MANAGEMENT AND ACCOUNTABILITY

Steve Cole reports:

I have more jobs than I can count: game designer, company president, customer service requests, deal making, marketing, and more. All of them need more time than I have and the only way to survive is to prioritize, to do the most important parts of each job and the less important items just don't get done. In theory, over time, I'll learn to train people to do some of these jobs until the total workload becomes equal to the total time available. The backside of this is that each job MUST get at least some time, but must not be able to steal time from other accounts. The new post-Boot Camp theory of management accounts for this.

TIME MANAGEMENT
Marketing is assigned a two-hour block on Monday. No other job is allowed into that time slot, so marketing will get at least some attention, but won't be able to steal time from other tasks. Marketing got Monday because it's better to send press releases early in the week. (I have a habit to send a press release at 5pm Friday for a product that will be released at noon on Monday. This drives wholesalers to the point of violence.) Customer requests get a two-hour block every Wednesday. Anything the customers want (such as me to sort through all of the old Starletters and give them to Eric to upload) gets done then, and no other job is allowed to intrude into that time slot. I have a long list of these things, which are sort of like "honey dos". In theory, there will be a triage, with the first 30 minutes spend doing anything that can be done fast and the remaining 90 minutes doing whatever is on top of the stack. Deal making (such as writing and revising contracts) gets a two-hour block on Friday. Right now, I'm involved in three "contract negotiations". I tend to forget to check on where these are (and a pot nobody is watching tends to get cold), and when I have something from the other party that I CAN work on, I tend not to do it as other jobs stole the time. So when Friday rolls around, I will look at each of these three deals and do what I can to make them move forward. If Jean needs me to write a contract for one of her RPG writers, she'll know that it's on the list for next Friday. The concept is, as noted, a two-way street. Those three minor tasks WILL get some time (because no other task can steal their time), but won't be allowed to steal from other time-accounts. Presumably, players will be satisfied to know that their requests won't get forgotten for months on end, and even the Visitation of the Great Dragon (some huge project that demands every available second) won't be able to steal the time alloted to these tasks. One thing I learned in Boot Camp is to treat these as doctor's appointments. There will always be "emergencies" that demand that I cancel these appointments, but the test is whether the crisis rises to the point that I would cancel a doctor's appointment to deal with it.

ACCOUNTABILITY
The accountability side comes from a series of meetings. I love meetings and have too many of them, or I don't have them at all. Meetings produce lists of things that people are supposed to do, but without a system to see if anybody actually did what's on their list, it's too easy for people (mostly me) to forget to do them (or just ignore the ones I don't want to do). Thus, the new system. We have three meetings a week. The longest one (90 minutes) is Saturday at 2pm, when we plan everything for the next week and "outlook" for the next month. Shorter meetings (30 minutes) at 2pm on Tuesday and Thursday go over everybody's "to do list" and remind people to get their lists done. This also gives people a chance to say that they need help or some resource to do their tasks. The scheduled meetings mean that we HAVE meetings but they don't become the ONLY thing that gets done. (We have gone through periods of having a meeting every day, and periods when we did not have a meeting for a month.) The schedule also means that everybody saves stuff that requires a group decision on a clipboard "for the next meeting". So nobody gets interrupted to review a question and make a decision; we all have a specific time alloted for meetings. Leanna knows that she will get a decision from me within 48 hours, and I know that every 48 hours I get to ask Leanna if she has done what I asked her to do. It also means that I cannot "drift aimlessly" for a week as I have been known to do, since the Saturday meeting gives me a "to do list" and the Tuesday and Thursday meetings make sure I actually did what was on it.