Tag: projectmanagement

14 Best Online Team Management Tools For Productive Teams

Boosting team morale and productivity could be considered as the number 1 goal for every project manager. The term team management isn’t just about allocating tasks to be checked off by your team before the end of the day. Key factors that contribute to the concept of effective team management are teamwork, collaboration, and recognition.

Without them, a company’s overall performance is at risk. This is where team management tools come into play. Unfortunately, no matter how hard a project manager tries or how many expensive tools she/he invests in, something or someone is often left behind. And here in-lies our problem…and where there is a business-related problem, there is a Process Street solution.

You see, not all team management tools are meant for you. Without the right approach and the right tool, your chances of keeping each team member productive and satisfied, are next to impossible.

You need to find a tool that works best for you and your team and you need to find it soon. In this article, we will explain the importance of effective team management. We will then present you with our 14 top team management tools so that you can find the right one for you.

Click on the relevant subheader below to jump to that section. Alternatively, scroll down to find the information you need to evaluate the best team management tool for you.

We’ll start with the basics of team management. What it is and why it is important? Team management is the coordination of a group of individuals to perform a specific task. Team management is a subset of the broader discipline: project management.

Project management versus team management

Project management explains how the resources of a project are organized and implemented for successful project completion. With successful project management comes the delivery of expectations: what can be delivered, when this can be delivered, and the cost of delivery. Resources are maximized, the project cost is controlled, change is managed, and teamwork and collaboration are enforced.

Drawing on the latter point – teamwork and collaboration are enforced – it is clear that team management is a management skill vital for project success.

Team Management: An essential management skill

Management skills are certain attributes or abilities a manager should possess to be effectual in their duties and to deliver the needed project results. A team that goes through the motions, will not care for the success of your project or even your company. Effective team management is essential in maintaining a positive company culture, an environment that promotes project completion and to retain employee engagement.

What is a team management tool?

A team management tool is an application that assists the user in managing their team and project. There are hundreds of handy team management tools in the market boasting their effectiveness by:

  1. Boosting collaboration
  2. Promoting recognition
  3. Ensuring employee satisfaction

With this in mind, it can be difficult to select the right tool for you. However, with our list of 14 top team management tools, choosing just got a lot easier.Team management tools: Our top 14 picks.In this article, we present our top 14 team management software picks. We summarize the pros and cons of each tool so that choosing the right tool is easier for you.

Best team management tool for process management: Process Street

Process Street is a robust and straightforward business process management solution. It’s designed to help you manage repeating business procedures, minimize mistakes, save money, and collaborate easily within your team. With Process Street, you can create recurring checklists, collaborate around them, track their progress, and complete projects as planned.

What the users like:
With Process Street, project and team management become a breeze. Simply:

  • Document every step of your project.
  • Transfer your documented project into a Process Street template.
  • Add features such as task due dates, stop tasks and role assignments to adapt and refine the management of your project and team.
  • Activate the template once the project commences. Once activated the template is termed as a checklist. You can have more than one checklist running from the same template at a time.
  • Track the progress of your team members in terms of their assigned tasks.
  • Receive regular email updates for each project, keeping you in the loop.
  • Collaborate with project members in one space.

At Process Street, we have a wealth of free template resources stored in our template library.

You can access our template library here

To help you get started with your projects, check out Process Street’s Project Management Process Template.

This template is free and ready for you to use right away. In this template, you will find features such as:

  • Stop tasks to ensure task order.
  • Dynamic due dates, so no deadline is missed.
  • Conditional logic, creating a dynamic template that caters to your needs.
  • Role assignments, to ease task delegation within your team.
  • Approvals, to sign tasks off within your team. Tasks can be assessed by the relevant team member/s. The assigned approver can easily open the checklist. Information from the tasks is then used to either approve or reject, or reject with a comment.

It is with these features that Process Street checklists are deemed to be superpowered, and can superpower the management of your team.

What the users dislike:
Process Street is a great tool, but there’s no mobile app yet.

Pricing:

  • Process Street Business – $12 .50 per user per month
  • Process Street Business Pro – $25 per user per month
  • Process Street Enterprise – Available by quote

Sign up to Process Street here. All plans start with a 14-day FREE trial..

Best team management tool for scalable remote collaboration: Proofhub

ProofHub is an online project management and team management software that helps businesses organize projects, people and get work done. The software delivers basic and advanced features for refined project or team management under one roof. This includes:

  • Task management software
  • One-on-one group chats
  • Discussion topics
  • Gantt chart tool
  • Kanban boards
  • File management systems
  • Online proofing tool
  • Time tracking tool

Read more…

 

By: Jane Courtnell

 

Source: 14 Best Online Team Management Tools for Productive Teams | Process Street | Checklist, Workflow and SOP Software

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If you want to grow your business you will need to start bringing on staff to help you get there. But how do you manage them? In this video, I will go over 6 apps that I have found to manage teams and projects. Here is the list: Trello https://trello.com​ GitScrum https://site.gitscrum.com/​ Plutio https://plutio.com​ Clubhouse https://clubhouse.io​ Notion https://www.wpcrafter.com/notion​ ClickUp https://clickup.com

How To Make Your Stand Up Meetings More Effective

Popularized for its utility in software development, the stand-up meeting is an effective tool for keeping teams on track and removing blockers.

And though they’re popular among engineering teams practicing the Agile methodology, stand-ups can benefit any project team.

But as useful as they can be, without the right approach, stand-up meetings quickly devolve into time-wasters.

So in this post, I’m going to start with some much-needed context for this often-misunderstood meeting. Then, I’ll detail the rules, tools, and leadership approach you need to plan, prepare for, and run consistently effective stand-ups.

What is a Stand-up Meeting?

The purpose of a stand-up meeting is for team members to share progress, remove roadblocks, and stay aligned. 

Meeting attendees traditionally stay standing for the duration of the meeting—hence the name. Standing up serves as a reminder to keep the meeting short; the ideal time range is between 5 and twenty minutes. 

A key distinction between a status update and a stand-up meeting is that the latter is designed for team discussion, not an update for managers or stakeholders.

Of course, stand-up meetings may differ slightly. But, in a scrum-style stand-up meeting, team members answer three questions:

  1. What did you do yesterday that helped the team meet its goal?
  2. What will you do today to help the team meet its goal?
  3. Do you see any blockers that will prevent you or the team from meeting its goal?

As Kimberly Gajda, Software Engineer for IBM, explains, “[In a stand-up meeting] Answers are given in the past or future tense. For example, “I completed this” or “I will complete this.” 

Stand-Up Meetings and the Agile Methodology

As mentioned, the stand-up is a popular meeting for development teams practicing the Agile methodology.

But, whether or not that describes your team, understanding this methodology—and how the stand-up fits into it—will help make your meetings more effective. 

Put simply, the Agile methodology is an iterative approach to delivering a project throughout its lifecycle.

Agile stresses the establishment of a broad vision and continuous learning and adaptation. This is distinct from traditional project management which begins with and adheres to a precise project plan. 

For example, in traditional project management, the team tries to anticipate and plan for all obstacles upfront. But with Agile, project managers expect and react to unforeseen obstacles as they come.

Stand-up meetings originated in Scrum, which is one of many frameworks related to Agile. But they’re often used by teams using other Agile frameworks, such as Kanban.

The reason stand-up meetings are so critical to the Agile methodology is that they create an opportunity for continuous communication. In the same way, stand-ups can be key to improving communication at your organization.

Planning Your Stand-Up Meetings 

Think of stand-up meetings as a solution to the problems that occur when any group of people attempts to work together as a team. 

Therefore, at a high-level, stand-ups are useful anytime you need to do one or more of the following:

  1. Share understanding of goals
  2. Coordinate efforts between team members 
  3. Share problems and improvements
  4. Develop and strengthen the team dynamic

If you plan to implement stand-up meetings, make sure you’re doing so to accomplish one or more of these four goals.

When and How Often to Hold Stand-Up Meetings

It’s important to adapt your stand-up meeting plan to your team’s needs, particularly when it comes to cadence. 

In the context of Agile software development, stand-ups are held daily because work is typically done in relatively short sprints. So it may not make sense to copy this cadence for your team.

In fact, one of the most common complaints about meetings, in general, is that they’re held too often. So if it takes some time to find the stand-up meeting cadence that works for your team, that’s okay. 

Just make sure you’re not holding a stand-up for the sake of doing it. If you don’t need to reestablish a shared understanding of goals, coordinate efforts, share problems, or strengthen working relationships, you don’t need a stand-up meeting. 

As a rule of thumb, start with a less frequent cadence and increase it as needed.

What you Need for a Stand-up Meeting

Once you’ve established your initial cadence and the purpose of your stand-ups, you’re almost ready to run your first meeting.

What’s left is to ensure a shared understanding of and strict adherence to the meeting’s rules. 

It’ll also help to have some sort of work-item tracking system. A kanban board is a popular option among Agile engineers but a simple whiteboard with sticky notes can work too.

By visually displaying all work items, a work-item tracking system helps you avoid wasting time while familiarizing everyone with the work items in process.

In the next few sections, we’ll review the protocol of a great stand-up, define the roles of this meeting’s participants, and provide an agenda template.

The Stand-Up Meeting Rules

An effective stand-up typically lasts no longer than 20 minutes. But keeping a meeting to 20 minutes or less requires a laser-like focus. That’s why the rules of your stand-up are so important.

Kimberly Gajda, Software Engineer for IBM, lists the following rules for stand-ups:

  1. Each team member’s answers must align with the tasks assigned to them.
  2. Stand-up meetings must be concise; no longer than 15 – 20 minutes.
  3. Answers must be given in the past or future tense.

    Gajda says, “Using the present progressive tense, such as “I am working with XYZ,” is considered poor form.” This information should be contained in the work-item tracking system.
  4. Answers must cover the time that has passed since the last stand-up.

    Gajda explains that if the task is too big to be contained in the time period since the last stand-up, report “what part of [the task] will be or was completed.” 
  5. Discussion about blockers and questions about what is being done must happen outside of the meeting.

Rule #5 is paramount because the point of a stand-up is to surface issues that need to be discussed while allowing those not involved to return to their work. 

If an issue is complicated, the parties involved should schedule additional time after the meeting.

The Stand-Up Meeting Invitee List

Stand-ups are designed to inform and facilitate collaboration between people from various departments. But this can lead to a long invitee list. 

And, as Jason Yip, Senior Agile Coach at Spotify, explains, people that aren’t directly involved in work items discussed can disrupt the stand-up. 

An easy way to cull your invite list is to focus on who’s needed to speak for the work items. In other words, if the potential invitee isn’t responsible for progressing a work item, they don’t need to be in the stand-up. 

Of course, sometimes it isn’t possible to keep your invitee list that concise. And it may be perfectly necessary for someone to attend just so they’re informed. In that case, ensure that spectators understand the rules of the stand-up to mitigate disruption. 

As Yip says, not everyone needs to talk, particularly if what they’re saying isn’t relevant to progress the work.

Finally, you’ll also want to keep remote meeting attendees in mind. As part of the team and the meeting, they should have a high-quality audio and visual set up. Ideally, they’ll also be able to manipulate the work-item system in real-time.

The Stand-Up Meeting Agenda

The agenda for a stand-up meeting is as simple as they get… as it should be for this short, high-powered meeting.

See a simple text version of our stand-up meeting agenda template with stand-up meeting questions listed out for each participant. Simply copy and paste as many sets of bullets as you need for your meeting participants.

You can also use this agenda in Hugo or download it for Google Docs or Microsoft Word.

Leadership’s Role in Stand-up Meetings

The stand-up is a team-focused meeting. To that end, leadership’s role is not to take over but to enable effective communication.

That could mean stepping in to enforce the meeting’s rules.

Or it could mean exemplifying the meeting’s rules with their behavior. For example, it can be empowering for team members to see their leader stand back when they have nothing to say that’s relevant to any work items.

Ultimately, when things go right in stand-up meetings, leadership’s role should be minimal.

Building Stand-Ups into Your Meeting Culture

Too often, teams abandon stand-ups because they’re implemented haphazardly. So if you want to run effective stand-up meetings, nothing’s more important than taking a thoughtful approach.

More often than not, an ineffective stand-up is a product of a lack of participation, preparation, or an unclear purpose. And it’s up to leadership to identify the correct time, place, and purpose for a daily, weekly, or bi-weekly stand-up meeting.

Just don’t expect to get it right on your first try. Keep improving, keep learning, and stay on your feet.

By: Rob Lennon / Customer Education Lead at Hugo

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Online PM Courses – Mike Clayton

The Daily Stand-up Meeting is a part of many Agile Project Management approaches. But in my experience, the idea pre-dates Agile. I bet the pyramid builder gathered around the wineskin at the start of every day! But, the two specific ways of conducting a morning stand up, which I talk about in this video, are from approached used by many modern Agile practitioners. Keep them short. For a small team, 15 minutes is plenty for a daily stand up. Stand (of course). It helps with: – Energy – Pace Two Styles of Morning Stand-up… Round-robin (3 Questions) method – Yesterday – Today – Blockers / Impediments – Maybe with a token to show who’s on Walking the board method Where there’s a Kanban Board or similar – Move from Right to Left – Who owns it – Blockers – Support to shift them Detailed issues and side conversations parked and addressed afterward Flag if off-topic discussions – take them offline Adapt your process to refine it constantly Recommended Videos. Carefully curated video recommendations for you: – How to Run a Great Project Team Meeting … https://youtu.be/dZeSiir1kWo – The Rule of Silence: The Free Source of Power in a Meeting … https://youtu.be/kXmAC_Iu8dw – Meeting Actions: How to get People to do Them … https://youtu.be/Bv67Tf9nh2I – Lessons Learned Meeting: How to Make it Excellent … https://youtu.be/cemERTeeQ7M – The Five Stages of a Meeting … https://youtu.be/3l8Of-SPcjI – What is Kanban? … https://youtu.be/W8dKoRjFvTY – What is Agile Project Management? … https://youtu.be/D5FoRXGa8ic For more great Project Management videos, please subscribe to this channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMZf… For all our great Project Management articles and resources, please check out the OnlinePMCourses website: https://onlinepmcourses.com/ For basic Management Courses – free training hosted on YouTube, with 2 new management lessons a week, check out our sister channel, Management Courses: http://youtube.com/c/managementcourses For more of our Project Management videos in themed collections, join our Free Academy of Project Management: https://onlinepmcourses.com/free-acad…#Project#ProjectManagement#DailyStand-up

5 Ways To Be an Excellent Project Manager During COVID-19

There’s no question that the way we did things last year cannot be the status quo way we do things this year. Or maybe even next year. Who knows how long this will go on and what long lasting effects the COVID-19 pandemic will have on our behaviors and business practices for the long term. That doesn’t mean we still can’t practice excellence and lead very successful projects either from the home or office or somewhere else… like the beach… as long as the person on the next towel over is 6 feet or more away from us.

I’ve compiled a list of 5 ways we can use best practices even better to successfully manage our projects and teams to excellence in project performance and deliver well for our now somewhat more uneasy and anxious clients in this climate of uncertainty. Let’s examine these five ways…

Communicate well and often. Communication is Job One for the project manager. And as many of us are working remotely and virtually we need to be better than ever at communicating effectively and efficiently. We need to be better listeners than ever before. That goes for everyone on both sides of the project and up and down the list of project team members and stakeholders. It’s “all in” when we are battling this type of bump in the road on projects as we are all going through unprecedented times. Remote work and remote project management is not for everyone and there are going to be project managers and project team members out there “learning as they go” on communication and how to work on remote projects. Communication will be the key to success.

Delegate tasks properly. When the landscape of a normal project has to change like this in times like this, it is extremely critical that the project manager be a very effective delegator of project assignments. You can’t just “assign” and move on. Knowing what you’re assigning and understanding and playing on everyone’s greatest areas of strengths will be a critical success ingredient. You can’t just toss out assignments as this is uncharted territory for many of us. And you must always followup with team members after assigning tasks. Always followup before it’s too late and deadlines become affected.

Know scope will change. Your project customer is going through the same issues you are and that your organization is going through. Lack of access to physical resources, and uncertainty of the workforce, uncertainty of the organizations real needs today, tomorrow and next month. Needs are changing – no one expected the coronavirus to affect the workforce like this and organizations like this or for this long. The project you are leading was probably conceived before the virus was even an issue… many big projects are planned out before the end of the previous fiscal year so that budgeting can be in place at the right time. Given all of that, be prepared to manage a project where the scope may be changing and requirements – especially some of the specific details – are going to change.

Anticipate the risks. Along with scope likely changing to some degree during the project, there can undoubtedly be other risks in this crazy virus-plagued world. Vendors may not be available to meet supply demands for project or final solution needs on a moment’s notice. Or they might not be in business at all or have the workforce ready to produce for your project needs. You may not have access to your entire team for the whole project or even the customer’s full team or subject matter experts (SMEs). The risks we must plan for right now on projects may be far different than the risks we are used to planning for under more normal circumstances. Anticipate a broader range – think outside the box during risk planning… you are going to realize issues on your projects that you never saw coming.

Be prepared to fully take the project reins. You have senior management and you have your team and you have your stakeholders. Under normal conditions you have these individuals down the hall in their offices or you know how to get in touch with them 24/7. They may or may not be readily available. What does that mean for you as the project lead? You may be making tough project decisions with no one available to bounce ideas off of and no time to delay those decisions till they are available. This not for the faint of heart, but project management never has been.

Summary / call for input

The coronavirus has drastically changed lives, buying behaviors, safety precautions and life priorities. No doubt about it. So, it seems logical that it would change the way we operate our businesses, interact with clients and manage our projects. When we are affected this much, it’s unavoidable that the way we manage and interact and lead projects would also change.

How about our readers? Have you been working remotely? How have you managed to remain effective and lead teams professionally and productively during this pandemic? Please share your thoughts and strategies.

By: Brad Egeland

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Online PM Courses – Mike Clayton 20.6K subscribers One thing dominates world news. The spread of the Coronavirus infection COVID-19 is now global, and many countries are seeing massive disruption. So, how should you respond, as a Project Manager? In this video, I go through a 7-step response plan. Our full COVID-19 article, with business references and resources is at https://onlinepmcourses.com/covid-19-… Do also take a look at our article: Managing Remote Teams: How to Meet the Challenges https://onlinepmcourses.com/managing-…

As an educator, and with a community of Project Managers who come to me for answers, I feel a need to respond. So, here is an outline COVID-19 plan for you. Its purpose is to remind you of seven priorities, and to act as a starter in forming your own plan. 1. Protect your people Your team, stakeholders, community. Number 2 on this list may be the first thing to do, but this is your first priority. Reduce the need for travel. Encourage more home working. Put people’s health ahead of project deadlines. 2. Put it on your risk register Convene a project Working Group and discuss a series of scenarios.

Then use each of those to identify risks and work on mitigations. Look for base case common features across scenarios and build infrastructure to handle it. 3. Consider if your project should be halted or delayed Open a conversation with your project sponsor, board, client… You need to be the one that goes to them, rather than them coming to you – that shows you as leading the situation, rather than just managing outcomes. You’ll need their sign-off on some decisions. 4. Key into organizational responses Your wider organization will be responding too.

Your skills are valuable, so offer your help in formulating it. Bring organization-tier thinking into your project. And also link into responses among your wider business and social communities. 5. Consider procurement commitments This one cuts both ways. You may need to delay deliveries of materials or bringing in contracted staff, if your project will slow down. Liaise with your suppliers. But, equally, if you plan to continue work, you may choose to advance purchase decisions and delivery dates to de-risk availability of materials. 6. Keep talking In times of uncertainty, fear, and possible panic, make communication a top priority. Even if you don’t know anything new, communicate that fact.

Be open and candid with your team, stakeholders, and your client/boss/sponsor. Communicate your scenarios and plans, and then update with how events are affecting your project and changes to those plans. 7. Regular review cycle to reconsider plans and responses Set up a regular review process, to keep yourself and key people up-to-date on external facts, and allow time to consider responses.

The situation may change fast. Establishing a process to evaluate changes will give you the infrastructure to adapt quickly. For more great Project Management videos, please subscribe to this channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMZf… For all our great Project Management articles and resources, please check out the OnlinePMCourses website: https://onlinepmcourses.com/ For basic Management Courses – free training hosted on YouTube, with 2 new management lessons a week, check out our sister channel, Management Courses: http://youtube.com/c/managementcourses For more of our Project Management videos in themed collections, join our Free Academy of Project Management: https://onlinepmcourses.com/free-acad…#COVID-19

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How To Decide Which Role To Fill Next To Increase Your Organization’s Effectiveness

If you want to get more done in the same amount of time you have to add resources. Every leader there ever was has faced the immutable law that scope is a function of resources and time. To get more done, you must add tools to make yourself and others more productive and add appropriate people in different roles to increase capacity. The role to fill next is the one that provides the most important and most urgent leverage – likely contributors, managers, coordinators, deputies, and then chiefs of staff in that order.

At a high level,

  • Leaders inspire and enable others to do their absolute best, together to realize a meaningful and rewarding shared purpose.
  • Deputies are second in command, empowered to act in their leader’s absence.
  • Chiefs of Staff give leaders leverage by managing them, priorities, programs and projects, and communication.
  • Managers of units, functions, programs and projects directly manage pieces of the overall puzzle and are accountable for delivery of their unit, function, program or project’s results.
  • Contributors work for unit, function, program or project managers and are responsible for delivering their own work.
  • Coordinators administratively coordinate others’ efforts, but are neither accountable nor responsible – unless they are acting as program or project managers or contributors.

Regardless of title, people often wear different hats at different times.

One key is to understand each position’s accountabilities. In general,

Accountable: Overall ownership of results. Drives decisions. Ensures implementation.

Responsible: Does defined work.

Consulted: Provides input.

Informed: Kept up-to-date. (One-way communication.)

Deputies are accountable for the decisions they make in their leader’s absence.

Chiefs of Staff spend a lot of their time consulting and providing input, making others more efficient and effective across the enterprise.

Unit, function, program and project managers are accountable for delivering results in their areas and, in the spirit of bounded authority, make tactical decisions along the way.

Contributors are responsible for, wait for it, their contributions.

Coordinators spend their time communicating across the people within a project if they are the project coordinator or across projects if they are the program coordinator.

Now that you understand the difference between these various positions, how do you as a leader determine which you need next?

Contributors are your organization’s muscle, actually doing the work. Build your muscle before you do anything else.

Managers of units, functions, programs and projects are the heart of your organization, translating overall direction into unit, functional, program and project priorities and managing delivery. These are generally the highest leverage additions once you have enough contributors.

Coordinators add leverage by working behind the scenes to arrange and coordinate resources.

Chiefs of Staff are all about leverage. Their primary function is managing your priorities and communication. In these they are consulting (two-way communication) and informing (one-way communication.) Additionally, they may pick up direct management for priorities, programs or projects. When they do that they look like a manager.

Deputies are all about succession planning, capacity and development.

Your deputy is generally your designated successor. This is particularly true if your deputy has “deputy” in their title. If you move out for any reason, they should be ready, willing and able to step into your position instantly.

Deputies give you, yourself increased leverage. Deputies often have the title of Chief Operating Officer. Those deputies give leader’s increased leverage by managing operations. Alternately, your deputy could manage the organizational process (often with the title of Chief Human Resource Officer) or the strategic process (with titles like Chief Strategy Officer, CFO, CMO, General Counsel or others.)

You may choose to move someone into a deputy role to further their development. In this case, the deputy will not be your designated successor. Instead they could be being groomed for a different role. You might for example, transition a CFO from heading the finance function to serving as your overall deputy for a period of time to broaden their horizons before moving them into a business unit general management role.

Implications

Make sure everyone understands what their job is and is not, and how they should interact with others. In general, add contributors first to give you muscle and then unit, function, program and project managers to direct your contributors. Add coordinators to support them next. Then fill chief of staff and deputy roles to direct the managers.

Click here for a list of my Forbes articles (of which this is #660) and a summary of my book on executive onboarding: The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan. Follow me on Twitter. Check out my website.

George Bradt

 George Bradt

I focus on executive onboarding and leading through points of inflection to accelerate transitions, leveraging my own senior line management and consulting experience, as well as my books including “The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan.”

Obtaining a career as a business professional after completing a higher education in organizational leadership online provides an opportunity to focus on improving the effectiveness of the company. Organizational effectiveness relates to the efficiency of a business; however, a professional must also focus on quality services. The key to organizational effectiveness is using the right tools and strategies to accomplish a specific goal. Find out more about how to improve organizational effectiveness: https://myonline.centralchristian.edu…

Efficiency is the wise use of both time and energy – this is something everyone, not just leaders, struggle with. The good new is that there are tools that can help us in our day to day workflow maximizing our time and communication for greater efficiency.

Here are 5 tools I recommend to become more efficient in your organization: Asana – https://asana.com/ Zoom – https://zoom.us/ Slack – https://slack.com/ Trello – https://trello.com/ Workplace by Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/workplace Have you used any of these? Share your thoughts in the comments below! Let’s connect on social media: Instagram: http://instagram.com/nilssmith Twitter: http://twitter.com/nilssmith Facebook: http://facebook.com/nilssmith Website: http://nilssmith.com #Efficiency #Organization #Workflow #Communication #Zoom #Asana #Slack #Trello

Why a Strong Mindset is the Foundation of a Successful Entrepreneurial Career

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It’s often the case that when one wants to start a business, they think it should begin with an idea and a business plan. But while these are necessary ingredients in entrepreneurship, they overlook the most necessary ingredient of all: their own mindset. There’s a quote from author and entrepreneur Idowu Koyenikan that says, “The mind has a powerful way of attracting things that are in harmony with it  — good or bad.” And it’s true. If you hit one obstacle in building your business and believe it’s a sign that you should give up now, you likely will. But if your mindset is focused on perseverance and success, you’ll keep at it.

Now, many words come to mind in association with an entrepreneurial mindset: optimistic, determined, persistent, unwavering. But what about the mindset required to just get started? Entrepreneurship has a way of taking over our lives, colluding with our identities and forcing us to confront everything within us. That’s why a strong mindset is the most powerful building block for any successful company.

Do you believe everything happens for a reason?

Some of the very best companies began because the founder went through a setback, then realized something better was ahead. When Vera Wang was rejected for the editor in chief role at Vogue, she decided to create her own bridal design line. When Oprah was fired as a news anchor, she was put on a talk show, which sparked the rest of her wildly successful career.

Believing that even the setbacks serve a purpose is a valuable mindset tool. If you’re going into entrepreneurship to win right off the bat, it’s likely you’ll have a hard time rebounding after your first obstacle. Also note that in the above stories of resilience, the founders made the conscious choice to take control of their own story. Vera Wang wasn’t in control of the fact she didn’t land the editor in chief job, nor was Oprah in control of being fired and placed on a talk show. It’s what they did next that mattered most.

Practice this very important resilience mindset hack by going through all of the past memories and events of your own life story. Are you able to see how one setback propelled a new opportunity? The sooner you make peace with the fact that obstacles are inevitable but bouncing back is always required, you’ll have the resiliency mindset to conquer a successful entrepreneurial career. A flipside to this mindset would be feeling like “everything is rigged against you” or what you were attempting “wasn’t meant to be.” You get to choose what’s meant to be after each obstacle.

Do you believe that you have limitations?

Do you have limited beliefs or fears that keep you playing safe, or are you coping with something else that’s holding you back? While building your foundational mindset, it’s a good time to assess what could be hurting you. Balazs W. Kardos, founder of the Diamond Life Blueprint, recently shared with me that he considers the first act of greatness he ever completed to be “pulling himself out of the darkness of depression“.

As he told me, “It took a great deal of inner work, but I now believe I needed to prove resilience and endure my bout with depression to get to where I am today. I know I can win against anything, which was a powerful shift in mindset for me.”

It’s a personal undertaking to assess one’s own limitations, but since the journey of entrepreneurship often entails coming up against these limitations, it’s best to assess them before you begin a company. See if there’s a coach or counselor you can work with to help you bust through the limitations, or even a mastermind group that can hold you accountable to your real visions of the future.

Do you have thick skin?

Rejections are just another obstacle that you’ll inevitably run into, whether it be your 36th “no” from a potential investor, an “I’m not interested” from a potential retailer or even a failed process of designing a prototype. We often hear the story of how Thomas Edison tried more than 10,000 times to create the lightbulb, but rather than giving up after so many failed attempts, his mindset turned 10,000 “failures” into “10,000 ways that won’t work.”

Another story exemplifying the same persistence is the story of Sir James Dyson, the founder of Dyson vacuum cleaners. He tried in excess of 5,000 prototypes before perfecting his company’s core design — and Dyson is still a frontrunning company today.

Begin to think of “no” as just a word. Better yet, shoot for thousands of nos in the spirit of Edison and Dyson. If you go into business thinking it will be a long string of yeses or bust, you’re in for a tough haul. Ultimately, your mindset is the only thing you can always control in entrepreneurship. Even the best-laid business plans will come up against moments that test your resolve and determination. Build a resilient mindset first, and you’ll be successful no matter what.

Jennifer Spencer

 

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Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com

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