CEO Daily Updates

Lessons and Tips of a Work-From-Home Culture | Joe Goes on Vacation | COVID-19 News Updates

Happily Dapily Tuesday!  

I read an article today titled “Don’t Buy Into The Work-From-Home Hype“. The author talks about some of the benefits of working in the office, as well as the dangers of being isolated from growth opportunities in a more interactive environment. I agree with some of the dangers posed, but I think it is possible to overcome them without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  

To be certain, working from home is here to stay. Maybe not for every company, but for some significant quantity of them that have learned how to do it. With a small amount of reservation, I’ll say I am pretty sure we are one of them. (There are two weasel clauses in that last sentence in case you didn’t catch them). I think that the ability for each company to succeed at maintaining a work from home culture depends on several factors. Here are a few that spring to mind….  

Vision and Leadership are important. One thing we have learned at CK is that we MUST be able to help a person understand what is expected in their role and how it fits into the overall picture. If we don’t know what we need them to do, they probably won’t either. You have to know your business model and know who needs to be where doing what. If you are a fly by the seat of your pants start-up where everyone “just does what needs to be done” this will be a lot harder. You might be able to solve for it with daily video calls to sync up until you can get better role clarity and reporting in place. If people don’t know what they are supposed to do, or what results are expected, it will be a lot easier to let things slide.  

Vision and/or good leadership (they are not the same, but can create similar outputs) also compels a person (or should) to WANT to drive things forward. Your team, and especially leaders, should be laying in bed at night thinking about how to accomplish things. When the vision is that compelling, you’ll be much more likely to be able to rely on your people to perpetuate a performance culture, no matter where their butt is parked. And vision doesn’t always have to come from the top (although it should start there). Don’t underestimate the inspirational and passionate leadership of mid-level managers and leaders to achieve the important things necessary to drive the business forward through their people.  

You’ll benefit from good reporting – You can’t rely on hallway conversations to fill you in on how a project is going since you’re not having them. Be intentional. Who needs to report on what, when? Determine what you did in the office and make sure you are at least doing that, but take this opportunity to refine the expectations and reporting to help you run the business well.  

Also, the accountability that comes with good reporting is important. There is some FALSE sense of accountability when you can SEE someone in the office, but that doesn’t mean they are getting anything done. Defining the expectations will help you begin to frame out what the reporting should look like.  

Focus on Outcomes. As much as possible, when redefining roles, accountability, and reporting for people who work from home, try to focus on defining the expectation of outcomes more than activity. Giving a sense of purpose to each team member helps them make their own decisions throughout the day that drive the desired outcome, instead of only measuring their efforts based on inputs of time … or worse, them feeling like they can simply “be available” (queue fingernails on chalkboard).  

The Need for Rest | Inspect the Inputs | Goggles? | Prayer Requests

Happy Friday!  

Woot Woot! I am going to do some sleeping, some rib cooking, some TV watching, and ……. well, what I mean to say is I am going to do whatever my wife tells me we are doing. Ha! I still have my laptop finishing touches to do, which shouldn’t take long, but I do hope to do all the things mentioned above this weekend. I have learned that the longer and harder I work my brain (and body), the more I need to be intentional about rest and recovery.  

I am my best when I am not worn down, and if I go too far it takes much longer to recover. True story – I got so worn down from work once (perhaps about 8-10 years ago) that my wife and I went on a beach vacation for two weeks and the ENTIRE time we were there I never turned the TV on, and we went hardly anywhere –  I just laid on the couch staring at the ceiling or sat on the porch watching the ocean. For two weeks. I was that bad off. I let myself get way too far gone from being too overworked.  

Since then I have learned that I tend to work in sprints. I will go really really hard for a few months, and then either need a vacation, or a season of going much slower. It’s near super human when I am sprinting but I have to recharge. What I seem to be experiencing now, at age 41 (soon to be 42), are batteries that don’t seem to be charging back up as fast as they used to.  Maybe “When you get my age” is really a thing – haha.  

Inspect the inputs:  

Over time we have tried to build leading indicators and funnels to understand and predict outcomes. Instead of looking at invoicing, which is “staring out the back of the bus”, we look at booked revenue, preceded by a list of other things that begin at activities and actions (like Google Adwords impressions) all the way through site traffic, conversion rate, cart abandonment, etc. It’s scientific, it removes a lot of guessing, and it’s real time. In fact, we have charts that show average site traffic by hour over the last several weeks compared to actual site traffic by hour TODAY. We can tell throughout the day if an hour is off (up or down).