VLF insights from the Twitter CEO
Published: Mar 18, 2006
This week, Umair Haque interviewed Twitter CEO Evan Williams at the keynote at this year's SXSW Interactive Conference. By many accounts, the interview bombed. But as Haque “gently suggests” the exchange contained some interesting observations on building a 21st Century business—observations that resonate with many of themes of the recent #mhvt discussion “Value Tweet” on the emerging virtual law firm model.
Here are some excerpts of Haque’s takeaways which may be relevant to lawyers and “new model” law firms:
Openness as a ‘survival strategy.’ New ideas, new concepts, new applications — all flow to open organizations. That's a great way to express the point that for next-gen organizations, openness is now table stakes: fail at it, and you're not even in the game.
Organizing for experimentation. Though many organizations want to experiment, they can't — because they're not built to … Twitter organizes for experimentation, by creating modular teams that rapidly iterate to solve tough problems. That's what 21st century organizations look like: networks, not pyramids.
Win/wins. Another theme of our conversation was focusing on win/wins — a term that's become cheapened to the point of jargon, but try looking at it anew … Twitter cuts deals with partners only when they think everyone wins — including end-users. Par for the course? Think again. That's pretty radical. Wall St, Detroit, Big Food, Big Software and HMOs are just a few for whom win/wins have mattered little, if at all. It's a simple, powerful way to frame next-gen strategy in a nutshell.
On that last point, I think we can safely add BigLaw to the list. It seems to me that the (non-cheapened) concept of win/win is a natural complement to the #mhvt theme of “results,” e.g., @ShatterboxVox: The issue for client is not VLF vs. trad firm, it is how do I get the results looking for w/ the resources I have?
-posted by brian