Image of Angie the Apex

Job description

Angelina is the founder and head of Adelante, a small microfinancing firm based in Los Angeles, CA that specializes in brokering loans for women-run businesses in minority communities. She also has a number of leadership or advisory roles outside of Adelante (e.g. Chairman of the Godzilla Foundation, board member of ABCD and Lawrence Olivier Labs, etc.) Angelina's involvement in these organizations varies over time depending on what's going on in each organization (e.g. important milestone dates, events) and her availability. her participation can range from detailed, day-to-day management to high-level guidance on matters involving strategy and long-term planning to intermittent advice-giving.

Personal life

Angelina is 45 years-old and lives in a loft in the Downtown LA Arts District with her husband Brad and no children. (Although someday, the two would like to adopt from abroad). While they collaborate closely on many projects (e.g. The Adelante Foundation, EKE Operations) and attend many social events together, the bulk of Angelina and Brad's time is spent in separate spheres. This results in a need for careful coordination when scheduling joint activities and family events, since their respective areas of responsibility do not progress in sync.

Angelina graduated from the London School of Economics with an MBA. She rocketed to the top of Littlefield, a small, a Stanford Business School affiliated VC firm, based in Palo Alto specializing in social entrepeneurship. In particular, her area of expertise was in microfinancing for women-run businesses in Latin America. In 2004, Angelina took the leap and convinced Littlefield to fund a start-up she would head-up.

Relationship to work group

In many areas of Angelina's work, Angelina relies on a team of people to provide her with the context she needs to insert herself usefully into the daily operations of the organization.

Angelina works closely with her executive assistant Eli, who manages her calendar and coordinates her meetings and trips. She delegates the details of day-to-day operational management of Adelante primarily to the members of the Adelante Operations Group.

Tech Specs and Gadgets

Angelina has the ultra-portable 2.76lb Sony Vaio which she has with her AT ALL TIMES. As a result, she finds dealing with a Blackberry or Treo redundant and prefers a slim and elegant Motorola Razr instead. She recently switched over a (Red) one, a cross-brand effort coordinated by Bono to raise money to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa. On her desk at the office, she has a 23" flat screen monitor. At home, she and her husband share a Mac Mini which is used primarily for media storage, personal email and personal internet surfing. She also owns a (Red) iPod Nano, which she listens to when she is forced to exercise in hotel fitness rooms on business trips.

Motivation for Adoption

Angelina is driven, ambitious and knows what she wants. Because so much of her work is outward-facing, you could say that her entire life is her work. However, to maintain her sanity, she enforces an iron-class personal health and wellness schedule. She is a fanatical practitioner of yoga, a lifetime student of wushu and has recently experimented with western style boxing as well. She has a startling memory for people, places and mundane details. As a result, she has built a strong network of loyal colleagues and disciples in the field. However, this bevy of admirers takes a lot of work to maintain and increasingly as Angelina's star rises in the world of microfinance and Latin American economic development, the challenges of keeping up with the demands of her position are wearing down the system that has served her so well over the last 20 years.

Angelina, with Eli doing most of the research, has been looking into alternatives, but she's found that most systems are either flexible, but not powerful or powerful, but not flexible enough. In her mind, more important than an over-engineered CRM-like solution, Angelina needs a people, places and things management support that is flexible and will follow her into the unstructured and unpredictable environments she regularly ventures into.

• Meeting people who don't have email addresses or cell phone numbers
• Keeping track of complex family, business and friendship relationships
• Logging conversations and interactions for future reference

However, that flexible system needs to be supported with sharing and collaboration capabilities, integrated with her email and communications, calendaring and task management.

Communications and Task management

Angelina receives a huge number of emails which she processes herself. She receives 40-60 personal emails and sends out over 20-40 emails a day. Angelina also subscribes to 15-20 mailing lists and RSS feeds, 3-5 of which She feels obligated to stay on top of on at least a weekly basis.

It is helpful for Angelina to organize her communications in 2 different ways:

1. Actionable vs. FYI Examples of actionable emails are ones where decisions are needed (or isuses raised that require action), requests for Angelina's time (phone calls, meetings, speaking engagements), tasks Angelina delegates out and status updates which require new follow up actions. Examples of FYI emails are internal & external mailing lists (a very few are actionable requiring Angelina's reply), general office-wide mail ("lunch is here"), status updates requiring no action, etc. A large third category would be junk mail, which Angelina gets a larger share than others given her fame and popularity on the web.
2. By projects Given the wide range of projects Angelina is involved in, when She needs to zoom in on any one project, it would be useful to group just the emails, notes and tasks related to that project to get the full context of the project. Projects are divided into roughly two spheres: Within Adelante and Outside of Adelante. Project areas within Adelante include: Operations, Product strategy and Business development, Design, CSG and Board meeting updates, Press relations, Community development. Project areas outside of Adelante include: Leipzig Conservatory class, Foxhats, EKE Administration, political reform efforts, WHAT'S THE DEAL Scholars, Mozart Foundation, Third Eye, Conferences, etc. At any given point, Angelina has 25-50 active projects across her various Project areas. Overall, She has 250 open projects.

Calendaring

Her daily calendar is coordinated by herself and Eli. She attends over 20 planned meetings weekly, mostly internal but >20% are external. Since Eli coordinates her calendar, Angelina needs to share her calendar with Eli on a read/write basis. Angelina also shares her calendar with Brad and his assistant Leopold, while Angelina and Eli have access to Brad's calendar. Angelina also occasionally views the general office calendar to figure who is where and the major events for the week.

Overview of PIM usage

Angelina's PIM usage scenarios are special in the following respects:

• She's an exceptionally busy person, receiving a lot more emails and requests for her time and attention than "the average knowledge worker", so much so that she requires a personal assistant to help her manage her time.
• She is involved in not only more projects than average, but her projects span a much wider range of subject matter and industries. Angelina is often juggling 10-15 projects at once, as opposed to 5-10.
• Angelina is at the apex of several different organizations and as a result relies heavily on the people who work for her to help her with different aspects of her projects (e.g. gathering background research, pulling together rough drafts, etc)
• She communicates and coordinates with many different people and organizations through Eli her personal assistant.

Collaboration dynamic

All of this means that Angelina has very few peers that she collaborates with on equal terms. She doesn't report to anyone. There is no one else looking to make sure that she spends her time efficiently and in the best interest of the organization. There is no one else who needs to track her tasks. her work is not reviewed by others. Angelina makes these time management decisions for herself. In many respects, her collaboration needs are very different from the "standard knowledge worker" who is Hub in a flat organization.

Angelina's Loft

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Angelina's Vaio

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Angelina's Razr

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Angelina's Nano

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• Red nano: