Book Review: Rework

How do you make your business better? There’s probably an infinite variety of answers to this question, but a good place to start is to look at other businesses that are very successful. Model yourself on what they are doing.

So who do you want to be like? Naturally you want to pick someone remarkably successful. How about IBM? Nike? Coca-Cola, perhaps? Without question they have all done a lot of things right to get where they are today. You could learn a lot from them.

But your business is nothing like any of these organizations. You don’t have thousands of employees. You aren’t dealing with the toughest aspects of entering international markets. You don’t have lobbyists. You have a completely different set of problems and priorities. You probably have more in common with the kid selling lemonade in your neighborhood then you do with these guys. And that’s not a bad thing. I’m not suggesting you won’t create a global company with a household brand name someday. I’m just suggesting that’s not what you have today.

So here’s where the book review comes in. (I know – finally!) So much of the culture of business literature is built around the idea of trying to run with the big dogs. Rework focuses on the things you need to do to be successful as a small business – or even a small team that is part of a big business. Based on the philosophy used to grow 37signals, Rework focuses on the things that matter to the success of your business today. You can worry about the problems of a billion dollar company when you’re a billion dollar company.

Anyone who’s read the SaaS (software as a service) manifesto Getting Real will recognize some of the same ideas.

• Don’t hire people until you really need them
• Meetings are almost never worth the opportunity cost of having them
• Build something with a few complete features over something with a ton of features that only sort of work

With this book, though, the focus isn’t just limited to software development. Rework is a collection of the best practices 37signals has discovered that translate to just about any industry. It’s a quick read, and it’s not a repackaged version of things you’ve read in other business books before. There are new ideas here that you can implement today. Seth Godin says it best, “Ignore this book at your own peril.”