Rework is the second book published by small business advocate 37signals. Rework challenges the current status quo for doing business in a more modern, internet-enabled economy and outlines steps for making your organization more agile and responsive.
Rework outlines steps for making your organization more agile and responsive
So, right up front: I’m pretty much a fanboi here. I’ve used 37signals’ applications for about 4 years now and have enjoyed every second of them. They’re simple, to-the-point, and they get the job done. I also became fairly entranced with 37signals’ way of business when Jason Fried gave the opening talk at South by Southwest in 2008, my first ever attendance at said conference. Common sense has a funny way of firing on all the right cylinders for me so I was immediately hooked. 37signals gets a lot right in my mind but enough with praise for the company and on to the book…
There’s a ton in Rework that stands at odds with current trends and expectations. If you’re a tech startup creating a new service or application, conventional wisdom says, “Seek out angel investors and raise some capital to get the ball rolling.” Rework, and the philosophy at 37signals, stands in the face of that. “Bootstrap,” they say. “Do it yourself,” they declare. “Be in charge of your own destiny!” The argument goes that most tech startups don’t have capital expenditures in the beginning. Well, at least not that meaningful. If you’re screen printing t-shirts and business cards, you’re going to need equipment to do that job. But as a company creating services or applications, the investment is simply time. Sure there are computers and software we need to do our jobs, but I’d wager we typically have those resources personally available. They may need to be upgraded but that’s a minor cost compared to purchasing a screen-printing machine or a plate printer.
There’s a ton of waste in the business world. Not necessarily wasteful spending, but wasted productivity.
The vast majority of the book is laden with common business sense. The biggest hurdle it seems is finding said common sense within the business world. Most business is caught up in their own processes and legacy practices and typical executives aren’t willing to either go back to basics or consider an alternate point of view. There’s a ton of waste in the business world. Not necessarily wasteful spending, but wasted productivity. Consider email for a moment. Computers are supposed to be saving us time. They’re supposed to remind us of things we need to do or events we need to attend, arguably so we don’t have to save those things in short-term memory. This should, again in theory, free our minds up to concentrate on other, more creative, tasks. Enter Outlook. Now, I’m not going to pick on Outlook because it’s from Microsoft, but because it’s the single, most-popular tool for the job used in businesses worldwide. But how many people keep Outlook running the entire time they’re working and when that little tell-tale notification pops up, we jump straight over to see whatever the email dictates? Outlook is not really assisting my productivity here. It’s interrupting my productivity and my train of thought and it’s going to take me even more time to get back to where I was when the mundane email is done being intrusive.
This is just one example that I’ve found in my current business life that Rework amps up the volume to 11. I could detail countless examples where the book admonishes us to take control of meetings, productivity, and overall working life, but I’m not here to steal 37sigs’ thunder. Rework implores us to work smarter, not harder, find new efficiencies, trust your employees, don’t interrupt co-workers, and embrace passive communications. These are suggestions most every business I’ve been involved with could learn from. Pick up a copy and let 37signals know what you think. It’s an easy read that’s hard to put down.