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PickyDomains -  World’s first risk free naming service   Complex, creative work can be some of the most challenging and rewarding work to do. Unfortunately, it can also be the most frustrating. When you're the team lead, it's your job to protect your team's creativity and energy by keeping projects from endlessly expanding, consuming all the resources, or turning into endless, recurring tasks instead of defined projects. There are three different ways that a team can be held hostage to an unending project. Creative Scope Creep Creative projects are notorious for inevitable scope creep: you start with a defined scope of work, and base your estimates of needed resources and time on that scope. As you tackle the project, however, the defined edges get fuzzy. More work is needed, and the scope of the project creeps out, maybe just a little bit here and a little bit there. That extra work, however, can completely skew all plans and timelines, leading to frustration and a project...

PickyDomains -  World’s first risk free naming service   Lori Kleiman is a Chicago based business expert and author with more than 25 years of experience advising companies on HR issues. Lori has a master’s degree in human resources, has been certified as Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) by the HR Certification Institute and is a member of the National Speakers Association. Telecommuting and remote work remains a hotly debated topic with high profile supported and defectors alike. How do you personally see this trend develop? Have we hit peak ‘telecommuting’ or will the remote workforce keep growing significantly for the foreseeable future? LK: I believe that flexible work schedules are essential, but full scale telecommuting can be difficult to maintain. There is no doubt that there is a loss of camaraderie and teamwork with workforces that do not interact on a regular basis. I recommend organizations use telecommuting for those that have earned the trust on a...

The main problem of conducting business from home is isolation, broken daily routine and lack of motivation. Here are some tips you can use to conduct your business efficiently. 1. Choose tools for work. It’s the first and foremost thing you have to do. Everything will do – from Excel sheets to complex CRM systems – just make sure you have all the information at hand and don’t forget to update it. The latest trend is all-in-one collaboration workspaces - Bitrix24 is free and particular popular. Besides Bitrix24, there are, for example, MangoApps, Freedcamp and some other. They substitute multiple tools like Trello or Asana for project management, Slack or Yammer for inner social communication, Dropbox for sharing files, Skype for making calls and provide CRM for maintaining client database. 2. Choose a special workplace at home. You should draw clear line between work and home so that to be able to focus on business. It’ll be good also to change into work clothes. 3. Make more call...

PickyDomains -  World's first risk free naming service   It might be a merger, a buy-out, company-wide restructuring, a round of layoffs, or an industry-wide economic plummet that’s left your team reeling. Or perhaps it’s something on a smaller scale: an unexpected firing or resignation, the loss of a key client, or a project that exploded in everyone’s faces. Whatever the crisis, you’ve survived it, but now you’ve got a team of war-weary, discouraged team members looking to you. Here’s how you can help your team pull together again. Don’t Ignore the Crisis One of the worst things you could do as team leader is simply act as if nothing has happened. Unfortunately, team leaders who are uncomfortable with conflict or unsure of how to talk about a crisis may take this route. What happens, however, is that your team members feel betrayed and abandoned. By ignoring the effects of the crisis or acting as if nothing has happened, you’re sending a clear message: Deal with this yourse...

The beginning of a new year is a great time for resolutions. Better than resolutions, however, are simple but specific changes you can make right now that will help you make this a more productive year.  1. Think small, not big.  We like to talk about big goals and big dreams. That's not a bad thing, but when we only look at the big picture, we can miss out on the small actions that we need to take on a daily basis.  You can work up your energy and motivation, and make a few great big leaps forward. However, it's far more effective to cultivate the habit of small but consistent progress.  Think of making regular bits of progress rather than huge surges toward your goal. You can't maintain the focus and energy required for those all-out effort. You can, however, maintain a tiny, daily habit or a weekly step forward. Break big goals into smaller goals, and then into tiny actions that you build into your daily routine.  2. Limit your to-do list.   An overgrown...

PickyDomains -   Risk free domain naming service Social media is all about connection and networking, but it's also distraction and procrastination in their finest, pixelated forms. Help your team use social media productively with these tips. Define the End Goals for Social Media Use Who's doing what, and why? Social media professionals know that without clear goals, social media use becomes a chaotic mess of button-clicking and key-tapping. You have to know what you're attempting in order to know if you're getting close. What are the end goals for social media in your business and for your team? Define these and you are giving your team members a way to quickly determine if their use of social media is helping to reach those goals. Discuss Limits for Social Media Use Defining goals and assigning roles will help your team members know how to use social media in a productive way... that is, in a way that is helping them to reach those goals. For some, social media use ...

PickyDomains - Risk free domain naming service Email has become one of the biggest detriments to productivity. Your team members are spending 28% of their workweek dealing with email : reading it, responding to it, processing it. In other words, an entire day of a five-day workweek is spent on email. Is email really that important? Of course, email provides convenience. We can communicate across the globe instantly. When email becomes an overload of unnecessary communication, however, the burden outweighs the benefit.     Check Yourself First Start by making sure you're part of the solution, not the problem. If you like to communicate by email about everything... If you like to use group emails to discuss projects, tasks, clients, and the company holiday party... If you keep multiple email threads going with multiple employees every day... If you expect immediate replies to your emails... ...then you might be part of the problem. If you have trained your employees that they m...