As freelancers, many of us work with small companies – you know, the ones run by a single person who outsources some writing, dev work or graphical creativity because he or she doesn’t have those particular skills. This is all fine and good, but it frequently means that our “boss” is someone who may not have all the skills they need for their job – after all, they never had to pass an interview, unlike us.

If you intend to hire freelancers – or if you’re involved in a project as an independent contractor and want to help your employer out – here’s some food for thought:

Make A Plan

While you presumably have a plan of what you want, the people you’re hiring have never seen it. A plan is not “be the best”. It is a reasonably detailed strategy that indicates where you are headed with what you’re doing so that your employees don’t produce the wrong thing (and cause arguments about whether you pay for the rework).

Remember, 90% of the people you’re hiring don’t give a monkey’s about your business: they’re freelancers and just want to know what you want them to do for each specific task. There are exceptional people who will get involved, but don’t count on it.

You don’t have to publish a great big strategy document, but
having some idea of what you want to achieve with things – as well as a
proper, complete, detailed spec for each task – will help a lot.

Being Vague Is Expensive

Each project needs a spec. And when I say needs, I mean absolutely NEEEEEEEEEEDS one! Without it, you’re flailing around in the dark and your scope will creep inexorably. A 10-hour job turns into a 20-hour slog, then a 50-hour marathon.

Define what you want. Don’t faff around with how wonderful everything is, how great a team is, how this is good for everyone involved – they know that or they’d sod off somewhere else! – just tell them WHAT you want, HOW you want it and WHEN to deliver it.

DMAIC and other Six Sigma principles can help here. The time you spend getting your spec right will cost you, but it’ll save you twice as much in the long run.

Oh, and don’t go back and change it until the job’s done – get Version One in place, then you can revisit and decide if you need changes.

Create A Central Store

You presumably have a server somewhere for all this content. Put everything in it, organise it and centralise your communication.

If you’re using three or four sites, online project management tools and email to converse, it’s all a big disorganised jumble and no one will be able to find anything. One store, in one place, with a separate bucket for each project (and an index of documents).

And while I think of it, use descriptive, standardised names. I don’t care how busy your workers are: people need to be able to find something quickly or it’ll cost you another 30 minutes of their time. That gets real expensive, real quick.

Hire someone to do this if you have to - a sort of “content funnel” who just administers the storage area, making sure everything has a description, a standard name, is in the right place and is listed on the index. I know it sounds expensive, but it’ll probably save you cash in the long run (particularly on a big project).

Concentrate On A Thread

When you’re running your own business or project, it’s tempting to try to do too many things at once. That’s a great way to ruin your health and get nothing done.

Variety is, indeed, the spice of life… but switching and changing all the time kills momentum. Tasks rise and fall in priority as if they were in some kind of variable-gravity environment, you lose sleep and everyone runs around chasing jobs like greasy pigs, never catching them.

Stop switching focus all the time. Stop trying to do six different things concurrently. Prioritise your tasks, stick to the priorities as best you can and, if necessary, delegate work. Of course, for that you need some employees you can trust not to cock things up (which is not easy with distant, unfamiliar freelancers) and you need a plan in place (see above).

Define Responsibilities

Yeah, I know it sucks but the people working for you need to know who to talk to when they’re stuck – otherwise they all come whining to you.

A simple text document on your (one, single, central) shared datastore works great. Name, project, responsibility. That’d work for project bucket names, as well. Then you can switch off your phone once in a blue moon because your employees all talk to each other (instead of just you).

Oh, and there’s a thought: keep a “reading list” that tells new employees where to find these index documents. Don’t just say “It’s in the store” and hope they figure it out. You might as well say “Use Google”. Some help that is!

You Don’t Like Writing

But having things on paper (or virtual paper) is essential when working at a distance. I’m sorry, that’s just the way it is.

Yes, talking’s lovely, but all it needs is someone to distract you for 30 seconds after the conversation or the lady next door’s pet crocodile to wander through the garden… and you’ve forgotten something. Specs are important and they (unfortunately) need to be on paper for reference.

What other tips can you think of for new employers and project leads?

Unfortunately, AC have now changed their rules: non-US publishers who are not a part of the Featured Contributors scheme will no longer get any kind of per-view payments.

Here’s the text of the email:

Important Announcement: As of May 1, 2010, Associated Content will be making changes to our payment system that significantly impact Contributors who are not United States taxpayers.

After evaluating our payment policies in regard to international Contributors, our legal team has determined that Associated Content must immediately start withholding a portion of all international Performance Payments pursuant to U.S. tax laws. Due to the cost involved in this process, we can only offer continued Performance Payments to international Contributors enrolled in Associated Content’s Featured Contributors program.

Contributors who are not enrolled as a Featured Contributor, or are not accepted into this program, will no longer be able to earn Performance Payments from Associated Content as of May 1, 2010. If this applies to you, you will receive a final Performance Payment on May 12, 2010 for your page views through April 30, 2010 (if your balance exceeds the current $1.50 payment threshold).

If you are not currently enrolled as a Featured Contributor, we encourage you to apply now. Please note that the program requires you to have top-notch writing skills, and a strong body of work in one of our featured topic areas. You can read all the details and apply to one of the programs here. Note: There is no deadline for applying to the program, but you will not be able to earn further payment until/unless you are accepted.

If you are accepted into the program, you will be asked to submit a United States W-8BEN tax form, enabling Associated Content to withhold earnings on Performance Payments pursuant to U.S. tax laws. In addition, your earning threshold will increase from $1.50 to $100, meaning Associated Content will only process Performance Payments when the total payment balance passes $100. The good news: As a Featured Contributor, you will receive high value assignme nts [sic] every month, and will continue earning Performance Payments on all content published.

That’s going to be a big hit for a lot of writers who used AC as a source of residual income outside the US.

AC will remove writers’ content if requested: contact them at community@associatedcontent.com

oDesk's Time Tracking

Over the weekend, I once again came into contact with one aspect of office life – be it online or bricks-and-mortar – that has always been contentious. It causes distrust and arguments. It causes bad feeling. It causes suspicion and paranoia. What is it?

Time tracking.

With the introduction of modern management and all its acronyms, the ability to track an employee’s day has grown in importance. In my experience, there are three main ways to deal with the subject:

Paranoid

Managers under pressure to meet KPIs and other goals frequently fall prey to a desire to track absolutely every moment. Tools are, of course, available to handle this, though many simply demand a list of hours worked and a task breakdown.

Working in such a dictatorial environment has the advantage of showing how efficient you can be, but it also comes with drawbacks. Not least of these is the feeling of being under surveillance: either an application sits in the background, logging every keystroke, every mouse click and every file or workers are expected to note everything they do in a spreadsheet.

In turn, this raises the issues of privacy (where logging is automatic) and of wasted effort (where a manual system is used).

Carefree

At the other extreme are the employers who don’t care about tracking. Either they arrange to pay per-task or they work out deadlines and leave their employees to do the job.

This kind of hands-off treatment can work very well, especially if your workers are honestly interested in what they’re doing, reasonably well organised and communicative when there are problems.

On the other hand, it can be a nightmare if people miss deadlines, don’t say anything when they hit a snag or don’t really care about the work. In that case, you’re just asking for trouble by giving them free rein.

Sensible

Between the two extremes is what, personally, I find to be the most sensible solution. A good manager discusses the projects and tasks with the workers, sets deadlines and then tracks the major steps (milestones, if you prefer).

By giving people freedom and space, respect and trust are encouraged. It shows that, as an employer, you don’t feel the need to stand behind your employees, looking over their shoulder and breathing down their neck.

In return for the trust you show, you can also reasonably expect your workers to track what they do. Not down to the minute, as that takes far too much effort and is very intrusive, but at least the number of hours on each task.

Online Freelancing

Some would say that fussing about the minutiae of a person’s work is pedantic and annoying. I’d normally agree with them, but I can also see that working with online freelancers who you can’t see is a difficult situation. How do you know they’re actually working and not just playing Call of Duty?

Most of the big online sites provide tools to manage this. For instance, I’ve begun using oDesk’s tracker to keep tabs on my hours for a client. Before this, we worked on trust – but his accountants don’t like that and I can see their point.

The majority tools generally have a start/stop button that you control yourself and – in the case of the one I’m using – take a screenshot a few times every hour just as “proof” that you’re working. If you happen to be visiting Playboy‘s web site when the shot is taken (not that I do), you can cancel the upload – and lose 10 minutes or so of logged time (and stop the clock). Some also allow for web cam pictures to be taken (which is a horrible thought).

These tools also record activity levels – by counting key-presses and mouse clicks – but not what’s being typed or clicked. As a writer and editor, this part is less useful as a good deal of time is spent researching or reading, without any physical activity other than eye movement and the mouse’s scroll wheel.

The good news? It seems I mostly underestimate how long it takes me to do things, so I shall end up better-paid than I was without the tracking.

How do you feel about having your time tracked? Do you consider it rude and invasive or a necessary part of the employer-employee relationship?

Well, maybe it does in fables but customer service is a different matter: bad service does not pass. Not at all. Anyone who’s read about my dealings with my bank knows that.

So for your edification, here are six lessons I’ve learned from dealing with possibly the most deficient, incompetent and unhelpful bank in the country. Most of them apply to any company – big, small or freelance:

1. Respond Immediately

I couldn’t give a hoot how your system works, what processes you follow and whether your sick grandma was taken into hospital this morning. This is the age of instant communication and I expect my contact to be acknowledged quickly. An email, a letter, a text – something that shows you are alive (at least in theory). Making me wait gives me time to mull over legal proceedings.

2. Read My Complaint

No matter how long, complex and confusing it is, read the whole of my letter. Don’t just get to the first point and assume that’s everything – especially if your response times are incredibly long. It’s infuriating to have to wait weeks only to find that the customer service rep completely ignored most of the problem.

3. Accept Responsibility

So I get a reply from Mr. Smith. Unfortunately, the next time I contactyou, Mrs. Jones is the only person available. She’s replaced by Mr. Bloggs, who is followed by Mrs. Smith (no relation) and so on. For the love of all that is holy, assign someone to my case and force them to accept ownership! Nail them to a chair or something – just make sure I’m only dealing with one person and their “I’m on holiday” backup.

4. Understand What This Costs Me

Yes, it’s very nice that you have a 24/7/365 call centre. I don’t even mind that it’s based in Outer Mongolia, Antarctica or the back-streets of Scunthorpe. What I do mind, however, is that it costs me £10 every time I have to call them because you screwed up. More and more people only have a mobile phone these days: remember that and offer to call me back.

5. Communicate Internally

Nothing is more annoying than finally getting in touch with someone who accepts responsibility… and then discovering that they don’t have a clue what’s going on, have no access to “other groups’” systems and wield no power to actually help me. Your internal departmental divisions do not interest me - the fact that you have at least four different call centres, helpdesks and other groups of incompetents who don’t share information is your problem. Don’t make it mine.

6. Don’t Do It Again

What’s the point in sorting out my problem – or at least some vague attempt at that goal – if you do exactly the same thing again two weeks later? And no, I don’t give a flying monkey’s poop that it’s an automated system that’s abusing my account. Un-automate it. It’s not my fault you spent millions on crap software that gives you no flexibility. I’m just the one paying for your incompetence.

Being an IT geek who’s far too logical about life and understands machines much better than humans, passion is somewhat alien to me. It’s something I’ve always been intrigued by, since I find it lacking in myself.

Where do those people who seem to have a never-ending love of a particular subject get the energy for it? And the concentration? Don’t they ever get fed up? Don’t they sometimes just want to eat pizza and watch bad movies?

I mean, it’s one thing to enjoy a hobby, but quite another to enthuse about it all the time. Are they really that thrilled about their subject? Is it all fake? Is it psychological compensation for something missing in another part of their life (cf. Crazy Cat Ladies)?

Since I’m a bit of a geek myself, I can understand obsession. I did, after all, once spend 36 hours in EverQuest. But when it reaches the point of taking a year off work to play a video game, spending all your time and money building stuff out of Lego or picking up a pen and writing while you’re eating breakfast with your off-hand? That’s all pretty extreme.

So it intrigued me yesterday when, in a conversation with my muse, she said “tu bouffes la vie“. It was a compliment about what it’s like to live with me (and no, I don’t think it ‘s that great to live with me, before you ask).

“You eat life.”

Apparently, she sees me as someone who is passionate about life. Not about any particular thing, but the whole of life. Bird song. Work. Sunlight. Movies. The cat. Cooking a full English breakfast. Hoovering. Whatever it is, she tells me, I throw myself into it and exude optimism and fun.

I think she has a distorted view. On the other hand, wouldn’t it be great if I found out, after all these years of believing I have no passion, that life itself is the thing I love most?

How are we supposed to know if we’re passionate about something? Where’s the border that we cross from normal to obsessive? Is there passport control? Can I bring luggage or just a carry-on bag?

I’d love to know what you think.

Image from WCL (click)

As a sometime-editor, I have a tendency to pickiness. Well alright, so I’m obsessive about spelling, grammar and those other little cogs that make up a smoothly-functioning language machine. Unfortunately, this finicky approach extends to any form of writing, which means that I self-edit constantly.

If you travel across the landscape of writing blogs, you will almost certainly have passed those offering advice for people like me: “Just write”.

Now, quite apart from this making me think of the quintessential capitalist brand¹ and the wonderful parody poster that I can’t seem to find anywhere (“Just Vom It”), that particular advice has always stressed me.

“Just write,” they say. “Worry about the editing afterwards.”

But I’m psychotic about my grammar. I’m obsessive about my spelling. Syntax is better than chocolate. Vocabulary and punctuation are ice cream and fudge cake! How can I just write and not worry about what I’m putting on paper?

As chance would have it, this week has given me precisely that opportunity.

Back at the end of last year, I had the good fortune to find a great client. We’ll call him Mr. Reliable². Regular work, regular pay, a few too many urgent deadlines but always grateful for extra commitment – for what more could a freelancer ask?

Normally, I create web content and edit documents written by his other writer (and temporary people in an offshore team), but Mr. Reliable’s main producer has gone missing for Easter. Two weeks’ holiday, right in the middle of a project. Guess who gets to carry the baton?

So over the last few days I’ve had so much to produce on such a short deadline that I’ve been “just writing”. 36Mb of content arrives in an email and off I go. Like verbal diarrhoea, but coming out the ends of my fingers onto the keyboard.

Engage brain, connect direct to hands, press “Start”. Let the ideas free-fall through synapses, unhindered by reason. Forget rhyme, thyme, lemon and lime . Do not pass “Go”, get out of jail free, you sunk my battleship. Thank you very much, Elvis has now left the building.

Surprisingly for one such as myself, it’s been quite a successful experience: the content is finished, the client is happy and I just need to go back and edit.

Whodathunkit?

Have you tried “just writing” or are you an edit-as-you-go person?

¹ In my opinion Nike ranks roughly at the level of slave traders, drug dealers, terrorists and politicians. Slapping a brand on everything conceivable to make a buck and finding new and interesting ways to cut costs (cough, sweat shops, cough) while pretending you’re a lovely, friendly, care-about-your-sporting-anatomy shoe company disgusts me.

² Which, by the way, is also the name of an excellent Australian movie based on real events. Watch it. It’s definitely worth the time. Freelunch says so, and he’s right.

Someone needs to go on a diet.

Something that I have difficulty understanding is the incessant use of buzzwords in business and the way their usage seems – in much the same way as Warcraft‘s Scourge Blight – to putrefy and spread everywhere.

Actually, that’s a very good comparison. Not because most managers are zombies, but because most can only build something on top of the festering mass of their own ego. And because – despite their conviction that they’re very cool and modern for using those words – everyone else knows that the habit is actually a sign that nearby humans are  in danger of brain-rot.

About now, all the managers out there are itching to jump down to the comments and berate me for my distorted, demotivational view of their job. Well, consider this:

Take, for argument’s sake, a phrase like “Encourage resources who resonate with the idea of building your brand.”

To most of you (and me), this would translate roughly into normal English as “Encourage employees who understand the importance of gaining brand recognition.”

The thing is that, in a global environment like the Internet, it could be read by a non-native speaker.

Putting that phrase through an online translator, you may be saying “Promote assets who vibrate with the notion of constructing your mark.”

Which, although it sounds funky, is probably not the message you want to convey.