Fast Company:

An Interview With Alan Webber

by Jeff De Cagna

Jeff De Cagna is managing director, Strategic Learning for SLA.

He can be reached at jeff@sla.org

Alan Webber, a former collegiate baseball player, hit .500

as editor of the Harvard Business Review. During three of his six years there, the publication was a finalist for the National Magazine Awards. In 1993, he moved on to new frontiers, co-founding Fast Company with Bill Taylor. The magazine's purpose is to give professionals the tools they need to survive in today's business climate. Webber is also author of, Going Global, in which he explores what it takes to be a global company in the new economy. Alan also contributes articles and columns to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post , and USA Today.

Webber took some time out of his schedule to speak with Jeff De Cagna in a wide-ranging interview that covered the new economy, the role of information professionals, the value of design, and the St. Louis Cardinals.

JEFF DE CAGNA: As you look back on the first five years of Fast Company's existence, what makes you most proud?

ALAN WEBBER: I think the thing that is most remarkable for us, for Bill and me, is that there really has been the creation of a community of people who have come together because this magazine exists.

Our original idea was that there was such a community with people who shared a mind-set, an attitude, and a set of values about work, business, competition, and their careers. What they lacked was a magazine that would become the identifier so that if you were on an airplane and you pulled out a copy of Fast Company, somebody else sitting across the aisle would see that and say, "Oh, I read that, too." You would instantly be able to assume that there's a connection of some sort between like-minded individuals.

And, in fact, that happens, and it happens all the time. It happens not only among people who read the magazine, but also people who use the website, people who belong to the company of friends that is now 35,000 or more around the world, and people who come to live events. So there really has become a remarkable community of people who look at the magazine as a part of their lives and as a part of the connective tissue that brings them together.

JD: What would you say is the unfinished work that you and Bill would like to tackle in the next 5 years?

AW: Well, I think there is a lot of stuff that we have just begun to scratch at.

Fast Company is devoted to chronicling all of the changes that are going on in the world of work and business. But those changes keep coming. This is not something where you can write a prescription for how to succeed in business circa 2001 and know that everything you write is going to hold true for the next five years. These are ideas and practices that are being tested every day. As the world of business changes, the ideas change. So I think this is unfinished business by definition.

That said, I think there are many of issues that we have touched on that we want to keep pushing on. What does it mean to be a leader when organizations keep changing? What does it mean to create a culture in your company that really values individual creativity and innovation and how do you do that as the game keeps changing? How do you combine economic growth with a larger sense of community outside the business community? How do you make sure that the promises of the new economy around a better work life, better socioeconomic balance, and better commitment to creating a future that's genuinely hopeful, are fulfilled?

So those are things that I think we are going to keep pushing on. To some extent, they're a little idealistic. To some extent, they're very practical about what goes on in companies and in competition. And I think that blend of pragmatism and idealism really defines a lot of the magazine's character. The fact that the game keeps changing means you have to keep adjusting those balances.

JD: What is your candid assessment of the state of the new economy as we talk today?

AW: I think it's fantastic. You know, people who think that the new economy is defined by dot.coms and IPOs are probably distraught, but I don't think that the new economy is or ever was about dot.coms and IPOs.

When Bill and I started Fast Company, we defined the new economy as a reflection of the combination of four very powerful forces that were going to reinvent everything about work, competition, careers, leadership, and organization.

First was technology, the notion that information technology was going to make all work digital, portable, personal, and real-time.

Second was the notion of global communication and global competition. Again, the idea here was that we were going to get outside of national boundaries and limiting identifiers and see a world where ideas, competition, cooperation, finance, technologyeverythingwas global in its scope.

Third was the notion of a generation shift that people coming into power, positions of authority, and responsibility in companies of all sizes and in all industries were from a different generation and had a different set of aspirations and expectations about work and employment. And we have seen that come true not only with baby boomers, but with all the successive generations. Each generation has a take on what business and work should mean.

And then there was a gender change. We predicted and then saw the number and importance of women rise in the workplace. It was no longer a question of would women take on positions of authority and responsibility, but how fast, at what rate, and in how many different categories would women become leaders, and we're seeing that as well.

JD: I want to ask you a couple of questions: one that's more short term and one that's about the longer term.

The first is your forecast for the next year. Where do you see things going and what are the markers that people should be looking for as they try to figure out where the new economy is headed?

AW: Well, I think the next year continues this ongoing journey into the wilderness with no map, no chart, and no obvious destination at hand. We're just pioneers blazing new trails. And I think what you see now, if you look across the business landscape, is a very interesting process of hybridization. You see big companies becoming more agile. In other words, what the smart, big companies are doing is looking at the track record of a lot of the start-ups of the last few years. Rather than saying, "Boy, those people had it all wrong, they're hopeless and stupid," they say, "Those people were incredibly creative and we can learn about nimbleness, agility, and creativity and creating different connections with our customers and our employees. How do we capitalize on those lessons, whether it's through the web or through software? How do we adapt to be more agile?"

And then you look at the start-ups and the young companies that are filled with talent and new business models, and they're looking at the big companies saying, "You know, there's something to be said for the lessons that we can learn from the big companies. There's a lot to be said for discipline and management processes that are predictable, dependable, reliable, as well as for profitable business models. It's not enough to be agile or fun or hip or relentlessly cool. We've actually got to be tougher-minded business people."

You combine those two. You see the big guys becoming more like the little guys or the younger guys and you see the start-ups looking to become more like the established business success stories, and you begin to see that in this next round of evolution.

JD: Just a moment ago you articulated some of the core ideas that shape Fast Company. Beyond those issues, what are some of the other emerging trends that you think will shape the future of organizations over the next several years?

AW: I think part of what always happens in the world of ideas, not just business, is a kind of pendulum effect where for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. And I think what we're seeing now is that having marched aggressively into the wilderness of the new economy for the last five years or so, people are now saying it's time to take stock, do a little bit of a pause to think through what we've achieved, what we've failed at, and what we need to learn.

So one of the developments or trends that I think you see quite clearly across the business landscape is a period of reassessment. It's not just on the company or strategy level, it's on the individual level. I think people are saying to themselves, "I worked really hard for the last five years. We have been at a breakneck pace and the work has been intense. Let's take a step back and evaluate what have we learned, what have we achieved, and what we need to reconsider."

So I think we are in the middle of a period of taking stock, evaluation, reassessment, and I don't know how long that will last. But I think it is not a bad thing that people don't simply continue at a breakneck pace, but use an opportunity as the economy has slowed down to do some evaluation and assessment work. So I think you can depend on that for a period of time as people really do some careful analysis and evaluation.

I think you are going to see that happening both in the work realm and also in the personal realm as people evaluate what they want out of their private lives as well. This issue seems to work across that boundary fairly intuitively.

I don't think people are just throwing away their fundamental belief that we are seeing our world transformed by technology. I think people are being more cautious about the rate of investment. I don't see people signing off of e-mail and throwing away their computers. I think they are still looking for ways to connect with other people seamlessly and effectively. I think the market for communication and relationship building is strongall of which is implicit in the sense that the world of work is changing and will continue to alter.

JD: What advice would you offer to information professionals who are trying to define their value propositions in a Web-enabled world?

AW: My fundamental belief is that there has probably never been a better time to be an information professional than right now.

If you think about both the demand for information in general; the creation of information as a supply issue; and then the need for people to help manage, categorize, organize, synthesize, and retrieve information. This is the information revolution.

If anything, we're all struggling to figure out, if the last revolution was the industrial revolution, the correct name for this revolution. Some people have called it the information revolution or the knowledge revolution.

A big part of what everybody is grappling with is that we have more information available than ever, more information is created at a faster rate than ever, and there is probably more confusion and sense of overload as a consequence.

So I think the information professional's challenge is to not only become incredibly adept at mastering what already exists and become an advance scout for this on-going information exploration, but to also begin to master the conversation about what comes next. How do you make it easier for the end-user to find what they're looking for? How do you create new taxonomies that can help people easily, quickly, and conveniently discover the information that they're trying to use or get it before they even know they want it? How do you anticipate the information demands of people? Because, essentially, the reality of the Web and the information environment today is that everybody has more information than they can possibly use all the time.

So the challenge isn't quantity and it isn't even quality, it's making the information that you need available at the moment you can actually use it. It's the difference between "nice to know" and "need to know" and it is a distinction that we have tried to make at Fast Company.

We look at other business magazines and they will present you with information that's nice to know, fun to have, entertaining or amusing, but people are incredibly busy today and there's just not enough time. So the challenge for the information professionalwhether you define that as a magazine editor or somebody in the world of informationis to move from nice to know to need to know so that you're really serving people with the information, the knowledge, the resources they need in a time when they absolutely have to have it.

JD: You once told another interviewer that, "At the heart of a new economy is the challenge of design." What makes design so important today?

AW: I think design is a fundamental element of any period of enormous creativity and innovation. We are just at the beginning of this boon in new ideas, new ways of working, new practices, and doing new models for business. And so behind every new company are a set of design specs and an assumed design protocol and, clearly, in the world of information and knowledge, we have to figure out the way to design the interfaces, the way to design the vocabulary, and the way to design relationships. Whether it's between man and machine, software and machine, or library and future categories, we have to design those things so that people can use them simply, effectively, personally, and creatively.

If you look at a lot of the failure of the last couple of years in the dot.com space, it is because of bad design specs involving business modelsan assumption of how to design a company and its financial future that was unsustainable. You look at websites and you instantly know whether they're well designed or poorly designed, whether they are easy to use or hard to use, and whether they appeal to the person at the other end of the computer or they send you away tearing your hair out.

When we started Fast Company, our basic assumption was that we were going to appeal to a generation of readers who were not only information junkies, but also design junkiespeople who defined themselves by the look and feel of their workplace, their work tools, and their uniforms. The design is a fundamental element of how we orient ourselves in everyday life to the tasks we take on.

I would say that the same is true of the design of information and the design of information systems. They have to be fun, they have to be easy to use, they have to be friendly, and they have to be capable of evolving as people's needs change. I think that is again part of the importance of the field right nowthat we're really beginning to change how people access and relate to the information they expect to have available to them.

JD: Since Fast Company is very good at providing "the rules of the road," I am wondering what you think are the rules of the road for information professionals who want to think and act like designers.

AW: The basic challenge is to understand that everything that you do is a design choice and every decision you make about how to categorize information or how to present it or where you put iton a website or in a file draweris a design choice. The challenge is to think about the end-user and to see the design from the point of view of the individual who is your customer. Think about yourself, your business, your task, as if you were an architect and you're designing a building.

We know that well-designed spaces allow for communication. They allow for people to have a positive experience and an emotional connection. We know that well-designed spaces are easy to enter and friendly to be in. We know that well-designed spaces create a sense of community and a sense of place. We know that there are symbolic signposts that help people orient themselves to well-designed spaces so that you know where you are at all times.

All of this is metaphoric for any design task, whether it's designing a page of a magazine, designing an interior of a library, or designing an access system to find and orient yourself to an information retrieval system.

So in a way, we need to know about what's good design and what works because we do it everyday when we're ordinary people going shopping in a downtown space or going to a conference. You know a friendly conference because it's easy to get around in, it's easy to connect with people, and there are ways for you to know what the sessions are and how to participate. All that is done almost intuitively without articulating the design specs.

But when you step back and ask yourself what are the design specs and what are the messages we're sending out by the way we talk about, write about, label, and look at our information from the point of view of the customer or the user, you instantly decode your own design specs and you know whether you're being user-friendly or user-hostile.

JD: I have just two questions left for you, and I want to use the first to help our readers get to know you a little bit better. As a huge St. Louis Cardinals fan, what is your fondest Cardinals memory?

AW: When I was growing up in St. Louis, my dad was in the photographic supply and sales business. Early in my childhood, the Cardinals and my dad struck a deal where they asked him to film games and take pictures of batters who were in slumps or pitchers who were having a tough time.

All he asked in return from the Cardinals was that he could bring my brother, my mom, and me to the games with him when he was doing that filming. So we went to game after game and sat behind home plate, up on the right-field roof, or out in centerfield in the shrubbery while my dad was doing this filming. We would usually sit with the pitcher who was going to pitch the next game while he charted the game.

Well, that led to my all-time greatest experience, which was between my freshman and sophomore years in college. I played freshman baseball in college and was trying to get ready for the sophomore year when my dad made a deal with the Cardinals so that I could finish my summer job early, go out and dress in a Cardinals uniform, and shag fly balls in the outfield during batting practice. So I actually had the opportunity to be a make-believe member of the Cardinals one summer, running around in the outfield shagging fly balls during batting practice. It was a phenomenal experience.

JD: Who was your favorite Cardinals player during that time?

AW: Well, everybody's favorite Cardinal of all time was, of course, Stan Musial. But I had a personal affiliation with Dick Groat when he played shortstop for the Cardinals because he was like mea little slow and not a power-hitter, but very good at the hit and run and moving hitters along. He actually had a great year where I think he led the league in hitting as a contact-hitter.

Basically, I looked at him as a shortstop that played the game with his head as well as with his hands. I was never the greatest athlete, but I used a lot of heady play, anticipating where the hitter was going to put the ball. As a hitter, I couldn't really hit with power, but could always put the ball into play. So Dick Groat was sort of my model in those days.

JD: My last question for you is quite simple. What is it about libraries that you love?

AW: Well, I'm a book junkie and I've always been. You know, the definition of happiness is a chance to go exploring and find a great book to read or use serendipity to stumble into something I didn't even know was there and pull it off the shelf and read it. That really does go back to how I was raised.

My dad grew up in Kansas City, and when we would go back and visit his folks, every member of the family we'd visit would give us two things when we were getting ready to drive back to St. Louis. One was a brown bag with something to eat and the second thing was a book to take home with us.

So I was raised on books as a sign of not just learning, but also as a kind of hospitality. It was the greatest gift you could give somebody. I think of libraries as everybody's home where you can go and get a gift like that and either read it there or take it home with you.