Admin day

by Nova on April 4, 2011 in Simplicity with 2 Comments

I want my life to be simpler but I have a few significant things working against me.

  • I am a very curious person and find something interesting in most things.
  • I am also plagued by enthusiasm; I find myself getting passionately immersed in things.

I know you are scoffing thinking that these are in fact characteristics I should be enjoying about myself, and I do enjoy them, they are the greatest source of enjoyment I have other than the kind I get from being with people I love. However they are also insidious attention thieves, pulling me this way and that, getting me excited, making me loose myself in wonderful things, things that aren’t in the plan – dammit.

There is of course a time for wonder and following your bliss and all of that that but sometimes you just want to start something, work hard on it and finish it and feel all warm and complete inside. That is a very difficult thing for someone with enthusiastic curiosity disorder, or Maggpie disorder as I sometimes refer to it – shinny thing… where… off I go!

Training the monkey

I know what your thinking, I just need some discipline, a strategy, a plan… well today’s the day to start training this monkey. My first experiment is to create a set time to do all the little things that fall through the cracks as I wonder about, head in a dream. Mondays are now Admin days. These are the rules.

  • No meetings to be booked, or long lunches for that matter.
  • No project work.
  • No spending 3 hours researching something I read about in a blog.
  • No reading blogs, or other kind of information input.

Things that I will be doing:

  • Replying to emails
  • calling people back
  • bringing databases up to date with contacts, accounts and any other kind of tracking data and
  • check stats and send out reports.

It sounds like a super dull day I know but I’m going to focus on that, rarely felt, feeling of order I’m going to get come 6pm. If it works there may be more specialty days to come.

Understanding your purpose, values and vision

by Nova on February 24, 2011 in Planning with No comments

In other words, ‘who are you, and what do you want?’

Whether you are a new business owner looking to create your first website, or a project leader in a large organisation managing a redevelopment, you must have a deep understanding of your purpose as a business, your business personality and your long term goals.

Purpose

Quite simply the answer to the question, why are you in business? If you’ve ever had to write a mission statement for a business plan you should have formulated a concise answer to this question. If you haven’t now is the time to do it. Forget about cliches and dig for the personal, to be rich, or the best in the world are generalisations that are simply to vague to give you any kind of guiding focus.

Values

What kind of company, or organisation are you, what is your business personality? Are you corporate and trustworthy, or are you open and inclusive, do you value innovation, or user engagement, is loyalty your guiding principle?

When we were first putting together Post Creative we sat round the kitchen table with a few postit pads and began by thinking about some companies we loved. On a postit we wrote down attributes we admired about those companies, what made us love them. Then we began to think about the kind of attributes we would like to be remembered for as a company. We wrote down as many as we could and then we decided to narrow it down to 5, 5 values that we would embedded in every product, practice and service we supplied. Give it a go and see what you come up with.

Vision

Vision can be the most difficult to think about because it seems so distant as to be intangible. What will you business be like in 5 years or 10? How big will it be, where will it be located, will the products or services have changes, how will your life have changed as a result. It is just guess work I know, but unless you have a sense of where you would like to go, it is very difficult to take the meaningful steps that will take you there.

Why are these 3 things so important to your web project?

  • The purpose of your website is to achieve your business objectives.
  • Knowing your values is to find your voice, your style, your brand. Your values will guide you in all aspects of your business especially in communicating with your clients and customers.
  • Your vision will provide the route map for how you website will develop over the coming years, always in line with your purpose and values and always heading towards your vision.
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