Fail forward. That’s a popular montra we hear and I believe it. Unfortunately I think that we are in danger of too quickly glossing over the “forward” part of the idea. It Is important to take a hard look at your failures, get context, find insight, and share the new found wisdom. Here are a few questions that I like my team to answer whenever there is an opportunity to learn and grow from a less optimal outcome.

What was the action taken and what was the result?
What might have been a more preferred result?
What was the specific lesson learned?
How could we identify a similar situation in the future?
What behavior is recommended for the future?
Who needs to be informed about this lesson to ensure a more preferred result?

The progression of questions take you from recalling the action, analyzing the action, determining new lessons, and deciding who needs to have this knowledge.

Try it for yourself and for your teams.

I have a Money Tree in my office. I’ve had it since I moved AdPropel into it’s own facility. It’s a resilient plant and has aged well. The tree is in a nice red pot, has five “tunks” that are twisted together, and grows leaves in bunches of six.

Of the five trunks, three of them used to be alive with leaves sprouting. Now,  only one trunk is left sprouting leaves and it’s flourishing, all the others have died. This tree reminds me of a lesson about starting a business. A lesson about focusing resources and not being pulled in all directions. About how some ideas and ventures will eventually fail, and how by staying in there, eventually one idea will flourish and grow.

Growing a startup isn’t about taking on many goliath’s in parallel. It’s about nurturing the most promising ventures and then building from that success. Create leaves, not trunks.

I think this short post from Seth Godin is important, especially from the perspective of a startup company. In a startup, the “self-starter” attitude and ability to be self-sufficient is all the more important. There is no formal management structure, few processes, and when the company is being created it takes mindshare and individual action to get things off the ground.

The relentless search for “tell me what to do” 

If you’ve ever hired or managed or taught, you know the feeling.

People are just begging to be told what to do. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the biggest one is: “If you tell me what to do, the responsibility for the outcome is yours, not mine. I’m safe.”

When asked, resist.

If you’re searching for a job in software development you need to pick up your game. There is an abundance of talent out there but fewer jobs today. Until that equation changes, you need to be more competitive with your job responses.

I’ve received the largest batch of resume’s from a craigslist as as I ever have in December 2009 99% of applicants haven’t changed their stripes. Here’s the advice:

1. If you’re out of town, specify whether you’re willing to re-locate or work remotely. Unless you’re exceptional I’m not going to contact you to find out.
2. Read the job posting and respond relevantly. I have a boutique shop that does cool things and a job posting that’s asking for some unique qualities. That means, don’t respond with a standard copy/paste letter or with no email body at all.
3. Along those lines, tell me why you’re a good candidate for the job. I spent time being detailed about the position, spend some time and tell me why you’ll fit. Don’t make me figure it out by deciphering your resume.
4. I get over 100 responses to each job posting. Ask yourself if you’re really going to stand out.
5. Give me your phone number and address, not just an email.
6. I don’t care about your GPA unless you list it as low. Maybe others do. Leave the GPA off, include the year of graduation. If there’s no GPA, I don’t care to know it. If you list a 2.2 GPA, I’m going to notice.
7. I expect everyone is embellishing to a degree, make yourself sound awesome because I’m probably going to assume you’re not as good as you say (unless you say it *really* well)

All that said, it’s a hard market out there and I wish everyone good luck with the job hunt. We’re not at 12% unemployment because it’s easy!

Microsoft and Google, two giants fighting it out for the future of software business. On the surface Microsoft and Google look similar. Both offer software, both have an online presence, both are technology companies. But their business models and revenue streams are nowhere near the same thing and that’s going to mean a lot for a long term competition.

What is Google?

Let’s look at Google. At it’s core, Google is a content company that derives revenue from advertisement. If you look at Google’s 10Q, 99% of their revenue comes from advertising services.

Google looks at online, desktop, and mobile software as content that can be offered free to users in exchange for advertising.Rather than having a blog, or a wiki, or a magazine, or pornography, or some other form of content, Google’s driving content is software. Software to search the web, software for email, software for editing documents, software for managing photos, software for getting directions, software for reading news and blogs. Google provides free web, desktop, and mobile software in exchange for advertising attention.

I’d like to note an exception to the above with Google’s business services, but that business unit is an insignificant revenue stream and has insignificant market share.

Google is best defined as a content producer, monetized by advertising. They are unique from what we would traditionally think of as content producers in that their free content is software and web services.

What is Microsoft?

Microsoft is a pure software company at it’s core. Microsoft designs, develops, tests, and packages software for desktop, server, mobile, handheld, tablet, vehicle, surface, and other devices. From operating systems to games to productivity tools, Microsoft is a company that produces licensable software across a breadth of industries.

Microsoft licenses software and sells support and maintenance contracts; targeting both business and consumer customers. Microsoft has the sales, marketing, and support infrastructure to back up a large software business.Gaming, media, advertising, consumer electronics, hardware, and other businesses Microsoft has extended into. Leveraging their software business they develop or advance new markets to sell software into.

At the end of the day, Microsoft sells software and has an ecosystem built around it for support, certification, maintenance, and development.

Winning the Consumer Market

Google is moving more and more into the consumer space. A space where advertising is a legitimate form of revenue generation. Google can continue to offer free software content to consumers and monetize through advertising. By offering software and services for free, Google is granted more leeway from consumers regarding the quality of the software… whether it be bugs or lack of functionality. Consumers are also okay with software being in a perpetual beta when the software is free.

For traditional software sales, Microsoft is maintaining it’s dominance. Despite all the bad talk in the press and blogosphere, Microsoft’s software business is still growing, as is the company as a whole.

Microsoft is cognizant of the intrusions into the consumer space by free software and web services from Google and other companies and is putting together strategies and making acquisitions for when the time comes that their software unit becomes flat. Today, there is still a lot of money to be made with traditional software sales, and Microsoft isn’t about to jump into the advertising for software content business until they’ve finished milking the software licensing cow.

Winning the Business Market

Today, Google doesn’t have the pieces in place to serve the business community. They have not invested in the sales and support infrastructure, nor have they invested enough in their business software offerings. Their business offerings are not as feature-rich, end to end, or functional as Microsoft offerings. Google does not have the world wide sales teams and support infrastructure that Microsoft has. Google has no certification program and a weaker partner network.

Google is a consumer facing company today, and from their investments it looks to stay that way for a long time. Microsoft is business facing and has leveraged that market to get to the consumer.

Recently, Microsoft has made investments and acquisitions in cloud computing and web advertising (including their recent $42 billion bid for Yahoo). Microsoft is in a dominant position overall and is getting prepared to compete when software goes more and more online. Remember, Microsoft still has a large web presence, a large IM presence, a large email presence, and a large social networking presence (especially in other countries). Microsoft is already ramping things up to take over when packaged software slows.

Google has a long way to go to enter domains Microsoft is dominant in. Microsoft has much less work to upset Google’s consumer web dominance.