Management Notes

• Project remote volunteers: What I observed is that any project requires considerable management to keep it on track. This is the nature of focused projects. It is easy to get overloaded once it requires time to make mission-critical decisions - build path, funding, review, requests and offers, etc. This is why we need responsible people (directors, managers) on the team. What you will find is that unless any person is a real team player according to OSE rules of engagement, they will be a liability as long as OSE is understaffed. This means that we need to make careful assessments and assertions on who we work with, while setting up other venues for open collaboration beyond the core team. The proper solution is proper organiational structure to handle collaboration. OSE needs major improvement on this as the project scales. - MJ 8.24.12
• Type of Governance-In my experience there are two primary mindsets to decide between...
  • The command and control corporate mindset (this is what we do at my office, once we reached about ~20 people), and the startup mindset. Karien described the below, and it is appropriate for a planning environment with employees rather than leaders. Freedoms are one of the things that attract leaders (bureaucracy repels), so it's an important balance.
  • Startup mindset: If you want people to be happy and move as quickly as possible, they you say.. buy WHATEVER you need whenever you need it, buy it yourself, we will approve anything. That's what a startup does, and it makes employees happy. The benefit is moving fast, no bureaucracy / roadblocks. You spend a little more, and acquire some redundancy, but the amount is usually beans in comparison to the employee salary outlays. This works in an environment where you have primarily leaders, and you have more autonomy.
  • Mixed: I have often employed a mixed strategy saying .. buy whatever you want that costs less than $200/$1000 etc. If it costs more than that, run it buy X via email for approval with a paragraph explaining why. etc .. Then we just look at who is consistently buying a lot of dumb things and ask them about that.. Usually this is not a problem though as people tend to regulate themselves over time when peers are watching.
  • Summary: Think hard about what the lesser evil is.. What's your primary goal.. keeping someone happy and working as rapidly as possible. It's possible you will find this is more important than minor annoyances like purchasing redundancies. In his case I'd say something like.. Factor e Farm will buy essential items, just send it through the requisition process. - CCT 8.24.12