Whose Job Is It Anyway?

One of my favourite maxims is "vision without execution is hallucination".  Not sure who coined the phrase but I like it.  It's all very well saying "let's do something" and it's something else to actually get it done, especially if it involves people.

It's helpful to have some "getting stuff done" tools in your toolkit and one tool that I've found helpful in the past is "RACI".

To get from an idea to reality, we need to know who is going to do the work.  This is where RACI comes in.

RACI stands for "Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed".  It's a usually framework to understand the roles of all the actors in a system required to get a task done.

Responsible
The responsible person is the doer.  (Or doers, i.e. those that actually do the work and deliver to the agreed standards, time frames or expectations).

Accountable
The buck stops here.  This person is answerable for the correct and thorough completion of the task.  It can only be be one person.  The accountable person may well delegate their tasks to a responsible person but they cannot delegate their accountability.

Consulted
Their opinion is sought, these are experts whose skills or knowledge can influence the success of the task.  It's a two way communication flow between the Responsible and Consulted parties. It can be more than one person.

Informed
(Or - told). Those who need to know what's going on.  Not necessarily during task, more likely on completion.  It's a one way communication and it's usually many people.

In any project, you write down all of the tasks down as the rows in your matrix.  In the columns, write either names or job titles.  In the grid, type R, A, C or I in each cell. 



If you do this with all of the people involved you can then get consensus on who does what.

It provides a good grounding for the next part of organising - what interactions (e.g. meetings) and documents are required during the project to make sure everyone gets what they need from the others involved.

To Scale Or Not Scale?

I was at an event earlier this week with a room full of tech start-up and growth company COOs.

One word that was used often in conversation was "scaling". 

"As the business scales", "When you're scaling up", "scaling the business", "scaling the team", "bringing scale to the team"... these were all typical soundbites.

I've heard people use the term so much over the past few years.  In a start-up it's easier to talk about "growth" and "scale" than trickier subjects such as "revenue" and "profit".

So, to clear things up, just what is "scaling".

Well, in my opinion, it's something more than just "size".

It's about efficiency of resource utilisation.

Here's a simple example.  You have £100,000 in revenue.  You have 5 people.  You have 2 web servers.

What happens when you double the revenue?  Do you double the team and double the number of servers?  If you do, you are not scaling.  You are just growing. 

Scaling would mean that you doubled the revenue, but the team size and web servers did not need to double.  Maybe the team went to 6 people and the web servers stayed the same.  Now you're starting to scale.

Scaling come from the term "economies of scale". 

The more transactions that take place, the cost per transaction comes down.

So - are you scaling or growing?  Ideally both!

Tune Out To Tune In

Where do you get your ideas?

I get my best ones in all sorts of strange places. In the shower, walking for the bus, on my bike. Rarely do ideas come to me at my desk.

Archimedes had his "Eureka" moment in the bath. You might do too.

CEOs seem to have ideas at the weekend. That's no co-incidence.

Creativity is an elusive thing. Try too hard and you'll not get anywhere. Ideas seem to have a life of their own and they are definitely not 9-5 office workers.

Here's something I learnt about ideas which really has helped me find more of these little creatures.

If I think about a problem hard and consciously, if I try to start solving it, even if I don't solve it, it plants a seed in my brain. My conscious mind works on the problem. Unless I've solved this problem before, rarely will a new idea form from conscious thought.

It's the unconscious mind which unlocks ideas. How scientifically true this is I cannot say. From experience though, I can say for sure that your unconscious mind continues to work on a problem long after your conscious mind has switched off.

You can be daydreaming in the shower and then pow! It comes to you. Taking that idea back into the conscious world you can do something with it and get cracking.

If you are short of ideas, discuss the issue at hand with someone and then leave it for a day or two. The unconscious mind will work it over and you might come up with new ways of looking at the situation.

Getting started is often the most important thing you can do. Just start the thinking consciously. Then pause. Reflect (not consciously). Wait. Discuss again. Reflect.

To really tune into a problem you sometimes need to tune out.

What's For Tea?

In our household there's sometimes a discussion that starts late morning or early afternoon with the question, "what shall we have for tea?" 

(Tea by the way meaning evening meal).

I usually say, "I don't know, it depends what's in the fridge".

My wife on the other hand likes to know what it is she is going to look forward to.

She'll think of a dish that she'd like and then asks what's missing to make it. If we need one or two ingredients, she'll buy them.

I on the other hand prefer to freestyle and make do with what we've got. Where she sees an empty cupboard, I see three or four alternative dishes. As I am the one cooking in these situations, I prefer to go with the flow.  It's not that I don't plan. I do plan. I plan by putting in place a lot of ingredients in our weekly shop. The cupboard is always stocked with lots of flavour and base items.

I however am less likely to imagine a meal in advance. I will perhaps look in a recipe book for ideas if we're having guests. My wife will think of lots of alternatives.

What about you? Who are you most like?

Both personality types serve a purpose. To be able to envision a future and make it happen is a great trait for entrepreneurs. Let nothing get in the way, get what you want.

Equally, the ability to adapt, optimise and deliver based on limited resources (making sure there are the right ingredients in place) is a great trait needed by teams who are working to build businesses.

Both tendencies have their advantages. Put both together and you get a formidable team.

By the way, it's no coincidence that my wife comes from a sales background and that I come from an operations background.

Just don't ask me what we are having for tea. Trust me, it'll taste great.