You Are The Conductor. Lead Your Orchestra.

2005 was a year where I did everything from court room trial work, computer support, administrative tasks, and virtually everything in between. In effect, I was everything from the water boy to the quarterback to the coach. My virtual worker program proved both successful and unsuccessful. It was successful in that it delivered tremendous flexibility to our firm and tremendous value to the client. It was unsuccessful in two regards.

First it was difficult to manage the tasks being assigned to the virtual workers. This was corrected by launching a basecamphq.com extra-net.

The second was that all of the tasks that were being generated resulted in work which had to be reviewed by, you guessed it, me. I would often joke that I had not anticipated that all the assignments that I had passed out would ultimately come back to me. I became the narrow spot in the pipe.

The problem will be corrected by the hiring of our new case manager, an ex-in-house counsel guy who will act as a buffer between myself and my virtual workers. He will become more of a quarterback, while I attempt to become more of the coach. I will be posting over the next several months about my new case manager and his role with the virtual worker program.

So, for 2006 my goal is to be less of a jack of all trades and more of a conductor leading his orchestra. Hopefully the music that we make this year will be even sweeter than last.