Kiss of Death and the Maturity Model

[Tim Altom <taltom -at- SIMPLYWRITTEN -dot- COM>]

In an offline discussion about this Kiss of Death thread, it occured to me
that the original poster may well have been correct, and the recruiter
correct as well, but only in a limited sense.

Military personnel do, indeed, seem unwelcome in startup companies here. And
upon further reflection, I think it's because those companies are what JoAnn
Hackos characterizes as Level I: chaotic, short-term, ad-hoc. Military
personnel don't tend to fit in as well here, probably because of their
typical preference for order and predictability.

From what I've seen, military personnel fit best when a company is Level II
and beyond. At Level III and above, organizations begin to resemble the
military, itself, and it actually welcomes the disciplined worker.

If you haven't run through the maturity model for yourself, I recommend it
as a way to understand your organization and why it's doing what it's doing.
We've extended its use to our sales effort. Simply Written does long and
complex documentation as a rule, and we impose project management on it so
that we can make a decent profit. Level I and Level II companies resist this
and we don't do as well with them. Knowing the model lets us target
prospects more precisely. It proved to us the truth of the adage that you
can't make everybody happy. There are contractors around here who are
comfortable in an ad-hoc world and they take care of the Level I and Level
II companies.

Tim Altom
Adobe Certified Expert, Acrobat
Simply Written, Inc.
The FrameMaker support people
Creators of the Clustar Method for task-based documentation
317.899.5882
http://www.simplywritten.com


 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=