Archive for the ‘10 Quick Tips’ Category

As a leader of a team, there are many things you can do to help your team work more effectively together. Below are ten quick tips for building a successful team.

1. Create clear communication. Communication is one of the key ingredients in a successful team environment – you want the people on your team to feel they can approach you if there is something amiss, allowing it to be worked out, instead of simmering under the surface. Communication should also be used to inform your team of specific goals that need to be met – your team will work harder if they know what they are working towards, and why.
2. Allow team members to feel responsible. If your team has reached a goal, then allow recognize that each member has had an important part to play in reaching that goal. Also, let everyone be involved in decision making processes. If even just one person feels like they aren’t an important part of your team, the whole team could suffer.
3. Encourage collaboration. By allowing and encouraging each team member to collaborate with other team members, each person will feel like they have a sense of ownership over what the team is working on.
4. Give rewards when your team meets a target. Let’s face it – rewards motivate people. Giving rewards for meeting a target will encourage your team to work harder, and to work together, to reach goals.
5. Get team members to do what they are good at. Matching members’ strengths to their responsibilities will allow your team member to work to their fullest potential without having to learn too many new skillsets, or feeling frustrated that they cannot work to their strengths.
6. Be willing to acknowledge help. If someone offers to help you, accept it. If you need help, ask for it. And if someone has helped you, thank them. Lastly, don’t be above giving help if you’ve been asked for it.
7. Get to the bottom of the problem. If there’s a problem with the team, don’t blame someone. Instead, work towards figuring out what went wrong and how it can be fixed.
8. Define responsibilities. Everyone on your team should know what they are responsible for. If you have four members on your team, and they all think they are supposed to be responsible for one thing, that one thing will get duplicated effort spent on it, while other areas may not get any effort spent on them.
9. Meet regularly. Meeting regularly will help all team members know what is going on with projects, and will allow members to voice any concerns they may have with what they are working on, and ask for help if needed.
10. Build trust between team members. Each member of your team should feel they can trust any other team member if they need help with what they are working on.

Telecommuting is an employee’s fantasy as it combines work with comfort and relaxation. It allows you to stay in your pajamas all day, walk the dog, and cook a fabulous meal for yourself while you complete a business project. Although this is true, telecommuting often turns in to an employee’s worst nightmare if they aren’t prepared to handle the obstacles that working at home has to offer. Telecommuting isn’t impossible; it does however take a lot of commitment to avoid the things that will distract you most at home.
These are 10 tips to help you telecommute successfully:

1. Create a routine. One of the main problems of working at home is that there becomes no distinction between work life and home life. This is one of the reasons while telecommuting fails for most people. To avoid this from happening create an early morning ritual whether it be, a work out before work, a shower, or eating breakfast to start your day off. The key is to give yourself an indication that you’re starting work and leaving home behind.
2. Groom Yourself. Some people may enjoy staying in their pyjamas all day which is definitely comfy, but not always the best way to be productive. Having a shower, eating breakfast and getting dressed will make you feel more awake and energetic and in turn more productive while working.
3. Make a plan. When you begin your work day it’s often difficult to just pick up from the day before and start working. Making a plan will help you pick your tasks and projects accordingly to ensure the structure of your day is organized efficiently. This will ensure you do not forget what you need to get done and that you complete everything necessary.
4. Find silence. Make sure you find a separate room away from blaring tv and screaming babies to complete your work. This is important to ensure you don’t get distracted and get your work done to the best of your ability.
5. Have a good work space. Your work area should not only be quiet but large enough for you to work comfortably, and store necessary files and supplies you might have. Having an attractive work area that you enjoy working in will make you happier about working and will result in a more productive work regiment.
6. Disconnect and minimize interruptions. If you have a hard time staying focused and tend to check your emails, text message your friends or surf the web, you might want to disconnect from everything that distracts you so you are able to concentrate. Ask the people that are constantly emailing you and talking to you to not interrupt you while you are hard at work.
7. Avoid the couch. It’s extremely tempting to move your work to the couch, but this can often result in watching tv or falling asleep. It’s hard to return to work after relaxing on the couch or in bed so try to stay at your desk to stay as productive as possible.
8. Communicate. When working from home it is immensely crucial to communicate with the people you are working with. This includes what you’re working on, the progress you’ve made, what you’ve achieved, and any assistance you might need. To avoid being accused of not doing your work, communicate regularly with fellow colleagues.
9. Don’t babysit and work. Mixing childcare and telecommuting is not a good match. Although telecommuting is good if you need to be flexible in regards to your children, you must have someone else to look after your children to ensure you have maximum productivity while working.
10. Set limits for work. Make sure to have a starting time and ending time to work. Without this you will find yourself working through the night and not leaving any time for your family. When your work is finished and your limit is up, wrap everything up, shut everything off and spend some time with your family.

One of our goals in business is always to increase both our productivity and the productivity of our team members. Here are ten tools that can be used to help with increasing productivity through our daily activities:

1. Remember the Milk. This is one of my favourite online tools – I am a natural list maker, so an online application that allows me to create as many lists as I need, while allowing me to access them wherever I am, well! Due dates can be set, priorities made and tasks can be set to repeat as often as needed. Remember the Milk is a great tool to keep on-top of your To-Do list. link.
2. Campaign Monitor. One of the best online tools to assist with sending online campaigns, newsletters, etc., to your clients. Campaign Monitor allows you to see stats of how many people opened your campaign, how long they read your campaign, what links they clicked in your campaign, and whether they forwarded it to a friend. link.
3. Sharepoint Online. One of Microsoft’s online tools, Sharepoint allows you to access, modify, share and create new documents with other users, while still using the Microsoft Office suite (as opposed to an online document editor). link.
4. Google. Google is so much more than just a search engine – there is Google Docs, that allows you to do document sharing; there is Google Calendar, where you can share you calendar with many people; Google Analytics helps you keep a tab on what is happening on your website (how many visitors you get, what keywords bring them there, etc). Google Alerts is one of my favourites, as you get an email whenever a website or blog on the Internet mentions any specified terms (for example, you could get an email whenever someone mentions your company’s name). link.
5. YouSendIt. Those files that you need to send to a customer that are too large in size for your (and their) email server to handle? Instead of mailing them a disc with these files burned on to it, YouSendIt allows you to upload the file to their website, so you just have to send a link where they can download the file to the recipient. link.
6. RescueTime. RescueTime is an online time management application that allows you to track and optimize the time you and your employees spend on each task they are faced with. link.
7. Roboform. A lot of companies have password-protected areas of their websites for their clients. Roboform allows you to easily keep track of your username and password for each of those sites, and automatically fills in those forms with necessary information. link.
8. Replace Text. This program allows you to search and replace strings of text from multiple files at the same time – a much faster way to accomplish this than going through every file that may have that string of text in order to search and replace that text! link.
9. Evernote. Use this program to save your ideas, likes, dislikes, thoughts, etc, and access them again using any computer or mobile device. link.
10. AutoHotkey. Hotkeys are keys on your keyboard that, when hit, will perform a specific action (such as “Ctrl+C” to copy text or images). AutoHotkey allows you to create your own hotkeys to help make processes you do faster. link.