Brad Abare | Brad Works Archives

I am Jamaica's husband, Foursquare's comm director, Personality's founder, and a catalyst for CFCC.

I'm also blogging at:
Personality™
Church Marketing Sucks

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Brad Works Archives

October 3, 2008

Fail Faster

Fail Faster Growing up, my education path was not typical. I dabbled in all of it: public school, private school, home school, no school, college at 18 and college at 26. I finished high school when I was 16; not because I was smart but because I was bored. It was the entrepreneur in me that kept me motivated to learn and keep figuring things out.

In a meeting with my team earlier this week, we were working through ideas for overcoming some significant obstacles in front of us. It's amazing how easy it is to over-process and over-think so many options. How many times have you had a meeting about a meeting to discuss a meeting's meeting?

One antidote I've learned along the way—and I think it comes from my atypical learning path—is to fail faster. The sooner I learn what doesn't work, the sooner I'll stumble upon what does work.

The guys at 37signals are a great example of this philosophy in action. They don't tinker around with products until everything is perfect. They get it out there an innovate along the way.

I'll admit, this approach doesn't make life easier nor is it a path to take if you have problems in the humility department, but failing faster sure does set you up for more successes.

This failing faster approach is not an excuse to avoid learning from others or adopting what's already working out there. Rather, it's an attempt at creating a fail-safe in the absence of overwhelming clarity.

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September 27, 2008

Office Party at the Office

Filed under: Brad Works

I have a great team at Foursquare. Their creativity never ceases to amaze me, and yesterday was no exception. Our associate editor (Marcia) and web project manager (Geoff) are getting married next month. They met before they started working here and it's been exciting for all of us to see their relationship evolve over the past year.

Because many of us on the Comm team are fans of The Office, we decided to put together a little Office-themed party for Geoff and Marcia. After we donned the character of our Office counterpart, we shared a meal, played a little Office trivia and concluded with a video that says it all.

Go team!

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August 1, 2008

Bastards, Series and Speaking

Filed under: Brad Works

For the past year or so I've been researching and writing about the topic of identity and soul, and why that matters for individuals and organizations. It's been a fascinating journey, especially since so much of what I do revolves around this topic. For example, at Personality, our whole profiling process is built around the ability to understand who an organization is and what to do as a result of that knowledge.

This issue of identity is also a significant pursuit at Foursquare because without a shared understanding of who we are, tribes are difficult to keep together or sustain.

A good chunk of my studying has stemmed from the book The Soul of the Corporation by Hamid Bouchikhi and John R. Kimberly. I reviewed this on the Personality blog.

I also wrote a 4-part series for Church Marketing Sucks that has resulted in a lot of good feedback--both in the comments section and directly to me via email. You can read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.

For my keynote during the Echo conference later this month in Dallas, I'm looking forward to sharing the "live" presentation of this series, including some great videos to drive home the point.