It's About Time

Chuck Williams

Founder and vice chairman
Williams-Sonoma Inc.
San Francisco, California

People don't have much time when they're shopping. So, if you're in the business of selling things, simple is better. I designed the first Williams-Sonoma store with that principle in mind, and today the shelving units and the atmosphere of the store remain practically unchanged from when I created them 40 years ago. At that time, merchandise in cooking stores was usually all jumbled up. But in my store, everything had a home, because I understood the beauty of what I was offering. I appreciate the curve of a knife blade, the shape of a soufflé dish. Such items should be displayed in their entirety, so that you can see the whole side of a saucepan, rather than just the handle. The simplicity principle proved equally valid when we decided to enlarge the stores. Instead of adding merchandise, we spread our existing inventory over a larger area. And our sales increased exponentially.

As for myself, I've never thought much about time management. If you're passionate about what you do, you never worry about how you're managing your time. I believe that passion is central to success. For the first 20 years of its existence, my store was a 24-hour-a-day occupation for me. I did my own buying. And I swept the sidewalk every day.

On the whole, I'd rather do things myself. If you hand a job to someone else, you end up spending your time managing that person, and you neglect your own responsibilities. Don't get me wrong; I'm all for delegating. I delegate management duties so that I can spend my time more usefully -- by helping other people.

Chuck Williams (cwilliams@wsgc.com) founded Williams-Sonoma in the California wine-country town of Sonoma in 1956. It started as a small hardware shop that also sold specialty cookware imported from France. Williams sold the business to Howard Lester in 1978, and together they created Williams-Sonoma Inc., which now owns such companies as Pottery Barn and Hold Everything, as well as Williams-Sonoma. The company went public in 1983.

Alison Crawford

Artistic coordinator
Cirque du Soleil
Montreal, Canada

The most valuable time-management technique that I've learned is patience. Patience is a muscle that I strengthen every day. As an artistic coordinator, I spend most of my work time coaching performers. Cirque du Soleil performers are very vulnerable because they put their whole selves into their work. You have to be as much a friend to them as you are a director. And you have to deal with problems right away, so that they don't ferment. For instance, one of our performers is from the Ivory Coast. She doesn't speak English, and she doesn't know much about our culture. As a result, she's very insecure, and she gets frustrated a lot. So we have to be very patient with her, and we have to show her how to do everything twice. I frequently have to help her calm down.

You can't hurry a learning curve either. You have to repeat and repeat and repeat a movement until it sinks into both your mind and your body. That's how dancers and acrobats learn. As a director, I know that the best way to create solid relationships with performers is by exercising patience.

Alison Crawford (acrawford@nat1.cirquedusoleil.com) is the artistic coordinator of "Dralion," Cirque du Soleil's North American show. She is in charge of the entire production, including lighting, costumes, and performances.

Scott Mills

Executive vice president and COO
BET.com
Washington, DC

Have you heard of the "nine pregnant women" rule? It takes nine months to have a baby -- but you can't get the job done in one month with nine pregnant women. That rule applies to any project: As you think about managing the time that you have available to complete a project, it's critical that you identify which steps you must complete sequentially.

In planning bet.com, I've lived by that rule. But I learned it the hard way in my former role as the overseer of bet's restaurants, urban-apparel lines, book-publishing operation, and new ventures. Last year, we ran into some serious problems during one of our first construction projects: the bet Soundstage Club at Disney World. We didn't have enough experience to know that by making small changes in one part of the process, we would greatly delay the entire project. As it turned out, we had to hustle the construction workers out of the building before we could let the crowds in. It was a nightmare.

That's not an experience that I was eager to repeat with bet.com. The Web site involved a whole new technology for our company. So before we started it, we had our designers give us a time line that included a thorough explanation of its components. Really, none of the development could start before we answered some fundamental questions about what African-Americans want in a Web site. So we started our consumer research early. The moral of the story is this: Before you do anything else, find out which elements -- no matter how small -- have the potential to tie up the entire operation.

Scott Mills (Scott.Mills@BET.com) is in charge of developing and finding strategic partners for BET Holdings Inc.'s Web site (www.BET.com). The site features news, entertainment, and financial information, along with messaging and chat services. It will soon launch an online shopping mall that will offer African-American art, jewelry, books, and apparel.