How to Apply 7 Change Management Principles to Your Remote Workforce

Amanda Greenwood June 18, 2020

Management, Processes

This is a guest article by Dan Fries – entrepreneur, investor, and writer. Dan shows bootstrapped entrepreneurs and business owners how to prepare for an exit by making better long-term financial decisions.

The only constant thing in business is change.

Whether you are seeking to grow your business or looking to adapt your model to evolving market conditions, implementing strong change management techniques is key to keeping your business agile and sustainable.

Effective change management techniques have many different elements, some of which Process Street has covered before. For instance, checklists for teams can help you to keep a careful track of the development of your team, and these ten templates that optimize creative workflow management can provide your team with the flexibility and creativity they need to stay ahead.

One of the biggest obstacles to applying change management techniques in the contemporary workforce is the rising number of freelance, remote workers.

In this Process Street post, we’ll cover the following seven key principles for managing change within a modern, remote workforce:

Let’s get stuck in.

Total Quality Management (TQM): Improve Processes & Keep Customers Happy

Amanda Greenwood June 15, 2020

Management, Manufacturing, Quality Control

TQM-total-quality-management

What caused the global financial crash in 2008?

Failures of AIG, Lehman, Merrill, and other major financial firms? Disproportionate risk-taking by banks and lenders? Deregulation within the financial industry? Development of new ways to finance mortgage products? Excessive lending and borrowing in the housing market?

Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.

However, these causes only tell half the story behind the financial meltdown that morphed into the biggest global recession since the Great Depression (Covid-19 aside).

What was the root cause? The real reason behind the enormous cost to the economies of many countries and the lost fortunes of millions of families?

A lack of total quality management (TQM).

Paul Moore, former head of group regulatory risk at HBOS (part of the Lloyds Banking Group since 2009), dubbed this crisis as ‘the biggest quality failure of all time.’

Total quality management stems from the belief that mistakes can be avoided if everyone is behind the continual process of detecting, reducing, and eliminating errors.

If organizations from within the financial sector believed in putting quality first, and positioned culture and people above profit margins and structure, the events leading up to the crisis could have been avoided.

Just imagine how different things might have been had the financial sector been managing their quality in a similar way to ISO 9001!

We’ll continue to explore this concept later but, before we do, let’s look at what else we’ll cover in this Process Street post:

Let’s get going!

AS9100: The Quality Management System that Changed Aerospace

Amanda Greenwood May 15, 2020

Agile, ISO, Quality Control

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped.” – Eric Moody, British Airways Captain, Business Insider

The words no one wants to hear when they’re tightly strapped into an aluminum tube, flying at 900kph, 35,000 feet up in the air.

One in three Americans either feels anxious or scared to fly and 73% are fearful of mechanical problems during flight.

“On a flight from Kiev to Toronto, several screws fell out of the ceiling onto my lap…When air started sucking out of a loose seam around my window, I really started to panic.” – Nate Drescher, The Travel

But air travel in the United States is the safest in the world. The odds of dying in a car accident are about one in 5,000. The odds of dying in a plane crash are about one in 11,000,000.

So, putting our fears aside for a second, why is flying the safest way to travel?

Well, partly because of the advances in aircraft design, technology, and engineering, but mostly because of Aerospace Standard (AS) 9100. The International Quality Management System standard for the Aviation, Space, and Defense industry.

“A person would have to fly on average once a day every day for 22,000 years before they would die in a U.S. commercial airplane accident” – Dr. Arnold Barnett, FlyFright

Whether you’re an avid flyer, an aviation expert, or an aerospace supplier, join me as we fly through the following AS9100 topics:

Fix your seat in an upright position, fasten your seatbelt, and prepare for take-off…

The Secret to IT Service Management: The ITIL Service Lifecycle

Amanda Greenwood May 8, 2020

IT, Quality Control, Technology

What do Sony Ericsson, the UK Passport Agency, MT Gox, and Knights Capital all have in common?

They’ve all suffered massive financial and reputational losses following the mismanagement, or non-existent management, of their new and existing IT services.

Major mobile phone operator, Sony Ericsson failed to renew one of their certificates and left 32-million people unable to use their mobile phones for a WHOLE DAY.
The UK Passport Agency failed to test its new computer system and left half a million British people without a passport in the UK.
Japanese bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, failed to spot several weaknesses in their software systems which enabled hackers to STEAL over 850,000 bitcoins.
Knight Capital Group, one of America’s largest traders, failed to spot a major bug in their trading software which cost them $440 million.

What could they have done to avoid these embarrassing, not to mention financially crippling, technical disasters?

Implemented an IT service management system, like the ITIL Service Lifecycle.

Which, coincidentally, is what this post is all about.

By the time you’ve finished reading this Process Street article, you will have answers to the following questions:

Ready? Let’s make a start…

Call Center Software: The Secret Behind Call Center Success

Amanda Greenwood April 22, 2020

Business, Software, Support

Call center agent: “Ok Brenda, can you please close all windows and then restart your computer”
Brenda: “Ok, no problem”
2 minutes later…
Brenda:“Ok, that’s done. Do you want me to close all the doors too?”

Even in the current digital climate, the majority of people (not just the Brenda’s of this world) still prefer being assisted by phone.

In fact, a study by Harvard Business Review found out that 57% of customers move from the web to the phone when they need support. Not only that, but the global call center software market size was valued at $18.1 billion in 2019 and is expected to reach $72.3 billion by 2027.

I don’t know about you, but these statistics were a shock to me.

With the stigma attached to call centers and the introduction of Live chat, forums and IM platforms, I thought call centers were dying a slow and painful death?

This couldn’t be further from the truth. They’re back! Better than before and here to stay, thanks to call center software.

Join me on a journey of discovery where we will look at the following topics to find out how call center software has brought call centers back from the brink:

Ready to go?

Grant Writing: How to Win Every Time (8 Free Checklists)

Amanda Greenwood April 15, 2020

Business Processes, Checklists, Writing

What’s the difference between a winning grant proposal and a losing one?

Grant writing.

Grant funding today is more difficult to obtain than ever before. A recent National Institute of Health (NIH) report showed that out of 50,000 grant applications, only 10,000 were given funding. That’s only 19%, which has fallen from 33% in the last 15 years.

Why?

A lack of Government funding, fierce competition, and poor grant writing skills.

We can’t do anything about the Government funds. We can do little about fierce competition. We can, however, do a lot about poor grant writing skills.

From completing complex grant applications to writing tip-top proposals, we’ve created the following eight templates to hone your grant writing skills.

If you’re in a hurry, go ahead! Click on the links below to jump straight in!

Curious about what these templates looks like? Check out the Proposal Template embedded below.

Scroll down for more information on each template of our grant writing template pack.

In addition to introducing our grant writing templates, I’ll be taking you behind the grant writing scenes, covering the following topics:

Ready? Let’s start with the basics…

Review Management: How to Win Business and Influence Customers

Amanda Greenwood March 18, 2020

Checklists, Customer Success, Marketing, Processes

“Everyone who works here is a jerk. It smells terribly bad and the manager is an a**hole.” – Vanessa, TrustPilot

As a business owner, how would you respond to this review? Fight back and tell the customer they’re wrong? Ignore it and hope it goes away? Or apologize profusely and kill them with kindness?

In a world where 70% of consumers look at multiple review sites and read a whopping 10 reviews before choosing a local business, review management needs to be a crucial part of your business success plan.

But with 63% of businesses not checking or responding to their online reviews, we at Process Street, have written this post to help you understand the impact and importance of managing your online reviews.

This post will tell you everything you need to know about review management, including the following topics:

We will also give you access to 14 super-charged templates that will actively help you manage your online reviews. If you’re in a hurry, feel free to jump straight into them:

If you’re curious about what these templates look like, check out this embedded Social Listening Strategy Process Checklist here, or scroll down to find them all embedded.

But if you’ve got time, grab yourself a cuppa and let’s get started!