If you haven’t read Paul Graham’s classic essay, “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule,” you may find it’s the most thought-provoking thing you read this week.

Graham – founder of tech startup accelerator Y Combinator — divides information workers into two groups:

• Managers (e.g., business owners, line managers, project managers, and other “boss” types), and
• Makers (e.g., writers, programmers, designers, and other creative or analytical types)

Each type needs a very different type of daily schedule to be productive. Most companies are run to meet the needs of the Manager type. But if your team members are working on the wrong type of schedule for their type of job, they can lose days of productivity a week… and thousands of dollars a year.

Managers (by the Hour) vs. Makers (by the Day)

Graham posits that Managers work best in hourly chunks, which are perfect for managers’ meeting-intensive days. But Makers, he says, need uninterrupted blocks of time — ideally at least half a day at a time, and preferably a full day at a time.

The nature of Makers’ work means that they need time to settle in. As Graham notes:

When you’re operating on the maker’s schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting. That’s no problem for someone on the manager’s schedule. There’s always something coming on the next hour; the only question is what. But when someone on the maker’s schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it.

As much as it pains me as an hours-driven project manager, I have to acknowledge that Maker tasks like troubleshooting a coding problem, creating design concepts, or writing a blog article don’t easily fit into a pre-specified block of hours.

In retrospect, this explains why a former manager — a Creative Director — loved when I could rearrange his schedule to create meeting-free days for him. He needed uninterrupted time to do his Maker tasks.

Putting This into Dollars: Losing $315K/year for Five Makers

Say your team includes a software developer getting billed out at $150 an hour and s/he’s supposed to bill seven hours a day, 48 weeks a year. If poorly scheduled meetings wreck his or her productivity for 1.5 days a week, that means $63,000 in lost billables.

And worse, if you have five people like that, your company is losing $315,000 a year in potential billables.

If you schedule a designer to meet at 10:30am or 3:00pm, you’re killing productivity for at least half their day, because they can’t fully dive into what they’d be working on otherwise.

There’s also an intangible cost — people tend to be satisfied at work when they feel like they’re making consistent forward progress. That’s hard to achieve when they  keep getting interrupted.

What I’ve Changed as a Project Manager

After discovering the Maker vs. Manager concept, it’s radically changed how I interact with Makers at work (that is, hesketh.com‘s developers, designers, and marketing strategists).

I still need to meet with Makers, but now I make sure to “chunk” meetings together (when we have our daily company-wide Huddle at 11:45). I also schedule weekly project meetings with Makers (chunked around the mid-day meeting core), so they aren’t surprised by as many last-minute meetings.

Now that I’ve realized how hard it is for them to switch between projects — one developer said it takes him 1-2 hours to get his head around switching into a task in a different project — I also do my best to schedule tasks for just one project at a time, so I’m not forcing them to mentally switch between multiple clients in just an hour or two.

Finally, I also think first — if I need to interrupt a Maker when they’re focused on specific large tasks, I ask myself, is the interruption going to be worth it?

Acknowledging My Maker Side

I need to acknowledge that I occasionally need to go into Maker mode myself (e.g., when I’m scheduling a project, reviewing documentation, or testing functionality on a new website). In that case, I find it helps to work from home or do it after-hours, when there are fewer interruptions.

To be fair, I love meeting-free half-days, too. They make it easier to get through my to-do list. And as an occasional writer, I also find it’s easier to write and edit blog articles on a wide-open weekend than in the evening after work.

Are You a Maker or a Manager?

As a project manager who’s juggling multiple clients and projects every day, and with a calendar with quickly-filling hourly chunks, I know I’m primarily in the Manager category.

How about you – are you living the schedule that makes you most productive?

After working in New York City and living in New Jersey after college, I moved to North Carolina three years ago. I returned to New York this past weekend for a volunteer trip to Queens and to visit friends in Manhattan.

Change Your Mindset: Driving and Marketing

Driving in New York took some adjusting after three years in the suburbs of a smaller city. Likewise, smart marketing can require some important mindset adjustments along the way.

1. Not everything’s cheap, but convenience has value.

Four hours at the parking garage was $30. I could have driven around for 45 minutes, looking for a cheaper metered spot. But was that really the best use of my time?

Free marketing tools are great… but if subscription-based services like Lynda.com and SEOmoz help you get consistent results faster than free alternatives, it doesn’t make sense to skimp. And hiring a solo web designer might get you a cheaper website, but hiring an agency gets you multiple people who are experts in their particular discipline… and a project manager who ensures it all happens efficiently.

2. Pay attention to the market, and know when to change tactics.

In retrospect, I should have parked somewhere in Queens and taken the LIRR or subway in. Just because I had unlimited miles on the rental car for getting around Queens didn’t mean that was the best tool for the job. From the heavy tolls to high parking costs to a cheap and convenient subway system, there’s really no reason to drive in Manhattan — the unspoken message is “don’t have a car.”

Likewise, marketing tools like static websites and paper-based direct mail once seemed like great ideas… but not the strongest ideas today!

3. Look into the future, and be prepared to react quickly.

Knowing that someone might cut in front of you at any time means you can prepare for it and react accordingly.

In marketing and business, things change. Don’t be Eastman Kodak — bankrupt after  missing the boat on digital photography, or American railroads — bankrupt in the 1960s and 1970s after they were unable to keep up with air- and road-based competition.

4. Accept what you can’t change.

Rather than fume about traffic jams and erratic pedestrians, it’s better to accept it and move on. If you want to merge, you better hit the gas and pull into traffic, or else you’ll be waiting there all day.

Markets are going to change. Competitors are going to do things that leave you in the dust. Accept that it’s going to happen and adapt.

What are your lessons learned?

I made it through without a scratch on my rental car. It was fun to catch up with friends, but the trip affirmed my decision to move to Raleigh, where getting from Point A to Point B requires something less than eternal vigilance.

What have you learned by driving in super-crowded cities?

I turn 30 this week. As I enter a new decade of my life, I’m interested to hear your wisdom on what you’ve learned along the way.

Or to put it another way — what do you know today that you wish you’d known when you were 30 years old?

My name is Karl and I’m a recovering perfectionist. Unchecked, perfectionism leads to procrastination, because nothing is ever quite perfect. Unmanaged, this can become a dangerous spiral for anyone, especially when it comes to meeting deadlines.

How do I cope with this? What’s my solution? Over time, I’ve finally realized that it’s usually better to be 90-95% now than to be 100% perfect later. I can’t get as much done if I wait ’til everything’s perfect, and I like getting things done.

Conveniently, comedian Tina Fey gave me a new mantra for this “good enough” approach, in her 2011 autobiography Bossypants.

It’s a comment from Lorne Michaels, creator and producer of Saturday Night Live, to the SNL writing staff. He said, “The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready. The show goes on because it’s 11:30.”

Life isn’t always so regimented, but it’s a good way to look at things. If it’s done, I can edit it, or we’ll capture it in the QA process. I use that in scheduling projects as a project manager — we need to finish the core functionality first, and then add the bells and whistles later.

How do you handle procrastination and perfectionism? I suggest reading the rest of Bossypants (or listening to the narrated-by-Tina-Fey audio book) for more useful — and funny — career and life advice.

Image credit: David Shankbone via Wikimedia Commons

Over lunch near the courthouse earlier this month, I overheard two lawyers complaining that it’s gotten harder for them to gouge their clients. No, this is not a lawyer joke — it’s a story about marketing, and about handling competition.

It was hard to ignore their conversation — and not just because they were talking loudly a few feet away from my table at the Chick-fil-A in downtown Raleigh. Their predatory conversation was like a verbal car wreck — I couldn’t stop listening.

Back in the Old Days, Without So Much Competition

The older lawyer was advising the younger lawyer about the traffic ticket business, and explaining how the market became hyper-competitive in just a few years.

You see, he used to charge $100 to fix a traffic ticket. Every morning, he’d send letters to people who’d just gotten citations, and he’d get an 8% response rate. Not bad, considering he was one of 3-4 lawyers sending letters. He’d show up in court at 7:45am and knock out 7-8 cases in 45 minutes.

He boasted that this business model made him $12,000 to $16,000 a month — yes, he shared this out loud in Chick-fil-A, and no, I didn’t interrupt to fact-check whether that $192K/year was net or gross.

But it wouldn’t last.

When His Competitor Became the “Wal-Mart of Traffic Tickets”

One of his competitors announced they were going to be the “Wal-Mart of traffic tickets,” and they cut their price to $45 per ticket.

Suddenly, everyone else in town dropped their prices, too, from $100 to $45 to match.

Plus, a glut of hungry new law school graduates meant he was now one of 30 lawyers sending those “hire me!” letters to hapless drivers, instead of just 3-4 before.

His direct-mail response rate plummeted to 3%. In less than five years, he lamented, the easy revenue was gone.

An Informed Client — A Lawyer’s Worst Friend?

My involuntary lunchmate complained that he couldn’t keep up with the aggressive competition. He stopped sending letters, and he switched to another area of law. Bitterly, he said he had to start taking harder, more time-consuming cases.

The younger lawyer — who’d listened patiently as the older lawyer told his woeful tale — rubbed salt in his elder’s wounds. The younger guy said, “I never waste time sending letters. When people call me, it’s because they never heard of the $45 rate — when I tell them it’s $130, they agree ’cause they don’t know any better.”

Wow.

What We Can Learn About Marketing from This Cautionary Tale

While the two lawyers’ rapacious attitude made it hard to concentrate on lunch, it made me think about marketing:

• First, I didn’t realize legal fees for traffic tickets were that low.
• Second, if I get a traffic ticket… I’m going to shop around!
• Third, why is Chick-fil-A so delicious?
• Fourth, if I were in a business where the market price dropped 55% in five years — what would I do?

If prices dropped, I think I’d find a way to compete on service or quality — I’ve been doing web design client service since I was 15 years old, and I’ve learned a few things along the way. And I’d look for a way to provide some sort of value that my competition couldn’t, whether it’s picking up the phone when people call or having deep experience in a niche industry.

What would you do if your competition dropped their prices 55%?

Want to create memorable experiences? It comes down to a few lessons I’ve learned as a volunteer bartender mixing martinis on the Dover Harbor, a non-profit 1930s Pullman railroad car based in Washington, D.C.

How to Create Your Own Memorable Experiences… for Family, Friends, Customers, or Anyone Else

As I shared at Ignite Raleigh 3, it all comes down to proper execution in three areas:

1. Be exclusive — transparency and openness are important business tools, but if you want to create a memorable experience, be something people want to sneak into.
2. Think like a magician — a magician doesn’t reveal all his tricks before the show. Sweat the details, but don’t spoil the magic by showing everything happening behind the curtain.
3. Build a network — you can’t do it alone. Whether it’s full-time volunteers or occasional helpers, you get more done when you recruit a team.

How to Learn More… or Become a Volunteer

Want to see more about the Dover Harbor onboard experience? Read my article.

Interested in an upcoming trip? Destinations from Washington, D.C., include New Orleans, Chicago, and Williamsburg. Visit the DCNRHS website for details.

Wondering about the 89-year history of the Dover Harbor? Visit DoverHarbor.com.

Want to become a volunteer crew member? The next hands-on, half-day training session is in Jessup, Maryland (outside D.C.) on March 17, 2012. Visit the Get Involved page and sign up at Facebook to learn more.

See the Dover Harbor Here in the Triangle this Weekend!

Want to see the Dover Harbor right here in the Triangle this weekend? The Amtrak schedule doesn’t allow time for tours but you can see the outside of the 90-foot, 90-ton car for yourself on Sunday, February 19, 2012:

• Raleigh, NC: Visit the Raleigh Amtrak station on Sunday morning at 10:17am, and look for the northbound Carolinian, train 80. The Dover Harbor will be the dark green car behind the last silver Amtrak car.
  
• Cary, NC: If you’re in Cary, the train’s scheduled for 10:02am.
• Durham, NC: And if you’re in Durham, the train’s scheduled to arrive at 9:42am.

This routing is subject to change, and trains can run several hours late, so call 1-800-USA-RAIL to check status on Train 80 between Durham (DNC) or Cary (CYN) and Raleigh (RGH) for 2/19/2012. And use caution near the tracks — trains are dangerous if you’re not careful.

Next Steps

And the next time you see a train go by, watch for a private railroad car at the end — a colorful reminder about creating your own memorable experiences!

Website and presentation image credits: All images by or courtesy of Karl Sakas.

During the 2012 Super Bowl, two Detroit carmakers’ commercials showed extremely different attitudes about the future. In doing so, they illustrate both sides of a classic advertising concept — marketing messages can appeal to either hope (get something good) or fear (avoid something bad).

HOPE: Chrysler — Halftime in America, feat. Clint Eastwood

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PE5V4Uzobc

Chrysler and Clint Eastwood project a message of hope, determination, and can-do spirit. It’s an ad about the future, and the future is bright, if we roll up our sleeves.

Key line: “All that matter’s now is what’s ahead. How do we come from behind? How do we come together? And how do we win?”

FEAR: Chevy — Mayan Apocalypse, feat. Twinkies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vAeeUhloQA

It’s obviously a joke — Chevy even has Twinkies, the snack food industry’s answer to nuclear-proof cockroaches — but the message is one of fear, not hope. After all, their unseen friend Dave is dead because he drove a Ford.

Tagline: “From the beginning of your workday to the end of the world, Chevy runs deep.”

Analyzing the Two Ads

Both ads got my attention. Both tell a story that makes you want to keep watching ’til the end. I wanted to see what happened. That’s good. Am I going to buy a Chevy pickup truck or a Chrysler vehicle? No, I’m happy with my Honda Fit. That’s bad (for GM and Chrysler) but I’m not in the market right now anyway.

The Chrysler ad appeals to my desire for a better future, my conviction that we can bounce back from the economic downturn. They were appealing to all Americans. And it was all about context. I believe “Halftime in America” will become one of the classic Super Bowl ads.

The GM ad is all about snide exclusivity, which isn’t Chevy’s brand promise at all. The ad is designed to appeal only to smug Chevy truck owners, as opposed to people dumb enough to drive a Ford or Dodge truck. Chevy was preaching to the choir — never the best use of $7 million a minute.

If you want truly inspired this year, you’ll have to look to Honda’s funny CR-V riff on Matthew Broderick’s performance in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Which message works better — Chrysler and hope, or Chevy and fear?

Update: NFL Properties LLC pulled the original YouTube video from the Chrysler channel, so I’ve embedded from an alternate location. HT to Brian McDonald for the heads up. I already knew the NFL doesn’t want people using “Super Bowl” without permission… apparently they think they own “Halftime,” too?

If you’re running projects at a marketing agency, you probably swear by doing daily check-ins with the practitioners (designers, developers, and strategists) on your team.

If you aren’t doing it already, here’s why and how I do daily check-ins as a project manager at hesketh.com. As a seven-person (and growing!) web design agency, we use FogBugz as our task-tracking system, but you can customize this to whatever project management system you use.

Why to Do Brief Daily Check-ins with Your Team

I find practitioners prefer to be doing their work (designing, programming, or strategizing) instead of meeting about or talking about their work — yet if they aren’t synchronized with the team, they aren’t helping the agency meet our clients’ goals.

Brief daily check-ins are a powerful tool to keep everyone moving ahead in the right direction, while juggling the inherent “doing” vs. “reporting” tension.

Questions to Ask Your Design, Development, and Strategy Team

Via email, I ask everyone five questions (with answers due by 10:45am):

1. What didn’t you complete yesterday?
2. For any tasks you didn’t complete, have you added notes to the task in FogBugz?
3. For any tasks you didn’t complete, have you updated elapsed time, so the Time Remaining is accurate in FogBugz?
4. What do you expect to complete by COB today?
5. What’s iffy/tricky on today’s to-do list?

If you’re running a larger team (15+ people), you may need to adjust how you collect answers. Even with four (soon to be seven — we’re hiring!) practitioners, asking the 2nd and 3rd questions makes my job easier, since people are increasingly keeping their tasks up to date in the web-based project management system.

If someone’s at risk of getting stuck (#5), I can help them get the obstacles out of the way. And if someone’s plan doesn’t match what I need them to do, I’ll send an update with the new priorities. That way, we’re never more than a couple hours off track.

Changes I’ve Made as PM

I used to check in with each person via instant message, but I realized the IM approach was too much of an interruption — people didn’t have time to organize their thoughts. It wasn’t giving me answers in an easy-to-compare format, and IMs aren’t thorough, either — instant messaging is good for simple-answer questions, but my asking “Where do things stand?” was too open-ended.

After forgetting to send the check-in email one morning, I’ve started sending the email each night, so people have it in their inbox in the morning and so I don’t have to worry about it. Instead, I just check everyone’s task list in FogBugz, and then see if their emailed replies match my expectations.

How’s It Working?

So far, this has been working pretty well. I’ve considered sending customized emails to each consultant (instead of the same message to everyone) but I find it’s easier to just follow up with each person as-needed.

Since most of the team isn’t in the office when I get there before 9:00am, I don’t have to wait for people to come in — the asynchronous approach means the answers come to me. I know what’s going on, and people can respond at their own pace — they don’t have to drop everything because I’m waiting for an IM’d response.

Future Changes — Including Your Input

I want to be sure I’m asking enough, but I also don’t want to overwhelm people with questions — for instance, I’ll combine the second and third questions as FogBugz-update compliance goes up.

What questions should I add or drop from my check-in list? Please share below!

After the latest Raleigh New Media Leaders networking event at the Hive, we recently held the door-prize lunch at the Busy Bee Cafe in Raleigh. Three lucky winners got to spend 90 minutes with three smart C-level marketing leaders — Gregory Ng, Heather Hesketh, and Jim Tobin.

Thanks again to Woody Lockwood for graciously donating event space at the Hive and donating “Lunch with the Leaders” at the Busy Bee.

Wondering what we discussed over crispy tater tots — or how to snag your own seat at the table next time? Read on!

Who Was There?

The all-volunteer organizing committee created “Lunch with the Leaders” as a unique door prize for the first Media Leaders event in January 2010. After all, what’s more valuable than getting 90 minutes of one-on-one time with busy marketing execs like Greg, Heather, and Jim?

Past leaders for Media Leaders events in Raleigh have included Brooks Bell, Karen Albritton, Michael Hubbard, and Patty Brigulio, among others.

Featured Media Leaders for January 2012:

• Gregory Ng (Chief Experience Officer, Brooks Bell)
• Heather Hesketh (CEO, hesketh.com)
• Jim Tobin (President, Ignite Social Media)

Prize-Winners at “Lunch with the Leaders” for January 2012:

• Antoinette Russell (PR Director, Wrightway International)
• Mark Fulton (Founder & Editor, DotSauce Magazine)
• Regina Twine (Former Director of Customer Engagement & Social Media, Live Work Play)

And Rachel Healy and I were there from the organizing committee to document everything.

Want to follow everyone on Twitter? Here you go: @AntoinetteR, @DotSauce, @GregoryNg, @Hesketh, @JTobin, @KarlSakas, @Rachealy, and @ReginaTwine.

Three Key Themes from “Lunch with the Leaders” at the Busy Bee

We started talking about marketing conferences — Heather is a member of the South by Southwest (SxSW) advisory board, and Regina shared her experiences attending SxSW last year.

1) How to Get the Most Out of Conferences

What can you do to get the most of conferences? Remember this:

• Everyone agreed: Never turn down an invitation — be open! You never know what’ll come out of a meeting or new connection.
• Greg noted that his connections at things like SxSW Interactive were non-traditional in ROI, but always valuable nonetheless.
• Heather: Any knowledge you gain is not from the conference — it’s in the bar. It’s about those informal connections.
• Regina: It’s about going and being open, not about having an agenda.
• Greg: If you’re looking for a data-specific conference, go to eMetrics in New York and San Francisco.

As we were discussing conferences’ mobile apps, Greg shared Phil Buckley‘s comment about boosting QR code adoption — If only they changed smartphone cameras to automatically read QR codes.

Greg recently tested a new type of QR code, to see what encouraged people to download his Freezer Burns app (among his 200,000 subscribers). People didn’t want bonus footage — but they definitely wanted free giveaways.

2) Five Years from Now — Predictions for 2017

I asked what people saw happening in the industry five years from now. A big theme was the tension between working virtually and the continuing need for valuable face-to-face time:

• Heather: Mobile workforce. You can work anywhere.
• Jim: Look at the new Microsoft Office 365 as a preview of how we’ll work in the future. Seamless, incredible. Built-in conversation, right there in the program, and it just works.
• San Jose has co-working space for people in San Francisco — 100 people in the same space, but working for different companies.
• Regina: Co-working will grow, because management will be less about keeping tabs and more about outcomes.
• Greg shared that Brooks Bell has a policy — see coworkers face-to-face every 48 hours.
• Heather: To test integrating a remote employee, we tried having a computer with video, live-streaming to a desk in the office (and occasionally tempted the remote employee with donuts in the office). The goal was to eliminate that hurdle, where people don’t want to disturb an employee working remotely. But remember, they’re at work – of course you can “disturb” them.
• As an employee at hesketh.com, I mentioned that holding daily huddles (about 15 minutes long) helps keep people moving in the same direction on the same team.
• Greg shared a theme from TIMA‘s recent futurist event: Privacy will be very different in five years. Big Brother won’t feel so scary any more — in part, because advertisers will be providing relevant messaging.
• Jim: There’s already this idea of “frictionless sharing.” Bad wording, but a good idea.
• Mark: We’ll see growth in domains. New extensions, and people investing in new extensions.
• At least one lunch attendee has pre-emptively bought domain names in their kids’ (or future kids’) names.

It seems clear that we still need to find a solution for still needing face-to-face interaction in an increasingly virtual work world.

To illustrate a potential solution, Greg shared a challenge common to the homeschooling movement — kids learn quickly, but they don’t develop the same social connections as in high school, and they struggle their first year in college. One solution includes forming learning co-ops, where homeschooled kids meet up to go on field trips, play sports, and otherwise spend “IRL” time face-to-face with other students.

3) Content Marketing: Ups and Downs

As we talked about privacy, the conversation took a turn toward content marketing — the good, the bad, and the ugly:

• Jim: Ignite Social Media’s growth has been through blogging, not advertising. For instance, they’ll release a video on their social media strategy — they’re producing them to appeal to the ideal “I’ve got money; I need some help” crowd, not the “I want to do it myself” category. Ignite also created valuable free social media tools, which led to perhaps 7.5 million of their 8.0 million inbound links.
• Heather: Content farms and bad SEO are “ruining my internet”; it’s like people are “peeing in the pool.” The focus on Optimization over Quality isn’t good.
• Greg: Brooks Bell will publish super-technical articles. They pre-qualify people, since the articles won’t appeal to less-technical people who aren’t BBI’s target market.

How To Get a Seat at the Next “Lunch with the Leaders”

Thanks again to Greg, Heather, and Jim for donating their time! And thanks to the Raleigh New Media Leaders organizing committee — Brian McDonald, Meg Crawford, Karl Sakas, Phil Buckley, and Rachel Healy — for making the latest events possible.

Want your own chance to win “Lunch with the Leaders”? You’ll need to come to the next Raleigh New Media Leaders networking event — keep an eye on our New Media Leaders website for dates and times.

What’s been your favorite networking connection or lesson-learned from New Media Leaders in Raleigh?

Last week, I shared my favorite blog posts I wrote in 2011. But what about favorites that didn’t get much attention earlier this year? Here are five articles you might have missed the first time:

1. The business of design and marketing: Valuable advice from 5 agency owners at AIGA Raleigh
2. Buying jewelry instead of gambling? Unexpected marketing substitutes
3. Old-school insults to inspire your copywriting
4. Cause marketing: McKinney’s tips for TIMA on creating your own winning nonprofit campaign
5. Usability testing: 5 tips from Abe Crystal for digital marketing agencies and their clients

What do you want to see more of in 2012?