How do you reactivate ghost customers?

Well, let me explain.

During the second world war, a young soldier from Lille attended a dance for servicemen about to be deployed. One woman caught his eye, and eventually, he worked up the nerve to ask her to dance.

Thinking that he would ask again – as most of the other young men would – she politely declined. The young soldier was shy, though, and took her refusal at face value. Not knowing her name or if he would even return, the young soldier went off to war.

Nearly a century later, their granddaughter – my very closest friend for all of three days – told me the story as we drove through the French countryside between Lille and Arras.

We love stories like that – the romance of chance encounters, unintended separations, and reunions that could only be an act of fate. Maybe it’s having an answer to the so-often unanswered question What might have been? that’s the thing that really resonates. Personally, I’m just really nosy and I like stories.

While most of us have some variation of “a friend of a friend’s second cousin’s grandmother was reunited with her first love by total accident,” the truth is, we rarely experience these reconnections without some sort of deliberate effort by one or both parties.

But we lose touch with people all the time. High school best friend. University mentor. Pick-up game buddy. Customer whose payment didn’t go through and involuntarily canceled their subscription to your service because they didn’t realize it.

Happens all the frickin time. But there is no missed connections column for lost customers. If you want them back, you’re going to have to be proactive. Fortunately, not only am I good with stories, but I’m pretty good at solving problems, too. (Or, at least, nagging our CS and Ops Team Manager, Blake Bailey, until he spills all his secrets.)

Either way, in this Process Street post, I’ll share the 5 things you need to know to put some life back into those ghost customers haunting your MRR.

• The journey to passive customer churn
• 5 tips to bring customers back from the dead
• Ghost customer resurrection a plan

Let’s reconnect!
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What is the ikigai concept for business?

Ikigai, which means “a reason for being”, is a Japanese word that has gently risen to the forefront of the business world, like a whale coming up to greet the dawn. It is a welcome wave of thoughtfulness and quiet in the face of a usually loud, blustering, profit-at-all-costs model.

The Ikigai concept beckons to us, asking us to consider the question: What do I get up for in the mornings? For most of us, the answer is not “money”.

Money, for most people, is a means to an end. If you ask people at the end of their lives what they wish they could have done differently, the answers are not usually “I wish I’d made more money”. They’re along the lines of “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends”.

Heart matters, both in our personal lives and in business. It seems a bit short-sighted to assume otherwise or to see business as totally apart from our personal values. The industrial revolution saw people exchanging their labor for money and becoming increasingly alienated from the joys of pouring their hearts into their creative endeavors and trade. They became cogs in the wheel of the factory that is capitalism.

We still have a top-down structure in many work environments today, but some companies have begun to embrace a horizontal knowledge approach, where managers and employees are on the same level and treated as equals. The more we learn about what makes employees happy, hopefully, the more we will move towards those models, of which the Ikigai concept is a prime example.

While ikigai is generally applied to finding purpose in your personal life, this Process Street post will look at how the same 4 concepts can be applied to your business as well:

• Ikigai for business: The need for meaning & purpose at work
• Ikigai business concept #1: How are you helping the world?
• Ikigai business concept #2: What lights your fire?
• Ikigai business concept #3: What are you good at?
• Ikigai business concept #4: How can you generate profit?
• Look inwards for your purpose – even in business

Make sure you’re sitting comfortably. Let’s begin.
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Kamelia Stone is Content Manager at Marketbusinessnews. She likes to travel, meditate, and draw inspiration from different sources, primarily from books.

Software Requirements Specifications (SRSs) document describes the various software features, capabilities, coding tests, and functions that are to be implemented in the product.

These parameters also include characteristics, design details, and implementation obstacles for the development team. The structure of SRS can be modified, depending on the project, and various features/functions can be added during the process.

SRS lies in the initial, bottom stage of the entire development process. The next stages include user requirements, which detail the needs of end-users, and describing beyond the goal of the final product (business requirements).

No matter how the SRS structure is shifted during the development process, functional (if/then, data handling, etc.) and non-functional (usability, scalability, etc.) requirements always take place.

This post for Process Street will discuss:

• Choosing a development model: Waterfall or Agile?
• Key attributes for composing a strong SRS
• Tools to simplify software requirements specification management
• A final word on the software development process

Now let’s get straight to business.
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Spreadsheets are so outdated. 

C’mon, spreadsheets are the same awkward, frustrating tool that never quite does what you need it to that I first learned to use way back.

You end up spending more time inputting formulas to make your data work than entering the data itself – and that’s presuming there isn’t a mistake in the formula that screws up your whole day.

Sure, spreadsheets are okay for some things, but can’t we do better by our information? Can’t we do better for ourselves? Don’t we deserve more efficiency, better automation, and time for that extra cup of coffee Monday morning? 

Of course we do. And that’s why Process Street created data sets. 

Who says we can’t have nice things?

Here’s what we’ve got:

• So data sets are fancy spreadsheets?
• Data sets: A knowledge base of possibilities
• Power tips from Process Street
• Work smarter, not harder

Every decision in an M&A is dependent on a number of variables. Making the right decision in the moment may not be the right decision down the road, but making no decision at all is worse.

The most impactful decision, though, is how the two companies will integrate (or not) once the deal closes. To some extent, this will be determined by your motivation for starting the M&A process to begin with. The similarities and differences between your business model and the business model of the company you’re acquiring will play a large role as well.

In this Process Street post, I’ll do a quick rundown of the two primary strategies, tuck-in and bolt-on, as well as everything you need to know in order to determine which is the strategy for your business.

• Round 1: Tuck-in vs. bolt-on: Debrief
• Round 2: Tuck-in vs. bolt-on: Pros
• Round 3: Tuck-in vs. bolt-on: Cons

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Value capture is, in essence, the end-all, be-all of a company’s life-cycle. Yes, you likely have other motivations for starting your company, but without capturing any value, your company will have a very short lifespan.

When it comes to acquisitions, if you don’t have a good strategy to drive value capture, you’re not only wasting your time, but hobbling your future potential in the process. If you look at some notable examples like Daimler Chrysler and Sprint/Nextel, it’s pretty clear that a bad deal will stick to you for a long time.

You might even end up as a cautionary tale for future M&A executives. No one wants that. Aspire to be the Apple of acquisitions. You can do that by focusing on four distinct levers that drive 80% of value capture.

Four things. They’re not even difficult things.

So in this Process Street post, I give you the rundown of the four levers you need to prioritize during your acquisition, and exactly why they make such an impact:

• Pursuing the ever-elusive value capture
• Lever #1: Utilize your functional teams early in the acquisition process
• Lever #2: Complete your commercial & operational due diligence before closing
• Lever #3: Assess the revenue & cost synergy potential of the deal
• Lever #4: Develop a realistic strategic operating model design

Let’s get to it!
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Human resource departments get a bad rap.

While those in leadership roles predominantly feel that HR has strategic value, a majority of on-the-ground employees feel much differently.

The question is: Why? What can you, as your company’s HR manager, do to correct this?

Here at Process Street, we know a thing or two about HR best practices – and have a wealth of pre-made templates to boot. There’s always room for improvement, though, so lately, we’ve been doing some deep dives into GitLab’s handbook (like my post on how GitLab totally rocks their marketing strategy).

GitLab is unique in a number of ways – most significantly, their willingness to share internal tactics. This post is going to look at five essential concepts every HR manager needs to keep in mind based on GitLab’s own tried and tested processes.

• Why should I care about GitLab?
• Why employees hate HR managers
• 5 human resources best practices for better management
• Successful HR management in the digital landscape

Ready to manage some humans?
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“Where there is judgment, there is noise – and more of it than you think.” – Kahneman, et al Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment

The city I live in is home to a very old, very beautiful, and very famous cathedral. It’s been a hotspot for tourists since the days of Chaucer (of course they weren’t called tourists then) and still plays an integral role in the community.

No matter where you are in the city, you can see that distinctive spire above everything. If you managed to get turned out (not as difficult as you might think with many small, medieval streets), that spire will lead you straight back to the center of town. It’s pervasive and omnipresent in such a way that – ultimately – leads to it being utterly ignored.

The main thing you need to know about this cathedral, though, is that it has bells. Loud bells, and many of them. And these bells toll. A lot. Like a lot. Not that briefly pleasant trill of bells you might get on the hour or quarter-hour, either. Some days, I’d swear the bells never stop ringing at all.

The thing is, much like the spire, I never paid much attention to the bells – until they stopped. For the year+ of varying levels of lockdown during the pandemic, the bells remained silent. Lockdown ended and things started reopening, including the cathedral and the cacophonic celebration of every pigeon coo by those accursed bells.

Yeah, it’s become a bit of a thing.

This, dear reader, is an example of noise – both literally and figuratively. The cathedral has always been there – unobtrusive, in the background, subtly influencing my actions and habits without any conscious awareness on my part. It shapes the way I move through the city, my awareness of time, my mood, my memories; but, before lockdown, if anyone asked me if it had any impact on my life, I probably would’ve shrugged and answered, “Not really.”

Noise is everywhere, and it affects every decision we make – especially because we aren’t even aware of it. We all know to check our biases when it comes to important decisions, but how often do you check your noise?

At Process Street, we take good decision hygiene very seriously, so this post will examine the idea of noise presented by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein in their book, Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, and use those ideas in our very own Noise Audit Workflow.

Feel free to skip ahead for the workflow, or stick with me as I discuss the theory of noise:

• What do we mean by “noise”?
• Noise in action: Be quiet! I’m trying to think.
• Reduce noise by focusing on the process
• Check your noise with the Process Street Noise Audit Workflow

Let’s make some noise!
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At Process Street, we’re proud to rock process management. So much so, we try to encourage a culture of continuous improvement across all of our internal teams & processes.

It’s even in our name. 

So how is it that our content team ended up using a process that was in pretty dire need of a redesign? 

And not just any process, mind you – the process of processes. The process we live and breathe by. The process that defines everything we do – including this very post. The one process to rule us all.

That’s right: Our blog production process was broken. 

We knew it, too. That was the worst part. The entire team was painfully aware of exactly how broken and inefficient the blog production process (BPP) had gotten. 

But you know how it is. Redesigning the blog production process became that thing that’s always on tomorrow’s to-do list.

By the time we finally found the capacity to tackle the process redesign project, there were more exceptions to the process than rules – which is not a good process management system at all. 

So the question became: How do we redesign a process that is constantly in use without breaking everything?

This is how we did it.

• Challenge: Our most essential process… broke
• Solution: Reengineer the process… But when?
• Results: A process that works; a team that’s productive
• Future: Continuous assessment & improvement

I have a brain goblin.

At least, that’s what I call it. Others might use neurodivergent, neurodiverse, neuroatypical – a lot of neuro-something, basically – or the more specific category they fall into (ADHD, autism, etc.). 

Everyone has their own relationship with language, though – personally, culturally, socially – and for me, “brain goblin” sums up my experience pretty well.

Around 20% of the world’s population is neurodiverse. A CDC estimate places about 5.5 million adults in the US. 

That’s the total population of LA and Dallas combined – and that’s just the number of adults.

“Neurodiverse” covers a lot of territory, but it’s safe to assume that – with 1 in 8 people considered to be neurodiverse – some of them are your employees, even if you aren’t aware of it. In fact, they may not even be aware of it: Less than 50% are aware they could be considered neurodiverse. 

The aim of this post is to give you some actionable steps you can take to improve neurodiversity inclusion in your organization. 

Come to think of it, a lot of your employees would probably appreciate them, not just the ones caring for brain goblins. 

• Neurodiversity 101: The very basic basics
• Accessibility challenges for neurodiverse employees
• The importance of words for neurodiversity inclusion
• Building an inclusive work environment
• Neurodiversity inclusion: Understanding thought processes
• Fixations & obsessions: Mastering flexibility
• Executive dysfunction in neurodiverse employees
• Neurodiversity inclusion & the human factor