The Elves Leave Middle Earth

Growing companies experience subtle changes that can have dramatic consequences.  From Steve Blank’s Blog, an article titled The Elves Leave Middle Earth – Sodas Are No Longer Free provides an excellent example:

One day the engineering team was clustered in the snack room looking at the soda machine. The sign said, “Soda now 50 cents.” The uproar began. Engineers started complaining about the price of the soda. Someone noticed that instead of the informal reimbursement system for dinners when they were working late, there was now a formal expense report system. Some had already been irritated when “professional” managers had been hired over their teams with reportedly more stock than the early engineers had. Lots of email was exchanged about “how things were changing for the worse.” A few engineers went to the see the CEO.

But the damage had been done. The most talented and senior engineers looked up from their desks and noticed the company was no longer the one they loved. It had changed. And not in a way they were happy with.

The best engineers quietly put the word out that they were available, and in less than month the best and the brightest began to drift away.

You can read the whole article here:  http://steveblank.com/

Rowing harder doesn't help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction

Kenichi Ohmae