12 | The one where James is unaware he "invented" the Andon

The AIB crew starts this week's episode by visiting THE 'Ancient Email' that started James and Kevin's business partner. Which leads into the celebration of the WP Ninjas transitioning Jon from part-time, to the newest member of their salaried roster. They then briefly (in proper AIB jokingly-awkward fashion) segway into emotions and being/not being in touch with them.

Our Favorite Things:

• Productivity tips, tools, and hacks.
• Compartmentalization
  • Separating your concerns.
• Bear Notes
• Noteshelf
• Basecamp
• Omnifocus
• TextExpander
• The value of good ol’pen and paper
  • “Thoughts untangle themselves through the lips and the finger tips.”
• SnagIt
• SmarterQueue
• Analyze when you’re most productive.
  • Be mindful of your time.
• PhpStorm IDE
• Codetree

The crew topic breaks with Kenny “gratefully” delivering this week's sponsor, Chevrolet, and the Chevy Volt.

Business Processes, Systems, and Productivity:

• Implementing a support ‘Andon’ system.
  • What it is, why it matters, why you need it.
• Measure the health of process flow.
• Support will be with you always.
  • 24/7 support is NOT healthy.
    • You team cannot be effective with that philosophy.
• On implementing process.
• Preparing for the probable and the unlikely.
• Never 100% trust forecasts.
  • Treat your data with a grain of salt.
  • Acknowledge trends and react to them.
• Why James enforces and lives his "no one left behind" mentality.