Firefox & Mitchell Baker

The soon-to-be-released V3.0
of the Firefox open-source browser will make mobile working easier.

What's more interesting is the useful lessons to be learned from The Firefox Way - of doing business.

It is, after all, a consumer product facing tough competition. In fact the company is a giant-killer - with Microsoft & Internet Explorer being the giant.

Starting with one employee in 2002, the company now has 150 - not counting the thousands of volunteers around the world.

The first lesson to be learned from Firefox is that achieving competitive advantage with IT can just as easily come from the bottom as from the top.

When Mozilla 1.0 came out it was a suite of Internet applications that included a browser. It was a flop, and it could have been the end. But two developers, Blake Ross and David Hyatt, had been working on a lean & secure version of the browser module. They were (a) motivated and (b) empowered. As a result, this bottom-up initiative became Firefox business strategy.

This leads to the second lesson; self-organising teams. You don't need layer upon layer of managers, giving a tall pyramid, which does not make for effective organisation in today's rapid-change environment. What you need is motivated and empowered people who, being guided and coached by their managers, with simple rules to keep them in sync with business aims, can do the business themselves.

Firefox has pushed the boundaries on this one, enabling and facilitating its thousands of volunteer programmers around the world to self-organise themselves into such teams.

The third lesson to be learned is that you don't need to be a Computer Science graduate - to succeed with IT. CEO Mitchell Baker (see photo) studied Asian Studies @ undergraduate, then went to Law School and practised as as a corporate lawer. She worked for Netscape then AOL, got fired in a round of layoffs, got involved in the Open Source Applications Foundation, and then started up the Mozilla Foundation.

She is also a skilled trapeze artist, flying several times a week, speaks Mandarin Chinese, and is married with one son. Now that's a well-rounded life!

The fourth lesson: CEO Mitchell has a simple yet powerful Vision for Firefox: safe & simple browsing. As it says in the book of Proverbs, Where there is no vision, we perish (29: 18). With Vision, Mitchell has the direction, ability and passion to lead and motivate others in the Firefox story. So Leadership & Vision is another lesson we can learn.

The fifth lesson is collaborative management style. It's quite evident that Mitchell is a Theory Y Manager. See also the Mozilla School of Management Simple Secrets of Successful Management.

In fact, a lesson in itself is that Mitchell uses a blog site, which gives output on what she's thinking and gets input on what others think.

It's not a bad idea; using blogs, wikis and other Web 2.0 technologies to optimise communication, collaboration, meeting of minds and team-working.

The sixth lesson is that concerning motivation @ work. What motivates people? How does Mozilla motivate its thousands of volunteers around the globe? How might this apply to the more conventional working environment?

The simple answer is treat people like volunteers, who work because they want to, who are motivated not so much by money or position but by (a) the work itself, and the satisfaction that comes from doing a good job, (b) mutual recognition & respect from working colleagues, and (c) the camaraderie that comes from team-working with others in a shared vision.

Senior Management Guidance & Suport - is the seventh and final lesson. Mozilla has a Steering Committee which undertakes the top-management role of proactively carrying out the following:

• Overall guidance.
• Empowering people
  
• Setting & monitoring progress for business goals
• Tracking overall progress
  
• Allocation & provision of resources
• Overall co-ordination of activities
  
• Spotting opportunities
• Addressing strategic problem areas
• Providing Leadership
• Seeing the big picture
  

As Mitchell Baker says, senior management's job is to guide and support, then get out of the way and enable people to do theirs.


P.S.
CJB had occasion to visit the main hospital in Oxford recently, the John Radcliffe, and had a look at the application icons on the nurse's computer screens. The browser they were using was Mozilla Firefox.