Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing ~ Helping New Teams Perform Effectively, Quickly

Effective teamwork is essential in today’s world, but as you’ll know from the teams you have led or belonged to, you can’t expect a new team to perform exceptionally from the very outset. Team formation takes time, and usually follows some easily recognizable stages, as the team journeys from being a group of strangers to becoming a united team with a common goal.

Whether your team is a temporary working group or a newly-formed, permanent team, by understanding these stages you will be able to help it quickly become productive.

Understanding the Theory

Psychologist Bruce Tuckman first came up with the memorable phrase “forming, storming, norming and performing” back in 1965. He used it to describe the path to high-performance that most teams follow. Later, he added a fifth stage that he called “adjourning” (and others often call “mourning” – it rhymes better!)

Teams initially go through a “forming”stage in which members are positive and polite. Some members are anxious, as they haven’t yet worked out exactly what work the team will involve. Others are simply excited about the task ahead. As leader, you play a dominant role at this stage: other members’ roles and responsibilities are less clear.

This stage is usually fairly short, and may only last for the single meeting at which people are introduced to one-another. At this stage there may be discussions about how the team will work, which can be frustrating for some members who simply want to get on with the team task.

Soon, reality sets in and your team moves into a “storming” phase. Your authority may be challenged as others jockey for position and their roles are clarified. The ways of working start to be defined and, as leader, you must be aware that some members may feel overwhelmed by how much there is to do, or uncomfortable with the approach being used. Some may react by questioning how worthwhile the goal of the team is, and by resisting taking on tasks. This is the stage when many teams fail, and even those that stick with the task may feel that they are on an emotional roller coaster, as they try to focus on the job in hand without the support of established processes or relationships with their colleagues.

Gradually, the team moves into a“norming” stage, as a hierarchy is established. Team members come to respect your authority as a leader, and others show leadership in specific areas.

Now that the team members know each other better, they may be socializing together, and they are able to ask each other for help and provide constructive criticism. The team develops a stronger commitment to the team goal, and you start to see good progress towards it.

There is often a prolonged overlap between storming and norming behavior: As new tasks come up, the team may lapse back into typical storming stage behavior, but this eventually dies out.

When the team reaches the “performing”stage, hard work leads directly to progress towards the shared vision of their goal, supported by the structures and processes that have been set up. Individual team members may join or leave the team without affecting the performing culture.

As leader, you are able to delegate much of the work and can concentrate on developing team members. Being part of the team at this stage feels “easy” compared with earlier on.

Project teams exist only for a fixed period, and even permanent teams may be disbanded through organizational restructuring. As team leader, your concern is both for the team’s goal and the team members. Breaking up a team can be stressful for all concerned and the“adjourning” or “mourning” stage is important in reaching both team goal and personal conclusions.

The break up of the team can be hard for members who like routine or who have developed close working relationships with other team members, particularly if their future roles or even jobs look uncertain.

Using the Tool

As a team leader, your aim is to help your team reach and sustain high performance as soon as possible. To do this, you will need to change your approach at each stage. The steps below will help ensure you are doing the right thing at the right time.

Identify which stage of the team development your team is at from the descriptions above.Now consider what needs to be done to move towards the Performing stage, and what you can do to help the team do that effectively. The table below (Figure 1) helps you understand your role at each stage, and think about how to move the team forward.Schedule regular reviews of where your teams are, and adjust your 
behavior and leadership approach to suit the stage your team has 
reached. 

Figure 01: Leadership Activities at Different Group Formation Stages

Forming
Direct the team and establish objectives clearly. (A good way of doing this is to negotiate a team charter.)

Storming
Establish process and structure, and work to smooth conflict and build good relationships between team members. Generally provide support, especially to those team members who are less secure. Remain positive and firm in the face of challenges to your leadership or the team’s goal. Perhaps explain the “forming, storming, norming and performing” idea so that people understand why conflict’s occurring, and understand that things will get better in the future. And consider teaching assertiveness and conflict resolution skills where these are necessary.

Norming
Step back and help the team take responsibility for progress towards the goal. This is a good time to arrange a social, or a team-building event.

Performing
Delegate as far as you sensibly can. Once the team has achieved high performance, you should aim to have as “light a touch” as possible. You will now be able to start focusing on other goals and areas of work.

Adjourning
When breaking up a team, take the time to celebrate its achievements. After all, you may well work with some of your people again, and this will be much easier if people view past experiences positively.

Tip 1:
Make sure that you leave plenty of time in your schedule to coach team members through the “Forming”, “Storming” and “Norming” stages.

Tip 2:
Think about how much progress you should expect towards the goal and by when, and measure success against that. Remember that you’ve got to go through the “Forming”, “Storming” and “Norming” stages before the team starts “Performing”, and that there may not be much progress during this time. Communicating progress against appropriate targets is important if your team’s members are to feel that what they’re going through is worth while. Without such targets, they can feel that, “Three weeks have gone by and we’ve still not got anywhere”.

Tip 3:
Not all teams and situations will behave in this way, however many will – use this approach, but don’t try to force situations to fit it. And make sure that people don’t use knowledge of the “storming” stage as a license for boorish behavior.

Key Points:

Teams are formed because they can achieve far more than their individual members can on their own, and while being part of a high-performing team can be fun, it can take patience and professionalism to get to that stage.

Effective team leaders can accelerate that process and reduce the difficulties that team members experience by understanding what they need to do as their team moves through the stages from forming to storming, norming and, finally, performing.

Team Management Skills ~ The core skills needed to manage your team

So you’ve just got a new job as a manager or supervisor. Congratulations! Or, maybe you’ve just been given the task of pulling a new team together. What a challenge!

Either way, whether your team exists already, or whether it’s your responsibility to create it, what do you do next?

This article looks at some of the key things that team managers need to do if their team is to thrive and succeed. These range from choosing the right people and deciding who does what, to communicating with, developing and motivating people. It also covers some of the most common pitfalls to be avoided.

 

First Things First
But before that, some definitions are useful. What IS management, exactly? And how does it differ from leadership?

A good starting point is the Warren G. Bennis quote that “Leaders do the right things, while managers do things right.” What this means is that leadership involves setting direction, communicating that vision passionately to those they work with, and helping the people they lead understand and commit to that vision. Managers, on the other hand, are responsible for ensuring that the vision is implemented efficiently and successfully.

Of course, these two roles overlap considerably – and what’s best is when you fulfill both roles. However, the focus here is on the specific skills and responsibilities of managers, and the tools available to them. (For more on leadership, see our leadership section.) After all, there’s no point energizing people to work towards a fabulous vision of the future, only to fall flat on your face when it comes to implementation.

Who do you need in your team?

The top priority for team managers is delegation. No matter how skilled you are, you’re just one person, while your team may be made up of many people. So it is absolutely essential that you have the right people on your team and delegate as much as possible to them.

Successful delegation starts with matching people and tasks, so you need first to understand fully what the team’s role and goals are. Only then will you be in a position to analyze the skills, experience and competencies within your team, and start matching people to tasks. Read our article on task allocation for more detail on how to go about this, and how to deal with real-world challenges, such as managing the gaps and overlaps between team members’ skill sets.

If you’ve had to bring in a substantial number of new people, read our article on forming, norming, storming and performing to understand the stages you can expect the team to go through on the road to successful performance.

Note:
Many new managers and supervisors reading this article will be taking over the management of an existing team rather than bringing together a new one. However, it’s worth considering how you would put together your ideal team if you had the opportunity, so you fully understand the issues you may face.

Briefing your team

Now that you’ve got your team together, you need to make sure that they’re as clear as you are about what you’re all there for. In the book Monday Morning Mentoring, a wise coach advises a young manager that he must always know what the “main thing” is that his team are working to achieve, and should focus closely on this so that they all “keep the main thing the main thing”.

A good way of doing this is by putting together a team charter which sets out the purpose of the team and how it will work. Not only does this help you get your team off to a great start, it can also be useful in bringing the team back on track if it’s veering off course.

Motivating your team

Another key duty you have as a manager is to motivate team members. Our article on Theory X and Theory Y explains two very different approaches to motivation. Find out more about the aspects of motivating other people that you can improve on with our How Good Are Your Motivation Skills? quiz.

Whatever approach you prefer to adopt, you also need to bear in mind that different people have different needs when it comes to motivation. Some individuals are highly self-motivated, while others will under-perform without managerial input. Use our article on Pygmalion Motivation to understand how to motivate these different groups.

Developing your team

Teams are made up of individuals who are all at different stages of their careers. Some may find the tasks you’ve allocated to them are challenging, and they may need support. Others may be “old hands” at what they’re doing, and may be looking for opportunities to stretch their skills. Either way, your responsibility as a manager is to develop all of your people.

Your skills in this aspect of management will define your long-term success as a manager. If you can help team members to become better at what they do, you will soon become known as a manager that others want to work for, and you’ll be making a great contribution to your organization too.

The most effective way of doing this is to ensure that you give regular feedback to members of your team on their work. Many of us are nervous of giving feedback, especially when it has to be negative. However, if you give and receive feedback regularly, everyone will come to benefit from improved performance.

Beyond this, our article on Understanding Developmental Needs will help you develop individual team members, and maximize their performance.

Communicating and working with your team – and with others

Communication skills are essential for success in almost any role, but there are particular skills and techniques which you’ll use more as a manager than you needed to when you were a regular “worker”. These fall under two headings: Communicating and working with those within your team; and Communicating and working with people outside your team. We’ll look at each in turn.

Communicating and working with your team

As the team manager, you’re likely to be chairing a number of meetings involving your team, including regular sessions as well as one-off meetings. Meeting of all kinds, and regular ones in particular, are notorious for their capacity to waste people’s time, so the skill of running effective meetings is well worth mastering.

Many meetings include brainstorming sessions, and as team manager, you’ll often have to act as moderator, so you’ll need to be comfortable with how to do this. There’s more to it than simply coming up with creative ideas, as you do when you’re just a regular participant in such a session. Read our article to find out what to do.

Another important skill for managers – and others – to master is active listening. When you’re in charge, it can be easy to think that you know what others are going to say, or that listening is less important because you’ve thought of a solution anyway. Don’t fall into this trap. Most good managers are active listeners: It helps them avoid time waster through misunderstandings, and it builds good relationships within the team.

Communicating and working with others

One of the most important people you need to communicate with effectively is your own boss. Take time to understand fully what your boss wants from you and your team. If you know exactly what he or she likes, and how he or she prefers it to be delivered, you’ll be better able to meet with his or her approval.

Don’t be afraid to ask your boss to coach or mentor you: You can usually learn a lot from your boss, but he or she may not be proactive about offering this. If you’re approaching your boss for advice, make sure you’ve thought things through as far as you can. Introduce the subject with a summary of this thinking, and then say where you need help.

Also, as a manager, part of your job is to look after your team and protect it from unreasonable pressure. Learn skills like assertiveness and win-win negotiation so that you can either turn work away, or negotiate additional resources.

Another part of your job is to manage the way your team interacts with other groups. Use stakeholder analysis to identify the groups you deal with, so that you can identify what they can do for you and what they want from you.

Managing discipline

However much you hope you won’t ever have to do it, and however much feedback you give, there comes a time in most managers’ careers when they have to discipline an employee. Discipline may be subtly different from basic feedback because it doesn’t always relate specifically to the employee’s work. You can give feedback on their phone manner, for example, but handling problems with timekeeping or personal grooming can need a different approach.

Obvious breaches of the law or of company policy are easy to identify and deal with. But what of other situations? On one hand you don’t want to feel or seem petty. On the other hand, you can’t let things go that should be dealt with.

Use these rules-of-thumb to help you decide whether you need to take action. If the answer to any is yes, then you need to arrange a time to speak to the employee in private.

Does the issue affect the quality of the employee’s deliverable to the client (internal or external)?
A graphic designer regularly only gets in to work late, although he stays late to make up for this. Customers are sometimes frustrated by not being able to get through to him at the start of the day when he’s working on rush jobs. 
Does the issue adversely impact the cohesiveness of the team?
Individual designers largely work on their own projects with few meetings between design team members, so cohesiveness is not impacted. However people are noticing his lack of punctuality, and other people’s timekeeping is beginning to slip. 
Does the issue unnecessarily undermine the interests of other individuals in the team?
The designer sitting next to the latecomer is unhappy that she has to field calls from clients before he reaches the office, and is unable to give a firm answer to the question “When will he be in?”The design team manager decides to speak to the latecomer because of the impact on his co-worker. They agree that coming in to work late is not a problem (he has a long commute, with heavy traffic en route) but that he will commit to being in by 9.30am every day to reduce the number of calls his co-worker has to field, and also give her a fixed time to give clients. He will also work late to make up time.

When you are faced with a potential discipline issue, take the time you need to gather information about the situation, then decide what you’re going to do and act. Discipline issues rarely go away of their own accord, and they usually get worse, often causing considerable unhappiness and resentment amongst other team members.

Traps to Avoid

The following pitfalls are common ones that managers fall into. Take care to avoid them!

Thinking that you can rely on your existing job knowledge and technical skills to succeed as a manager. It is essential that you develop management and people skills.Failing to consult regularly with your boss, in a misguided attempt to show that you’re competent and can cope on your own. However, when you approach your boss, make sure you’ve thought the issue through, and have some ideas as to how the problem can be solved.Embarrassing your boss, or letting him or her get a nasty surprise. Follow the “no surprises” rule.Doing anything that requires your boss to defend you to others. This will cost your boss in terms of political capital or “loss of face” with his or peers and superiors, and it makes him or her look bad for not “nipping the problem in the bud.”Failing to talk to your customers (whether internal or external) about what they want from you and your team, and failing to act on this.Using your authority inappropriately. Make sure that everything you ask people to do is in the interests of the organization.

Many of these points may sound common sense, however it’s incredibly easy to make these mistakes in the rush of everyday managerial life.

Key Points:

When you move from being a worker to a line manager, you need to develop a new set of skills, and make use of new tools and techniques. These will help you with the key management areas of organizing, motivating, developing and communicating with your team.

You also need to learn specific time management techniques relevant to your role as a manager. It can be helpful, too, for you to understand the different managerial styles that are commonly found so that you understand where your natural approach lies, and can work best to improve on this.

Most Essential Social Media Tools For Today’s Entrepreneurs

Juggling so many tasks can be daunting and lead to a lot of stress. So if you’re an entrepreneur and you want to become more efficient, productive and successful, there are tools that can help you track all possible social media data. Most are easy to use if you take the time to learn them, and many have both free and for-fee versions, the latter offering more detail. Take a look at the list of tools below.

1. Buffer is a great platform and app to find and schedule content on all social media platforms. You can also view analytics, shorten links, create schedules and reshare messages that have already been shared before. This makes building up your brand and company on social media extremely easy.
2. Asana is a free project-management tool that allows teams to communicate without email, in one central location. Because many work with virtual teams, this is a great tool to stay in touch.
3. Most people already know about Google Drive, but Chromebooks and ability to convert and edit Microsoft Office documents make it (and accompanying Docs and Sheets) a great way to collaborate and share documents with your clients, freelancers or employees.
4. SoundGecko translates online content — like news and blog posts — into an audio file. This allows you to “read” any content that can help you with your business — including articles on productivity, sales and branding — on the go.
5. If you are seeking funding for you business, AngelList is a great social network that can help you seek funding and make connections with those in your community.
6. If you need a logo, social-media cover photo, podcast intro, website content and more, be sure to check out Fiverr. Sure, the gigs start at $5 but that doesn’t mean they are sub par. Look at reviews and actual Fiverr gig samples before deciding on a contractor.
7. If you need a freelancer for a long-term project or something more extensive, try Elance, a platform that allows you to post projects and find freelancers that have what you are looking for.
8. Original websites are always a good thing, but if that is lacking in your budgets, Wix is a pretty and simple website builder that has modern templates that almost anyone can edit.
9. If you need an office or just a place to work for the day, try ShareDesk orDeskTime to find a co-working office or open desk that allows you to have office space without paying for an entire office.
10. If you are an Android user, connect your Google account to your phone and take advantage of Google Now, which can tell you when to leave for appointments that are on your calendar, whether or not your flight is delayed or even new articles from websites you frequent often. This “virtual personal assistant of sorts” can help you stay organized and on track, even if you have a lot of balls in the air, as most entrepreneurs do.
11. If you fly or travel to a lot for conferences, meeting with investors or clients, or other events, TripIt Pro (there’s also a free, less robust, version) can help you stay on top of flight changes, frequent flyer numbers and more.
12. NerdWallet offers an array of airline credit cards, which can help you accrue points to fly where ever you need to build your business. Put all your business expenses on a single card — from Dropbox subscriptions to office supplies — and watch the points stack up.
13. Amazon’s Audible/Kindle Unlimited allow you to listen and read several books from its service each month. Just like SoundGecko, it’s another way to stay up-to-date with business, self improvement and more.
14. AllConferences, Lanyrd, ConferenceAlerts, and Confradar – great ways to build a good business is to meet other entrepreneurs and industry colleagues through conferences.
15. If you are looking to drum up business within your local community, try Meetupto find networking groups, industry meetings and speakers. EventBrite is also a great place to find tickets to smaller, local events as well.
16. Pinterest can be a great place to find inspiration for new products and upcoming trends (so you can use them in your own projects), as well as a place to share your products and inspirations as a company. Power personal blender Nutribullet is a good example of a growing company that capitalizes on its audience’s interest in healthy living on Pinterest.
17. Once LinkedIn accepts your request to join LinkedIn Content Platform, you have free reign to contribute content as much as you want. It’s probably best to only post original content on LinkedIn. Because LinkedIn is already such a large platform, its content will get indexed faster and could potentially give you more visibility than your company’s blog.
18. Contently automatically creates a writing portfolio for them based on the websites they say they write for.
19. Think of Talkwalker as Google Alerts, but better. It offers more comprehensive results and more options that allow you to check for mentions of your company online. This helps with public relations and the chance to interact with people who are discussing your brand online.
20. HARO helps a Reporter Out is an email that goes out multiple times per day, with requests from reporters for sources for their stories. This can turn into free publicity for your company. Be sure to respond ASAP, as some requests can get competitive.
21. HelloSign or EchoSign is legally binding digital document signing services that allow you to get contracts, agreements, W2s and more signed quickly and over email. Be sure to check your state’s regulation on these documents, but they usually stand as legal in the majority of states.
22. Going back to working with a distributed workforce, Join.Me allows you to share your screen with another user quickly, for free. All you need is the free software, and the other user can see your screen from their browser. If both of you have the software, however, you can also cede control of your mouse to the other user, allow tutorials, customer service and how-to demonstrations easier than ever.
23. Jing is a free screencast (screen recording) and screenshot software that makes it easy to record product demos, illustrative how-tos for virtual assistants or screenshots for blog posts and product description pages.
24. If you are looking to reach out to journalists to cover your company, product launch or other news, PressPass and JustReachOut allows you to search for journalists by beat, industry or region.
25. Like PressPass and JustReachOut but for bloggers, BlogDash allows you to connect with bloggers in your specific niche to review products, sponsor blog giveaways or build relationships.

Further more tools provide anything from simple tracking systems to advanced data management from multiple social media accounts, and knowing your social media goals and objectives will help you decide which ones to use. Here are a few more:

• Blitzmetrics lets you monitor content from Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube and other platforms. Checks news feed coverage and feedback rates, and helps determine which demographics are most responsive.
• Bottlenose analyzes and provides data from real-time activities across numerous social networks.
• Carma lets you review and evaluate your social media image, brand recognition and message penetration through traditional and social media analysis.
• Conversocial monitors comments and customer service issues on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Instagram. Comments are sorted into positive, neutral or negative categories, and can measure such data as customer satisfaction, agent response times and issue frequency.
• Curalate applies advanced image analytics to social media conversations to help strengthen campaigns for Pinterest and Instagram.
• Facebook Insights is Facebook’s free built-in analytics tool provides metrics based on Facebook content.
• Google Analytics provides web, social media, mobile content, conversion and advertising analytics and reports.
• HootSuite is a social media management tool that tracks various social media platforms at one time with free analytic data. A pay version provides more detailed reports.
• MediaVantage provides real-time traditional and social media monitoring in a single database to keep track of what’s being discussed about your brand.
• NetBase lets you monitor social media or specific platforms in real time to analyze your campaigns, consumers and competitors, and engage or react accordingly.
• Pinterest Web Analytics is Pinterest’s free analytics that provides users with data on reactions and responses to their pins.
• Social Mention is a free aggregator that tracks user-generated content in a similar manner to Google Alerts, except the focus is on social media sites. Also provides email alerts on your brand, your competitors or your industry.
• SocialOomph allows you to follow up on keywords, auto-follow new Twitter followers, track retweets or utilize the many functions for tracking your social media accounts.
• Sprout Social is a web app that tracks content and conversations across social media platforms by demographic measures, monitors trends in social engagement, and tracks customer service response times.
• Talkwalker monitors trends, your brand and products, and also identifies influencers.
• Topsy lets you search by location or keywords and monitors tweets, retweets, websites and blogs. Also analyzes, indexes and ranks content and trends.
• TweetDeck is a service that allows businesses, organizations and individuals to monitor, manage and schedule their social media marketing activity.
• Viralheat aggregates your social media traffic into a single stream for easy access, and lets you sort using various filters.
• YouTube Insight provides total views, their demographic and geographic breakdown and even how long people are watching your videos.

Let These Web Tools (Mostly Free) Work For You To Grow Your Business

Of the infinite resources available on the Internet, there is still nothing better than FREE. Below are 12 (mostly) free tools that can help build your business:

1. 1M/1M offers access to the extensive startup network and collective knowledge in Silicon Valley to entrepreneurs everywhere. This is a truly interesting source for “starter uppers” to talk about branding, positioning, financing or anything else entrepreneurial.
2. Want to merge your brand into the social networks within your industry? Instead of searching the hundreds of thousands of Twitter hashtags,newswhip.com does that for you. This site aggregates the overwhelming volume of topical discussions and delivers the most popular ones to you so that you know who to start a conversation with. You can also type in your name or Twitter handle and see how influential you are — or not.
3. Looking for another revenue stream? Skimlinks will measure and implement affiliate-marketing links not only on your website but also on your RSS, Twitter and Facebook feeds. This handy tool turns links and keywords on your site into their equivalent affiliate links, thus allowing you to focus on more pertinent content: your business.
4. For those startups who collaborate over graphics, try Lucidchart, a sort of Google Docs for visual projects. You can build collective mind maps, flow charts or anything else your graphics-based heart desires.
5. Graphic designers have a broad range of services, fees and (sometimes) attitudes, which is why finding the right one for you is as much a cost to your wallet as it is to your emotions. Cool Text generates free graphics for web pages or logos without overburdening you with the design work. Simply choose what kind of image you like, fill out a form, and your custom-made image will be created right then and there.
6. Needtagger allows you to find a target audience on Twitter based on your product or service. You can set filters for like-minded people in your industry and build a followership of potential customers based on your business.
7. Bright Journey offers a collection of startup knowledge from extremely successful entrepreneurs around the globe with the intent of sharing their expertise with others. Users post questions and the best answers are voted to the top.
8. Want to know where your website stands along a grade scale? Go to Hubspot’s marketing grader and see where you rank in terms of effectiveness. It will measure your blogging, SEO, lead generation and more.
9. While Fiverr may not be free, it’s pretty darn close. You can buy and/or sell anything for $5. From writing a blog headline, generating an “About Us” page on your website, to drawing a cartoon character, fiverr.com is a one-stop-shop for anything under $5.
10. Looking for an elegant digital or print layout for a magazine or company newsletter? LucidPress is an easy-to-use resource that offers drag-and-drop capability, making video, text or photo layout much easier.
11. CreativeLive hosts video classes spanning five different categories: photo and video, art and design, music and audio, craft and maker and money and life. Videos are free and there’s even a calendar to peruse for upcoming content.
12. Of course, no list of websites is complete without the resident Google tool.Google for Entrepreneurs is another pool of insider knowledge with free videos of instruction, such as learning how to brand yourself from Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, and more.

Work Smart: These Business Productivity Apps Will Help You To Do That

You’re busy–you have a business to run, payroll to make, products to refine, innovations to … well, innovate.

Marketing is what happens between all that–which is why it makes sense to get help from mobile applications that can simplify and organize your efforts. Here’s a dozen of supersmart business productivity and marketing apps for the real-world entrepreneur.

1. 30/30 (Free)
   If you’re struggling to accomplish a difficult task, give it your full attention for 30 minutes, then take a 30-minute break to recover and refocus. The 30/30 app uses that rule to increase productivity by helping you organize and manage your tasks and timing so you stay on track.
   Great for: writing content or copy, responding to e-mails or doing anything you tend to put off.
2. Cal (Free)
   Cal offers an aesthetically pleasing interface with integrated functions that tie in your contacts and social media accounts.
   Great for: keeping a packed schedule organized, without feeling overwhelmed.
3. Pocket (Free)
   Content overload isn’t just a clich?; it’s a real problem. Use Pocket to save interesting articles, videos and more from the web to read or watch later. Once saved to the app, the list of content is visible on any device, at any time–even when you’re offline.
   Great for: staying up to speed on news and industry issues. It also allows you to share an article you’re reading on Pocket directly to Twitter, with no need to go back to the original link or to the Twitter app.
4. Buffer (Free)
   Buffer allows you to easily manage your social media accounts from one interface. Share news and links to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+ in real time, or use it to schedule tweets and retweets. It offers a nice analytic back-end, as well.
   Great for: easily managing social profiles with an all-in-one interface (though I’m not really a fan of scheduled tweets).
5. Mention (Free for one alert, $9.99 per month for two)
   An alternative to Google Alerts, Mention ensures that you don’t miss a thing on the web or social media. It tracks keywords and delivers instant updates to help you quickly react, collaborate and analyze your online presence in real time.
   Great for: a robust view of who’s talking about you or the things you care about.
6. Evernote (Free)
   This popular app is a way to capture and organize ideas, links and notes–like a virtual Moleskin. But unlike its paper brethren, Evernote syncs across your desktop and mobile devices to give you ready access to your stuff.
   Great for: collecting things. A caveat: It’s so easy to use that you might find yourself becoming a digital pack rat, with too much stuff. I’ve learned to resist the urge to save everything to Evernote.
7. Dropbox (Free or subscription)
   The ubiquitous collaboration and file-sharing tool, for both mobile and desktop.
   Great for: moving large files around and sharing them within your own devices or with others on your team. Also great for keeping track of and accessing files.
8. CardMunch (Free)
   Snap a photo of a business card, and CardMunch will turn it into a contact. Owned by LinkedIn, the service even adds the person’s full profile, when possible.
   Great for: networking, and it’s especially handy for trade shows, when you’re dealing with a large volume of business cards.
9. GoDocs ($4.99)
   If you frequently find yourself needing to update Google Docs when you’re away from your computer, give this app a go. GoDocs lets you sort, edit and upload new docs to your Google Drive from your phone.
   Great for: convenience. This isn’t a Google product, but it feels like one, because it allows for easy access and updating to any document, including spreadsheets.
10. Statigram (Free)
    This app offers back-end data, aggregating Likes and Comments, as well as advanced analytic, to help guide your Instagram strategy.
    Great for: performance insights into your Instagram accounts (it’s the secret weapon for visual-content creators).
11. Analytics Pro 2 ($7.99)
    The best mobile Google Analytic experience, Analytics Pro 2 has what you need to view data on the move, dividing reports into eight sections: summary, visitors, traffic sources, social, content, goals, e-commerce and app tracking.
    Great for: optimizing your site’s performance. It may sound like a lot of information to absorb, but you’ll revel in the richness.
12. GoToMeeting (Free)
    GoToMeeting has allowed for virtual collaboration via desktop since forever. The app lets you do the same thing when you’re on the go.
    Great for: calling in to a meeting or webinar from an inconvenient location. I’ve even used it from the car.
13. Waze (Free)
    Waze is the world’s largest community-based traffic and navigation app. Other drivers share real-time traffic and road info, crowdsourcing your commute.
    Great for: road warriors. If you spend a lot of time on the road in unfamiliar cities, it’s a lifesaver. And it’s got you covered even on those days when your challenge is just finding the fastest route to the office.

Let The World Feel Your Presence

Growing online presence is no easy job — especially for small and midsize business that are often lacking the brand awareness and resources of their much larger counterparts. Fortunately, now, more than ever there are a plethora of tools to help newly-minted entrepreneurs build their brand quickly and cheaply.

Here are Five to help jump start your online-community presence.

1. Buffer to post content. Content sharing is one of the easiest way to grow and nurture community. Yet, with more and more social platforms popping up online, content sharing can be time consuming, as each has its own style and messaging. This tool is a great way to streamline posting and schedule on multiple platforms, making sure you’re talking to everyone where it counts. Plus, it’s a great way to keep communications going on the weekend, a time when many users are interested in sharing online content.
2. LaunchCrew to launch campaigns. When launch day comes, startups need to get the word out to as many people to have the most impact and increase the probability of being heard in crowded industries. Often this entails getting current followers to share with their friends, family and connections. LaunchCrew will help you do just that. It lets you cast a much wider net, practically doubling or tripling your impact. But how? By asking your audience for their credentials to be able to post on their behalf on the day of your launch. Or for any major campaign. You’ll get that initial boost you’ve always dreamed of — the one you really need these days to break out of the pack from the very start.
3. Unbounce to create landing pages. Landing pages are now a must-have design choice to boost your online special operations. By customizing these towards a targeted audience, along with specific and relatable calls to action, it makes them way more efficient at achieving higher click-through rates. Unbounce allows you to create landing pages incredibly fast, with no technical skills required, making it easy not only to build but also to A/B test and implement the best results.
4. Click to Tweet to foster sharing. It’s ok to ask people to share. But the simpler it is, the more people you’ll get to do so. By giving out a simple, pre-composed click-to-tweet URL for your audience to tweet in seconds, you’ll find that your potential for virality is drastically increased.
5. Mention to monitor and react. Once people start talking about you, the best way to continue growing is to detect these mentions and to reply to every one of them. By doing so, it fosters a lot of motivation for them to talk and mention even more about you, creating a network of trusted brand advocates. By having alerts based on keywords — like the name of your company, your products or your competitors — mention allows you to stay in the know and react in seconds by connecting your social accounts directly to the app.

With these five tools, you’ll find yourself developing and maintaining a clear brand voice in no time. And it’s then that you’ll start to see your online presence heating up.

STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS PLANNING

As the old saying goes, you need to know where you‘re going before you can know how to get there. Likewise,
…before you can plan out your strategy…
…before you even start to think about your media products or event…
…you need to nail down your objectives.

WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO?
In the very place you need to lay out what you‘re trying to achieve with a communications plan. For example:

• Do you want to educate your customers?
• Do you want to build support or create demand?
• Do you want to get people to do something differently?
• Do you want to defuse a situation?
• Do you want to improve the search results for your company/product/executives?
• Do you want to improve your organization‘s reputation?
• Do you want to generate more online or offline news coverage?

Whatever you want to do, this is where you define it.
DEFINING YOUR OBJECTIVES
To fall back on an old mantra from business school, your objectives need to be:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Time-focused

Make sure your objectives are measurable and time-focused. The specific, achievable and realistic characteristics will emerge from there. Vague objectives are a common pitfall. Ensure you can measure them and you will be forced to be ―specific. As for ―achievable and ―realistic, if your objectives don‘t meet those two criteria you don‘t deserve to be writing plans for anything.

One of the hardest parts of this to get your head around is the difference between business objectives and communications objectives. It’s important not to confuse the two. Remember — you can‘t take responsibility for the entire success or failure of the program. It helps to include the business objectives for the initiative in communications plan in addition to the communications objectives. Doing this helps to make sure your plan supports the overall business goals rather than working on its own.

Scrum Appendix: Terminology

• Burn Down: The trend of work remaining across time in a Sprint, a Release, or a Product. The source of the raw data is the Sprint Backlog and the Product Backlog, with work remaining tracked on the vertical axis and the time periods (days of a Sprint, or Sprints) tracked on the horizontal axis.

  

• Chicken: Someone who is interested in the project but does not have formal Scrum responsibilities and accountability (Team, Product Owner, ScrumMaster).
• Daily Scrum: A short meeting held daily by each Team during which the Team members inspect their work, synchronize their work and progress and report and impediments to the ScrumMaster for removal. Follow-on meetings to adapt upcoming work to optimize the Sprint may occur after the Daily Scrum meetings.
• Done: Complete as mutually agreed to by all parties and that conforms to an organization’s standards, conventions, and guidelines. When something is reported as “done” at the Sprint Review meeting, it must conform to this agreed definition.
• Estimated Work Remaining (Sprint Backlog items): The number of hours that a Team member estimates remain to be worked on any task. This estimate is updated at the end of every day when the Sprint Backlog task is worked on. The estimate is the total estimated hours remaining, regardless of the number of people that perform the work.
• Increment: Product functionality that is developed by the Team during each Sprint that is potentially shippable or of use to the Product Owner’s stakeholders.
• Increment of Potentially Shippable Product Functionality: A complete slice of the overall product or system that could be used by the Product Owner or stakeholders if they chose to implement it.
• Sprint: An iteration, or one repeating cycle of similar work, that produces increment of product or system. No longer than one month and usually more than one week. The duration is fixed throughout the overall work and all teams working on the same system or product use the same length cycle.
• Pig: Someone exercising one of the three Scrum roles (Team, Product Owner, ScrumMaster) who has made a commitment and has the authority to fulfill it.
• Product Backlog: A prioritized list of requirements with estimated times to turn them into completed product functionality. Estimates are more precise the higher an item is in the Product Backlog priority.. The list emerges, changing as business conditions or technology changes.
• Product Backlog Item: Functional requirements, non-functional requirements, and issues, prioritized in order of importance to the business and dependencies and estimated. The precision of the estimate depends on the priority and granularity of the Product Backlog item, with the highest priority items that may be selected in the next Sprint being very granular and precise.
• Product Owner: The person responsible for managing the Product Backlog so as to maximize the value of the project. The Product Owner is responsible for representing the interests of everyone with a stake in the project and its resulting product.
• Scrum: Not an acronym, but mechanisms in the game of rugby for getting an out-of-play ball back into play
• ScrumMaster: The person responsible for the Scrum process, its correct implementation, and the maximization of its benefits.
• Sprint Backlog: A list of tasks that defines a Team’s work for a Sprint. The list emerges during the Sprint. Each task identifies those responsible for doing the work and the estimated amount of work remaining on the task on any given day during the Sprint.
• Sprint Backlog Task: One of the tasks that the Team or a Team member defines as required to turn committed Product Backlog items into system functionality.
• Sprint Planning meeting: A one-day meeting time boxed to eight hours (for a four week Sprint) that initiates every Sprint. The meeting is divided into two four-hour segments, each also time boxed.. During the first four hours the Product Owner presents the highest priority Product Backlog to the team. The Team and Product Owner collaborate to help the Team determine how much Product Backlog it can turn into functionality during the upcoming Sprint. The Team commits to this at the end of the first four hours. During the second four hours of the meeting, the Team plans how it will meet this commitment by designing and then detailing its work as a plan in the Sprint Backlog.
• Sprint Retrospective meeting: A time boxed three-hour meeting facilitated by the ScrumMaster at which the complete Team discusses the just-concluded Sprint and determines what could be changed that might make the next Sprint more enjoyable or productive.
• Sprint Review meeting: A time-boxed four hour meeting at the end of every Sprint where the Team collaborates with the Product Owner and stakeholders on what just happened in the Sprint. This usually starts with a demonstration of completed Product Backlog items, a discussion of opportunities, constraints and findings, and a discussion of what might be the best things to do next (potentially resulting in Product Backlog changes). Only completed product functionality can be demonstrated.
• Stakeholder: Someone with an interest in the outcome of a project, either because they have funded it, will use it, or will be affected by it.
• Team: A cross-functional group of people that is responsible for managing themselves to develop an increment of product every Sprint.
• Time box: A period of time that cannot be exceeded and within which an event or meeting occurs. For example, a Daily Scrum meeting is time boxed at fifteen minutes and terminates at the end of fifteen minutes, regardless. For meetings, it might last shorter. For Sprints, it lasts exactly that length

Set Meaningful Goals with These Five Principles

Sometimes the only thing you need to get motivated is a clear goal with challenging aspects. Mind Tools explains how to set these types of goals with five basic principles.

These five principles, developed from Dr. Edwin Locke and Dr. Gary Latham’s theory of task motivation and incentives, make your goals feel drawing and worthwhile:

1. Clarity: Your goals need to be explicitly clear so you know exactly what you’re trying to achieve, and know how to measure your progress.
2. Challenge: Make sure your goal is challenging enough to keep you interested, but not so challenging you lose confidence.
3. Commitment: Your goal should feel achievable so you know you won’t give up, and find ways to remind yourself why you should work hard to keep moving forward.
4. Feedback: Find ways to receive feedback on what you’ve done, and analyze your progress and accomplishments so you can adjust the difficulty, if need be.
5. Task Complexity: If your goal is stressing you out because it’s too complex, break your big goal down into smaller sub-goals.

With these simple principles you’ll keep yourself in check while you move forward. It’s easier to overwhelm yourself than you think, but you also need to strike a balance and make sure your goals are challenging enough to keep you hooked.

Yes, Email Is Exciting. Get Excited!

Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet.

“E-mail is dead, or at least that’s what Silicon Valley is banking on,” wrote Businessweek tech reporter Ashlee Vance.

There’s the co-founder of Asana, the work software startup. Email has “become a counter-productivity tool,” Justin Rosenstein likes to say.

Slack, the superhot work chat tool, likes to brag that they’ve “saved the world from over 70,000,000 emails” (if you assume that every five Slack messages prevent one email from getting its wings).

And it’s not just entrepreneurs with cloud software to sell. There are the young people, too, especially whatever we call the younger-than-Millennials.

Getting an email address was once a nerdy right of passage for Gen-Xers arriving on college campuses. Now, the kids are waging a war of indifference on poor old email, culling the weak and infirm old-people technology. One American professor maintained that, to his students, “e-mail was as antiquated as the spellings ‘chuse’ and ‘musick’ in the works by Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards.” The vice-chancellor of Exeter University claimed, “There is no point in emailing students any more.” The youth appear to think there are better, faster, more exciting ways to communicate than stupid email.

Yet, despite all the prognosticators predicting it will—choose the violence level of your metaphor—go out of style, be put out to pasture, or taken out back and shot,email grinds on.

You can’t kill email! It’s the cockroach of the Internet, and I mean that as a compliment. This resilience is a good thing.

“There isn’t much to sending or receiving email and that’s sort of the point,”observed Aaron Straup Cope, the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum’s Senior Engineer in Digital and Emerging Media. “The next time someone tells you email is ‘dead,’ try to imagine the cost of investing in their solution or the cost of giving up all the flexibility that email affords.”

Email is actually a tremendous, decentralized, open platform on which new, innovative things can and have been built. In that way, email represents a different model from the closed ecosystems we see proliferating across our computers and devices.

Email is a refugee from the open, interoperable, less-controlled “web we lost.” It’s an exciting landscape of freedom amidst the walled gardens of social networking and messaging services.