2011 OctoberDesign of Business | Design of Business

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Recently at a startup meeting that some fellow Angels and I hosted, I was amazed to see nearly every entrepreneur at the table (yes, there was a rather large oval table in the room) had a Macintosh (Powerbook or Air). Having made the switch (back) to a Mac just this last February, I realized how the last ten years of using a PC had ingrained certain habits, which were hard to break.

Surprisingly the transition to a Mac OS X after a decade of Windows usage, went extremely smoothly with the only initial hiccup being able to find a good replacement for Notepad++ which had been my primary text editing/composing tool! In the weeks that followed as I got down to actually working, I slowly began identifying the holes in my work flow and began filling them with free apps or utilities for the Mac. Here are the insights that I gained from that journey and hopefully some of you will benefit from it as well.

Note: I have focused on primarily things that I felt made my transition from Windows to Mac OS easier and were holes in the software that came along with the MacOS. Clearly there were apps or utilities that shipped natively with the Mac OS and I have tried to mention them where ever appropriate.

TextWrangler By far the best (free) text editor on the Mac – from Bare Bones Software the makers of BBEdit – whilst the Mac OS ships with TextEdit (ala WordPad for Windows) – for any serious HTML coding or even plain unhindered text creation. If I were to add only one piece of software to my Mac OS X it would be this.

Business bundle

OpenOffice (now from Oracle) has been a staple of mine the last three years and was the first business app I downloaded. It gets far greater use despite my having bought the iWork package from Apple. Even for heavy users of MS Office, you will not skip a beat IMO with OpenOffice.

Skype – Despite the excellent iChat that ships in the Mac (allowing Jabber, gmail or AIM chats) – much of my business (or even personal) chat, video-calling and VOIP is done on Skype. So this made its way on to the list.

Wine – Nearly everyone I know has one favorite utility or application on Windows that has no real (or acceptable) equivalent on the Mac (if you can believe it). In my case it’s Quicken for Windows and The Journal from David RM software. Wine (& Wine Bottler) are great to run Windows apps under your Mac OS X. Loving it!

Media Management

Picasa As father of two girls and owner of at least two SonyEricsson phones and one Sony T-90 camera (thanks Yogesh!) I get a fair number of pictures taken (mostly in dubious focus). Having used Picasa on my Windows machine and despite the occasional twinge about Google’s reach into our lives, I’ve opted to stay with Picasa as my image importing, (minimal) photo manipulation tool. It’s face recognition feature is pretty cool. iPhoto that comes bundled with the Mac OS X is something that I am yet to play with – this is an instance where inertia won over

GIMP A year ago, I still found GIMP complex and intimidating – however sustained use over the last year, particularly for FlipSide, our nearly weekly cartoon, has made me rely on this as my primary image composition and image authoring tool. I am told this works reasonably well as a photo retouching tool, but never having used Photoshop or GIMP for such use, I cannot comment. This is amongst the most heavily used tools on my Mac (not bad for a X11 app

Audacity For all the audio recording, tape/CD clean up and audio blogging needs, nothing beats Audacity and thankfully the app is truly cross platform and my daughters who do most of the ripping/editing didn’t miss a beat in using Audacity for most of our audio recording/editing needs.

VLC Media Player – Sure iTunes is nice, as is QuickTime Player both of which ship natively with MacOS X. But it helps to have a media player that can play your VCD, DVD, audio CD, play practically every audio compression format that’s out there (3gp anyone) and do some other stuff, such as stripping just the audio, which I am yet to fully figure out. And again like GIMP and Audacity it is a great endorsement for the Open Source software.

Utilities

Alfred This was the first utility that I downloaded from the Mac App Store and more importantly the one I use the most. In their own words “Alfred is a productivity application for Mac OS X, which aims to save you time in searching your local computer and the web.” I use it as my primary launcher and am slowly beginning to prefer it over Spotlight (which it leverages). There is so much to Alfred (the free version) that it requires its own review to do it any justice.

EasyFind This is another utility that I find particularly useful to locate files who’s actual (or full) names I can’t recall. It supports Unix wild cards – doesn’t require indexing and works fast. It also can be constrained, to search in specific locations (or sub-folders or paths) or on file or folder names or within file contents. Also its ability to peer within packages and hidden files is a sweet benefit.

Wunderlist The newest addition to my Macintosh (surprisingly spurred by my purchase of an Android phone). It’s a great to-do list creator/tracker that syncs across my phone, Mac desktops, the cloud. It even allows my wife and me to maintain (and assign one another) to-dos across our separate Macs/calendars. Much like Alfred, it comes with a great yet simple interface with several GTD features and keyword (or labels) support.

Disk Inventory X & Grand Perspective Both of these are disk usage utilities that shows the sizes of files and folders in a special graphical way called “treemaps“. It was particularly useful while planning to move or back up files or as has happened all too soon, when my hard disk space seemed to be disappearing rapidly. Again not only useful but cool looking too. I prefer Disk Inventory for reasons I’m not too sure myself!

A quick glance at a typical entrepreneurs’ nightstand will show at least two or three books piled up waiting to be read. Despite their best intentions, entrepreneurs and other business folks often don’t get around to reading all the books they plan to. The fact that they are frequently gifted many “must-read” books only adds to the problem. If you thought things were bad before, our friends and sundry experts on Twitter and Facebook who’ve begun showering all of us with even more recommendations are making matters worse.

Last night when the pile of books on my bedside table tumbled over, I was finally spurred to action. I set out on a quest – to find that one book that must be read – after which it wouldn’t matter if I read any others. I’d have to admit that my thus-far forbearing spouse probably had as much to do with my wanting just one book on my nightstand. It is this journey I share with you in this week’s column.

The preamble of the US Declaration of Independence, first adopted on July 4, 1776, states “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” Scholars agree that the authors of the Declaration of Independence were greatly influenced by the work of English philosopher John Locke (1632 – 1704). That his ideas have held sway for over three hundred years speaks to the foresight and genius of John Locke. If there is such a philosopher in business, who has not only influenced multiple generations of business leaders but continues to stay relevant today, it is Peter Drucker.

Whether you are a new employee starting out on your first job or an experienced CEO and particularly if are an entrepreneur, Peter Drucker has something of lasting value to impart to you. The challenge in getting acquainted with Peter Drucker and his work is the sheer prodigiousness of his written output. He’s Shakespearean in the number of volumes (nearly forty) he has authored and the breadth of subjects he’s covered. The utter clarity of thought and simplicity of his communication style have earned Drucker, in my opinion, the right to be termed the Bard of Business.

And much like getting acquainted with the Bard of Stratford-on-Avon through a Minerva or Cliff Notes guide, the first time reader might wish there was a quick and easy guide to Drucker. Luckily Drucker’s own “The Effective Executive” first published in 1966 (subsequently revised as The Effective Executive Revised in 2002 and The Effective Executive in Action in 2005) is such a guide. The book distills the wisdom needed for a professional lifetime in Drucker’s trademark lucid style within its slim 174 pages. It is the volume I’d choose, if I had to pick only one of his books.

The charm of the book lies in Drucker’s simple assertion that effectiveness can be learned. Never one to mince words, he asserts in the very first chapter,“Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are essential resources, but only effectiveness converts them into results.” He then quickly spells out five simple steps to learn and practice effectiveness.

Drucker’s frequent use of compelling anecdotes from his own wide-ranging consulting career and history makes reading the book not only pleasurable but memorable as well. My own favorite story is the one about President Abraham Lincoln’s response when he’s told about his new commander-in-chief’ General Grant’s fondness for the bottle. “If I knew his brand, I’d send a barrel or so to some other generals.” Drucker goes on to say, Grant’s appointment was effective because he was chosen for his strength of winning battles and “not for his sobriety, that is, for the absence of a weakness.”

My roommate in college would read the Bible each night before he went to bed. Many a times, as brash 18-year-olds are wont to do, I’d ask him “Haven’t you read it before? How come you are reading it again?” To his credit he never lost his cool and would mostly give me an indulgent smile before returning to his book. It was only much later that I came to appreciate the value of returning to a book I’d read many times and discovering new things each time. The Effective Executive is such a book, one that I find myself returning to each year and it has never disappointed.

Get yourself a copy today and you wouldn’t even have to clear out any space, given the slim volume it is.

Summary

Effective executives

Manage their time through explicit choices about what’s important

Focus on what they can contribute themselves

Build on people’s strengths rather than try to mitigate their weaknesses

Set and drive the long-term business priorities

Understand and make effective decisions and

Know that effectiveness can be learned

An edited version of this article first appeared in my Book Beginnings column in the Mint.

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Monthly Archives: October 2011

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