The jobs
40 jobs nobody wants to do.
Each one is the same thing underneath: a Hand with a brief. Some wait to be asked. The rest have a schedule and run on their own. Nothing sends, spends or submits without your yes.
Money Your inbox Your calendar Paperwork Outward Your data Knowing things Watching Things that run themselves
Money
The jobs where not doing them costs you money quietly.
These three charges are wrong. Get them refunded.
What am I paying for every month that I have not opened since January?
Work out who has not paid us and go after them.
Do September's expenses from the receipts in this folder.
What renews in the next sixty days, and what should we re-quote?
Your inbox
The reason you have four hundred unread and a bad feeling.
Go through this morning and tell me only what actually needs me.
Unsubscribe me from everything I have not opened in six months.
Who have I emailed in the last month who never replied?
I have been away since Thursday. What did I miss?
Your calendar
The back and forth that is not the meeting.
Get the four of us in a room next week, an hour, not Monday.
Book the dentist, the car service and the eye test. Any time except Friday.
What is due before the end of the month that nobody has started?
I need to be in Manchester Tuesday morning and back that night.
Paperwork
The jobs that are only hard because they are boring.
Outward
Anything with your name on it. None of it sends without you.
Who covers this, and what would make them care?
Draft a reply to everything from the last fortnight. Show me the two-star one first.
Three posts about the thing we shipped, spread over the week.
They have had it for six weeks. Write the complaint and tell me who it goes to.
What could we realistically rank for that we are not even on the page for?
Your data
Every system you own is full of things that are stale, missing or entered twice.
Forty thousand rows. Tell me which customers we lost and roughly when.
Half this list has no company size and no website. Go and find them.
Update everything from this week's email before I look at the pipeline.
I think we have the same twelve companies in here under different names.
The sheet and the system do not agree on last month. Find every difference.
Move all of this into the new system and prove nothing fell out.
Every managing agent within twenty miles who runs more than fifty units.
Two years of expenses, none of them categorised. Suggest the categories first.
Knowing things
Reading you would rather not do.
Read this and tell me what I should be worried about.
Check every number in this before it goes out.
Who else does this, what do they charge, and how do you know?
Notes from this, and the actions on the board.
Watching
Jobs that are only useful if nobody has to remember to do them.
Things that run themselves
Several Hands, a running order and a schedule. Nobody has to remember.
Put this week's issue together. I will read it Thursday.
Same report as last Friday, with this week's numbers.
Close September. Tell me what is unresolved.
Anyone new who writes in, have a packet ready before I ring them.
Take the next thing off the list and get it to a draft I can read.
None of these quite it?
Then write the brief yourself. These aren't products; they're the same Hand, told what the job is. A paragraph in your own words does the same thing. Plans start at $20 a month, with work included.
