If you own a business, I hate to break it to you, but there is no such thing as a vacation. Ok, maybe that’s a bit harsh. I take vacations. Actually, I get to travel quite a bit and love doing so. However, as a business owner there is no such thing as leaving the laptop at home or putting down the “crackberry.” You need to watch your business like a hawk. I must get at least 30 emails per day from people inquiring about this and that. A lot of these emails need to be fielded and forwarded to employees. You can’t stop being the quarterback. I just figured out that I get about 200 emails per day (including spam). If I go three days without checking email, that is 600 emails! There is no way I can just create my “out of the office” autoresponder and worry about emails when I get home.

If you want to be successful, you need to stay connected. It’s the life you have to live (at least for now). You need to pay your dues at a frantic pace for years before you can sail away on your yacht and not worry about things. But here is the flip side: you are your own boss. You can go anywhere you want! You can do anything you want! You can take that vacation without having to request time off. The only caveat is that you can’t put everything down. You have to stay connected. But I think it is a good trade-off, especially if you love your company and are as passionate about what you are doing as I am. You really don’t see having to stay connected as a burden. Winning customers, partnering, and expanding my network fuel me and keep me going. Sometimes my vacation is even better because great things are happening back home.

As long as you are on top of things, I think the blackberry and the laptop un-tether you from your desk and allow you to go places and still get stuff done. I remember life before my blackberry and Sprint wireless card, and I was always freaking out that I had to get back to the office. Now I can do business on a beach in Maui or from the Great Wall of China. No joke! I was replying to clients from the top of the wall outside of Beijing. It was an awesome feeling that I could be thousands of miles away seeing one of the seven wonders of the world, and I was able to conduct business and make sure things got done. One could argue that I didn’t appreciate the scenery as much and that I was “looking down and not up.” But like anything else in life, you need balance. I could still conduct business and enjoy the views. I tell you right now, I couldn’t be at my office enjoying the Great Wall; there is a give and take.

I haven’t used the “out of office” autoresponder feature in two years, because I am never fully out of the office. I think it’s a small price to pay to get to where you want to be in life.

1. I will not be afraid to take risks
2. I will be as confident as I can at all times
3. I will take constructive criticism as something constructive
4. I will always make fun of myself
5. I will stick to a rigorous schedule and always hit my deadlines. Persistence is the key to success!

Scenario 1: If you are a business owner, you realize that nobody in your company can do a job as well as you can. As a result, you never delegate and will always assign yourself the task at hand.

Scenario 2: You are so busy that you don’t have time to train someone to do it, and because of your attitude (see #1 above), you would just rather get it done quickly by yourself.

Scenario 3: You don’t have any project management procedures in place, coupled with follow-through habits, so even if you delegate a task to someone, you haven’t put any milestones or deadlines in place, and things will eventually slip through the cracks.

Scenario 4: You don’t have a lot of people you can delegate to because you are small and are just starting out.

Scenario 5: Is there a 5th one you can think of?

Delegation is one of those incredibly important skill sets to have as a CEO. The smartest CEOs in the world aren’t usually the engineers of the company, they usually aren’t the best public speakers, and they surely don’t have the most knowledge of the company’s intellectual property. They surround themselves with people who can do what they themselves can’t, then they delegate. Don’t get me wrong–I am not trying to use the phrase “teachers teach,” because a CEO has to be a jack-of-all-trades and needs to master the art of being a chameleon. CEOs need to be able to at least grasp concepts so they can help make educated decisions. They must also find the right people and motivate, motivate, motivate.

The only way to truly expand a business is to be able to find and hire the right people, then delegate their goals to them and make sure they hit those goals. It is so important you learn the art of delegation as quickly as possible. CEOs who have the Scenario 1 issue need to stop and ask themselves one simple question: “If I really spend time training this person, will he or she ever be able to do this task, and if so, how long would it take him or her to learn?”. If the answer is never, you need to either fire that person and find someone new or start thinking about who else in your company could manage this task.

At the end of the day, it is your job as the CEO to have group managers report back to you as to how their departments are performing. As you start to get bigger and bigger, this becomes a reality. I find myself spending less time selling these days and a lot more time on financial projections, building our next generation platform, public relations, marketing and branding. The tasks I used to have time for, I don’t anymore, but those tasks didn’t go away.

For Scenario 2 CEOs, have you heard the expression, “Take one step back, two steps forward.”? This is the perfect analogy for simply taking the time to train a competent person. Sure it’s tough because you have so much going on and you could do it faster, but damn it, if you don’t teach someone else, you are going be doing this task for the rest of your life! Take a step back and show a competent person (competent being paramount here) how it is done. Your one step back is the time it takes to train someone; your two steps forward is that you can now delegate that project/task in the future to someone else.

So let’s say you get good at handing things off to people. You love it so much that you keep delegating more and more tasks and soon you have more projects spinning than any one man can handle, but that’s the beautiful part about delegation–more than one man can handle. However, CEOs just don’t bark orders and expect them to be done; they are managers and need to manage. Scenario 3 is the pitfall of so many CEO entrepreneurs. You can never expect someone working for you to always get the job done right and on time. Even the most dedicated and talented employees still don’t have your mentality. This is your baby, and you are always going take the best care of it. With that in mind, it is very important that you establish project management procedures. Some people like using software like Basecamp or Microsoft Project. Personally, because of how fast-paced our company is, we use good old-fashioned Excel. There isn’t one project or task someone has that does not get written down into his “Project Status Update” file, along with a due date. We keep the milestones simple: “First draft, second draft, final draft, manager x approval, launch.” All of these milestones would have a due date. You better believe that I am looking over my managers’ task lists on a daily basis and asking them how their progress is coming along. If they aren’t hitting deadlines, I am asking them why and trying to figure out a way that this won’t happen again. If they continue to miss deadlines, I put them on review and these reviews could affect salaries when raises come around. Think of this as a tennis match–you hit the ball to someone and he had better hit it back or he just posted a point to you. You have to make sure that he or she hits that ball back and that the ball is exactly how your manager said it was going to be.

The fourth and final scenario is a common one at this stage. One of the biggest issues is that everyone is so overloaded with work that even if they could do a good job with a new project, they don’t have the time to take it on. So being a good prioritizer is important here. Ask yourself if this project is monumental and must be done right away, or if you can put it on the back burner until someone’s time frees up.

Or you can be like me and come into the office on a Sunday when nobody is there, turn up the house music really loud, blow a fan in your face because the building turns A/C off on Sunday, and try to get as much of it done as possible because, hey, at the end of the day, you own the biggest piece, right?

Jared Reitzin
www.jaredreitzin.com

I believe there are two types of “to dos” in business–tasks and projects. Projects are large and have multiple dependencies and milestones. With tasks, there is usually just one thing you need to do and when that one task is done, you can cross it off your list. I highly recommend using a good project management system for your larger projects, especially if you are doing any sort of software development. However, this article is about making sure tasks don’t slip through the cracks.

Things get added to your plate in many different ways. Let’s take a look at where my tasks come from:

1. By Email: Most of the things that get added to my plate come in by email. Usually someone I work with or a client needs me to do look something over or do something for them.
2. By Phone: I am on the phone so much I miss a lot of calls. I always try to call everyone back, but the callback list starts piling up.
3. In Person: At meetings, something always gets added to my plate. Sometimes it’s just the meeting notes and/or next steps that I need to type up and send to someone.

I have developed a very easy system over the years so that nothing slips through the cracks, and it always involves using Microsoft Outlook. It’s even better when you use Exchange so that your blackberry and laptop are synced up with your work station. This gives you even more protection.

I use three methods of keeping track of my tasks, and they utilize a combination of a notepad next to my phone and Outlook. For incoming phone calls, I always take notes and write down the person’s number. If it is a personal call, I almost always them back from the road, either to or from work. I keep a running log of who calls and at what time. I also rate the call from 1 to 5, 1 being a call I need to return right away and 5 being a call I can make over the next week. I will add this call list every day to the tasks section in MS Outlook so that it shows up on my blackberry device which allows me to make calls anywhere I am. I am able see who I need to call back and how important it is.

Once a week I will write down (either by hand or in Word) all of my major tasks and have that “to do” list printed out and placed next to my keyboard. As my tasks are completed, I cross things off the list. It is so important that you do this! The reason is that not only won’t you forget anything, but it provides a sense of accomplishment as you see things being removed from your plate. Stress is caused by being overwhelmed, and people who don’t visually see their plate getting smaller continue to stress. And in case you forgot, stress causes hair loss and early death.

As I said above, most tasks get added to my plate via email. The most disorganized people I know have more than 200 emails in their inbox. The inbox should be the most important task manager you have. It’s so important that you keep it clean and it houses only tasks that you need to complete. I use my inbox as my main task manager. My rule is that if it isn’t in my inbox, it doesn’t exist. If it is in my inbox, I need to take some sort of action. It’s important that you delete anything you don’t need and keep everything you do. Every day, I will review my inbox all the way back to the oldest email to decide if I can move anything out of there.

The following are types of emails most people get on a daily basis:

1. Newsletters or trade emails
2. Client or co-worker emails
3. Friends and family
4. Bills or notices
5. Spam

If you are like I am, you read a ton of newsletters and trade emails so you can keep up with your industry and the competition. I receive about 10 major ones per day. I will usually look at each one and if there is an article that I want to read, I will not delete the email from my inbox until I have done so. I have some emails that are two months old, but if the article is important enough to me, I won’t delete it. If you are not keeping up with your industry, I also view that as letting things slip through the cracks. However, it is important that you keep your inbox clean so as soon as you are done reading, get it out of there.

All emails from clients or co-workers get a response. I don’t delete the email until I have responded. If there is something I need a client or co-worker to do, I won’t remove the original email out of my inbox until that task has been completed. If they respond, I will keep the response in my inbox and delete the first email they sent. Again, it is so important that you only keep the most important things in your inbox at all times. Make sure you don’t keep a string of conversations in your inbox; only keep the latest one.

Emails from friends or family (depending upon the importance) usually don’t get a response during business hours. I like to clear these out of my queue after hours when I am less distracted and can provide extra attention to the people who matter the most.

I get a ton of notices, bills, invoices, etc., on a daily basis. If it is an invoice and I need to get our billing department involved, I will forward it and delete it from my inbox right away. If it is a notice, I usually read it and then delete it right away, unless it is something like a domain renewal and there is a time constraint.

I finally got a decent spam filter and I don’t get much, but spam will never fully go away. You guys know what do with these freaking messages.

I feel the best when my inbox does not have any more than 50 emails in it at all times. When I am on the road, it can easily get above 300. I will stay awake until very late just removing and replying to emails so I can clear my inbox. When I get below fifty, I finally start feeling a lot better and less stressed.

With all of these emails you are deleting, your deleted folder should get pretty big over time. I usually only keep three months of deleted emails; anything older than three months I delete for good. As your PST file gets bigger, Outlook starts to slow down and nothing is more frustrating than a slow Outlook. I keep about six months of my sent items since I always need to find some email I sent to someone that they claim they didn’t get (thanks spam). Make sure you archive your sent items that are older than four to six months so you can keep Outlook running smoothly. One more thing I do for organization is use a program called X1. You will find out more about this in my post, “Entrepreneur’s Software Arsenal.” It’s only $50.00, and it will change your life.

Do you have any good organizational skills to add to this post? Put a note in the comment section, and I will add it to this post with a link to your website.

Thanks,
Jared

]]> http://www.jaredreitzin.com/slipping-through-the-cracks/feed/ http://www.jaredreitzin.com/happy-mlk-day/ http://www.jaredreitzin.com/happy-mlk-day/#comments Tue, 22 Jan 2008 00:16:10 +0000 Jared http://www.jaredreitzin.com/happy-mlk-day/ Dr. Martin Luther King is one of my heroes. Imagine for a second that you knew you could be assassinated if you continued to purse a cause that you knew was right and just. Could you continue to stand up for what you believe in? I think about this often, and I realize that there are very few people on this earth who could. Does this story remind you of any other historical figure?

MLK was a very selfless man. He realized that segregation would affect generations of people long after he was gone. He saw a window of opportunity to change that while he was alive on this earth and he took it. It amazes me to think that only 40 years ago, African Americans, and other minorities, were not allowed to go to the same schools as Whites, drink at the same fountains, or sit at the front of a bus. We have come a long way to make equality work, and thanks to Dr. King, “little black boys and black girls are able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”

If you have a moment today, go to AmericanHetoric.com and either listen to or read his famous speech. It’s impossible not to get goose bump. This man is spitting fire.

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