by Diana Ramos Whether you're renovating or adding to an existing location, or constructing an entirely new one, properly planning for a construction project is a tremendous undertaking. Even the most experienced program managers struggle with setting proper expectations for construction projects given the unforeseen hiccups that can occur.
There’s no way to be 100 percent prepared for the realities of a construction project. Contractors may encounter changes in site conditions and need to adjust plans, or there might be sudden shortages in important building materials. But that shouldn’t stop owners from making their plan as watertight as possible, and using a reliable software platform, such as Smartsheet, to help them execute. Ensure you and your contractors are hitting your targeted budget by dividing the process into these four key phases. by Renee Coulombe Businesses today need to move fast to stay competitive. But how can today's leaders help their organizations move faster? One way to speed business execution is through better communication.
Here are three ways that business leaders can improve communication without slowing things down —so work can move forward quickly. by Renee Coulombe Business today is moving faster than ever, and leadership must accelerate work processes in order to stay competitive. In fact, a survey by Forbes found that 92% of executives believe that organizational agility is critical to business success.
But how do you speed up in the right way? Here are ten ways a work execution platform can help you move faster — so you can say yes to more ideas, more customers, and more revenue. by Stephen Danos The benefits of building and maintaining a culture of quality can be measured in dollars. According to a 2014 study, companies that emphasize quality, and ultimately make fewer mistakes, can save an estimated $67 million per every 5,000 employees.
At a time when customers increasingly use social media and online reviews to make informed purchasing decisions, the pressure is increasing for businesses to continually raise the quality of their offerings. This emphasis on quality — combined with pressures to respond to changing demands at speed — can lead to more mistakes for companies that lack a clearly defined doctrine of quality. So, how do effective leaders build and sustain a culture of quality — without sacrificing speed? Here are some ways business leaders can get started. by Stephen Danos Earlier this month, we posted an interview with author and speaker Kevin Carroll that delved into three traits that all successful leaders have that help motivate their teams.
When it comes to company cultures, there is another concept Carroll espouses that helps to unite and motivate teams — play. “What I love about play is it allows you to have a level of confidence, especially creative confidence, and agility and nimbleness. As far as play, you have to problem-solve on the fly.” —Kevin Carroll Purposeful play can organize teams around common goals, then motivate them to problem-solve, create, and collaborate more effectively and quickly than before. by Stephen Danos Many powerful business leaders no longer leave their work at the office. Instead, they’ve intentionally embraced work-life integration over work-life balance, and expect their employees to follow suit.
Work-life integration is a more harmonious approach, entwining career and personal activities so that professionals can make decisions wherever they are in order to execute on business objectives. Basically, if you are productive, excited, and joyous at work, the thought is you will bring that home with you, and vice versa. For those who embrace work-life integration, here are some tips and tools that free you up to move faster on higher impact work throughout your day. by Stephen Danos Fast, informed decisions are the backbone of successful companies. The ideal speed of decision making is analogous to an 800-meter run, the controlled sprint where participants need to establish their position and pace once the starter pistol fires. Elite runners train rigorously to shave milliseconds off their time.
by Stephen Danos In order to gain a competitive advantage in today’s business world, companies need to make speed a habit and accelerate workflows, all while avoiding the Red Queen Effect: working faster and harder to stay in the same place.
As pressure to innovate grows, companies need to continuously improve on their products and processes, taking in to account internal observations and customer feedback. This means being proactive and, like experienced chess players, thinking several steps ahead to compete without sacrificing quality. The combination of a clear foundational vision, organizational alignment, and emphasis on speed allows business leaders to build successful, cross-functional teams. Once these are firmly in place, businesses can run faster and smarter. by Stephen Danos When leaders move with speed, whether in decision-making or in running efficient meetings, the benefits can spread throughout an entire organization.
Studies show that leaders ranked in the top 10 percent based on their leadership speed see positive results in the attitudes of their direct reports — 63 percent of whom say they would do everything possible to make their company successful. That’s according to the book Speed: How Leaders Accelerate Successful Execution, in which the authors propose that there is no statistical downside to speed, as long as leaders take the time to periodically pause and reassess whether their efforts are aligned to their organization's overall strategy. Business leaders who avoid these five common pitfalls can motivate their teams to execute more quickly — and at a higher level. by Stephen Danos Today, business leaders have a lot to consider when making decisions: performance analytics and other data coming in from a multitude of sources, resource and budget run rates, and much more. The faster a leader can reach the best decisions based on the best intel, the faster teams can carry out strategies, provide competitive value, and delight customers. Given the stakes, refining your decision-making process is well worth the effort, but to get the process right may require a few false starts and iterations. It will also help if your team can adopt an agile mindset, so they can take small steps in the right direction, giving you test-and-learn insights to make decision-making processes more efficient and swift.
While there’s no quick fix, here are five things leaders can do to speed up decision making — and how Smartsheet can set teams up for repeatable success. |
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