A little over a month ago I was struck by the realization that I had abandoned the hope of actually being able to accomplish anything between 8AM and 6PM.  This was obviously disheartening and I resolved to swim upstream and find the root cause of the issue.  I discovered that I was constantly running in and out of meetings and the time in between meetings was not sufficient to really get any substantial work complete.

In looking across our business and speaking with our executive team I came to the conclusion that I was not alone in this feeling.  Local Marketing Automation is a complex beast and requires a lot of well oiled parts working together efficiently.  As a result our organization often needs to communicate between various teams which frequently results in meetings.

Now internal and external meetings are not a problem unique to Balihoo, many books have been written about the issue, however, I decided to try to tackle the issue by combining two pet theories of mine.

1.  People work better in the morning because they are fresh

2.  People work better when they have a large chunk of uninterrupted time.

By combining these theories I came up with a concept to try within our organization - no meetings before 11:30 AM - we call it the Morning Dig and it went into effect Feb 8th on a one month trial basis.  We are wrapping up the trial period and as a result I polled the company to see if the employees are finding the time as useful as I am.  

The results were overwhelming - fully 95% of the employees voted to keep the Dig.

Some quotes from voting employees were: 

"Even though I cannot entirely cut out client-facing meetings in the morning, I love the dig. I’m especially grateful for the absence of internal meetings in the morning, which allows for much needed structure during my day. Dig on!"

"I voted with the button but I wanted to add….PLEASE KEEP THE DIG, Pretty please"

"I have to admit that, at first, I saw The Morning Dig as an obstacle to effective planning and workflow, but have been pleasantly surprised to see how much more productive I am with having mornings free of meetings. "

Its always nice as a CEO when ideas work and resonate with your team and, what a phenomenal team we have here at Balihoo.  

If you want to learn more specifics around how we are doing this, please comment on this blog and I will do my best to respond quickly - probably before 11:30 - while I am Digging!