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Adele Sommers's Articles Display Category|Title|Newest|Oldest Managing Project Risks (Part 1): Don't Be Snared by These 6 Common Traps When your business decides to undertake a new endeavor -- whether it's designing a training program, building a new system, or revamping an existing product -- this endeavor is called a project. It involves people, funding, resources, schedules, requirements, testing, deployment, and much more. You may have noticed by now that projects are risk magnets. This article explains six common risks to avoid to help your projects run more smoothly. Managing Project Risks (Part 2): 10 Major Mistakes Your Team Can Avoid Does your organization see every opportunity as a "must-win" project, even when it's a poor fit for your in-house talents? If so, this is one of several viewpoints that can blind your company to potential problems ahead. In Part 1 of this series, we explored how to recognize six common project traps. Now in Part 2, we'll review 10 major mistakes to avoid (or risks to flag) when choosing, estimating, and staffing your projects. Managing Project Risks (Part 3): How to Quickly Assess Potential Pitfalls Being optimistic is a wonderful thing, but being overly optimistic -- in the face of unrealistic odds -- can sabotage a project's success. Over-optimism abounds when people view every project as a "must-win" effort while failing to manage potential problems. After you’ve identified the possible risks, this article explains how you can quickly evaluate any risks you've identified to see whether they're likely to overwhelm your project. Managing Project Risks (Part 4): A Simple Mitigation Planning Process Getting a handle on project risks is a slippery job, but well worth the effort if you and your project team desire to sleep more soundly at night. After you’ve identified various risks related to choosing, estimating, and staffing a project, you would next assess the potential adverse effects on the project cost, schedule, quality, and features. Following assessment, this article takes you through a simple, four-step risk management process. How to Get Out of "Project Overwhelm" This article offers a simple, sanity-saving approach to handling projects that have not followed expectations, or have otherwise gone awry. It explains how to extricate one’s team from "project overwhelm" by regrouping and swiftly charting a new course. It explores the pros and cons of attempting a last-minute, heroic maneuver versus proactively re-planning the tail end of the project. 17 "Must Ask" Questions for Planning Successful Projects Why do some projects proceed without a hitch, yet others flounder? One reason could be the type and quality of the questions people ask at the very start. This article suggests 17 insightful queries that can expose the uncertain aspects of your project, and thereby help you avoid expensive surprises later. You can thus achieve your project goals with much less guesswork and far fewer problems than you may have experienced in the past. Aim Your Sights at Your Customers' Downstream Success The way we approach projects can profoundly influence our customers' success. Often, we think primarily about what our customers asked for, even if it's not the best fit for their needs. Although it's commendable to listen to our customers’ wants, it's also possible to generate an incomplete or incompatible result based on superficial information. Here are three ways to turn "20:20 hindsight" into "20:20 foresight" in this regard. Quality Lives in the Eye of the Beholder Regardless of how good you believe your offerings or project solutions are, your clients and customers will be responding to "quality in perception" even more than "quality in fact." Quality in perception refers to things like courtesies, special considerations, a caring and personalized attitude, and a host of other subtleties that can lead us to believe that we are receiving something above and beyond what we're paying for. Tips for Uncovering "Customer Hassles" When consumers aren't happy with the quality of their experiences, what will they do? Some people will contact your company to vent their frustrations about what they've been experiencing. But research shows that the vast majority will quietly take their business elsewhere and you might not ever hear why. To help you put a stop to the silent exodus, this article suggests four ways to uncover the causes of "customer hassles." Keeping Your Offerings Easy to Use (Part 1) To compete successfully today, we need to remove headaches from products and services. Various marketing surveys indicate that consumers want simpler products with fewer features and shorter learning curves. Without easy-to-use products and services, it's hard to attract loyal customers. This article, the first in a series, takes a look at two of the factors -- simplicity and built-in guidance -- that contribute greatly to customer satisfaction. Keeping Your Offerings Easy to Use (Part 2) Where should you draw the line between simplicity and complexity when creating or enhancing your products or services? Especially when customers are asking for new enhancements left and right -- demanding endless features and options -- how do you know when it's time to rein in the expansion and revert back to basics? This article (Part 2 in a series) probes more deeply into how to reverse this trend by simplifying what you have to offer. Electronic Support Systems: A Great Way to Stretch Expertise Imagine providing your employees and customers with unlimited training to help them become rote experts in your products and services. This approach is expensive and time-consuming, as it emphasizes "installing knowledge" into people’s heads. An alternative approach is an electronic support system. Focusing on Consistency Part 1 When we aim for consistency in our communications, values, messages, images, offerings, and the customer experiences we create, we take another significant step toward developing long-lasting and meaningful customer relationships that will boost our bottom line. Focusing on Consistency (Part 2) Consistently pleasant customer experiences produce "raving fans" who spread positive "buzz" about our products and services. In contrast, even a single unhappy experience can sour a customer, who may then take her business elsewhere and we might not ever hear why. This article explains what to do. Beta Testing, Anyone? 10 Potent Strategies for Achieving Success Beta testing should involve a methodical prove-in of a carefully designed system, such as a software product, Web site, or automated tool. It's not meant to be a hit-or-miss, cross-your-fingers-and-hope-everything's-OK Band-Aid that you can apply at the last minute. You need to do more than randomly bang on the system in an attempt to find a way to break it. Here are 10 strategies for successfully carrying out the process. Designing Information to Help People Act Quickly Today's media-saturated world challenges people to comprehend and respond quickly to a plethora of visual messages. Our news-based and "how-to" information may be adding to audience overwhelm instead of helping people perform. This article discusses five information design techniques that can boost our audience's ability to interpret and respond. What's on Your Meeting Agenda? Conducting great meetings depends on several activities that occur before, during, and after each event. To help you establish the conditions for success and attain the very best results, this article offers essential tips on using meeting notices, agendas, and summaries. Don't Let Your Policies Drive Your Customers Away There are a variety of ways in which we might be inadvertently frustrating our customers and clients. One of the most common involves our policies and procedures, which may be unnecessarily confusing or restrictive. By being alert for situations that put our customers on the defensive and handling those situations gracefully, we can retain our customers’ loyalty and avoid driving them away. Developing a Philosophy for Providing Value Providing great benefit to customers doesn’t occur by accident; it comes directly from applying a well-designed value philosophy. What does it take to create outstanding products and services that are not only profitable, but also capable of converting ordinary consumers into “raving fans”? This article covers four critical ingredients that produce stellar products, services, and customer relationships. 7 Ideas for Developing Business Systems Wherever you are today with respect to growing your business or organization, developing systems and processes represents a crucial part of setting the conditions for success. Because it’s so important to establish a robust foundation before your business explodes with new business, this article offers seven ideas for systematizing your organization. Tips for Setting the Conditions for Business Success Creating a stellar organization involves setting the conditions to help people do their very best work, and your company’s success depends on designing the circumstances under which people can function most effectively. Two areas that deserve attention in this regard are your ability to observe the results of cause-and-effect relationships, and how well your business can shift to becoming system-dependent instead of remaining person-dependent. How to Turn "20:20 Hindsight" into "20:20 Foresight" By incrementally capturing 20:20 hindsight (lessons learned) and turning that hindsight into 20:20 foresight (best practices), you will achieve far greater long-term success than if you simply ignore or forget what occurred once a project ends. This approach can greatly reduce the negative effects of attrition on a company's intellectual assets when people leave because they quit, retire, are laid off, or were temporary workers to begin with. Setting the Criteria for Business Success Aligning our life passions with our business purpose can help us define a set of "business success criteria." Until that occurs, we might be unable to recognize the options that truly fuel and inspire us -- those that are best suited to our values and strengths. Once we develop these important criteria, we can select worthy endeavors with much deeper insight, as well as choose the best possible collaborators, clients, and employees. How Accurate Are Your Project Estimates? Projects typically involve many dynamic aspects, yet they're often constrained by finite conditions. These contradictory forces make it very difficult to determine with pinpoint accuracy the time and effort required. By using a set of proactive estimating techniques to scope, plan, and constrain your project conditions, you can dramatically improve your estimating practices, reduce and mitigate risks, and increase your project success rate. Tips for Prescribing a Future of Your Choice Throughout history, we humans have tried many ways to predict the future, from reading palms to stargazing. Once we understand what we would like the future to represent, we're better able to take the actions required to prescribe it, rather than simply predict it. Preferably, that future will resonate with our passions, gifts, and what we (or our companies) can truly excel at doing. This article offers a two-stage process for this purpose. The Treasure Trove in Your Suggestion Box Do you have a suggestion box for your business? If so, how sincerely do you consider the recommendations and complaints you receive? If you haven't yet tapped this invaluable resource, this article offers several tips for using the input you collect to actually strengthen your business and bring in more revenue. 5 Ways to Finesse New Project Budget Discussions If you have difficulty engaging in budget discussions for new projects -- particularly during initial client meetings when it can be tempting to make promises that might be difficult to keep -- this article explores five ways to help you gracefully avoid backing yourself into a corner. How Strategic Is Your Business Plan? If you currently have a business plan, how much of it taps your most creative strategic thinking processes? Many plans are static, formal documents designed to impress potential backers, but do not necessarily serve as dynamic, living visions. This article describes seven essential exercises to incorporate into a traditional business plan, or into a flexible slide presentation that powerfully communicates your vision to others. How Can a White Paper Become a More Effective Persuasion Tool? The science of persuasion has moved to a new level of intrigue as researchers attempt to discover which kinds of arguments or information help buyers make purchasing decisions. This article focuses on recent findings in this area and suggests how the research could apply to the domain of white papers. Turning Breakthroughs and Mishaps into "Best Practices" We can measure the success of our organizations to a large extent by how much we learn, absorb, and apply from experience. Such organizational learning can occur either intentionally or accidentally! This article offers tips on what to do with your breakthroughs and mishaps. The more data you can extract from them to create systems that everyone can follow, the more flexible, robust, and effective your organization will be.	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