Getting It Done

Within weeks, the local teams had drawn up highly detailed strategies for their rollouts -- covering everything from market goals and message themes to program budgets and performance measures. Those blueprints were then presented at a conference in Hong Kong, where they were analyzed and compared against the overall company strategy by the executive team before being approved by Cheung and Ellenbogen. Says Ellenbogen: "On the one hand, you need clear, functional goals with precise guidelines. On the other, you need local implementation, which means empowering people at a local level."

Don't make a move until all of your people know their places. At the start of each new project, Cheung, Ellenbogen, and other managers make sure that all employees know precisely what their role is -- and isn't. Employees have considerable leeway in meeting their goals as creatively as possible, but they must stay within their roles. For example, David Chen, VP of sales and marketing, had free rein when designing the marketing plan for the Hong Kong launch. But he was not responsible for -- or even allowed to work on -- projects that fell outside of his role: designing the site's technology, recruiting local partners, or implementing product delivery.

Rigid roles allow for a surprising degree of creativity. At the same time, they keep expectations clear, encourage productivity, and, perhaps most important, reinforce a companywide sense of focus. "All of our people are overachievers," says Cheung. "Their natural tendency is to try to do whatever needs to be done, regardless of whose job it is." That may be an admirable tendency, but acting on it can throw off a schedule and create delays -- a fatal weakness in an industry where speed to market is just as important as product quality.

Write it down. For all of HelloAsia's cutting-edge communications technologies, the company is a memo writer's haven. Every aspect of the company's strategy is put down on paper and distributed, as are all tactical, day-to-day operations. Meetings cannot begin without a specific, written agenda and do not end without an equally specific action plan that clearly outlines who is doing what and when -- which is then put in a memo and sent to all meeting participants.

The best-laid plans may need to change. Cheung and Ellenbogen have no problem modifying plans -- or changing them altogether -- provided that it's done right. Every week, the four markets' team leaders conduct a teleconference with their executive teams to assess whether new developments justify midcourse modifications. And twice a year, the entire company gathers to assess company progress, to analyze successes and failures, to adjust the next year's goals, and, of course, to put the following year's plan in writing.

But discipline, planning, and foresight don't always come naturally to a workforce steeped in the spontaneous just-do-it attitude of the high-tech world. So Cheung and Ellenbogen spend a lot of time reinforcing a culture of planning. The result is a startup that seems mature beyond its years. "We decided to take care of the basics up front," says Ellenbogen. "That way, all of that energy that you get from being a startup is just a bonus."

BGI: A Model of Effectiveness

On the 30th floor of a San Francisco high-rise, Bill Drobny, 37, is performing managerial psychoanalysis. The manager of strategic projects at Barclays Global Investors is on the phone with project manager Angela Page, 30, who is in Toronto supervising the online launch of a huge new financial product. Things are going well, she says. She's hitting all of her deadlines, and the launch date is a go. But something is bothering her.

In a soothing, friendly voice, Drobny begins asking questions about the project. He starts with some of the standard items on the project checklist -- easy-to-gauge items, such as scheduling and team rosters -- and then gradually shifts the conversation.

"How does it feel to you?" he asks.

"I'm totally stressed," Page admits.

"Why?" asks Drobny.

"I don't know," she says. "I'm under all of this pressure, but objectively, everything is going smoothly."

"Maybe not," says Drobny. "If a project feels uncomfortable, then something's probably wrong."

When it comes to getting things done, every project and every task consists of equal parts objective metrics and subjective feelings -- a lesson that is deeply ingrained at BGI, one of the world's largest and most conservative managers of indexed mutual funds. At a company that prides itself on its superb financial skills, top managers also appreciate the fact that a flawless execution requires a doctorlike sense of every project's shadowy innards. Over the past two years, BGI's managers have developed a model of a successful, healthy project -- a kind of Gray's Anatomy for getting things done. By applying that model to their own projects, managers can diagnose problems, gauge whether talent is being correctly deployed, and, says Drobny, "even determine whether someone has a project at all in the first place."