Today, I tried an experiment – holding office hours. Isn’t that such a throwback to your old college days? Several folks have asked about how it went – so here’s a brief summary. Turns out it was good fun – and hopefully this also proves to be productive for Glenbrook in terms of future business.
Over the course of the day, I had a total of about 8 calls. Several were from old friends – in between jobs, just catching up, etc. One from an entrepreneur who’s starting a new financial services business and looking for both some data and my quick reactions to his idea, and a couple of from private equity investors who seem increasingly interested these days in learning more about opportunities in the US payments system. Lots of very interesting conversation, indeed!
All in all, today’s office hours experiment was really worthwhile. I wasn’t inundated with calls, I had some very enjoyable chats, and hopefully good things happen as a result. I’m thinking of trying it again – perhaps weekly or at least a couple of times a month. I’ll try to provide a bit more advance notice the next time I do it.
Meanwhile, feel free to call or email me anytime – my office hours are really just reserved blocks of time when you’ll more likely find me available to chat! Normally, I’m much more responsive to email – during office hours, I’m more responsive to the phone!
PS: One of the inspirations for my Office Hours experiment was Bill Taylor’s HBR blog post.
Scott is a founder of Glenbrook with more than 30 years of experience in information technology. He is a co-author of the book “Payments Systems in the U.S.” and a co-inventor of US Patent 6,332,126 and US Patent 7,840,459. At Glenbrook, Scott focused his work on payments innovation, mobile payments, and social media / Web 2.0 in banking and financial services.
Previously, Scott was group executive vice president at First Data Merchant Services and at Visa International, where he led the development of Visa’s global payment systems strategies. Scott began his career as a systems engineer with IBM, where he held a series of technical management and product planning positions over seventeen years. Scott formally retired from Glenbrook in October 2016, but remains important to the firm as both a friend and advisor.