{"id":1374,"date":"2008-04-02T08:29:25","date_gmt":"2008-04-02T13:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/startupwhisperer.com\/write-it-down\/"},"modified":"2021-02-03T16:40:02","modified_gmt":"2021-02-03T22:40:02","slug":"write-it-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/startupwhisperer.com\/2008\/04\/write-it-down\/","title":{"rendered":"Write It Down"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have this penchant for writing things down. Everything.&nbsp; I have what a friend affectionately calls, &quot;FOMS&quot; Disease. FOMS stands for the &quot;Fear Of Missing Something.&quot;&nbsp; For startups (or really any size organization), you need to write things down.<\/p>\n<p>Some things that you should codify are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>notes on important business meetings &#8211; email, cheap CRM software (aka Salesforce), or even an excel spreadsheet<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Take notes after each staff meeting &#8211; write down the action items and the key decisions in the meeting;&nbsp; forward them every week and keep track of your progress.&nbsp; It is the no dicker sticker for the team.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Strategic planning sessions need notes and easy-to-follow plans out of them.&nbsp; One slide should be able to some up your Objectives, Goals, Strategies, and Tactics.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Remark your code and if you don&#8217;t have time to write specs, at least document UI specs<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Keep a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) scorecard that is circulated to your management team, employees, and Board every week<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I love the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Execution-Discipline-Getting-Things-Done\/dp\/0609610570\/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1206424165&amp;sr=8-1\">Bossidy book, Execution<\/a>.&nbsp; It was published 6 years ago and I find it extremely pertinent.&nbsp; It is jam packed with no-nonsense blueprints for running a company.&nbsp; I imagine Larry walking into a meeting like the dime store detective, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mike_Hammer\">Mike Hammer<\/a>.&nbsp; Noir-like and hard-nosed getting right to the facts.&nbsp; He devoted a lot of time in the book about the importance of follow-up after meetings and constant attention to decisions that are made.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>To be honest, I use notepad as my planning tool and I use Excel for planning product launches.&nbsp; I am what is called &quot;old school.&quot;&nbsp; There are certainly fancier tools that are no doubt more elegeant like <a href=\"http:\/\/37things.com\">37things<\/a> and<a href=\"http:\/\/liquidplanner.com\"> LiquidPlanner<\/a>.&nbsp; As your company grows, you will develop management procedures and processes as you scale.&nbsp; Setting an early culture of execution via deliberate attention to writing down decisions (and sticking with them), is a wonderful way to keep your fast mover advantage as a startup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have this penchant for writing things down. Everything.&nbsp; I have what a friend affectionately calls, &quot;FOMS&quot; Disease. FOMS stands for the &quot;Fear Of Missing Something.&quot;&nbsp; For startups (or really any size organization), you need to write things down. Some things that you should codify are: notes on important business meetings &#8211; email, cheap CRM&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/startupwhisperer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1374"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/startupwhisperer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/startupwhisperer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/startupwhisperer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/startupwhisperer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/startupwhisperer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1962,"href":"https:\/\/startupwhisperer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1374\/revisions\/1962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/startupwhisperer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/startupwhisperer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/startupwhisperer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}