Chapter 26 Section 25: Dare to break the rules

Things were going well, and Cooliris continued to break the mold.They do away with the hierarchical distinction between interns and full-time employees, allowing interns to also work on important projects and take full personal responsibility for the work at hand.Every intern has to bring a project with a large target, and they have the right to do as long as they think it will help to complete the project.Of course, there is necessary oversight, but interns have explicit authority to make important decisions.For example, if the goal is to increase the number of websites that support Cooliris software, the company doesn't tell the interns what to do every step of the way, but encourages each of them to complete the goal on their own.That way, everyone's abilities are visible at a glance, and it's easy for the company to know who's doing a great job and needs to be rewarded.

Cooliris didn't stop there, though.They found that the best way to find out whether someone was a good fit for the company and the job was to observe them on the job.So, they recruited hundreds of students to do product testing, which is a common way to evaluate new product features, but Cooliris also serves the purpose of recruiting while product testing.In the interaction with everyone, Cooliris understands the thoughts of these people, whether they love the product, and most importantly, whether they are suitable for the company.In this way, Cooliris can not only obtain useful customer feedback, but also find new employees if it goes well.

dare to break the rules You might think that it would be easier for an individual or a small new company to challenge the mundane and break the norm. In fact, large companies also break the norm when they encounter it in the way.I heard about Microsoft's release of the Zune from a former student, Tricia Lee.Microsoft designed the Zune to compete with Apple's iPod, and the development schedule was tight.When the project was almost halfway through, they found that the goal was obviously impossible to achieve. According to the progress at that time, and taking into account the frequent bickering among various departments, feedback links, and bureaucracy, the actual development time was much longer than expected.To solve this problem, a subgroup of the project team worked overtime independently of the rest of the team.They completed an important piece of basic code in the software code, pulled the project back on track, and boosted the morale of the team, so Microsoft completed the development of the Zune product on schedule.

Companies like Microsoft have extended processes that run across departments within the company.However, scalable processes don't always work.When things are burning and need to be resolved as quickly as possible, companies should dare to break through the bureaucracy like Tricia and Microsoft's Zune team did.In fact, many companies have decided to implement a Skunk Works program, where they take people from their day-to-day work and form a team, empowering them to break out of the box, allowing them to think freely and work differently.