One of the chief requests I got in the "Why do you read this blog?" thread was for more real-life case studies and examples. I was thinking it'd be good to open up more information about how we build and run things.
I also want to give the brilliant people I work and collaborate with a time to show your thinking, and to riff on team-building somewhat. So, expect to see more case studies, more processes, and more behind-the-scenes going forwards.
Recently we welcomed Zach Obront to the GiveGetWin team, and one of the first orders of business is getting more systematic. This is a short announcement to the team, and we're posting it publicly as well. In here, you can briefly see his line of thinking and the questions we have to answer to get systematic.
You'll note that a lot of a lot of this is commonsensical thinking-through of possibilities, and seeing where constraints are to break through them. That's a lot of building systems -- identifying what the constraints are, where the problems arise, and then solving those.
Here's Zach Obront --
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Hey guys. I’m Zach – a new member of the GiveGetWin team. Eventually I’m going to be helping out with the recruitment process, but for starters I’ve been focusing on building systems for provider recruitment. As the organization grows (both in volunteers and providers) this stuff is crucial to avoid stepping on each other’s toes, staying organized, and keeping any opportunities from falling through the cracks.
There’s a huge amount of information that goes into reaching out to a new provider. Has someone else contacted them in the past? What are they working on right now? Has anyone in their network done a deal that can vouch for us? Do any of the recruiters have an existing relationship with them?
The same goes for providers who have already agreed to work with us. When is their deal going to go live? What is the deal going to consist of? How much should we charge? Who is going to work with them on marketing materials?
When it was only one person interacting with each potential provider, it was possible to manage all these ideas simultaneously. Now that it’s a team of us, the challenge is to keep information loss and redundancy to a minimum. We’ve got to operate like one big brain.
This is what the step-by-step process is for. Some of it’s obvious. Some seems counterintuitive. But the point is to seamlessly take the deal from idea to launch while keeping the flow of information and responsibility clear.
I read a book recently called Phi, which uses short fictional stories to build a model for consciousness. The idea is that, because of the varying perspectives within your brain, what emerges is greater than the sum of its parts. A team is the same way. The only difference is a friction in communication between team members that doesn’t exist within the mind. The point of the systems we’ve designed is to keep that friction at a minimum, so that our work together can accomplish more than we could possibly dream of separately.
Check out the attached document which outlines the process, get signed up for an account at Trello, and let me know if you have any ideas to make this system even smoother.
I’m looking forward to working with all of you.
Zach Obront
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Sebastian here again.
This seems like something that can be very beneficial to readers here -- bringing you the internal thinking and logic of everyone onboard, along with strategic direction, systems, evolutions of processes, success rates, and so on. This is something we'll bear in mind as we work/develop documents from the v0.1 just created, to the final polished version that's going to sustain hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions, in fundraising for charity. I'm excited to start opening this up and showing you behind the scenes.
If you're on the GGW team, you should receive an email from Sebastian/Zach shortly and you should be invited to three Trello boards. If you don't see that, ping Sebastian at sebastian@sebastianmarshall.com
You can find Zach at http://zachobront.com/ and GiveGetWin is of course at http://givegetwin.com