Project management is among a top skill to master in any business; especially one wanting to grow.
Why?
Because without project management, business owners will unnecessarily run into common issues:
You often get derailed by "the unexpected.”
It’s inevitable.
You get interrupted an unexpected number of times daily. Those interruptions come at unexpected times. They each take an unexpected amount of time with which to deal.
That’s why it’s "the unexpected."
These interruptions kill your flow, destroy your focus, and force you to work on the urgent instead of the important.
So how do you deter, prevent, and deal with the problems these unexpected interruptions incur?
I was shocked, hurt, and felt like my idea had been stolen. Though I had the idea first, Nintendo would be the star. Nintendo would make $millions. It took years before I was old enough to recognize the important lesson in this experience...
Are you second-guessing your next great idea? Are you downplaying the value you could provide to others? Are you upset that you found a competitor in the market who seems to be offering everything you want to (and seems to be finding great success doing it)?
It might be time to step back and realize a few important things.
The legend of the koi isn’t well know.
As it’s told, a school of koi swam upstream through China’s Yellow River. They worked together, against the current, until they came upon a waterfall called the Dragon Gate.
Upon seeing the obstacle, many koi turned away, unwilling to tackle the challenge. The rest remained, jumping with all their might in an attempt to reach the river above.
But their efforts brought more struggle.
It wouldn't have mattered if all 7 billion people on this planet were screaming in unison for my success. Nor would it have mattered how early I'd woken up that morning, how much water I drank, or if I'd eaten protein for breakfast. It wouldn't have made a bit of difference if I'd created a plan for my day, meditated, or drafted the perfect self-introspection piece in my journal.
I didn't know how to drive a stick-shift well, so it was unlikely I'd get it right. I would have stalled that son-of-a-bitch on the platform every single time.
Skills can't be faked.
Wanting to succeed is never enough.
And life-hacks won't give you some magical power to achieve more than you're already achieving.
The average American spends 11 hours a day consuming media.
Eleven hours.
Every. Single. Day.
Two hours and 22 minutes of that time are spent on social media. The rest is spent in front of a TV or online reading, listening, or interacting with content.
According to my iPhone, I’m better than average.
But it’s hardly worth celebrating...
I can attest from first-hand experience that striking out sucks.
It doesn't matter how you do it.
Swinging under a ball for that third strike feels like opening a drain to let all the potential flow out of your body. No base hit. No home run. No chance to be the hero in front of an audience of cheering fans.
Life hacks. Tactics. Pro tips for stealing small, incremental improvements to your life...
Make your bed.
Organize your desk.
Drink eight glasses of water a day.
Who. Fucking. Cares?
Seriously, are these truly going to make your life better? Are you going to look back from your death bed and say, "you know, I wish I would have drunk so much goddamn water that I needed to piss 47 times every day?"
She literally wouldn’t look at the camera.
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I tried calling her name. I tried whistling. I tried making that funny clicking noise... you know, when you smile, press your tongue to the roof of your mouth, and suction air through the sides of your teeth (what the hell is that called?)
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But when it’s photo time, Dottie turns her bulldog head to show her “good side.” She will not look at the camera. And there’s nothing any human being can do about it.
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That’s just one of the quirks that make Dottie, Dottie. When you know that about her, you love her even more for it.
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Dottie wasn’t trying, but this stubborn bulldog quirk of hers contained a bit of advice:
There’s a feeling you get at the end of the day when you know you’ve crushed it.
You’ve accomplished everything you wanted, maybe more, and now have time to relax, recharge, get a good nights sleep, and head into another victory tomorrow.
Those are the good days.
On other days though, you don’t even know what went wrong.
You spend all day ridiculously busy, yet feel you’ve accomplished nothing. That increases the pressure on you to get more done tomorrow. You feel overwhelmed by everything that needs your attention. What's worse, you can’t get to sleep quickly because you’re up worrying about what a stressful day tomorrow will bring.
What is the difference between those two days?
It was 4 am, and the house had long since settled into its frame after a day of heavy traffic. Every creak had worked itself out. Every computer had gone into hibernation. Every child had sunken into their slumber.
It was calm. Peaceful. Silent.
My sleep, however, was interrupted by a deep, unsettling feeling that something was wrong. I gasped for air, sucking in oxygen quickly as if my head was forcefully plunged into a bucket of cold water. My eyes shot wide open, searching for the source of trouble, unable to find it in the black of night.
Be honest.
How many times have you posted a selfie on social media? What about pictures of your business, your employees, or even your products?
If you said none, you can leave now. We all know you’re lying :-).
That's what you're supposed to do, right?
Constantly post pics and text revealing new features for your latest product release. Letting the world know you have new office space. Sharing a press release your company just wrote.
Wrong.
I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but it’s time for a little tough love. Tough love is because I want your business to succeed.
I want you to stop wasting time on social media. I want every post you write, every image you post, and every advertisement you pay for to generate massive returns. Whether it’s likes, shares or honest-to-goodness top-line revenue, I want your social media marketing strategy to succeed. Wildly.
And the fact of the matter is, if you are posting pics of yourself, your business, your employees, your news, and otherwise just talking about yourself on social media, your posts are falling on deaf ears.
It's debilitating, isn't it?
Not knowing if you are on the right path. The uncertainty of whether what you are working on will bring you success.
You work and work. You push from every angle to make an inch of progress Only to look up one day and find yourself lost; unsure if what you are doing is getting you anywhere, worried that you are missing something.
It's a hard feeling to shake.
When this uncertainty hits, it saps your motivation. Your focus and clarity transform into a gloomy cloud of doubt hanging overhead, raining worry and dissatisfaction upon you.
Every business owner knows this feeling.
Just recently, Forbes published an article reporting that only 7% of workers feel productive during the workday.
7 percent!!!
Just think about that for a minute... 93 out of 100 employees don't feel like they can get their work done.
And if they don’t feel like they’re getting their work done… Guess what? Let’s just say they could be doing a lot more.
What do they blame?
Half of us were annoyed. The other half were pissed.
“We have to let users ‘undo’. Our product is useless without it," I argued (I was on the pissed off team in case you’re wondering).
“But nobody is going to NOT buy our product just because there’s no undo," came the response.
We argued far longer than we should have, debating the intricacies of an undo button and whether our engineering team should develop this one feature for our customers.
After multiple meetings, half a dozen arguments, and hurt feelings all around, a decision was finally made.
Sort of.
If you’re heading into 2017 thinking about setting new plans and goals for your business, Modern da Vinci is here to help. In this brief video, we cover:
This is the first video in a series where we will lay out a specific approach for creating a simple, clear, and impactful plan to help you set (and reach) your goals in 2017. And beyond.
Look, there’s no way around it. Delivering bad news sucks.
When you’re receiving bad news, you sit back, you listen, and you react.
But when you are delivering bad news, your mind races with possibilities: What will I say? How will I say it? How will they react? What if they get angry? What if… what if…
It doesn't get any easier as a small business owner. With your customer's satisfaction and the revenue they generate at risk, delivering bad news can be downright stressful.
If you've never had to deliver bad news to a customer, congratulations. This post is for you. Because inevitably, you will.
If you have had to deliver bad news to a customer, I feel for you. This post is for you as well. Because I've been there a few times before. So many times, actually, my business finally figured out how to do it well. In fact, after delivering the worst news in our company's history, the customer literally called us back to thank us for it.
I’d like to tell you that story, and help you craft a “bad news message” for the next time you need to do the same.
You have a tremendous, untapped advantage as a small business. Something that even the biggest companies can't compete with. Something that will inspire loyalty, productivity, and pride in every one of your employees.
It’s called the “big picture.”
Whether it’s your purpose statement, a larger project goal, or a combination of both, the big picture is the reason your employees head into work every morning. In this article, we’ll uncover why sharing the big picture is so powerful and give you strategies on how you can do this with your team.
Having a strategy is vital for any small business. A strategy defines your plan for moving from where you are today to where you want your business to be in the future. On a more tactical level, having a clearly articulated business strategy is essential to being able to prioritize, build consensus, make decisions, and assess progress toward your goals.
Unfortunately, the “classic” approach to strategic planning doesn’t work very well for small businesses. The traditional methods found in textbooks are designed for large organizations. Small businesses don’t need the same kind of plan that a large corporation does, and they certainly don’t need the types of plans that global corporations produce. Using the wrong methods for strategic planning can cause a lot of frustration for small business owners as well as wasted time, effort, and resources.
So then, what is the right amount of strategic planning for a small business? What should you focus on? Who should be involved? What should the final plan look like? How much planning is too much?
This post will give owners of small businesses a simple and effective process for performing strategic planning by taking a look at some common issues small businesses run into with strategic planning, the most important elements of planning that small business should focus on, and concrete steps to tackling strategic planning the right way.
