Company of One

Aug 11

Written By Socrates - Head of School Team

Think you might want to read this book?

Think capturing market share, hiring employees, and growing rapidly are the signs of a successful business? In Company of One, Paul Jarvis is here to turn these preconceived notions on their head. Jarvis will convince you that new tech platforms and changes in access to labor have opened the door for companies of one to reach many people and make plenty of money while keeping control of the company in one person’s hands. He argues that one person can set how much money they need to make to have a good life, grow the business to that level, and then focus only on excellent products and customer service from that point on. While the parallels to education are not obvious at first, critical questions are teased out of this book that will challenge all school leaders to reconsider how to lead in our information age.

What Would Socrates Ask?

How can Results Only Work Environments (ROWE) be used to streamline student work more efficiently?
How often are your current families surveyed to find out about their happiness?
What if all new initiatives for school improvement were given low overhead, but lots of autonomy, guidance and time?
If 83% of new business comes from word-of-mouth referrals, what are we doing to make sure current student/parent voices are heard?
What if schools offered content and projects openly online and only charged for feedback/assessment?
What if schools had a monthly email/blog where they emphasize what they’ve learned about themselves/their mission?
What if we required students to seek feedback twice during a project (the timing/questions to be determined by them)?
What if all new families received a two minute video from an administrator, teacher, advisor, or counselor welcoming them to your school?

Research

For every 5,000 employees, at least 250 will be true innovators and 25 will be innovators and great intrapreneurs as well.
More than 96% of managers and executives are extroverted.
70 percent of buying experiences are based more on how customers feel they are treated and less on the tangibles of a product.
92 percent of consumers trust recommendations from family and friends over any other form of advertising.

Concepts

An “intrapreneur” is a corporate leader who is allowed to come up with their own goals and execute towards them.
It is important to experiment with ideas outside of one’s normal role. It was a Facebook “hackathon” that led to the creation of the “Like” button.
The four typical traits of all companies of one: resilience, autonomy, speed and simplicity.
All resilient people possess three characteristics: acceptance of reality, sense of purpose and ability to adapt.
Google gives its engineers “20 percent time” to work on whatever they want. More than half of their products/projects come from this idea.
Leadership qualities required from a company of one leader: understanding of psychology, ability to communicate, resilience, the focus/ability to say no to what doesn’t serve your business well and decisiveness.
The “power paradox” is the idea that the very skills needed to gain power: empathy, self-awareness, transparency and gratitude, are the same skills you lose while you spend time in those positions of power.
A “holocracy” is a completely flat organization with no one managing anyone else.
A great example of a purpose driven company is CVS. They stopped selling tobacco products because it didn’t align with the purpose of improving health.
Sign of the times: up until the 1950s the word “priority” was almost always singular.
Our ability to focus diminishes drastically after about fifty-five hours in a week.
People tend to evaluate each other based on two general dimensions: how interpersonally warm we appear to be and how competent we seem to be.
Beware of “commitment drift”: the systematic breakdown in fulfilling an organization’s most important commitments due to perceived short-term gains that end up compromising the stated promise.
Be persistent: WD-40 is named after the success after 39 initial failures.
If you aren’t embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.
Beware of “Endowment Effect”: Overvaluing your plan because it’s yours.

Quotes from the author

“A company of one questions growth and stays small on purpose.”
“As a society, we’re gradually starting to view “work” not as a single place of employment, but as a series of engagements or projects.”
“A leader’s job is to provide clear direction and then get out of the way.”
“Businesses should take notice- customer education is the new form of marketing.”
“Teach everything you know and don’t be afraid to give away your best ideas.”