This really isn't "tech" related, but it is definitely on my mind.

I was really excited to attend the grand opening of Nick and Nino's Coal Fired Pizza tonight. Monroe's newest restaurant represents a significant investment by two of my friends, Tony Sacco and Nino Perna, and if the grand opening crowd was any indication, I'm sure it's going to be an overwhelming success. 

The concept is great - a coal-fired pizza oven that gets up to 1000 degrees cooks the thin-crust pizzas super fast, and with a very unique flavor. The restaurant is beautiful, and the huge oven is very impressive in the center of the open kitchen.

Nino and Tony started working on this project five or six months ago - in the middle of the worst part of the credit crisis and "recession." I talked with them alot during the renovation of Dolce Vita, their upscale Italian restaurant which gave up some space for Nick and Nino's, and during the construction of the pizza restaurant. I don't know how much they spent, but I'm absolutely positive it wasn't a small investment. So I asked: "Why spend that much money, and open a new business, when the economy is tanking?"

Nino's answer was simple: "We have to do it to keep growing."

These two guys are very successful entrepreneurs who understand the best way to get through the tough economy - pay close attention to your bottom line, while planning for and investing in the inevitable top line growth that will come as things turn around. As the economy turns, which I think it's already starting to do, their brand new restaurants will be positioned way ahead of the competition's to take great care of customers who are again wanting to spend money.

This isn't to say they aren't already busy at Dolce Vita - most evenings I'm there (which yes, are too many) the restaurant is incredibly busy. I'm certain Nick and Nino's will be just as successful.

The investment and the confidence that Tony and Nino have in their businesses and their plan is really inspirational for small business owners who are sweating slower receivables, decreasing sales and margin pressure.

Seeing what they've done sure makes me feel good about our business and our community. I wish them tremendous success. And thanks for the great pizza!

So, our company Nextel bill came in the mail yesterday... It has slowly crept up to just over $400 a month. Heartburn city, let me tell you.

So, I figured I'd give Nextel a call to see what we could do to lower my costs. We have an extra phone on the account we're not using, so I knew I could put that phone in "seasonal standby" for a few months, which drops the cost, but I wasn't sure what other options might be available.

I was connected to a wonderful customer service representative named Elizabeth. She reviewed our services, compared options, and came back with fantastic news.

She was able to reduce our monthly bill by over $100 per month, and at the same time, give us unlimited data, unlimited texting, 500 more minutes per month, AND unlimited Blackberry data service. Oh, and unlimited direct connect (the reason we use Nextel).

The lesson here I suppose to to review these monthly bills and check in once in a while with the vendor. They have a way of slowly going up.

You're undoubtedly familiar with the phrase, "When the cat's away, the mice will play."

Now, I'm not at all in favor of Big Brother watching what I do in my private life, so I can completely understand other people objecting to their privacy being invaded. I rarely use my Kroger discount card because the idea of my purchasing habits being stored in some database somewhere, and used to figure out what makes me tick, bugs the crap out of me.

Politically, I'm a staunch Republican, and the idea of the government invading my personal life any more than absolutely necessary makes my blood boil.

It is important to note, though, that I'm talking about my personal life.

Personal life occurs during personal time, in your own personal space. In public places like your office, or my office, or out on the streets, people need to understand the idea that they have no right to privacy. I would go so far as to say that we should have surveillance cameras on every lightpole, so we can prevent terrorist attacks and hunt down and find terrorists and criminals when they do attack. 

They have street surveillance cameras in London, for example, and remember how quickly they found the terrorist attackers in July, 2007?

Let's translate this to the workplace.

Employees need to understand that they are at your office to work. They have no right to expect privacy. WHATEVER they are doing is your business as long as they are doing it at your business, on your business's clock!

Salary.com (www.salary.com) commissioned a study, and reported that American companies spend more than $750 billion paying people for work they're not doing. Add to that your best, conservative guess as to the amount you're paying people for work they're doing that isn't in compliance with your standards, that's shoddy, that's only half-ass, or that doesn't follow your procedures, and you are very easily talking about a $1 trillion problem.

If you're a business owner, your share of that $1 trillion is coming out of your pocket.

Big brother has to watch at work. The cat must never be away, and the mice must never be allowed to play. It is simply too expensive!

There's a few ways to accomplish this. One, of course, is with technology.

We routinely install software that monitors employee computer usage. This software is relatively inexpensive (less than $100 per computer), and records every action that is done on the machine, including what programs are being used, what websites are being visited, if any chat programs are used, all e-mail activity, and every keystroke typed. We can keep a history of screenshots, as well, recording the activity on the computer screen every 30 seconds or so.

Where it gets particularly useful is when you know you have a problem. If you know that employees are spending time on Myspace, for example, you can block access to that website. Or, you can make Myspace a hot monitoring term, and start recording a screen shot every second while an employee is on that site.

We also have the ability to block any external sites at the firewall level, so there's no need to monitor employee's computers. Using a Fortinet router, we can deny and allow sites based on their category (research sites are allowed, for example, while lingerie sites are not).

You can also install video and audio surveillance equipment, and access it from anywhere you have an Internet connection. The systems will record everything to a server or computer with a large hard drive, and allow you to review it whenever you need to. Washington State University researchers found that workers who knew they were being watched got more done, but weren't as happy. Gosh, I wonder why?! Could it because they were actually having to - say it with me, folks - W O R K?

And here's a little secret I'll let you in on: The good employee's don't care. And secretly, they're going to be happy you're cracking down on the slackers.

Installing monitoring software isn't all that expensive, particularly when you contrast it with your share of the $1 trillion American businesses spend per year paying for work that isn't getting done.

I was talking with a client today, and just randomly we started discussing employee Internet usage and the amount of time wasted. It gets to be staggering pretty quickly, if you do the math.

Suppose an employee spends 6 minutes per work day on the Internet doing things that are clearly not work related. That's 30 minutes a week. Or, 1,560 minutes per year - equal to 26 hours.

If that employee's burdened cost is $15/hour, your company just spent $390 for absolutely nothing.

If you have 10 employees, figure almost $4,000 per year in wasted time.

And that is if they waste only 6 minutes per work day.

My conversation with the client ended up there. But I thought about it some more when I got back to the office, and ran it out a little further....

Let's say you have an employee who consistently comes in right at the bell, so to speak. So, they run to the time clock, punch in, and then go through the process of taking off their boots and coat (remember, we're in Michigan... it gets cold here!), putting their things away, booting up their computer, socializing for a few minutes before they get started, perhaps even get their coffee ready.

Then this employee punches in from lunch, and spends a few extra minutes after they're punched in finishing up whatever they were doing on their lunch hour.

If you add all of that up, you can easily envision a scenario where you've lost 30 minutes a day to nonsense.

Which equals 130 hours of time you have paid this employee in a year, for which you've received nothing.

At our illustrative $15/hour burdened cost, that's $1,950 per year in completely wasted labor expense.

If you have a few of these people on staff, or their cost to you is even higher, the pointless expense to your company becomes staggering pretty quickly.

We have software we sell that monitors and reports on employee's Internet usage.... So that base is potentially covered.

But how do you deal with the "leaked time" in the scenario above?

Short of being a drill sergeant in your business, I'm not sure of the answer. I'd imagine, as with most things, it involves a delicate act of line-walking between too strict and not strict enough.

The meeting I had in Dallas was a peer group of other geeks in businesses similar to mine.

One of the topics I brought up for discussion was time management. And in a fun little bit of irony, we ran out of time on the first day to talk about it, and ended up talking about it the following morning.

The largest challenge I face in my everyday business life is managing my time effectively. After running through what I thought to be the problem, our facilitator asked me: "What is the real problem?"

And she's right.... The problem isn't really managing my time effectively. I am for the most part a reasonably skilled manager, and can effectively do just about anything that needs to be done.

The issue she suggested is really fear.... And I don't necessarily disagree with her.

What do I fear about actually doing those things that need to be done, instead of the things I am doing? Perhaps admitting the things I think need to be done really aren't that important?

An interesting question to work through.

Some of the folks in the peer group gave me an interesting insight. We all, everyone in my line of work, have crazy schedules that can easily swing out of control. It is partly the nature of the beast, unless you're a service company with dozens of employees, an emergency or wrinkle in the schedule isn't controllable, and sometimes unavoidable. The trick is to stop using that as a crutch to not get the important things done.

One member offered that he never schedules things on Mondays, since that is the craziest day for them. Another suggested putting my list of things in writing, prioritizing them as best as possible, and then picking the top three and focusing on them, instead of the whole list.

People don't repetitively do things that they don't really want to do.... I wonder if I find some satisfaction in the chaos?

The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.