This is a guest post by Rodney Laws. Rodney is an ecommerce expert with over a decade of experience in building online businesses. He’s worked with the biggest platforms in the world, making him the perfect person to offer advice on which platforms to build your website with. Check out his reviews on EcommercePlatforms.io and you’ll find practical tips that you can use to build the best online store for your business.

Even after full-time remote work became a viable option, most businesses were strongly wedded to the classic 9-to-5 office setup.

Many thought it would tank productivity, impede communication, and damage how their business was perceived, despite the 30% of people working remotely full-time proving that remote work, well, works.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced businesses to try alternative measures. Those reliant upon footfall either pivoted drastically or shut down entirely, and all other companies faced the same, urgent question: Can we transition to being 100% remote?

Remote teams who were once dubious about remote work are now enjoying the benefits of increased flexibility, enhanced productivity, and saving money while working from the comfort of their own home. In fact, 74% of CFOs will move at least 5% of their onsite workforce to work permanently offsite.

However, there can also be disadvantages to remote work if they’re not nipped in the bud, such as burnout.

That’s why, in this guest post for Process Street, I’ll tell you how to avoid burnout as a remote team. I’ll cover what burnout is, why it’s so destructive, and provide you with tips and templates for making sure your remote team doesn’t suffer down the line.

Read through the following sections to get up to speed:

• What is burnout, exactly?
• How to avoid burnout: 5 tips to stop remote employee burnout
• Use Process Street to lead remote teams to success!

Or, if you wanted to dive into a template that helps team members to appropriately manage their days without overworking, there’s the Remote Daily Work Schedule Template below.

Click here to get the Remote Daily Work Schedule Template!

It’s time to get started with the rest of the post. ⌚️

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I have a question for you.

What does a Formula 1 racing team, like Ferrari, have in common with a high-flying company, like Apple?

They’re both in highly competitive industries? They’re both focused on improving their performance? They’re both incredibly driven to succeed? They’re both intent on being the best in the world?

Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

In other words, they both strive, in everything they do, to achieve Operational Excellence (Op Ex). However, achieving Operational Excellence is far from easy, and (fortunately for Apple and Ferrari) only 36% of companies manage it.

So, buckle up and join this Process Street post, as we race through the following topics and learn, from the likes of Ferrari, Apple, Disney, and Google, how to become operationally excellent:

• What Operational Excellence is (& what it isn’t)
• The four key creators of Operational Excellence
• 10 ways to achieve Operational Excellence
• The real reasons organizations fail to achieve Operational Excellence
• How to overcome Operational Excellence challenges

Ready to zoom into pole position? ️

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What do professional skydivers and successful project managers have in common?

They both identify, assess, and plan for risks.

Skydivers look at the conditions, equipment, and capabilities before, during, and after they jump out of planes. Project managers look at the conditions, equipment, and capabilities before, during, and after projects.

Why do they do that?

“To stay on top of potential issues that could derail intended outcomes” – Project Manager, Guide to Using a Risk Register

How do they do that?

Well, I don’t know how skydivers do it, but to identify, assess, and plan for risks, a good project manager is never far away from a risk register.

But, when I discovered that 81% of organizations feel their risk registers are ineffective at identifying and planning for potential risks, and 30% of projects fail as a direct result, I felt the need to write this Process Street post about how to create one.

So, listen up as we go through the following:

• What is a risk register & what does one contain?
• Why projects won’t survive without a risk register
• The 3 biggest mistakes to avoid when creating a risk register
• How to use Process Street to create a risk register

If you’re in a hurry, grab this free Risk Register Process Checklist now, and catch up with the what, why, and how later.

Got your parachute? Ready, set… Geeeeronimoooooo…

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This is a guest post by Jory MacKay. MacKay is a productivity obsessed writer and editor of the RescueTime blog. He loves to use data and storytelling to help people take back control of their time.

A recent survey of 850+ knowledge workers from around the world found that 92% of people regularly work on evenings and weekends. That’s a terrifying statistic. And while it’s easy to lay the blame on ballooning priorities and overwhelmed teammates, those are only a small part of a bigger problem.

Poor time management strategies seem to be the underlying issue, and in this Process Street article, we will explain how you can remedy this.

Our days have become cluttered with busywork, non-stop communication, and unclear priorities. We rarely have more than half an hour to focus on any one task at a time and so we end up taking our most important work home with us to make progress.

But as study after study has shown, we need to be able to disconnect from the workday to stay happy, healthy, and productive.

So how can you help your team take back control of their time, make meaningful progress on important work, and still punch out at the end of the day? It comes down to a combination of using the right data and adopting effective time management strategies.

In this article, we will cover:

• Time management strategies and how to prioritize your time with Process Street
• Team time management: The perfect storm of busy work and bias that eats up your team’s time
• How to improve personal productivity and track where your time goes
• 5 time management techniques: Ways to give your team more time each day

Let’s jump straight to it!
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After the Second World War, Japan was faced with tremendous infrastructural damage and needed to begin the long, difficult process of repairing pretty much everything. During this time, Allied forces occupied Japan and oversaw the process of reparation – many American experts were enlisted to aid in the efforts to rebuild Japan’s economy and infrastructure, while at the same time ensuring no military force was re-established.

Among those enlisted was W. Edwards Deming (of the Deming Cycle and PDCA fame). One of the early goals was to begin production of new radios; the problem was, new management was unskilled, production facilities and raw materials were in short supply, and quality management was a big issue.

Long story short, Deming helped to spearhead the establishment of quality control initiatives focusing on top-level management taking responsibility for clearly defining quality policy and procedures. This kind of quality control framework came to be known as Hoshin Kanri, and it eventually proliferated beyond Japan and over to America and the rest of the globe.

A 2020 report by the IPMA Organisational Competence Baseline (IPMA OCB) explained that to execute business vision, mission, and strategy, implementation of the Hoshin Kanri approach – also referred to as Hoshin planning – is vital for lean and strategic management, and for future-proofing a business.

In this Process Street article, you will learn: What Hoshin Kanri is and its history, why you need to implement Hoshin Kanri in your business or line of work, and how you can do this using our free Hoshin Planning: Hoshin Kanri Policy Deployment Process Checklist.

You can navigate to the most relevant section for you using our quick links below. Alternatively, read on for a gentle introduction to the fundamentals of Hoshin Kanri.

• What is Hoshin Kanri and where did it come from?
• Hoshin planning and key concepts
• Main benefits of Hoshin Kanri planning
• Hoshin planning: Using Process Street to implement the Hoshin Kanri process

Let’s go explore the concept of Hoshin Kanri!
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I have a proposal for you.

I can build you a house, complete with walls, windows, doors, and a roof for $350,000.

Do we have a deal?

No. I didn’t think so!

To make a decision like this, you need cold hard facts. You need details, clarity, and proof! You need budgets, breakdowns, and solid guarantees.

That’s exactly how a project stakeholder feels when they receive your project proposal, and to further complicate things, calculating an average proposal win rate is next to impossible.

Project stakeholders will, on average, receive around 50 proposals a week. To choose you out of this huge pile, they need clarity, details, specifics, lateral thinking, and a whole heap of persuasion.

You need to learn the art of how to write a project proposal, to stand any chance of winning their investment, and increasing your proposal success rate.

So, join me in this Process Street post where we will take the following lessons in how to write a project proposal:

• Lesson #1: What a project proposal is
• Lesson #2: What a project proposal reviewer is really looking for
• Lesson #3: The surefire way to succeed with your project proposal
• Lesson #4: The 4 types of project proposal & how to create them (with tips & templates)
• Lesson #5: A little more about Process Street and how it can help your project proposals

If you’re in a hurry, grab this Project Proposal Template Checklist, and catch up with the class later:

Click here to access the Project Proposal Template Checklist!

Now, butts on seats, no talking, and let the class begin!
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The excitement around a new project is intoxicating.

After all, it’s an opportunity for your team to collaborate and put their well-honed skills to use.

But with important projects, excitement can easily turn into dread. Especially considering that 70% of organizations have failed one or more of their projects in the last 12 months, with a lack of clear goals being the main issue.

So how can everyone involved know what’s expected of them? What deliverables they must bring to the table? How their actions figure into the bigger picture? And how can you, the project manager, break the project down into manageable segments?

While The Beatles professed that “love is all you need”, what’s going to be more useful in this scenario is a work breakdown structure.

That’s why, in this Process Street post, you’ll learn what the work breakdown structure is, why it’s so useful, different examples of it, and tips on how to create a work breakdown structure yourself. To boot, you’ll even get your hands on our easy-to-use Work Breakdown Structure Template!

Read through the following sections to get clued-up:

• What is a work breakdown structure (WBS)?
• Work breakdown structure examples
• Why a work breakdown structure is useful
• How to create a work breakdown structure
• Use Process Street for completing projects and processes alike!

Or, if you’re eager to get the template already, here it is:

Click here to get the Work Breakdown Structure Template!

Let’s break it down.

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Product roadmaps are an essential part of understanding how to align your product to a long-term vision for product-market fit. They are also one of the key deliverables for product managers and are useful to almost all teams and stakeholders.

What the product roadmap should provide:

• Clear overview of key launch dates and milestones
• Clearly communicate which teams are responsible for what
• Clearly communicate important deadlines and time allocation
• A beacon to align different teams to core company goals and objectives

What the roadmap shouldn’t include:

• Goals and objectives unrelated to the product
• Overload of information about specific product features and specifications for development
• Big Surprises
• Too much data without clear association with company goals or objectives

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

• What is a product roadmap?
• Planning the product roadmap
• Key elements of a product roadmap
• How to build a product roadmap
• Free product roadmap template
• Best practices for creating a product roadmap template
• Mistakes to avoid when building your roadmap
• More tools for product success

First off, here’s a template you can use to get started building your own product roadmap.

Product roadmap process

For those of you who came just for the template, here it is:

If you’re interested in the why behind this template design, and more insight into an effective product roadmap approach, read on!

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I’ve got bad news.

Statistics show that no matter how hard you try, your project is probably going to fail.

To be a little more specific, only 2.5% of companies complete their projects 100% successfully.

“Failure is an unavoidable part of any project process” – ProjectManager, 5 Notorious Failed Projects & What We Can Learn from Them

Yet the cost of project failures is staggering. Failed IT projects alone cost the United States around $150 billion in lost revenue and productivity. And it’s frightening! Failure scares us all.

But, the good news is, failure, and how it affects you and your project’s overall success and profitability is controllable. If you can catch, or even predict, failures early enough, you can execute damage control measures and prevent them from completely derailing your project and its profitability. You can even use them to improve your project.

How can you catch or predict failures early?

By using a project tracker.

A project tracker is a snapshot of your entire project. It gives you and the project team a clear picture of how the project is performing, where the weak spots are, and which areas need the most attention.

Let me explain this concept further by taking you through the following topics in this Process Street article:

• What is a project tracker and what does it do?
• Are project trackers really necessary?
• What happens if you don’t track projects properly (with a real-life example)
• The most effective way to track projects

Let’s get going!
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Click here to visually map and improve your business processes now!

Did you know that visual information is processed 60,000 x faster than text?

This explains why the average person remembers only 20% of what they read but 40% of what they see. This also explains why most companies use a form of visual management to communicate with their employees.

Let’s do a little test to see if people, in general, respond better to visual cues than text.

Look at these two depictions of a traffic light below.

One is a sentence describing a traffic light, and one is an image of a traffic light. Both traffic lights are on different colors:

1. The traffic light is on red.

2.

At the end of this Process Street post, we’ll see which color traffic light you remember! No cheating mind!

In the meantime, I’ll take you through the following topics to explain what visual management is and how you can use it to effectively communicate with your employees:

• What is visual management?
• Why use visual management?
• The 3 golden rules of visual management
• Implementing visual management with Process Street

Ready?
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