Technology, time, organization make SBJ, business happen

This month I celebrate eight years before the mast; eight years of employment with SBJ. In that time I have seen the editorial department at its most efficient and at its least efficient. I have seen staff come and go. I have seen technology transform not only how we do things, but the pace at which we do them.

Changing technology

In my early experience with SBJ, I saw late nights, even a couple of all-nighters in the course of producing the editorial portion of the paper.

When I started here, we did paste-up with X-acto knives and line tape. We shot our own halftones, developed our own film and printed our own photos, and physically pasted everything to a page.

Only eight years later, we do all of our production on computer. Pages are printed out for proofing, but they have all the graphics and photos already in place, the result of scanning and digital technology. We still take most of our photos on film, but we outsource the developing and scan directly from the negative.

The finished paper is burned onto a CD-ROM and sent to our printer, and ultimately we will be able to send our pages via Internet to their final destination.

The technology is so fast that it drives the human element. We editors and writers must increase our efficiency in planning, assigning, writing, editing, proofing. In some cases, we must perform a dozen tasks in the space of an hour that once would have taken half a day.

It is a challenge no doubt many of our readers are familiar with.

For my department, meeting that challenge is a matter of evaluating how we do what we do, then doing it better.

Solving a mystery

People ask me all the time, "How do you do what you do? How do you produce these huge papers every week?"

I have always had two standard re-sponses, my verbal answer: "I honestly don't know," and my nonverbal answer: a shrug, hands thrown up in a gesture of helplessness while shaking my head.

I was not trying to avoid the question or to be facetious.

For a long time I have been amazed at the ability of our company's small staff and particularly my six-person editorial staff to produce papers averaging 40 pages a week and ranging as high as 80 pages a week; the Book of Lists, the Golf Guide and programs for our special events; and our SBJ Daily Update, a daily news e-mail that is sent exclusively to paid subscribers.

I am beginning to figure it out.

What makes it possible is talent and skill, but it also is speed and efficiency, and, at the heart of all we do, technology. Of course we must all, as a company, work together, communicate and support each other.

But the key to getting the job done and getting it all done between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday is two essential concepts: time management and organization.

Time management

As a new manager, one who came up through the ranks, I was used to just doing, not analyzing; getting the job done, not assessing how it was done.

Recently, I noticed some problems with our process. Some employees seemed to have too much to do, others not enough, and while deadlines were generally being met, there were clearly some issues to be addressed.

Dorothy Gardner, our vice president of finance, suggested I track my staff's time and my own to see how we were allotting our time. So for one week, each person filled out a "time sheet" listing their activities by the hour.

It was a revelation.

Not only did I find out who did what (and unless you sit and look over each employee's shoulder, do you really know who does what?) I found out who was organized and who wasn't; who was working smarter and who was working harder. This is the obvious stuff. I still have more to learn from this exercise.

In many cases, the person with a problem was me. Until I tracked my activities, I didn't realize how disorganized I was. I am very fast and efficient in performing tasks, but that speed and efficiency is offset by my lack of organization. The job gets done, but I've been working harder, not smarter, to do it.

That is no longer the case. I am beginning to get organized.

Organization

Organization does not happen over-night (I wish I could slip my time sheet under my pillow one night and have the Organization Fairy leave me a master plan) but I am getting there.

The essentials are simple: have a list of tasks and prioritize it; look up and look around; have a place for everything, and by God, put everything in its place.

As our city manager, Tom Finnie, is fond of saying, the most important thing is to have a plan.

I am working on my plan. I'll let you know how it turns out.