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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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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I’ve just finished watching this Netflix docuseries and I can’t stop thinking about it.

The Last Dance.

It’s ten juicy episodes, full of massive egos, incredible basketball, and a banging 90’s hip-hop soundtrack. It’s a fantastically brutal account of how the Chicago Bulls came to dominate the basketball scene throughout the 1990s.

The team was led to countless victories by three key players: Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman.

This, coincidentally, demonstrates the concept behind the Pareto chart, and this Process Street post perfectly.

I’ll explain what I mean by this later. First, let me go through what we’ll cover in this post:

• What is a Pareto chart?
• Where did the Pareto chart come from?
• How to read a Pareto chart
• When to use a Pareto chart
• How to create a Pareto chart with Process Street

I’m excited to get started. So, my cagers, let’s take it to the hole!

I admit. I may have googled “basketball terms” for that sentence… what I’m basically saying is; C’mon you lot! Let’s go!

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This is a guest post by Sharon Koifman, an expert in remote work with nearly two decades of experience running three companies 100% from his computer. Sharon has studied and researched not only how to operate remote businesses but how to create an amazing work culture where people love to come to work. These days Sharon runs DistantJob, a very unique recruitment agency geared specifically for finding remote developers who work from all over the world.

As the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) started spreading, many companies began advising their staff to work from home. With the virus now pandemic and many countries under some form of lockdown, there’s a large swathe of people who are working from home that have never done so before.

Are you one of those people?

If so, you may be wondering how you’re going to stay productive while working from home – especially if you have young children at home and are having to balance their care and education at the same time.

The good news is that it is doable. In fact, full-time remote workers have been doing this for years! You can learn from their wisdom (and mistakes) which I’ll share, so you can be as productive as possible.

Just make your way through the following sections in this guest post for Process Street:

• Common WFH struggles
• Working from home tips for staying productive
• Work from home like a pro with Process Street!

Let’s get started!

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This is a guest post by Derek Jones from Deputy, a global workforce management platform for employee scheduling, timesheets, and communication. With a focus on Emerging Retail, Derek helps business owners and workforce leaders simplify employment law compliance, keep labor costs in line, and build award-winning workplaces. Derek has over 16 years’ experience in delivering data-driven sales and marketing strategies to SaaS companies like MarketSource and Griswold Home Care.

One of the many factors that can help guarantee the success and growth of a business today is employee performance.

Most organizations know this. Therefore, they want employees that are as efficient as possible. However, that is easier said than done, especially in industries where activities often run at odd hours or even 24/7.

For such industries (like healthcare, hospitality, and retail in particular), one of the most important things they’ll need to manage is shift work scheduling.

Through optimization, the task of scheduling shift work will have a structure to minimizes employee burnout and improve overall performance.

Employees that work in an enabling environment have a higher chance to properly complete all important tasks – on schedule.

In view of that, in this Process Street article, we will:

• Discuss some of the issues and challenges that surround shift work.
• Take a look at up-to-date research regarding employee performance.
• Summarize 3 shift-work goals you can incorporate to optimize your shift work schedule.
• Give top tips on shift work scheduling to maximize employee productivity and retention.

Click on the relevant subheaders below to jump to that section, alternatively scroll down to read all, and find out how you can optimize your shift work schedules today!

• Schedule optimization: Using BPM in shift work
• Shift work scheduling: The top 3 shift work issues
• How do common shift work issues impact employee performance?
• Schedule optimization: 3 goals to optimize your shift schedule
• Shift work scheduling: Scheduling tips and tricks for shift work

Let’s jump right to it!
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This is a guest post written by Jeff Oxford. Jeff is a tech enthusiast who follows new trends in technology and digital marketing. He had been a speaker at the 2013, 2017, and 2018 IRCE and has written contributions to Forbes.com, InternetRetailer.com, and Infusionsoft.

Staying on top of tasks amid distractions is not a problem exclusive to the 21st century, although today’s folks have to deal with social media. It is the rabbit hole where anyone can willingly spend at least 144 minutes every day.

You can expect this statistic to rise when the expected three billion people, or 40 percent of the world’s population in 2021, will join the social networking sites.

With that and other things in mind, it’s no wonder that productivity and efficiency are the main targets of a tireless quest to achieve a productive work life.

According to Google Trends, the interest in productivity peaked in September 2018. While it has sustained some lows, the idea continues to gain attention as we speak.

Efficiency, like productivity, also enjoys high volume searches in the US.

Turning a blind eye on the impact of social media and relevant efficiency killers is counterproductive. Surely, limiting access to Facebook, Twitter, and other sites that compel browsing during office hours can help. Plus, smartphones have to go or be kept out of reach to avoid looking at it every 20 minutes.

It makes even more sense to face the battle head-on, combat technology with technology. Companies can focus their energies on speeding up, streamlining, sorting processes so that people have less time to wonder and wander about in the office.

That’s not to say that you’ll always be able to tell why your productivity plummets.

Every workplace is different, and so are the people that populate it. However, office culture and personal quirks aside, this article will count exemplary technologies and tools that harness, not hinder, workplace productivity.

If you’d like to skip ahead then feel free to use the links below:

• 1. A reliable, fast connection goes a long way
• 2. A project management tool tracks everything
• 3. A time tracking tool gives control
• 4. A chat app provides quick, real-time updates
• 5. Teleconference Equipment Links Teams
• Working with technology is the new productivity
• Boost your productivity today with Process Street!

Let’s dive in!
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The global economic cost of anxiety and depression is $1 trillion per year.

That is a substantial cost to an issue that is predominantly ignored.

1 in 5 adults in the U.S. will experience a mental health issue each year, with 1 in 6.8 people experiencing mental health problems in the workplace on a weekly timescale.

Work anxiety is one such mental health condition which evokes a sizable economic cost from lowered employee wellbeing and sick leave.

In this Process Street article we explain what work anxiety is – and in that sense, anxiety in general. We then provide information on how you can take action on anxiety from a personal level and at a company-wide level.

Click on the relevant subheaders below to jump to that section. Alternatively, scroll down and read all we have to say.

• Work anxiety: Mental Health Risk Assessment
• Work Anxiety: Anxious meaning
• Anxiety explained: Understanding anxiety and the biological causes
• Work anxiety: Take action on anxiety, what you can do as an individual
• Work anxiety: Take action on anxiety, what you can do as a company
• Work anxiety: Take action with Process Street

Capes at the ready, let’s conquer workplace anxiety!
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This is a guest post by Ivan Boychuk. Ivan is a freelance writer who specializes in creating quality SEO content that ranks high in search engines like Google.

“Do what you do best, and outsource the rest.” – Peter Drucker

Peter Drucker, who was a legendary thought leader in the area of marketing, understood that outsourcing work to freelancers can be an effective strategy to increase overall business productivity.

Why?

Because hiring a freelancer can save you time, money, needless headaches, and it can bring fantastic outside talent onboard. But with so many people chasing after the freelance lifestyle, it can be a daunting task to sift through countless candidates and hire a quality freelancer for your business.

Don’t worry, though.

In this guest post for Process Street, I’ll explain what a freelancer is, what to look for when hiring a freelancer, and show you 9 great websites for hiring freelancers! Just read through the following sections:

• What is a freelancer?
• What to look for when hiring freelancers
• How to hire freelancers: The best hiring websites around!
• Use Process Street to help hire freelancers & keep them on track

Let’s get started.

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This is a guest post by Travis Taborek. Travis is a content marketer and copywriter based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a graduate of General Assembly’s Digital Marketing Bootcamp and has done SEO and content work for business ranging from small tech startups to corporations like TiVo. Read his work here.

Content marketers have their work cut out for them.

They’re tasked with generating fresh ideas for content that stimulates interest in a brand and demonstrates thought leadership consistently, frequently, and at scale.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of productivity apps out there to help keep your mind focused, your writing clear, your headlines eye-grabbing, and your calls-to-action compelling.

To help you do your best work possible, I’ll show you the 10 best productivity apps you need in your digital toolbox.

Specifically, after explaining what productivity apps are, I’ll break each app down into one of four categories – brainstorming, focus, creation, and general productivity – then highlight their features, use cases, and pricing plans.

Just read through the following sections in this guest post for Process Street:

• What is a productivity app?
• The best productivity apps for brainstorming
• The best productivity apps for focus
• The best productivity apps for creation
• The best productivity apps for general productivity
• Put the pro in productivity with Process Street!

Let’s get started!

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