I moved house not too long ago.

Now, I’ve always been a pretty terrible record keeper in my own life.

To remedy this I tried the hoarder technique. If I thought something was even remotely important, I’d throw it in a box file and vow to come back to it one day in the future.

It was only when I came to moving, and thought I’d try to Marie Kondo my crap away, that I dug out all my box files and the piles of messy paper inside them.

I’ll be really honest with you – it’s not an approach to records management that I would recommend.

Your business probably creates exponentially more records than I do, so you certainly can’t use an unthought-out approach to records management either.

That’s why we’ve decided to take some of the basics of records management, explain them, and give you a series of actionable ways to get started taking control over the lifecycles of records in your company.

In this Process Street article, we’ll be looking at:

• What is records management?
• Why is records management important?
• The 5 key steps to records management
• How to build a records management process

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Can you afford to lose $185 million?

That’s what Wells Fargo had to pay in fines after failing to apply a working risk management process.

Their lack of attention to the risk and pressure that they exposed their employees to led to sales practices that were bad enough to cause 5,300 employees to be fired and the penalty fines mentioned above.

Risk is inherent in everything we do – from conventional ideas of the risks in gambling to the chance of collisions while traveling. In business, risks can come from any direction and can severely impact your output.

Whether you wake up late and get less work done because of it or someone doesn’t get their work done on time and holds up the rest of the team, you need to be able to predict, prepare for, respond to, and monitor the things that can go wrong.

That’s why our post today will examine everything you need to know to build a risk management process to make your work watertight. We’ll even throw in a free, fully-built risk management process for you to use!

If you want to skip to a particular section then feel free to use the links below:

• Why you need a risk management process
• The risk management process
  • Set and align your objectives
  • Identify and document risks
  • Assess documented risks
  • Respond to risks
  • Monitor risks
• How to deploy a risk management process
• Your free risk management process template

Let’s get stuck in.

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Marie Kondo has managed the impossible. She’s rallied a large chunk of the population into getting excited about tidying up.

That’s right. Tidying up.

And there are clear benefits to decluttering – from being able to donate to thrift stores more to having improved mental health, to having better financial management and even boosted rates of productivity.

But how did Marie Kondo revolutionize the act of tidying?

With a simple process called the “KonMari Method”.

In this post, you’ll find out who Marie Kondo is, the science behind the lauded KonMari Method, why the method is beneficial for everybody, and you’ll even get your hands on a (free) KonMari Method checklist!

Read through the following sections to get the complete rundown on Marie Kondo:

• Who is Marie Kondo?
• What the KonMari Method is and how it helps with tidying
• Rules of the KonMari Method checklist
• Benefits of following the KonMari Method
• Use the KonMari checklist yourself to spark joy!

Now, let’s spark some joy.

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This is a guest post by Jessica Bruce. Jessica is a professional blogger, guest writer, Influencer & an eCommerce expert. She’s currently associated with ShopyGen as a content marketing strategist. She also reports on the latest happenings and trends associated with the eCommerce industry. Follow her on Twitter.

As soon as a new eCommerce website launches, there’s a race to get as many visitors as possible.

The race certainly isn’t easy, and what makes it harder are the additional hurdles that come up along the way. One of these hurdles, as you may or may not know, is the acquisition of conversions.

Conversion is the most crucial acquisition for any eCommerce business. An eCommerce business cannot survive with mere website traffic; it needs conversions to drive revenue.

“Trying to increase sales simply by driving more traffic to a website with a poor customer conversion rate is like trying to keep a leaky bucket full by adding more water instead of plugging the holes.” – Bryan Eisenberg, Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results

That’s why, in this post, we’ll be looking at what conversion and CRO (conversion rate optimization) are, how to calculate conversion rates, in addition to giving you a handful of free, useful CRO hacks that will boost your eCommerce sales.

What is conversion? And what is CRO?

Before digging deeper, let’s consider what conversion actually is first.

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Agile is a buzzword. These days, everyone is “doing agile”. Or so they say.

Despite over 90% of senior executives stating agile adoption as a top priority, less than 10% actually consider their firm to be performing with a high level of agility.

As much as people love to wear the badge of agile on their sleeve, there is a great deal of confusion swelling in the dark chasm between the aspiration of agile implementation and reality.

So what is agile?

It’s basically a philosophy of software development that prioritizes iterative development of working software and solutions through cross-collaboration and self-organizing teams.

It’s also an umbrella term for a bunch of development frameworks, but agile doesn’t simply mean kanban or scrum.

Some of the confusion arises when teams equate the agile approach to using an “Agile framework” (usually capitalized).

Frameworks like these are attractive because they’re sold as simplified solutions to difficult project and process management problems.

Sure, these frameworks can be an important part of an agile implementation, but they need more. They need a firm foundation to stand upon.

It’s not enough to simply go through the motions and expect an agile approach to “just work”, especially when transitioning from a more rigid and traditional framework like waterfall.

In order to drive agile success, teams need to adopt agile philosophy. They need to change the way they think about work ownership, management, and their relationship and duty to customers.

Without this vital force, frameworks like scrum and kanban fall flat.

In this article I’ll investigate what it is that separates true agile from the “fake” agile that is often the differentiator between success and failure of a development team. Here’s a quick overview:

• What is fake agile?
• Why fake agile is bad for your teams
• Fake agile vs true agile: How to spot the difference
• Misguided agile leadership
• Understanding true agile
• Questions to ask to help you spot a fake agile team
• The need for agile training
• Tools for agile teams

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It is becoming increasingly apparent that sustained corporate success lies in harmony with a healthy society and environment.

84% of business executives recognize the importance of adopting a sustainable business. Academics, such as the environmental economist Robert Mendelsohn, agree that sustainability is key:

“We can’t afford not to be sustainable.” – Robert Mendelsohn, Can we afford sustainability?

At Process Street we also recognize the increasing priority adopting a sustainable business model should have.

In this article, we explain what a sustainable business is, why it is important, how it can benefit your business in both the short and long term, and how you can implement sustainable actions into your business. At the end of the post, we provide you with templates that act as aids to make your common business processes more sustainable.

• What is a sustainable business?
• Why business sustainability is important: The three principles of sustainability
• A model of sustainability: Three-nested dependencies model
• Case studies for sustainable business
• The short term benefits of a sustainable business
• How you can be a sustainable business

Let’s get started.

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In this post, we’ll be looking at and learning about performance appraisal.

While we won’t be praising performances of global stars à la the judging panel of the Oscars or Golden Globes, we will be using performance appraisals to assess the conduct of the stars in your workplace.

After all, performance appraisals can be hugely beneficial.

For instance, 68% of employees who receive consistent, accurate feedback are more fulfilled in their jobs, in turn boosting employee engagement. Additionally, 92% of employees believe feedback – including negative feedback, if delivered appropriately – is effective for improving performance, resulting in increased employee output.

For performance appraisals to be successful, however, certain rules and procedures must be followed diligently.

Otherwise, the appraisal could backfire and have seriously detrimental results, including distrust and demoralization.

From a business perspective, this can be devastating.

So, to learn how to provide effective performance appraisals, read through the sections below:

• What is performance appraisal? And what are the objectives of performance appraisals?
• The different performance appraisal methods
• Why a performance appraisal needs to be done correctly
• Using Process Street’s performance review templates

Let’s begin.

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How do you know how much money your business might make?

How do you know how big your business could grow to in future?

How do you explain all that to someone else in a way which makes sense?

Well, a huge part of these kinds of calculations comes down to understanding your market.

Who might need this product? Who tends to buy this type of product? How many of them can you sell to?

There are lots of questions you might ask.

These questions, once you’ve dug deep enough into them, give you your TAM SAM SOM.

In this Process Street article we’re going to look at:

• What is TAM SAM SOM?
• How to calculate TAM SAM SOM
• How you can use Process Street to understand your business

Let’s get started!

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This is a guest post by David Miller, a technical writer & edu-tech enthusiast currently pursuing research in project management software. You can find him on Twitter, or writing for the ProProfs Project.

If I ask you to select a few colleagues in your company and take a survey of how well they understand their company’s culture, how do you think they’d score?

Not so sure?

Now, think about remote teams.

Teams you don’t even talk on a regular basis – how sure are you that they know your company’s values or culture?

Let’s take an example.

According to a PMI study, 83% of respondents spend at least an hour or two working remotely every day. Among which the percentage of remote employees stand at:

• 47% – Business Owners
• 47% – Managers
• 50% – Executives
• 36% – Team Members

Now, as you can see that most upper-management employees are usually working remotely with the company, and if they themselves don’t possess a firm grasp on company culture – how will they pass it on to their team members?

Usually, remote team members are simply assigned tasks with a due date and it is all professional.

But, what most companies don’t realize is that it is really crucial for everyone who is part of a company to understand their values and culture.

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In experiment after experiment, the real-world human decision-making process falls outside of rational economic theory. Indeed, many of the decisions we make are completely irrational.

Don’t take my word for it.

Dr. Dan Ariely‘s book Predictably Irrational explores our irrationality and motivations in great detail. If you don’t want to read the book then I highly recommend checking out his Ted Talk:

Simply put, our instinctive brain often seems to take control at the pivotal moment of choice. If you could understand why and how this happens, you can better predict your customers’ behavior and give them the value that they’re looking for.

This is where social cognition and behavioral psychology come into play. It’s an area that the marketing team here at Process Street is spending a great deal of time studying so that we can better serve our customer.

Social cognition is the study of how our minds interpret people and the world around us. This article will give you a primer into some of the core concepts and go over real-world examples to help solidify these principles.

You’ll learn how to have a better understanding of how people interpret your messages (marketing, personal, etc…) and be able to apply these concepts to all areas of your life. You’ll be able to communicate to your audience effectively and accurately.

“I am like a machine being driven to excessive rotations: the bearings are incandescing and, in a minute, melted metal will begin to drip and everything will turn to nothing. Quick: get cold water, logic. I am pouring it over myself by the bucketload but the logic sizzles on the hot bearings and dissipates elusive white steam into the air.” – Yevgeny Zamyatin

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