Learning to Dance

Last night the Philadelphia chapter of Fast Company, Company of Friends welcomed Bill Loftus, CEO Gestalt LLC, as the monthly speaker. 

Bill told us how a small “agile” company managed to beat out much larger and older defense contractors to win a $30M contract with the US Government.  

He said that he didn’t play fair.  

I think he did. 

But he didn’t follow the rules the way everyone does. 

In his rule book:

Client relationships are based on trust and not the letter of a contract. 

Transparency abounds. 

Self-organizing teams make the implementation decisions. 

There is no blind allegiance to a home grown technology. Everything is fair game. 

Building solutions out of pieces and parts of applications that already exist and passing those gains in productivity and economy on to the customer is a given.

There are people that own the vision of the solution and people that own the schedule. They’re different people. 

He described how Gestalt built their innovative products saying it’s “not so much a process as a rhythm.”

Maybe more companies should learn how to dance!  

Photo by Joe Zlomek

Comments

[Valeria Maltoni]

Ann:

Thank you so much for participating and for writing your take. I love how you managed to highlight the nuggets of our conversation! And what a great title: it reminds me of the IBM story.

I linked to your post in the notes of our event on the FC site. Maybe more people with blogs will attend and decide to write about the topics -- that would amplify and extend the conversation.

[ann michael]

Hi Valeria!

I really appreciate that you take the time to manage and coordinate the Philly chapter of CoF. Thanks!

Bill was a great find. I just loved his rhythm comment.

I thought about the difference between a musician or dancer that's technically perfect versus one that’s ALSO feeling the music (the rhythm).

Even though you can appreciate the technical perfection of the first, the second achieves far more impressive results. They are capable of improvisation and extension to the art in ways that make sense, ways that work, because they understand the WHOLE. They’re not just assembling the technically accurate pieces. They are mesmerizing – a joy to watch.

See you at the next meeting!

Ann