Saturdays at 7:30 am (5:00 or 6:00 pm India time depending on daylight saving) I call the MassLandlords bookkeepers in India. I love it.

I actually get up at 6:30 to prepare for the call and to review our “treasury dashboard.” I love getting up early on a weekend. It feels so productive. Plus, this phone call represents two-and-a-half years of process development. We review income and expense reporting for MassLandlords and two MassLandlords partners. We use asana for linear processes, skype for the call and screen sharing, Google Drive for file transfer, and Google Docs for the dashboard itself.

The idea for the dashboard comes from my training in operations. You want to quickly see a visual status of the entire organization. One of these boxes updates via an API, most are manual and take 30 seconds to update, maybe five minutes for the whole week’s work. I can update them or the team in India can.

The other thing I really like about the team in India is their combination of hard working and good attitude. They have had no end of challenges, from power outages to dengue, and yet we have continually taken care of our people and our jobs. We’ve had language skills training to the point where we’re talking politics, technological innovation to automate a lot of our work, and a mindset of continuous improvement to leave us all feeling productive and headed in the right direction.

I’m lucky to work with their team leader, who is receptive to suggestions and candid with feedback. It’s a great team, almost three years in the making, and checking in on their progress is certainly my favorite part of the week.