There Will Be Birds

Ethel didn't chase after birds today. 

You know Ethel - a beloved shelter lab mix who offers lessons in how to behave in business and life.

Ethel’s been plagued by birds since the warm weather has hit.  During every walk, she lunges unexpectantly at a robin or sparrow that has the misfortune of pecking around on nearby ground, or a seagull with the nerve to fly in her "air space."

It’s a losing proposition.  The offending bird simply flies away, as Ethel lunges and leaps, strangling herself on her choke chain while painfully pulling my arm out of its socket.

For months on end, I made the habit of calmly telling Ethel, “Yes, there will be birds” when an aviary incident took place.

It seemed like forever for Ethel to get wise about avoiding this trigger to a negative reactive response.

But today, she got smart.  Despite the robins and sparrows rooting around in the lawn during our morning walk, and the seagulls zooming overhead, Ethel heeded that calm reminder “Yes, there will be birds” and responded in a more positive fashion – by simply not reacting.

It can be like that in the consulting world of business-to-business marketing, as well. 

Something unsettling happens, like a new client with fast-breaking projects, or a rash of proposals all due in the same week, or the feeling that it’s just one fire drill after another without break.  The temptation is to lunge wildly, get choked up, and let the unexpected situation trigger a negative reactive response.

Instead, like Ethel, perhaps it is wiser to remember the lessons of past situations, and realize that, yes, there will be birds.  The trick is to not let them get the best of us.   I’m slow to learn this lesson for sure.

This whole thought process reminds me of these wise words discovered many years ago:  where attention goes, energy flows.

5 Tips for Work Teams: Lessons from Ethel the Dog

It was only a matter of time before Ethel infiltrated this blog.

We adopted Ethel, a black lab mix, as a 7-month old pup this past summer from the Alcona Humane Society up near our cabin in Northern Michigan.  

Before she came into our lives, Ethel spent her entire life in the shelter, lovingly cared for by the dedicated staff and volunteers at that well-run organization.

Ethel is a wonderful office-mate.  She listens when things get tough, and she shares her wisdom to keep me focused and on task each day.

Although still a puppy, Ethel knows a thing or two about the business world,  with specific wisdom for work teams.  

5 Lessons 

To be effective, any team - whether a department, a project team, or even a team of volunteers --  must set and maintain shared goals.

For marketing teams, one shared goal might be to expand market awareness for the product/service. Another shared goal might be to deliver quality leads to the sales team.  Yet it’s easy to get off course. 

Thus, here are five lessons from Ethel about being effective in our work lives.

1) Keep your focus – Nowhere is focus more clearly displayed than right before Ethel receives a bone or treat, or during a game of fetch with her ratty Frisbee.   Work teams must cultivate and maintain this same quality of focus to be effective.  Ignore those daily distractions, and keep a consistent focus on overall business goals.

2) Run, romp, and play daily – Ethel is a lot easier to be around when she gets to have 'fun time' each day.  Work teams are wise to keep those countless projects humming along, but don’t forget to insert some fun into each day.  There’s a lot of value in making fun a priority for a high performing work team.

3) Never pretend to be something you’re not – With Ethel, what you see is what you get. Not sure of how to perform a task or meet the next project benchmark?  Come clean, do the work needed to get up and running, and be authentic with your teammates.

4) Avoid biting when a simple growl will do – We encourage Ethel to think before she acts. When things get stressful, keep your cool!  Certainly speak up for yourself and be assertive, but tone down the aggression.

5) If what you want lies buried, dig until you find it – Ethel is a tireless digger when she’s exploring the sandy beach on the big lake. Sometimes teams can get off course; a project goes awry due to an underlying issue.  Work hard to dig into a solution, discover the underlying cause, and remedy whatever process issues there are in order to work more effectively.

Five Online Productivity Tools: Work Smarter, Faster, Better

For an old gal, I love new tech tools. 

Regular readers know I was certainly not an early adopter of Twitter, but am now one enthusiastic Tweeter, hooked into a range of analytical tools, third party apps, and other ways to get the most marketing bang out of Twitter.

It’s much the same with online productivity tools – applications that automate and streamline the way one works. 

As a freelance/contract worker for over two-decades,  a trusty black planner and a yellow spiral notebook were once the tools of choice.  Well, in fact I still rely on those two tools, but there are a plethora of personal productivity applications right under our online noses! 

Thus, gathered here are my current favorites, in order of preference.  They are especially useful for B-to-B contract marketers.  Happy Clicking!

1) Wipee List:   http://www.wipeelist.com/

These guys rock.  First off, if you are looking for an easy way to manage your “to do” list, this is the place.   Essentially a to-do list manager, this app helps prioritize tasks to increase productivity, especially when working for many clients and projects.

They also rock because they are  “quick, easy and free” and when they say free they mean it.  They don’t just give you a few features for free, then entice you to pay when you need more robust features.  The complete feature set is free.  Whoopee, Wipee List!

Another reason why these guys rock is the writing on the website.  I love this line:  “Wipee List is Free, But That Doesn’t Mean it Sucks”.  The text is human, witty, and engagingly sarcastic. (sounds like my handsome hubby...)

One other reason they rock is the incredibly easy interface. You can tell the Wipee team did a ton of usability testing.  (I love usability testing! Why develop an interface and never bother to ask anybody how useful it is?  Who did their usability testing, I wonder?   What a dream job that must have been.) 

2) Nudge Mail http://www.nudgemail.com/

Running a close second to Wipee List is Nudge Mail.  I am a beta tester for Nudge Mail, and relied on this little tool quite heavily when managing a client web redesign project in 2010. 

Essentially, one uses Nudge Mail to send oneself emails, or other team members emails, at key dates or milestones.  Some might consider me a “nudge” so naturally this is one useful tool.

Using Nudge Mail is entirely done within email, which when you think about it, is the way you might do all of your other work. There is no need to go to a website, all the transactions happen within your email system.

It takes seconds to create a new email (or forward an existing one), set the “to”, subject, day/time and any message in the body of the email.  Hit send, and that little baby goes out on the day/time you selected. 

Upcoming team deadlines?  Set a nudgemail to remind yourself or others.  Managing a complicated event or project?  Nudge mail can be a tool to keep everybody moving in the same direction, at the same time.

3) Doodle http://doodle.com/

Have you ever tried to coordinate a meeting with 8 or 9 people spread out in various time zones?  How can you keep track of availability or preferences? Heck, it is even tough to get 3 people together on a 10-minute conference call for a project update even if they are in the same time zone.

Doodle is free, and wonder of wonders – you don’t even have to register! Use it to schedule meetings, lunches, social events, conference calls or other appointments with multiple people, as many as needed. Simply set up a poll assessing best time for an event, send a link to all those participating in the call or meeting, and use a personalized URL to finalize the logistics and manage the event.

For a fee, Doodle links to calendars such as Outlook, Google and other apps.   

4) Zoho https://www.zoho.com/

As a freelancer/contract professional, I’ve worked through various methods to track records of time per project/client for end-of-month-invoicing – from manual notebooks, to Spreadsheets, to Basecamp.

Zoho is an easy to use online service that allows several individuals to create, track, and manage invoicing and basic project management. I’ve only used it as a free trial - and it’s streamlined the process incredibly. Zoho helps manage a range of tasks including invoicing, expense tracking, quotes, and some project management.  Note this is one of those applications that only provides a specific set of free features, but pricing is reasonable for the full suite of functions.

5) Teamly http://teamly.com/

Teamly is a good alternative to other, more robust project management applications like Basecamp from 37 Signals, which I helped implement at Markit Strategies, the virtual PR agency I’ve been associated with since 2005.

Teamly is especially useful for virtual teams.  I suggested Teamly for a volunteer organization and it worked nicely.

One of the biggest strengths is the priorities page which gives an at-a-glance view of priorities.
 It’s easy to add, manage and move priorities around—or look back or forward in time to see accomplished or upcoming tasks.

Whew!  So there they are!  If you try any of these five tools, share your experience.  If you know of any other great apps, post them here!