My personal rules of productivity

I had forgotten that I'd written this until the magazine arrived today. Oddly enough, it actually gives some useful information. I'll share it here, in case you're interested.

(This is from Connect Magazine, a Utah-based technology publication I've been a columnist with for the past year or two.)

Working in a large company, it’s easy to forget how much real work there is to be done. In November I left Novell to join an open source Enterprise Content Management startup, Alfresco. I spent three years with Novell, and made the move with some trepidation.

Nearly three months later, I’ve yet to catch my breath. There’s something about working at a small company that demands efficiency and one’s best work. Perhaps it’s because there’s nowhere to hide — if you don’t deliver, everyone knows, because who would deliver in your stead? Or maybe it’s because so much rides on so few that you just don’t have time to take breathers.

Regardless of the reason, I don’t know that I’ve ever been happier. It feels good to be productive, to be needed. I’m not fully persuaded, however, that I needed to wait until Alfresco to be a productive human being. Looking back, there are things that I could have done better in my time at Novell, and things Novell could have done better for me. I’d like to share a few here.

Employer Rule No. 1: Give employees ownership of real deliverables. Depending on the kind of manager you are, you’ll either shy away from this because: a) you can do it better, or b) you don’t want to overload your direct reports. Either is a mistake. In my experience, most complaints I’ve had with any of my past employers have related to having too little to do, rather than insufficient salary/title/etc. Give your employees meaningful work, and they will (eventually) love you for it.

Employee Corollary No. 1: Insist on personal accountability. Yes, it’s scary to have people counting on you. It’s much easier to coast along behind the scenes. But admit it: it’s not very satisfying. Sloth never is. It’s much better to be king of an infinitesimal pond than a nobody in a massive ocean. Go for the responsibility, not the title. (I’ve made this mistake on several occasions, and each time I’ve regretted it.)

Employer Rule No. 2: Less is more. You really don’t need 10 people for two jobs. You need one. I’ve become a big believer in slow, organic growth in organizations. It’s much better to hire one person and stretch them thin than it is to hire 10 people and have them struggling to find sufficient work to keep them occupied.

Employee Corollary No. 2: More is less. If you’re in Sales, you “just need Feature X in the product to sell millions of Product Y.” If you’re in Marketing, you just need Research Report Z in order to do a quality competitive analysis, figure out the product direction to take, etc. If you’re in Engineering, better hardware, more software, etc. is your complaint. In every case, you’re wrong. You don’t need more. You just need to work with what you have. There is a customer base out there for nearly any product; the best product marketing/competitive due diligence is done out in the field, getting your hands dirty (and not some overpriced tripe from an analyst who sits in an office all day); and the best code is often free, done on cheap commodity hardware. The less you have, the more resourceful you’ll become — this makes us think like a real customer, who has to stretch an IT budget. Speaking of which….

Employer Rule No. 3: Every employee should be revenue-additive. This is the most important of them all. Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL, once told me that he thinks business development is something every employee should do, all of the time. I didn’t believe him then, but I do now. Every employee should understand how she contributes to the company’s top and bottom lines, and should be held accountable for how she measures up. Everyone should be selling, developing product, marketing it, etc. No exceptions.

Employee Corollary No. 3: If you’re not making money for your employer, you’re a waste of money. If you don’t understand how you fit into the Circle of Life for your employer, find out. Or figure it out. But don’t just collect a paycheck. You owe it to your employer and to yourself to help defray the cost of your paycheck, as well as that of others’. The more revenue-driven we become, the more effective and the better our chances of improved future employment.

In closing, I wish I had lived up to the three employee corollaries while I was at Novell. Too often I blamed the company’s bureaucracy, without recognizing that I was contributing to it. Or I complained about the company’s direction without giving myself to the effort to improve it. I was a whiner more than I was a fixer.

I’m lucky to have landed somewhere that demands that I improve on this. But you can find this same fulfillment wherever you work. You just have to take personal, financial responsibility for your company, in whatever role you’ve been given. Good things will come to you if you take that role seriously.