A 96 hour meeting

I didn’t think about it this way, but it made perfect sense after I read an essay. Recently my team at my day job had an offsite gathering for brainstorming and evaluating our group’s place in the company. We met for two days away from the office, and 6 of us were in a meeting room for 8 hours a day.

That’s not a two day meeting, or a 16 hour meeting. It was for me, but for the company that was a 96 hour meeting.

Just think about the loss of productivity from that two days. Across 2 major sites, that’s a lot of work lost. True we did get some things done, and we had the chance to each hear what the others think of their business and how to improve it. However it also added a lot of stress. In addition to the need for me to work nearly twice as hard for the time of the meetings (2 days), I also had to take more time to prepare for the meeting, in my case, about 3-4 hours, which was twice as long as I presented.

That’s stress to be prepared for the meeting, but that meant that essentially the 2 hour meeting time for me meant a 6 hour increase in work. Two hours of work, two hours of extra work to handle things, and two hours of prep.

Imagine how many meetings you have in your company, even in small companies. Taking a couple hours of each day for a meeting between 2 or 3 people and it’s no wonder that 12 hours days are needed to get many companies going. That lowers creativity, adds stress, and doesn’t necessarily accomplish a lot.

What can you do instead?

What I’d recommend is that you empower people to make more decisions. Don’t require meetings to get things done, and when you do need people to get together, make it minimal. Schedule time and limit the number of people, and solve things quickly. Don’t take a half hour for a meeting. Start on time, get the issue out there, debate it and make a decision in half the time to allotted.

Then go back to work.

Sunk Costs

I was reading a book recently (Rework) and there was a chapter in there about assessing the relevance and impact of the things you work on. I had heard this before, but hadn’t thought about it in some time. I have a few projects underway, and I should assess if they are still worth it.

The basic idea is that whatever you’ve done, whatever resources you’ve invested (time or money), are gone. It isn’t relevant for trying to decide if you should continue. If you continue on because you’ve invested in the project, it’s ego. It’s saving face, and not necessarily productive.

I first heard about this during the Cold War. There was a defense contractor that invested $20million in some weapon. However they reached a point where it wasn’t working and there was some concern if the military would buy it. One engineer wanted to scrap the project and start over with a new idea. There were others that said since $20million was invested, they needed to continue.

Someone in management finally said that the $20million was irrelevant in the decision. That money was gone whether they continued on or started over. The question was what is the best decision now.

It’s easy to get invested in a project, either emotionally, or because of the money. It’s also easy to let that investment drive you, rather than re-assessing your current situation.

Don’t consider the sunk costs. Don’t consider anything as being thrown away. If a project needs to be scrapped, take away a learning experience, however expensive, and move on. Do your best not to get trapped by previous bad decisions and make the best decision for this point in time. If you can reuse things do that, but don’t force yourself to reuse things because you invested in them.

Thinking Time

Our business has struggled over the last year, and recently my partner and I sat down to talk about things. One of the issues we identified was that while we were getting work done, it was day-to-day work, the operational stuff that needs to be done. It brings in revenue, but only in a short term way. At least in our business is doesn’t help build a bigger business and grow revenue.

It’s easy to get bogged down it the day to day work of your company, doing the same things over and over that need to be done. That’s the in-the-forest, seeing-the-trees work that you get used to. However there are times you need to step back and take a wider view and try to think strategically.

How you do that is a complex subject, and the process might be different for each person, but the important point of this post is that you need to make time to do it. You need to set aside time periodically. You can do it every week, once a month, or maybe a few days a year, but you need to spend some time away from the day to day tasks with a longer term view towards the future.

Goals for 2010

Most people set their New Year resolutions for the new year at this time. We know from history that many people don’t stick to those resolutions, often failing to get in better shape, eat better, or other similar personal changes. I think the average person has bailed on their efforts by Feb 1.

I think some of this is precisely because they’re not goals that are specifically written down and committed to. It’s easy to say you want to make some grand change, but the reality is that you need to focus on one small goal at a time and make a concentrated effort to achieve it.’

It’s no different for business. I haven’t been heavily involved in my side venture over the last few months, and I’m not sure I will be more in 2010 since my life is somewhat moving in a different direction. However I still talk regularly with my partner, and we are talking about some specific changes for the business in 2010.

I don’t know what kind of goals we’ll set, but he is big on them, and so I’ll try to help him pick a few specific ones that make sense for the next year and we’ll work on implementing them.

Buy-Sell Agreements

I've never had one, but I have seen a few at the small companies that I've worked for. This is an agreement among the founders, a legal document, that specifies what restrictions there might be in terms of  selling shares of the company. Wikipedia puts it well, a "premarital agreement among business owners."

The idea is to prevent control of the company from being shifted without the agreement of partners. It's often limiting how shares can be sold, including to whom. It might prevent a spouse from moving control to a third party in the event of divorce or death. It also specifies pricing in some cases.

Why talk about it? We are considering adding a partner, and this person mentioned that if things didn't work out, they would want to sell their shares to a friend. There's a concern about new partners that we don't know about, so this came up.

I'll write more as we get more details.

Networking for business

I had written a piece about networking, trying to show people how it can help you find other job opportunities. Someone commented that one other use of networking, at your current job or business, is that by talking and interacting with others, you might hear about business opportunities that you don't otherwise have.

You can network with people and try to do business with them, but that can make a bad impression on people. Instead network for information. You might learn what competitors are doing well, or doing poorly, and alter your business practice accordingly. You might get ideas about what would, or wouldn't work with your business.

Or you might hear about a competitor losing a customer. That might be the person you want to approach.

Genius Bar Rocks

I had an appointment to go to the Genius Bar at the local Apple Store today and have them check out my Nano. I'm glad I went as the "genius" who helped me actually gave me a new Nano, replacing my suspect one with a refurb for free.

Very cool for me, and great customer service.

This after AppleCare declined to do anything, and didn't even tell me anything. There's a disconnect in Apple customer service, possibly on purpose, and it's a little annoying. However the service at the Apple Store I got will ensure I am happy and willing to stick with Apple products. At least some of them. I'll also be heavily considering a Macbook for my next laptop.

This started when my Nano started acting up. It constantly rebooted when I attached it to my PC. So I did a few troubleshooting things online and decided it needed a repair. Actually I didn't do much since almost nothing would work. I'd hoped to reformat it, but that didn't work.

So I scheduled warranty service with Apple. I'd bought this in Jan. and since it was post 6 months, I had to pay a handling charge. $30, which isn't bad, I guess. I could have bought an Apple care support item, but that would have caused me to pay $40 more for 2 years coverage. Debatable if that's worth it. Best Buy wanted even more ($49).

So I paid it, a couple days later a FedEx box arrived. I packed it up, sent it off, and about 3 or 4 days later I got a box back. I opened it, found my iPod with a pre-printed form that gave various scenarios. Actually it gave 3, all of which were bad news. One was liquid damage, so sorry, one was something else, and one was "damage caused by excessive force." Mine was the last one, with a nice little X in the checkbox.

That's it. No other information about what was wrong with my Nano. For all I know they opened the box, put the paper in there and shipped it back. I looked over my Nano, checking for issues. I find no evidence of damage. A few people suggested online I check the connectors, but they look fine. They charge the device, but it won't sync. It plays music, even logs Nike+ stuff. The only thing it doesn't do is sync. Sounds like software to me.

The options on the paper were almost non-existent. A few people suggested contacting the Apple Store, so I did. They said I'd likely have to buy a refurb, but that only the Genius Bar could look at it.

And I'd need an appointment.

OK, no biggie, I go to make one online, and they don't have any for 2 days. I make one, and show up today. Every person in the Apple Store has an iPhone, they can check me in, and they Q me up for the next slot. There are like 8 or 10 Genius' people, at 12:30pm on a Wed, helping people. My appt was 12:40 and 12:42 they called me up.

They guy asked me what happened, looked at the paperwork, and then plugged in my Nano. He agreed it was likely software, but said since he couldn't format it, and it sounded like that was the issue, he'd give me a new one.

It took about 20 minutes, mainly him typing and filling out paperwork. They didn't have another green one, but I said no issue, and got a refurb, 8GB blue one to replace my 8GB green one.

Great customer service, the people were nice, and the constant videos on the wall, all showing hints on how to use your iPhone, iMac, Macbook, or iPhone were cool. I learned a few things while I was waiting and want to try them out. I actually did try one thing out.

I also got a hint for my books on CD ripped to iTunes, so I need to try that.

(cross posted at my dkranch blog)