there’s a relatively common idea in startup world that a company “ships its org chart”. this is called Conway’s law: in effect, it means that a given company will end up shipping a product that reflects their org chart.

for example, we have 6 people in online marketing at kettle & fire. that means that – relative to our competition – K&F is going to be far more focused on driving online marketing than another company.

duh – if you hire people to focus on marketing, they’ll do marketing.

i think this similarly applies at the micro level, the level of the individual. i believe that not only do organizations ship their org chart, but the individuals in that organization ship their calendar.

i got this idea from this essay about keith rabois talking about how to be an effective executive. as an executive, the question you should be asking is “how well does my calendar reflect my top priorities”?

is recruiting a focus? great. how much of your time is spend recruiting?

product – how much of your time are you spending on product?

is email a focus and a core competency? no… then why am i spending so much time on f’ing email?!

thinking about my calendar through this lens has been tremendously helpful. i’ve now started doing a weekly review on mondays of my schedule, and ensuring that 50%+ of my time is going towards my highest-leverage, most important priorities. so far, so good.

if it’s not obvious, i feel like i don’t have a ton of time to write blog posts these days. however, i’d love requests – if there’s something you’d like me to write about in the future, please leave a comment below.