jakester's Blog

gordon - Basecamp is great. We don't use it right now but have had some success with it in the past. It's certainly very easy to use so the chance the staff will pick it up is high.

For us we have a bunch of tools internally that help with visibility. The latest one is a little tool I threw together that is like Twitter + a simple Work Log which really helps to keep everyone in the loop without a lot of structure or effort.

But high visibility is no panacea... in fact it almost encourages micromanagement. What I'd like is a really intelligent, well thought out process from someone smarter than me that details the best approach to set goals with employees and have them regularly judge progress towards them.

Feel free to message me if you have any questions about Basecamp or other tools... I am sort of obsessed with this stuff and am happy to be of whatever assistance I can.

Hi everyone!

I run a small software company that uses a ROWE-like approach - no fixed hours, no requirement to work out of the office, just get stuff done, etc - but I've always found it a challenge to set reasonable (and reasonably concrete) expected results for people and then track progress towards those results.

As a result, we often use the digital equivalent of "Management by Walking Around," asking people what they're up to, etc. This is okay - but I feel we could really improve in setting expectations and measuring them.

So does anyone have any tips for us? How do you guys set expectations, or how would you like your expectations to be set? Does ROWE provide some guidelines in doing this?

Poetgrrl - you don't have to put up with that. If you're the only marketing person at small business, AND you are good, then you are probably their most valuable employee, period. You may need to remind them of that on occasion.