Unless you are a mindless worker bee, you’re constantly thinking about how you can contribute to the success of your IT business or organization. How can you help the membership base grow? What steps can you take that will increase revenue? Well, when I read this News.com story today, I was reminded that the popularity of some Web sites isn’t the result of the “how much more you can do” approach: “Craigslist’s laid-back approach to success.”

Within the past 11 years, Craigslist has grown incredibly. The site operates in 190 cities and “generates roughly 3 billion page views from about 10 million unique users every month, making it the seventh most popular site on the Internet in terms of page views.” Despite the site’s growing popularity, it still “employs only 19 people, half of whom are technical staff.” 

According to Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster, “Larger companies tend to be focused on maximizing revenue, so they need big sales teams and business development… We don’t try to do that, so we don’t really need all those people. If you focus exclusively on meeting users’ needs and blot out everything else, that’s the best strategy.”

That last sentence is perhaps the best business advice I’ve heard yet. Instead of worrying about numbers and revenue, maybe it’s time to just focus on meeting users’ needs. Now, I just need to find out what TechRepublic members want! This is the perfect place to start sonjaslist. I’m all ears…