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March 6, 2010 By Susan Barr Leave a Comment

USE 4 D’S TO DEAL WITH UNFINISHED PROJECTS

unfinishedprojectsThis is the third post in a monthly series dedicated to preparing your business for the upcoming economic recovery.

We all have them. Many times, they sit in stacks of papers in our office, the “someday I will get to that pile.” Not addressing this pile of projects before business growth is like trying to run a marathon with an extra 40 pounds on your hips, knees and ankles – it can be done but it takes longer and it hurts a lot more. Everyone has their own system but for me, I like to follow the 4D’s approach:

Do It! These are the projects that support strategic objectives, have high payback and cannot be delayed. They were a great idea before the recession and they are an even better idea now.

Delegate It! Do you have employees looking for more challenging assignments? During a recession when money is tight, performance development projects without restrictive schedules can be delegated to employees who are trying to develop new skills. In a tight market, if you cannot offer raises or other financial incentives, providing employees with enhanced duties and opportunities to develop new skills helps foster positive morale.

Consider smartsourcing the work to a freelancer. Besides the traditional online jobbers such as Monster.com or Hotjobs.com, check out Craigslist.com, elance.com, guru.com or odesk.com as terrific resources to locate highly credentialed professionals. Ask for referrals on your social networks such as LinkedIn. There are many unemployed or underemployed professionals on the market willing to freelance while between jobs. If the projects require administrative or computer skills, you can use web-based productivity tools such as Google Docs or Zoho for virtual collaboration.

Dump It! In my experience, at least 50% of the projects in the “someday” pile should simply be dumped. If you haven’t made it a priority by now, what has changed? Why wasn’t it critical enough to rise to the level of importance before? Was it lack of staff? If so, why didn’t you outsource the work while the business was stronger and money available? Was it because no one can do it like you? I hope not – those kinds of projects will kill your business whether we are in a recession or on the upswing.

Delay It! These are great ideas that have positive impact on the business but are not as high a priority as “Do It Now” items. They are not essential enough to pay someone else to do (or they are difficult to delegate or outsource) but they are worth getting done. For example, you may have a list of blog changes you want to make but they don’t raise to the level of critical enough to hire a webmaster to complete. Avoid putting everything you cannot do immediately into the Delay It category – you will simply end up right where you started with a big pile of unfinished projects. If you designate a project for delay, be sure to put these projects on your plan and schedule time to accomplish them within a short period of time. Any project that continues to miss its planned start and finish over and over again must be questioned as a possible “Dump It” project.

Please schedule regular reviews on a monthly or quarterly basis – mark it on your calendar. Use the opportunity of a business downturn to establish the practices and disciplines that keep you organized and focused upon profitable activities and projects.

Filed Under: Achieve!, Forward Momentum, Lead with Vitality!, Prepare for the Upswing Tagged With: nurture soul of biz, recession, small business productivity

March 4, 2010 By Susan Barr Leave a Comment

MAKE ROOM FOR THE RECOVERY

filing boxes on dollyThis is the second post in a monthly series dedicated to preparing your business for the upcoming economic recovery. Yesterday, we discussed how you need to clear out your thinking and today we talk about how we must clean up and make room in our office space to prepare for growth.

* Are your files over stretched to the max?
* Are your computers running out of space?
* Is your facility/office running out of files space?
* Do you have stacks of unfinished projects?
* Lists of to-do’s are everywhere?
* Daily email traffic filled with subscriptions and newsletters you never read?
* Daily snail mail filled with postcards and sales letters, magazines you never read?
* Books on your shelf?
* Is your office furniture laid out in such a way as to be highly productive?
* Old supplies in your drawers?
* Are you so disorganized that you buy new supplies because you cannot find the old supplies?

Isn’t it time to clean out your workspace? The process of cleaning up serves several purposes:

* Cleaning up allows you to symbolically remove past mistakes.
* Cleaning up and making room allow you to acknowledge your past accomplishments. You will run across old to-do lists, goals, projects, customer letters and other items that remind what an excellent job you do at what you do! Cleaning up your office can be like looking through an old picture album.
* Cleaning up inspires your future. Old projects and customer files may spark an idea that has been latent for a long time. Start making a list of your inspired thoughts.
* Cleaning up creates space for new customers, new sales, new processes, and new product innovation ideas.
* No one can do their best thinking when surrounded by disorganization. Just think how pleasant it will be to work in an organized space.

For some great ideas on how to organize your filing systems, here are some books for further study:

Organizing from the Inside Out, second edition: The Foolproof System For Organizing Your Home, Your Office and Your Life by Julie Morgenstern

Getting Organized: Improving Focus, Organization and Productivity by Chris Crouch

You can also browse the web for “office organization” or “home office organization” and you will find many resources available from professional organizers.

As you go through the process, put aside all “unfinished projects” which we will review tomorrow. Are you ready to make room for the economic upswing?

Filed Under: Achieve!, Forward Momentum, Lead with Vitality!, Prepare for the Upswing Tagged With: nurture soul of biz, office productivity, recession

September 8, 2009 By Susan Barr 1 Comment

Small Business Disaster Planning

Last weekend, a tornado touched down within a few miles of my home and home office. No damage to our home but others suffered wind damage, fallen trees, and electrical service interruption. In other news, our nation and world is bracing for an outbreak of H1N1 virus. Wildfires ravaged thousands of acres across the West Coast of the U.S. destroying homes and businesses, causing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people.

In my local metropolitan area, thousands of homes and businesses are bracing for the threat of floods throughout the Green River Valley this winter as the Army Corps of Engineers is predicting rivers overflowing from damage to the Howard Hanson Dam. Local counties and cities, as well as most large businesses, are preparing for a disaster.

Whereas I don’t get caught up in the fear of these kinds of events, I do think it is prudent to have a business continuity plan in place in the event of an unforeseen emergency. Yes, even for the small office/home office.

A business continuity plan, also called a disaster recovery plan, is defined by www.businessdictionary.com as a “set of documents, instructions, and procedures which enable a business to respond to accidents, disasters, emergencies, and/or threats without any stoppage or hindrance in its key operations.”

In its simplest format, a business continuity plan should include the following information which ought to be communicated to and in the constant possession of all key employees.

• Communication Plan
• Relocation Plan
• Evacuation Plans
• Emergency Supplies
• Vital Records
• Emergency Staffing Plan

Start by developing a Communication Plan. It takes very little time to make preparations that include a list of critical phone numbers of staff, suppliers, customers, local and national disaster assistance centers.

Backing up vital records off-site requires a minor monthly investment and is a must for any business. Web-based backups such as Mozy or Carbonite are my favorite choice for consistent and dependable backup security as there is no hassle required with manual backups, transporting the hard-drives to a safe deposit box offsite, etc. Businesses with more than 5 networked PC’s could consider contracts with Managed Services providers such as CMIT Solutions.

For more thoughts on how to develop a Business Continuity Plan, check the following resources:

http://www.sba.gov/services/disasterassistance/index.html
http://www.ready.gov/business/index.html
http://www.score.org/disaster_preparedness.html

If you are a home based business, make sure your business assets are covered in the event of a disaster. Most homeowner’s policies do not cover home-based business losses. For more information about types of home-based business insurance:

http://businessinsure.about.com/od/insuringyourbusiness/a/homebusins.htm

Hope for the Best, Plan for the Worst!

Filed Under: Achieve!, Forward Momentum, Prepare for the Upswing Tagged With: business continuity, business insurance, online backup, small business, small business technology

September 4, 2009 By Susan Barr Leave a Comment

20 Questions to Improve Team Performance

Is your team struggling or are they performing at peak levels? Are they mired in conflict and gossip? Are they competing or are they collaborating?

Henry Ford said “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”

Whether your team works remotely from virtual offices or together in the same office, the group will function better when you take steps together to answer the following:

1. Why does this organization exist?
2. Who do we serve?
3. What are our shared objectives?
4. What do we believe in?
5. What is our team contribution to our organization, community, customers, owners, employees?
6. What is our individual contribution to the team, community, customers, owners, employees?
7. What values direct our decisions and inform our business practices?
8. What principles guide our interactions with customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders?
9. What do we expect of one another?
10. How will we communicate with one another?
11. What methods will we use to communicate?
12. How often will formal communication take place?
13. How will we handle conflict?
14. How will we utilize the chain of command?
15. How will we resolve differences?
16. How will we challenge one another?
17. What does each individual contribute to the objectives?
18. Who needs to be involved in decisions?
19. Who makes final decisions?
20. How will we hold each other accountable?

Shared commitment to common purpose, core values, communication norms, defined roles and responsibilities, and a culture of mutual respect, accountability and responsibility can turn a dysfunctional team into a high performance team. Achieving buy-in to the above questions accelerates the progression of a team from the formative stages with a strong foundation upon which team synergy and peak performance can be built.

Filed Under: Achieve!, Forward Momentum, Get Profits, Strategic Thinking Tagged With: leadership, synergy, team norms, teamwork, vision

August 31, 2009 By Susan Barr Leave a Comment

The Scarlet ‘E’ for Social Media Expert

Lately, the blogosphere has begun an outcry against the “social media experts”, mostly by other self-described “social media experts”. I recently found myself laughing out loud when one such expert claimed outrage in her blog, asking her readers to “out the fakes” by sending her their horror stories about fake gurus…an interesting approach to convincing others of her value, to say the least. Somewhere, someone is busy crafting Scarlet ‘E’s for the offenders.

I admit to having a natural skepticism of the words “expert” and “guru” – years of working in software engineering left me with a definition of expert which leaves few able to pass the threshold. In spite of my prejudice regarding use of the word, I think the current debate needs reframing. I find it more alarming to see such a preponderance of business consultants and experts who do not understand social media or worse, those who dismiss it as irrelevant to their consulting work. The issue is not whether there are too many experts. The real issue is that anyone who charges for products or services that affect the customer experience MUST be conversant in social media.

If you are a business owner, don’t ignore the debate about experts but don’t become dizzy over it. It is my belief that you should not hire any marketing professional or web professional who does not make it a priority to understand how your customers are using social media and how those same customers expect to interact with your business using social media. Such professionals must have a broad understanding of what is happening on the social web and how it affects consumers. Their priority must be on your customer and your business vision, not their obsolete process or proprietary solution.

How can a PR pro or an advertising consultant create an effective campaign for your business without consideration of social media? How can a website designer ignore how social networks can be utilized to drive web traffic to your site? How can a strategist create a plan for you without considering a content marketing strategy? In this day and age, ignoring social media is akin to professional malpractice.

So, how do you evaluate the self-described experts? Social media marketing is still a young field but most of us talking about it have a back-story. Before the advent of social media, what did the expert do? A resume should be available on their website or upon request. Are they bringing the perspective of an experienced brand marketer? A corporate executive? A successful entrepreneur? A technical website developer? A graphics or creative web designer? They must have more depth than a resume of 1000’s of Twitter followers or Facebook friends can avail.

Be wary of the expert who is selling you proprietary solution along with their social media expertise. There are countless solutions providers who mask “strategy” under the cloak of their proprietary software or advertising solutions. They ask leading questions which always direct you to their custom solutions with great promises of Google page rank. Local coupon sales, local ad sales, canned websites and FB pages, local online directories, software packages that “automate” your social media methods and new business networking sites are just a few examples of applications being sold under the broad umbrella of social media marketing. Such solutions should be investigated thoroughly to ensure the result applies to your unique business and whether other alternatives exist (possibly free), especially since many of the above require ongoing subscription fees or hefty up-front costs.

Keep in mind that profitable social media implementation is 80% strategy and 20% technology so make sure your strategy is well-defined before you sign on the dotted line. Stay focused on your goals and hire experts who share your commitment. Ultimately, the labels don’t matter as much as whether your goals are achieved by working with these folks.

Filed Under: Achieve!, Forward Momentum, Get Connected Tagged With: outsourcing, small business marketing, social media

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