Many of the elements of that company were things that people told him couldn’t be done:
- You can’t have a company that entirely consists of high ability people, you need a mix of less able people that the high ability people leverage.
- Intellectuals aren’t interested in making money, so a company built around them won’t stay viable.
- It’s a harsh world where nice guys finish last – so you can’t afford to be nice to employees and customers without an ulterior business reason.
- High ability people can’t collaborate effectively, they intellectualize and self-destruct.
- Large companies need a strong management structure to avoid falling apart.
- Intellectuals must be run by B students since intellectuals are idealist and only greedy B students are pragmatic enough to make real decisions
- Doing things for the long term doesn’t work.
- Being transparent about economics and operations is bad internally, worse externally and certainly won’t scale.
- Don’t reveal your weaknesses, especially to outsiders.
- The purpose of being international is to take advantage of people in weaker countries.
- Don’t give production people powers that can be abused and hurt the company.
- Culture is secondary – it cannot be a sustainable advantage – you need a superior business model
In lots of ways of ThoughtWorks is a reaction to this kind of common sense.
ThoughtWork에 대해선 최근에야 알게 된 곳이라 자세한 사항은 모르겠다. 하지만 Martin Fowler의 말은 내 호기심을 자극한다. 아마도 누구나(적어도 백치가 아니라면) 한번쯤은 창의적이고 뛰어난 사람들끼리 모여서 사업적 성공을 거둘 수는 없을까라는 생각을 해 봤을 것이다. 또한 그것이 매우 어려울 것이라는 생각과 함께, ‘젠장.’하고 속으로 소리쳐본 적도 있을 것이다.
ThoughtWork라는 곳은 불가능하게 보이는 것을 현실로 만들어가고 있다니 놀랍다. 앞으로 그들이 어디까지 가는지 지켜봐야겠다.
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