Business

Archive for July, 2010

Although sometimes it seems that projects take on a life of their own, the simple fact is that projects don’t manage themselves. It takes the energy and commitment of a number of people to take a project from the initial idea through inception. As more companies embrace the concept of self-directed work-teams that work on specific projects, project management, will become a more vital element of the workplace. The following checklist will help you create a successful project management office:

- Formulate and outline the project

- Break up the project into manageable tasks

- Keep the project on target and complete it on time

Getting Started

The best way to guarantee a project’s success is to start with a strong foundation. Among the questions you should ask when putting together a project kick start:

- Is this something we have done before? If so, what did we learn from the last project?

- Do we have the time and resources to do this project effectively?

- How many people will we need? What sort of expertise should they have?

- Will we need to use outside sources?

- Does top management support the project?

- How long will the project take?

- Once you’ve put together a workable project plan, you need to put an action plan together so:

- Decide how many people will be assigned to the project. Assign people on the basis of their experience and expertise.

Make sure you have a commitment from upper management regarding adequate resources (funding, staff, time, etc.). Make sure, too, that you know exactly what upper management expects in the way of a given project. Communicate your interpretation of their instructions to your supervisors, and make sure you clear up any questions or confusion before the project begins.

Set up a communication network to ensure that everyone is talking with one another; don’t allow people to work in a vacuum.

Create a schedule with specific dates by which different elements of the project will be completed. Build-in a few days to allow for unforeseen problems.

Assign someone the task of keeping records of ongoing progress during the project. This information should be shared with everyone who is working on the project.

If no one from your division has ever worked on this sort of project, consult with people from other departments, or even from other companies (when possible) to get an idea about what to expect.

The Course of the Project

Once the project is under way, there’s a strong tendency to put it on automatic pilot. This makes it harder to fend off potential difficulties, and it cuts off any creative ideas that could enhance the project. Here are some ways to keep things moving effectively through the project’s duration:

Hold regular meetings. These don’t have to be formal three-hour progress sessions – but they should give project members the opportunity to share ideas, voice concerns and ask questions of one another. Some of these meetings should include brainstorming sessions, which promote free flow of creative ideas.

Keep written records of meetings. These make people take the sessions more seriously, and they give anyone who’s unable to attend a point of reference from which to work.

Have individual workers provide you with progress reports. These should not be one-sided conversations. Share your ideas, and offer to address the individuals’ concerns and answer questions as well.

Make sure deadlines are being met. Make it clear that anyone who anticipates missing a deadline should let you know ASAP; this way, you can adjust schedules, or provide people with additional support staff or other resources.

Keep track of what is being spent on the project. Individuals should provide you with information on how much they spend. Let them know how much money they have to work with so they don’t go over budget.

If you’re working with outside contractors or people from other departments, make sure you keep them posted on the progress of the project. You should invite them to at least some of the meetings and brainstorming sessions, and be sure to solicit their opinions.

Solicit the opinions of people in the company who aren’t involved with the project. Sometimes a fresh perspective can provide the best ideas.

Keep upper management apprised of the progress you’re making. This way, you can be alerted to any potential red flags (no manager likes surprises).

The Difference Between Success and Failure

A key factor in the success of the team is its leader. The qualities of a successful project leader include:

- Conscientiousness

- Technical and organizational knowledge

- Honestly/trustworthiness

- Consistency/predictability

- Resourcefulness

When the Project Is Completed

As the project draws to a close, it’s important to remember that a completed project is not a project that is over. Here are some guidelines for dealing with the project’s completion:

Just before the project is complete, meet with the project team as a whole (and one-on-one) to make sure all the loose ends are tied before the project is submitted. Make sure everyone is given credit for contributions.

Remember you don’t have to have a glitzy presentation with video and fancy hand-outs – but your presentation should be professional. Make sure you provide neat, complete copies of your work to upper management, and make certain your presentation is well-planned and professional. A typed copy sent to the supervisor in an interoffice envelope is not enough.

Be sure to give proper recognition to team members when you present the completed project to upper management. It’s important to recognize workers in front of their peers, but they deserve recognition “upstairs” as well.

After the project is over and handed in, gather everyone who worked on it and conduct a postmortem: What were the best aspects of the project? The worst? What mistakes were made, and how can you learn from them? Did you budget, enough time and resources? Too much? Not enough? Do you need more of less outside help for the next project? Who has demonstrated expertise that had previously been ignored? How can the entire process be streamlined? Include your outside contractors and consultants in the postmortem and be sure to get their insights.

How to Promote Your Business in the Yellow Pages:

Ask the Expert

By Fran Finley

The Expert

Our expert on Yellow Pages advertising is author, speaker, consultant, Barry Maher. You may have seen Maher on the Today Show, NBC Nightly News, CNBC or in the pages of USA Today, the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. His book, Filling the Glass was recently honored as “[One of] The Seven Essential Popular Business Books” by Today’s Librarian magazine. Few people realize that Maher is also the author of the book, Getting the Most from Your Yellow Pages Advertising, and that he conducts Yellow Pages workshops at conventions across the country. According to TIME, “Barry Maher has helped thousands of small businesses get the most cost effective Yellow Pages advertising possible.”

Does Yellow Pages advertising really work?

Well, it certainly can work. But it’s far more likely to work if you pay attention to a few key rules.

Can’t you rely on your Yellow Pages sales rep for any help you need?

Sometimes the rep can be part of the problem. Too many Yellow Page ads are whipped up in the few minutes the rep has left after trying to sell you a bigger ad. Ask, no, insist, that your directory publishers develop an ad for you that justifies the cost. If they can’t, have the ad produced yourself.

Okay, so you need a great looking ad. What about the content?

Content is another key. The first piece of ad copy that readers see, the headline, has to be powerful enough to drag them away from all those competing ads. Never use your company name as your headline unless it really is that powerful. Unless it really is the most important selling copy in the ad.

What other copy should you include?

You have to include all the hard, factual information potential customers need to make a decision to call or drop by: be it about image, market niche, products and services, features, brand names, expertise, pricing, quality, hours, reliability, speed, location, service area, credit available, whatever it might be.

So you should use every bit of ad space you’re paying for?

Absolutely not. Your ad is competing for readability with every other ad under your heading or headings. If it’s difficult to read, it isn’t going to be read. You’ve got to refine your copy until you can provide all the information potential clients want in an ad that’s so uncluttered and inviting that reading it becomes automatic.

What about visuals, like drawings and photos?

Nothing can turn a mediocre Yellow Pages ad into a great one faster than the right illustration. If your picture isn’t worth a thousand words, find one that is.

How about ad size: is bigger better?

Unfortunately, all things being equal, bigger ads get a greater response. They also get the best placement, closest to the front of the heading. Placement can be even more important than size.

A visually appealing ad can make up for some size, especially under a heading where all the ads are on the same page or two. It’s much more difficult to compete with ads on an earlier page. That page may never be turned.

Always consider placement when you’re deciding on ad size. Have your sales rep show you where the size you’re considering would fall in this year’s directory. That should give you an idea of the position, relative to the competition, you’d have next year. Sometimes going up a size and spending just a few more dollars will move you much closer to the front of the heading. Sometimes you can cut back in size without losing much in the way of position.

What about using color?

Color is eye catching. And expensive. If the money you’d be spending is approximately the same, you’re better off significantly improving the size and placement of your ad than the color.

Some areas are covered by several competing directories. Should you buy ads in all of them?

Make the sales rep prove value before you buy, especially when you’re considering a directory for the first time. If he or she can’t prove value, don’t put any real money there. Instead, try something small: perhaps even a simple in-column ad, or even just a listing. Track your response, survey your customers to discover how they discovered you. Then next year you’ll have know.



What’s the biggest Yellow Pages mistake you’ve ever encountered?

That’s got to be the attorney who found herself listed not under ATTORNEYS but under REPTILES. I’ll leave it to you to decide if that was perhaps more truth in advertising than she bargained for.

Which reminds me: Always insist on getting a proof for your display ad.

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remember Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey, ” you might recall when the space ship’s HAL 9000 computer says to Dave the astronaut, “I know you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen.” Is that what you feel like without your PowerPoint file when giving a presentation? That’s a bit disturbing, yes? If this is so, your PowerPoint file has taken over!

In order to recover your dignity as a presenter and prowess using PowerPoint, we must get back to the basics. First, we will cover what it means to give a good presentation. Second, we can look at the purpose and value of using PowerPoint. Finally, we will consider how you can overcome common tendencies of presenters with some hints and tricks to engage your audience with your presentation.

You engage the audience, not the prop! It is perfectly understandable that in this rapid paced world, we all want to press a button, plug in, or clap on-clap off for results. When you do this with an audience of live people, you start sounding and behaving like a HAL 9000 and I am sure many of us did not make it through that movie for the monotonous voice of the main character! You must remember that you engage the audience, not the prop! A good presenter is like a good jazz musician. You must know the song: your main point. You must know the melody: the points you expect to cover. Finally, you must know your audience so that you can wow and amaze them with what they might be surprised to hear. Start with writing a thesis that includes your interest to inform in terms of their interest to learn. Next, block out basic points and consider props you can use to describe your points with that audience in mind. Finally, consider your arsenal of presentation tools and how you can align them with the introduction, supporting points and call to action or conclusion.

Uh…Hello! Step away from your PC or Mac and consider your list of presenter tools! We know that PowerPoint can give visuals to reinforce points with pictures, bullets, charts and even movies. Now, remember that a good presenter uses body movement, the dynamics of his voice, topic related props and my favorite of all, the audience themselves with questions, games or demonstrations! The people in your audience retain information differently, therefore it is critical that you use a variety of tactics to engage their senses and make the presentation memorable for all. If you simply click F5 to slide show, you can be replaced with a HAL 9001! Besides, most people do not want to get a break from their computer screen to sit back and follow along with a projected version of yours.

PowerPoint is a modernized overhead- not cue cards! Ah, PowerPoint? How lovely art thou! Already one year past our legal drinking age, PowerPoint was derived from a product called Presenter developed by Forethought and sold to Microsoft before they created the Windows platform. As the story goes, this application was designed to replace the expense of making and sending high-quality 35mm slides between companies. Do you remember these slides? These projectors? And not to mention editing these when we made a mistake! PowerPoint today is a multimedia software application that can be used to present, make handouts/signage and even create self-running and interactive shows on the internet or via CD ROM. This is why presenters love this tool but some have mistaken PowerPoint for box of cue cards with taped on pictures. That is not exciting! During your presentation, it is fine to use PowerPoint to reinforce your point and objectives. Maybe you have the freedom to become Carrot Top but most of us are expected to use a PowerPoint throughout the presentation using either a linear or a pictorial wheel style to articulate and reinforce our information.

Do I use a Linear or Pictorial Wheel style? First, one must think outside of the application and discern which style best suits your audience. A linear presentation guides your presentation on screen with your main point, supporting bullets in multilevel fashion. This is the traditional style you may find yourself editing passed on from others. Ensure that you have no more than 6 bullets per slide, use no fonts smaller than 24 points, and no more than 2 font styles and font colors (if you can help it) per slide. Vary and simplify your slides by avoiding paragraphs or using bullet lists on every slide. Be frugal, consistent and creative with animations, slide transitions and especially sounds. Take advantage of movie clips, charts, tables and diagrams one slide at a time. You may also incorporate links to hidden slides, applications or websites to objects or sentences so that you can elaborate further on a topic according to your audience. A Pictorial Wheel style gets the audience away from just following a slide show. Using this style, you would make many slides that express only one point using pictures, movies or specific complex animations. Next, you would need to use slide sorter view, to create thumbnail buttons you can place on the first slide. During the presentation, you can simply click one of these thumbnail pictures that are cleverly linked to a matching hidden slide in your presentation and conveniently linked back to your first page of thumbnail buttons. You choose how to reinforce your points and can easily elaborate on others as it interests the audience. As you can see, this design could be very useful for sales people who do not always impress with “we will get to that.” All presentation styles benefit from giving an outline handout but do not mistake this with a duplicate of the presentation. That’s a complete spoiler! In either scenario, the idea is that you maintain your flexibility to give your presentation in an indispensable, memorable and flexible way that caters to your ever changing and diverse audiences.

Finding Confidence outside the ppt. file: Some final tips So why do we ever let the machine dominate us? Maybe we feel the need to get it right consistently, or over with swiftly, or pack in everything we thought our audience ever wanted to know. How many stars, how many reason, right? I repeat, step away from the PowerPoint and back away slowly! You need an outline, 2 lists, a PowerPoint and then, Practice! That is a real presentation. First phase, start in Word or on paper to make your points as noted above. Your presentation is about your audience, not you. Next phase, create 2 vital lists and then, your PowerPoint file. First list what Presentation tools can we use to reinforce the points to be covered? Consider time and group dynamics. Second list will include what will be needed to successfully deliver the overall presentation (ie. props, presentation space, printouts and projector/white boards, schedule of guest speaker, microphone, flash drive, laptop, etc.). Only if you have created this outline and these lists, may you now safely approach the red PowerPoint icon to discern which style will use to make a template or tweak the file you are given. Alas, you are preparing a real presentation and not just a PowerPoint ppt. file. Good job …but you are not finished yet! For the final phase, there is no avoiding the need for live rehearsal, assembling of your props, running through your games or questions as well as having your associated handouts and demonstrations updated for that new audience. We can package this up in a folder but if we have not reviewed and updated our presentation, we will deliver like an out- of- date HAL 9000 and the audience will wonder where to trade us in!

So ‘Dave’, are you ready for your Presentation Odyssey? Astronauts have to be a bit smarter than gerbils to figure their way back to earth when the space flight has issues. Therefore remember that you are in charge and you need to get to know the mechanics of your PowerPoint software so that you can apply some of the tips mentioned here as well as reinforce your points by knowing your outline. Take a course on presentation skills and also take note of genius strategies you see used to engage a professional au

dience elsewhere. Be indispensable, flexible and memorable. That’s good jazz. Have a nice flight!