Category: Blog

In some companies economic incentives are the de facto standard to let people push output to the max.

They are the perfect shortcut to allow people to sprint to their max until they are exhausted.

Sadly though this is not the way to let people care about the product or service you’re selling.
To do so you’d first and foremost need a product everyone in the team uses, then and only then, you’d need people who are wise enough and mature enough to understand that their work depends on the product.

And the last thing is to recognize their effort.

As usual the shortcuts aren’t really the best solution. Just shortcuts.

When you’re young you’re naive enough to believe there’s a way to make everyone happy.

The more you grow, the more inside you a thought gets built: that you’re the only one you can make happier.

Now, this is the other side of the fence, that’s true, but can we achieve a decent level of distributed happiness?
I think it’s possible only when all the teams involved are ok with losing something.

For example today we were discussing with a colleague what versioning system adopt.
I have a view, he has his, and the good part is that neither of us is wrong or right.
We simply have different approaches that are, probably, incompatible.

should one of us give up? Or maybe there’s a solution?
I am still naive enough to think a solution is possible, but maybe that solution is something I don’t like: having each his own different cake.

In the easter moments like this I always think about consuming less.
We’re too far involved into a society that press us to consume more, build more, destroy more.

But this is not sustainable. An example? “Vegnanism”. Being vegan is probably unsustainable in the long term. Replacing meat with legumes might not be enough for 7 billions people.
Do we have enough fields? Can we sustain a business like that?

While obviously we can try, I think we are missing the main valid point that people that are vegan propose to the world: We are mass producing and mass killing animals and the food waste is too much.

Now in italy we all fear the palm oil, and ingredient we didn’t care for in 20 years now has become our main enemy.
But is that true? I think our main enemy is how much food we consume and waste each day. That is something we should really consider to change how the food industry is acting.

Less food, less animals will be killed, more chances of sustainability.
We can’t think of using up the resources of this world to 100%, we should consume less to allow room for growth.

Why don’t we do this? We’re used to this kind of “richness”. We’re used to see kitchen tables full of food, we’re used to big homes and to services that deliver us foods with lots of waste elements (plastic, etc).

The paradox?
It’s easier to become vegan because it doesn’t challenge ourselves but only the world.

We fear it, making big choices. And we fear it because they are big, because we don’t think we can handle it.

We’re small, and to grow big what’s needed is some kind of hope.
A hope that there’s a light out there that can save us.

Today we started trying growing a little more with the small company I’m building. It’s strange because people are increasingly interested in the product although we’re not marketing it.

Today marked the first day a competitor appeared for our product. They probably have more money than us, so it’s perfectly plausible that they might outgrow us.

What it’s nice is that this will take us to the next level. Competition exist for this reason, to help companies build better products.

If we will be unable to sustain the slow growth then it’s fine to kill the company, if we will succeed then it’ll be fine to let the company flourish.

It all matters, our choices, our ideals. A company like this should be a direct reflection of what our hopes for a better world are.
I know it seems naive, but it’s true.
I tried to put the way I think and live into the products, that smile, that breathing life, because that is what will make the difference.