A Tolstoy Moment

Lausanne: Tolstoy wrote, in Anna Karenina, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

The same is true of product companies, in a way. When things are ‘happy’, the natural lines of force seem to harmonize, and the effort of the participants seem to converge in good ways. When things are ‘unhappy’, there are all sorts of strange dynamics, with very odd and bizarre social arrangements. And often, events take so many dramatic — and tragic — turns that I feel I am standing stage right in an Italian opera, or a member of a Greek chorus moaning about the vagaries of the gods’ feelings toward mortals.

I have had a number of interactions with unhappy companies in the past few years, but it is not an experience that I have become inured to. Every time a client becomes ‘unhappy in its own way’ I feel the pain of a family member trapped in an unhappy home all over again.

My reaction is often to fire the client outright, where I immediately remove myself from the scene, and the pain. But when I have invested any of myself — in a design, or social relationships — its hard to simply cut the strings that bind all at once. And so, in many cases, I remain pinioned in a souring situation, as politics rage, or product plans go off the rails, or when unrealistic expectations meet fixed financial realities.

Every time it hurts all over again, and I am forced to reflect on the human and social costs of software ‘unhappiness.’ At those times Tolstoy sounds like a seasoned venture capitalist, who has seen it all a hundred times over.