Day one - 'managing things at a distance' experiment.

I mentioned a few days ago that my biz partner was going away for 2 months.  See below.  Well he left last night and this morning he calls me from New York to say he's just had a call from the guy we sub-contract our warehousing and some of our deliveries to, to say that he's been locked out of his warehouse by his landlord for non-payment of rent.  We've been watching him for a few weeks but had got, what we thought were, some pretty watertight commitments and contingencies.  It's an interesting start to this 'managing at a distance' experiment.

A local test for globalisation

So my biz partner is going to the US for 6 weeks.  He's got stuff he needs to sort out over there and the biz has got to the stage where our very able team of four should be more than capable of running the show while he's away.  There's a limit to what I can do to help, given my other commitments, and he will be able to work remotely, though the time difference means he won't be around until 4pm UK time.  So this really will test just how robust our enterprise has become.  In theory, with modern communication and the fact that two of our team work on France full time anyway, it should work perfectly.  But I have to confess to being a little nervous.  Will let you know how things develop over the coming weeks.