Image: Flickr.com (Astronit)

Have you ever felt like someone looking for Waldo/Wally when it comes to your business plan? Has your business plan been missing or you just couldn’t figure out how to organize your business just like it is when someone is trying to figure out “Where’s Waldo/Wally“?

Just to explain for those who don’t know about “Where’s Waldo/Wally”, it is a book that has pages of different images which contain tiny people doing various things. The whole object is to find Waldo/Wally amoung all of the tiny people in the image. The image to the right is a sample of what a page might look like.

Now how does this apply to a business plan? Glad you ask. Below are a few things that you can relate to the process of developing or figuring out your business plan.

• Fix the small thing. Sometimes the smallest or tiniest thing may be stopping you from figuring out your business plan. Such as, what you should include in your business plan. Here is a resource that can help you: Entrepreneur.com - Business Planning
• Investing time. Do this to figure out what works and doesn’t work is important to your business planning. Start with a to-do list because it helps you quickly identify the key things that you need to work on for your business.
• Finding the uniqueness (like finding Waldo/Wally). Being able to make your business standout so it can be found by potential clients is a way that you can make your business unique. Branding your business is important so being able to brand your business with a logo, or a catch-phrase, or a specific service/product offering is important to your business planning. To help you develop the branding for your business, please visit: Entrepreneur.com - Branding Your Business. When you hear “Just Do It”, one of the first companies that come to mind is Nike. This is a classic example of branding your business. 
• Have Fun! Don’t allow yourself to get stressed out or overwhelmed as you develop your business plan. If you feel that you are getting stressed out, then take a break. Release, Relax and Relate to the moment. Feel free to ask for help from others such as the experts from SCORE. They have a wealth of knowledge to share with you.

Would love to hear about your experience in developing your business plan. Please comment and share different idea that you have in how to brand your business.

Image: www.SXC.hu

Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing Elizabeth Harrin who is a Project Manager and the author of “Project Management in the Real World“. Applying project management to a business is something that could help a business streamline their processes as well as bring organization to their business.

During the interview, she shared valueable information to help Project Manager or business owners understand the basics of project management and how to apply it in every day situation.

Below is the feedback from Elizabeth while I interview her via Twitter.

Question 1: Please introduce yourself to my followers.

Question 2: What are the key areas of your expertise and how long have you been involved in this area?

Question 3: Please share the gist of your book.

Question 4: Please share some basic project management strategies that business owners can implement in their business.

Another type of large project team can be termed as a “Foosball” team or a static team. For those who may not know, Foosball is, according to Webster.com, a table game resembling soccer in which the ball is moved by manipulating rods to which small figures of players are attached (also called table soccer). Two to four players can play at a time to win the game.

The thing about that connects a “Foosball” team to a project team is the fact that both can become static. In a sense, not moving or changing it’s strategy. Constantly doing the same thing can cause either to become static and prevent the team from growing. However, a static project team can get past the “static” phase by choosing to change different aspects of it’s operations.

Case study 2: Foosball Project Team

Image: www.SXC.hu

The whole plan of Foosball is to make sure your ball goes into your opponent’s goal while stopping it from going into yours by using the player rods that you push, pull and turn. This is related to a project team in the following ways:

• Static positions: no matter how much you push, pull, or turn the handles in foosball, the players stay on the same particlar row. No room for growth within a project team can cause the team members to become static and thus affecting the project.
• Tunnel view: because one of the objects is to make a goal, sometimes you can become so concentrated on doing that, you may forget to gaurd against your opponent’s attempt to make a goal. Within a project team, it is important to keep in mind that a broad view is good to have as well as a focused view so that you can keep all aspects of the project in focus. Allowing both views to be a part of your project team may allow you to see upcoming project issues and give you an opportunity to plan on how to handle them strategically.
• Loosing control: when playing foosball, sometimes it’s hard not to lose control of the ball and your foosball players. To gain control in foosball, it takes practice and the honing of your skills. Just the same when dealing with a project team, it takes practice and the honing of your skills as a project manager in order to continuously stay in control of your team. If you find that control is slipping out of your hands, it’s always a good idea to regroup everyone, analyze what’s going on with the team and then make a plan on how to get control back.

Image: www.sxc.hu

A connected project team allows its members to grow and help each other refine their skills. A disconnected project team could fracture and cause it’s members to lose their focus.

Ensuring that your project team is connected and growing is a very important tasks as a project manager. Being able to identify the key aspects of a connected and growing team can mean the difference between success and failure.

To help you identify the differenct between a connected and disconnected team, the list below was created. It can help you make sure that their project team stays connected and continues to grow.

In a teaming environment for a large project, occasionally you may need to separate into sub-teams in order to complete a project. This is usually done to ensure that project deadlines and task are completed in a timely manner. While at the same time allowing projects to flow smoothly.

This article is the first in a series about organizing large project teams. Each of the articles will cover a particulr type of team along with the pros and cons of using each type of team.

Case Study 1: Circular Team

Image created by Kim Beasley using photo from www.SXC.hu

Being able to create smooth transitions between the sub-teams and the full project team is very important. In the image above, the teaming environment is considered a circular teaming environment and has been separated into three sub-teams. As you can see, each team has been color-coded which is a good way to keep tasks and process organized. Also the diagram shows how the information flows between the teams.

Pros of using a Circular Team

• Project Manager: will be able to color code the tasks and responsibilities for each sub team. Will also be able to create a process flow chart that shows the path that each project would take.
• Core Team: project members who would be considered leaders of the sub-teams and would be consistent throughout the entire process.
• Contracted Team: project members who could be moved from team to team as needed.

Cons of using a Circular Team

• Project Manager: may find that allowing communication between non-connected teams to be difficult.
• Core Team: may develop tunnel vision about the project because all they would know is what affects their part of the project and may not be able to grasp the full vision of the project.
• Contracted Team: may not be able to become familiar with any one part of the project because they would be moved around as needed.

Project management can be a tough gig, but, with the right organizing tools, you can be quite productive.  OpenProj is one of those tools.

From the website:

OpenProj is a free, open source desktop alternative to Microsoft Project. OpenProj has been downloaded over 175,000 times in the first weeks since it was released and has quickly become one of the most popular open source applications. If you are managing a group project we recommend Project-ON-Demand. If you want a free replacement to commercial desktop software, then OpenProj is perfect. It’s available on Linux, Unix, Mac or Windows, and it’s free.

Click here to download OpenProj.

 Diana Huggins who contributes to Lockgnome’s Windows Fanatics blog always seems to have those tips and how tos that people need.  Whether it’s watermarks in Word or new lines in Excel cells, Diana has posted them.

Sure, you might think they are simple, if you’ve already spent time trying to figure out how to do it through trial and error and Office help, but lots of people haven’t.

Instead of just posting every day her latest tip, just save us both some time and subscribe to the blog and get them via RSS.

One of the anticipated features and Microsoft office 2007 is the ability to natively export files as PDF or XPS.  I was looking for this feature today when I needed to send off an invoice but couldn’t find it.  Luckily a quick search in help gave me the answer right away, I needed to download the add-in!

It only took a couple seconds to do this and I didn’t even need to reboot or close Excel, but really bugged me that this wasn’t included by default.

Here’s the link to the page where you can download this pretty essential add-in for office 2007.

Even though Microsoft has been criticized by Adobe for including PDF export in Office 2007, I think it’s a really good thing.  I wonder if the XPS format is gonna catch on and all.  I think we’ll have to wait and see. 

So you need to create a new document.  It doesn’t matter if you’re using Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint (or even OpenOffice), looking at a blank screen is almost as daunting as getting the document done.

Now, when you make this a complex task, like a form letter or invoice, you can waste a lot of time making one from scratch.  My first stop whenever I need to do something like this is to look for the built-in templates that of come with Microsoft office.

Like today, I needed to make a new invoice, my old PDF invoice wasn’t going to work anymore, so I needed something new.  My first stop in Excel, because a knew Excel was the right application for me to make invoices, was to open help, and type invoice template.  I was given a choice of several different styles of templates, I picked one, downloaded it from Microsoft, filled it in, and I was done.

The same goes for Word or PowerPoint, browsing the built in templates can save you a ton of time when you need to make a new document, an especially a complex document.

For instance business cards.  When you buy one of the print yourself business card packs, using a template is critical to making sure the cards come out right.

For those of you who think all stock templates are boring and ugly, you’re wrong.  A lot of the templates are very nice, and all of them can be customized.

One of the best work tips I can give you is to use the resources your computer already has two save you time and effort.  Using templates is one of those tips that everyone should be using.

If you are a manager, how do you delegate work? Like, projects? Or strategies?

There are a couple of different approaches to the work that can be chosen. You can be a manager that explicitly lays out the steps that needs to be done and explain those steps to the individuals doing the work. There are advantages to this approach:

You are working with a new employee on the job and you will utilize the specific steps developed to implement to explain what is being done and why so that the employee learns.

You have no choice as a manager because your manager has laid out the steps for you to do and there is little, if any discussion about the steps.

If you think about this approach, there is virtually no ability to be creative or innovate in this type of environment. These…are…the…rules…and…you…will…follow…them…

Or, you can be the manager that lays out what needs to be accomplished through the project and then let the people doing the work figure out how it can be done. There are more advantages to this approach:

Since the end is defined and not the means, the individuals involved in the work can determine the best approach to the work, allowing for more creativity.

Since the individuals involved in the work create the best method of achieving the end, there is a much higher degree of ownership of the work.

I personally have a theory that says that creativity comes out of chaos, something that one of my better managers in my work life taught me. Too much structure stifles creativity.

If you’re Old Skool, you could almost say that the first approach is Theory X and the second approach is Theory Y on getting things done through people.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Define the goal. Leave the rest to your skilled workforce.