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: 24% [?]

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: 26% [?]

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: 21% [?]

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: 23% [?]