Over the past few months both my brother and I have been doing a lot of customer calls and really diving deep into better understanding what our customers’ challenges are and how we can better help them. I also recently covered sales while Larry was out of the office and speaking to our customers and prospects reaffirmed that one of the challenges I keep hearing about is time management.
When I dove further into the topic with those customers I realized that I struggle with the same challenges as a CEO of a small but growing company. So I have been reflecting on the topic quite a bit the last few weeks, all the while researching different productivity hacks on how I can improve my output. But those were all minor solutions that didn’t really address the core problem. And then I came across Paul Graham’s very famous essay on Maker’s Schedule vs Manager’s Schedule, and it hit me, that’s IT! So today I wanted to share what I found out and what I’m doing about it as it may help each of you.
First a little background...
Like many of my customers, I wear a lot of hats, professionally. My main focus is being the CEO at BrightGauge, but as a small company (I no longer consider ourselves a "startup"), that doesn't just mean CEO duties, that includes a whole bunch of other things. I spend most of my time managing the Growth Team so I work on Marketing campaigns, helping with sales deals and pipeline management, following up on implementations and professional services work, etc.
When I'm not focused on specific Growth Team tasks you can find me handling the finances and following up on past due accounts. And that’s just the BrightGauge stuff - there is also a portion of my time spent at our other family businesses Compuquip Technologies (Internet Security), Dosal Capital (Finance & Investments), and Blue Wave Communications (voice & data cabling).
The Challenge
So yes, I wear a ton of different hats. And I'm ok with the different hats as it keeps it interesting, however after reading Paul’s essay it struck me that my biggest challenge is bouncing from Maker (the doing) to Manager (the managing) because those are two completely different skill sets and approaches to work. As an example, some of my responsibility is to manage others and make sure we are aligned with our goals and heading in the right direction, that's Manager stuff. Then I also have to contribute to our blog posts, draft up content for our podcast, follow up on support tickets, jump on demos with customers... that's Maker stuff. Switching gears between the two is very difficult if you don’t properly plan for it.
My Solution
For now what I'm doing is blocking off time for each type of work and dividing my days as best as I can. So far it’s been a huge help and I’ve really been able to focus and feel a lot more productive. Here's a screenshot of my current schedule blocks:
It’s not a perfect solution but I definitely feel progress and that I’m heading in the right direction.
How you can apply this to your business
Although you may not realize it, you might be experiencing the same challenge. It may not be exactly the same as me but instead related to splitting your time between managing the team, still billing those legacy clients that depend on you, doing the vCIO work for your big clients, or making sales calls, etc. Depending on the size of your business and the ability (time and financial) to hire more resources you may have to stay in a hybrid role. The key I’ve found is to identify how you work best in each role and make sure you're mentally prepared and focused for each.
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