Getting in Sync

by Tim O'Reilly
March 1993

When the company was smaller, it was easy for everyone who needed to be involved in a project to talk with each other. Coordination happened fairly naturally.

As we get bigger, it gets tougher and tougher to keep everyone in the loop, especially since we're so spread out geographically. Meetings are a help, but don't necessarily get to the core of the problem...the kind of natural, ad hoc collaboration that comes from people being in the room together.

With so many things going on, even geographical proximity doesn't always help. There are so many people whom I see regularly--like the proverbial "ships passing in the night." We don't have the time to engage that we used to have!

I've always said that we were the "company of the 90's" in terms of our distributed structure. We've enjoyed a lot of the benefits of that structure--flex time, flex location :-), flat management structure, flexibility whenever possible.

All of this flexibility was possible because we had a secure core identity, which in many ways was defined by a few strong personalities, whose internal sense of right and wrong was the touchstone of our choices.

Now, we are struggling to come to terms with the flip side: how to keep flexibility from disintegrating into chaos. In many ways, this is an exciting opportunity. We figured out how to make a small company that works; now we face the challenge of how to make a larger company that works just as well (or better!).

Let me give you some concrete examples of the kinds of issues we're struggling with, in the area of company identity.

1. As we have more designers working on different projects, it becomes more important to articulate just what is the company "identity" in design. How do all the separate books and marketing pieces we develop add up to say "O'Reilly & Associates"?

   It used to be easy: the "look" of our books and the marketing materials based on them was consistent because they mostly traced their lineage back to a single person's vision.

   Now, we've got so much going on, and so many people working on different projects, that there's increasing divergence. Lots of great new ideas, but more of a need to articulate what ties them together. We can't just take for granted any more that our image will hang together of its own accord.

2. This exactly parallels what's happening in editorial. As we've gotten more editors, books increasingly diverge from what used to be a fairly consistent "O'Reilly style." The increase in the number of editors is exacerbated by the fact that we've covered many of the topics in our original "core" market. Our original books were written for markets that we (the editors) knew intimately. All we had to do was write for ourselves, and figure out how to reach people like ourselves. Now we're struggling to define the core of our editorial identity, so we can apply it in other areas.

3. In our overall company culture, I've been used to a certain kind of "personality-based" management. I've always seen my role, and the role of the managers and other senior people in the company as defining the culture by example, by the judgements we make and the approach we take to solving problems. The company culture is passed on by a kind of "viral transmission" from one person to the next. (Contrast this with an imagined company that has an explicit policy for every possible situation.)

   But it seems harder to me each year to sway the company just by force of personality.

   I had a curious feeling in the talk I gave in the Cambridge office when I was there last month. The closest concrete image I can use to describe it (and one that came to mind from trying to jump-start Sue's car the night before) was of trying to push a car that is just a bit too heavy or on too great a slope.

   Perhaps I was just a little overtired, but it also struck me that there's a paradigm shift in the wind. There are too many people, too little time to see them all, let alone to really get to know them, too many projects to put my stamp on them all--and a conviction that it's no longer always appropriate that I should.

There's a fine and difficult line between preserving the essence of an identity--whether it be editorial or design or the company culture--and stifling innovation. We've got to preserve what's good about what we've done in the past while remaining open to new ideas. After all, much of our success has come because no one was telling us "how it's done."

In short, it's a time of creative ferment: strong new personalities emerging and putting their stamp on the organization, people who've been around in formative roles moving on into new areas (and sometimes leaving a vacuum to be filled).

It's also a time for reflection, for thinking deeply about what we've done well, what principles underly the things we feel best about, and how to carry them forward.

I'm certainly doing a lot of thinking about this, and would like to ask you do join me in doing so. It's important that we all look at where the company is moving, and actively participate both in defining that direction and in getting in sync with it; that we remain open to change and constantly reinvent our "jobs;" that we trust that even in the midst of change, some things will remain constant.

What are those constants? First, the principle that people count, and that whatever we do, we want to care for each other. The definitive formulation for that principle goes something like this: "Act towards others as you would have them act towards you." In that statement is carried the requirement for honesty, compassion, going the extra mile to understand or to help, and bringing all of yourself to each moment.

Add to that some of the classic virtues: patience, thrift, hard work, courage, humility (a sense of how little we know and have accomplished is a sure precursor to open-mindedness and readiness to face the unknown)...in short, we ought to live in the company by the same principles that we follow in our daily life :-)

Salt all this with an understanding that what actually happens is always a poor reflection of what we dream, but that our goal is to bring the two closer together, and we have a recipe for success no matter what challenges we face.