Why is Productivity Beautiful?

Ever spent a whole day at work and not really accomplished anything? Read some email, factor in a couple of unexpected phone calls, toss in a few meetings. Before you know it, eight hours have passed and you haven't checked anything off of your list. You can always stay late (along with everyone else) but doesn't your family or your pet deserve some attention too? Didn't you promise yourself that you'd get some exercise? What about that book you never started?

I've found that my work time during the weekend is far more valuable than during the week. Why? Not because I particularly enjoy spending Saturday in front of a computer. It's because my perspective is totally different. During the week I feel an obligation to spend a certain number of hours working. Sometimes those are productive hours, sometimes they aren't. But I fit myself into the mold, whether or not it makes sense. On the weekend, however, I just target one or two discrete tasks. If those tasks take me five minutes, great! I walk away with a sense of satisfaction. If they take a couple hours, that's OK too. The point is that that weekend allows me to focus on what I'm trying to accomplish, not how long I spend doing it.

That's really what WorkWyze is about, too - allowing you to put everything else aside and focus on what needs to get done. It provides you with a 'work repository', a place to remember why you were hired. Why not give it a shot? Complete a Work Item. Feel that sense of satisfaction as it moves to your Archive folder. Maybe even assign a Work Item to someone else. Then go home and take your dog for a walk.

Email: The Black Hole

Twenty years ago, email was virtually unknown outside of academic and scientific settings. Today, it's so widespread that you might be shocked to find someone who doesn't use it. What an amazing transformation for such a short period of time.

In the workplace the change has been even more dramatic. Email has become the default means of communication, stealing market share from the telephone, hard-copy memorandum, bulletin board, hallway conversation and meetings. The problem is, it has been a little too successful.

Twenty years ago you never would have dreamt of having a lengthy debate with a colleague via pencil and paper. You wouldn't have called a meeting to look for your missing stapler. You wouldn't have used the bulletin board to monitor your team's performance. Today, though, email is used for all that and more; it's often the be-all and end-all for office information and communication. It's ubiquitous, easy to use, and fast. But it's also abused.

How many times have you had the following internal conversations, with more than a hint of frustration:

• "I'm positive he sent me that link, but I just can't find it. Or was it Joe that sent it? Forget it, I'll just ask the whole group if they know."
• "Ahh ... performance reviews, my favorite time of the year. What did Jane accomplish in the last 12 months? I know she was really productive, but I need specifics. I'll just go into Outlook and review all her emails. Yikes ... there are 454? Better get some coffee."
• "Why do they keep copying me on these messages? I don't care what they do in Sales unless it's going to impact me, or unless they need my help."

Email has become a dumping ground. Good luck separating the wheat from the chaff!

It's time to pull back a little and carefully consider where you store your important information. Work requests, status updates - your critical day-to-day information - should be accessible outside of email. Consider a separate work management system that will provide you easy access to the data that's most critical to your team. Has your team completed the work that you assigned to them? Do you remember what your boss asked you to do in the last meeting? Those are questions that you need to able to answer ... easily.

WorkWyze, offered by our start up Aquamarine Networks, is just one option. See what's out there and choose one that works for you. But whatever you do, don't just send an email.

WorkWyze - simplify how you manage your team

After many years of managing people and projects in organizations of all sizes I came to realize that there is a common thread; when two or more people get together to collaborate, chaos seems inevitable.

"I thought I told you that we needed it by Wednesday..."
"No, actually, I've been working on that..."
"This is so frustrating, I need to know who is assigned to this, and what the status is"

The thinking was that it shouldn't need to be this way. Myself and a couple of friends have built WorkWyze. WorkWyze is simple online tool that is designed to make is easier to manage teams, and enable team members more easily manage their work.

Our beta release is up and running. I'd really appreciate you stopping by WorkWyze.com and see if you'd like to try it out with your team. It's free! You can also check our brief video of at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njt3wGO7yy0

Productivity is beautiful!

Streams, Capsules, and Cloaking Systems

“Information wants to be free”, as the slogan goes. Services such as Twitter give us access virtually anything newsworthy, right now. Social Networks such as Facebook perform a similar function for friends and family. Huge technical innovation has taken place to get us this point, but the method with which information is delivered is also novel. To enable us to more easily consume the increasing volumes of information “the stream” has emerged. We are fed a neat and steady hose of information capsules in formats such as Twitter 140 character posts, and Facebook’s summarized updates of friend’s activities. At a glance we know what’s going on. If we want to know more, searching is simple.

If data about world events and social circles is now more fluid, the same could not be said for the information inside most organizations. Here the stream is more like an inconsistent drip. Crucial data relating to “what’s really going on…” is cloaked within isolated groups and individuals. Sometimes this buried information can be random beautiful nuggets that could unlock solutions to nagging issues. But its also often bad news that no one wants to touch; the stuff that is allowed to fester and later blows up like the BP oil explosion in the gulf of Mexico. Organizations that are conservative and secretive have cultures that tend to keep things hidden; like the stain on a old carpet the problem of concealment is rarely even acknowledged. The innovative companies though, realize the value of free access to information. They understand that knowledge is power, and creating channels that allow access to knowledge will only serve to strengthen the power of people to make the right decisions and get things done. The challenge though is that open and accessible corporate systems similar to the functionality made available via Facebook and Twitter have yet to hit their stride.

Shameless Plug 
In WorkWyze we are building solutions to the myriad of information issues faced by teams and organizations. WorkWyze is simple and free to use. We have taken a leaf from Twitter’s book by creating a feature whereby co workers can post a capsule of work related information into a stream that is viewable by other team members. These can be consumed as crisply as a tweet, with little of the baggage associated with email. The WorkWyze task tracking and assignment system is similar to Facebook’s news feed. Its no longer an issue to figure out who’s working on what, what the status is, and where the priorities lie.

If you’re a member of a progressive team, and want to check out WorkWyze, you can sign-up for our free beta by going to WorkWyze.com.

What I really need is a tool to help me manage my team

Your team gets by, but it sure would be nice if there was less chaos and hassle. I guess you could use Microsoft Project right? “Yuck” most would say. MS Project is a system that is generally favored by Project Managers that veer towards the geeky side, and even some of them are none too fond of all of those complicated looking Gantt charts, dependencies, and predecessors. For most, the jury is in. MS Project can be viewed as valuable for planning and blueprinting a project, but to manage and execute towards milestones old MSP is more than a tad on the rigid side.

37 Signals is a company that began providing services in the area of web design. Unsatisfied with the available tools that would allow them perform their work in an efficient manner, the folks at 37 Signals elected to build there own. And so Basecamp was born. Basecamp is a online solution that is significantly lighter and more elegant than MS project. In addition to Project Management, features include a White Board, Forums, and Document Management. It has attracted quite a following and has spawned a number of imitators. If your team is planning a project such as the design of a web site for a client, then products such as Basecamp are definitely worth looking in to.

But the thing is, most working teams are of an operational nature rather than project based. Work is frequently ad-hoc, often discrete, and only occasionally part of a grand plan. The challenges lie in making sure that work is defined, delegated, prioritized, and easily tracked. Most teams struggle along using combinations of email, spreadsheets, and documents to address these challenges. For sure, each of the aforementioned tools provides value, but none are designed to be a Work Management System.

In WorkWyze we believe that we have the optimal hybrid solution that provides relief for working teams. WorkWyze is part Task Management System, part Collaboration Tool, a dash of Social Networking, with a pinch of Project Management thrown in for good measure. It is simple and straight forward. It has a uniquely clear Workflow System that instantly allows you to track and identify the status of any work item. The Water Cooler activity feed allows you to take an instant pulse of the what is going on in your work environment. The Reporting feature allows you to track what your team members have elected to prioritize, it also enables the monitoring of next steps, and measures the on-going progress of the team.

Getting used to GAE

I'm starting to get comfortable with the Google Apps Engine and, so far, it's a great tool.  Once you learn the syntax and the basic structure, it's a quick way to develop features and make them available for feedback.  I went with the Python option (over Java) for the simple reason that I have a family member who also uses Python. At this point any help I can get is invaluable.  I do have some long-term concerns about the viability of GAE for this project but we'll just have to see how things turn out. For example, data indices can take days (!) to build when you move a live version of your code to the live system.  Also, I know that GAE doesn't support HTTPS connections from custom domains.  At some point I'll be forced to look into workarounds for that problem. But, for now, this platform is easy, free, and has enough support that I can usually find answers to my questions. - Glenn

Building a Prototype, Gathering User Feedback

So we’ve hashed through the UI and functionality and have come up with a bare bones interactive prototype. Used Adobe’s Fireworks for this (good range of functionality, but pretty buggy on a Mac). Nothing fancy, all black and white, but it looks real, is clickable and presentable enough to convey the concept and gather feedback.

A bit more about the functionality. We’re looking to build a system that will easily allow teams better interact, track their work, be more productive, be less stressed out, contribute more and lots of other good stuff. It doesn’t sound all that sexy, but when you think about how most people’s jobs are riddled with chaos you reckon that there’s definitely an opportunity to provide some help. After our initial demos with our first batch of would-be users, we think we can build a solution that will help.

Most of the folks we’ve shown the prototype to so far have been manager types, generally people we know or we’ve worked with in the past. We’ve been stopping by their houses, meeting in bars, lunches etc. basically anywhere there is space to flip open a laptop. The manager types are most important, and since they are likely to be the key decision makers, they’re getting most of the attention for the moment at least. That said we’re keenly aware that the other team members (those that report to the managers) will be a vital also; if they give it a thumbs down, regardless of how the managers like it, we’re going to have a hard time being successful. Feedback has been pretty good, probably 80% of those we talked to conveyed that they would be willing to partake when we get to the beta testing phase. Those that has reservations, generally saw too much overlap with existing products, although most of these guys we presented to in the beginning of our roadshow, and we didn’t have our story as tight as we should.

Incorporating – Partnership Vs “S” Corp Vs “C” Corp Cs Vs LLC, California Vs Delaware

So to make things real, and limit our personal liability in the business, and to have an option to write off our expenses, we needed to formally set up a company. There are some options and complexities here, but in the end we opted for an “S” Corp. What guided us in this direction? We wanted to create a company where there would be option to splice up portions of the company to future employees. From the research we did, a Partnership and LLC are less convenient when looking to divide out shares. So that that left us with the choice of an “S” Corp and “C” Corp. A “C” corp is the most robust option. It allows you to have different classes of shares, and a very large number of shareholder (actually not sure what the max is, but its greater that 100 for sure) One of the big disadvantages of a “C” Corp is that your income (yes some day we hope to have income) could be taxed both as corporate profits, and again on any dividends that are issued. An “S” Corp is a subsection of a “C”, its kind of like a starter corporation. It allows income to be “passed through” which basically means that for the shareholders, money made by the corporation can be taxed as if it were a salary. Limitations of an “S” Corp over a “C” corp include 1) A maximum of 100 shareholders 2) Only 1 type of stock (as far as I know it would be preferred stock) is allowed 3) Only legal residents of the US (either citizens or green card holders) are permitted to invest. For the moment, none of these 3 points are a concern to us. From what we also read, apparently its not too much to a big deal to convert an “S” Corp to a “C” Corp at some time down the line if the need arises.

So after settling on an “S” Corp, we now had to grapple with whether to incorporate the company in California or Delaware. Why Delaware? Anyone who has dealt with corporate contracts would often have seen that the opening text states the name of one of the companies, “is a Delaware company”. You see, Delaware is a small state that I guess felt they had to specialize in something to give it a notch up against other states. So Delawareans enacted some laws and established procedures that favor business. For example, for Delaware companies, the preferred shareholders can make some decisions, such as whether to sell the company or not, without requiring input from the holders of common stock. They also have courts (called courts of Chancery) where guilty and innocent verdicts are decided by a small team of judges rather than a jury, apparently companies prefer not to have to deal with juries. We also read that because of these advantages, many investors (particularly Venture Capitalists) will have a strong preference for investing in Delaware companies. The disadvantage for us, as a small operation setting out, is that it adds another layer of paper work. Because we are resident in California, we have to deal with the bureaucracy here no matter what. Adding Delaware to the mix just adds more complexity to something that we, without accounts and lawyers as of yet, we don’t want to deal it. So we opted to become a Californian “S” Corp. If we need to reincorporate as a Delaware company at some point in the future, we’ll deal with it then.

Most of our research was done on line, with some consultation with an accountant (poor guy didn’t really want to deal with us, being tax season he had a lot more on his mind.) We found the following sites to be pretty useful

http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com

http://entrepreneurs.about.com/od/businessstructure/Business_Legal_Organizational_Structures.htm

http://www.stephenlnelson.com

We submitted our registration for online at http://www.incfile.com/ cost, approx $300.