For individuals and small teams that may not require the collaboration and power of Salesforce.com or the many other CRM solutions on the market, you can retain speed, simplicity and discipline with your sales and relationships using Gmail and G Suite. Much of the efficiency of using Gmail as a CRM comes from habits andContinue reading “Using Gmail as a Simple CRM Tool”
Category Archives: Productivity
Managing Projects and Tasks in Gmail
There are a lot of project management tools out there (Basecamp, Monday, Trello, Asana, etc.) And many can be a great fit for sophisticated project management workflow for teams. The collaboration, task management and record keeping structure can be helpful. However, there’s a lot of friction also when it comes to using a whole otherContinue reading “Managing Projects and Tasks in Gmail”
Minimize Switching Costs Between Systems
The presentation from Google’s team on interface, flow and usability in their G Suite products has a helpful comment, “A company is the sum of its processes.” The 12 minute mark of the presentation is helpful to understand the cost of context switching. This happens each time we have to move from one software, appContinue reading “Minimize Switching Costs Between Systems”
Delegate with the Imperative
When we are working in teams, the amount of energy we spend trying to get everyone moving in the same direction can be exhausting. Many of the meetings we conduct are to get clarity. With the onslaught of information coming into everyone’s life, we can’t assume everyone’s head is clear, much less understanding what youContinue reading “Delegate with the Imperative”
Free Up More Time
“… you want maximal free time, not maximal activity, and you can assess your own “success” according to such metric.” ~ Nassim Taleb As business is slowing and we are in this environment of quarantining, it’s an opportunity to look around and remove or reduce waste. I can understand feeling disoriented when there’s not aContinue reading “Free Up More Time”
Space and Time
I rarely run into someone that is not frazzled. Because our technology and tools are so efficient, the amount of information hitting us is bewildering. Get more customers, get more problems. Get more emails, have more work to respond. The signal to noise ratio is a real problem. When you do address the signals, youContinue reading “Space and Time”
Simplifying Choices for Your Customers
Every bit of complexity can keep your customer from taking a next step with you in your engagements and work. We are inundated with choice and information. You can be both a welcome resource and helpful partner by taking stock and simplifying how you do business. Here are some areas to consider streamlining to makeContinue reading “Simplifying Choices for Your Customers”
How to Simplify the Complexity of Projects
We are overwhelmed from the complexity and volume of information every day. Much of it comes from the ease of team members and customers having the convenience of being able to email and text us. In your given day, think about how much you read in your inbox. Pages and pages of content that hasContinue reading “How to Simplify the Complexity of Projects”
Actions that Work
Every week you have the opportunity to move the needle and get your business notching up a level. Not only do you have to get the necessary work you committed to others done in your projects and tasks, but you have to make space and time to work on your business in addition to in yourContinue reading “Actions that Work”
Manage By Outcomes
How do you know most of your work matters? There are probably a few things that matter to produce the outcomes important to an organization. Most work is simply effort and cost and does not produce meaningful results. You can see this with the ridiculing of office politics and people doing busy work in cartoonsContinue reading “Manage By Outcomes”
