Save what matters by delegating what doesn’t

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I am a huge fan of delegating. Part of what makes me good is that I love time management advice, and I’m constantly asking myself what is most important to me. I keep my list to about five things, and everything else is fair game for delegation. Also, I am lucky to have many traits of a good delegator, including:

1. Little interest in details
Perfectionists are the worst at delegating. They are delusional and might die early from obsessive fixation on detail if they are lawyers.

2. Strong sense that time matters more than money
I am willing to sacrifice money to buy time whenever possible. Often, even when I overpay I feel good about not having had to do the task. And you can generally tell how much money I’m making by how many people I have helping me because that’s always the first thing I spend money on.

3. Young kids at home
There is no such thing as “free time” when you have toddlers at home. There is only time to parent and time to do the whole rest of your life. So time management is figuring out what you’ll either give up completely or delegate.

People who have a long list of things they won’t delegate are really just making excuses. I never regret having tried to delegate, even when things don’t go that well. I delegated my whole move from New York City to Madison and found out in 20-degree weather that I don’t have my winter coat. But so what? It’s worth it to have been able to do things that really matter to me instead of spending a week moving my stuff.

I delegated buying my mom flowers once. I decided that if it’s the thought that counts, it was enough that I thought to tell someone to do it. My mom wasn’t crazy about that idea, but the world is not the judge of what is okay to delegate. You are.

I got used to FreshDirect, the amazing online grocery delivery service for New York City (whose successful business model includes $600,000 in parking tickets a year.) In Madison, I was not about to start going to the store when I had already tasted the excitement of delegating the walk through the aisles. So I ordered online, but the Madison store didn’t save my grocery lists. And pointing and clicking 70 times to buy 70 items is not that fast.

But then I discovered that our local food co-op, Willy Street Co-op, has a great delivery system. No point-and-click ordering, just email them a list. So I started writing my list. But then I realized that not only does conjuring brand names and quantities takes a long time, but it takes a lot of brain power plan a family’s food for a week.

So I wrote list items like:
A few treats for kids –stuff that looks fun to eat
6 things that are microwavable that I didn’t think of.
Dinner stuff. Surprise me.
Fruit that’s in season. 4 servings

The food I got was healthy, appropriate and fun. (Thank you, Kelly). And this brings up overlooked benefits of delegating: you get to see things done another way; you learn from someone else about what is available; you get to have a surprise. If you are not a control freak, these are good experiences.

You spend so much time food shopping. Don’t tell me it is an integral part of your family life. It’s not. Sitting at the table together is what’s important. You don’t need complete control over what you eat. You probably don’t have the luxury of controlling as much as you are trying to control. And for most of us, the way to preserve and celebrate what is most important in life is to off-load what is not.

Look at your life for the things that are not at the core. Admit that the core is small. Question everything you think you need to do yourself. It comes down to how much are you willing to give up control, and how much you value your time.

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You are the sum of the people you play with

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Who you hang out with has so much to do with the quality of your life. I think about this all the time, so I was happy to see that the neurobiologists finally came up with some evidence that if you hang out with positive people, your brain actually starts thinking more positively (subscription soon).

I also think that friends who do cool things make your own life more exciting. My friend, Dennis, at Techdirt, sent the press releases to me about his company’s new product, and he was so excited that it made me excited, too. There is no neurobiology to support this — yet — but I am convinced that people who love their jobs give us more energy for our own.

When I played professional beach volleyball, everyone was always angling to be the worst on the court during practice, because that’s the fastest way to get better. This was no small feat when you’re at the top of a sport. But the day I had a match against Olympic gold medallists, I learned more about myself and my game than from 20 matches with people at my level.

A blogroll, to me, is a metaphor for all of these issues. If you are the sum of who you play with, then I want to choose my list of blog playmates carefully. When it comes to blogrolls, some people have very thorough lists of everyone in their field.

My list — which I’ve titled, What I’m Reading — is the blogs that make me excited and get my brain moving in new directions. The list changes all the time. A lot of the blogs aren’t career blogs. After all, I dream up ideas about careers all day. But you could say that your career is closely related to the people you play with, and in that sense, these are all people who have helped my career most recently.

(Hat tip: Willy in Wisconsin)

How to run a meeting

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There are lots of rules for running a good meeting — always have an agenda, start on time, make sure no one is hungry. But this rule is more important than all others: Be a cheerleader for your objectives. When you run a meeting you have an objective and you are trying to convince everyone else to help you get there.

Here is a list of five types of meetings and how to run them.

1. The update-on-what-I’m-doing meeting
To people who are not used to running meetings all day, it’s easy to mistake a meeting for something that is purely informational. Don’t do that. You will be poorly prepared and you will look bad. After all, why give an update on what you’re doing without making people understand the value of what you’re doing? Meetings are about conveying value.

2. The get-on-the-same-page-as-me meeting
If everyone is not on the same page, it’s your fault because you’re the leader. Deal with nay sayers one-on-one, before the meeting, not in the meeting. Why gather everyone in a room to convince only a few of them to change their minds and get on your page? You don’t need a meeting for that. Each person has different issues to address, and you can’t do that in a group without offending the offender and boring everyone else.

3. The we-have-some-stragglers meeting
Let’s think about a project that is not on track. For one thing, it’s probably because only some people are behind, but not all. This is a management problem, not a group problem. To get specific people back on track, meet each straggler before the big meeting, and help them to change how they’re working. You need to understand why they’re behind and help the shift their priorities and/or work practices. Then you hold the meeting to let everyone know that the project is back on track because you have commitment from people who need to change how they’re working.

4. The no-one-is-making-this-a-priority meeting
Many teams of messed up projects are a bunch of people who don’t report directly to the team leader. But leading with no authority can actually be a path to success if it’s done right. If the leader has no authority to make the messed-up project a high priority, the way to solve this problem is not to call a meeting. You solve the problem with team members individually. Find out what their goals are and figure out how to align this project with their goals so they are excited to meet them. The big meeting is a celebration of your success at these one-on-one meetings. It’s to show everyone that they’re all committed to the team.

5. The let’s-hear-some-ideas meeting
Just because you write brainstorm on the agenda doesn’t mean people will do it. You need to make them want to. They need to feel that you will listen, that their ideas matter, that people in the meeting will be respectful.

Which brings me to the reason you have an agenda. You need to control the parameters of the meeting so that you meet your objective. The best meeting shows everyone how well the team is working, how meaningful the project is, how happy you are to be able to work with everyone. A meeting is a way to make people love working with you. Because that’s the way you will meet your objectives, whatever they are.

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How to succeed in China

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My Chinese radar really perked up last week when I read the Economist article about Alibaba. This Chinese company is the largest online business-to-business marketplace in the world, and it just purchased Yahoo! China, which makes Alibaba the12th most popular site in the world.

I checked out the site right away, and, guess what? It looks just like eBay, except that the testimonial on the home page is from someone who lives in Vietnam. Moments like this make me think career advice really needs to address the China issue: How will you survive in China? But the answer is, of course, that you probably won’t. Which is why I don’t write a lot of advice about it.

Some people will do well in China, though. So let’s take a look.

There is a brisk business in Chinese nannies for American babies. New York Magazine reports that, “The lycee is passe (old Europe has no trade surplus), and some parents are scouring Craigslist and placing ads in the China Press for sitters who speak Mandarin, China’s official language.”

One of those parents says, “Even if my little girl weren’t very smart, she’s always going to get a job because she’ll be totally fluent in Chinese.”

This is not true. It takes a lot more than speaking Chinese to succeed in China.

China is among the easiest countries to attract outsiders to work but is also one of the hardest places for them to succeed, according to David Everhart, regional practice leader for Asia at the recruiting firm Korn/Ferry International.

Everhart gave me this list of five traits of people who succeed on a Chinese mission:

1. You are generally a very patient person, with a high tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity.

2. You already have a certain knowledge of Chinese culture — not only societal, but also the business culture.

3. You have evaluated your company’s China strategy and are empowered to manage expectations at the home office about what it will take to meet your goals.

4. You have researched and secured extra support so your family will be able to adapt socially in China.

5. You arrive in China and immediately begin thinking about succession planning: how to develop the leaders of the future who will allow the firm to localize its management team.

Most of us will never work in China, but there’s a lesson in this list. You need social skills and a big-picture strategy for any job you take. In China, because of a cultural gap, you need them even more. But don’t kid yourself: If you can’t tolerate a certain amount of uncertainty and ambiguity, you will flounder in a leadership position anywhere, not just in China.

Finally, check out Melanie Parsons Gao’s blog. She is a Sun employee who blogs about making the transition to China. She posted a list of what to bring that is interesting even if you never go.

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A peek at the office of the future

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I was checking out the information about the upcoming conference Office 2.0. I wanted to get a sense of what the future workplace would look like. There’s not much information there, but I got a bit from the list of speakers:

1. There are two links next to every speaker name: blog, and profile. If you think you don’t need a blog, you need to look at this list. It’s long. And every person on it has a blog. Blogging is essential for big thinkers, serious careerists, and anyone who wants to be part of a wide-reaching conversation.

2. The list of photos is pretty unremarkable, mostly men, mostly headshots. There are a lot of visions for what the future of the office will be. Our computers will have no client application other than a web browser, for example, and virtual collaboration will be easy.

But maybe the most wide-reaching vision of Office 2.0 emerged before the conference even started. The image is on the speakers page, where David Young, CEO of Joyent, makes room in his own small square headshot for his baby’s head, too. Because Office 2.0 must make room for children.

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Instead of feeling lost, look at life differently

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Are you worried that you have no idea what you’re doing with your life? A lot of how you feel about yourself stems from how you look at the world. For example, instead of worrying that you are not on a track, consider that the tracks are not viable.

It’s a hard mental shift that might require some tricks. Here’s one to try: You can draw things more accurately if you turn them upside down before you put the pen to paper. Artist (and my aunt) Judith Roston Freilich says, “That’s an old trick. Also, people often suggest that when you are drawing and you’re stuck you turn your page upside down.”

The work world corollary to that might be to take a closer look at the people who pull their whole life together by age 24. In fact, they are the exception to the rule, and they are probably not that innovative. Wayne Osgood, professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, told me these people are “fast starters,” and he says that they are only about 12% of the population. This group typically does not finish college and appears to have conventional personalities and expectations.

Before turning yourself into a pretzel to fit someone else’s mold. Try turning the world upside down and then take another look at yourself.

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You sent your resume with a typo? Get over it

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Here’s some career advice I’m sick of reading: “Don’t have typos in your resume.”

If you need to read that advice to know you shouldn’t have typos in your resume then you are unemployable.

My friend Ben pointed out that when Colin Powell resigned, he typed his own letter at his home computer to keep the resignation a secret. But the White House sent the letter back because it had a typo. I wish the lesson here were that you always get a second chance. But no one will give your resume back to you to fix. So instead the lesson is that everyone makes typos. It’s human.

It is near impossible to not have a typo in a resume at some point because we’ve all read our resume five hundred times, and it’s ineffective to proofread something you’ve reread so much. On top of that, job hunting is often a repetitive, boring task, so it’s no surprise that people copy and paste and put the wrong employer name in the salutation all the time.

So there’s nothing you can do to fix a typo if the resume is sent. You look bad resending a resume to a hiring manager and saying “I had a typo in my resume.” Most likely the person won’t notice the typo anyway unless it is in his name. Even if you are applying for a proofreader job, it’s not going to help to resend the resume. The job of a proofreader is to catch the error before he hits send.

A lot of polls say recruiters will dump a resume in the garbage if there’s one typo. I don’t believe it. First, all typos are not equal. But also, a sales person with a typo is different than a technical writer with a typo. While a technical writer should be detail-oriented, the skills that make a good sales person don’t necessarily make a good proofreader.

So if you send a resume with a typo, hope the recruiter doesn’t notice, and try not to do it again. Move on.

But you should consider hiring a resume writing service to write your resume. You can trust a top company to not have a typo. There are a million reasons to hire someone to help you with your resume. It’s a very important document and it’s very hard to write yourself because you’re too close to the information on many levels, not just in terms of spelling.

That said, I hired a top resume writing company and then later made some changes in my resume and, of course, sent it out a couple of times with typos. Maybe it was a good thing, though. Because to be honest, if anyone ever hired me for being detail-oriented, they would be disappointed. It’s important to know your strengths. I know who to hire to compensate for my shortcomings. And now, years later, I know not to mess with what those experts come up with.

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Make the world a better place from the job you have right now

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At some point in their work life most people start wondering about the bigger questions: How can you support yourself with enjoyable work and still make the world a better place?

I have had discussions about this topic with my husband. He was working at a grassroots agency that struggles to save people from poverty and prison. I told my husband that since I was supporting our family while he worked for a nonprofit that pays peanuts, I was doing enough to save the world.

He said, “You're not saving the world. You're saving us.”

“I know,” I said. “I'm an enabler. I'm enabling you to save the world.”

He said, “You can do what you want. But grassroot action makes an immediate difference.”

Grassroot action. This is the kind of language you hear all the time if you live with an activist.

To be honest, I wouldn’t be able to handle seeing the sadness my husband saw every day: Like the juvenile offender who was not going to school because the prison forgot. But I still want to make sure my work has meaning.

And I am not alone. In the book, The Altruism Question, psychologist Daniel Batson reviews approximately twenty-five studies that all show that people have an inherent need to help others out of a sense of altruism — to make other people feel better. And Stephan Bodian, who often writes about Buddhism, explains, “Each of us must find our own right livelihood by following our hearts while facing the reality of our unique situation.” What I take this to mean is that we all want to do good, but you have to take care of yourself first, then your family, and then the world. Most of us have enough trouble with the first two.

For some people right livelihood will mean a life of environmental activism. For other people, it might take the form of creativity. “For many of us, it might simply involve doing what we can, at the jobs we currently have, to add to the world’s collective store of peace, love, happiness and material well-being,” writes Bodian in Yoga Journal.

In case you are wondering, my husband is typical of social activists in that he has a spouse working in a more lucrative sector. We found this out the hard way, when we tried to depend on his job for insurance. The human resource person actually told my husband, “The premiums are sky-high because no one here needs to use the insurance.”

Fortunately for those who do need insurance, the business world offers a surprising range of opportunities to honor one’s need for right work. I have mentored people who have been able to make huge changes in their lives, and I have changed corporate policies to accommodate single mothers and gay job applicants. These have been high points in my career because I felt like I was doing good.

But you don’t actually have to make a monumental contribution to the world in order to feel good about yourself. Small acts of kindness add up.

Sonja Lyubomirsky, professor of psychology at University of California at Riverside, found that being kind makes you feel more positive about yourself and the world. She has an exact prescription for how to be kind that reminds me of my husband doing good at the grassroot:

“In our daily lives, we all perform acts of kindness for others. These acts may be large or small and the person for whom the act is performed may or may not be aware of the act. Examples include feeding a stranger’s parking meter, donating blood, helping a friend with homework, visiting an elderly relative, or writing a thank you letter.” In order to optimize the good feelings that come from good acts, Lyubomirsky’s research indicates that you should load up your acts of kindness so you do five in one day.

You can follow these instructions from any job, no matter how big or small. Write a note to yourself on one day each week, and count your deeds until you get to five. Your job will bring deeper meaning to your life because you will be using it to directly cause positive feelings in the world.

As for me and my husband, I am never going to work in a prison, and he’s never going back to corporate life. But we are striking a balance. Winston Churchill once said: “Make a living by what you get, make a life by what you give.” The best careers can combine both, and this is true of a marriage, too.

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Consider a virtual company to get a flexible work life

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While everyone was watching for the telecommuting trend to explode, something else exploded right next to it: The virtual company. The business with no office to telecommute from.

These companies give new opportunities to entrepreneurs to get started with no money down. But a virtual business also gives people the opportunity to create the personal life they want. “The future is likely to be the age of virtual businesses,” writes Anita Campbell, founder of Small Business Trends. “Forget three guys in a garage that was your father’s startup. Today it’s three people spread out across the country or even across continents, each in their home offices or back porches with laptops, mobile phones, and WiFi.”

Pamela Slim, who blogs at Escape From Cubicle Nation, says there is a “perfect storm” of factors converging to make virtual businesses more popular, and easier to start:

1. Workers will quit regular jobs to get control over their time.
Both men and women are increasingly willing to leave the work force to create personal time and family time, according to Jacqueline Luffman, a labor analyst for the government of Canada. In light of that, a virtual office ends up seeming like a compromise rather than an extreme solution.

2. Technology levels the playing field.
It has become so cheap and easy to use that someone who doesn’t have a lot of resources can create a web presence that looks established and professional.

3. Retail businesses can be virtual.
Of course, there’s always eBay. But you can also set up a shop with Amazon, where you create a storefront (which could even be a blog) and Amazon handles all inventory and fulfillment issues — and then sends you a check for the sales you make. Or you can work with a slew of smaller online wholesalers the same way.

4. The rise of telecommuting.
Established companies such as Sun Microsystems realize that telecommuters are happy, appreciative and cost-effective, so they encourage people to telecommute. Smart companies provide essential training and support so workers are productive at home from the start. The side effect is that location-based companies are training workers on how to set up their own virtual companies.

This trend means that it’s easier for you to have a work life that you can control – whether you’re working at your own virtual company or at someone else’s. The benefits are flexibility, efficiency and little overhead. The drawback is that time management is difficult, and not everyone can adapt.

Dennis Yang works at Techdirt, a virtual company that provides daily news and analysis to corporate clients. While Yang does not sit with co-workers, he is never lonely. He typically has about seven conversations going on at any one time on his computer screen, and he can work anywhere he wants — for example, his grandmother’s living room.

A typical day involves constant instant messaging, occasional emails with clients, and Skype for Internet-based phone calls, which are free – though Yang adds, “We don’t like to have phone conversations because it’s difficult to have more than one at a time.”

Techdirt’s 14 employees hang out in a virtual conference room, which is really a chat room, and when the once-a-week phone call happens, someone types in the chat room that it’s time to move to the conference call.

Not surprisingly, members of Generation Y populate many of the virtual companies. “The younger generation is very attracted by the virtual companies because they are used to it. Skype and IM are normal to them, and it is not weird to work with people you rarely see when most of your friends are people you rarely see.” says Chris Yeh, co-chair of the Founders Forum for entrepreneurs, and founder of his own company, Targetfirst.

But virtual companies have a lot to offer Generation X as well: “We want a career that gives us control over our schedule and our life,” says Yeh. “I want a work environment where I can also focus on my kids. Working from
home is not a panacea for everything because the kids take time and they are always calling for you, but at least there’s no commute time.”

The virtual business community is huge, so there’s room for everyone. In fact a whole economy has developed in which virtual companies do business with other virtual companies. Sharon Sarmiento, founder of Streamline Virtual Office Solutions, offers project-based, administrative assistance to companies that do not need a physical presence. So it is no surprise that a major client is Andy Wibbels, the king of promoting blog-based businesses.

For some people, such as Yang, virtual companies present a continual mix of work life and personal life where neither begins or ends. For others, such as Yeh and Sarmiento, a virtual company is a way to discover optimal methods for dividing a day.

Last week Sarmiento was experimenting with a four-hour workday. “I’m trying to be really productive,” she says, and then defines what she means by that in a blog post aimed at helping other virtual entrepreneurs manage their time. “You cannot work harder,” she advises, it’s more about prioritizing. “Just turn off the computer at the end of four hours. This experiment is almost entirely psychological.”

It might seem that in the land of virtual companies, in a virtual economy, there is virtually no work getting done. But Yang and Sarmiento both exemplify the work ethic that typifies virtual offices.

“In a small company where people know each other and are dedicated to a cause or a calling, you can count on everyone to be productive,” says Yeh. But even a technology cheerleader such as Yeh doesn’t foresee a workplace devoid of stupid meetings and wasteful schedules. “The virtual office can cut down on the BS,” he says, “but BS is part of human nature.”

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