Vlad Mazek – Vladville Blog

Over the past week I have been complaining about burnout and the ongoing audit and process implementation we are doing. This affects everything from payroll to billing to support to documentation to yes, even me.

You see, we all have a responsibility to the company as a whole and that means sticking to the mission.

So why am I so deeply involved in fixing the mistakes? Partially because this is my company and I either made the mistakes myself or didn’t spot them when they were being made.

I would like to note that I could really care less if the mistake is something we are doing wrong or if it’s just something we are not doing as efficiently as we should have. As a software company we are in control of the code and experience our clients have, so if we aren’t doing everything we need to in order to please our clients we are making a mistake.

I feel that a sense of responsibility is key to leadership when it comes to managing and running a company. If you can’t be held responsible for your actions how do you expect anyone working for you (with a lot less of a profit share at risk) to feel responsible?

Have I never heard of delegation? Yes. And don’t take me wrong, I am not doing this by myself. I am possibly not even the hardest working one here. But when something is broken it is your responsibility to give it your all to fix it. People pick up on that. If I am asking my people to work weekends and longer shifts just so we can get to where we need to be as an organization what sort of a message do I want to send to my team:

Good luck working this weekend. I’m going to Disney World and after that I’ll ride around in my Ferrari while watching you on a webcam to make sure you’re working fast enough.

Pull something like that and you may as well flush the loyalty of your staff down the toilet. It’s much easier to keep the good people than to try to hire, train and nurture new ones.

Metrics

We have a little thing around the office that we call a fuck-o-meter.

We use it to gauge the partners that are on their way out of a business. You see, direction, vision, perseverence, worth ethic… all of those come from the top down.

So when we find a perpetual entrepreneur at the top that seems to do everything but actually run their business we can easilly see a company that doesn’t stick to its mission and it’s days are numbered. I’ve been running this business for a long time and I know that sometimes the problems are so large that it’s almost impossible to see a way out of them. Sometimes you are just blindsighted by the problems you never could have forseen. For example, just yesterday I learned that the trade show booth we purchased for the ConnectWise event did not get proofed by anyone and the vendor failed to notify us until we noticed that it hasn’t arrived. Now I get to look like a total jackass while people around me scramble to get something put together on a 48 hours notice. The fun of this gig is that things like this happen on a weekly basis for one reason or another, in one department after another.

I know that there are times when the grass is greener on the other side.

I know that the constant cycle of wins and losses takes their toll on the leadership that actually cares about their work and the client base.

This however is what separates winners from perpetual entrepreneurial failures.

The company whose leadership is not capable of even sticking to the mission they have built for themselves is doomed.

The staff of the company that is stuck working overtime while the boss is on his 4th mini-vacation this month is looking for a new job.

The company whose supposed leaders are starting up new businesses and taking away from the main mission of the company take note.

If you work in such a company – grab a pen: Your owners are shifting focus and starting new companies because they think the company is well.. as the meter implies 🙂 %*#%ed. Start searching for a new job.

People always ask me about the motivation, how I do it, what to do. It’s pretty simple: If you are asking people to bend over backwards for you and you’re a no-show then you clearly communicate to them that you have no faith in them

And believe me – as they are stuck sitting there 10-12 hours a day working for you they have more than enough time to think about it and become totally disgruntled.

The all seeing, all knowing..

How do I know this with such certainty? Well, as the CEO and the guy that has contacted every single partner we’ve ever signed up, my email address is on at least 20,000 email accounts out there.

That virtually guarantees me the front row seat to a corporate failure as people email their entire contact list about the exciting new venture they have set up in sellling wine. Or distributing Oxyclean. Or becoming an IT person and also a licensed distributor of DishTV, Coffee or whatever the current MLM scam happens to be.

Responsiblity to the Mission

So let’s loop back to the beginning. Every member of the team has the responsibility to the mission of the company. The mission of the company isn’t just a blind Dilbertarian view of corporate jargon – it includes what a company does to create value, how it makes money and how it compensates it’s people.

Nobody is more responsible to the company, to the clients and to the staff alike, than its leader.

And if the leadership isn’t involved in the company than their visiblity to the company activity also comes into question and ultimately the future of the company is bleak.

As you can tell, the course of action is pretty simple.

Your PR as a leader goes both ways. To your clients on the outside, to your employees on the inside. Want to be seen as a hard working guy thats on the same page with the company that cares about what you do and the people you work with….. or do you don’t want to be seen at all?

The “work” is the easiest part of running the company. And nobody cares that you are tired or burned out.

We’re about to embark on the largest hiring and marketing bump in the history of my little company. With growth come not just pains but the inevitable fix cycle to prepare and execute the company plan.

That sounds all nice and pretty, strategery as George Bush would put it, but the reality of the situation is pretty grim. At it’s most pessimistic level, it is a week of grueling torture where you are forced to sit through months and years of your mistakes in a slow and drawn out process attacking virtually every vital statistic of what you’ve dedicated your professional life to.

Once the shaming is done comes the realization that there are two ways to fix it (three, if you consider burning the place to the ground for insurance money and keeping a straight face while trying to explain how 30+ data center suddenly melted down): throw more people at the problem or throw away more money. Then you sit and watch people draw on the whiteboard, or pretty binders, their plan and recommended course of action.

Then when the plan is together and we actually start the hard work of bringing everything to perfection you as the leader get to hear all over that this stuff is so easy, how come we never did it all along…. which is sort of like giving everyone on your payroll a free license for kicks in the family jewels. Repeatedly. Daily.

Every mistake is a learning opportunity. Cultivating the process of continuous learning, change and adaptation across everything we do is something we still haven’t figured out completely. But it is something we’re trying to do.

But with this new plan we’re taking a week a month to attack top 10 problems with our company. This way we can fix the little problems as we go along without allowing them to become giant problems that we can’t do anything about. As we grow, it’s important to keep the standard of quality.

The only difficult part is coming to terms with spending a week each month on the floor in a fetal position while the ego and the crotch are repeatedly deflated and swollen to the point of looking like a coconut tree.

Buying the new Dell mini laptop and got prompted to sign up for the Dell’s managed services. See if you can top this:

“This service covers your household — all family members and all Dell-branded consumer devices under warranty (excludes purchases from retailers and Employee Purchase Programs). Your call will be answered in 2 minutes or less on average. Request telephone appointments with your favorite team members and receive follow-up from the same team members you talked with!

[add $99/year]”

But wait, an MSP does a lot more than just answer phone calls, even if none can do it for $99/year/PC, especially not 24/7. You also work on infrastructure, help with the system setup, viruses, spyware, etc. Don’t worry, Dell is prepared to kick ass there too:

“We’ve got you covered! If you need help getting started we are here for you 24/7! Dell on Call phone technicians are available around the clock.

On Call Services 30 Days [add $49]

On Call Services 13 months [add $149 or $2/month]

PHONE-BASED SUPPORT TO:

Set Up Your System

Help You Go Wireless

Hook Up Your Email/Internet

Remove Spyware and Virus

Connect Your Gear and More”

Seems like this would be a place to write the eulogy, except there really isn’t much nice stuff that can be said for people that chose to stay at the bottom.