This is a guest post written by Andre Pinantoan who is currently the Head of Growth at AI coaching startup, Fingerprint for Success. He was previously Head of Growth at multiple high growth companies such as Canva.

The COVID-19 pandemic has plunged a lot of us into the deep end, and many people have had to adapt to new ways of working. This includes how to effectively run remote meetings on a regular basis that actually have some productive value.

It’s one thing to hold a virtual conference once in a while. But when it’s one of your primary tools for communicating, coordinating, and just generally getting your team on the same page, it can either be the best thing for efficiency or a complete failure.

Truth be told, research shows that meetings already had a bad reputation pre-COVID. A survey conducted in 2018 with more than a thousand workers in the US showed that one in four people felt meetings are a waste of time. Add to that the “online” factor, and conducting useful meetings starts to get way harder for a lot of people.

I personally felt the steep learning curve during the initial months of adapting to our new way of working. As a team leader, I’ve always felt that being physically present and giving my time to members has been a key way of supporting them. So I had to find a way to channel my presence digitally.

Through these challenges, we’ve learned and adapted. As always, it’s crucial to understand what’s not working and try to make things better. Along the way, we even found some surprising benefits of conducting meetings virtually.

In this Process Street article, I will share the difficulties we faced when transitioning to full-time remote communication and how my team managed to overcome them.

• Problem 1: Too many unnecessary meetings
• Problem 2: Non-verbal cues are harder to express, read, and, utilize
• Problem 3: Introverts get lost in the conversation more easily, and extroverts dominate
• Problem 4: Action points get forgotten post-meeting
• Problem 5: Technological and “ways of doing things” problems
• Problem 6: People get tired and lose concentration faster”
• Collaborate, but don’t forget to connect
• Using Process Street to run remote meetings (that don’t suck)

Let’s get started!
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“Airtable vs Trello. Which is better?“

Our team (and customers) used Trello for years before transitioning to Airtable several years ago. We were having a tough time adjusting (old habits die hard), and my Process Street colleague Ben Brandall was trying to get to the bottom of why.

We love improving our productivity using everything from business process automation to focus music, and this case was no different.

Trello is a powerhouse of task management but Airtable is a masterful mix of database, spreadsheet, task and project management app. How are you supposed to choose?

That’s why I’m writing this post. After having used both apps personally and professionally for more than three years, I’ve been able to get to grips with who these apps are designed for and what makes them useful.

Most of all, you can learn from this to see which app would suit you instead of spending years testing them out yourself.

Let’s get started.

Once upon a time, the island nation of Sri Lanka was called “Serendip,” a word derived from Sanskrit which means Dwelling-Place-of-Lions. (Lovely, right?).

Serendip provides the setting for the Persian fairy tale “The Three Princes of Serendip”, who throughout their travels, stumbled upon an uncanny amount of luck.

The story of the princes and their relationship with luck is where the wonderful word Serendipity comes from. Serendipity, meaning accidental, unexpected, random, wonderful, happy, luck.

It is luck, or rather, how to make your own luck, that is the focus of this Process Street blog.

This post embraces and explains tech entrepreneur Jason Robert’s concept of “Luck Surface Area”, in the hope of helping you, the reader, increase your luck both in life and in business.

To jump to a specific section of the post click the appropriate link below. Alternatively, just keep scrolling to learn about the three lucky princes, Luck Surface Area, and how you can make your own luck.

• Serendipity and making your own luck
• How to make your own luck
• Make your own luck: The Luck Surface Area equation
• 5 actionable ways you can increase your luck surface area and make your own luck

Feelin’ lucky? ✨

Let’s get started.

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When it comes to managing what work gets done, we’re often faced with a choice: is this a project, a process, …or both? Project vs process, the age-old debate.

Different tasks need different approaches.

You need multiple techniques in your skillset and understanding the difference between projects and processes, and how this impacts on work, makes for a very useful tool.

In this Process Street article, we’ll look at:

• Project vs Process: What’s the difference?
• What is a process?
• What is a project?
• The principles of process management
• How projects can become processes
• Get started with process management today

Processes are a lot more interesting than you’d first think. That isn’t some kind of joke — they’re interesting, I swear. But what is a process?

Although they’re defined as “a collection of interrelated work tasks initiated in response to an event that achieves a specific result”, there’s a bit of a backstory that helps us cut through the corporate tranquilizers and understand what a process is, and why processes matter.

First, a few examples of processes:

• Cleaning the store
• Finding an email address
• Deploying software
• Customer profiling
• Onboarding a new employee
• Planning a wedding

But why are those processes? Why aren’t they just jobs to be done? The point is that when you formalize a process, you think about the workflow with productivity in mind and it makes it easier to execute and optimize.

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“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest” – Benjamin Franklin

According to the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), companies with better training investments enjoy a 24% higher profit margin.

Keep this statistic at the forefront and consider the benefits you will obtain if employee development didn’t stop once the training period was over.

Employee development, implemented via an employee development plan, gives an organization the means to continually invest in their employees so they bloom in their role.

Employee development looks to improve employee skills, knowledge, and experience to meet their professional and personal goals. An employee development plan is the set of actions guiding the employee to meet these goals, with back-and-forth collaboration between the employee and the manager.

The research division of Miller Helman Group found that investing as little as $500 in employee development yielded a 46.1% employee performance increase. It is reasons like this that we at Process Street take employee development seriously.

In this article, you will learn what an employee development plan is and how top CEOs use employee development to succeed in their role. On that note, we will also provide you with our free Employee Development Plan Template to help you get started.

Sound good?

Click on the relevant subheader below to jump to your section of choice. Alternatively, scroll and learn all we have to say in terms of employee development.

• Employee Development Plan Template
• What is an employee development plan? Professional vs employee development
• Employee development in action: Rose Marcario, CEO of Patagonia
• Employee development plan benefits
• What should an employee development plan include?

Ready to nurture your best team? Let’s get started!

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You need to invest in lean tools.

Why?

Studies show that moving towards a leaner business model can improve productivity by up to 25%, increase stock turnover by 33%, and increase on-time delivery by 26%.

The recognized benefits of being lean are only accumulating, with more and more studies advocating lean approaches in business for both economical and sustainable success.

However, some companies choose not to embrace lean philosophy through fear that the costs related outweigh the benefits gained. With this, we at Process Street have come to help.

You see, this fear has oozed from imperfect implementation and a misunderstanding. With the right lean tools and techniques, lean thinking can easily and successfully be applied.

In this article, we present you with our top 8 lean tools to assist you in implementing lean philosophy for your business or line of work. By using these tools, you will see a transformation, with maximal value and minimal waste.

Along with these tools, we grant you access to our template resources, which you can hop in and use right away for free.

Click on the relevant subheaders below to read the section of choice, alternatively scroll down for all I have to say.

• What is lean?
• The 5 lean principles
• Lean tools: Our top 8 lean tools to assist lean principle application
• Lean tools and the benefits they give
• Lean software tools you should use today

Keen to become lean? Let’s jump in!

Hard work doesn’t always guarantee success.

With that bombshell, you may be wondering “If hard work isn’t enough, what should I do to help my business succeed?!”

The answer’s simple: VRIO.

VRIO isn’t the latest must-have app or some new fad – it’s an incredibly useful business framework and analysis tool for understanding whether your business has the capabilities and resources to thrive in the long-term.

Considering that following a VRIO framework could bolster your growth, increase revenue, ensure you’re always one-step-ahead of the competition, and keep your business better organized, VRIO isn’t a process to be dismissed.

But if it’s the first time hearing about VRIO, have no fear.

I’ve got you covered.

In this post, I’ll go into the definition of VRIO, tell you how it was conceived, explain the four dimensions that make up the VRIO framework, and tell you the best times to undergo VRIO so your business can reap its rewards. Simply read the following sections to get to grips with it:

• What is VRIO?
• Where did the VRIO framework come from?
• When’s the best time to undergo VRIO analysis?
• The VRIO framework: Value, rarity, imitability, and organization
• Use Process Street for continuous business success!

Let’s get started, shall we?

Why do you need a MEDDIC process in place?

From sales prospecting to cold calling and emailing, and qualifying leads to closing the sale, it’s a well-known fact that sales reps have their work cut out.

But did you know that, according to research by The Bridge Group, 1/3rd of salespeople fail to meet their sales quotas? Not just from time-to-time either, but on a permanent basis.

As somebody who’s at the helm of your sales team, it’s your duty to supply your colleagues with the right systems, processes, and tools. You must make sure your team succeeds.

For sales success – specifically, qualifying leads for the sales pipeline properly, getting higher close rates, meeting quotas, and dramatically boosting your bottom-line – use the MEDDIC methodology and process.

Never heard of MEDDIC before?

No sweat.

Read through the following sections in this Process Street post to get clued up:

• What is MEDDIC?
• Why is the MEDDIC sales methodology so useful?
• How to do the MEDDIC sales process properly
• Bolster your sales team’s efforts with Process Street!

Or, if you wanted to make use of our MEDDIC Sales Process Template straight away, grab it here:

Click here to get the MEDDIC Sales Process Checklist Template!

Let’s dive on in.

This is a guest post from Olivia Harp, whose easy-reading, approachable pieces help bring important business and negotiation skill-building content to new audiences in an accessible way. With a degree in linguistics, Olivia excels in creating her own engaging content.

Sustaining customer satisfaction can be challenging in business. However, there are several ways to improve your sales and customer satisfaction at the same time. Improving your sales negotiation skills is an overlooked low-hanging fruit route to making a positive impact on your customer relations.

Through sales negotiation training, you can learn how to identify your customer needs better. Understanding your customers puts you in a position to offer better services. By improving your customer relations, you may be able to attract and retain more customers.

This article outlines practical negotiation tips to increase your customers’ satisfaction.

In this Process Street article, we’ll cover:

• Redefine your business strategy
• Analyze your sales negotiation tactics
• Review your negotiation style
• Additional negotiation skills for customer satisfaction
• Get it right every time with Process Street