Whenever you need something from someone else before you can move forward, it's a dependency. We believe dependencies slow people down. We want people to be more independent, because that will keep them moving forward.
It's like, the front door of the office is like a Cuisinart, and you walk in, and your day is shredded to bits because you have 15 minutes here, 30 minutes there, and something else happens, you're pulled off your work, then you have 20 minutes, then it's lunch, then you have something else to do.
Very, very few people actually have long stretches of uninterrupted time at an office.
A fixed deadline and a flexible scope are the crucial combination.
Success isn't about being the biggest. It's about letting the right size find you.
You have to live with your decisions every day. Why live with one you're uneasy with? 'Because it'll make you money' is a common reply. But I don't think that's good enough.
You cannot ask somebody to be creative in 15 minutes and really think about a problem. You might have a quick idea, but to be in deep thought about a problem and really consider a problem carefully, you need long stretches of uninterrupted time.
If you care about your product, you should care just as much about how you describe it.
Great people want to work on things that matter. Inevitably, a great person working on imaginary work will turn into an unsatisfied person.
Bottom line: If you can't spare some time to give your employees the chance to wow you, you'll never get the best from them.
In almost every case, cutting things back is a way of favoring what is left.
When we launched the first version of Basecamp in 2004, we decided to build software for small companies just like us.
Your employees have lots of opinions about everything - your strategy and vision; the state of the competition; the quality of your products; the vibe in the workplace. There are tons of things you can learn from them.
A company gets better at the things it practices.