I've moved my postings to Substack. It's a free newsletter and you can read the archives just like you read the blog posts here. It's a lot like the blog but more focused on practical ways you can systemize your company to scale faster and manage better. Hope to see you there. 

Check it out!

https://johnseiffer.substack.com/

PS - I realized I did this back in September of 2022 but neglected to mention it here. I apologize. 

I'm wondering if we should form a Mastodon server for SMB folks who I mostly met on twitter. You can comment below, email me - john@ceobootcamp.com or DM me on Twitter - @BetterCEO.

I think the SMB Twitter "community" if that's the right word has done well by staying out of the junk on Twitter - both before and after the ownership change. BUT I worry that forces beyond our control will drive it out of business.

Mastodon is a potential alternative and below is the best understanding of it that I've seen. It's from a piece by Teri Kanefield discussing the pros and cons of social media. The whole thing is at https://terikanefield.com/curing-the-ills-of-social-media/ but the first part is a lot about the current political situation (which I'm happy to say SMB Twitter has pretty much stayed out of). The Mastodon bit is about half way down. She also talks about POST. I'm copying this with her permission. 

-=-=-=- Start of Teri's piece -=-=-=-=-=

III: About Mastodon

Mastodon launched in 2016 when German software developer Eugen Rochko (working for a nonprofit) didn’t like Twitter so he wrote the Mastodon code, and made it public. Yup, he gave it away. Anyone can use it. Anyone can improve it.

This means that anyone can operate their own Mastodon server. People can also join a server that is open to new users. If the server is on this list, you can join. These servers depend on community donations. Each server makes its own rules. If you open an account on one server, and you don’t like it, you can move to a different server and take all your followers with you.

There are no algorithms on Mastodon, which decreases the incentive to produce inflammatory, rage-inducing content.

To show you an example of how this can work, a group of journalists led by Adam Davidson of the The New Yorker established a server for journalists. They vet their members, so you know that anyone with “journa.host” after their names has been vetted by Davidson and his partners.

To follow Davidson and any of the other journalists on journa.host, you can create an account on any of the servers open to anyone. You then interact with them the same way you do on Twitter. You can follow them, comment on their posts, “like” their posts (it’s called “favorite” on Mastodon) or retweet (called “reboost” on Mastodon.)

Here are the advantages for Davidson and his journalist colleagues:

• He and his friends own their own data. Nobody can sell their personal information.
• They make their own rules. They can block anyone they want from their server. They can forbid the use of certain words. Their server, their rules.
• If their server runs well, anyone who follows them or comments on their posts will have a smooth experience.
• They don’t have to live in fear that a corporate overlord will suddenly wreak havoc on their professional lives.
• There is no “quote tweet” on Mastodon (I don’t know about Post.news).

For an interesting take on how the quote-tweet encourages dunking and drives polarization and extremism, see this article by Matt Tait.

Disadvantages:

• They have to monitor the content on their server. The more users they have, the harder this gets.
• They also have to pay the bill. For a sense of the cost of having your own server, click here. If you can do the technical work yourself, the cost is about the same as maintaining a word press website. It isn’t prohibitively expensive. It’s work intensive. (Like a functioning public sphere.)

To take another example, a startup company with 10 engineers and 3 marketing people can set up its own Mastodon server. This gives each member a social media platform. They don’t have to worry about anyone selling their data, blitzing their customers or followers with ads, or allowing Nazis and other creeps onto their comments.

Your neighborhood gardening club can have a server if you all want to chip in. If you (or someone in your group) can do the technical back-end work, the cost is minimal. You can get one for your extended family. Your political activist group can have one. (You are a member of a political activist group, right?)

Here’s an interesting take on why your organization should have its own server.

But what about the bad guys? What keeps them from forming their own server?

Nothing. But your server simply has to block their server and there is an impenetrable wall.

In fact, this is just what happened. A bunch of Nazis and white supremacists opened their own server called Gab. Every single server on this list has Gab blocked, and any new server is advised to immediately block Gab. So the Gab Nazis are completely isolated. You will never see anything they post and they will never see anything you post. The only way a Nazi can see your stuff is if they join a normal server and hide the fact that they are Nazis, but once their Nazi-ness shows, zap. The owner of your server, who doesn’t tolerate Nazis (that’s why you are there) blocks them and they’re gone.

In fact, did you know that Trump’s Truth Social uses Mastodon code? Trump, being Trump, tried to pretend that he created it, but the creators of Mastodon let everyone know that Trump basically used their free-to-the-public code. In other words, Trump is not a tech genius. He was doing the tech world equivalent of plagiarizing.

Mastodon is Messy

Different servers have different rules. It isn’t clear what a server’s rules are when you join. I see people on Twitter say, “Mastodon is confusing. The customer service is terrible. They need to get their acts together.” Here’s the thing: There is no “they.” There is no person in charge. Nobody is promising that the trains will run on time. It’s like democracy that way. It’s messy. We’re on our own, for better or for worse.

Mastodon is not a good place to Monetize

I suspected that Mastodon was not a good place to monetize, so I checked with Professor Google. When I used the search terms “Branding,” “monetizing,” and “Mastodon,” a few articles came up explaining that Mastodon isn’t good for branding, but when I tried to click on them, I hit a paywall, which told me what I needed to know.

The public sphere is not supposed to be a place to make money. It’s a place to exchange ideas.

Things I like About Both Post.news and Mastodon

• Twitter allows 270 characters per post. Mastodon’s default allows 500. Individual servers can change that. Post.news has no limits. Longer posts encourage thoughtful content and discourage EVERYONE NEEDS TO SET THEIR HAIR ON FIRE RIGHT NOW one-liners.
• Mastodon has an edit button. (I assume Post.news does, but I don’t know yet.) The Twitter rationale for not offering an edit is, “What if a bunch of people like it and then the original poster goes back and adds something creepy?” The answer is, “So what? We’re not a bunch of babies. We value good content, which occasionally requires correction.” If you edit on Mastodon, users can see previous versions, which prevents dishonest editing.
• When you look at someone’s Tweet, you instantly see how much engagement a Tweet has, which stimulates “lots of people liked this, I wonder why,” instead of “this content sounds interesting.” It seems to me this makes it easier to ignore the hair-on-fire oneliner rage inducers. This doesn’t happen on Mastodon. (I don’t know about Post.com.)

-=-=-=- End of Teri's piece -=-=-=-=-=

I found a bit more on how Mastodon works here:

https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/08/what-is-mastodon/ 

Two Types - Internal & External

My client rescheduled our time twice in a row due to emergencies. It got me thinking that there are two types of emergencies. To over simplify (a little) one type is internal. A machine breaks down. Or you run out of cash.

The other type is external - things happen outside your company that you need to deal with. Often these are unforeseen problems that customers call on you to fix. In either case, don't stop by fixing the problem. Work to prevent it from happening again.

For Internal Problems

Prevention starts with the 5-Whys. Ask why it happened. Then ask why that happened, & why THAT happened. There's no magic about the number 5. Ask till you get to the root cause.

Usually the root cause is a person problem. That’s good news because it’s fixable. Someone wasn't trained properly, didn't communicate, didn't have the tools or the ability. Something like that.

Then develop better procedures to make sure that root cause is corrected. Schedule maintenance on the equipment and have backups if necessary. Check your cash on a time table and know what to do before it becomes a crisis.

For External Problems

You're like a fire department or emergency room. An emergency is not an interruption – it’s what you do.  Fixing problems is part of the value you provide even though you can't schedule them. You need three things.

Thing 1 The resources to handle the expected load even when you can't predict the details. That means sometimes those resources will be sitting around. That's not waste. You have to strike the balance between just in time and just in case inventory levels.

Thing 2 Good procedures and training. An emergency room can't function if things aren't stored in the right place so everyone knows where to find what they need. Or people haven't practiced how to deal with certain situations.

Thing 3 Make sure you're charging for the value you provide when solving customers' problems. You can build this into your original price, charge for ongoing support, or charge on a case by case basis. Your value doesn't end when your product is delivered.

Just because you can't predict the details of an emergency doesn't mean you can't prepare. Make a list of recent emergencies and note which are internal & which external. You’ll know what to do next.

One of the biggest frustrations for any business owner is when an employee doesn't perform to your expectations. The higher level the employee, the worse it gets. The root cause it often a mismatch between our expectations and their performance. I found the "LADDER OF LEADERSHIP" is a great tool to help codify our expectations and improve their performance.

 Delegate Don't Abdicate

I see too many business owners who just want to set it and forget it as Ron Popeil would say. But your employees are not a Rotisserie BBQ. Your job as CEO is to coordinate the output from everybody else like the conductor of the orchestra.

 The Ladder of Leadership

	Employee says	Manager says
7	I've been DOING …	What have you been DOING …
6	I Just DID ...	What did you DO …
5	I INTEND ...	What do you INTEND …
4	I would LIKE to …	What would you LIKE …
3	Here's what I THINK ...	What do you THINK …
2	Here's what I SEE …	What do you SEE …
1	Tell me what to DO …	I'll tell you what to DO …

In a previous post I discussed the 4 Parts of a Function and why it's useful to see your company as a compilation of functions rather than jobs.  If you haven't read that one, it will make more sense to do it before you continue reading. I'll wait.

This time I want to examine what it looks like to see your entire company through the lens of functions.

When companies start out, they look like this. This one guy performs all the functions a company needs done.

But when companies scale they don't look like this ...

Your Organization is Made of Functions Not Jobs

"I will show people anything you want to do, do it. Don't listen to anyone. Chase your dreams."

That's advice from a guy who tried to run on water in the contraption pictured above from Florida to New York. But he washed ashore 30 miles SOUTH of his starting point and the Coast Guard has to help to make sure he was safe. He was.

This was his third attempt. in 2014 he had to be rescued from a similar contraption near St. Augustine, FL and in 2016 he had to be rescued again near Palm Beach. All this from an article in the BBC.

It's nice to have dreams but to accomplish anything you have to wake up.

Hiring can be the most problematic part of running your business - but when done well the rewards of a good team are critical to success. Most job descriptions describe a person's position in the org chart (who they report to etc.) and the skills you expect them to have. But that's not enough. It's better to create job descriptions around functions rather than positions. Here's the difference.

A function is an activity that produces an output. For example, a company needs to have financial transactions entered into its books. That's a function called bookkeeping. It also needs to call on delinquent accounts for payment. That function is called collections. It also needs someone to purchase office supplies (remember office supplies?) and someone to call a contractor when a printer is acting wonky, or the AC isn't working properly or the janitorial staff didn't do a good job. (That function is called facilities.) Depending on the size of the company and the volume of work involved all these functions might be handled by the same person who could report to different people for each of those functions. You give that person a title (bookkeeper perhaps, or office manager, or assistant to the ….) and that title becomes their position. But it's the functions that are critical.

Most people in most companies perform several functions. And as the company grows the functions grow in size but not in kind. That's why a job description is better used to define the various functions in your organization which can then be combined into a position, and recombined as the company grows.

A good job description has three parts which I'll describe below. 

Outcomes

This section describes what you want that person to produce. It's what you'd see if they did their job in the middle of the night while you were sleeping. Depending on the nature of the work, it can include the quantity of output as well as the quality and frequency. For managers, it might describe the output of their team that is expected. For knowledge workers it could include the kinds of decisions you want them to make, or questions you want them to be able to answer - or even questions you expect them to ask.

The output section also includes the bit about who they report to (reporting is a output after all) but it's not limited to that.

Here's a  chart you can use to list the outcomes you expect from various functions you want this person to perform. .

Column 1 – Output We’ll See  This is what you’d notice in the morning if the person did their job in the middle of the night. 

Column 2 – How Much This is the quantity of such output you expect (if that’s relevant). 

Column 3 – How Well This is how you’ll measure the quality of such output (if that’s relevant).

Column 4 – How Often This describes the frequency you expect to see that output (if that’s relevant).

I'm on a bit of a rant. But this is important. And I put it in the category of "Management" because as a manager, it's your job to devise and enforce communication standards in your company. Do this and it will be obnoxious at first but it will pay off.

Email is not normal communication so it needs different rules.

Rule #1 - Only one topic per email

If I have 3 different things to talk to you about I'll send you 3 different emails. One for each topic. If I ramble and think as I write, I need to edit before I send and make each one a different topic.

Not doing this is LAZY and disrespectful of your time and attention.

Rule #2 - Subject Line MUST be useful

Both rules work together. But rule number 2 means:

• Every email must have a subject
• The subject must say what the topic is
• The subject should say what I want you to do with this

Some examples:

Monday's meeting notes - for your files

Monday's meeting notes - please comment by Friday

Question about Monday's meeting

You see what I did there? Just by reading the subject you know what to do with the email. 

Even better if you can communicate your whole thought in just the subject line. Remember when twitter was only 140 characters? Think like that and see how powerful your subject line can be.

There are other rules

There are lots of other rules for good emails, but those two are the most important. If you're a real glutton for punishment, here are two more. 

Never ask for a meeting or to reschedule a meeting without including a date AND time that works for you. Maybe include more than one and let the recipient choose. But never say "Can we reschedule to next week?"

Use EOF - Those three letters stand for END OF FILE and if your message is short enough to put entirely in the subject line, by ending with EOF I know I don't have to open the email. Example: Monday's meeting has moved to 2PM - EOF This is an advance technique and required enough people to understand what it means to be useful. 

</End of Rant>

OK one more thing. I noticed I made most of the examples about meetings - email is the least efficient way to schedule meetings. Use Doodle.com for a group or YouCanBook.me to let one other person book with you (it's better than Calendly). 

Picture Source: stephen-phillips-hostreviews-co-uk-3Mhgvrk4tjM-unsplash.jpg