MattInglot
02-16-2010, 10:08 PM
Background Story (skip if you wish)
For the past five years I have been running a website development company. What started in my 2nd year of university as an awesome way to pay for tuition without huge debt or a part-time job doing something I don't like became a serious business venture and a company with a mission to solve some really difficult problems in web development (a rapidly growing but frustrating industry). By my 4th year I was opening an office, hiring employees, and switching my five year program to part-time so that I would have time to run everything, finish my degrees, and not burn out. Since then we've opened a bigger office, have a nice little development team now, and have the opportunity to work on some neat projects.
I can't complain too much about my situation, but Tim's book (as well as others such as Built to Last by Jim Collins) really highlighted strongly some of the ways that I've really been holding myself and the company back. Lots of Work 4 Work's sake. Lots of delegation opportunities missed, lots of shuffling papers. At various points in running the company I have had many roles that have been vital, but far too often I've been the overbusy bottleneck, working 60-80 hour weeks without looking for a better way. It's ironic because our entire offering is strongly rooted in automation and scalability, and I've worked hard since day 1 to make that the religion of the company. But I haven't made myself scaleable!
Since originally reading the 4HWW I have put a lot of 4HWW inspired ideas into use, from small revelations like switching away from vendors that don't do automated credit card processing (not that I handle bills myself, but no sense paying someone else to waste their time either) to big ideas like a customized project management system that increasingly automates project management and saves a ridiculous amount of e-mails. It has really helped. Yet for all my good intentions and all the tremendous progress, my presence at the office was (seemingly) invaluable.
My 30 Day Remote CEO Experiment
Necessity is the mother of invention indeed. In the summer I need to become a very hands-off CEO for 3 months as I finish a part of my degree that requires full-time effort (yes, thanks to my entrepreneurial ambitions I'm still in school!). Running the office full-time and managing my team in person isn't going to cut it, and we are nowhere near the point where we can hire someone to be the office manager. I therefore dedicated February as my 30 day remote work experiment to forcefully cut reliance on me and resolve any issues with me not being accessible 24/7 before the stakes are upped in the summer. I informed my employees in January, then went about the prep work to make it happen. I created the following core rules:
I respond to e-mails from my team once a day. It is their responsibility that anything I am genuinely needed for is sent well ahead of time, and more importantly, they are now empowered to make their own decisions (technically they always have, but when I'm happy to discuss and throw my two cents into even the flavors of coffee ordered, there hasn't been a necessity to take advantage of this).
I am "present" at the office Friday afternoons to sign cheques, discuss things in person, and handle anything else that needs my attention. I work at home the rest of the time. I do show up to the office at other times, but only to meet with clients. I cannot be asked questions, no matter how critical during those times. I do say hi of course when I'm there and may chit chat a little, but no work discussion!
I will have my cell phone and will treat calls from the office as an emergency. Conversely, a phone call to my cell phone has to be an emergency. An emergency means our services are down, a rabid grizzly bear has breached the office perimeter, or someone is hurt. Billing issues, development questions, coffee orders, etc are not emergencies and judgment is to be used to deal with them accordingly.
It is now day 16 of the experiment and the developments have already been pretty interesting. It's run long enough that I've wanted to take some time to reflect on the results, and since it helps to write such reflections out, I figure I may as well share them with this forum in the hopes that they are useful to others or can trigger some good discussion:
1) The experiment has been at least as big of a challenge for myself as it has been for my employees. It is very easy to accidentally break the e-mail rule when something is urgent, saving the day, but ultimately sabotaging the experiment. I've recognized this and have been better at it the past week. Let bad things happen as Tim says. This is worst since a big part of my job is sales, and so even with remote work I need to communicate with clients, and hence there is a lot of e-mailing I have to do in the process of closing sales.
2) I've been very successful at using my BlackBerry a lot less with the new found freedom to not reply to employee issues and knowing that a customer won't be waiting on a response because a developer has to check in with me (well most of the time at least). This is rapidly breaking what can be described as almost a nervous tick of constantly checking the BlackBerry whenever idle, or even when watching a movie, going out to dinner, etc.
If you don't tame it, the BlackBerry is almost a portable container to carry all of your work problems with you wherever you go, rather than a tool of liberation. It is a very weight-off-the-shoulders feeling to let that go. Long-term this should become a cellphone, modem (the tethering capabilities rock), and e-mail SENDING (not receiving) device for me.
3) I had to zip down to the office a number of times because I was missing notes that I took at a meeting and needed them to respond to a client. It is clear now that paper is the enemy of mobility and I am now working actively to go paperless. I will experiment this week with taking meeting notes on my laptop.
4) OpenVPN rocks! It took some effort to get it setup, and an extra $50/mo for a dedicated IP address at our office, but I can now remote desktop into my computer from anywhere that I have internet via a secure VPN connection. This solves a lot of traditional mobility issues because while we are a web company and have a lot of our own systems web-based, giant 40MB PSD files and the archaic architecture of QuickBooks makes it really awkward to work off a web browser. I haven't had a chance to test how well this works using the BlackBerry as a modem, but from any decent internet connection I can work from my work computer and even stream music off it at the same time. My home computer and my laptop are dumb terminals with nothing of value on them. I still need to research how to remote reboot my computer at work since having it crash can be a huge nuisance.
5) It truly is amazing how much time goes into the little day-to-day details instead of the big picture stuff that truly matters in the long-run. This experiment has helped put my time to better use by connecting off constant distractions in the office. I feel less pressured and can stop halfway through the day to exercise. It is nice. On the other hand it also highlights how much of my day is communication, and how much of it could be cut down by putting together some mail templates, brochures, more info on our website, etc. I may work hard, but not all of it is necessary work!
6) When I was at the office it seemed that everything needed me to keep running. Simply by making myself unavailable, problems are now taking care of themselves. This now has me wondering, Tim style, how much management can be automated. Once the 30 days of this experiment are up, rather than going back to the Old Way until the summer, I think I'm actually going to step it up a notch and see what sort of extremes I can take things.
7) Ignore and mismanagement are not cool. Our Project Management system, which we've had for a couple of years but built many last Fall in preparation for the summer's absence, has been instrumental in allowing me to be able to see what is happening. I know the status of each project, whether it's blocked by anything we are waiting on, when it's due, what the profitability of our various projects is, whether there are budget overruns occurring, what each person's work load is like, etc, all at a quick glance on one dashboard. I think having the appropriate business info in a palatable format at a moment's notice has been really vital. Not only does it cut down communication, but I can see how the company is doing along critical parameters. That's very different than turning a blind eye to everything and hoping that it's going well. This goes back to automation and delegation, and having processes to make sure everything runs smoothly.
I'm sure many of you winced the moment I started talking about employees and brick and mortar office space. That is not the Tim Ferris Way. So I think it's important to point out that my passions and my business are strongly tied together. For me it's not a simple matter of cutting my work week down to 4 hours so I can pursue my true hobby of music or skydiving or basket weaving because building an awesome company is a big dream/hobby of mine. Instead my aims are to stop working in my business and focus on becoming the builder, and in doing so be able to better serve our customers while simultaneously affording myself the freedom to work my butt off for 3 months at a hyper charged pace when I want to (when I get into something, I get into it), and then disappear for 3 months on a break. That's where I want to be ultimately.
I will definitely post an update once the experiment is done, but I will also happily answer any questions about it to date. Any feedback is great too!
For the past five years I have been running a website development company. What started in my 2nd year of university as an awesome way to pay for tuition without huge debt or a part-time job doing something I don't like became a serious business venture and a company with a mission to solve some really difficult problems in web development (a rapidly growing but frustrating industry). By my 4th year I was opening an office, hiring employees, and switching my five year program to part-time so that I would have time to run everything, finish my degrees, and not burn out. Since then we've opened a bigger office, have a nice little development team now, and have the opportunity to work on some neat projects.
I can't complain too much about my situation, but Tim's book (as well as others such as Built to Last by Jim Collins) really highlighted strongly some of the ways that I've really been holding myself and the company back. Lots of Work 4 Work's sake. Lots of delegation opportunities missed, lots of shuffling papers. At various points in running the company I have had many roles that have been vital, but far too often I've been the overbusy bottleneck, working 60-80 hour weeks without looking for a better way. It's ironic because our entire offering is strongly rooted in automation and scalability, and I've worked hard since day 1 to make that the religion of the company. But I haven't made myself scaleable!
Since originally reading the 4HWW I have put a lot of 4HWW inspired ideas into use, from small revelations like switching away from vendors that don't do automated credit card processing (not that I handle bills myself, but no sense paying someone else to waste their time either) to big ideas like a customized project management system that increasingly automates project management and saves a ridiculous amount of e-mails. It has really helped. Yet for all my good intentions and all the tremendous progress, my presence at the office was (seemingly) invaluable.
My 30 Day Remote CEO Experiment
Necessity is the mother of invention indeed. In the summer I need to become a very hands-off CEO for 3 months as I finish a part of my degree that requires full-time effort (yes, thanks to my entrepreneurial ambitions I'm still in school!). Running the office full-time and managing my team in person isn't going to cut it, and we are nowhere near the point where we can hire someone to be the office manager. I therefore dedicated February as my 30 day remote work experiment to forcefully cut reliance on me and resolve any issues with me not being accessible 24/7 before the stakes are upped in the summer. I informed my employees in January, then went about the prep work to make it happen. I created the following core rules:
I respond to e-mails from my team once a day. It is their responsibility that anything I am genuinely needed for is sent well ahead of time, and more importantly, they are now empowered to make their own decisions (technically they always have, but when I'm happy to discuss and throw my two cents into even the flavors of coffee ordered, there hasn't been a necessity to take advantage of this).
I am "present" at the office Friday afternoons to sign cheques, discuss things in person, and handle anything else that needs my attention. I work at home the rest of the time. I do show up to the office at other times, but only to meet with clients. I cannot be asked questions, no matter how critical during those times. I do say hi of course when I'm there and may chit chat a little, but no work discussion!
I will have my cell phone and will treat calls from the office as an emergency. Conversely, a phone call to my cell phone has to be an emergency. An emergency means our services are down, a rabid grizzly bear has breached the office perimeter, or someone is hurt. Billing issues, development questions, coffee orders, etc are not emergencies and judgment is to be used to deal with them accordingly.
It is now day 16 of the experiment and the developments have already been pretty interesting. It's run long enough that I've wanted to take some time to reflect on the results, and since it helps to write such reflections out, I figure I may as well share them with this forum in the hopes that they are useful to others or can trigger some good discussion:
1) The experiment has been at least as big of a challenge for myself as it has been for my employees. It is very easy to accidentally break the e-mail rule when something is urgent, saving the day, but ultimately sabotaging the experiment. I've recognized this and have been better at it the past week. Let bad things happen as Tim says. This is worst since a big part of my job is sales, and so even with remote work I need to communicate with clients, and hence there is a lot of e-mailing I have to do in the process of closing sales.
2) I've been very successful at using my BlackBerry a lot less with the new found freedom to not reply to employee issues and knowing that a customer won't be waiting on a response because a developer has to check in with me (well most of the time at least). This is rapidly breaking what can be described as almost a nervous tick of constantly checking the BlackBerry whenever idle, or even when watching a movie, going out to dinner, etc.
If you don't tame it, the BlackBerry is almost a portable container to carry all of your work problems with you wherever you go, rather than a tool of liberation. It is a very weight-off-the-shoulders feeling to let that go. Long-term this should become a cellphone, modem (the tethering capabilities rock), and e-mail SENDING (not receiving) device for me.
3) I had to zip down to the office a number of times because I was missing notes that I took at a meeting and needed them to respond to a client. It is clear now that paper is the enemy of mobility and I am now working actively to go paperless. I will experiment this week with taking meeting notes on my laptop.
4) OpenVPN rocks! It took some effort to get it setup, and an extra $50/mo for a dedicated IP address at our office, but I can now remote desktop into my computer from anywhere that I have internet via a secure VPN connection. This solves a lot of traditional mobility issues because while we are a web company and have a lot of our own systems web-based, giant 40MB PSD files and the archaic architecture of QuickBooks makes it really awkward to work off a web browser. I haven't had a chance to test how well this works using the BlackBerry as a modem, but from any decent internet connection I can work from my work computer and even stream music off it at the same time. My home computer and my laptop are dumb terminals with nothing of value on them. I still need to research how to remote reboot my computer at work since having it crash can be a huge nuisance.
5) It truly is amazing how much time goes into the little day-to-day details instead of the big picture stuff that truly matters in the long-run. This experiment has helped put my time to better use by connecting off constant distractions in the office. I feel less pressured and can stop halfway through the day to exercise. It is nice. On the other hand it also highlights how much of my day is communication, and how much of it could be cut down by putting together some mail templates, brochures, more info on our website, etc. I may work hard, but not all of it is necessary work!
6) When I was at the office it seemed that everything needed me to keep running. Simply by making myself unavailable, problems are now taking care of themselves. This now has me wondering, Tim style, how much management can be automated. Once the 30 days of this experiment are up, rather than going back to the Old Way until the summer, I think I'm actually going to step it up a notch and see what sort of extremes I can take things.
7) Ignore and mismanagement are not cool. Our Project Management system, which we've had for a couple of years but built many last Fall in preparation for the summer's absence, has been instrumental in allowing me to be able to see what is happening. I know the status of each project, whether it's blocked by anything we are waiting on, when it's due, what the profitability of our various projects is, whether there are budget overruns occurring, what each person's work load is like, etc, all at a quick glance on one dashboard. I think having the appropriate business info in a palatable format at a moment's notice has been really vital. Not only does it cut down communication, but I can see how the company is doing along critical parameters. That's very different than turning a blind eye to everything and hoping that it's going well. This goes back to automation and delegation, and having processes to make sure everything runs smoothly.
I'm sure many of you winced the moment I started talking about employees and brick and mortar office space. That is not the Tim Ferris Way. So I think it's important to point out that my passions and my business are strongly tied together. For me it's not a simple matter of cutting my work week down to 4 hours so I can pursue my true hobby of music or skydiving or basket weaving because building an awesome company is a big dream/hobby of mine. Instead my aims are to stop working in my business and focus on becoming the builder, and in doing so be able to better serve our customers while simultaneously affording myself the freedom to work my butt off for 3 months at a hyper charged pace when I want to (when I get into something, I get into it), and then disappear for 3 months on a break. That's where I want to be ultimately.
I will definitely post an update once the experiment is done, but I will also happily answer any questions about it to date. Any feedback is great too!