Year: 2021

7 Foods That Reduce Stress

Post author By PPM Academy
Post date October 11, 2021

993 Views

Stress is something that affects everyone. Even if you’re typically calm, stress will likely impact you at some point during your life. Along with the mental anguish that comes with stress, it can also cause you to experience physical pain. While it’s common to treat stress with yoga, meditation or bubble baths, there are also foods that reduce stress and anxiety. These seven foods can reduce your stress levels.

1. Dark Chocolate

Dark chocolate may be your favorite food option when it comes to battling stress. It is full of flavonoids, which are plant compounds that contain a variety of health benefits like decreasing the body’s cortisol release. To receive the most benefit from dark chocolate, purchase a bar that’s 70% to 80% cacao. A high percentage of cacao provides you with more fiber and essential minerals.

According to one study, those who ate around 1.5 ounces of dark chocolate each day for a two-week period had fewer stress hormones in their bodies. The great thing about using chocolate for stress management is that it offers you a positive chemical and emotional reaction. Most people enjoy the flavor of chocolate, so eating it is generally enjoyable. Foods for relieving stress are a natural way to handle challenging life moments.

2. Leafy Greens

Foods for relieving stress include leafy greens. If you decide to eat leafy greens to reduce stress, be sure to buy swiss chard, spinach or fresh kale. These leafy greens contain folate, which is a vitamin that helps your body generate dopamine and serotonin. Dopamine and serotonin are feel-good chemicals.

When you’re experiencing a high amount of stress continually, your brain will start to generate more stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. The brain will also produce less neurotransmitters that help with relaxation and create happy emotions. The good news is that eating more leafy greens can help your body reestablish its hormone levels. If you eat a salad with three cups of spinach, you’ll be ingesting almost half of the daily amount of folate that nutritionists recommend.

3. Seeds

Foods that reduce stress include seeds. They are high in Omega-3 fatty acids, which is a nutrient that helps support your body’s cells. Omega-3 fatty acids also provide the support that your body needs to produce the type of hormones that manage inflammation.

There is a connection between your gut and your brain. When your brain is busy planning the agenda for your next meeting, your gut’s brain, which is referred to as the enteric nervous system, or ENS, is managing and monitoring your digestion. To break down food, the ENS releases enzymes that control the blood flow that your body needs to absorb and eliminate nutrients.

The ENS doesn’t think thoughts like your brain does, but it communicates with your brain. For instance, people who suffer from irritable bowel syndrome or other kinds of bowel problems may experience intense emotional shifts that the ENS triggers. In the past, medical professionals thought that depression and anxiety caused gut problems, but it may be gut problems that are causing depression and anxiety.

4. Black Tea

Drinking a mug of black tea can help people recover from stressful situations faster. One study comparing people who drank tea to those who didn’t found that the tea drinkers were calmer and had lower cortisol levels than those who didn’t. Holding a warm cup of tea can make you feel calm and relaxed.

For even more stress relief, drink lavender or chamomile herbal tea. These herbs feature relaxing properties. If you need caffeine to remain focused, try drinking green tea. This type of tea supports brain health because it’s filled with flavonoids just like chocolate.

5. Avocados

Knowing which foods reduce stress will help you treat high tension situations naturally. Avocados are a great way to get the important vitamins and minerals that your body needs to be healthy. This includes vitamins like C, B6, E and K. Avocados also contain riboflavin, folate, magnesium, niacin, pantothenic acid and potassium.

Avocados have been connected to an improvement in diet quality as well as a better intake of nutrients. They can even decrease your risk of developing metabolic syndrome, which is a set of conditions like obesity and high blood pressure.

6. Almonds

Almonds are jam-packed with useful vitamins. For instance, they contain vitamin E, a nutrient that supports your immune system. Almonds also feature B vitamins, which work to make the human body hardier when it’s dealing with moments of stress or depression. To gain the most benefit from almonds, try to eat a quarter cup of them daily.

What you choose to eat can make your body feel better or worse. If you develop unhealthy eating habits, then the food that you consume could heighten your stress levels. To keep your stress levels as low as possible, eat foods that reduce stress and anxiety.

7. Raw Vegetables

Foods that reduce stress include raw vegetables. Snacking on raw vegetables can decrease your stress in a mechanical way. When you chow down on a celery stick, slice of green pepper or carrot stick, then you can relieve the tension that develops when you clench your jaw.

After adding raw veggies to your diet, you may be inspired to start exercising. It can be tough to remain active if you work inside an office during the day but prioritize it as much as possible. Even a short walk will decrease stress and improve your physical and emotional health.

Food Can Help You with Stress

By knowing which foods reduce stress, you’ll have more ways to manage the condition. If you need support or guidance, contact me today. I can help you deal with the excess stress in your personal life and at your job.

Streamline Processes

7 Steps To Streamline Processes

Post author By PPM Academy
Post date October 8, 2021

1,034 Views

How to Streamline Your Business Processes in Six Steps

It’s time to face the fact that business people tend to overcomplicate things when it comes to operating a business or handling a project. Whether it involves establishing work assignments, setting up quality inspections, overseeing a project, or reviewing a to-do list, managers and teams frequently make processes more complex than they should be. If you think that you’re taking too many steps to get things done, it’s time to consider ways to simplify. Here’s how to streamline your business in six steps.

1. Assess Your Company’s Workflow

It may seem unlikely, but many project managers don’t know the ins and outs of their company’s work processes. To improve workflow, make a list of every process required in each area of the business. Do this to determine how your company operates and to see where things are becoming cluttered.

Discuss work processes with your employees. Be sure to ask them for feedback on the best way to streamline processes. Review every element and record the details. Once you’ve documented your company’s current workflow, you’ll be able to spot the bottlenecks, loopholes, redundant actions, and nonessential work. This will give you information about what is working well and where the business is struggling.

2. Pinpoint Important Focus Areas

After assessing the results of your company’s current processes, rate each one according to importance. Make it simple by rating them on a scale of 1 to 10. This will make it easier to pinpoint your business’s important focus areas. It also shows you where you can improve workflow. For instance, in some organizations, creating a better system for the warehouse and developing a way to keep the area maintained may be the highest priority. In other businesses, forming a customer retention management team could ease the workload for the sales associates.

According to Felix Oberholzer-Gee, a Harvard Business School professor, organizations focus too much of their attention on creating a strategy instead of how to streamline processes. This creates conflicting priorities. To resolve the problem, project managers should focus their attention on satisfying the business’s customers and its employees.

3. Break Your Work Processes Down

Streamlining processes requires you to break them down. Make each work process smaller and more manageable. Often, projects experience delays due to dependencies and the decision stages. This happens because the work process is too complex.

Make the steps as simple as possible. Break each one down into separate steps and work only toward the outcome that you need. Neuroscience and psychology research confirms that management is about how decisions are made. Some decisions are more challenging to make than others. Making good decisions when you need to make them relies on your reasoning and willpower abilities.

To confirm that your products or services are working as well as they should be, check with your clients about their pain points. Use this information to streamline processes better. For instance, if your customers feel as though they have to wait too long to receive their product or service, then you’ll want to look into ways to improve this. You may need to hire more employees or give your employees more power to make decisions.

4. Make To-Do Lists According to Particular Goals

It’s impossible to plan without a goal, so be sure to establish clear goals to streamline processes. When you have a goal, it’s much easier to make informed decisions without enduring extensive mental stress. General goals waste time. Once you’ve selected a goal, work backward to create your to-do lists.

Lists are incredibly helpful in encouraging you to take action. You’ll know what needs to be done and when. Lists help you remain on task and prevent you from missing important steps.

5. Implement Automation Where Possible

How to streamline processes? Implement automation where possible. The most popular way for businesses to track and oversee their workflow processes is by using work management software. Automate where you can. Powerful software programs and apps include advanced features that will make your company’s complex operational processes smooth and easy.

When you implement automation, your business will use less paperwork. You may even need fewer staff members since these types of programs to automate data entry and processing.

By streamlining processes, your employees will likely be more productive. This kind of reorganization will give your workforce an accurate idea of their everyday tasks and the assignments given to them. Your workers will be able to increase their focus and improve their work quality.

After you streamline operations, your company will be able to satisfy its customers and make work less frustrating for its staff. Streamlined operations also lower costs and make it possible for the business to do more using the same number of resources, which will make the shareholders happy.

6. Conduct a Test

After deciding how to streamline processes, conduct a test to make sure that everything is operating as predicted. You may need to make modifications. To test the changes that you’ve decided on, assess how your new processes operate live in the workplace. Try it out when you start working on your next project and review how each part of the new process works.

Keep in mind that changes take time to settle in, so be patient. Give it time to work. Evaluate how effective each workflow process is to confirm that everything is working as you intended. Give yourself the flexibility to make any needed changes.

7. Embrace Simplicity

How to streamline your business? Do it by embracing simplicity. Project managers who embrace simplicity will find it possible to streamline operations. When you eliminate unneeded actions, you’ll save time and money. If you need additional support or direction, contact me today. I can help.

Managing Virtual Teams

Leadership Skills For Managing Virtual Teams

Post author By PPM Academy
Post date September 27, 2021

1,121 Views

While some industries were testing the pros and cons of their employees working remotely prior to the arrival of Covid-19, the work option wasn’t a focus like it is now. The pandemic took the world off guard, and today, many people are working from home without the proper support. Here’s what you need to know about developing leadership skills for managing virtual teams.

1. Let Go of the Micromanaging Mindset

Instead of overseeing your team from a controlling mindset, place your ego on the backburner and acknowledge your vulnerabilities. Be okay with the idea that you won’t have all of the answers. Embrace a humble attitude and welcome a childlike interest.

This different mindset will help you focus on common achievements by noticing and influencing varying skills, perspectives, and cultures within your team. When you release a micromanaging mindset, you’ll be better equipped to lead multicultural teams, which are more common with remote work. If you have a multicultural team, then it’s extremely important to be able to identify and manage conflict.

Tap into your sympathetic and empathetic side. When you genuinely care about the people you’re leading, it’s easier to develop trust, which is what people need to perform effectively. It’s important to realize that working remotely comes with different challenges. For instance, if you attempt to reach someone and they don’t answer right away, this doesn’t mean that they aren’t working.

Pay attention to your communication skills when leading people remotely because you won’t have the same methods available. Keep in mind that people communicate with their body language, mouth, and eyes. Misunderstandings are more likely to occur with remote leadership.

2. Offer Transparency

Leadership skills examples include embracing open communication. Create a transparent environment, one that allows each worker to take initiative without concern. As a leader, do your best to form a path that allows clear communication. This step will strengthen proactive actions and encourage responsibility.

When you provide a transparent environment, you’ll remove uncertainties about the company. You’ll also give your workers a greater sense of control during tough times. This will keep your employees feeling connected since they’ll be focused on a common goal. They will also feel like they’re a part of something important. Transparency will help you build a stable company culture.

3. Become Comfortable with Technology

These days, technology is imperative to running a company. Leadership skills examples for managing virtual teams include becoming comfortable with technology. This requires more than just being skilled at using the tools needed for virtual meetings or being familiar with live chat apps. Successful virtual team managers oversee the digital changes in their divisions. They also prioritize turning the latest technological advancements into calculated decision-making procedures and invest in technology that will improve productivity and implement their talents better within the team.

Provide training for your team. Make sure that your people know about any new products or services that are being rolled out. Also, when new technology becomes available, schedule time to train your people. According to a survey that included 440 employees from eight different businesses, an estimated 60% of the companies didn’t offer virtual team training. Specialized training will send people off to work at home more prepared. You can make sure that they know how to operate everything and how to do their jobs properly.

4. Be Consistent and Fair

As a virtual leader, it’s important for you to be consistent and fair when making decisions. Your team will be more productive if they can predict how you’ll react to situations. When leaders run things consistently, employees feel freer because they know that within particular limits, they can do what’s needed to get their jobs done.

If a manager is unpredictable, then his or her workers won’t know what they can or can’t do. This will make your staff feel restricted. It will also make your workload bigger. Consider an organizational restructure. Employees need to understand what’s happening with it and how it will affect them.

Make sure that you’re providing your people with as much certainty as you can. For instance, if you tell someone that you’ll get back to them by a particular time, then do it. Even if you don’t have an answer, contact the person to notify them of this.

5. Develop a Remote Team Culture

Managing virtual teams includes developing a remote team culture. While it might feel tired to use icebreaker questions and participate in games that help people get to know one another, you can make them fun and meaningful. Look for ways to bring your employees together using virtual apps. Catch people off guard by asking unusual questions. You could even invite team members to participate in a virtual run/walk, one that they can do as they wish.

Set aside time to get to know each member of your team personally. Ask them about their families and what they like to do for fun. When you’re meeting with them, see how their weekend went and if they’re doing okay.

6. Make Yourself Available

One of the toughest parts of managing a team remotely is that you’ll be missing out on in-person communication. When you’re with someone in person, you can tap into how the other person is feeling by paying attention to their voice tone and facial expressions. This ability is lost when people are communicating remotely. Make sure that your employees know when you’re available. Be there when they reach out to you with questions or concerns.

Leadership Skills for Virtual Teams

Developing leadership skills for virtual teams requires creativity and a willingness to tweak your in-person management techniques. For additional assistance, reach out to us at the Productivity Intelligence Institute.

Make More Money

5 Ways To Make More Money Today

Post author By PPM Academy
Post date September 20, 2021

987 Views

Evaluating Five Ways to Make More Money Today – How You Can Earn More Money and Increase Productivity

If you want to make more money, you need to implement multiple strategies that will improve your productivity, maximize your profits, increase attentiveness and reduce your expenses. You may also utilize affiliate marketing, offer consulting services, and sell numerous types of products. Moreover, you should create a social media profile, and after you customize the profile, you may promote many products, accept paid sponsorships, offer promotional codes, and improve the reputation of your business.

Utilizing Affiliate Marketing

Once you join an affiliate network, you can evaluate advertisers that offer cutting-edge products, local services, many types of links, and numerous incentives. Some advertisers will also provide custom advertisements, and you may utilize advertisements that feature detailed pictures, promotional videos, and a call to action. These advertisements could quickly increase sales, generate many leads, and improve the effectiveness of your marketing campaign

The affiliate network will provide custom links, and after a visitor clicks the link, the system can automatically place a cookie into the browser. The cookie contains software that may track the customer, evaluate the interests of the client and store important data. When the customer purchases relevant products, the software can evaluate the custom link, and the affiliate marketer will receive a substantial commission.

After the marketer generates many leads, the business may increase the commissions by more than 50 percent. Sometimes, the company could also provide a monthly bonus.

Managing Social Media Profiles

Typically, you should create a social media profile that features several advertisements, which will promote your business. The social media page may contain many testimonials, relevant links, and promotional videos, and you could post pictures that show multiple types of products.

The social media profile can increase sales, improve the reputation of your business and generate many leads. Once the guests view the social media profile, the visitors may share links that are related to your business, and consequently, the new links could consistently increase your website’s traffic.

If you manage a popular profile, many companies can provide paid sponsorships, and you could post numerous advertisements that will describe multiple products, local services, or well-known businesses. Before the companies offer paid sponsorships, the businesses may inspect the social media page, estimate the number of followers, evaluate the comments and examine the interests of the visitors. Subsequently, the companies could determine the value of each sponsorship, and the businesses may offer sponsorships that are worth more than $5,000.

Offering Consulting Services and Helping Numerous Businesses

Many companies frequently hire experienced consultants who can provide valuable information. The consultants could evaluate how to make more money, and the experts may describe strategies that could improve brand awareness, decrease several types of expenses and increase the effectiveness of each marketing campaign. The consultants can also evaluate the needs of customers, and the specialists could describe products that may interest the clients.

The consultants will estimate the values of many products, and the experts can study numerous trends that could affect the clients, local businesses, the prices of the products, and the overall supply of the products. The consultants may also evaluate economic news, competing companies, the opinions of customers, and innovative products.

Sometimes, a business will pay consultants more than $100 per hour. If the experts provide useful information, the company may frequently request new consultations, or the business can provide a detailed contract, a monthly salary, and numerous types of incentives.

Selling Multiple Types of Products

Many businesses have created innovative websites that sell custom products, cutting-edge services, and monthly subscriptions. Once you create an online store, you could design landing pages that will promote the products, and each landing page may contain excellent reviews, a detailed video, several pictures, and a call to action.

The website can feature tools that will allow the clients to customize each order. The customers could quickly purchase multiple products, evaluate numerous types of shipping, view the online cart, and choose a payment method. Additionally, the clients can check the status of each order, and after the company ships the package, the business should provide an email that contains a tracking number.

Increasing Productivity and Utilizing Neuroscience

While you manage a business, you should create a positive workplace, provide substantial incentives and recognize the accomplishments of many employees. Typically, a positive workplace can improve productivity, reduce chronic stress, stimulate creativity and promote teamwork. A positive environment could also increase the loyalty of employees, and an excellent workplace may substantially improve the reputation of the business.

According to multiple neuroscientists, most companies should offer rewards that can motivate employees. If a business provides substantial incentives, the employees could increase focus, promote teamwork, improve innovation and create new solutions. The experts described how to make extra money, and the researchers indicated that the incentives can consistently stimulate the production of dopamine within the brain. Dopamine is a natural compound that could stimulate neurogenesis, and the neurotransmitter may enhance well-being, reduce chronic stress, improve motivation and increase energy.

Generally, you should provide clear-cut goals, and you can evaluate daily tasks, the duration of each project, the costs of the project, and various types of rewards. Once a company creates multiple goals, the business could increase productivity by more than 20 percent. After a business evaluates how to make more money, the company may also help the employees to create efficient teams, and the teams could complete important tasks, evaluate numerous types of obstacles, increase motivation and achieve many goals.

Evaluating Our Services and Requesting a Free Consultation

Our business provides consulting services that can help large corporations, project managers, online entrepreneurs, and local companies. Once you visit our website, you may examine how to make extra money, and you could evaluate many strategies that could consistently maximize productivity, increase motivation, improve the cohesiveness of a team and reduce downtime. If you would like to request a consultation, you can submit our contact form, and an experienced consultant could answer your questions, evaluate your needs and schedule an appointment.

Thought Leadership

Secrets To Leading Others Through Influence To Get More Done With Less

Post author By PPM Academy
Post date September 13, 2021

1,033 Views

Choosing Influence over Authority to Do More with Less

For much of the twentieth century, businesses used a top-down approach to organization. Employees in an upper management position had authority over workers down the chain. In some cases, this arrangement led to tyrannical managers who used their power to hire and fire as leverage to get work done.

Flexing your authority may be a necessary tactic in a crisis, but more businesses are seeing the wisdom of developing influential leaders. Leaders with the soft skills to persuade and inspire are more likely to receive higher performance, greater commitment and longer tenures from their team members.

Traits of an Influential Leader

Some people are born leaders. They bring a charismatic personality along with the ability to articulate a clear vision. People are more receptive to a leader whom they like and admire. You may not have been born with all the traits of an influential leader, but you can develop them over time.

Passion

Leading others through influence involves passion. Your team members assume that you are an expert in your field who will do the necessary work with focus and zeal. Passion is contagious, and employees will mirror the enthusiasm of their leader.

Responsibility and Self-Motivation

In a top-down authority structure, those beneath the leader typically receive the blame for failed projects. Influential leaders take responsibility for their mistakes and work with the team to grow from them. Such leaders know how they fit into the organization, and the rest of the team can count on them to honor their commitments.

Self-Awareness

Influential leaders know their limits and hire employees accordingly. They have the confidence necessary to admit when someone else on the team has expertise. In this way, they demonstrate how to lead a leader and cultivate leadership within the team.

Engagement

There can be a fine line between micromanagement and engagement. Influential leaders are aware of how a project is unfolding, but they do not control every step. Often, the leader gathers information by asking questions in an informal conversation with employees rather than disrupting the day with formal meetings.

A Role Model

Influential leaders provide leading examples for their teams. By reliably carrying out their parts of projects, they develop credibility and trust. Engaging other team members with a hands-off approach fosters an atmosphere of creativity and productivity.

We dug deep into Jack Canfield’s $1 billion mind to find the secret to his Effortless Success

Order Course Today

Traits of an Influence-Centered Workplace

Your workplace culture will reflect the example you set as a leader. An office is a place of business, but it does not need to be a place that employees endure for the sake of a paycheck. Influential leaders develop an atmosphere that brings the best performance from staff members.

Low-Stress Culture

Strong, authority-centered structures tend to use fear and anger as motivators. Employees will meet goals to avoid negative consequences. In this workplace, employees frequently trigger the stress response as they try to struggle with tight deadlines or quotas. Work is exhausting, and they can hardly wait to leave at the end of the day.

Low stress does not mean unproductive. Instead of fear, employees work with a shared vision. The influential leader sets the example, and the others follow. Leaders who listen will also acknowledge the realities of life. Long-term employees should not be nervous about asking for extra time to do a better job.

Empowering Curiosity and Creativity

In a low-stress environment, employees have the freedom to experiment in ways that can improve productivity. One of the most important leading examples is acknowledging mistakes and failures gracefully. Influential leaders know that failure can teach as many lessons as success. Employees in such a workplace are encouraged to learn more about their fields and look for innovative solutions to daily problems.

Positive Atmosphere

Neurological hormones shape the way that people feel. The anxiousness of stress stems from hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. Feelings of satisfaction and reward come from the release of dopamine and serotonin. When employees feel appreciated and know that they are engaged in meaningful work, it triggers these positive hormones. As employees begin to associate positive feelings with the workplace, they will grow in enthusiasm for their jobs.

Growth Mindset

Influential leaders recognize that things can always be better. They are constantly on the lookout for ways to streamline processes and encourage team members to embrace innovation. Instead of dwelling in the comfort of what they have always done, they seek innovation to do it better.

Group Process

In an influence-centered workplace, team members trust that their opinions matter. They are free to discuss and even disagree with leadership. The group recognizes that every team member brings different gifts and expertise.

Secrets for Establishing Your Influence

Leading others effectively requires improving your soft skills and reframing your understanding of authority. Pursuing these changes will improve the productivity and general atmosphere of your business.

Listen to Your Staff

People are willing to listen when they feel heard. There is much more to the life of an employee than what you read on a job application. When an employee speaks to you, put down whatever else you are doing and pay respectful attention.

Observe Patterns and Preferences

As you move from station to station at your workplace, take time to notice what is happening. How do your employees approach the task at hand? Some people are content when working alone, and others thrive with a partner. Employees will feel appreciated when you take these natural patterns into account.

Align Their Passions with Your Vision

Once you learn more about your staff members, it is time to bring them on board with your vision. If you can make connections with your mission and their passions, you will find that there is greater excitement about the job. Rather than employees who work for you, you will develop team members who promote your vision.

A Helpful Resource for Leading Others

At the Productivity Intelligence Institute, my focus is on helping entrepreneurs become the best leaders they can be. If you wonder how to lead a leader or grow in your personal leadership style, I can provide tools and training to get you on your way. Feel free to reach out for an initial consultation.

Brain Hacks

Brain Hack Secrets for Productivity Professionals

Post author By PPM Academy
Post date September 7, 2021

1,381 Views

How do people achieve success? According to research, successful people develop a vision, continue to try after failing and are honest. Along with these positive characteristics, people can become successful in life with brain hacking. Here are seven hack secrets to train your brain for success.

1. Think About Tomorrow Today

Successful people prepare for the next day before they leave the office. Before leaving work, or logging out from your computer at home, take about 10 minutes to prepare for tomorrow. Make a list of the top three things or projects that need your attention the most the following workday.

Sort your tasks to determine what you can complete quickly. Then, do them first the next day. This will eliminate them and free your brain to focus on the things that are more important.

2. It’s Okay to Say No

Become comfortable saying no to limit your obligations. This allows you to focus on the important stuff. People who struggle to say no often experience depression, burnout and added stress. Steve Jobs once said, “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on, but that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are.”

3. Make Time for Your Health

When you exercise, your brain releases endorphins. This helps your brain solve problems more effectively and helps with creativity. You can also hack your brain with meditation. Those who meditate enjoy inner calm, which works to break down the brain’s mental walls or emotional limitations.

Eat a diet that’s filled with omega-3s and good fats. Including these nutrients in your diet will ensure that your brain’s dopamine levels remain active. It will also boost your cerebral circulation.

Make sleep a priority. Try to get 6 ½ to 8 hours of quality sleep each night. Good sleep will help you be more alert and attentive.

4. Embrace Feedback Loops

In management, it’s important to embrace feedback loops. Look at your results and consider ways you could have improved them. Do this even if your results were successful. This brain hack will help you achieve even greater results for your next project.

Become comfortable questioning yourself. Also, be open to feedback from others. Pursue preferably adverse feedback. This is always hard to hear, and it will be hurtful, but you’ll likely benefit the most from it.

Take steps to hire people who have the skills and training to give you consistent and honest feedback. Tighten your feedback loop as much as you can for greater efficiency and speedier implementation. That way, you’ll be able to create a better overall product or service.

Order Now

Create teams that quickly get results and build a harmonious workplace with the 8-step Workplace Jazz method, with behind-the-scenes improvisation secrets that integrate productivity, workplace culture, music, and neuroscience to help your team achieve peak performance.

5. Keep a Consistent Work Schedule

Hack your brain by creating a consistent work schedule. The brain loves a schedule, and when you choose work hours, you’ll be conditioning your brain to prepare to work at certain times of the day. You don’t have to work in full 8-hour blocks if your management job doesn’t require you to.

If you’re working from home, consider splitting your day up into two sections. For instance, work from 9 am until 2 pm, and then, take some time to do something for you or your family. Complete your additional hours toward the late afternoon or early evening. The brain hack is to keep it consistent each day.

6. Know Your Brain

The human brain attaches to the spinal cord. The reticular activating system, or RAS, is located at the base. This part of the brain manages cognition. It is also responsible for filtering out around eight million pieces of information that enter the brain. Basically, the RAS gets rid of the white noise. When a message filters through your brain’s RAS, it is sent to the cerebrum where the message is categorized as a conscious thought, emotion or both.

What messages are sent to your cerebrum? Any messages that are important to you will be allowed to enter your cerebrum. For instance, if you are preparing a presentation, then the RAS will permit thoughts that will help make it successful such as resources that will work to make your presentation memorable.

Familiarize yourself with your brain’s fundamental cognitive functions and harness them for your productive needs. These functions are your:

• Reasoning skills
• Problem-solving abilities
• Knack for planning
• Execution expertise

These functions are the perfect mixture for workplace productivity. However, the brain works best when you simplify things. While multitasking is often touted as a great ability, when you try to do several things at once, you’re holding your brain in a processing mode instead of in a thinking one. Decrease your choices as much as possible.

Keep in mind that the brain’s neurotransmitters drop in the mid-afternoon, which is another reason to start each day with your most challenging tasks.

7. Energize Properly

Brain hacking involves staying energized and excited about projects while avoiding overstimulation. If you’re not excited about a task, then you probably won’t do it very well. On the other hand, when you start getting close to a deadline, you become more energized to reach it.

Keep in mind that you can become too energized, which may harm your performance. Some stress is helpful, but too much can cause the kind of anxiety that will hurt you. Try to keep yourself near the tip of being energized but not overstimulated.

Brain Hack Secrets for Success

Take advantage of how your brain works by keeping your goals near the top of your mind. Document your goals each day, visualize what you want to happen and stick to a schedule. When you follow these steps, your subconscious mind will continue working toward achieving them. For guidance on how to hack your brain to achieve success, contact us at the Productivity Intelligence Institute. We work to help managers gain positive results for their companies.

Increase Productivity

How To Produce Successful Outcomes And Increase Profits

Post author By PPM Academy
Post date August 28, 2021

1,121 Views

How to Increase Profitability and Produce Successful Outcomes

As an entrepreneur, you want your business to be successful. You hope that your bright business idea will lead to profitability. Unfortunately, many business owners can tell you that making a profit can be harder than it looks. Sustainable success requires strategy and intentional effort.

Define the Meaning of Success for Your Business

When you started your business, you may not have been thinking about money alone. You had a vision for a product or service that added value to the lives of your customers. Some entrepreneurs have other priorities as they get started, hoping the endeavor will give them greater freedom, opportunities to travel or more time with their families. As you look for profitability, you also want to look at other successful outcomes from your business. Being your own boss may be worth a lower profit margin.

What is the best strategy to increase profits?

The best strategy to increase profits comes in two parts: increase income and reduce expenses. Both aspects of the profit margin involve analysis of your practices. Increased income can come from such actions as reaching out to a new market, introducing new products or increasing the engagement of your current customers. Decreasing expenses involves evaluating your overhead costs, increasing productivity and eliminating waste.

Create a Culture of Efficiency and Productivity in Your Workplace

Is there a better way? This is always an appropriate question to ask. Like many parts of your life, workplaces often fall into comfortable patterns. Such habits can make the work flow smoothly, but they can also entrench inefficient practices.

One of the frustrating parts of improving efficiency is resistance to change. As much as possible, bring your employees on board for the process. If you allow them to examine their own tasks, they may discover places to improve efficiency. You might consider offering rewards to employees who point out inefficiencies or create processes to improve productivity.

Don’t Undercut Your Efforts

Decreasing costs can be a tricky task. If you cut things too much, you will lower employee morale and decrease productivity. The best strategy to reduce expenses is to develop streamlined processes that lower frustration for your employees. People who enjoy their workplace will put in the best effort.

Employee burnout can become another pitfall of increased efficiency when employers reward better practices with a greater workload. The increased pressure leads to higher stress levels. As you make changes, you should look for warning signs of burnout like frequent sick days and a lower quality of work.

Consider the Cost of Customer Acquisition

From printed posters to online marketing campaigns, it costs time and money to bring new customers to your business. Understanding this expense can help you develop a strategy for profitability and sustainable growth. In the early days of business, the focus will be on growing the customer base. However, there may be times when it is more profitable to improve relationships with your current customers than to seek a new market. In general, it costs less to make a second sale with an existing client than to get an initial sale from a new one. Also, clients that already know and trust you are more likely to buy more expensive products or services from your business.

Provide Value and Meaning to Your Clients

People want to feel good about the choices they make, and your business is one of those choices. Every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to create trust and a positive impression. As much as you are offering a product, you are also sharing a message.

Sharing your story is an emerging way for smaller businesses to compete with larger institutions. People are more engaged when they understand why a business exists and not just what it does. They want to know about your passion and hopes for the enterprise. When they understand the reason, they are more likely to stay connected.

Marketing through a story is more than just sharing a compelling tale. For centuries, storytelling has been a primary way to pass on information, morals and meaning. Telling a story engages more parts of the brain than a sheet of statistics or bar graphs. When they hear a good story, listeners use the portions of their brains that translate language, create emotions and analyze facts logically.

Engage Clients at a Deeper Level

Modern businesses are learning a great deal from neuroscience. Although you like to think of yourself as making rational decisions, neurotransmitters affect many of your daily choices. A growing knowledge of this reality is shaping the way that businesses interact with customers.

Develop Happiness with Dopamine

Dopamine is the neurotransmitter associated with rewards. When gamblers hit the jackpot on their slot machines, they receive a burst of positive feeling as well as a shower of coins. Customer bonuses and surprise deals will evoke this reaction.

Stress and Cortisol

The body produces cortisol when it is under stress. For a long-term relationship with a customer, you may want to think twice about stimulating this reaction. People rarely have positive associations with high-pressure sales, and they will look for someone else to help them next time.

Create Trust with Oxytocin and Serotonin

Oxytocin and serotonin are hormones associated with contentedness and connection. Interactions that stimulate their production leave a positive impression. Offering excellent customer service, a relaxed atmosphere and friendly employees will encourage trusting relationships with long-term clients.

Seek an Outside View

It can be difficult to gain perspective when you are handling the day-to-day work of a new business. At the Productivity Intelligence Institute, my focus is helping entrepreneurs develop positive outcomes for their businesses. If you are wondering what is the best strategy to increase profits while maintaining a positive workplace culture, it would be my pleasure to work with you.

Entrepreneurship

How to Develop an Entrepreneurship Spirit?

Post author By PPM Academy
Post date August 27, 2021

1,080 Views

It’s common to think that entrepreneurs are born and not made. While it’s true that the most successful entrepreneurs possess certain traits, it’s false to assume that you can’t be successful because you don’t inherently have the exact attributes that you see in others.

What makes someone an entrepreneur is less about genetic disposition and more about mindset. This is called the spirit of entrepreneurship. Today, I will outline exactly what an entrepreneurship spirit is and give you five tips on how to cultivate it within yourself.

How to Define an Entrepreneurship Spirit

Before you can figure out how to cultivate an entrepreneurial spirit within yourself, you have to understand what makes someone an entrepreneur. There’s no single “it factor” to point to. Instead, the best way to define it is through a series of traits that successful entrepreneurs have.

The “Big Three” factors of an entrepreneurial spirit are:

1. Self-efficacy

From a business standpoint, self-efficacy manifests as a belief that you can and will perform the tasks necessary to achieve the desired outcome. It’s confidence in your own capabilities and motivations.

2. Ambition

Entrepreneurs can never think small. You need the drive to do more, be more and dream more. Ambition persists in the face of challenges, setbacks and criticisms.

3. Purpose

Most importantly, an entrepreneurial spirit has a deep-seated purpose. Purpose will drive you when you feel tired or discouraged. A sense of purpose pushes you to seek out opportunities for improvement and take risks in the name of growth.

5 Ways Everyone Can Build a Spirit of Entrepreneurship

1. Approach life with unending curiosity.

Nobody is born with all of the “secret ingredients” of a successful entrepreneur. However, everyone is born with a boundless curiosity. As children, we are relentlessly, unabashedly curious about the world. We are shameless in our questioning, and we think of creative solutions to our problems.

Many of us tamp down this innate curiosity as adults. We learn to feel shame for asking too many questions or going against the grain. An entrepreneurial spirit allows you to throw off these constraints and dive headlong into that childlike curiosity and questioning.

In fact, studies show that heightened curiosity is directly correlated with greater creativity.

2. Learn to take smart risks.

It’s normal to feel an aversion to risk. In fact, taking risks is often viewed negatively because it is associated with recklessness or impulsivity. Successful entrepreneurs understand that there’s a difference between taking risks and taking calculated risks.

Build up your entrepreneurial spirit by increasing your tolerance for intelligent risk-taking. Being able to stay mentally agile and resilient is a critical component to success in life.

3. Don’t second-guess yourself.

“There is a world of difference between knowing what to do and actually doing it.” – Bill Phillips

Entrepreneurs are confident in their ideas and abilities. This doesn’t mean that you should run headlong into every idea you have, of course. Instead, it means that once you’ve weighed the pros and cons of a decision, you make your choice and act decisively.

Maybe you’ll succeed; perhaps you’ll fail. Regardless, an entrepreneurial spirit is tenacious and willing to learn from mistakes. Those who second-guess or doubt themselves are less likely to take any action at all, which means they never get the opportunity to fail or succeed.

4. Get in touch with your passion and potential.

It’s true that entrepreneurs need more than passion to make their ideas work. However, research proves that passion is a key component of a true entrepreneurial spirit.

What is the driving force that compels you to create? Why do you feel a relentless urge to develop newer, better, more innovative solutions to problems that other people don’t even see? If you can identify the answers to these questions, you can pinpoint your passion.

Without passion as fuel, it’s much harder to engage in entrepreneurial activities that take a substantial amount of time and energy. It is worth the effort to get in touch with the unique passion inside of you because this will help to unlock your full potential. Entrepreneurs who can tap into this passion and potential often see their ventures succeed and thrive more frequently than their peers.

5. Explore the power of personal connection.

In business, nobody can genuinely succeed alone. Those with an entrepreneurial spirit understand the need for connection. Not only do you need partners in your venture, but you need a network of mentors, friends, peers and supportive individuals who care about you and want you to be successful.

“People power” is very real. Establishing meaningful connections with others helps to give you accountability, access to resources and advice when you’re in difficult situations. True entrepreneurs recognize the value in staying connected both within their chosen industry and in as many adjacent fields as possible.

You Too Can Channel a Spirit Of Entrepreneurship

You don’t have to be born with a special set of traits that magically make you a great entrepreneur. The best in the business all learned how to channel the tireless passion of the entrepreneurial spirit, and so can you.

In my work at the Leonard Productivity Intelligence Institute, I’ve seen many clients who simply needed a shift in mindset. Once they understood the power of their potential, they were able to lock in and reap the benefits of their own unique entrepreneurial spirit.

Actionable Insights

Quick & Easy Actionable Insights Secrets For Productivity Managers

Post author By PPM Academy
Post date August 16, 2021

1,228 Views

In today’s business world, data-driven operations help productivity managers realize sustainable growth. With enough data, you can determine how your company is doing and use the info to plan for the future. The combination is referred to as actionable insights. Here are seven quick and easy actionable insights for productivity managers.

1. Install Data Management Technology

Make sure that your team’s data is easy to access by installing data management technology. For instance, a program like advanced business analytics will allow you to consolidate information from all of your sources into one simple platform that you can view and act on immediately if needed.

2. Focus on Workplace Culture

Keep workplace culture in mind. This can impact how your team performs, which can also affect your company’s profit margins. When people work in an environment that’s happy and supportive, they want to be there. Focus on your culture to ensure that it’s positive and strong. According to an Oxford University study, happy employees are an estimated 13% more productive than workers who are unhappy.

Free Trial

3. Encourage Completing Tasks in Sets

The book “The 4 Hour Work Week” states that there are ways to be more efficient at every task. Quick and easy actionable insights include completing tasks in batches instead of separating them into small chunks. To implement this as a project manager, consider how you handle data entry. Often, managers spread it out and send reports all week long. Instead, allocate a set time to complete it all at once.

For instance, plan coworker meetings so that they are back-to-back. Answer all of your voicemails at a specific time each day or week. Take advantage of automation to send weekly messages. You can also download social media software to manage these types of posts.

The thought behind this technique is that it takes most people time to develop a rhythm with each work task. If you stop and start different tasks, then you’re wasting time returning to your rhythm or coming back to where you left things.

Insight for living includes letting people set their hours according to their chronotype, which is a person’s natural body clock. Every human has a unique chronotype that has high energy points and low ones. About 10% of people are larks. This means that they have the most energy in the morning. An estimated 20% of people are owls. These folks work best at night. Everyone else is somewhere in between. Try to let people work when their energy levels are at their highest.

4. Complete Your Most Important Jobs First

Author Steven Covey covers this in-depth in his book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” In the book, he advises the reader to put “first things first.” When you follow this recommendation, you’ll be prioritizing your daily tasks—work at being disciplined enough to do jobs when you don’t want to. Focus on managing yourself instead of your time. For this tip, consider the Pareto Principle, which states, “80% of your results come from 20% of your time.”

Stop thinking of every decision as equally important. Jeff Bezos famously refers to decisions as type one or type 2. Type one decisions are big, scary, and high stakes, while type two decisions are ones that you can undo if needed. Most decisions are type two, so you should be able to make them fast. When you consider fewer decisions as type one, the less time you’ll spend communicating with others.

5. Be Efficient with Staff Meetings

Most people have participated in business meetings that they felt were a waste of time. Quick and easy business insights for project managers include holding useful meetings. Make sure that you’re creating an agenda and a goal for each session. If you’re not able to follow through with this step for a particular meeting, then cancel it.

Be respectful of each person’s time. If you schedule the meeting for an hour, make sure that you end it on time. You can end it early if you finish up before the hour is up, but don’t go over the hour. Prevent issues from developing and keep your team’s productivity levels high with clear planning steps that ensure you follow through with each meeting’s goal.

6. Consider Working Remotely

Office environments can encourage collective energy and give you access to more resources. They can also diminish your team’s productivity. Team members might interrupt coworkers who are in the middle of a project because they believe that they are experiencing an urgent matter while most of these issues are not urgent and can be dealt with later.

The Harvard Business Review conducted a study that determined when people worked from home; they were more productive. Remote staff members are also less likely to leave the company. This insight reveals that people are more content at home. If shifting to remote work is impossible, consider implementing a hybrid work environment in which some of the time is spent at the office, and some are spent working from home.

7. Focus on Engagement by Building Trust

One of today’s top management challenges is how to inspire and challenge workforces. When employees have a powerful connection to their job and coworkers, they feel like they are contributing in a positive way. This results in consistently positive outcomes for the company and its staff.

A critical key to building this type of culture is trust. Foster trust by:

• Recognizing worker excellence
• Assigning challenging jobs that are possible to achieve
• Giving people freedom over how they work
• Sharing information

Business Insights for Project Managers

Embrace these seven business insights to help your teams and company operate more effectively. If you need more guidance, contact us at the Productivity Intelligence Institute.

Creating High-Performing Teams

The Expert’s Guide to Create High Performing Teams for Project Managers

Post author By PPM Academy
Post date August 10, 2021

1,183 Views

What is a high-performing team? A high-performing team is a group of people who are goal-focused, individuals with specialized knowledge and corresponding skills who work together. They also revolutionize processes and develop exceptional results consistently. Project managers can follow these seven steps to create high-performing teams.

1. Choose Your People Wisely

To put together a high-performing team, choose who you hire wisely. Take advantage of professional recruitment software, HR managers, and recruiters to pinpoint the best candidates for your team. You might want to develop a technical skills evaluation test to weed out potential employees who have the skills and knowledge that you need for your team.

Characteristics of high-performing teams include focusing on their size. It’s important to establish teams that are not too big or too small. A report published by the McKinsey Global Institute states that teams containing less than six people are not able to function well because there is less diversity. Teams that have more than ten people operate less effectively, so try to keep your team size somewhere in the middle.

According to research, teams are the best source for developing new knowledge and concepts. Staff members work better on teams, and they support a better range of competent individuals. Teams inspire commitment, control uncertainty, and handle new situations.

2. Develop Effective Plans of Action

High-performing teams use effective plans of action. This includes proper planning and deployment. Effective planning is the foundation of teams that perform at a high level. If your company has ineffective rules, then they are likely to create organizational problems or cause trouble with team members assessing information. Ineffective work rules can also prevent employees from taking useful risks and embracing creativity.

3. Foster Mutual Respect Among Your Teams

Members of high-performing teams are familiar with and recognize one another’s skills and working techniques. This dynamic establishes a powerful connection between team members. It also works to create opportunities for building relations and increasing team productivity. Your teams will tackle challenging projects together, and this will bring about the best results, ones that are derived from shared standards and an overall sense of dependability.

Make sure that you’re setting goals that are designed to help your team function better and develop efficient work habits together. Set attainable goals that are specific. That way, your team will know what they need to accomplish, increasing their chances of being successful.

4. Make Sure that Your Team Engages in Open Communication

Create high-performing teams by making sure that your team engages in open communication. Make sure that you’re stating each project’s vision and objectives frequently and clearly.

Teams that perform at an elevated level operate in an environment with open channels of communication between themselves and their leaders. These teams welcome and use constructive feedback. Be open to receiving feedback about how you’re running a project.

Research shows that teams who work together to accomplish a common objective typically work five times better than other employees.

ORDER COURSE TODAY

5. Maintain a Team Dynamic in Every Situation

When you’re speaking to your team, be sure to address the group as a team. Don’t place blame on individual members. If a staff member remains in a work environment where he or she frequently receives the blame for team failures, then this will create employment dissatisfaction, which can impede productivity. It’s important to establish an environment with shared responsibility.

If a deadline or a goal is missed, then discuss the situation with your team members as a collective instead of individual members. Maintain the collective mindset for your team, whether they’ve outperformed your expectations or fallen short.

Foster a work atmosphere that is psychologically safe for your employees. This includes holding sessions specifically for feedback, offering advanced training, and helping people develop their problem-solving skills. A psychologically safe atmosphere encourages people to get rid of their work personality and just be themselves, complete with human interactions and authenticity.

6. Empower Your Team

When work teams are empowered, they take on an enhanced sense of ownership. This makes it easier and more likely for them to develop new skills. It also increases their personal interest in what they’re working on, encouraging them to make decisions about how to proceed. Aim to create balance in your teams so that there are boundaries, but people also feel like they have the power to make decisions.

Consider structuring your team around organizational culture. This type of culture helps you attain certain goals by inspiring your team members to embody desired behaviors, work ethics, and a collective attitude.

While it’s tough to give organizational culture an exact description, it includes elements like:

• Employee incentives
• Creating a shared sense of action and resolve
• Codes of conduct
• Work habits and emotional reactions
• A company’s story and how people are a part of it

A company’s culture is constantly changing. This makes it a challenge to evolve under a formal program. Implement organizational culture as the foundational structure in which you and your teamwork together.

7. Help Underperforming Team Members Improve

Characteristics of high-performing teams include holding one-on-one sessions with each member to make sure that they are performing to the level that your team requires. Provide development steps when needed. When teams are high-performing, it is because of the people. It’s important for each member of your team to perform equally to achieve goals. If you have someone who isn’t pulling their weight, then this will impact the dynamic of your team. In time, it will cause your company to lose business.

High-Performing Teams Require Nurturing

With these seven tips, you’ll be able to create a team that works together, one with good work habits and high productivity. For additional support and direction, reach out to us at the Productivity Intelligence Institute.