Many of you may have noticed that I’ve missed a day or two of blogging - I apologize, I know how MysteryCEO.com has become a drug of sorts for you

Well, our company is in the dead middle of a big product launch and I have literally been working around the clock (loving every minute of it - but sleepy at the same time). There is ONE thing I can’t get over, I’ve done quiet a few of these launches and have always promised myself one thing:

Next time, before we even announce the launch date, we’ll make sure EVERYTHING is done - all sales material, product, testing, etc…

What I can’t understand is why I NEVER follow through with that? It seems NOTHING gets done until a firm date is SET. But at the same time, nothing is done at the time the firm date is set (well, not “nothing” - but you know what I mean).

So, in other words - to motivate yourself TO get things done, deadlines become necessary…

Anyways - what’s your opinion on that?  Do you work better with deadlines?

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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.

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