Month: May 2016

Inspiration vs Manipulation

A few weeks ago I was lent a copy of the book Start with Why. The ideas around the use of manipulation vs inspiration to change human behavior is one of the ideas that struck a chord with me thus far. Looking at companies today, there is a clear differentiation in the way that organizations position themselves based upon where they fall with when using manipulation vs inspiration.

Inspiration

These are the companies that get the best employees, deliver innovative solutions, and much of the time have higher margins and growth compared to competitors. How is this achieved? You guessed it. They have a great and inspiring vision of why they do what they do.

spacex mission.PNG

This vision and end goal above is lofty, and certainly something the people (especially rocket designers) can aspire to. Having such a vision for where the company is headed has apparently worked to Spacex’s advantage. Spacex has managed to steal significant market share from the much older Arianespace. There there must be something behind Spacex’s success.

commercial_launchers_web_1.12.151-879x485

The focus on a lofty vision of “why” an organization does what is does not only drives profits, but also clear and concise decision making and motivations for all who are involved with the company. Driving behavior towards a goal that is inspiring and internally motivated is much more effective in the long-term  compared to manipulations.

Manipulation

Price, promotions, fear, aspirations. These are the tactics that are potential changers of human behavior. When making use of these strategies, a company has most likely lost sense of why it exists. The reason for this? When a company is offering to cut price, or market to customer aspirations, there is no longer an internal motivating factor that drives the company. The company compass for decision making has been lost.

The great (or terrible depending on your perspective) example of this is General Motor’s use of promotions to drive sales. In the 1990’s General Motors, along with other US auto manufacturers relied on offering of sales incentives to retain market share when faced by an onslaught of foreign automakers. By taking this route, the US automakers effectively weakened their brands. This may have allowed the automakers to retain higher market share short-term, but it obviously didn’t help the long-term growth and profitability of the company.

Manipulations create addictions for companies that may create some short-term value, but it is at the expense of harming the organization in the long-term. The more fear, promotions, prices cuts, and aspirations a company uses to sell products the cheaper the brand perception will be.

Bottom line, knowing why a company exists provides in internal locus of control which has been proven to be a motivating force compared to the use of manipulations. There’s a reason that Apple customer’s pay more than a 20% premium compared to competitor products, and it’s due to knowing why.

Down with Vertical Database Architecture

The goal of gathering data can be broken down into a combination of any of the following free. Understanding what has happened, what is happening, or project what will happen. When getting answers to these questions, as long as the answer is obtained, why does it matter how the answer was obtained?

Getting a view into this information can be done many different ways, and with the products available on the market can be done for free and with minimal IT know how. There is a time and a place to pay a premium on IT projects to obtain the capabilities that Skyscraper_Diagramnone of your competitors will have. When a solution needs to be scale-able and tailored to your unique needs.

This is when architecture comes in.

Just like any structure, a database architecture can be flat or tall. What is the difference? To
run with analogy of comparing database architecture to buildings, a skyscraper (vertical) is much more complex to build and maintain compared to a house (horizontal).

Horizontal

A horizontal architecture can be pictured like a suburb. This translates to a house that is commissioned by you that is easily customizable and suited to your needs and wants. Do you want a pool? Easy. Do you want a larger living room or a smaller kitchen? That can be done.

Taking this analogy from building skyscrapers to databases, a flat architecture means that your data is displayed from a single (or as few as possible) levels. It is much easier to understand how the wiring, plumbing, lighting, etc. were put into a house when compared to a skyscraper. Additionally, when you want to install a pool, it’s much easier to install and maintain than a pool on the 23rd floor of a high rise.

Architecture Diagram

Vertical

A vertical architecture means many structural layers in the database, and with it comes complexity. The difference between the physical skyscraper and databases? Skyscrapers are generally created when there is no more land to build flat, this law of physics doesn’t apply to databases.

Why would anyone build a vertical architecture than? In my experience time and resource constraints effect (two thirds of the magic time-resource-quality triangle), short-term thinking.

Benefits of Horizontal

  1. Decrease in cost: Less people to maintain complex solutions, and more time spent creating value for you.
  2. Higher quality: More visibility into what is happening where. Instead of having to dive through and learn how everything was built, people playing with the data only have to learn specific portions which they are interested in.
  3. Faster delivery: The final win on a flat architecture, is speed of delivery. By reducing complexity people spend less time learning, and more time creating value. While in the immediate you may save time in the short-term with a vertical architecture, you will pay dearly in the long-term.