Posts written in November 2008 Blog Index

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James Bond and the Rypple Effect

Tihomir Bajic ~ November 24th, 2008

The Rypple Team just watched Quantum of Solace, the new James Bond. Reviews were mixed, but one thing is certain – this Bond was different. Love it or hate it, it’s a departure from the old formula of spy gadgets, one-dimensional villains we love to hate, and Bond girls who capture our attention and then fade like shooting stars.

Daniel Craig is a more realistic James Bond. Instead of seducing every woman he meets, he nurses his lost love and channels his rage towards removing every obstacle in his way. His friends are double agents and his lover betrayed him. He rarely uses gadgets and he actually bleeds after a fight! Bond villains give up their doomsday devices & world domination plans for believable schemes involving money & greed.

The Bond franchise has matured. Goodbye to one-dimensional characters following pedantic & predictable plots. The creators of Bond have a new formula for Box Office success. But they are not the only ones with a new formula for success. Change is afoot among Gen Y’s and corporate HR departments.

Love it or hate it, the arrival of Gen Y employees created a tectonic shift in the corporate world. Most Gen Y’s need continuous feedback from their managers and a motivational career path. Instead, they get the dreaded Year End Comprehensive Performance Review, a morale shattering exercise that is the polar opposite of what Gen Y’s need. These Annual Reviews are a shock for Gen Y’s accustomed to instant communication through text messages and MSN, and continuous feedback throughout their academic lives. Fortunately, we created Rypple to fill this void providing Gen Y’s and their managers with a new formula for success.

I walked out of Quantum of Solace feeling less excited than after Casino Royale. This new direction was unexpected. Casino Royale when it came out, but still familiar. Yet, I prefer this more sophisticated and less chauvinist and black-and-white Bond franchise.

I also understand now why some HR specialists prefer to stick to traditional performance review and career guidance policies rather than adapt to Gen Y’s.  Taking a step in a new direction represents the unknown. And that is stressful. It takes a lot of effort to unlearn old ways and embrace new ones for what they are, and not for what they are not.

Just like Daniel Craig ushered the new James Bond, I hope Rypple will help herald a new era in employer-employee relationships.

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Development, author of onebookaweek.com

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The Holiday Edition Rypple Meetup

George Babu ~ November 18th, 2008

Our last Meetup was all about the new Rypple. This meetup is all about…well, the holidays of course! And Rypple. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the recently launched edition – what do you love? hate? want to see? It’s all fair game.

Where: Spacco Restaurant and Bar, 2415 Yonge St. Toronto, ON M4P 3E7

When: Wednesday, December 3rd, 6pm onwards

What is it: Monthly gatherings of Rypple users (Rypplers?) who want to hang out with other Rypple users (and the people behind Rypple).  Great food, great drinks, and limitless rounds of billiards!

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George Babu is responsible for Corporate Development and IP at Rypple. Prior to joining Rypple, George spent the last several years working on a variety of technology and intellectual property-related projects with both Research in Motion (RIM) and Bereskin & Parr, one of Canada's leading IP law firms. George holds B.A.Sc degree in Electrical Engineering and is currently completing his JD and MBA degrees, all at the University of Toronto. Given all that's on his plate, George doesn't sleep all that much!

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Why Agile development helps us to build Rypple, one feature at a time

David Stein ~ November 18th, 2008

In the old days of building software, you would discover, document, design and build an entire set of features before letting a user actually use the software.

This Waterfall model was supposed to be the most effective way to develop software. But we learnt its limitations first hand when we started using it.  It created a false sense of security.

We used to think that it reduced risk because if you knew all the requirements up front, you could accurately estimate the time and effort needed to build software.   Waterfall assumes that you can’t start until you know everything you will need to do, in great detail.

We found the opposite to be true: projects took longer, were most expensive, and were riskier than anticipated.   The requirements we originally specified were usually far from what we actually built.

Why? A few reasons:

  • The list of  “must-have” requirements is long at the beginning of a project
  • Users take forever to sign-off on requirements, because they do not want to miss anything
  • Incorrectly interpreted specifications and time lags resulted in expensive re-work

We took a different approach with Rypple.  We decided to be Agile.  We studied the methodology, and most importantly, practiced it, to get better at doing it.

The more we use Agile, the more we are convinced it’s the right approach.

There are many excellent resources to get you up to speed. Our favorites is by Mary Poppendieck.  We met Mary at our last company and she’s a great inspiration for learning by doing.  We’d be remiss if we didn’t link to Mary’s suggested #1 book on the subject of Agile (it has nothing to do with software – it’s about building cars).

Agile forces us to:

  • Break features into small and manageable chunks
  • Start with the user experience (user story), not the screen design
  • Minimize excess inventory and waste by not focusing on future features too early
  • Get user input early and often

This approach initially made some members of our Rypple team anxious. They’re now Agile evangelists.   We now embrace Agile and all that it can do for us. We are most thankful that we don’t spend too much time trying to forecast the future accurately. We embrace user feedback so we get each small feature right.

Agile is a journey that we are on.  We continue to learn and improve our approach with what works for Rypple.

Agile means we’re already working quickly to deliver a constant stream of features that our users actually want and actually use.  And that feels good.

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David Stein is a co-CEO of Rypple. David was one of the founders and the Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer of Workbrain. He is a recognized HCM strategist and has helped some of the biggest companies in the world to get the most out of their people.

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Rypple.com is Born

Tihomir Bajic ~ November 11th, 2008

Rypple.com was born on Monday November 3rd, 6:47am weighing in at 2lbs 5ins. Rypple and its parents are doing well. Cigars anyone?? :)

This is a short reflection on the delivery process and the final feeling of serenity that this new service has brought into our family.

Gestation of this idea took 9 months (interesting coincidence!). During that time, we improved our service significantly by creating a prototype and getting feedback from our alpha users rather than designing in vacuum. To our alpha users: Your help was truly essential in bringing our service concept into the world in a form that people would love. Your acceptance of this idea reinforced our belief that our bottom-up solution will leverage web 2.0 to change how people get insightful feedback to improve their professional, academic and other types of relationships.

We had our first Rypple Meet-Up to thank our users, and as a token of thanks, we will host many more Rypple Meet-Ups for our users in the future.

Many have asked what it takes to get a start-up idea like this off the ground. We spoke at length about that at Professor Greg Wilson’s class at the University of Toronto. There are many things, but most important of all is an unyielding commitment to the cause.

As an anecdotal example of the level of unyielding commitment that is required, the dev team can tell you ad nauseum about how they dealt with last minute unforeseen hosting solution provider issues on a Sunday while trying to ignore a loud construction crew remodelling a nearby office and another crew releasing noxious fumes into the air vents! It was so bad that firefighters had to come in to deal with the poor air quality issue so the dev team could go back to work fighting pre-birth fires!

Now that rypple.com has been alive for more than a week, we are starting to see its true potential. Like proud parents, our commitment to raising rypple.com into adulthood is getting stronger by the day as
we get excited with every little baby step we take. Although we know that we will hit many bumps and bruises along the way, we are excited about the future and hope that you will continue to give us invaluable feedback and help us guide rypple.com’s growth.

Here are some things that people are saying about new rypple.com:

Once you start, you’ll never want to stop!  I have already caused “Rypples” with my clients, my colleagues and my friends. This is a fantastic tool to gain insights in a way that’s fun, quick and easy.  Michal Berman, Consultant, embarkonit.com

The UI is great…. Very easy to understand what I’m required to do to use the service. Fantastic! Pema Hegan, Founder, Gigpark.com

…and far too many more to list!

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Development, author of onebookaweek.com

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How Fast is Bottom-Up Coming Up?

Daniel Debow ~ November 7th, 2008

This week, we attended Don Tapscott’s book launch for Grown Up Digital.  Don’s latest is a follow-up to his two prior best-sellers, Wikinomics and Growing Up Digital.

Don didn’t disappoint.  He outlined two key trends that are changing the way businesses are organized: Internet-based, bottom-up collaboration; and demographics.  Don focused on the Net Generation’s entry into the workforce and their use of the Internet as a communication and self-organization platform.

We loved the talk, but wondered:  “How long will it take for traditional business people to really start changing their organizational structures, social norms, and expectations to account for the reality of the Net Gen?”  Will this change occur over the next 12-24 months?  Will it take a few years?  Or will it take a decade or longer? Will it wait for the Net Gen to take on more senior management roles and force business to redesign around Net Gen models of communication and collaboration?

We don’t know for sure, but we think the shift to “bottom-up” is going to happen a whole lot faster than most business people imagine.

When we talk to people about Rypple’s goal of re-inventing performance management and professional development as a bottom-up, collaborative, and self-organizing process that integrates work with learning…light-bulbs go off.  People get it, which is great.

But, we wonder…  how long until the early majority start to get it and change how they do business?

Up until last week, we didn’t think the mainstream population took this stuff very seriously.  Sure, people heard about Linux software being built in a open source fashion, but … hey, that was just a bunch of tech stuff, right?  There have been dozens of stories about corporate wiki-style innovation.  But these were just gimmicks and experiments, right?  And while everyone (not under a rock) got YouTubes emailed and chatted about (and maybe joined) Facebook, most people were cynical when they heard how things are “different” with this generation.

But, this week, the power of bottom-up collaboration got a huge, undeniable, impossible-to-ignore proof-point for everyone in the world.  It will be very hard to write off bottom-up as yet another over-hyped trend. This week Barack Obama was elected president. Yes, he was a great orator.  Yes, he benefited from a huge dissatisfaction with Bush, fear of the economy and desire for change.  But, what is really notable is Obama’s use of technology to massively engage people through self-organization.  It’s ironic that the election of the hierarchically top executive in the land, and the ultimate Commander-in-Chief, would be the public harbinger of the power of a new style of collaborative, bottom-up organization.

As Mark Ambinder noted in June in the Atlantic,

Obama has truly set himself apart by his campaign’s use of the Internet to organize support. No other candidate in this or any other election has ever built a support network like Obama’s. The campaign’s 8,000 Web-based affinity groups, 750,000 active volunteers, and 1,276,000 donors have provided him with an enormous financial and organizational advantage in the Democratic primary.

Don thinks (and we agree) that this self-organization is not going to stop with the election.  As he writes:

In the old style of politics, election day marked the end of typical citizens’ involvement.  They would take down their lawn signs and then passively watch the President run the country for four years.

But young adults won’t be satisfied with politics as practiced by their moms and dads, and this will be one of the biggest challenges facing Obama.  This age group will be exceptionally demanding. They will want to be involved in the act of governing-by debating contributing ideas before decisions are made. They will want an ongoing dialogue with their elected officials, and they know the technology exists to easily make this happen. They will also insist on integrity from elected officials; if politicians say one thing and do another, young Americans will use their digital tools to find out, and spread the news.

This election marks the birth of a political juggernaut that will dominate and transform politics in America. By 2015, children of the baby boomers will constitute one-third of the voting public. They have at their fingertips the Internet- most powerful tool ever for informing, organizing and mobilizing.  And as we’ve seen, they know how to use it.

We think Obama’s improbable election will be the final “evidence” point that convinces the business world that they need to understand the change that is coming to their way.

We’re going to be speaking at the Talent 2.0 conference on the 19th.  Peter Cheese, the head of Accenture’s HCM practice andTammy Johns, Senior Vice President of Global Workforce Strategy for Manpower will be on a panel with us. Hopefully, we’ll have some good conversations about this topic down in Orlando.  We’ll blog a bit more about our thinking when we get back.

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Daniel Debow is a co-CEO of Rypple. Daniel was one of the founders and the VP of Corporate Development and Marketing for Workbrain, an enterprise software company. He holds a JD and an MBA from the University of Toronto and an LLM in Law, Science & Technology from Stanford University. He's a huge music fan, plays the bass (badly), and spends far too much time online. He lives in Toronto with his wife.

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The Wall Street Journal weighs in

George Babu ~ November 3rd, 2008

We had a hunch about how the workplace was going to change, so we built Rypple. We have a deep seated belief in our hunch, and don’t really need the affirmation…but still, it makes me happy to see that the Wall Street Journal, that grand poobah of newspapers. Here’s what they had to say:

Millennials want loads of attention and guidance from employers. An annual or even semiannual evaluation isn’t enough. They want to know how they’re doing weekly, even daily.

Can Rypple easily get you daily feedback? Check.

managers must tread lightly when making a critique…. Some managers have seen millennials break down in tears after a negative performance review and even quit their jobs. “They like the constant positive reinforcement, but don’t always take suggestions for improvement well,” says Steve Canale, recruiting manager at General Electric Co. In performance evaluations, “it’s still important to give the good, the bad and the ugly, but with a more positive emphasis.”

Does Rypple prevent this breakdown at the annual review by giving gentle guidance throughout the year? Check!

If a job doesn’t prove fulfilling, millennials will forsake it in a flash. Indeed, many employers say it’s retention that worries them most…If employers fail to provide the opportunities and rewards millennials seek, he says, they’re likely to drop out of the corporate world as he did and become entrepreneurs. “We get stifled when we’re offered single-dimensional jobs,” he says. “We are multi-dimensional people living and working in a multi-dimensional world.”

Will Rypple help make a job fulfilling (to the extent possible) by increasing communication, reducing anxiety, and helping people improve? Check.

Status and hierarchy don’t impress them much. They want to be treated like colleagues rather than subordinates and expect ready access to senior executives, even the CEO, to share their brilliant ideas.

Will Rypple help break down hierarchical barriers by lowering the barriers to getting feedback from managers? Check

Millennials were bred for achievement, and most will work hard if the task is engaging and promises a tangible payoff

If anyone says “forget the Millenials, they’re too much trouble”, then they’re losing out on a valuable resource!


Check out the original article.

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George Babu is responsible for Corporate Development and IP at Rypple. Prior to joining Rypple, George spent the last several years working on a variety of technology and intellectual property-related projects with both Research in Motion (RIM) and Bereskin & Parr, one of Canada's leading IP law firms. George holds B.A.Sc degree in Electrical Engineering and is currently completing his JD and MBA degrees, all at the University of Toronto. Given all that's on his plate, George doesn't sleep all that much!

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