Configurations: “Ongoing maintenance” for CiviCRM

Effective use of CiviCRM will involve a frequent need to make configuration changes. Your CRM is all but useless without it.

For example, you’ll need to:

• Create new users, and manage user permissions.

• Create and manage contribution pages, events, membership types, custom fields, and similar data structures in CiviCRM.

• Manage navigation menus and other content-related configurations in the CMS (usually Drupal or WordPress).

What it is:

This is the point-and-click configuration by which you’ll set up CiviCRM and the CMS to behave as you need it to.

This configuration will serve as a durable structure within which your users can perform the tasks they need to do.

For example, by properly creating and configuring an event in CiviCRM, you’ll create the forms and fields which your constituents can use to register online for that event.

What it’s not:

Don’t confuse this with data entry — we’re not talking about the task of creating or editing contacts or updating membership records.

That’s fairly low-skill work that’s usually performed as a day-to-day clerical staff task.

We’re just talking about the work of a site administrator in configuring the site’s features so that other users (staff and consitutuents) can use those features in a structured way.

Who can do it:

We could look at this question using the in-house/outsource criteria from yesterday’s email. I’d rate this item like so:

Each rating is 1-5; so each Total can range from 4 to 20, with a mid-point of 12.

	Technical	Generic	Explainable	Inscrutable	Total
System configuration	1	1	3	1	6

And specifically on each criteria:

• Technical: Not at all.
  This is point-and-click configuration; you may need to learn more about how your CRM actually works, and it may sometimes seem tedious, but this doesn’t require special knowledge or tools.

• Generic: Not at all.
  The configuration of your site is virtually 100% unique to your organization; there’s nothing generic about it.

• Explainable: Somewhat.
  Depending on the complexity of what you need, it could take quite a while to explain the need to an outsider.

• Inscrutable: Not at all.
  Even after this configuration is done, you need to know how it has been done. It’s not enough that “it works for now” — because you will need to modify it later. So you definitely need to understand how it works.

All of this means that it’s a very poor candidate for outsourcing.

By the time you explain what you need to an outsider, and by the time they explain to you how they’ve configured it, someone on your team could have done it faster, cheaper, and probably more to your liking.

Getting help:

Sometimes you’ll hit a need that requires some fairly complex configuration. So you might want some help.

Pulling in an outside expert — to create a sound strategy for the best configuration, and to work through those configuration tasks with you — can be a great way to get yourself to the point of mastering these configurations.

If you’re not confident in how to configure your own CRM system, and you’re not satisfied with your progress through consulting the CiviCRM online documentation, I’d strongly encourage you to seek out coaching and training so you can start moving forward in a decisive way.

In summary:

• There’s no getting away from configuration management — without it, your CRM is virtually useless to you.

• It’s not a great candidate for outsourcing; the most valuable approach here is to have someone on your team spend the time to become confident in this kind of work.

• Help is available, whether it’s just by consulting the online CiviCRM documentation, or by pulling in an expert for coaching or training.

Up next, we’ll discuss feature improvements: What are your options when it’s time to make CiviCRM do something that’s really not possible through point-and-click configuration?

Tune in tomorrow.

All the best,
Allen

“Outsource” vs. “in-house”: a framework

So far we’ve discussed a few separate components of ongoing maintenance for CiviCRM:

Hosting and infrastructure; Security updates; and Non-security updates.

One reasons we’re even examining these topics is to help uncover the best way to get each of them addressed — should you outsource it to a specialist, or to a generalist, or assign it to one of your in-house team, or even do it yourself?

And you might have noticed a pattern here, which I’ll point out just in case you didn’t:

There are a few criteria by which you can evaluate any task to decide if it’s a good candidate for outsourcing:

• Technical: Is it highly technical — whatever that might mean to you? For example, does it require writing custom code or using special tools other than the CRM or CMS browser interface.

• Generic: Is it the kind of thing that’s done essentially the same for all CiviCRM sites?

• Explainable: Is it easily explained to someone outside your organization?

• Inscrutable: After it’s done, is it unlikely you’ll care about how its done?

The more you answer “Yes” to those questions, the more you should probably consider outsourcing it.

Consider the topics we’ve touched on so far. We can rate them on a 1-5 scale for each criteria, and count up the total rating:

Each rating is 1-5; so each Total can range from 4 to 20, with a mid-point of 12.

	Technical	Generic	Explainable	Inscrutable	Total
Hosting and infrastructure	5	5	5	5	20
Security updates	1	5	5	5	17
Non-security updates	1	1	5	5	12

You can see that our Total column is a pretty good indicator of whether I’m likely to recommend outsourcing or keeping it in-house:

The higher the Total value, the more likely it’s a candidate for outsourcing.

Homework:

So what about tomorrow’s topic: system configuration work?

This includes things like creating and managing users and permissions; configuring events, memberships, and contribution pages in CiviCRM; and other point-and-click configuration you can do in the browser.

How would you score that kind of work on the 4 criteria above?

We’ll dig on it a little more tomorrow.

All the best,
A.

Non-security updates: “Ongoing maintenance” for CiviCRM

Yesterday we talked about keeping up with security updates for your CiviCRM site.

But you'll also need to think about non-security updates.

What it is:

Your CiviCRM site depends on a number of components working together in harmony: the CMS (usually Drupal or WordPress) with its plugins or modules, and CiviCRM with its extensions.

These are all separate software packages, provided by a variety of development teams. And each of them will periodically release new versions that provide bug fixes or feature improvements.

Sometimes you’ll want those, and sometimes you won’t.

But either way, somebody will have to be in charge of applying them, and of deciding whether and when to do so.

Who can do it:

As with security updates, you can probably do this in-house.

And I generally recommend that you do. Here's why:

Any upgrade has the potential to create surprises — features that work differently, or even changes that break some behavior specific to your site — and because these non-security updates are discretionary, it's important for you as a site owner to make an informed decision about any such update.

And, because those decisions are unique to your organization and your site configuration, you're not very likely to find an external service provider who will "just do it" for you without your ongoing input.

It's a lot like the job of maintaining your own house: fixing a loose doorknob is something you could call in a specialist for; but once you know how to do it, it's faster and easier to fix it yourself.

And regardless of who actually fixes the doorknob, it must be you, as the owner, who decides on getting it done.

Getting help:

Fortunately, you’re not entirely on your own here.

You can get some very good training and/or coaching to help you make these decisions. You might need a lot of guidance in the beginning, but you will soon become familiar with the process and be in a position to make good solid decisions without outside help.

In summary:

• The owner of any CiviCRM site has to be closely involved in deciding on non-security updates.

• This kind of thing needs your attention at least every couple of months.

• Once you get the hang of it, it’s typically quicker and easier to handle this in-house than to hand it off to a specialist.

• Coaching and training can help you to get familiar with this part of maintaining your site.

Tune in tomorrow for a brief look at ongoing configuration management and why it’s usually best to handle this in-house.

All the best,
A.

"Ongoing maintenance" for CiviCRM: Website security updates

Yesterday we talked about hosting and infrastructure for your CiviCRM site.

Today let's look at something that's not quite so generic: Website security updates.

What it is:

Your CiviCRM system is going to run inside of a content management system (CMS) like Drupal or WordPress. And both CiviCRM and the CMS must be kept up to date with the latest security improvements.

Security is an arms race, and while the bad guys continue to look for new ways to compromise any popular software, the developers at CiviCRM and your chosen CMS are continually releasing updates to address those potential vulnerabilities.

These updates typically come out on an as-needed basis, several times per year, and somebody needs to apply those updates to your site.

Why you need it:

New security vulnerabilities are discovered on a surprisingly frequent basis.

Applying security updates is the easiest step you can take to deal with this.

If you're not doing it, you are needlessly leaving yourself open to attack, and potentially the misuse of all of your contacts’ personal information.

Who can do it:

This is less technical than the hosting component, and there's a good chance someone on your staff can handle this.

They may need some advisement or training, and they may have questions from time to time. But it's mostly a matter of paying attention, and clicking a few buttons in the admin interface, or unzipping a few files on your hosting server.

On the other hand, because it has so little to do with your internal rules and policies, and is a fairly generic task, it’s something you could outsource pretty easily.

Some hosting providers include this service as a feature of their hosting packages. Joinery does that, and we also offer a separate subscription service to cover these security updates even if you’re not hosting with us.

In summary:

• It's not so techincal, so you're probably able to handle this in-house; or you can outsource it as a matter of convenience.

• This not something to be neglected. In-house or outsourced, somebody needs to be on top of this.

Tomorrow we’ll look at a related but separate topic: non-security updates. They’re optional and more specific to your own site’s needs, so are worth considering in a different light.

All the best,
A.

"Ongoing maintenance" for CiviCRM: hosting and infrastructure

The foundational element of maintaining a CiviCRM installation is hosting and infrastructure.

If you’re thinking about getting started with CiviCRM, you'll definitely need to give this some consideration.

But even if you're already running CiviCRM, and you're looking for help to keep it running smoothly, it can help a lot to know what's actually required at this foundational level.

(Quick note: There are several fully-hosted CiviCRM offerings which, while fairly limited in what they can do, will allow you to sidestep this topic entirely. See my recent email, “No money, no time? CiviCRM Spark”)

What it is:

CiviCRM is an online system that has to be hosted somewhere. It lives on a server somewhere, and you usually don’t care too much about where, as long as it’s secure and reliably connected to the internet.

That hosting server has to be maintained: it has to stay online; regular backups must be taken; server-level security must be kept up; and any service outages must be dealt with.

What it isn't:

What we're describing here is only what's needed to keep your hosting server up and running.

Hosting services don't typically include security updates for CiviCRM, and they often don't include high volume outbound email, as for your newsletters or other email appeals.

This topic also doesn't include the other things I'll be talking about in this series, like configuration and user management and graphic design and content management. It's worth considering those things, but they’re separate from hosting and infrastructure.

Who can do it:

This is fairly geeky technical work, and it's unlikely you will want to manage this in-house, though I have some clients who do.

Because this is both fairly technical and rarely specific to CiviCRM, you probably going to get more bang for your buck by paying the relatively small amount to have an outside provider ensure that it's all done right.

Fortunately, such services are quite easy to find. Almost any hosting service that can host a Drupal or WordPress site will do fine with this.

Joinery offers such a service, as do several other CiviCRM partners. If needed, we can even offer customized hosting solutions in case your site has special needs such as very high visitor traffic.

If you're tight on funding and just need something basic, you can also check out CiviHosting. Their shared hosting packages are very reasonably priced and have a good reputation in the community. (That’s not a referral link, either; I’m just happy to recommend them.)

In summary:

• It's fairly technical and generic, so you're probably better off outsourcing this.

• it only includes the task of maintaining the internet server where your site lives. Anything else related to making your site do exactly what you want is generally not covered here.

Tune in tomorrow for a similar discussion on keeping up with security updates for CiviCRM and the rest of your website.

All the best,
A.

“Ongoing maintenance” for CiviCRM

What does it take to keep a CiviCRM system running well and continually meeting your needs?

We generally call this "ongoing maintenance," but that term needs to be defined, because it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

And that difference in understanding can create some problems. For example:

• If you sign up for a “managed hosting” service, what does that really include?

• If you’re just trying to set aside a reasonable budget of money and time to keep your CRM running properly, what areas should you be considering?

• Is it possible — or desirable — to outsource all of these things to an external service provider? Can you — and should you — increase efficiency by handling some of it in-house? Is that even an option?

Over the next few days, we’ll be looking into different aspects of this topic to help tease apart each one. What it is, why it’s important, and who you can look to for making it happen.

Some areas we’ll be looking at:

• Hosting and infrastructure

• Security updates

• Non-security updates

• System configuration

• Feature improvements

• Custom visual design

We’ll talk about which of these you can (or even should) expect to handle in-house, and which are good candidates for outsourcing, and even some steps you can take to make sure you’re not assigning tasks to folks that are over- or under-qualified for the work.

Tune in tomorrow for a brief discussion of that first item: hosting and infrastucture.

All the best,
Allen

“Could you do this for me?”

When you need something done, and you’re not sure how to do it, it’s smart to ask for help.

But what kind of help will actually be the most valuable?

For example, here’s a real conversation (paraphrased) with one of my clients last week:

Client: Hey Allen, we’ve hired a new staff member who needs to start using CiviCRM. Can you create a user account and get them set up?

Allen: I could, but how about I show you how to do that, so you don’t have to wait on me (and pay me) every time you need something similar?

Client: Oh, can we do that? Yes, that would be great!

Maybe you think “creating a new user” is a silly example, because to you that’s a simple task.

But that’s a relative matter. For this client, it was a mystery — until it wasn’t. We all have something new to learn next.

Once you’ve learned it, you no longer have to pay someone to do it for you, which is nice.

But what’s even better: you never have to wait for someone to do it for you. When you know (or someone on your team knows) how to do it, it’s often faster to do it yourself than to describe the need to someone else.

Having someone do it for you sounds appealing at first.

But learning how to do it is often the better option.

All the best,
A.

Bang for buck

If you're at a small organization, limited funding is a perennial problem.

The problem we're trying to solve is that there are rich teams and there are poor teams. Then there's fifty feet of crap, and then there's us.

— Oakland A's General Manager Billy Bean (as played by Brad Pitt in Moneyball)

In the film, Beane and his assistant manager turn around a struggling small-market baseball team with an elegant implementation of a fairly simple principle:

Hitting your goals is not about spending lots of money; it's about taking the most effective action you can with the resources that you've got.

In terms of your CRM, that means prioritizing the improvements that will get you the biggest bang for the buck.

Fancy new feature? Not a bad thing, as long as you can clearly articulate exactly how it will pay for itself.

If you can't, it's probably worth considering alternatives: creative use of existing features, better training for your staff, better analysis of the data you're already tracking.

The specific steps you take will depend on your actual goals.

But the principle is the same:

Put aside the notions of “how we’ve always done it” and “how the big players are doing it,” and focus instead on actions that will get you measurable results toward goals that you care about.

All the best,
Allen

Striking out

Are you afraid of failing?

Afraid that your next project or campaign won't be the home run that your organization needs?

Or that it might even be a complete strikeout?

Everybody wants to hit a home run.

Here’s a fun fact:

Babe Ruth — often called the greatest baseball player of all time — held, when he retired, the all-time record for career home runs.

Did you also know he held the all-time record for career strikeouts?

If you want to hit the ball, you gotta swing.

Sometimes you'll strike out.

Don't let that stop you from getting up to bat.

All the best,
A.

Consent and interest

Yesterday I wrote someone and asked them to take me off their mailing list. (Yes, emailing them about it was the only "unsubscribe" option. And no, I had never actually subscribed to get their mailings.)

Their response was, er, not what I expected:

Done. I'll never send you anything remotely useful ever again.

Okay then. I'm glad at least that you've removed me.

But here's the thing:

As a vanity metric, it can feel good knowing that you have X thousand people receiving your emails.

But if they're not actually happy to read your emails, such a metric is just that: vanity.

That's why I will always caution against adding people to your mailing lists without consent. It's probably illegal, but worse, it's largely a waste of effort if you're genuinely trying to build support for your cause.

Instead, look for opportunities to capture interest and capitalize upon it.

For example, a client I spoke with today is putting up an advance information page for their annual student film competition.

The submission period won't be open for a few more months.

But you know what is open? A simple sign up form at the bottom of the page for people who want to be kept informed on the competition.

Those people are demonstrating their genuine interest.

And they've not only consented to receiving emails; they've actually asked for it.

And that's the point.

Folks who have asked to receive your material are the ones you want to reach.

Those that haven't are not very likely to be interested in the first place.

Look for interest. Deliver value. And then maximize the relationship.

That's how to turn consent and interest into advocacy and action.

All the best,
A.

Driving and navigating

Navigation is a separate task from driving.

• Rally racing teams rely heavily on the co-driver's navigation skills.

• Commercial airlines, which haven't had a dedicated navigator on the crew since the 1980s, rely on automated navigation systems.

• When you're alone in your car, you're both driver and navigator (probably with some less-than-perfect advice from your phone).

It doesn't matter how the navigation gets done.

Somebody has to do it.

Without it, you can drive all day and never get anywhere.

Here's the thing:

Somebody will need to operate your CRM system, your membership programs, and your fundraising campaigns.

But somebody will also need to navigate: identify the goals, read the terrain, chart a course, and adapt that course as needed.

It can be tempting to put your head down and just work, and now and then that's what you'll have to do.

But don't forget to look up now and then. Check the road. Check the map. Try to foresee the challenges. Try to spot the opportunities.

That's how you get where you want to go without driving in circles.

All the best,
A.

Scale and value

Say I've got a nagging problem with one of my systems.

And, say I finally decide to put aside one whole day this week to fix that problem.

Is it worth it?

Maybe.

What if I told you I only encounter that problem once a year, and the real problem is that it takes me an hour to do something that could take 5 minutes?

Sure, that's frustrating.

But is it worth a whole day of my time?

That's 8 hours of work. Considering the scale of the problem, the fix won't save me that much time in 8 years.

And there's a very good chance I won't even have this problem 8 years from now.

That's why scale matters.

Here's the thing;

A little math goes a long way.

A problem that feels like a big headache — but that only comes up now and then — may be frustrating, but it may not be worth solving.

Or, maybe there's an alternative solution that's less sexy but more pragmatic. Like handing that onerous task to an intern.

Time and money are always limited, so it makes a lot of sense to pick your battles …

… and to consider the scale of a problem when estimating the value of a solution.

All the best,
A.

Return on investment

Obviously you have a limited budget: of time and of money, and of other things like trust, goodwill, and the interest of your supporters.

If you're going to expend some of that budget to get something done, do you at least know what you're hoping to get out of it?

Do you have a way to enumerate the value of what you'll get?

If you do, then you can calculate the return on investment that you're hoping for.

If you don't, one might wonder why you’re making this expenditure at all.

Here's the thing:

Sometimes we make a purchase just because it feels good. I bought a new pair of shoes last week that look great and feel great, and that's worth it for me.

But when you're spending large parts of an inherently limited budget, it can help a lot to know what you hope to get out of it, and what do you think that's worth.

Otherwise, you have no reason to expect a good return on investment, because you don't even know what return you're hoping for.

Remember, your resources are precious.

Wouldn't you like to have a reason to believe that you're spending them wisely?

All the best,
A.

Easy things first

If I asked you, you could probably make a list of 5 or 10 things you'd like to improve in your CRM.

Email templates
Staff workflows
Easier imports
Streamlined reporting
Refined user permissions
A dozen other things

If you’re like most people, the longer that list gets, the more overwhelming it feels.

That's our nature. We envision a perfect world, and then feel a little intimidated imagining what it would take to get there.

But what if you just started with the easy things?

You probably did this back in school:

When you have 87 chemistry problems for homework, there's no rule that says you have to do them in order.

You can skip the hard ones and do all the easy ones first. That will give you practice with the concepts you understand which can give you insights into the ones that seemed impossible before.

You can do this with your CRM improvements as well:

Start with the ones that seem easy, and that you're sure you really need.

With those hard ones sitting in the back of your mind, the easier work will often trigger some idea to solve the harder ones.

Here's the thing:

It's perfectly fine to make One Long List of Everything, and then build a plan and budget to tackle it all at once.

But if that's blocking you from getting started, you're in a bad spot.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Don't let the whole shebang be the enemy of moving forward.

Start with the easy things, and see what that tells you about the harder things.

Otherwise, you may never move forward at all.

All the best,
A.

Send passwords by email?

In an ideal world you'd never have to share your password with anybody.

But sometimes it's almost unavoidable. If you're pulling someone in to help with an external system you may have no choice but to have them log in as you on that system.

And it can be tempting to send them the password by email. That's the easiest way.

But please don't do it.

It just leaves too many opportunities for the bad guys to get their hands on your passwords.

Here's why:

• Email is completely unprotected from eavesdropping in transit.
  
  Your email message will pass through any number of servers between the time you send it and the time it's received. That means your email can be read by anyone with access to any of those servers. Including, potentially, the bad guys who would like to abuse your systems.

• Email has a tendency to hang around.
  
  It will stay in your sent folder, and probably in the recipient's email archives, for months or years. If any of those locations is compromised, your password will be disclosed.

• Emails get copied.
  
  Your email message will often be forwarded, and copied in replies, and even sent to additional CC and BCC addresses. Every time that happens, there's another copy laying around, and more people who can see your password.

So what's the alternative?

There are a few options that will let you avoid nearly 100% of the problems mentioned above.

1. onetimesecret.com: This is a simple web-based tool that will store your message (e.g. your password) in an encrypted format, and give you a link to that message. The link will only work one time, for the first person who uses it, and it will expire entirely after some days. You can then email that link instead of emailing your password.

2. Joinery Secure Message: if you need to send a password or other sensitive information to me here at joinery, you can submit a secure message at https://my.joineryhq.com/message/. This will notify me that you’ve sent a secure message, but it will never send the message itself over email.

3. Telephone: This is not ideal, because hopefully your password is complex enough that it’s hard to read out loud, but if a telephone call is your only option, I say the inconvenience is worth it.

Here's the thing:

A password is a key into a system that you want to keep secure.

Every time you send the password by email, it's like making an actual copy of the key and giving it away … by taping it to a postcard and dropping it in the mailbox.

You probably wouldn't want 20 or 30 copies of your house key floating around in your neighborhood.

So you probably don't want to send your password by email, either.

All the best,
A.

Better group management in CiviCRM

Besides their original purpose as a way to organize your contacts, CiviCRM groups wind up becoming very useful for a number of things, including mailings and complex searching.

Unfortunately, long-running CiviCRM sites often have hundreds of contact groups that have been created over the years.

And making efficient use of hundreds of groups can be a real headache.

Just finding the right group might take you several minutes of frustration. Each time. (And worse, it's easy to just create a new group when you can't find the right one, which of course means you now have more groups to deal with.)

So here are a few tips to help you make better use of groups and avoid the headaches:

1. Develop (and document, and use) a naming convention for your groups, so that you can know what each group is for and easily find the right group when you need it.

2. Have a look at the Temporary Groups extension. Sometimes you just need a group to do one task, like sending a mailing. This extension makes it easy to ensure that such groups don't hang around forever.

3. Avoid some tricky areas. These are the kind of things that seem really smart when you find out about them, but can be very confusing if you're not careful.

• Parent and child groups are tricky until you work with him for a while. Make sure you really need this functionality before you just dive in.

• CiviCRM will allow you to manually add and remove contacts from smart groups. I advise against it, because it can be confusing later when you find there are contacts in a smart group that don't fit the smart group criteria.

Here's the thing:

Groups are awesome. You can do a lot with them.

But proceeding carefully can save you a lot of frustration in the long run.

All the best,
A.

PSA: Hosting troubles

Quick note on potential problems with some WordPress hosting platforms. (If you’re not currently looking to change hosting, you can probably skip this.)

TL;DR:

Some “managed WordPress hosting” services make life difficult for CiviCRM.

The deets:

Most any web host these days that can support WordPress (or Drupal) can also handle CiviCRM just fine.

But my clients, and several of my colleagues in the CiviCRM community, have had a hard time with a certain category of hosting.

This is usually called “managed WordPress hosting.” Examples include Kinsta, WP Engine, Pressable, and others.

These are, to be honest, really awesome platforms for enterprise-level WordPress website development.

The general idea is that, while of course they offer all of the standard web hosting features, they also provide lots of automation that WordPress developers love.

One of those great features is a streamlined mechanism for hosting three versions of a site: one for development, another one for pre-launch staging, and of course the live site.

Unfortunately, that very cool feature often relies on some assumptions that make life easy for WordPress developers, but tend to cause problems with CiviCRM.

What this means for you:

In short, it means you should expect to jump through a few more hoops to get CiviCRM working on these platforms.

I've spoken with other CiviCRM developers, and scoured the online community for other perspectives.

The short story is: I've heard from several very capable people who’ve tried it, and almost none who have actually made it work.

I've got plans to talk this over with a few people at CiviCRM Manchester next month.

Our hope is to come up with some documentation that will do a couple of things:

• First of all, avoid casting aspersions at these platforms, which really are wonderful for what they do.

• Secondly, to help set reasonable expectations for CiviCRM site owners: what’s easy, what’s hard, and what might just be impossible.

In the meantime, if you're considering one of these platforms (or your WordPress developer is), I encourage you to talk it over with your CiviCRM specialist first.

Then, before you make the move with your live site, consider setting up a test site and putting both WordPress and CiviCRM through their paces.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

And significant breakage on your live CiviCRM instance is probably better prevented than cured.

All the best,
A.

What a home run looks like

When a baseball player gets up to bat, he's often looking for just a single or a double.

But if the pitch is right, and the timing is right, and it feels right, he's going to swing for that home run.

Because it's there.

He know what it is, and he'll take it if he can get it.

What about you?

Do you know what a home run would look like on your current campaign?

Have you taken some time to think about it?

Will you, on your next campaign?

Here's the thing:

You can't always hit a home run. It's fine to be content with a double.

But it's good to know what a home run would look like.

So you can swing for it if the opportunity arises.

All the best,
A.

Why maintain complexity?

If your systems are complicated, you might have thought about hiring someone to help you manage them.

But then again:

Why would you pay someone indefinitely to manage your complicated systems …

instead of paying someone once to help you simplify them for you?

All the best,
A.

Why architects don’t clean office buildings

Just about any project you might undertake can be divided into three distinct phases of work:

• Planning, strategy, and architecture: Identifying near-term and long-term goals, assessing resources and limitations, and plotting the course.

• Execution: Taking what's called for in the architecture phase and building it into a working reality.

• Maintenance: The daily work of keeping the system operational.

I like to think of these as altitudes of involvement.

Consider an office building:

• Planning and architecture:
  This is the 40,000-foot view of things. It's in the realm of the zoning board, the architects, the designers, and the business strategists.

• Execution:
  This is ground-level work. It's in the hands of the general contractor, the subcontractors, the building inspectors, and everyone else who helps from ground-breaking to opening day.

• Maintenance:
  This is below-ground work. It happens in the basements and store rooms and mail rooms and cleaning closets. It's the work of everyone who keeps the place running smoothly, from building maintenance to security to housekeeping to tenant management.

You could apply the same division to even simple projects like your child's 5th birthday party. There's planning and design (date selection, guest list, menu, venue); execution (sending invites, decorating, food prep); and maintenance (keeping the guests happy and the space tidy during the event, cleanup afterward).

Here's the thing:

For a kids birthday party, there's a good chance mom and dad will be covering all areas.

But for any substantial business project, you'll notice that there are a distinct set of players at each altitude of involvement.

Architects, for example, don't usually provide office cleaning services.

And if they did, you can bet they'd charge a lot more than most folks would want to pay for that service.

What this means for you:

In short, it means that the work of planning your CRM strategy, improving your CRM features, and maintaining your CRM systems are three very different areas of work.

You can probably find someone who's willing to promise you all three.

But are they really good at all three? And are they really offering you great business value in all three areas? (Remember, great architects won't usually contract with you to clean your bathrooms.)

The good news for you is that you can consciously divide any project into these three different areas and assign each one to the right person for the job — in-house or otherwise.

By doing that, you've got a much better chance of getting great work at each phase, and of avoiding needless expense.

All the best,
A.