There is an article in the November issue of Fortune Small Business about Rackspace. The article focuses on our commitment to the financial concept of Economic Value Added (EVA).

Some of the facts in the article are a bit off, and it completely glosses over the reason why Rackspace can set prices that allow for 15% true profit in an industry where most are competing on price, but overall, it’s a good read.

Also, my picture is in the article.

The break even point for ESPN’s cell phone service, ESPN Mobile, was estimated to be about 500,000 subscribers. After seven months, they had just 30,000. So, they did what any high school coach would do facing fourth and long … they punted.

ESPN annnounced that they are discontinuing ESPN mobile as of December 31, 2006. Why did this venture fail, when so many other Mobile Virtual Network Operators are succeeding?

According to this BusinessWeek Online article, there are four lessons to be learned:

• Not everyone is Steve Jobs
• Sports fans have other lives
• Make sure you blow people away
• Know when to cut your losses and move on

The article also mentions that ESPN has had a history of following failures with success before, as seen with ESPN: The Magazine, ESPN 2, and the ESPN Zone restaurants.

Which raises the question - will we see ESPN venture back into the mobile content game? History tells us that they will, hopefully a bit wiser for the wear.

Pluggd, a Seattle-area startup, unveiled a demo of their HearHere technology at the recent DEMO conference. This really cool technology allows you to search for a specific topic within a piece of audio (in this case, a podcast). What’s cool is that it works not by looking for keywords, but rather by looking for context. Check out the video of their presentation, or take it for a test drive yourself. Pretty awesome stuff.

Mark Hurst, author of the wildly entertaining Good Experience Blog, and founder of Creative Good, posted this entry about a recent experience with his bank. The conclusion that Mark draws is spot on.

The reality of business is the customer’s reality. But seeing things from the customer’s perspective, and then acting on it, requires something outside the realm of traditional usability, marketing, branding, and graphic design. It requires listening to, and empathy for, the customer. It requires reaching beyond one’s narrow discipline and learning, sometimes painfully, that things have to change.

This is a trap that even the most gung-ho “customer experience” advocates fall into from time to time. We think of things from our (the company’s) point of view, rather than considering how our customer sees things.

At a previous employer of mine, the company was structured in the Proctor and Gamble model (individual product lines leading a matrixed organization). Everything within the company fell into four different product lines. Which product line a given item lived in was determined by our own internal production process, rather than how the customer would be using it. As such, items that would seem to go together would be owned by completely separate divisions of the company. What’s more, these four divisions were all completely, utterly opposed to sharing resources with any of the other divisions. Four enormous silos, dedicated to making their respective manager look better than the others.

The result of this was all sorts of customer confusion. They would visit our website, and put an item in their cart. They would then want to purchase a complimentary product, but would be unable to find it. Why? Because our org chart said that the product they were looking for lived under someone else, who demanded their own website.

Could you imagine going to dell.com, adding a computer to your cart, and not being able to add a printer because it came out of a different Manager’s P&L? Well, that’s pretty much what we did.

I spent much of my time at that company trying to fight absurd, non-customer friendly decisions such as that one. Eventually, I grew weary of fighting and moved on. I just visited the site, for old times sake … nothing has changed. Depressing.

In this month’s issue of Fortune Small Business, there is an article entitled “America’s Best Bosses“. The article is about the Winning Workplace’s 2006 Best Boss Award. It just so happens that Graham Weston, Chairman and CEO of Rackspace Managed Hosting, was one of this year’s winners. (For those who don’t know, I work at “the Rack”.)

As I read the profile on Graham, one thing sort of bothered me. There seemed to be a large emphasis on the material rewards that Graham is known to dole out - the keys to his BMW, a stay at his house on the river. That’s all well and good, but I don’t think that it fully captures exactly why Graham is (in my opinion) the best CEO around.

Anyone can find ways to give gifts to their employees. It takes someone special to find ways to help their employees use their own gifts - the special talents, skills, and abilities that make them who they are. As someone who has labored under bosses who are concerned with fixing what is “wrong” with a person, Graham’s style of thinking is a breath of fresh air. Rather than fixing flaws, Graham is interested in finding ways to allow employees to use their strengths. It sounds like a small thing, but it makes all the difference in the world.

My “fatal flaw” is that I’m probably one of the most disorganized people you will ever meet. My desk looks like a war zone. Most of the dead-tree documents that are given to me end up stuffed into a giant file folder simply labeled “Papers.” That is not to say that I am not effective. I love to think, to strategize. I love looking at processes and finding ways to make them better. I love working with an employee to make them a superstar. But I hate planning out my day in one of those dorky little Franklin Covey planners. I hate filing away paperwork, and cleaning up my desktop.

Thus, the first time I heard Graham speak (during Rackspace’s “Rookie Orientation”), I was blown away. He had a story similar to mine – he was completely, utterly, hopelessly disorganized. He had spent years trying to develop a way to get organized. He read hundreds of books, met with experts, tried every single organizational method known to man. And then it hit him – he was spending hours and hours each day trying to become merely ok at something he had no natural talent for. Based on the teachings in Gallup’s “Now Discover Your Strengths”, he decided to take that time, and spend it on something that he was great at – leading Rackspace into the future.

His message to us that day was clear, and it has remained constant during my time at the Rack. Spend your time doing what you are great at. Don’t strive for well-roundedness – well rounded people seldom make history.

Graham is the best boss around not because of his willingness to toss you his keys, but rather, his willingness to help all of his employees do what they are great at, every single day.