Mike Nemeroff is the co-founder and CEO of RushOrderTees. An entrepreneur from an early age, Mike and his siblings started a small screen printing business in their garage as teens and RushOrderTees was born. Under Mike’s leadership, the business has grown into the $75 million dollar ecommerce company that it is today with more than 225 employees.

Everyone wants to have a successful business, but getting there can be a challenge. Your team can make or break a project. For that reason, you need to surround yourself with individuals who can provide an added boost to your production levels.

Who should you choose for your team?

It takes all personality types to successfully manage a team and pull them towards your objectives. You need to find the right people who can work together and motivate others to meet your business needs.

The best types of team members give your business the right momentum and direction while providing open communication. Running a business can be difficult, but finding the most qualified people to fill those vital roles is even more complicated. You need to choose individuals who are willing to support, guide, and even challenge your ideas.

This Process Street post will walk through the four best personalities that can help run a successful organization:

• Workplace personality #1: The Leader
• Workplace personality #2: The Task Manager
• Workplace personality #3: The Abstract Thinker
• Workplace personality #4: The Champion

Let’s dive in!
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This is a guest post by Andriy Zapisotskyi. Andriy is a Growth Manager at Mailtrap. He has over 5 years of experience in the field of marketing & loves to network with new people.

Jeff Gardner (Director of Customer Support & Success at Intercom in the early days) on customer communications:

“It’s got to be easy. Don’t make customers jump through hoops to use your product.

It’s got to be effective. Know everything about your product, including its limitations.

It’s got to be authentic. Make sure everyone’s aligned on your fundamental cultural values.”

As a Customer Success Manager, you represent the customer’s interest and your goal is to help them get value from your product. In many ways, they are the link between the user and the company, and that link grows stronger the more acquainted with the product the customer becomes.

CSMs are kind of like a combination of product manager and technical support; one of their chief duties is leading the Customer Success team in handling all communication from the customer about the product, be it questions about service, onboarding, or resolving technical difficulties.

It goes without saying that communication is important. The tone, content, and delivery of any kind of messaging should be refined and optimized to deliver the best possible customer experience. You should consider how to tailor different messages for different purposes, mediums, and customer profiles. A one-size-fits-all approach is unlikely to get you very far, and a keen understanding of etiquette around customer success communications is essential.

This means the CSM needs to be able to take into account the nuances of written communication with individual customers and be able to adjust their approach to each specific situation.

In this Process Street post, I’ll detail the core principles vital for a CSM to lead their team to successful communications with all customers.

• CSM communications etiquette: Ground rules
• CSM communications etiquette: Provide a solution
• CSM communications etiquette: Closing a query

Let’s dive in!
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Does anyone have the number for Jeff Bezos?

He owes me over $10,000.

Thanks to his 1-Click checkout, I must’ve purchased at least $10,000 worth of stuff that I didn’t need or want. He’s made it way too easy to purchase from Amazon and it’s got to stop.

So, yeah if you have his number I will…Wait… What’s that?

Bezos didn’t come up with the 1-Click checkout idea? It wasn’t his idea to make it possible to buy a Tibetan Buddhist necklace worth $169,000 in one single click?

Well, if it wasn’t entrepreneurial Bezos, the innovator and founder of Amazon and the Blue Origin spaceship, then who on earth was it?

Regular Amazon employee, programmer, and intrapreneur: Peri Hartman.

Thanks to Peri’s pioneering checkout idea and Amazon’s unwavering belief in intrapreneurship (harnessing the power of innovation from within the workplace), the 1-Click checkout gave Amazon a huge competitive advantage, re-wrote the entire book on eCommerce, and ruined my life. They also made a cool $177bn by slapping a patent on it and licensing the idea out to others.

But despite this example, many companies fail to harness the power of their existing internal innovators. Preferring instead to hire external resources to execute ground-breaking ideas, boost competitor advantage, and improve ways of working.

So, taking more intrapreneurial examples from the likes of Apple, Facebook, and Google, this Process Street post will help you understand the importance of intrapreneurship and shine a light on the hidden entrepreneurial resources that lie within your company:

• Are intrapreneurs just shy entrepreneurs waiting for their big break?
• Proof that encouraging intrapreneurship is good for business
• How to recognize intrapreneurs and nurture intrapreneurship within your organization

Ready to see what’s right in front of your nose?

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90% of customers feel that the companies they buy from could do better when it comes to how they experience onboarding.

Customer success is about helping your customers understand and leverage the value of your product; you’re basically helping them achieve their goals. In a sense it’s one step beyond traditional customer support, taking a proactive approach to understanding and addressing customer needs.

A key component of customer success is making sure your customers are effectively onboarded.

Onboarding provides a unique opportunity for the CS team to nurture and address the key needs of a new customer, and an effective onboarding program can mean the difference between a long-term customer and a rapid churn.

For customer success teams to succeed with onboarding, CS managers should drive clear best practices and use well-structured processes to make onboarding as effortless as possible for everyone involved.

In this Process Street article, we’ll dive into:

• Customer success onboarding best practices
• Designing your customer success onboarding framework
• The customer onboarding process
• Measuring success with key customer success onboarding metrics

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There are plenty of great quotes from inspirational leaders that perfectly sum up the importance of workforce planning, but in my mind, none of them quite capture it like this one:

“Making a plan without the right tools is like making spaghetti without a pot.” – Kris Hughes, Content Strategy Consultant

You are absolutely not going to be making any spaghetti without a pot, or at least a pot-like vessel that will hold boiling water in a way so as not to burn the crap out of your hands in the process. When it comes to workforce planning, the spaghetti is your business and the pot…

Okay. I took the simile too far. You get the picture: if your business doesn’t have the right people in the right place, you got nothing.

Think beyond that: if the right people don’t stay or aren’t being utilized properly, you still don’t have a pot to… make spaghetti in.

There is a lot out there about workforce planning, and by a lot I mean, a frickin lot. It’s my job to do research and even I got a little dizzy trying to sort through all the different takes on what is or isn’t or could be/might be the best way to manage your workforce.

This post aims to simplify all that. I’ll cover the foundations of workforce planning, specific considerations for remote work, and examine some common methods for finding the right approach for your organization.

This Process Street post is designed so you can jump straight to the info you need to know, so feel free to skip ahead.

• Workforce planning foundations
• Challenges for remote workforce planning
• Future-back planning process
• Recruit, retain, reinforce
• Workforce management tools

Let’s get planning!
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We’ve never met, but I know who you are.

You spend 90% of your day either in meetings or answering emails, so you’re incredibly short on time.

You’re a big believer in “moving fast and breaking things” but over-regulation, cyber threats, obsoletion, and the availability of key skills keeps you awake at night.

You check in with Twitter and Reddit daily to stay in-the-loop, and you’re a keen consumer of content that’s quick and easy to digest, from reputable sources, and provides clear answers to your questions. You hate waffle!

Am I close?!

Whether I’m right or wrong (and before this gets any creepier), I know all this because I’ve created your customer profile, or buyer persona if you prefer.

Organizations that use customer profiles to create and deliver content enjoy 73% higher conversions than those that don’t. So, I used market research and data to build up a semi-fictional representation of you.

I identified your common behavior patterns, discovered what your key motivations were, and established your biggest pain points so I could write a tailored post that clearly answers your questions, provides value, and delivers useful insights.

I won’t lie; this took a lot of time!

But was it worth it?

Take 10 minutes to read this Process Street post and get insights from the likes of Hiten Shah, Lincoln Murphy, and Tomasz Tunguz, learn how to create a customer profile in five simple steps, and find out:

• Can a customer profile really leverage growth?
• What’s the one thing you must do before you create a customer profile?
• What’s the quickest way to create a customer profile that helps you scale?

Let’s “cut fast, cut deep”, and cut the crap.
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According to a report given by Queens University, 75% of employers rate teamwork and collaboration to be very important.

Despite this, reports by Globe and Mail and the Harvard Business Review indicate that 20-44% of employees experience workplace communication and collaboration challenges. And if you’re operating remotely, well, these challenges just became harder to overcome. There is a gap between want and reality.

In this Process Street article, we consider how using office hours can close this gap by supporting the effective implementation of an open door policy for your remote team.

Office hours are times in the week managers set aside to answer questions, address issues, and discuss topics with employees. This effectively implements an open door policy, to establish aspirational communication and collaboration goals. An open door policy is a culture that supports complete workplace transparency, communication, and productivity by establishing strong communication channels between employees and their managers.

Today you’ll find out exactly how office hours and an open door policy complement each other – plus top tips on managing your remote open door policy.

Click on the relevant subheader below, or scroll down to find out all.

• What do we mean by office hours?
• The top challenges with a remote open door policy
• Remote open door policy challenges (and how to solve them)
• The benefits of office hours and supporting an open door policy

Let’s get straight to it!
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I love winning.

It doesn’t matter what’s involved or what the prize is, I’ll do what I can to achieve my goal of clinching that ‘winner’ title.

When I was 6, my primary school held an egg and spoon race as part of its sports day activities. The prize was a yardstick of chocolate. Let’s just say that, by lunchtime, there were tears and tantrums elsewhere while my face was smeared with chocolate.

To this day, I’m still (perhaps unhealthily) incentivized by goals. Particularly in the workplace. I’m not alone in this though, as numerous studies show that goal-setting improves employee performance and engagement.

Do you relish winning, too?

And do you want the next quarter to be your team’s best quarter ever?

Then you need to know about OKRs (objectives and key results). It’s basically an adult version of the egg and spoon race.

That’s why, in this short, informative Process Street post, I’ll define OKRs, describe their business benefits, give advice on how to write solid OKRs, and also provide OKR examples from the likes of Google.

Just make your way through the following sections to learn all about OKRs:

• What is an OKR?
• The business benefits of the OKR methodology
• How to write inspiring, useful OKRs
• 3 OKR examples — including ones Google use
• Moving forward as an OKR-aligned team

Now, let’s make this quarter more than OK.

Let’s make it internally record-breaking, thanks to OKRs!

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Dave Nevogt is the CEO and co-founder of Hubstaff Have you ever been enjoying a productive streak when — out of nowhere — a meeting invite interrupts your day? He leads a 100% remote team that builds time tracking and productivity tools, including the Agile project management software, Hubstaff Tasks.

Have you ever been enjoying a productive streak when — out of nowhere — a meeting invite interrupts your day?

Or, has someone ever requested a meeting with you, and after some investigation, you realize that this could have been answered in an email?

Let’s face it, meetings are often met with disdain, and for good reason: many are unnecessary.

You can tell by how often meetings are studied, and how much time goes into rethinking them. It turns out that:

• 73% of people multitask while in meetings. Clearly, most meetings are not worth our full attention.
• Detailed agendas can decrease the amount of meeting time up to 80%. Yet only 37% percent of companies use them.

It’s time to make a change. And that change is to clear your schedule as much as possible. Fortunately, this Process Street blog post is here to guide you in making these changes.

• The benefits of holding productive meetings
• The 7 secrets to productive meetings
• Avoid overload and focus solely on productive meetings
• How can Process Street help you run productive meetings

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I’d say we’ve all heard of the metaphor of the “glass ceiling”, right?

Here is a definition for those who need some clarification:

U.S. Department of Labor

The term became popularized in the 80s/90s where it was commonly used to describe the professional challenges women faced during that period.

Despite the advancements made in women’s rights since the 1980s, the metaphor of the glass ceiling is still very much valid today. Not just for women, but for minority groups and individuals as well.

Fortunately, we appear to be moving in the right direction when it comes to inclusivity in the workplace. 80% of employees consider inclusion to be an essential factor in choosing an employer and 69% of executives rate diversity and inclusion as an important issue.

But, what does it take to create a sense of inclusivity in the workplace?

In fact, what does inclusivity actually mean? And, how does it differentiate itself from diversity?

This Process Street blog post hopes to answer these questions (and more). Keep scrolling for an introduction on workplace inclusion and ten actionable strategies and metrics that’ll help to increase inclusivity within your organization or line of work.

Or alternatively, to jump to a specific section by clicking the links below:

• Understanding inclusivity and diversity
• 10 strategies to create an atmosphere of inclusivity in the workplace & their metrics
• Inclusivity in the workplace: Useful tools
• Inclusivity in the workplace: Further resources

Let’s get started!
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