Last week I was having lunch with a business associate who owns a computer consulting firm in the East Bay Area. We were discussing the way his business works with Corporate Procedures for their business operations. As a small business typically we begin with one person per task, and they are an expert at what they do, more because they created their process. However, as a company grows we begin to delegate tasks and then eventually form teams of people who do the same processes. At this point, it becomes important to have a written procedure.
Procedure manuals can become large an tedious. For the small business, it is important to scale your procedures – even beginning with the very simplest bits of information. We have seen employees come to the owner/manager/etc and sometimes say their should be a procedure. Or other-times, it is more simply stated, how do I do this task. Those should be the indicator to begin a written procedure policy.
It does not need to be something complicated. Even a simple: 1-2-3 checklist of bullet items – no detail. But begin somewhere. Start simple and as the needs grow, expand your documentation.
What you don’t need to do is replace formal education, industry standard training or other certifications with documentation. In the computer consulting industry, your technicians should know “how” to create a user, or setup a “security group” — but as a company you may have established a “methodology” that you want to remain consistent.
Another good example is creating checklists — such as a Quality Assurance – before we return a computer to the customer, we will always check….bla, bla, bla.
As a small company, really there is no hierarchy, nor is their a technical writer. So what I’ve helped some business associates do is to setup a wiki, such as MediaWiki and permit all of their employees to add content to their hearts delight. It is search-able, and has great version control. You can then empower them, if they think there should be a policy, they can create it. Even if it is a simple 3 bullet point list of what you need to know when…
Begin with a culture of documentation early. There is no need to perfect it, just start getting procedures down on paper. Let it grow from there. Commit to spending 15 minutes per day, or at least an hour per week contributing and growing what you have. Brain dump your knowledge. Once it becomes something used frequently by your staff, you’ll find you have a bit more time — and your employees will be more empowered with the information and knowledge they need.
I just completed browsing an interesting entry over at On Startups: Wimps Wait which is suggesting that releasing a product is more important than waiting. I believe, as in many things, there is a balance in the middle. Here is the takeaway I suggest from the blog.
- Your product will never be to the point of you being comfortable at releasing it. You need to realize the point of diminishing returns on further tweaking it;
- Revolutionaries release, wimps wait — be the first to market!
- It is better to have customers with a half-way product that they accept, then a perfect product that hasn’t been released (i.e. zero customers);
- You will be more reluctant about the times you didn’t release;
- At the end of the day, “just ship it” — do your best and then let it go;
- Take a look back and realize just how many times you thought you did work out all the bugs, all the time spent, and at the end of the day, customers will were unhappy or found bugs — will waiting on your release for two more months really make a difference;
- To succeed, you must release — product in development doesn’t bring in revenue;
At the end of the day, be it product or service, you need to understand when you have done your best, and that more time will not significantly improve your product/service, and you just need to let it go into the marketplace and see how well it does. Be ready to adapt and change as necessary. Fix bugs, rework contracts, etc. But a few grumpy clients are better than none when you’re starting out.
A business associate of mine was describing a new leveraging of the Linked In technology. The concept is simple, use Linked-In to discover the name of key people: recruiter, directors, principles, etc., for the company you’d like to work for and directly submit your resume to them via e-mail or postal mail. The rationale behind this is that often when submitting your resume through the proper channels on the corporate website, or via Monster/Dice/etc your resume may be automatically filtered out because of some negative keyword. However, by directly submitting a resume, it will increase the likelihood of it being read by a human and therefore you have a higher chance of being contacted.
However, on the other end of the spectrum, I cannot count the number of times I’ve received a unsolicited resume, for a position we don’t have or have then need for. It frequently makes me wonder how much they really want to work for my company, instead of just “some” company.
I guess the reason for the offense is my perspective of the hiring process:
1) You should be looking for a job position which specifically matches your skill set;
2) You should be looking for a company which matches your work culture/ethic;
3) You should want to work specifically for our company for a specific reason. If it came down simply to businesses (title, pay, etc., all the same) I want you to have a reason to want us.
Sending out an unsolicited resume says that you’re willing to take anything from anyone – that it really simply comes down to price. But the reality is most people leave their jobs for reasons other than money. Sure, we all would like to get paid more. But frequently there are other underlying problems. If pay is what will make you choose me, then you might simply leave when it suits you.
What are your thoughts? How have you received resumes lately?
I was discussing with a friend over lunch about the concept of micro-loans and peer-to-peer lending. They have had an amazing rate of success recently, and I believe those programs will only increase in 2009, especially as banks continue to tighten down on who they’re lending to.
This brought about an idea: would you contribute $100 towards the success of another entrepreneur? A network of individuals who understand the power of collaborative efforts, investing in the future, and the benefits of new start-ups. Say, we were to pull together 5 sponsors per business and then distribute those funds to pre-qualified businesses. What our primary checkpoints would revolve around business concept solvency and a non-negative business/criminal record. Personal credit score may not apply.
Take a moment and let us know what you think about this!
A growing trend is the concept of a Counter Offer – those being a special offer provided to an employee, which tendered their resignation to the company, in an attempt to avoid loosing them. The reasons appear straight forward – you know you have a good employee who knows the company and ’system’ and it is a lot of work to interview and train a new employee. However, here are a few good reasons not to offer a “counter offer”
