In the United States, Post Office employees have a bad reputation. They’re notoriously unfriendly, cold, hostile and unhelpful. It’s hard to avoid feeling frustrated when you have to deal with arrogant staff – be it an employee of the Post Office, an abusive police officer, or a flight attendant who’s running his own little power trip on the passengers.

But then I ask myself – wouldn’t you also become angry, frustrated and bitter if you had a crappy job at a crappy organization? The work environment and the context you create within your company plays a major role in your staff’s happiness and professional satisfaction, which in turn is crucial to make your customers happy.

The Post Office doesn’t have a good context that would allow its employees and agents to thrive and be happy. And the atmosphere of bitterness spreads to the customers who don’t receive friendly customer service. If only you could be nice to people, they would put up with long waiting lines, complicated rules, and even expensive service! If the clerk apologizes for the wait and take the time to provide good customer service, that would make all the difference.

It’s so important to create a great company context where the members of your organization can strive and be happy. (more…)

While building Noam Design and helping other businesses take off, I’ve learned a thing or two about entrepreneurship and about developing a business. Here are 6 mistakes I find particularly hard for entrepreneurs to avoid: (more…)

“Just knowing you have the time helps you make the time.” Extract from another great post by Jason Fry.

Every interruption cuts your work day into a series of work moments. 45 minutes here, then a meeting. A hour there, then a conference call. 20 minutes until someone taps you on the shoulder or calls your name across the office. These events kill productivity.

Most of these interruptions are experienced at a micro level. They’re experienced during a day. But I’ve found the same thing holds true on a macro level. If you stretch your time scale out to weeks or months, a day trip here or a couple days away there has the same effect: It kills productivity. A couple days away a week is like a few meetings a day — it makes it hard to get anything meaningful done. An interruption is an interruption.

[...] knowing I have a clear schedule for many months has shifted me into a pleasantly productive mindset. I’ve gotten a ton done so far this week. There have been some projects I’ve been meaning to start for a while, but with future travel hanging over my head I couldn’t get into a groove. I’m back in a groove.

It’s a good reminder of the power of an open schedule. Just knowing you have the time helps you make the time.

From The pleasure of an open schedule By Jason Fried of 37signals. (more…)

It doesn’t really matter how much time you spend on something, right? The outcome is what matters. The results. Then why most service companies bill their clients by the hour? Is there a better way?

On the other hand, we know that businesses who charge their clients based on scope restrict themselves to working within stiff boundaries – which doesn’t work in a creative industry.

So is there another way? The solution we found here at Noam Design is to stop taking on client work and focus on our products instead.

So we’re not charging by the hour: it doesn’t matter how long it takes us to develop a Magento template or a CMS template! Time isn’t a factor when determining a product’s price. Quality, usefulness, and market demand are more important.

We’re not charging based on the scope of work either. Sometimes a product requires a huge amount of work, revisions, adjustments, etc while other products are developed in a breeze. All that is quite irrelevant though – only the end result matters. Is the product useful for our customers? Will someone get a good value by buying it? Do people need it? These are the questions that matter more. (more…)

No matter what your line of business is, there are always competitors. If you think your product is so unique that you have no competitors… well it’s time to wake up!

Many business starters try so hard to differentiate their product or service from the competition that they end up believing they have no competition. In fact, maybe it’s better that way!

The thing is that focusing on the competition too much will not help you create a great product. Don’t concentrate your efforts on how you can beat the competition by doing better, more, less, or different. That’s a waist of time. Worse than that, it interferes with your ability to create a great business.

It’s best to ignore the competition and focus on what matters: your product and customers. Which audience are you targeting? What problem are you solving? What’s the best way to solve that problem for your target audience? What is necessary and what is not?

So ignore the competition. Create your own thing instead.

Related Posts:

• Don’t worry too much about being first
• Underdo your competition

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How much time someone has been doing something is no indication as to how good that person is at doing it! In all the different fields I have been involved in, I’ve met people who had tons of experience and really sucked while others had almost no experience but were really good.

It’s not the quantity of experience that matters – it’s the quality. In fact experience will interfere – people often get stiffer with experience. When you have a lot of experience in a field, you’re prone to continue doing things the way you’ve been doing them so far. It’s harder to adapt and to change.

No matter what your line of business is – adaptability and flexibility is an asset of the utmost importance. Especially if you’re a small business. Because speed and agility is an advantage you can leverage over the big guys. (more…)

When developing a new website or web application, you should choose to work with widely used web technologies that are popular on the internet. Why is this a smart choice?

Large pool of talented people.
If you work with widely used technologies, you’re aiming at a large pool when looking for talented people to work with. That’s really important. When working with technologies that are more rare, you are tying yourself to the companies or individuals you’re working with. By using more popular technologies, you’ll have a choice if for whatever reason you need to find other people to work with. And all the past work done will not be in vain because other people will know how to work with it.

Cost effective.
It is usually more expensive to work with technologies that are more rare. Of course it’s not the rule but it’s often the case. Again the pool of competitors is smaller so that usually means higher prices.

Access to resources.
In addition, it is much harder to find resources, frameworks, platforms, and in general open source software when you use technologies that are less popular – so you miss out on a lot of shortcuts and powerful options. Basically everything has to be coded custom – again that’s much more expensive and is not sustainable.

Prepared for growth.
Working with the wrong technologies will interfere with your company’s growth. Any web application needs to be regularly updated, maintained, and carefully secured (especially when it comes to Ecommerce for example). By not choosing a route where you can use popular software and platforms that are themselves regularly updated by the community, you are signing up for a long relationship with your developer and will end up being too dependent. It’s not a smart choice.

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Related Posts:

• Web Design Explained
• Top 5 Questions To Ask A Web Design Company

When starting a business, you often have to juggle between tasks and roles. One day you’re the project manager and the next you’re the billing department guy. Of course that’s totally fine – and you should be proud of taking care of so many different things. If you’re a one man show – enjoy it while it lasts and promote yourself as such.

But as time goes by and your company grows stronger, you’ll want to focus on what you do best and enjoy the most while delegating the other tasks to people who are a better fit for them. (more…)

Simple rules have the potential for beautiful and complex behavior while complicated rules lead to stupid behavior.

Tax rules

Tax rules in most countries are perfect examples of complicated rules creating a context for idiotic behavior. Of course it’s not the tax payers’ fault. But the overly controlling rules and laws naturally lack the clarity and flexibility to allow for simplicity and organically beautiful behavior. In the end, paying taxes could be a noble thing to do. It’s just that the tax system is cluttered and entangled with complicated rules and does not provide clear guidance. The result is just one big non-sense.

Laws of Physics

The laws of physics are somewhat simple. Newton’s three simple rules are responsible for so much beautiful behavior. These simple rules have infinite applications in the form of movements, forces, interactions… it’s all so harmonious. And when Albert Einstein introduced the theory of relativity, and then the theory of general relativity, he didn’t introduce more rules or more laws. To the contrary, his vision enhanced the simplicity of the laws and integrated them into a broader system with clear and simple principles.

Albert Einstein says it so beautifully:

“nature is the realization of the simplest that is mathematically conceivable”

(more…)

One of the worst ways to go about getting something done or solving a problem is to look for multiple options.

That’s particularly obvious in the design field. When you’re looking to get a design done, don’t ask “can I see a few options of how that can look?” but rather focus on creating the one design that will be right. Any good designer knows that. So much waste and confusion is created when you don’t work that way. Especially because having seen the few options most people request to combine some elements of one option with some elements from the other option and you end up with a Frankenstein type of design made of disparate pieces. The result is simply not coherent.

I think that the core of this issue comes from a culture of multiple choices. It start in school where most tests consist of multiple choice answers. People end up not exercising their brain to look for the right solution to a problem. Instead they are faced with a selection of choices and they focus on the options. This type of approach is deadly to creativity. (more…)