard line that everyone gives that everyone wanting to be in leadership has to go through a stint in sales has led me to seek out other alternatives, such as sales support or something that wouldn’t completely exhaust and burn me out after a few months.

If you haven’t yet, you should take a Meyers-Briggs personality test. Mostly accurate knock-offs are freely available with 2minutes of Googling.

Being an introvert isn’t a bad thing, you just have to know that you are not an extrovert in what feels like an extrovert’s world and take time for yourself and set boundaries.

if we vomit every single detail of our lives on each other — that is: what we ate for breakfast; the latest app we installed on our iPhone; our highest score on a mobile game; or detailed every item of our personal schedule since the last time we chatted — we would surely not get around to discussing the deeper nuances of what life has been teaching us. We’d be so hard pressed to squeeze in a play-by-play commentary of our daily doings we might risk being too distracted by minutiae to discuss what we have actually learned and interpreted from our activities.

Don’t get me wrong: I definitely crave bouts of healthy superficiality in dialogue as much as the next guy. There is always a time to talk about the most superfluous and inconsequential things, however we define them. But our relationship needs something more — beyond listening to the other person’s coffee order preferences — to grow as a thing of friendship.

I’m guilty as the next guy for broadcasting small details that don’t matter in the grand scheme. This short post is worth a read - he has a great suggestion at the end.

There’s a massive misalignment between the labor pool and the job pool, and I blame our undergraduate institutions.  They’re still training people for an industrial economy.  While not every person graduating can be an engineer, business folks are not going to be managing and working with production lines, or for that matter filling roles in investment banks and management consulting firms.  The business jobs in this economy comes from: selling digital media, trafficking ads in DART, negotiating CDN prices with suppliers, creating P&L’s where the COGs is Akamai, tracking and filing bugs in Pivotal Tracker.  A business person in 2011 needs to be able to dialogue with a Product team about the features customers need, and this business person needs to have an inkling of a sense as to how code is built and what can be shipped and how.

And yet, the case studies in business schools still involve cranberry farms, beer shipping, and Microsoft vs. Apple.

This short blog post sums up such a huge problem that I have seen in the labor market these days. Not only at startups, but most large companies literally can not find enough employees to work there.

Then I realize why - we truly are still teaching people to work in an industrial economy. I always use this example. In my Intro to Marketing MBA course, we had to do a few case study analyses. Every single one predated the internet. The one my group had to focus on was a mail order catalog.

I’ve never even ordered something from a mail order catalog.

Luckily I have been blessed with professors who ditched their textbooks and fostered true discussion and learning of what was new in the world. One of my best undergrad professors would literally print out articles from that morning’s Wall Street Journal or New York Times if it was relevant to what he was teaching.

Students coming out of college today should be at the forefront of innovation. We have lived our entire lives with some of the most amazing technology that other people are just starting to grasp, yet it seems like the dots aren’t being connected in some learning environments.

(shameless plug) I also hope that my new site, Behind Companies, will become a resource for up to date business case studies.

Welcome to Behind Companies

Hi and welcome to Behind Companies! This site is written and curated by me, Marcelo Somers.

I have always been passionate about learning the stories behind how companies arrived where they are. It might stem from my interest in history, but it is truly fascinating to hear the inside stories of what made companies succeed and fail. It is also something that helps people with leadership aspirations grow and succeed.

I hope for this site to become a collection of modern articles telling the inside stories of companies’ successes and failures. I want to make it accessible to anyone, not scattered across dozens of books and Harvard Case Studies.

Billboard magazine reports that The Beatles sold more than two million individual songs worldwide and in excess of 450,000 albums in its first week on Apple’s iTunes Music Store. (The Beatles’ catalog was added to iTunes on November 16th.)

According to Experian Hitwise, it was social media — not search — that drove a lot of the online interest and, more importantly, the online traffic surrounding The Beatles addition to iTunes. Consider this stat: On November 16, the first day Beatles songs were available on iTunes, 26% of UK traffic to Apple.com came from social media, about double the amount that came from search.

And Hitwise says Apple received a “huge spike” in UK traffic coming specifically from Facebook. The week prior to The Beatles launch on iTunes, Apple was the 86th most popular outbound destination from Facebook; after the launch, it jumped up to the 20th most popular. Hitwise says that one in every 200 web site visits that left Facebook went straight to Apple’s web site.

I never quite got the “share/social is the new search” quote that has been floating around for a few months now. This is it.

What’s fascinating is that we’re doing share/social without realizing it. It’s passive. It’s an active thing to go to Google, type in a search, and find your answer. In this case, it’s viral marketing at it’s best.

I think what is the most interesting about all this is that the market is self-selecting of good and bad. You could argue that crappy work will go away because people will only share what is interesting and unique. No more SEO. No more sites like Mahalo whose entire business model is predicated on the fact that they can bait users into clicking on their Google search.