January 15, 2012

There are no working hours…

This week we’ve decided to introduce a new (Trial) method of working, it’s based around a concept that I have felt strongly about for a long time.

I’ve always worked best and most productive during the afternoon and evenings, the morning has never been a good time for me to work. Other people will be the same, others will work best early morning etc. The core point I’m trying to get across is that everyone works differently and is most productive at different times. So why do we insist on a 9-5 working pattern?

I’ve done some monitoring of how productive I am when in the office, I found there were certain points when I’d get into the office at 8am and not start work until 10am. Even at 10am I don’t feel like I’m producing the same quality as when I am in the “zone” and then other times I can sit down for 2 hours (in the “zone”) and code will almost write itself, I’ve been more productive in them 2 hours than some full days. So again we have to ask why even employers that offer “Flexible working patterns” insist on employees working 8 hours per day?

We’ve decided at Silverchip, to strip the start and end point for the team and simply give each employee responsibility for certain areas or projects, no number of hours they have to work per week etc. Our focus will be on work output, not hours worked.  What we hope to happen is the following,

The Team Is Happier

We’ve all had days, where things go wrong and the guys will now have the ability to take some time out so they can come back with a fresh set of eyes. The guys will all have the ability to go to the gym, go out for meals with friends or even just sleep in. This should produce a much happier team.

The Team Is More Productive

If the team can choose how,when and where they want to work, this will increase there productivity – they wont need to have lunch at a certain time or get on an overcrowded bus to work. All these aspects should improve each team members productivity.

We attract the best quality staff and retain them

By offering this method of working, we hope the great staff we have are retained and when we come to attract new people, our company and work-style is a deciding factor.

Now, people out there will be sceptical of doing this due to the fact they have to be there in the office to answer phones and hit deadlines etc. Well we do too, and due to the internet, we can redirect calls anywhere in the world, deadlines are still an important part of what we do and each of us will be responsible for a project hitting the deadlines. We will be using Campfire to communicate as a team and a whole host of web based tools to manage what we do. We haven’t finalised everything we are using yet but will update you once we do.

So, I’ll be keeping a log of how this goes over the next week and be sure to keep you posted if it succeeds or fails. I strongly believe in the team we have and see no reason why the above wouldn’t succeed.

Agree? Disagree? Implemented something similar? I’d love to hear about it below.

January 10, 2012

50/50 Co-founder model

I read an interesting article this morning from Joel Gascoigne, who I have a huge respect for and enjoy reading his blog (You should also check out his app – Buffer). The article he wrote today was about avoiding the 50/50 co-founder model (find it here) – have a read and this is my response.

When I set up Silverchip in 2008 it was pretty much a company to handle all the contracting work I was doing, it wasn’t a ‘business’ as such – I mean sure, it made money and had accounts but it was just me. I decided to get serious towards the end of 2009 and to do this I knew I needed help, I needed someone I could trust. The person coming  in to work with me would essentially have full access to all my previous clients and contacts and more importantly, the “co-founder” would need to be 100% dedicated and I mean give up there life to make this work, we needed to take 8 months without a salary to give us a fighting chance and I knew there would be long night and weekends involved.

With all the demands I needed to place on the other person I knew the only way I could get what I needed from them was to offer the 50% – against much advice from friends, family and colleagues. Jamie (Who really needs to sort his blog out!) officially started in March 2010 after 4 months of planning. Our aim was to get the business self-sufficient by the end of the year and we succeeded.  It was hard but I’m glad I made the decision to offer the equal stake.

The most important thing about the 50/50 model is that ideas we have, we talk about. This results in problems being discovered before they cost the business any money (Sure we’ve made mistakes but we’ve also thrown hundreds of ideas away at concept level – before they have cost us any time or money). Neither of us can demand the idea goes through unless the other agrees and we are both logical people so things get worked out. Sometimes a start-up is a lonely place and is a very rarely and easy journey, having someone of equal responsibility is a way to share the worries of running a business and allow us to focus on creating (in our case) great websites.

People might be reading this and thinking, “I created this I want the cash reward” and I went through this mentality but strongly believed that having a 50/50 partner gave me a greater chance of success than going it alone – and it’s worked.

Now this wont always work and I was lucky enough to know someone I trusted, who had the right skill set, who was willing to give up his job and give this a try – it wont always work like this. The key element is that both of you truly want the same thing and are prepared to work equally hard to get it.

I really enjoy reading about how people got set-up so if you have an opinion on this please share via the comments below.

December 18, 2011

Targets

After discussing Focus a couple of weeks ago, we at Silverchip have talked a lot about our plans for the next phase of the business. When Jamie joined the business, we set a number of targets for the first 18 Months.

What we realised in the past few months is that we stopped setting targets and it’s something that I believe to be a failure for one simple reason.

“We had no measure of success!”

Sure, the number of projects being acquired was increasing and our staff levels were following suit. But how could we measure success: 2 staff? 200 staff? It’s all relative to what we wanted to achieve and that was what’s missing.

Previously, every week we would sit down and look at how we were performing in terms of the targets we set and at one point we even had a large thermometer on a white board that we would fill closer to 100% over time and then surpass it and write new targets. It worked great, it felt rewarding to increase on the board and felt bad when it decreased and more importantly it was an easy, visual representation of how we were doing.

There was no hiding it, if we were doing well it was clear and in the same way if we’d done something wrong, it was obvious for us both to see and we could fix it.

You wont hit all your targets. The targets me and Jamie set at the start of Silverchip were tough and many people would have looked at them and said there was no way we could do that. However, I’m happy to say we went well beyond the targets we set. Now that doesn’t mean the targets we set were too easy, because at the time of setting them they were not, we just grew faster that anyone could have planned.

That’s a key point, no-one knows what the future holds and no-one knows how things are going to play out (If you know someone that does, please let me know). So, many of the targets you set you will surpass and some you may not achieve in the time frame because of some unexpected event.

I suppose the key thing to this is to push yourself with your targets, don’t set a target that you will beat easily but be realistic and that’s key.

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars.” – I received a leaving card from some colleagues with this quote on the front. Still sticks in my head as a good quote when talking targets.

Now targets wont work for everyone, people work in different ways and it’s up to you as a business owner, developer or whatever you are to discover your own way of measuring success, but for us this works well and it can be translated into everything we do. I’ve now set up a page (ToDo List) where I have set targets for the next year. These targets are based on personal life as well as work related items and I will be updating the status often.

November 25, 2011

Focus is important.

So, I’m coming to the the end of my third financial year and the company has changed a lot. I spent a year of that time as a freelancer working with some great people and agencies and the last 18 months I’ve firmly established (With my business partner) the business as a leading provider of technical solutions.

I’ve always had numerous ideas and concepts I’d like to develop and retail as applications and ideas are plentiful (I have a list!). Now while this is all well and good it’s been brought to my attention that continuing to prototype these ideas and develop several at once is causing an issue. I’m applying 20% effort to 5 ideas, I should be applying 100% effort to 1 idea. If it doesn’t work, drop and move on. That’s how I truly believe we can deliver the best product.

So my mind-set will be changing, we will be focusing on one thing at a time, delivering each thing to the highest standard and using any skills or financial gain to enhance the next project.

I’ve done a bit of digging online and this seems to be a commonly encountered problem, what are your thoughts?

Other Links

http://jamesdalman.com/2011/08/focus-on-one-thing/
http://blog.asmartbear.com/one-priority.html
http://www.whatithinkabout.com/focus-on-one-thing-at-a-time-to-completion/

October 2, 2011

JQuery OnClick event on IPad

Recently, we have been doing some HTML5 and CSS3 development targeted at the IPad. One key thing we observed was the slow response time when using JQuery’s onClick event.

We resolved the issue by binding a specific IPad event, this then removed the click delay and now the app runs smooth as on the desktop.

$('.class').bind('touchend', function () {
//Code
});

Note : If your app is to run on the Desktop you still need to bind the .Click event for the desktop still. You can do this by first determining what device is viewing the app and calling the appropriate bind.