I have a question for you.

What does a Formula 1 racing team, like Ferrari, have in common with a high-flying company, like Apple?

They’re both in highly competitive industries? They’re both focused on improving their performance? They’re both incredibly driven to succeed? They’re both intent on being the best in the world?

Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

In other words, they both strive, in everything they do, to achieve Operational Excellence (Op Ex). However, achieving Operational Excellence is far from easy, and (fortunately for Apple and Ferrari) only 36% of companies manage it.

So, buckle up and join this Process Street post, as we race through the following topics and learn, from the likes of Ferrari, Apple, Disney, and Google, how to become operationally excellent:

• What Operational Excellence is (& what it isn’t)
• The four key creators of Operational Excellence
• 10 ways to achieve Operational Excellence
• The real reasons organizations fail to achieve Operational Excellence
• How to overcome Operational Excellence challenges

Ready to zoom into pole position? 🏎️💨

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What do professional skydivers and successful project managers have in common?

They both identify, assess, and plan for risks.

Skydivers look at the conditions, equipment, and capabilities before, during, and after they jump out of planes. Project managers look at the conditions, equipment, and capabilities before, during, and after projects.

Why do they do that?

“To stay on top of potential issues that could derail intended outcomes” – Project Manager, Guide to Using a Risk Register

How do they do that?

Well, I don’t know how skydivers do it, but to identify, assess, and plan for risks, a good project manager is never far away from a risk register.

But, when I discovered that 81% of organizations feel their risk registers are ineffective at identifying and planning for potential risks, and 30% of projects fail as a direct result, I felt the need to write this Process Street post about how to create one.

So, listen up as we go through the following:

• What is a risk register & what does one contain?
• Why projects won’t survive without a risk register
• The 3 biggest mistakes to avoid when creating a risk register
• How to use Process Street to create a risk register

If you’re in a hurry, grab this free Risk Register Process Checklist now, and catch up with the what, why, and how later.

Got your parachute? Ready, set… Geeeeronimoooooo…

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Who is Kanye West?

A musical genius? A passionate campaigner? Jesus? Or a spontaneous, unintelligible twitter ranter?

“I’m telling you, I am Warhol. I am the number one most impactful artist of our generation. I am Shakespeare, in the flesh. Walt Disney. Nike. Google…”

“A lot of people here felt like they lost. You know why? Because y’all been lied to. Google lied to you. Facebook lied to you. Radio lied to you”

“My greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live”

Kanye West is a brilliant example of how impulsive, unplanned communication can ruin a reputation.

But it’s not only famous celebrities that suffer the cost of off-the-cuff comms.

Unplanned communication is costing companies over $37 billion every year. This is no surprise when you consider that over 60% of companies don’t create or follow a communication plan.

It’s time to stop winging it and start planning it.

Read this Process Street post, grab our free communication plan template, and learn how to communicate properly, as we go through the following:

• The basics: What a communication plan is
• Three must-have communication plans
• Why having a communication plan is a no-brainer (with true stories)
• How to build a communication plan with Process Street

If you’re keen to start planning your communication right now, grab this free Communication Plan Template Checklist:

Click here to access the Communication Plan Template Checklist!

(Sign up for a free trial here, if you’re not yet a Process Street user)

Let’s start talking…
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I have a proposal for you.

I can build you a house, complete with walls, windows, doors, and a roof for $350,000.

Do we have a deal?

No. I didn’t think so!

To make a decision like this, you need cold hard facts. You need details, clarity, and proof! You need budgets, breakdowns, and solid guarantees.

That’s exactly how a project stakeholder feels when they receive your project proposal, and explains exactly why companies only win 15% of the proposals they submit.

Project stakeholders will, on average, receive around 50 proposals a week. To choose you out of this huge pile, they need clarity, details, specifics, lateral thinking, and a whole heap of persuasion.

You need to learn the art of how to write a project proposal, to stand any chance of winning their investment, and increasing your proposal success rate.

So, join me in this Process Street post where we will take the following lessons in how to write a project proposal:

• Lesson #1: What a project proposal is
• Lesson #2: What a project proposal reviewer is really looking for
• Lesson #3: The surefire way to succeed with your project proposal
• Lesson #4: The 4 types of project proposal & how to create them (with tips & templates)
• Lesson #5: A little more about Process Street and how it can help your project proposals

If you’re in a hurry, grab this Project Proposal Template Checklist, and catch up with the class later:

Click here to access the Project Proposal Template Checklist!

Now, butts on seats, no talking, and let the class begin!
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This is a guest post by Rimma Sytnik – a Senior Digital Marketer at Reply with 4+ years of experience with email & messenger marketing, on-page SEO, and link building.

Did you know that a nurtured lead can make, on average, a 47% larger purchase than a non-nurtured lead? Did you also know that perceived indifference can cost you 68% of potential customers?

Buyer journeys are becoming more and more complex, not to mention competitive. To stay afloat, you should maximize every interaction you make with each potential customer. You need to focus on building meaningful relationships with your prospects through consistent personal interactions.

That is exactly what sales engagement is and, coincidentally, what this Process Street post is all about.

In this article, we’ll talk about the importance of sales engagement and give you some tips on how to get started. This is a brief overview of what’s to come:

• What sales engagement means (and why you should care)
• Getting started with sales engagement in three easy steps
• Best practices for effective sales engagement
• How to use Process Street to make your sales engagement work

So, let’s dive in!
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I once lost $45,000.

What makes it worse (or perhaps better?!) is that it wasn’t my money.

It was my previous employer’s.

I was managing a website build for a big client and was under huge pressure to meet a tight deadline. So, as many do, I decided to start the project before the Statement of Work (SoW) was signed by the client.

This was a big, expensive, mistake to make.

It cost an additional $45,000 to re-work parts of the build that the client had verbally approved, but hadn’t legally signed off.

Ouch.

(Despite what you might think, this isn’t the reason I don’t work there anymore!)

According to research, 37% of projects fail due to a lack of defined and approved project goals and objectives, which come with a Statement of Work (SoW). This causes around 80% of organizations to spend at least half their time on expensive rework.

“Not using a Statement of Work – SOW during the project initiation is a major cause of project failure” – 4PM, Statement of Work – SOW

But what is a Statement of Work (SoW) and how do you create one?

All will be revealed in this Process Street post, as we go through:

• What a Statement of Work (SoW) is
• Why bother with a Statement of Work (SoW)
• How to create a Statement of Work (SoW)

If you’re in a hurry, grab this free Statement of Work Process Template now, and catch up with the rest of the post when you can:

Click here to access the Statement of Work (SoW) Process Template!

Otherwise, keep reading and we’ll go through this template, in a little more detail, later.

Let’s get into it!

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Want to lose weight? Shape up? Get fitter? Gain muscle?

If you do, I have one thing to say to you:

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got” – Henry Ford

To get better, improve, and achieve your goals, something needs to change.

But this concept doesn’t only apply to people who want to lose weight, get fit, or become stronger.

It applies to businesses too; to keep improving, businesses need to keep changing.

Businesses can typically find between 50 to 75 improvement opportunities when they go through process analysis. This can result in anywhere from a 10% to an 80% reduction in costs.

Aha! Thought that might get your attention! Interested in finding out more?

This is what you’ll learn by reading this Process Street post on process analysis:

• What is process analysis?
• How Lego and IBM nearly collapsed without process analysis
• The 4 tell-tale signs that a process needs analysis
• How to do process analysis (and how to do it well)

Ready to take the first step towards new and improved processes?

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I’ve got bad news.

Statistics show that no matter how hard you try, your project is probably going to fail.

To be a little more specific, only 2.5% of companies complete their projects 100% successfully.

“Failure is an unavoidable part of any project process” – ProjectManager, 5 Notorious Failed Projects & What We Can Learn from Them

Yet the cost of project failures is staggering. Failed IT projects alone cost the United States around $150 billion in lost revenue and productivity. And it’s frightening! Failure scares us all.

But, the good news is, failure, and how it affects you and your project’s overall success and profitability is controllable. If you can catch, or even predict, failures early enough, you can execute damage control measures and prevent them from completely derailing your project and its profitability. You can even use them to improve your project.

How can you catch or predict failures early?

By using a project tracker.

A project tracker is a snapshot of your entire project. It gives you and the project team a clear picture of how the project is performing, where the weak spots are, and which areas need the most attention.

Let me explain this concept further by taking you through the following topics in this Process Street article:

• What is a project tracker and what does it do?
• Are project trackers really necessary?
• What happens if you don’t track projects properly (with a real-life example)
• The most effective way to track projects

Let’s get going!
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I shouldn’t be here.

I should be sitting in a field, sipping a lukewarm cider, waiting for Aerosmith to come on stage and blow me away.

I should’ve been at the Glastonbury music festival; the UK’s (muddier) equivalent to Coachella.

But thanks to Covid-19 I’m not.

I’m stuck in my hot, stuffy office.

Although it’s heartbreaking, I’m not the only person affected by the decision to cancel the biggest event in my calendar, and music festivals and social occasions aren’t the only events to get canned because of the pandemic.

Most business trips, in-person meetings, and big, costly conferences have also been canceled or postponed.

In fact, talking of conferences, the number of canceled conferences is said to be costing the economy billions. As a direct example, the losses from major tech conferences alone have soared beyond $1 billion.

But, before you start contributing to these losses and canceling your own conferences, there is another way.

Welcome to the world of virtual conferences.

As more and more businesses start to think of new, innovative ways to carry on with ‘business as usual’ during this troubling time, this Process Street post takes a look at the virtual conference. Not only is it a stop-gap until the virus disappears and normal life resumes, but it’s a great permanent replacement for the traditional, physical conference.

Join me as we discover the answers to the following questions:

• What is a virtual conference?
• Why run a virtual conference?
• What should I consider when running a virtual conference?
• How do I run a virtual conference (with Process Street)?

Plus! On top of all that, we’ve developed four virtual conference process templates that you can use, for free, to help you plan and run the best, kick-ass virtual conference.

If you’re itching to see them, dive in and take a sneak peek:

Or pop into any of the other templates in this post directly from this list:

• Planning a Virtual Conference Checklist
• Running a Virtual Conference Checklist
• Process for Troubleshooting Virtual Conference Issues Checklist
• Hosting a Live Webinar Checklist

Take that Covid-19! We’re going virtual…
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Click here to visually map and improve your business processes now!

Did you know that visual information is processed 60,000 x faster than text?

This explains why the average person remembers only 20% of what they read but 40% of what they see. This also explains why most companies use a form of visual management to communicate with their employees.

Let’s do a little test to see if people, in general, respond better to visual cues than text.

Look at these two depictions of a traffic light below.

One is a sentence describing a traffic light, and one is an image of a traffic light. Both traffic lights are on different colors:

1. The traffic light is on red.

2.

At the end of this Process Street post, we’ll see which color traffic light you remember! No cheating mind!

In the meantime, I’ll take you through the following topics to explain what visual management is and how you can use it to effectively communicate with your employees:

• What is visual management?
• Why use visual management?
• The 3 golden rules of visual management
• Implementing visual management with Process Street

Ready?
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