Good to Great by Jim Collins
Posted on September 22, 2007
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I recently was finally able to grab a copy of this classic and finish it. It is a great book but I kind of expected that. While there are many counterpoints to why the book isn’t so “Great”, I think overall there is much to learn from the information and examples even if they aren’t as literal as some may like. But hey, its all relative anyway. 
Collins and his team go through a very lengthy and in-depth study and comparison of various companies in order to find out what makes a company go from “Good to Great”. They come up with some pretty interesting results and concepts.
They have many metrics for comparison and judging the companies but what they mainly did was try to find the companies with consistent results, success and growth over at least 15 years and over the general market results. They then found as close to identical comparison companies who had similar size, revenue and circumstances but who were not to jump the chasm from Good to Great.
Companies studied which they considered great include Abbott, Circuit City, Fannie Mae, Gillette, Kimberly-Clark, Kroger, Nucor, Philip Morris, Pitney Bowes, Walgreens, Wells Fargo and a few more. Some of the traits they found in common in all the great companies compared to their “good comparison” companies were:
- Disciplined Leaders who aren’t self-serving
- Using Technology as a accelerator to success
- Not just hiring people, the the RIGHT people for the RIGHT positions
- Promoting a self-motivating, disciplined company culture
- Focusing on what they know they can be great at, they call this “The Hedgehog Concept”
- Being consistent in that focus and created goals based off them
- Having the discipline to look at the brutal facts and be honest with your company
Some of the points individually might seem like common sense but if you take them all and see how they harmonize together it starts to become clear.
So overall a great book, I recommend it though I’m sure many of you already have. Probably something to skim through every once in a while as well. 
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Posted on September 22, 2007
Filed Under Art & Design, Books Reviews, Business, Business Books, Daily Thoughts, Entertainment, General, Productivity, Quotes, Startup, Tech, Web
My ultimate tool for free-thought data input, organization and getting things done
Posted on February 27, 2007
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So I’ve been going over my methods for organizing my thoughts, all the things I need to do and trying my best to “Empty my head”. For the last 3 years I’ve been fairly successful at this using various methods and trying this technique or that.
In reflection I’ve noticed one tool I’ve used that has stayed constant as a crucial part of my data input, brain dumping and organizational note taker. What is this tool?:
The Post-It Note
Thats right, the time-tested Post-It note. It is an amazingly executed, efficient masterpiece. Thought I must admit, with all the technology, methodologies and hand-held wonders in the world I sometimes think to myself:
“Am I missing out on something? How can this work so well? It’s almost TOO simple… Right? I should be using my PDA… Shouldn’t I?”
But no, it always comes back to one thing: It just works
So here are a few reasons why it works best for me and how I use them:
- Easy Input – I guess the number 1 reason here, its EASY. Write it down and go!
- Easily Noticeable – It’s easy to find with very bright colors. Lets face it, there is a good chance you’re using one to help get organized. With bright colors they’re very easy to find in a cluttered bag or messy desk.
- Rugged – When I say rugged, I do mean you can throw them anywhere but more importantly I don’t feel like I have to handle them with care. Now I think this is an important point, as with PDA’s or other things (even small notepads such as moleskine) I feel as I have to handle them with care because they’re “worth more” or “more delicate”. I find this a barrier to entry and another reason I love Post-It’s, they’re cheap.
- The Stickiness! – It is of course what makes Post-It’s, well, Post-It’s. You can put them anywhere. What I end up doing is making an aciton-list, take it and sticking it on the opposite side of the Post-It pad. So I can start another list if needed. With this, I’m able to keep track of things but not TOO MUCH info at one time. Should I need to, I take it off the back and stick it on my desk or monitor.
- Size – Size matters, they come in very convenient sizes to carry around. I usually have the original 4×3inch size, easy to put in my bag, pants or jacket pocket.
- Satisfaction – I have to admit, there is nothing like just taking a Post-It full of finished actions and RIPPING IT TO SHREDS or CRUSHING IT INTO A LITTLE BALL with my hands and throwing it in the trash. Its an awesome and quite fulfilling experience.
I mainly use them to write down quite thoughts I have, create immediate action lists or to create an action list that I’ll input into my GTD system at a later time.
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Posted on February 27, 2007
Filed Under Business, Business Books, Daily Thoughts, General, Productivity, Ranting, Startup, SugarStats, Tech, Travel, Web
Here’s my Ruby on Rails Stack … Literally
Posted on February 26, 2007
1 Comment
Its getting pretty high…
So far:
- Agile Web Development with Rails v1 (Why not, its free now.)
- Agile Web Development with Rails v2 (Just in, worth it.)
- Ruby for Rails (ehhh…)
- Rails Recipes (Recommended)
- Rails Cookbook (Best Buy)
I’ve seen the Ajax for Rails (or is it Ajax on Rails?) out, though we don’t do Ajax FOR EVERYTHING, it might be a good reference. I’ll take a gander, anyone have opinions of it?
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Posted on February 26, 2007
Filed Under Books Reviews, Business, Business Books, CSS/XHTML, Daily Thoughts, Design, General, Marketing, Productivity, Ranting, Ruby on Rails, Startup, SugarStats, Tech, Web
Rails Cookbook - Fresh off the Press
Posted on January 30, 2007
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Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeet. 
I haven’t gone through it besides flipping to a few pages but I can say it is definitely packed with some Rails goodness, REST and everything. Though I’m no super 31337 ruby ninja of any kind, I have to say its great to FINALLY have a book or some material that goes through more detailed and complex things. I mean, you can only go through so many tutorials that explain what scaffolding is or how to make a to-do list.
I especially love how clear the examples are and how the book is structured (The main reason I love O’Reilly books in general). I’ll be sure to do a more thorough review on it once I get into copying integrating many examples into SugarStats 
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Posted on January 30, 2007
Filed Under Analytics, Apple, Books Reviews, Business, Business Books, CSS/XHTML, Daily Thoughts, Design, Entertainment, Hosting, Marketing, Productivity, Ranting, Ruby on Rails, SEO, Security, Startup, SugarStats, Tech, Web
Ruby on Rails News, Links, Books and more
Posted on September 16, 2006
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Theres been a whole lot happening in the rails world lately, pretty exciting. I’ve found so many great links and info that I had to share them. If you have anything valuable to add let me know or if you find this valuable Digg it. Some are up on my Del.icio.us account as well.
Books
The Flexible Rails Book by Peter Armstrong is out. Atleast in Alpha PDF form. I checked out the previews and its looking good. This is definitely something I’m going to be looking into for SugarStats in the future. Within a few revisions after the main launch I want to upgrade the graphs (We’re currently using Gruff Graphs by Geoffrey Grosenbach) to use Adobe Flex and add a little more richness to the application. From what I understand Google Analytics uses Flex for its graphs.
Adobe Releases Flex 2 SDK for Ruby on Rails – Though not a book, here is some more Rails/Flex related info.
Rails Links and Resources
Cocoa Magic for Gruff Graphs – This could save a few people some time.
Ruby Memcache client enhancements – Always good
Capistrano 1.2 is out – Oh yeah, Capistrano Shell here I come!
Memcaching Rails and Act_As_Cached – Great article with a PDF to accompany it. I will definitely be looking more into this plugin.
Addicted-to-Caching Plugin – Another interesting cache plugin. Take a look especially if you rely on page caching.
Memcache basics for Rails – Since we’re on a caching role here… This topfunky.com article has been out for a little while, but in case you missed it you should give it a read.
UJS: Unobtrusive Javascript for Ruby On Rails Plugin Update – In case you missed this a few weeks ago, Luke Redpash and Dan Webb (perhaps some others?) have a update to the great UJS Plugin. I’m about to add this to SugarStats, I might write a post later on how I like it.
RailsConf Europe 2006 Wrap up – Here are some quick wrap up notes from Christian over at the xml-blog. This is part I and I look forward to part II. I wish I could have gone 
AJAX Scaffold Release as a Plugin – This is a great project and I’ve played with it before. I’m glad more projects are turning into plugin’s when they once came from generators. Richard White has really done some great work here.
Peepcode.com Releases TextMate basics for Rails Videocast- Geoffrey Grosenbach is at it again. I bought the first screencast: RJS Templates and it was pretty good. I learned quite a bit from it. I’m contemplating getting this one, who wouldn’t want to be more efficient in TextMate?
RailStat: Open-source web stats package released – RailStat is an open-source real-time Web site statistics package written in Ruby on Rails. Though its a generator (bleh), it looks interesting. I’m currently seeing what would be the best user tracking from within SugarStats, though I don’t need super advanced statistics.
Scruffy: Alternative Graphing Toolkit for Rails – Though we started with Gruff Graphs, this projects looks really cool. Especially the SVG image part, something Gruff Graphs could REALLY use. Along with multiple graph “blocks”. I’m pretty sure we might integrate this for some specific purposes, maybe for some small graph overviews in SugarStats.
Rails Sessions N Such – A great post over at Err the Blog about Rails sessions and the different options regarding their use. I personally use SQLSessionStore, unbeatable (except maybe by memcache )
SQLSessionStore Released as a Plugin – Speaking of SQLSessionStore, its been released as a plugin! Making it even easier to install.
A Look at Common Performance Problems in Rails – I thought this was a good article though it may seem like common sense to some. But sometimes you just need a nice fat checklist of this stuff in front of your face you know?
Rails Output Compression – A post on the new Rails Google forums with some good info on enabling output compression in Rails.
Productivity
HumanScale Freedom Task Chair – I’m pretty sure I found my next work chair!!! sweeeeeeet.
Bingodisk.com: 100GB WebDAV disk storage – I just ran across this, it seems the good guys at Joyent are up to no good again! But seriously, 100GB WebDAV storage for $199/yr. Hrm, not that there aren’t already 100 different online storage systems out there but this looks kind of cool. Its apparently sitting on a phat Sun Fire x4500 running Solaris 10. Mmmmm, talk about mass storage. Though Amazon S3 is still on the top of my list.
AutoAdmin: Auto-generated admin interface in a Rails plugin – For those of you wanting an easy admin interface for your models similar to what Django has. Though I created my own before this plugin came out for the simple purposes of SugarStats, I think this would have been great to have instead.
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Posted on September 16, 2006
Filed Under Analytics, Books Reviews, Business, Business Books, CSS/XHTML, Daily Thoughts, Design, Hardware, Marketing, PHP/MySQL, Productivity, Ruby on Rails, SEO, Security, Startup, SugarStats, Tech, Web
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I'm Marston and here you'll find my rantings, rhetoric and other useful info. I dig tech, photography, quantum physics and organic food. I'm the founder of SugarStats.com and thats my days developing.
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