Make it Happen

Making a big fern on the beach

Tim Norton — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:17:19 +0000

people-around-giant-fern-oriental-parade-20-metres

Sometimes you just have to dig a big fern on the beach with some good people… This week we dug a 20 metre fern on the beach here in Wellington, New Zealand - see the video below, and a couple of years ago, a 100 metre fern in the beach in Sant Monica, LA. We’re just warmed up and now and heaps of other people are now involved so tonight (Friday 20 march) tomorrow (Saturday 21st), we’re going for 50 metre one with a big community, if you’re in Wellington, come down… hang out… and do a bit of digging…

The Made From New Zealand crew rock out a 20 metre fern together on a sunny morning…

Server maintenance

Jeremy Olliver — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:31:26 +0000

There will be some maintenance performed on the PlanHQ application to move to a new server configuration, ensuring the stability and availability of the service we provide. The application will be unavailable during the maintenance, which will be performed on Sunday 1 March. We expect the maintenance to take no more than several hours, but we are allocating the entire day for the maintenance to be sure.

Cheers, Jeremy

Growing good habits of getting things done

Tim Norton — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:03:08 +0000

To achieve goals and be someone who constantly gets things done, you’ve got to make it habit. If you want that habit to grow across your team and become the norm, then you’ve got to put a system in place to make the habit your standard way of operating.

1. Stop Wondering and start Knowing

We use PlanHQ as a team to get things done across every venture I’m involved in, and we’ve been doing this for many months now, so we’re all hooked into the same common way of getting things done.

I don’t spend much time wondering what will get done when, I just flick over to PlanHQ, jump into the business I’m working on, checkout the goals and see what who’s delivering what when. If I want something to get done, I throw in actions for the people who need to do them, and I checkout their plate to see what their existing commitments and priorities are so I can see what they’re planning on getting done. We still have lots of chats, and often a phone call discussing the actions, but we all know that unless its an action in the plan, it’s not expected to get done.

2. Change Priorities Clearly

One of the hardest things with a team is changing priorities. Sometimes things just need to change, an opportunity arises and you need to move fast. But people are already driving in a certain direction, and having to change can be a real pain. But one of the big pains is that smart people have to use their brains for doing the work, and don’t want to have to use it for managing what has to be done when.

When we want to adjust priorities, rather than have meetings and discussions and express urgency, I re-shedule someones actions with them or do it myself while on the couch or on the move and then the new priorities are all laid out on everyones personal dashboard - and the new priorities are everyones priorities. We still catchup in person or on the phone, bt this is to re-enforce the new priorities and answer any holes, not to set them.

3. Turn all discussions into action

A lot of discussions happen, and discussions often include a mix of ideas, analysis, potential, strategy, decisions and some immediate actions. So because of this discussions don’t always lead to action, and with so many things being said, I don’t expect anyone to walk away from a discussion with concrete moves to make with their time unless we make Goals and actions in PlanHQ. You have to respect that we’re all juggling a lot in our heads, so knowing what to actually get done each day needs to be laid out in a system where anyone can refer back to and act on when things get noisy. Every meeting should lead to either adding or reshuffling some actions or Goals.

PlanHQ is Money - Turn a business plan into action

Tim Norton — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:57:07 +0000

Entrepreneur Devin Day of jelly Barn writes a great article on How to Achieve a Business Plan, and talks about turning strategy into action. Below is Devin’s comments on how PlanHQ helps make his business tick.

“I signed up with out any further reading as I new just from the interface it was EXACTLY what I was looking for. And the rest is history - our staff is all over the world so SAAS is so key to our organization and planHQ is money!”

Jelly Barn

Comments from Devin

“I use a lot of SAAS platforms for standardization for so many process at JellyBarn, but I found there was a BIG hole. I couldn’t continually spend all my time communicating our plan/vision, let alone get the team to read lengthy docs. I said to myself there must be a better way. There has to be an SAAS solution for executing business plans. I found a lot of cheesy “write your business plan with our online software” - blah. Then Bam! I found planHQ and the funny part is I know and use so many services online that I didn’t even need to read more than your hook “achieve your business plan” and see the interface.

I signed up with out any further reading as I new just from the interface it was EXACTLY what I was looking for. And the rest is history - our staff is all over the world so SAAS is so key to our organization and planHQ is money!”

Scheduled Maintenance

Jeremy Olliver — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:27:51 +0000

The site will be temporarily unavailable while our hosting providers replace some hardware on our server. The maintenance window is scheduled from 1800-2100 PST on December 16, 2008.

If you have any questions about this feel free to contact us.

Island 2.0 - 100,000 more bottles and there’s more land

Tim Norton — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 01:11:14 +0000

I wrote about Richy Sowa and his Spiral Island initiative last year in How to Make an Island and solve a few of the worlds problems. He had already made one amazing island from some 300,000 bottles, but it got destroyed by a hurricane, and last year in September, he had just started rebuilding… Well its just over a year on, and he now has a new home in Mexico, floating on 100,000 left over plastic bottles an island with house, solar panels, fresh water system and more… Has to be seen to be believed, so until any of us get to Mexico, this video will have to do…

island-20

Watch the Latest Video Tour of the new Island

Find more videos like this on Richie Sowa’s Spiral Island II

Financial and Metrics Management

Jeremy Olliver — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 02:08:51 +0000

The Financials section of PlanHQ has remained the same for a while, and though it provides a simple way to keep track of your financial data, we think it would be great if you could track more than just the default profitability for your financial data. So we’re planning some changes which would allow you to track additional statistics on your finances along with data that isn’t financial in nature, such as customer numbers.

Tracking Categories

Shown above is an example of the types of data you could monitor with our planned changes and below is an example of how a new metric such as customer numbers would be tracked. Before we get into implementing these changes, we’d love to have your thoughts and feedback on what numbers are important to you and knowing whether you’re on track, and how useful these changes will be to you.

Non Financial Data Tracking

Site Outage

Jeremy Olliver — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 05:24:22 +0000

Today our site had an unexpected outage from approximately 8pm till 9:50pm PST due to the failure of a power distribution unit with our hosting suppliers. The faulty unit has been replaced and the site is now running smoothly again, no data has been affected by this outage.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

New Zealand’s Global Business Community

Tim Norton — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:55:39 +0000

Made From New Zealand

It’s been a full-on few months, and I’ve been operating in multi-venture mode using PlanHQ to switch between business and get a lot of stuff done. One of the most exciting things we’ve been working on over the ast few months is building and launching New Zealand’s global business community - MadeFromNewZealand.com.

While most of our customers and readers of this blog are in the US and scattered around the world, we’re big on building our home country New Zealand and connecting and promoting our businesses to the world. PlanHQ is Made From New Zealand and I’ve built a great international network of cool people so far who’ve supported us and bought our product. Here’s a video of me on our morning business show talking about building New Zealand’s business community.

Building a Lightweight Business

Tim Norton — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:34:38 +0000

At PlanHQ we’re big on being small and lean. It’s all about getting big results out of small high-powered teams. I did a presentation the other week on building a lightweight global business after being selected as the Wellington Regional Management Champion. The slides don’t say it all, but I cover a few lightweight businesses I’m involved in building, and do the weigh-in on a successful cycling community we’ve got running in the UK. Step 1 to going lightweight, grab PlanHQ and use your spare time to make serious progress.

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.