Rework! Get rid of the meetings!

Rework your work! How we apply Jason Fried and David Heinemeier’s ideas in FindthatLead! If you haven’t heard of these guys, they are the writers of Rework, a book that changes the way we see how to get work done.

IF YOU’RE CONSTANTLY STAYING LATE AND WORKING WEEKENDS, IT’S NOT BECAUSE THERE’S TOO MUCH WORK TO BE DONE. IT’S BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT GETTING ENOUGH DONE AT WORK. AND THE REASON IS INTERRUPTIONS. 

In FindThatLead we know we have a great product! We have a user base of 15000 and growing after 4 months of existence. We aren’t the best, but do we actually need to be the best? How do we do it?

We apply to Rework on a daily basis. We love Jason Fried’s ideas about how work should be done.

Cut your schedule into pieces schedule and you will raise a lot of frustration in your team.

If your work routine is constantly interrupted by meetings, planning meetings, setting goals, and even planning business, get rid of them because they aren’t necessary to create successful businesses anymore.

“If you’re constantly staying late and working weekends, it’s not because there’s too much work to be done.

It’s because you’re not getting enough done at work. And the reason is interruptions. “

M&M’s interrupt

Managers want to check workers´ productivity and to do that they organize meetings.

For Jason Fried, these interruptions are unavoidable at the office and are hard to escape from them inside a traditional company. You can’t tell your manager to stop interrupting you, or you could get fired.

In the present times, managers and bosses are generally inclined to think that procrastination on social networks is what really interrupts workers. In his opinion, the real problems are M&Ms: Managers and Meetings, not the actual workers.

Meetings are where people talk about doing work but not where they actually do it. Most managers tend to interrupt their employees too often, distracting them from the actual important work.  When the manager calls for a meeting, and tells everyone to stop what they’re doing, even if it is something important, workers can lose their focus and the attention they need to finish important jobs.

Planning as a waste of time

Rework tells us not to spend too much time on planning, which he associates to guessing too much ahead. There is some truth with this point, nonetheless we recommend to plan a bit, just a little bit so you don’t end up doing too much repetitive work which would have better been done with more preparation.

MEETINGS ARE WHERE PEOPLE TALK ABOUT DOING WORK BUT NOT WHERE THEY ACTUALLY DO IT.

A bit radical?

Even if his view seems radical to me, the idea is very simple and in FindThatLead we love simple things. To simplify business operations, to do less, better, and working by correcting on the go, is an easier approach that allows anyone to step into the business world without wanting to have everything ready, which would take too much time in planning.

In any Software as a service company,the fastest approach is to create a simple product intended to solve a very specific problem.

Build what you need and forget the competition

People may also need the same things you need.

If you find a need in your work, chances are that someone like you is looking for a solution to that particular need.

Don’t be afraid that the competition might be doing the same things.

Just do it, try it, and see how it turns.

Don’t invest too much into it either, just do the minimum needed to get it started and have a minimum viable product up and running.

Our case

In my case, I had a need. I needed to get more leads without having to connect with people in social networks.

I asked some coworkers to help me do it. I needed to contact people on Linkedin who weren’t my part of my connections.

Some people told me that this wasn’t a good business model, but I didn’t listen to them.

And here we are having a user base that is growing every day, thanks to my great team of developers.

Conclusion: Re-all

We don’t have managers, we manage by ourselves. Revamp, rethink, redesign, redo, and Rework. Stop wasting your time and your colleague’s now!