What Brexit May Mean for Your Business (Work Management Roundup)

Welcome back to the weekly Work Management Roundup, where we collect and curate links to articles on business, work, productivity, and careers. And what a tumultuous week it's been! The biggest topic people will be talking about for the next few weeks is undoubtedly the United Kingdom voting to exit the European Union, and UK Prime Minister David Cameron resigning from his office by October, both of which will have massive consequences on global business. Some say you might be jobless this year, others say "if you think it doesn't affect you, wait till Game Of Thrones loses its funding for location shooting." Read on! Brexit: The Scary Reason You Might Be Jobless This Year (Mic): If you think it won't affect you, dream on. According to a Boston University professor: "Even if stocks and other markets take only a short-term hit, other global economic effects might keep rippling out over the next six to 12 months." Scariest prediction? It may begin a period of slow global growth. Although, since nothing like this has happened before, no one can predict the outcome with certainty. 7 Creative Strategies for Marketing Your Startup on a Tight Budget (Entrepreneur): When you're bootstrapping your startup, it makes sense to do the most cost-effective marketing possible. Here, Matthew Toren shares 8 ways to do so, ranging from carving a niche, to sending e-coupons. 5 Strategies for Forming Team Productivity Habits (Wrike): Download our eBook that outlines five concrete strategies for building a high-performance team, one habit at a time. The US Commercial Drone Industry is Finally Governed by Real Rules (Quartz): Meanwhile, if your startup has anything to do with commercial drones, it might be time for a pivot. The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) finally announced some strict rules that will affect every commercial drone — from aerial wedding photos to drone delivery. How To Brainstorm Like A Googler (Fast Company): Google uses a three-step linear process for brainstorming new ideas and turning these into actual products. And none of the steps include the word "synergize." My Cofounder Said “I Love What We’re Doing” and We Shut Down Our Startup (Maqtoob): A startup CEO shares his story: "Well, if you didn’t give up for a really long time, and you’re still not there, maybe it’s time to fail fast."

Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, shares that we can’t be prisoners of our past mistakes. Our history will hold us back in a circle of self-doubt and remembered failures. To move forward, however, means to view past mistakes as lessons learned, to imagine a better future ahead, and to strive towards it. #Wrike #quotes #excellence #creativity

A photo posted by Wrike (@wriketeam) on Jun 17, 2016 at 3:48pm PDT

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Leadership 5 min read

Your Customers Can Help You in Crisis

Today, no company can be immune to the current economic situation. So it is the time for many businesses to analyze their business model and risk profile. Economics experts join their voices stating that the best thing you can do to withstand the crisis is to improve your customer service and be attentive to customer needs. Terry Leahy, the head of TESCO, a British-based international grocery and general merchandising retail chain, noted in one of his recent interviews that staying close to customers is the key to surviving the current, difficult economic conditions. “We learned some lessons, and the message is simple – stay with your customers. Listen to your customers.” For project managers, it’s important that you treat your customers as stakeholders. John Mackey (CEO of Whole Foods) and Kip Tindell (CEO of The Container Store), who drove their companies with a constant growth over good and bad times, explain their take on stakeholders in this very interesting interview. It’s a must-read for executives in the current economic conditions. Lots of companies now will have a closer look at the opportunities offered by Web 2.0 tools. Online communities, blogs and social networks are great sources of information about your customers, their opinions and their needs. Corporate blogging has become a popular trend. Books are written about it. Blogs have become effective in allowing customers to speak to each other. There are hundreds of superb examples on the Web. Take the Starbucks Gossip blog, for example. It’s a powerful communication channel for the largest coffeehouse company in the world. Each post on Starbucks Gossip gets up to 200 comments. This is an endless source of hands-on information and valuable ideas from Starbucks lovers. Blogging is just one example. It’s important to be open to your customers, so in this respect, all means of communication are good -- blogs, forums, e-mail, phone, you name it. This will help you to lend an attentive ear to your customers’ voices and perceive their unmet needs. Companies that are not afraid to be open to their customers reap the rewards of customers’ trust. Yet another advantage is that they can implement ideas coming from their customers’ community to make the product or service better. The closest example to me is our project management software. We prioritize the development of Wrike’s new features, based on our users’ feedback and requests. Every voice counts, as we believe that a happy customer makes our business thrive. We can say that our customers help us improve the product, giving us tips on what direction of development to choose next. So listening to your customers is important for being able to survive in a harsh economic situation. But what’s even more important is being able to change your business based on your customer feedback and to do it quickly. Paying attention to your customers’ needs is the first step. The next one is being agile and adaptive to the changing requirements. Here’s where Project Management 2.0 practices and supporting tools can be of great help. Project Management 2.0, which is based on the vigor of collective intelligence and power of emergent structures, can help you incorporate customer feedback into your tactical plans much faster. First, a project blog, wiki or a project collaboration solution makes your project work more transparent for your clients. Having this insight into how you deliver the product or service your customers can introduce their ideas and thoughts on how it can be improved. Let’s say a customer leaves a comment on your blog or drops you an e-mail with a really brilliant idea that no one from your team had before. Still, it’s just an idea. Only you and people from you team know how to apply it to the project. This idea then can be input into your collaboration system, so that each member of your project team can develop this idea into something bigger and offer a way to incorporate this idea into your project. The project manager can then find the best way to fit the idea into the project development, so that it benefits all the stakeholders. The project then will be a result of the collective work of many minds. Emergent structures employed in the Project Management 2.0 applications will be the engine that makes this work possible. The whole process of incorporating customers’ feedback into the project development becomes much faster and easier. The company becomes truly agile and responsive. This means it will be more resistant to economic downturns. I would appreciate it if you could share your experience of fitting your clients’ feedback and requests into your project work. Have you used Web 2.0 and Project Management 2.0 tools for that? Please leave a comment below.

Leadership 3 min read

How the CIA Makes Tough Decisions & More (Work Management Roundup)

Welcome to your fresh new Friday habit, the Work Management Friday Roundup — a collection of articles we've spotted over the course of the week that will help you manage your workload, be more productive, and simply become an awesome contributor to your team. How the CIA Makes Decisions: If you're facing a tough decision, then you may need this 5-step process created by a former CIA executive who, during his career, had to make difficult recommendations on some of the biggest threats to national safety. Minimum Lovable Product: Startups take note: Instead of building the minimum VIABLE product, why not aim to build a minimum LOVABLE product? After all, investing in what customers will "love" instead of what they simply "need" makes good business sense. Dread Opening Email? If you're one of those people who dread opening their email, then you could be subscribed to way too many newsletters. Or you just might be in a destructive relationship with email as the collaboration tool you can't let go of. More must-reads: Feel Like Giving Up? Here are some things to remind yourself when you feel like giving up, by productivity author James Clear. Productivity Challenged? Read 8 tips to double your productivity and learn how to cut down the number of meetings you attend, put all your work in one place, and more. Thumbs Down to Open Offices? The open office trend seems to be reversing itself. Consider these points before planning your new office. Do You Give Good Feedback? If not, learn the art of giving feedback. Because if your team doesn’t know what you expect from them, you are unlikely to get the performance you need. Do You Need a Portable Work Desk at Home? If you work from home and you're looking for an inexpensive work table that can be put away when not in use, consider a folding table. Follow "Productivity Works!" on Flipboard Are you a Flipboard user? Then you need to follow our Productivity Works! magazine. We promise you'll love it: View my Flipboard Magazine. Top image credit: Ludovic Bertron

Leadership 5 min read

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What Brexit May Mean for Your Business (Work Management Roundup)

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What Brexit May Mean for Your Business (Work Management Roundup)

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Your Customers Can Help You in Crisis

How the CIA Makes Tough Decisions & More (Work Management Roundup)

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