So the more management we get into, the more I’ve been thinking about this concept. Especially having a largly virtual team, it becomes a big issue for us to think about.

Many don’t understand the concepts - micromanaging and macromanaging, I’m also now creating my own term - rightmanaging.

Micromanaging: 

The best way to describe it is the way Wikipedia does, “management style where a manager closely observes or controls the work of their employees, generally used as a derogatory term.”

This is for people who just can’t let go - many entrepreneurs/CEOs “may” start off this way, but if they plan on surviving, they won’t make it long with micromanaging.

Not only are you not productive because you’re too busy watching over EVERYTHING - this is a big morale killer for the team. It basically shouts that you don’t trust your team and also those who work for you get sick of it eventually.

Micromanaging is like sucking the life out of you, your team and your business.

Macromanaging:

Macromanaging is the FLIP evil of micromanaging, “For the most part they leave their employees with a lack of decision making, especially when the details of the job change and they need immediate assistance - Source: CrystalLinks.com. Your team will always need your guidance and structure.

Macromanagers are almost “lazy” - they completely leave their team alone and this is never a good thing - unless you have ONE HELL of a team.

Even me, with the great team I have, I do keep a close tie to what’s going on - but I don’t practice micromanagement OR macromanagement (but if I were asked which one I’m closed to, it’d be macromanagement).

Introducing…RightManaging 

Not sure if anyone else has ever introduced this term, but I came up with it in my head.

Rightmanaging is really just a good balance of micromanagement and macromanagement - it’s right in the middle. A good manager never wants to over-crowd their team, but you do want to be there to make sure things are going well.

For example/ If your team is working on a project, you don’t need to see how they are doing every single element. However, you do need to check in to see deadlines are being met. And, on those deadlines, ask for demos of what is being produced.

This will not only help you stay in touch, but it will make your entire team feel great that they are involved. I mean as a good manager, what’s really your MAIN goal…

Nope, not that employees are on time. Not even that they are all constantly working. Honestly, not even that they do it only your way.

Your main goal as a manager is to make sure the project gets done on or before deadline and is done with supreme quality!

So, knowing that - practice rightmanagement. Don’t get in everyone’s way, but make sure you’re at least there to bump into them every now and then.

Popularity: 56% [?]

So I’m sitting at a seminar this past weekend and someone I truly trust tells me, “hey you should do the kolbe…”

What the hell is a kolbe? Sounds like some Jewish dance.

He was referring to a “Kolbe Index” - it’s basically 36 questions you answer - this thing then does a FULL analysis of you and tells you what kind of person you are and what your strengths are.

Why the heck do I need to know who “I” am…

I mean who knows you better than you know yourself. Well, it’s not for that. There are 2 purposes to use it for:

1. Self-Validation

It’s nice to know that you’re not crazy and that it’s OK to be the way you are - Kolbe tells you how to work WITH who you are rather than changing yourself.

2. Hiring!

This is where I’m going to be using it the most. You can make all your potential hires go through it first and review the evaluation - it will really help you better understand what you’re getting into.

It only took me about 20 minutes, I did it while I was waiting for my flight at an airport. It’s even kind of fun to do…

I was blown away…

They were right. This thing had me PINNED! The evaluation was VERY specific, let me show you a few things…

This is the BASIC rating they gave me: I don’t like doing research (TRUE), I’m OK at following-through with things after launching them (ALSO TRUE - this is why I always have product managers), I’m GREAT at coming up with ideas and JUMPING on them (SOOO VERY TRUE) and I’m a pretty bad IMPLEMENTOR (Here, I disagree a bit). I find I’m very good at execution and implementing, but maybe I’m not?

They do warn not to argue with the results and NOT TO GET OFFENDED.

Now, that is general stuff right? Well, here, let’s get into the details…

This is just ONE of many examples where I got freaked out. It was DEAD on, I SERIOUSLY do work better LAST minute, I HATE conforming and even more, I hate sticking to scripts - I’m a “winger” - I like winging things.

Bottom line, this Kolbe Index was great. Once you take the 36 questions you can buy all sorts of evaluations, career, personal relationships and many more. For hiring, I’m going to use the main Kolbe Index and the “Career MO.” The main Kolbe Index is only $50 and the Careero MO was like $30.

So, for a total of $80, I validated myself - feel good and can stop trying to change myself!

Visit http://www.Kolbe.com

Popularity: 65% [?]

I’ve said it before on this blog that the bigger your company gets and the more hiring you do, you can expect YOUR role as the CEO to move towards more “management.” Management may sound fun, but it can make any “true” entrepreneur want to ram their head into a wall.

As boring as it may seem, I am now convinced that it is a truly vital part of the business - without it, an entrepreneur will simply run the company bankrupt.

Some of the “not so fun” parts of being management include (but are not limited to) the following…

1. Financial modeling (for you, your company, the investors)

2. Financial tracking - One of the main key roles of the CEO and CFO are really “cash flow management” and making sure that the company has money and is not in any hot water. By tracking your actuals vs. your model, you have the ability to predict any cash problems months in advance.

A good CEO will catch these and solve the problem early rather than getting caught by surprise (a pure entrepreneur would probably have no idea until the lights went out).

3. Hiring - This means spending MORE time doing modeling and negotiating for key hires.

4. Management Meetings - “So…what color tissue paper should we get for the bathroom?” This is an on-going joke that the bigger companies get, the more meetings their management has over silly things - the more time they waste, etc…

Meetings are vital and important - but if you plan on using them to discuss “junk” - you’re killing your company.

5. Strategy Development - Yet again, more time with spreadsheets and “data” trying to figure out what products to launch and which direction to go in.

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What sparked this post?

One of our executive team members just recently made an observation that I was lately either spending all my time in spreadsheets and modeling or on the phone. When she said that I had one of those “AH HA” moments where I thought … “it’s begun…there’s no turning back now.”

I’ve learned more about Excel in the last 2 weeks than I ever wanted to know or planned on learning. But, at the same time, this is the first time where I truly feel like I have a good grasp on the “health” of our business. I know EXACTLY when to expect problems and even better, I know exactly when we can raise or need to lower our spending.

For the first time, I feel like I have my fingers on the pulse of the business - all hail Excel!

Popularity: 36% [?]

The more we get into corporate sales the more shocked I get about how SLLLOOOOWWW these big companies are! Even the smallest decision has multiple layers of approval. Even after the leading manager/director approves the project, then there is an entire new approval process through the financial department for the actual invoice!

I definitely understand the need for structure and organization, the larger you get, the more people you have to watch and the more systems you need. Obviously, the more systems you put into place, the more “red-tape” there is…etc…etc…that all makes everything slower.

I get it.

But, is there seriously no better way?

I see this as one of the biggest advantages that smaller businesses or start-ups have over big companies - they are nimble; only a few people need to make the decision and they need to get it done fast (they’re busy doing 10 other things too).

The more I experience this, the more I believe that keeping our organization nimble and allowing the right managers the RIGHTS to make quick decisions is critical. Some ideas I have to put this into place…

1. Every department head and sub-manager should have a “no question” budget or range within which they can approve.
2. There should be a central system for proposals and approvals that all department heads check at least weekly (rather than a string of emails that get lost).
3. Just say “no.” I’ve noticed that the bigger they are, the harder it is for them to just say no - but, stop wasting everyone’s time - if you don’t want it, just say no!

My Personal Experience With Microsoft… 

For example, I was dealing with Microsoft on a deal once. After wasting weeks of my time in trying to set-up a call (btw, THEY were hunting ME down), we finally got on a call. We were on that call for 1 hour with me explaining what we could do for them (btw, this is over a year ago). Finally, the Microsoft rep basically tells me in his own words…

“Well, we want you to do this and that for us - all customized just for Microsoft, but we’re not going to pay you for it. No, you can’t co-brand it and no, you can’t even tell people that Microsoft is your client.”

I’m sorry, what the hell do “I” get then? He went on to tell me that they had no “budget” for what we were offering.

My question … why did YOU hunt ME down?

So, basically, they were not able to just say “no, we don’t want this service” but instead they wanted the highest version of our service for free, just because they were Microsoft - no thanks.

The best example of a nimble big company I have seen…

Google - I think the main reason they are continuing to grow so fast and are destroying Microsoft and Yahoo is that no matter how big they get, they remain nimble.

They are constantly launching new services, new products, hiring new people, going into new international markets - yet, they make decisions and they trust their employees and managers with a certain “room” for self-monitoring and decision-making.

I have personally had an experience with Google as well and the entire process lasted only one week. We had an “offer” for them, we wrote it to the right person in a department. He was interested, set-up a call a week later - we did a 1 hour call where we went through a lot of Q&A. A few days later he wrote to us saying he was not interested…a NO! Or better yet, a FAST NO!

Sure, I didn’t sell them - but I still love them for respecting my time and just going one way or the other.

Moral of the story? I don’t care how big you get, you should monitor how long it’s taking people to make decisions in your company. Make sure you remain nimble.

Popularity: 40% [?]

I’ll probably take a break from virtual team discussion for a few days after this post, but here is another tip that is very necessary if you are running a virtual team. And, in full confession, we are still not very good about it (but fortunately we have such a great team, it has not been too necessary, everyone works on the “it was due yesterday” system

Running Tight Deadlines

By default with a virtual team - the team members are going to work their own hours - there really is nothing you can do to control that. If you try to place too many measures to assure “time based” work from your team, that’s a horrible culture to put in place.

So the solution is to move over to “project based” - think about it, do you REALLY care what times the project was worked on so long as it was done on time?

Our position on this is that we set-up launch dates and sub-dates within the launch for milestones. As long as those are met, we’re in very good shape.

It’s critical to really watch these deadlines tightly. It’s even more critical to make sure you have multiple milestones in the process of creating a bigger project. Small deadlines are much easier to manage than one large “launch this project on date X” deadline.

Make sure to appoint a “Project Manager” - one person who is responsible for managing the deadlines.

Project and milestone based deadlines: This is the simplest way to manage virtual teams, to make sure everything is getting done in a timely fashion while also allowing the freedoms that everyone gets from working off-location.

Popularity: 33% [?]

Given that I am just returning today from an international trip where I met with two seperate teams that are absolutely critical to our business and obviously working virtually - I figured it would fit to discuss how we manage a virtual team.

From day 1 our team has been virtual so I’ve gotten quite used to it, however, the more I meet other companies, I have learned that managing a virtual team is quite a task for many and also unsuccesful.

There are many things that we do, some purposely and some just happen by chance that really make a virtual team possible.

Today, let me share some of the TOOLS we use to make it possible…

1. Conference Call Lines

In the U.S. we use www.freeconferencecall.com to run at least 1 team call a week where we have a very specific outline we use:

A) General reporting from the CEO and any other team lead with major news. Here we discuss the status of all on-going projects and any other major developments.

B) We go through all members of call 1 by 1 and ask the following 2 questions:

i) What are the 3 main objectives for this week.
ii) Anything you need from any team members?

** The great thing here is that it makes everyone’s commitments public and also gives everyone a chance to chat live.

If someone commits to doing something, they are now obliged to the entire team. The sense of responsibility drastically increases.

C) We go through any questions anyone has regarding anything going on.

** Our calls range from between 30 minutes to 1 hour.

2. GTalk

Most of us all have Gmail accounts and are constantly logged onto Gtalk so we can easily ping each other instantly if needed.

GTalk allows you to do instant messaging chat and also allows you to use their system for live chat through your computer (which is crystal clear even internationally).

3. Skype

You can host multi-user conference calls through Skype for free which are also free to use.

4. Project Management System

We currently use BaseCamp. This is a system that allows you to create many projects, deadlines, to-do lists, chat boards, etc…all around specific projects. You can also control who has access to what.

http://www.basecamphq.com/

My confession here is that I’m still not very good at using BaseCamp (the rest of the team is), I still prefer receiving e-mail threads, but am trying to get out of that now.

These are the 4 major tools we use to run a virtual team, they are simple and mostly free!

Tip of the Day: Even if you don’t have a virtual team, a weekly team call is critical - it has tremendously helped us stay organized and also build relationships and repore between the team members.

Popularity: 37% [?]

So as I mentioned yesterday, right before I snuck out of the office I was visiting a couple of days ago, the manage of the office asked me to make an “inspirational and motivational speech” to the group. Speaking to the group is one thing. Motivating a group is another thing…

However, he added the phrase “motivate them so that they don’t leave us for 10 years…”

NOW my eyes gouged out a bit - what the hell am I going to say that will motivate a group of people I have never met to stay with us for 10 years!?

At first I fought it and tried to get out of it, but quickly I had one of my famous “AH HA” moments. If you think about it, what is the main job of a leader? To inspire and motivate!

So, I took up the challenge and plunged into the speech.

The group was actually very attentive, everyone quickly turned around (they actually stood up first), as I spoke I could see heads nodding and many really understanding our big picture as I explained it - I quickly felt very welcomed and comfortable and got into a rhythm.

Here is the outline I used:

1. Thanked them for everything they are doing for us.
2. Discussed the “big” picture of the company.
3. Gave details of how what they are doing fits the company’s growth and how important it is.
4. Talked about some of the great feets we have crossed and why 2008 is the biggest year yet.
5. Asked questions (which I think they were still too shy to ask).
6. Mentioned my open door policy and gave everyone my personal contact information.
7. Ended the talk with another great thank you!

The entire talk was less than 5 minutes, which I think was perfect, I meant it to be fast.

In self-review, I feel I did “OK,” I could have done a much better job in each of the 7 points above (I feel my nervousness probably showed a bit). As I finished up, our CTO who was present there gave me some great suggestions.

Here is what he said verbatim:

“You should have talked about how the company started and what the vision/mission behind the company is…”

He is absolutely right. I spend so much time around those who know how we started and who know our vision/mission that I took it for granted! One of the most unique aspects of our company is how we started and how strongly we believe in our vision/mission.

Before I discussed the “big picture” of the company, I should have spent time talking about our vision/mission and how we started. I will definitely fix this the next time…

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A Tip: Use some humor in your “speech” to lighten the mood and make everyone feel more comfortable with you. A smile and a laugh can help others receive your message better but can also give you that much more confidence to deliver your message.

Popularity: 33% [?]