Author Interview: Curt Finch
Q: Your book, All Your Money Won't Another Minute Buy, gives a thorough look at why tracking time is so important for businesses today. What inspired you to write a book about time tracking?
A: Well, originally I read an article by a man named Jeffrey Gitomer who suggested writing a book and leaving it behind on sales calls instead of a business card, because everyone ignores and loses business cards. Since I had already had many articles published and they were all related to a common theme, I thought we could pull them together into a book. So at first it was meant to be an educational document for prospects and customers, but it has morphed into much more than that. First of all, I've found that most of the project management literature is written in unapproachable Ph.D. talk that's just not very useful. Things like earned value management and activity-based costing are complex and hard to implement as described by these authors, but they just don't have to be that hard. The hard part is people. Everybody hates to track their time, and everybody hates timesheets. This book explains why it's worth it. And people need to know. They really do.
Q: Why is tracking time so important for organizations?
A: It's important for individuals to know how they're spending their lives, first of all. But companies too - especially today's companies which are people businesses, knowledge businesses - they've all lost their way. They've forgotten how important it is to know your costs. It's not okay to be ignorant of your costs, and in a knowledge or people business, you will be ignorant if you don't track your time.
Q: In the book, you talk about your earlier experiences as a programmer and how they led you to create your own company. How did these early experiences influence your career?
A: I used to work for a guy named Ron Nicol. He got us to track time, and he used the data to get raises for everyone. He was awesome. Now he's running a huge company and pulling down loads of cash. He was a great manager, and that's what happens to great managers. Weston was similar. I have seen the power of time tracking in multiple environments, and I've learned how it improves lives.
Dilbert, the comic strip, and Office Space, the movie, make fun of office life. They're very funny – cynicism is funny – and one of the things they make fun of is the lowly timesheet. I can see why, but I've learned how important it is, so that you don't waste the lives of your employees by letting them work on things the market won't reward them for.
Q: What is the most common reason why companies are hesitant to implement automated time tracking systems? Any suggestions on how to address this?
A: They think that Microsoft Excel spreadsheets are working fine for now. They're not, though. That kind of system is not auditable. There are no revision controls with it. Excel is great for many things, but not for implementing repeatable processes touched by everyone in the whole company.
Sometimes they think that they'll never get employees to track their time, and that it will be their own version of Vietnam inside their company. And it might be. That's why I wrote this, though: to give them ammo.
Q: What tips can you give managers for facilitating this?
A: Tell employees what's in it for them. Maybe it makes your company more successful. Maybe you're basing bonuses on this data one way or another. The book outlines many other ideas for addressing this problem.
Q: A major premise of All Your Money Won't Another Minute Buy is that the economy has changed drastically in the last fifty years. Why do you think this is and what are its implications?
A: I don't know why things are accelerating so much - it's like an exponential curve out there now - but they are. Gutenberg to the telegraph took hundreds of years. Orville and Wilbur to landing on the moon took 65 years. The IC chip to a robot vacuum took 50 years. The invention of the Internet to the demise of Egghead Software took two years. The internet, cell phones, globalization and massive population growth are all giving us more brains to work with. I don't know why it's all happening but I can see that it is.
The implications of accelerating change are huge. Creativity and time to market for new products and services are the key to success. 50 years ago, a product had a longer lifetime. Now, however, we have Internet-connected mousetraps for crying out loud. We have light bulbs with computers in them that automatically turn off after a couple of hours. If the humble mousetrap can become obsolete by technology, then so can just about everything. Certain things about the human condition are unlikely to ever change - for example, we all want more than we have. That's just being human, or even alive, because animals are that way too. But for businesses, accelerating change creates a frightening instability, and I think the largest companies will have the hardest time coping with it.
Q: You devote the last section of your book to "the future." What do you foresee in terms of technology and time tracking in the next ten or twenty years?
A: Some of it I can't talk about yet. We just have too many copycats. But watch this space.
I can say that I envision a future where no one has to wonder what they did on Tuesday, the 4th of April, four years ago. That data will exist and be accessible if you want it to be. In addition, the relevant parts of that data that need to be communicated from the individual to businesses that he or she works with will be sent over in a secure manner.
