Recently our CEO responded to some policy concerns by asking us to tell him what policies we thought were stupid, so they could be fixed, or discontinued completely. He called for a “policy purge” and that very day the first policy was killed. And our CEO is NOT out of touch with employees. He sits 40 feet from me in a cubicle just like I do. With the right arc I can nearly hit him with a Nerf dart. Any employee can stop by and chat with him anytime they see him.

One of the key things I have noticed by watching Undercover Boss (and being in business a long time) is just how much valuable information is being lost between the front line troops and middle and upper management. Often the middle managers get the blame for this, but at the end of the day, the CEO runs the company, and has to set the standard for the culture. Open, or closed? Inclusive, or exclusive? Executive restrooms, or does the CEO piss in the same pot I piss in?

Undercover Boss has covered some very arrogant and extravagant CEO’s – and some very down to earth ones. The down to earth ones almost always know their businesses better.  They may not understand every employee’s personal issues, but they get the business. The arrogant ones are out of touch – probably because they are out of reach.

Being disconnected from employees is just as dangerous as being disconnected from your customers. Listening and learning seem to be lost arts in many companies.

As companies become more global and the Internet makes the world more real-time it is more and more difficult for companies to communicate internally. And at the same time we are adding in the complexity of a nearly real-time external communication channel with customers.

This is a LOT for companies to digest and adjust to. Many won’t. But those that invest  in new communication channels will probably get to know their employees and customers much better than those who do not.

Finding the right tool to talk to a lot of customers and/or employees is hard. You may pick the wrong platform, expect people to show up where they do not show up – but you must not give up.

The new world is about rapid communication – and customers and employees both expect it. How they want it delivered is something we are all still figuring out.

Maybe Ray Ozzie knows? He has been as close to getting it right as anyone. And it appears he is still working on it.

They have stuff to sell, and they want me to buy.  We all need to make a living.

I’m not focused on making money from Social Media – I am focused on saving money WITH Social media.

Every customer we help in near real time is a customer that that is exposed to Fanatical Support® – often for the first time.

And that support is important.  It is timely.  It is genuine – it is driven by an engineer with a desire to help a customer win.

Near real time support adds a lot of value because it both maintains your brand reputation and reinforces your core commitment to customers – that you are a partner, not just a vendor.  That you win and lose together.  That they are not just a number.

So we focus a lot on how Social Media can help us help customers win. That is our strategy.  Please steal it – emulate it – make all my experiences with brands better by making them more engaged with me.

But put real people behind those accounts and hashtags – people that are empowered to make a difference, and people that really give a damn.

That isn’t Marketing.

That is Social Media as a Service.

I manage Social Media.  But I am just a customer care guy that knows Social Media tools.

That does not make me a “Social Media Maven/Expert/Guru, etc” – it makes me customer guy with more tools than I had a decade ago.  Simple.

• It’s About Transparency. It’s about not lying to your customers, and thinking that a good Twitter apology will suffice when you’re caught. It won’t, and you’ll lose.
• It’s About Relevance. It’s not about tweeting every single time your company offers 10% off on a thingamabob. It’s about finding out where your customers actually are, and going after them there.
• Finally, it’s about knowing your customer, and making sure your customer thinks of you first.

The post I reference – and it is good reading.

I am very pleased to report that Rackspace has no “Social Media Experts”.  We have Rackers that care for customers and know how to use various tools. We are not, and will never become the tools.

And here is the rest of the story…

I sent an email to our Chairman tonight – Graham Weston, who I respect a great deal.

Here is part of what I told him:

What I just really, honestly love about this company – I
feel completely comfortable putting my personal “brand” on the line.
I am completely comfortable telling companies that if we screw up, I
will make it right for them. I do NOT promise what Rackspace will do.
I promise them what *I* will do – and I know Rackspace will have my
back.

I am not sure many companies get how empowering that is – that I trust
my employer enough to give my customers my personal guarantee -
because I know my company has my back.

I’ve spent two + years talking to some of the best customer support
companies on the planet – some of the largest high profile social
media adopters – and none of my peers feel that absolute sense of “my
back is covered”. It is extremely empowering and adds a level of
authenticity to what we do that we could not have planned for – or built a
program around. It is what I know of us as a company (much because I was a customer for so long) – the trust I have earned, and my knowledge of the business. I am not going to give away the farm. I am running a for-profit business. But I know when to give away a few daisies to sell a dozen roses.

This is NOT normal with the other companies I am dealing with. I think we are doing something pretty unique here – and I really appreciate it. Mostly I appreciate not having to get permission to do what is right. I am trusted to do what is right.

And empowered.

And that is very unusual. More unusual than we think, I think.

So I want to dig deeper into that, and find out how what we are doing works, and how we can extend it, and how we can even teach it to others – because we are fundamentally based on giving knowledge back. Be that OpenStack, or what we are learning in Social Media.

Knowledge is more fun when it is shared.

The truth is every job produces stress at times, and I do feel it on occasion.

As a manager, when I feel stressed out I always try to stress up, and not stress down.

In other words, when I am stressed, I stress out my managers, and not my employees. I figure my manager’s get paid to deal with it, and my employees don’t.

So a very short post.

When stressing out, stress up. Never stress down.

If your bosses don’t react to it well then find new bosses. Or find a new job.

But never stress down – your employees don’t deserve it and probably can’t affect the cause of your stress anyway.

I can’t write any of that any better than anyone else has already done (and possibly not even any worse).  At best I could come up with a smarter title and better marketing – so perhaps my book would sell better than someone else’s book. But it would not add any more real value to the conversation.

I would love to add a chapter to each of these books though.  I would call it something like, “When to (politely) tell your MGT to go to hell and do what you need to do to make things right”.

Of course, I have never, and never anticipate telling my MGT to go to hell – I’m not suicidal.  I have had lengthy conversations about which of us are correct though   But does my MGT know how far I will go, how much hell I will raise, and how many people I will wake to serve a customer?  They do.  You don’t get a title like “Chief Disruption Officer” by swimming in calm waters.

My chapter would focus on making sure that your organization had that guy or gal that cares more for customers than anything.  That isn’t afraid to get fired for fighting for them.  Because they are expected to do just that.  They are paid to raise a bit of hell, wake up a couple VPs if needed.  Call the Chairman of the Board on a Sunday, if that is what it takes.

This is a customer advocate at best. One that is unafraid, because they are expected to err on the side of the customer.

Many have discussed the notion of the employee who is “untouchable” – meaning they can’t get fired without a huge payout (hell, we do this in sports all the time, why not do the same with customer advocacy!?!).  That gets them the freedom to never sacrifice customer experience. And it is mostly a good idea.  But like everything, it is not a perfect idea.  It could be abused and used for purposes other than serving customers.

I actually like almost the opposite of “untouchable” – I like the notion of “damn near fired” more

I like it when I push us.  I like it when I make us uncomfortable with finding a solution to a customer issue.  I like that I am sitting on the edge of the wall – and that I could easily be pushed off if I don’t stick to what is right, what is true, and what is fair. And do it in such a way that everyone wins – at least a little.  YOu can never succeed if your goal is to create a loser.

You become as close to “untouchable” as you can get by trying to find a way for everyone to win.  And it isn;t a balance, because it is hardly “even”.  Even is generally where you are at when you get invited into the conversation – everyone thinks they have already given too much.

Winning is getting one of them to move, just a bit.  And having them feel good about it.

This is a challenge to NOT be normal, not be boring, and not let life just happen.

We aim to change the world.

One URL at a time, or one customer at a time – doesn’t matter to me.  I am here to matter in a company that matters.

I am here to help other Rackers change the world.  And that is not “normal”.

I’ve never done a good job explaining WHAT I do on a day to day basis. I am sure some coworkers will be just as interested as anyone. In a company of over 3K employees, it is hard to know what people do. Especially people like me. Why?

I work at home most of the time. I manage a nomadic team, so they don’t need me in their faces every day. I trust them to do their jobs, and they trust me to let them. And when I work at home, I work with customers. A lot of them.

I am also part of a larger team that understands that I add a different value – one I can’t add in an office. Usually, at least . I trust them to appreciate me, and to ask me for help when they need to. And I often ask them for the same. They are amazing people to work with, and they have a ton of my respect.

I spend my days, and nights (on good days and nights) talking to customers. Or potential customers. I love what I do, and who I do it for, so I spend a lot of time and energy doing it. I honestly don’t mind talking to a customer at 2am. 6am is harder for me though .

I run Social Media for our company. And that is a pretty big job – we get a lot of mentions on Social Media. Our entire Social Media plan consists of two words though – “Be Helpful”. Not a lot of fluff there. No 37 slide PowerPoint Deck. We are singularly focused on helping our customers win. No fluff there.

I love customers – even one’s that aren’t happy with us – I spend a lot of time with them. I try to “fix” whatever we broke. A promise or a process has probably failed us. We are a big company – that happens. I want to fix it. It is not my job – it is my passion. My team has adopted it as their passion.

I’m empowered to cause change – and I empower my employees. And I have interesting employees. I have AMAZING employees, in fact:

Two Linux Senior Systems engineers that know more about hosting than I will ever know. Robert (Robot) Taylor and Robert Collazo have spent most of their technical careers helping customers.

Robert Scoble and Rocky Barbanica, who bring life to building43.com, and introduce us to amazing people that just need a bit of help by someone that just gives more than a shit. That’s why we do building43.com – it is helpful.

Yes – I have a team of five, and four of us are named Robert. And we have one Rocky. It DOES get confusing!

But we all have the same focus – to care for customers, share their successes, and help them build the value they deliver to their customers – that is our goal – we all win together. And it is our commitment. It is so simple.

And it is so fun! If you are not having fun, you are doing it wrong.

We have a different thought about “Social Media” than many public companies. We think we need to have a staff that knows the company and the products so well that they can actually FIX issues we see on Social Media. And we do. I am the former Director of Software Development for our Cloud. Robot and Rob Collazo are engineers that have built and supported our company for years. No fluff there either.

We also support and appear at as many events as we can possibly support. As recruiters, engineers, evangelists, speakers – it is all the same thing. We want to be where customers want to talk to us. And if that is on Twitter at 2am, you have a good chance of seeing me tweet my home phone number. Or one of my team reaching out to make sure we help, at almost any hour.

So yes – I love my role. I can touch a lot of parts of the business. But mostly, I can interact with a huge number of our customers – and help us find new ones. Mostly because I have a lot of people supporting me – from my employees, to my managers, to my coworkers.

And our Senior Leadership Team that is just willing to “think different” – and allow me to try some crazy ideas, (responsibly) and see where they take us.

And where they take me – which is to places I would not have imagined just 2 years ago when I went from a customer to an evangelist.

Find a company you love. Then find a job there. Then find a way to help them win. It is an amazing feeling.

You really can’t hire people that have the dedication my team has. You can inspire them, and empower them – trust them, and have fun with them. The right people weren’t looking for a job when they found you though.

They were looking for a mission.

Create one.

More than I wanted a J.O.B. – I wanted to change the world.

And here I find myself, at 4am, not being able to sleep – even though I need to be on a flight to Boulder in 4 hours.  I’m too excited to sleep – oh, I tried!  But every few minutes I would find myself peeking once more at the OpenStack Twitter Account (@OpenStack) – wondering if the hits were still coming in (they are) – and assuring myself this is real (it is!).

We’ve been hard at work for the last several years – working towards that end. Today, I think we have helped change the world.

By open-sourcing the second most popular Cloud Computing platform on the planet, I think we’ve just changed the world. Hell, by partnering with NASA, we may actually be changing more than this world. (I can imagine OpenStack running on the Moon, and on Mars!)

The list of partners is impressive – go look at http://openstack.org. There are a lot of forward thinkers on that list – and they are company I am proud to be in.

Mostly though, I am proud of the company I work for. This is a bold move by a Leadership team that has demonstrated exceptional thought leadership in our space. In the two short years I have been with the company we have more than doubled our customer count, drastically increased the number of servers and data-centers we have, and made bold moves in many other areas.

I’m sure there will be a lot of discussions and a lot of questions about our decision (there were plenty of internal ones!) – but I am confident that at the end of the day, a truly open cloud that is already in production will better serve the world – a cloud that has proven its ability to scale and serve real customers.

It is a great day to be a Racker. I’m very proud of what we have done, and what we will continue to do to change the world – one (open) code drop at a time!

Come join us at OpenStack – change the world with us.  Change your world!

Why I am a Racker

I have no such illusions or delusions about my ability to use, and find useful, this new tool-set we’ve been given.  Twitter is but a knife in a culinary set though.  It is not a full set of utensils.  We have an ever-growing set of tools and utensils.  And I don’t think the tools matter much – at least not as much as how we decide to use them.  A knife can be used to cut.  Or it can be used to butter a shared loaf of bread.

Yes, the tools change – but the way they are wielded has been unchanged for decades.

So let us ignore individual tools for now, since they are so varied, and they have a different level of usefulness depending on your company and industry.

The bigger question is, “Can Social Media Be Measured?”.  I ask a smaller question – “Should it be measured”?

I’ve effectively used social media in a number of ways.  But that doesn’t make it a replacement for meeting people face to face, or using more traditional methods to target a specific audience.

Social Media is a shotgun approach to meeting and conversing with those that you are interested in; or might be interested in you.  It is, if done well, an invitation – and that should be enough.  For me, and my company, it is enough.

But behind that invitation to a conversation you need real people – people that know your business, and your product – and that are empowered to affect  change.  Otherwise you are talking to a wall.

Social Media has been useful to me, and to the company I work for, because we don’t just listen and respond with useless banter.  We have a team of engineers behind us that actually CAN make change happen.  In fact – our entire Social Media Team IS engineers.  We have also been customers.  WE know what the pain points are – and this was done by design.

When you have that level of understanding of your customers – and what they really need – well, measurement takes on a new meaning.  A less significant one.  We use “social” to be helpful – with people empowered to help.

I am not overly concerned about “measuring” Social Media – as long as we keep it relevant.  If it is relevant to your business – as long as it causes conversations and resolves customer issues – well, I don’t think it needs to be measure more than that – today.  Over time measurement will become more important.

But if you work for a company now that is MOST concerned with measurement – and NOT as concerned with your impact – be afraid.

Focus on just making a difference.  The tools will catch up to us.  If you try to catch up to the tools you will take your eye off the prize – customer engagement.

So I have ONE measurement this year – only one.  How do my social media outreaches affect customers.  How involved are they where I post, with what I care about, and in a context that makes sense to me and my business?

Do they care about what I care about?  DO I care about what they care about?

If they respond in any way, I can measure social media.

If they do not respond, I can also measure social media

But I am not keeping score beyond, “Are we doing more good than bad”.

I think many are over-thinking this right now.

Are you talking to your customer or not? If you are – you can measure that – just by the number of conversations.  If you are not – don’t waste your time in measuring in.

But don’t focus on the numbers.  Focus on the conversations.  The REAL conversations you have with customers.

Rob

And as powerful as it is – you need to realize what it means.  If you want to “control your brand” then social media will scare the crap out of you.  If you want to understand your brand, it is invaluable.

When my employer suffers even a small failure in even a fraction of a percent of one of our data centers we see Tweets that say, “Rackspace is down”.  While this is often 99% untrue we realize that for that 1% it is 100% true.  So we treat it as if we are down.  1% isn’t acceptable and we don’t disagree with those that paint any outage as a significant outage.  Our goal is perfection.  We know we cannot achieve it, but we also realize we can most closely approach it by simply expecting it of ourselves.  And letting our customers demand it of us – even encouraging them to do so.

Does that get painful at times?  Certainly.  Do we sometimes feel as if we should be more defensive – absolutely.  It would be nice to minimize the concern to shareholders, employees, and customers when only a fraction of customers are affected by an issue.  But that also requires that we minimize the pain that affected customers feel – and we aren’t willing to make that trade.  There aren’t many successful companies that minimize or marginalize their customers.

Most of us at my office run our own websites – and we know how painful downtime is.  In fact, many of us were Rackspace customers before we came to work here – and we chose to work here because we know that the good far outweighs the bad.  Especially compared to the industry as a whole.  We are expected to be perfect in an imperfect technology.  Failure is in our future.  We know we can’t be perfect.  So we plan for when we aren’t.  But we are here because we love to help.  We feel most successful when we give others the ability to succeed.  And we can’t do that unless we know how and when we are failing them.  So we really appreciate that social media allows us to have those conversations early, and often.

But a failure is a failure – and they all hurt.  And social media may make that failure more apparent to more people – and frame things in context that sound ominous.  But we would rather hear about our failures than hide from them.

And social media makes damned sure that every failure is heard.  But it also makes sure that every success is shared.  So it is a double-edged sword.  Once you realize that you don’t wield the sword you start to think more pragmatically about things.

Then social media becomes what relationship management has always been about.  Add more value than noise.  Be genuinely concerned.  Do better.  Learn.  Get better.  Invest where your customers tell you to invest.

Be honest, and don’t be afraid.  Embrace the chaos.

I was wrong.  Twitter lists matter NOW– regardless of client support.  They are both searchable and subscribe-able.  That makes them important.

Why?  Because companies own and cultivate “brands” – a personae.  And Twitter Lists may just disrupt that in interesting ways.

Example – it is fairly easy for me to find “lists” of companies I use (or compete against, or admire – whatever).  The point is – there is no longer such a thing as a “Corporate Twitter Persona”.  It is now the total of the personas of all of your employees.  For good or bad.

Now I am not following the corporate entity alone – I am watching everyone associated with the entity.

Your corporate brand is now affected by every person subscribed to, or added to a LIST about your brand.

This is a bit of a game changer.

It’ll take a different mindset.  Not sure it can be “managed”, but pretty sure it needs to be acknowledged.

But you have to start with loving to be “helpful”.  That is a powerful word that your customers will respect.

Anyway, here are some of my pointers:

• You are hyper-connected, and loving it that way.  You are “always” online, even when it isn’t really appropriate.
• You know your customers.  Better yet, you used to BE one of your companies customers!
• You know the customer community.
• You love fixing things.
• You don’t mind “being the bad guy/girl” if that’s what it takes to satisfy a customer.
• You are technical in the field you are supporting.  If it’s a writing site/company, you should be a writer.  Know your audience and you will have a respectable voice.
• Develop an online persona for yourself/company .  It can be your own, if that is appropriate.  It can be a merging of yours and your companies core values.  But it must be genuine, and it must be constant.
• Make friends with your customers.  Work for them more than you work for anyone else.
• Remember that you are also changing the way your company thinks/feels about customer outreach.  Don’t forget to reach within early and often.  Get advocates on your side.  Find those others that are already doing your role in an ad-hoc way, and embrace them.  Educate them.  Encourage them.  USE them

If you aren’t having fun – you are definitely not in the right position – get out of it quickly!

It actually is a mess.  Amazon, a company that doesn’t talk to their customers bought a company that is renowned for talking to their customers.

What?

Why would they?  Perhaps they know they have something to learn about being a “people business”.

Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon made that pretty clear to me with this blog post from several days ago.  Link is at the end of this post, excerpt is as follows:

Once a year however we take a moment to make sure that everyone who wants to give their input into the direction of the Amazon Web Services has the opportunity to do so.

Once a year?  Really?  That is not a “people business”.  That isn’t really even trying.  That is a poor effort at outreach – even by Amazon standards.

How often does my employer measure engagement and or satisfaction?  After every chat, or call.  Or ticket.  By being active on Twitter – because our customers are there.  By providing real people to talk to 24/7 – people that can actually help.  People.

By answering the phone when our customers call.  By caring for each of them as if they were our largest customer.

We also bring a lot of customers to the Rackspace HQ every year to help us learn how to get better.  And our CEO puts his number out on Twitter.  People.

You can build a business on technology – I’ve learned that.  But you build a following through people.

Tony Hsieh knows that.  Perhaps Amazon is looking to learn something here.  Let’s hope!

Good luck, Zappos – you got a lot of educating to do!

“Feedback for Amazon Web Services“

I know what I want.  I want to amaze customers.  I know I need support, and when internal systems fail me, I bitch.  LOUDLY.

I know customers depend on me, and the promises I make.  I get pissed if we miss a promise. And I bitch.  LOUDLY.

I am trouble.  I do NOT apologize for it.

I know some of my leadership wonders just WTF they were thinking by hiring me.  But I take care of customers.  So I generally make them happy.  Making people happy is what I love more than anything.

I am trouble.  I don’t accept ANYTHING because that is “the way we do it” and the “norm” generally annoys me.  I don’t care “how we have always done it”.  I don’t want to hear about “rules” if they slow me down.  I want a superhighway – I want nothing in my way.  I want no stoplights.  I just want to help people do what they are best at doing.  Building a website, managing a server, etc.  Doesn’t matter, as long as we make it easy.

I am trouble.  I know this.  I warned my employer before they hired me.  I’m not trying to hide the fact.  I am actually proud of it.

I won’t settle.  I demand a lot.  From my employer, my coworkers; my customers, even.

I also bust my ass

So before you become Trouble, make sure your are worth the trouble.  Am I?  Every day is telling.  Every challenge is telling. Some days I am more trouble than I am worth, I am sure.  But most days – most days I kick ass and help customers.  Most days, I am worth the trouble.

So far, my employer is standing up pretty damned well, and standing behind me.

So if you are going to be Trouble. make sure you know what value you add.  And make sure you and your employer have some level of agreement.

But if you ever get the chance to be trouble, and get away with it – you can do some amazing things!

If you work really, really hard.

Really hard.

Otherwise trouble will get you fired.

It’s not easy – and it shouldn’t be easy – you have let a customer down.  A process, or a promise, has broken.

So how do you “deal with” a really angry customer?

First off – you better really care about them, because if you don’t, you are screwed.  They will know it, and they won’t trust you.  Customers know when you are blowing smoke – even if you are REALLY good at blowing smoke.  Set your corporate and personal values high – and live up to them.

Second, it helps if you can put yourself in their shoes – particularly if you have actually been in their shoes.  I manage customer relations for a hosting company (although I am not technically IN support) – so it helps that I have been hosting web sites for well over a decade.  It helps even more that I was a customer of my employer for years before I became an employee.

Third – and most important.  Don’t lie.  Don’t EVER lie.  Customers can forgive a lot – but they will not forgive a liar.  When I can’t tell a customer something specific I just tell them that I can’t answer that.  Simple. And when I honestly don’t know something, I tell them that. No harm in not knowing every answer.  Extra credit if you know where and how to get the answers, and get back to the customer quickly.

Fourth – don’t try to funnel customers into a “system” for support.  Support customers where and when you find them.  They may not like your systems.  They may prefer Skype, or Twitter, or comments on a blog post.  Don’t expect customers with issues to find you – you need to be looking for them – and talking to them wherever (and whenever) you find them wanting help.

Fifth – have a personality.  Be human.  Customers relate to real people.  Be open, and honest, share your contact info – make it VERY clear that you exist to talk to customers.  When you leave a blog comment, leave your entire title and phone number.  I “Tweet” my home phone number at least a dozen times a month.  I *want* customers to find me – taking care of them is my job.  Actually – it is more than a job – it is what I love doing.  And that leads us to #6.

Sixth – if customers annoy you, and you are in the service business – do us all a favor.  Get. Out. Now. I often have my waitstaff at restaurants replaced if they just don’t seem to like their jobs.  Sorry – I am paying for more than food – I am buying an experience – and if that includes listening to someone bitch about how much they hate serving me, I just get a manager to replace them.  I don’t feel bad about it.  If they get fired, they deserved it.  They aren’t suited for this line of work, and better they find out now.  I deserve the experience I am paying for. And that brings me to number 7.

Seventh – don’t put up with bad service.  When you allow a company – ANY company to give you bad service, and you don’t complain to correct, you are setting the new standard.  You are in actuality lowering that standard.  Demand more.  From everyone.  Don’t tolerate mediocrity.  Demand more, don’t settle.  Ever.

Finally – I know customer support can seem like an “expense”.  But when you look at the cost of customer acquisition – a good support representative – one that really “get’s it”, and loves it – they can be a gold mine for your company.

Avoid the burn of churn and support customers where, when and how they want support.  They will love you for it, and you will profit from it.

We depend on a network, and so do all of our customers – so we employ multiple redundancies in that network.

But mostly, we are a people company.  That is why it didn’t surprise me a few weeks ago when I went to console a fellow Racker who lost a parent – and recognized several vehicles from coworkers that arrived before I did.  Another network.  A human one.  Again – with a lot of redundancies.

That is why our (now pretty damned frequent) birth announcements are always met with congratulations and words of wisdom, humor, and just plain support.

We are a young company – look out though – we are breeding like crazy!

I’ve worked for companies that pretended to feel this way about employees.  Said the right things.  Sometimes did the right things..  Usually didn’t.

Now I work for one that gets it.  Really.  It isn’t BS for investors, or a ploy for recruiters.  The care, concern and affection that exists here is real.  Nothing about it is fake.  These people look out for each other, and have each others backs.  And know each other.

And it is all about building a great community that makes a great place to work, and eventually a great business.  Many companies haven’t figured that out (yet).  They are trying to build great companies at the expense of employees and often even customers.  They have no legs.

That’s back-asswards.

Take care of your employees and let them build something great.  And they will take care of you, and your customers. And your business will grow, and it will grow stronger over time.

I’ve ridden every color of this pony there is, and I like the horse I am hitched to now.

Build by hiring caring people that are passionate about customers.  And let them show it.

And you will win – and you will have employees blogging about you – using their real names, because they are proud of where they work, and what they do.

Enlist them instead of enslaving them.

Rob

That is actually an interesting fact about Rackspace – every employee is treated as a trusted friend.  We see the books.  We know the numbers.  We know how we are doing, and how we depend on each other to get better, and to do better.

And we let people find what they are good at, and where they best fit in.

Think that is bullshit?

In 11 days I will have been at Rackspace for exactly one year.  After one year I’ll feel more comfortable calling myself a Racker.  I feel like one – just don’t feel as if I have “earned it” yet

I was hired in the Cloud division.  To manage developers.  I now work for Rackspace proper – doing something MUCH different then I was hired to do.  Many companies would not have worked with me to find that “sweet spot” – they would have parted ways with me before they put that effort into the relationship.

Instead, Rackspace let me go try something new (to us).  I took over our Cloud blog, and our Twitter account.  And it worked – pretty well.  They let me build an event for SXSW in Austin – which was amazing, and very well received.

And then they let me do something really out there – I hired Robert Scoble and Rocky Barbanica.  And then we built building43.com, which is yet another experiment.  One I have a lot of passion for.  One I truly believe in, and am passionate about.

And I think that’s the key that Rackspace has figured out – they let people follow their passion.  And they work with those employees to find a way to make that passion make sense.  For the Racker, for Rackspace, and for investors.

So I was hired to manage developers.  Instead I am managing emerging media, building a truly unique web property, and trying to find a completely new way to do both marketing and PR in a public company.

Not bad for the first year.  Wonder what they will let me try in the second?  Guess that depends on how these current projects work out!

But it is pretty damned cool to be able to TRY – to do something totally new.  To have the company see if it fails instead of demanding proof it will succeed before they even try.

If you think hosting companies are boring, you haven’t worked at Rackspace.  We are anything but boring – we are pushing the envelope in ways most companies aren’t.

And that’s why I love it here.

Join us   We’re hiring.

Always.

Rob

Second – we never had more than two full time people on this project – Robert and Rocky. The rest of us are passionate about B43, but we have other roles as well. Including some being contractors. No dedicated five person team.

Third – no – I cannot hire you for building43. We are getting enough offers of help from people that just want to help. Please don’t ask to get paid – we won’t do it. Better material comes from those that are just passionate, I think.

Fourth – I am not the “lead engineer”. Been a long time since I considered myself an engineer. Probably goes back to 2004 or so. I was the guy that tried to make sure we were all focused on the same goal – nothing more.

I hope you like building43.com. It took a lot of effort from a lot of people.

Rob