Slacker Manager

Never Work Alone

by Bren on October 10th, 2005

So the other day I was thinking about all the great stuff people are doing online. Rosa’s Ho’ohana Community; Scott’s pmclinic; Lisa’s Two Weeks To A Breakthrough; Rob’s The Business Experiment; Merlin’s 43Folders group (there are many more examples…these are just top-of-mind).

I thought it’d be really cool if there was something that helped people solve their real life management/leadership/business issues in a way that wasn’t overwhelming. Something that took the friendliness of Rosa’s community, the "a-ha" factor of Lisa’s breakthrough stuff, the "crowd wisdom" of Rob’s TBE, the weekly wrap-up of Scott’s pmclinic and rolled it all up into something public like the 43Folders group.

I pitched an idea to Dwayne and Skip, since they’re both local Portlanders (besides, we’re always looking for an excuse to do lunch). I asked if they’d be willing to shoulder the burden of authoring a new blog and moderating a companion Google group. They agreed and we’re unveiling the Never Work Alone blog and Never Work Alone Google group today.

Here’s the deal: we’ll solicit problems via this email address: neverworkalone@gmail.com. We’ll select one problem each week and post it to the Google group. We’ll let the group work on the problem and at the end of the week we’ll post a summary of the problem and all the advice (with links to blogs/websites of advice-givers, when known). That’s pretty much it. Over time, the blog will become a treasure trove of specific work-related problems with related advice and solutions.

Of course, the Google group may take on a life of it’s own, and that’s totally cool. There will be smart people available through that group, so I’m sure folks will want to tap into their collective knowledge. We’re taking the structured route with the blog and the weekly situations in part because we want to make it easy for advice-givers to know where to focus their limited time, should they choose to help out.

Some technical notes…one of the nice things about Google groups is that you can choose how you want to receive your messages: email, on the web or via RSS (well, Atom, but who can really tell the difference?). Of course, the blog has an RSS feed as well… Finally, we’re working on getting neverworkalone.com pointing to the blog…should be working this week.

Have a look around, consider contributing and definitely let us know how we can make it better…

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POSTED IN: career, tips and tricks, weblogs