O 'Reilly founder Tim O' Reilly talks about leadership

Leadership (interview with Tim o'reilly)

 

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Tim o'reilly founded o'reilly
Media, inc., the beauty of the team, and several other books are published by this company. Our two editors have always admired Tim and the company he founded, not only because of his influence on the publishing industry, but also because his influence has expanded to the software and software development fields. Over the years, we have worked with almost everyone in every department of o'reilly, and we have seen a very good team. We would like to ask Tim to introduce his thoughts and how he formed the team and allowed the Team to continuously show the best abilities.

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Jenny: When we started editing the beautiful team, we noticed that everyone's definition of the team seemed to be different, later I found that some of the content in the book clearly talked about this problem: the team is always composed of people who are temporarily organized to build a specific project? Or can a group of people who have never met each other be considered a team?

ANDREW: We used a small strategy to raise an open question that is easy to use. How do you define a team?

TIM: my own experience is mainly about company operations. Of course, it also includes the experience of relevant teams. But most of my thoughts are a more extensive question, that is, how to exert leadership. Let me start with the important points and talk about some ideas about leadership and management, which are part of the entire team's affairs. Speaking of leadership and management, I am not very clear about the division between this content and the team.

First, I would like to quote two things that others have said. The first sentence is from Harold Geneen, the founder of the first modern joint venture, ITT. "Management skills are to achieve your goals through others' work.This is an interesting view. But the problem is that there are many implementation styles, some of which are completely imperative. For example, the typical "manager" is like this: analyze what needs to be done, who needs to be done, and then find these people to form a team. They do such things.

I fully agree with this idea, because the management skills are indeed achieving your goals through others' work. At the same time, I always use the meaning of another quote. The sentence is actually about writing, as Edwin schlossberg said. I saw it from an article in his magazine when I first joined the work, that sentence is deeply rooted in my mind. It is the most influential sentence to me. "The writing skill is to create an environment that inspires others to think."

Jenny: How do you apply the idea of "Creating an environment that inspires others to think" to the software team?

TIM: Let me talk about my views. This is what I call the architecture of participation.
. In 1998, we published a book called "Open Sources" and interviewed some people who have written articles on open source. Linus Torvalds said in an interview that this sentence was not written at the end, but I was very impressed. He said: "For windows, I have no way to achieve anything like Linux, even if the source code for Windows is useless. Its architecture is not that ." This sentence gave me a series of thoughts on the open-source project architecture. For example, how are those architectures designed? Why can people create freely and happily? There must be rules behind success.

ANDREW: What else does Linus not do? This reminds me of sourceforge.net, which has many final open-source projects.

TIM: I think some projects fail because there is a problem with the systems used with these projects. The system must have such a basic feature that every task is very small and can be completed independently. For example, some people say that they want to publish a book by wiki. I think this is probably the reason, but this idea is not implemented. Why? Because the book contains a lot of content, it is very complicated, and there is only one main thread of narration. The Wikipedia dictionary is a set of pages with little content for each unit. Individuals can complete the process on their own, and others can update or slightly adjust the content.

The entire dictionary is composed of many small parts. I think some types of work are themselves suitable for such collaborative activities-they are designed at the beginning to make the various parts easier to integrate, so they are more free.

The UNIX design method is a bit like Lego, and its design principle is that there are some "bulge" and "Groove" that can be connected to each other ". Think about pipelines, filters, and other similar things-people can use their own knowledge to write independent utility tools. Most programs accept standardized Input and Output Based on only a few simple rules.

Similarly, each small part of an independent table has a guide page. I often think that if you can choose between a Windows system that complies with a certain open source license agreement (such as GPL) and a Windows system with a guide page for each piece of code, what can I replace or change on this system? Yes, open-source licenses are important, but they are not enough. On the contrary, it is enough to have a guide page, although you may infringe the copyright of some people.

ANDREW: You mean to successfully operate a project-an open source project or another project, the key is to break down the project into small pieces that are easy to understand?

TIM: I'm talking about a system that inspires people's creativity and a set of principles. Let me explain a specific example. In 1998, I organized a meeting later called the Open Source summit. This story tells us what happened in the Open Source world. Others are also talking about open source, especially Eric Raymond, who wrote the cathedral and the bazaar before. I organized a Perl meeting a year ago. We are all considering several things at the same time. Netscape has just opened up the browser, making it a sensation. I noticed a problem where Eric Raymond and others described the iconic event, totally ignoring the BSD field. All of them talk about Linux, GPL software, and free software.

At the same time, I have seen another open-source method that has existed for a long time. When I saw the open source, I said, "I did not expect that this open source has a much greater influence ." When I saw it, I asked, "Do you know what the five best programs on the Internet are ?" They started scratching their heads. I told them: "The 1st name is bind (Berkeley Internet Name Daemon ). Every website of you depends on this program, which is maintained by a programmer with long hair in Sequoia. The 2nd name is sendmail or Apache. 75% of online emails are sent by Sendmail ." You can continue to count, all of which are Berkeley Software. People cannot see it all.

Jenny: I remember that there were a lot of arguments about choosing open source protocols, that is, choosing GPL or BSD. I heard that you have managed to resolve the debate and guided everyone to reach a consensus. What was the situation at that time?

TIM: I put GPL and Berkeley together and said, "We must find out what is common. We must talk about something. There was a press conference at five o'clock, and I didn't know what to say to them, but I had to say something to them at five o'clock ." I vaguely felt that something was going to happen very interesting, but I don't know what to do if 20 people were confused about the problem that day. Eric came in and said, "We had a similar meeting a few weeks ago. Christine Peterson proposed a name called open source )."

Michael tiann from cygnus said: "We have been thinking about the name of 'free soft ." Linus Torvalds said: "I didn't realize that the word 'free' has two meanings in English. Free software can be understood as free software or free software, which is ambiguous )." Michael tiann went on to say, "We have been using the word 'sourceware ."

So we voted. We said, "we all agree to use a name, which will be used later ." We vote between sourceware and open source, and open source wins. The press conference was held at five o'clock, and later things were well known.

ANDREW: That's really interesting. Jenny and I wrote an article stating that the deadline may have various negative effects on the team. I did not expect this method to help you a lot.

TIM: We often bring together short-term partners. I feel that I will do something, but I am not very clear about what form it will be, or what form it should be. But I know I want to turn it into reality. One of the principles of the team is the deadline for creating a person's behavior. For example, we should hold a press conference at five o'clock, which may become a powerful tool. However, many companies and many others are abusing this practice.I have seen some project managers lie to their team on deadline and want to create a sense of urgency. This violates the principle of good faith.

However, if it can be used correctly, the sense of urgency is still good. This is a bit like what Alexander pubai said when talking about poetry creation: the slit makes creativity flow like a fountain.

Speaking of the team, I also want to talk about the power of the complementary advantages of team members. At o'reilly, she now has a very competent chief operating officer who plays a huge role. We are two sides of a coin. I focus on major events and spend very little time on internal transactions, so that I can do more. She focuses on daily business operations, which is much better than when I have both hands. It is very important to realize the complementary strengths.

ANDREW: I have a question. Jenny and I recently wrote an article for onlamp entitled "What should enterprise projects learn from open-source projects. Then, we gave a lecture entitled "Why can open-source projects succeed. We focus on the practical methods they use, because we have been doing this in the past.

You have talked a lot about the team, personality, complementary power, and how to work with people. However, we found a problem. If we look at the most successful open-source projects we all know and love, such as Apache, Linux, and Emacs, we will find that there are many excellent practices. Developers, programmers, and others of open-source projects are willing to implement them, but if they return to the office environment, they will feel suffocated by the same methods, for example, strict build and release processes, continuous integration, and test-driven development.

Jenny: There are a lot of code reviews. It will be very laborious for us to apply the same practices to the company environment, and those people will even resist these practices. Why do you think this situation exists?

TIM: Well, let me say that. People who ride horses know that the secret to riding a good horse is to let the horse think it is what they want to do. Similarly, when people feel that they want to do what they want, they will resist it. If they thought it was what they wanted, they would immediately accept it.

Two thousand five hundred years ago, Lao Tzu, a Chinese thinker, said: "I am the only one who has made great achievements ."The best way to lead is to allow people to do things voluntarily.

This is even more obvious when people create amazing things from an aesthetic point of view. Now that we have an iPod, how can we still think of devices without touch screens? I remember the first time I picked up the Kindle, I pressed a few times on the screen but didn't respond. I thought something went wrong. In fact, Kindle has its own characteristics, such as supporting evdo connectivity. "Yes, it should look like this ."

ANDREW: I really didn't expect you to talk about what a product should look like. Most of the discussions I 've discussed about open source are arguing about some issues such as GPL, BSD license agreement, and creative.
The commons license agreement is superior or inferior. I think people are a little bit entangled in details. However, you think that open-source software is a very unique way to achieve your vision. I never thought so.

TIM: it must be acknowledged that people always think that the key to open source lies in its licensing method. It is of course important, but as you said just now, practice is far more important than licensing. When reviewing the achievements of o'reilly in the industry, the first thing I think of is that all books are written by users. Most product creators are not employees of our company. We must come up with a product-related and credible idea, and then find someone who will say "Well, this is a good idea, and I want to do that too. We guided them and found many others inside and outside the company to review their work. We must have a management system, although it is often loose. These things can be done in many ways. I like Larry Wall's Perl slogan "there are more than one way to do this", which is also one of the reasons. Because I think there are more than one answer.

ANDREW: especially in Perl.

TIM: Yes. Look at programming Perl. I can spend six months revising this book as I thought. Or, I can say, "It's good to write it like this ." Even if I write this book, I will not write it in this way. I will wish it good luck and send it to publishing.

I still remember how we published this book. It is a pity that all the edited energy is used to transform it into another book. It took her two years to work with several authors, or to teach or force or cheat, let them not write books as they imagined at the beginning. She does not know how to let the author write. So I said, "That is also a book, but it is different from what you think ." She replied that the few people wrote completely unrelated content fragments.

I said, "You only need to introduce them to the basics of writing books ."

Jenny: many in our team say programming Perl is one of the best programming books they have ever read. What you get is different from what you expect, but it is better.

TIM: That's a special case. How can you discover the essence of things? I think this is the source of understanding and the foundation of everything. There are many insights. One of them is basically about algorithms and operations: it gives you all the data, and you are very good at operating them. Some people are really smart in some ways, but clumsy in others. For example, they turn a blind eye to the obvious truth and have no common sense. There are other people who are not good at symbol operations, do not spell, and do not do arithmetic, but are talented in reviewing the situation and understanding the nature of things. The smartest person has both of these qualities. They can look at the world from a new perspective. They have a strong Comprehension Ability: "I know what it can be ."

Now let's go back to the Perl book we just mentioned. The editors have received all the training and know what a book should be and how it should be written. This kind of training creates obstacles for her, so she can no longer look at the book from a new perspective. What she cannot understand is that if she helps the author write books in the way they want, the progress will be smoother.

Jenny: Do you think that an editor or any team leader should not force the author or team to move toward a specific goal?

TIM: experience tells me that in most cases, leaders do not have to be team members.Most of the work of the leadership is the guidance of personnel, and my guidance is to do as little as possible. To realize this idea, we need to see the strengths of the team members. When we encounter something, we can say, "This is what we can handle ."

This is a pattern recognition and I am back to my understanding of the editing process. This is a bit like a phrase that Angela arms often said when talking about sculpture: sculpture is to discover the image hidden in the stone.

I think the process of editing books is similar. It is similar to leading a project. When I started writing Web 2.0 articles, it was also a process of viewing a large amount of data and discovering the image hidden in the stone. This is also true for writing open-source articles. This is also true for a team. How can a group of people realize their potential? The key is to understand them and what they can do.

ANDREW: if there is a lack of good leadership, it is more dependent on collective leadership. Do you think this may lead to a great team?

TIM: possible. But pay attention to it. Apache is a good example. Tim Berners-Lee made a blueprint and said, "I have thought about it, that is, hypertext server and hyper-text client ." Apache talents are willing to accept such constraints. I also remember that in the middle of 1990s, Netscape added something. Microsoft added something and everyone said, "Apache seems to be idle. They have not added any features, and they are outdated !" Apache said: "Well, we are working on hypertext servers. We have a good Scaling Mechanism and people can add the functions they want ."

This is back to the "participating architecture. They did not build this large and complex application. They maintain a pure vision. This vision was actually put forward by a visionary leader, not part of Apache.

When the NCSA server team founded Netscape, some people did not bring it back. Apache was built by these people. At that time, some customers were using the NCSA server, so they said: "We must maintain this application to ensure its normal operation ." What a great team they accept the limitations of the original system design. They don't want to show themselves or be creative.

In my opinion, the same is true for the work completed by IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) in earlier years. They have developed some good principles that people will abide. If you read John Postel's article on the robustness principles written in the tcp rfc, It's like from the Bible: "Be conservative with your work, be open-minded when accepting opinions from others." That's what they say.

The key is that if your system structure is good, the chances for your team to succeed will be higher. You don't need a team to rely on a vision or a leader. The entire team will crash quickly without losing the leader.

ANDREW: when it comes to fast crash, have you ever had a bad time? For example, if you fail once or twice, you will have a profound lesson?

TIM: there may be a lot of failures over the years, some of which seem to be successful afterwards. The failure is not a complete failure, but it is indeed a failure-they are the result of the choice, which should be traced back to the leadership aspect. Something may go wrong. Think about what happened to Yahoo and Microsoft. Everyone is talking about it. They don't know who else fails Yang Zhiyuan and Steve Ballmer, and their management process has serious problems. They don't have a clear vision to explain what is right. But when we look back later, we may say, "Ah, Yang Zhiyuan is wise. He maintained Yahoo's independence and his strategy helped him avoid losses in time. Can you imagine it? Just like looking back at the previous transactions made by Bill Gates and IBM in PC history. What will happen if IBM is more savvy? The history will be completely rewritten. No one knows what will happen.

Jenny: Yes. We now think that this is an obvious success. It may not be even a wise choice in the future. You can make a series of choices regardless of the outcome. Are you looking at your successes and failures in this way?

TIM: At that moment, I saw the impact of different choices. The first website portal was made in o'reilly. We have built GNN (Global Network navigation), which is earlier than Yahoo! and is the first Internet site portal. I tried my best to give up control of the company, so I sold GNN to AOL.

I correctly inferred that it would be difficult to keep up with the speed of Internet development unless I was willing to give up control of the company and introduce investors. Previously I read a good book written by William davidow, an early venture capitalist, called marketing high technology (Free Press ). He said this is a simple arithmetic problem. Governing the market means occupying more than half of the market share and growing faster than the entire market. After learning about the Internet, we said, "We are a private enterprise that relies entirely on its own funds and cannot rule the market. Internet is experiencing explosive growth and we will be marginalized sooner or later. We either introduce funds or sell them ." I sold it. It can be said that we have paid expensive tuition for lack of experience. Yang Zhiyuan and David felo introduced venture capital. Despite the recent difficulties, their company has grown into a company with billions of dollars in operating income. I think from a financial point of view, they are much better than what we do. I mean,At that time, I knew what my personal goal was: To keep an independent company and do what I like to do.I have been doing this since then.

What I want to say is that failure and success are relative to the goal you want to achieve. If we were a startup backed by venture capital, the decision to sell GNN could be disastrous. However, as a self-owned entrepreneur, I can decide whether to sell it. I would like to say that it is important not to comment on others' "failures" after the event, because failure may be the result of your choice.

ANDREW: Do you not need to perform final accounting? At the end of the project, a project fails or fails, right?

TIM: our thinking is either "failure" or "success. We will try to select from a group of possible success plans. There is no optimal solution, but the choices are different.

I think that in many cases, both commercial and software design (in fact, design of any work product), we do not understand the importance of aesthetics. Wallace Stevens wrote a collection called the necessary angel (the necessary angel, vintage Publishing House. In that book, one of his views is: we all think that the choice determines the result. He has a poem called NOTES towards a supreme fiction (the highest fictitious note ). His opinion is: Maybe God invented to let people believe. The goal of religion and the scientific community is to create an aesthetic vision that we can believe in. Just try to convince people to believe it.

ANDREW: I can think of a reader who builds database applications in an enterprise environment. After reading this book, he will say, "there is no aesthetics in my work ."

TIM: I want to say, "Go and check out Steve Jobs ." This is my answer-he can prove the power of aesthetics. He has made many choices. Many people think that Apple has made a mistake because they have not followed the mainstream practices.

They follow their own paths and aesthetic points. He was able to return to Apple again and again because he had a convincing vision that he could persuade others to accept. What people talk about is that "the real distortion field of Steve Jobs was originally used to describe Steve Jobs, he uses his leader charm to persuade others on almost any issue. "-that's the case. He can create a compelling vision for others to accept.

I remember a key employee who once smiled and said to me, "I met you once and then left. I think everything you said is correct. But when I leave and think, 'actually I don't believe what you said! '"

That's how I can convince her. This is back to an interesting observation. I remember when our company had more than 50 people. At that time, I had to change my way of working, because in the early days, I had a "real distortion" role for people-this was true for everyone in the company. We are a small group and work closely together.

I remember that when I was in middle school, I often slipped out quietly in my father's car at night. In order not to let him hear it, I pushed the car onto the road and dared to start the engine until it was far away. When you are in a stroller, you will feel that you are pushing this giant thing, so you keep pushing and pushing, and it is slowly accelerating forward. I think the same is true for employees who promote the company-"Ah, these things are really heavy ." I must make it work. Then I talked to several people at a time. You should let people do their tasks freely and then look at their situation.

In the early days of my work, I read a sci-fi book that had a huge impact on me. This book was written by F. M. Busby, Rissa Kerguelen (Berkeley Press ). Not many people have read this book. In those years, especially in the 50 or 60 s (this book was written in 1970s), one of the key concepts that people often talk about is the idea of time expansion. If the speed is close to the speed of light, one of Einstein's paradox is that the inertial frame will change, and the time for people who travel through it will go very slowly. Many sci-fi stories have mentioned that people have gone and found that people around them have become very old. Rissa Kerguelen has three parts, one of which is the "vision ". It talks about what preparations should be made if you plan to make a interstellar trip, and you will appear again in 15 years. This idea is that you must let things get up and catch up with it. I think some things in this scenario are very powerful. The things we discussed earlier-the structure of various systems, that is, the way you promote things. You can join it at the specified time to see if it is evolving in the way you want. This is what I thought when I started thinking about what I should do to my company. I must let things start and catch up with them.

Jenny: What was the team's reaction when you started pushing?

TIM: their confidence and vitality are constantly improving. They all want to be leaders and take things in another direction.I think: as a good leader, we need to know when people can do those things.I am a fan of the Celtics, and I remember a very enlightening story in the Age of mongobird. At that time, K. C. Jones was the coach. When the basketball game reached a crucial moment near the end of the game, everyone listened to the coach's tactical arrangements. "Just give me the ball, and you will all be on the side," said pattern ." K. C. Jones said, "Larry, I am the coach. Close your mouth! Do you understand? We handed the ball to Larry, and then all of them were on one side ."

Sometimes, people are going smoothly. As coaches or leaders, your job is to say, "They are right. Let them do that ." This is the relationship between me and Dale Dougherty to a large extent. In fact, the success of o'reilly is largely attributed to Dale. Many people think that I did it. In fact, it plays a very important role. He was the first person to bring us into the world wide web. He is the author of Web 2.0. He is now the publisher of MAKE magazine. It's a bit like dancing. He leaves for a moment to play himself and then comes back. Sometimes it feels like a sibling relationship. We have a dispute over who is at the helm. But in other cases, we are very harmonious.You need someone who can argue with you. You need people to have their own ideas.

When you think something is correct-I don't know what it means, is it absolutely correct or just beautiful. The learning is correct. When everything is normal, when you hear wonderful music, when you see the lines in the painting or the outline of the stone, you will say: "Beauty is truth, truth is beauty, this includes everything you know and know." This is jici's poem. This is the case.For me, to enable people to work together, the most important thing is to give them an acceptable aesthetic vision. When you build a vision that everyone can accept for the truth you build, you are also expressing an ideal. Only in this way can people pursue that ideal independently and freely.

 

 

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Participating books include code, architecture, project management, and team.
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