Vendors Say “Manage the Work”, I Say “Do the Work”

“Did you enter the information into Monday.com, Salesforce, Trello and Jira?”

This is something I hear all the time when working on client projects.

By the way, please, no offense to the vendors listed… pick any CRM, project management, task management, or kanban tool.

Many times, I am the one being asked to enter data into these systems. By the time I learn them all, enter the data, review other people’s additions, 50% of my hours are used. Leaving me only half the time to do the actual work. How does that make sense?

Tool overload

There are SaaS applications for everything!

Apps for note taking. Apps for strategic goal management. Even apps for shoutouts. Name a process or a function or just a common task in a company, there’s probably a SaaS solution for it.

In many cases, these solutions are critical. I can’t imagine running a sales organization without a CRM SFA application like Salesforce or HubSpot. It’s a great investment.

Just be careful not to swing the pendulum too far with productivity tools. Your workers’ priority should be doing the work, not managing the work.

Bias for action

I’ve got a “bias for action”. Some often say, I am “impulsive” and “careless”. There’s no doubt I’ve jumped to conclusions or rushed into some projects, but I adjust quickly. They call it “failing fast”. I think it works for most things, maybe not cybersecurity and financial transactions, but surely in sales and marketing and other areas.

Most of the time my intuition is correct. Very rarely do you have all the data or 100% accurate information. There will always be some risk in decisions. But don’t let “edge thinking” get in your way. By edge thinking I mean focusing on the highly improbable events that might happen. Focus on the 80/20 or 90/10 cases.

Analysis paralysis

“Perfection is the enemy of progress.” 

One of my favorite quotes. Did you ever work for a company that had that person who said NO to everything until all the data and information was confirmed and analyzed. You know the person, the “Chief Devil’s Advocate”. Of course, a realist in a group or team is very healthy. Even a pessimist can be useful. But don’t let them slow you down.

Use your intuition. Intuition is not just a gut feel or emotional feeling. It comes from years of experience. It comes from your subconscious processing thousands of data points. It comes from your brain identifying patterns. Intuition is probably closer to “wisdom” than “feeling”. The grayer your hair, the better your intuition. (Yah, my hair is white)

Spend more time on the work

My point is this…your company likely does not need the latest and greatest SaaS solutions for every micro function in the company. You don’t need meetings and teams for every single decision. You don’t need a data warehouse full of data and AI for everything. 

Pick your spots. 

I love my Google tools: Workspaces, Group Chat, Sheets and Slides. I can almost run my entire two businesses using just a few tools like Google Workspace. Now I’ve got ChatGPT too!! 

Don’t get me wrong, the large 5000 person corporations need more sophisticated tools. But most companies are not that large. Simpler is often better. 

Stop managing the work… get to work!