When last I wrote, I mentioned that we were working on something and we’d have a Gabbo up soon. Unfortunately we haven’t delivered that Gabbo, but instead we’ve been hard at work on the actual product.
We’ve decided to push ourselves to launch the actual product ASAP and start doing A/B testing and some marketing tests as soon as we can.
We’re not quite ready to tell you exactly WHAT we’re up to, but it won’t be long now.
The New Ninjas Basement Den
The New Ninjas took the summer off, but we got back together to start working on some of our plans for world domination projects which will propel the business to the next step.
The group has new digs, in the basement of Ninja Dave’s house, and in true start-up style we’re working off foam floor tiles, some inexpensive chairs from the Rona clearance section, some collapsable 6 foot tables, and some reclaimed IKEA furniture that I’ve donated. Yep, the Ninjas actually own physical assets now! Plus we’ve got our eyes on a sweet boardroom table from Lovers of London.
While we’re not quite ready to pull the shroud off our new project yet, we plan on launching a Gabbo on the new domain in the next week or two.
What’s a “Gabbo” you ask? It’s our internal name for any promotional landing pages we launch before a product launches, and we lifted it directly from the Simpsons.
Gabbo is a ventriloquists dummy who had an enormously popular, though short lived TV career.
Before Gabbo’s show premiered, numerous advertisements mentioning him were posted on TV and in the streets. The town was abuzz with anticipation, with everyone eager to find out who (or what) Gabbo was.
Our Gabbos are used to gather email addresses of people who are interested in our new products. Ours for the new product should launch shortly.
Keep watching this space for more details!
Its amazing how everyone knows communication is important but yet when it comes to actually communicating they are not good communicators at all.
What is worse than not communication is the crutch people use to not communicate. I call this crutch “Process”. IE creating a system where people don’t need to communicate as everything is written down and managed; all the variables are known… yeh right…
A great example of this scenario comes out of what I call a “something happened” meeting, basically something didn’t go according to plan. At these meetings I see a lot of people using the terms, “we don’t want to point fingers”, and “we just want to see what can be learned”, “learn so we don’t have this happen again”.
While I agree with this sentiment, and not wanting to de-motivate people sometimes you need to figure out what actually happened. However what normally happens is some key things are written down that can be learned.
After we figure out what sort of happened and how the train got off the tracks, there are two general outcomes that I see:
I hate option 2, Plain and simple, it literally boils my blood. Why?
Well first I think it creates what I call a “protective shield from responsibility”. That employee or team or whoever can now follow a process that will make their managers smile, and if shit goes wrong they have a process to say “well it wasn’t in the manual or guide, so I didn’t do it”. We have essentially stopped them from thinking and using their brain. Seems dumb if you think you have talented employees. I want my teams to think, be smart, and make decisions. I think we will be better for it, even if we mess up from time to time.
Second, it takes up a lot of useless time! How many meetings does it take to “decide” on the process, and then someone has to go away and build the damn thing. We then have all to “agree” on it. Then it gets formalized, then approved, then someone has to implement it, and finally the best part AUDIT! We now need to have someone check to make sure people are working! In that amount of time I’m pretty sure my team could release a mobile version of our site…. If you do this you stop adding actual value and add busy work.
This is why I love option 1. We fucked up, we admitted it, we learned from it. We went back to work. If you feel we are missing something it is your responsibility to speak up. The best part about this process, it fosters people to think and it spreads organically through the entire business. I now have people every day telling me how to create a better product, and I love it, it gets me amped to come to work.
This is how we run New Ninjas, we talk, we communicate, we speak up (it sometimes created heated debates, Brian and I love going toe to toe) but some our best breakthroughs have happened because we love to talk. Our team is smart and we foster talent, to do that you have to let people work free. Get done what you say you will, but do it smartly and we will never get mad.
If you’re a regular follower of the New Ninjas you’ll notice that we’ve been pretty quiet lately. May was a big month in terms of us figuring things out, but a quiet month in terms of new updates.
Don’t worry. You will know what crazy shenanigans we’re up to shortly.
(ooooh, ominous)
HedgeHog - Hannes Grobe/AWI: Creative Commons 3.0
Jim Collins in his amazing book “Good to Great“, talks about the Hedgehog concept, which is the core of your business. If you understand your hedgehog concept, and stick to it with devotion, your company can become great.
Collins uses the parable of the clever devious fox and the simple hedgehog. The fox keeps coming up with new ideas to eat the hedgehog, but the hedgehog beats him by employing his one simple trick.
Rolling up into an inedible ball of thorns.
You simply have to answer three questions.
If you answer those three questions, you figure out what the core of your business is.
One of the biggest problems with the Ninjas is that we are all talented individuals who have had some success with our individual competencies. It’s the dilemma of choice that’s actually quite paralyzing.
Mike and I are both quite good at video stuff, and we could create a video company in an instant. Dave is a ridiculous programmer, and he would be perfectly happy building perfect systems. Matt is an awesome business guy, and sneezes genius business plans and business improvements. Mike and Dave are passionate about good code, and they want time to make things awesome. Matt and I are obsessed with playing around with marketing, and getting revenue quickly.
The one thing we all agree on is that we love creating value quickly. Mike and I can do cool video stuff, Dave and Mike can write genius code, Matt and I can work on business and marketing plans, and together we can all focus on making sure that we are creating an elegant, beautifully designed product that provides a valuable service.
Our hedgehog concept is that we can show small business how to be better. Make more money, save time, and have fun along the way. We chose the name New Ninjas to make sure we NEVER take ourselves too seriously.
Our presentation to the London Venture Business finals was bookended with a statement that has become a mantra for us.
We are the New Ninjas.
