{"id":875,"date":"2013-03-20T13:17:27","date_gmt":"2013-03-20T13:17:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/?p=875"},"modified":"2013-03-20T13:37:16","modified_gmt":"2013-03-20T13:37:16","slug":"expectation-of-100-percent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/expectation-of-100-percent\/","title":{"rendered":"The Expectation of 100%"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s 4:36am. I’ve been awake for an hour, stumbling through email and catching up on reading. G and I flew back from London two nights ago, and although I slept great last night, I crashed at 10pm tonight and only managed 6 hours before the jetlag kicked in.<\/p>\n

Casey<\/a>, who runs the inbound engineering team at Moz, and I had an interesting conversation before I left (note: this is from jetlagged, 4am memory, so hopefully I’m capturing the spirit if not the right words):<\/p>\n

Casey:<\/strong> Why are you out of the office so much?<\/em><\/p>\n

Me:<\/strong> Same reasons as always – lots of brand building and making connections, some direct marketing value, some serendipity<\/em><\/p>\n

Casey:<\/strong> You know, when you’re in a meeting, things get done faster and more efficiently. There’s less discussion and more action.<\/em><\/p>\n

Me:<\/strong> I know. I’m sorry. But in some ways, that’s how it has to be. The company’s getting bigger. I can’t be in all the meetings and we need to find ways to scale that don’t require my presence or input. And we’ve been doing pretty well so far.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The funny part is, I’ve actually been in Seattle much more this year than in years past (spent 20\/78 days so far in 2013 on the road). I’ve been intentionally limiting my travel schedule to do more Moz stuff at home. But Casey’s right. I’m trying to get out of the weeds and out of the tactical day-to-day decisions and focus on other stuff. It’s pretty different from 3-4 years ago when a few of us would get in a room, hammer out a plan, and then go do it (though, if we’re being honest, the past had plenty of inefficiencies, too).<\/p>\n

But even when I’m home, I’m out of the office a lot. My biggest responsibility and largest time consumer these days is 1:1s. I sit down with a ton of Mozzers (there’s 120 of us now) and try to get a sense for their happiness, their job responsibilities, where (and whether) they feel like they’re making a positive contribution. Then I take a lot of that data and bring it back to the company level – working on team structures, policies, processes, and hiring that will help.<\/p>\n

The days are filled with context switching that, on reflection, even I find crazy. Yesterday’s a good example:<\/p>\n