Bringing everything to new scale
new perspectives
I'm writing this to you while sitting in Luton Airport. The beer is tasteless but the cheese chicken burgers are better.
Back in my childhood, I could have been reading books that started like this substack.
Operations Done Left and Right
It appears that founders have more issues with regular management than with all other aspects of business. Obviously, the latter is a consequence of the former. So, I've decided to include a regular section in my substack that provides useful information in this area.
Meetings Hygiene (you can copy and paste this into your company rules for everyone to be aware of these values):
You should know the cost of your regular meetings. How much do you invest in a weekly executive meeting?
You should know the purpose of each regular meeting in advance. No purpose - no meeting.
You should have an agenda for the meeting. Not a rough plan, but a clear agenda detailing how much time you will spend on each topic.
You should be strong enough (mentally strong 🙂) to stop a discussion if it deviates from the agenda or exceeds the planned time.
You should analyse whether you need those meetings and timely cancel meetings if there is no agenda. Don't be afraid to do so. Canceling a purposeless meeting can sometimes save your company thousands.
You should record all action points right after the meeting and ensure everyone adds them to their personal task lists.
You should have a moderator who keeps everyone on track and asks clear questions. Every meeting is a small strategic session that requires a moderator.
At the end of the day, meetings can be the most powerful instrument for managing people and simultaneously the biggest time eater. So, choose what yours will be.
Books Worth Reading (Not Typical Business Literature)
"Africa Is Not a Country"
How Otto Von Bismarck divided Africa with 15 European countries at the Berlin Conference. How territories were sold to British private companies and then sold back to the British Government. Why Unilever was there. How 15 European nations decided the fate of the whole continent, dividing territories without regard to the languages, cultures, and tribes. The African Scramble.
Tools I Tested and Started Using
Humata → you can ask it some questions from huge PDFs and it will find the answer or can do analysis of the data.
WaxWing → marketing strategies for SEO, SMM, your website. Just share your website and based on the data on it, the tool will generate some marketing strategies with time estimation, priority.
Folk → CRM which allows you to have fundrasing, sales, networking, recruitment pipelines in one place. It enriches data from socials. Save a contact without jumping between tools — import from anywhere on the web with folkX
Biggest Eye Opener This Week
Template for Agencies in ClickUp → https://clickup.com/templates/agency-management-t-90100000747
For those interested in Project Management
What is the MoSCoW Prioritization Method? → Article here.
How to Use T-Shirt Sizing as an Agile Estimation Technique → Article here.
Health Insights as I Am Kinda Into Biohacking :)
Whoop is good for sleep tracking and considers various factors that affect your recovery. However, one of these factors, stress, is influenced by heart rate. And... every time I laugh or joke a lot, my stress level is high. This means that Whoop cannot differentiate between good and bad stress, which has changed my attitude toward stress levels as not crucial.
From interesting observations... after I had McDonald's at 10:30 pm, I experienced a high level of stress the whole night. This was the first time since I started using Whoop a month ago. Everyone tells you that eating late is bad for you, but no one shows you a diagram illustrating how your body digests food all night, decreasing your sleep quality. What a shame.
Your Jane Davydiuk, Fractional COO