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Leader’s 3 survival traits during crisis

By | Business

We all are facing difficulties during these uncertain times. However, it is essential to realize the importance of moving through. Businesses should find ways of making operations stronger after the time of distress. However, it is impossible without a strong spirit of the team, mutual support and confident leaders. Powerful leadership is an essential aspect of survival during hard times. We want to provide you with 3 primary traits that are essential for leaders and can help to keep business alive during the crisis.

1. The mission should stand

A mission statement is the most important and powerful principle that edify managers and employees why they work for the business and what their collective goals are. Strategy and approaches can change, however, the company’s mission should stay consistent.

2. Leaders have to stay open-minded during a crisis

The whole economic environment will change significantly as a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic. Therefore, leaders need to stay open-minded and come up with innovative solutions.

The post-crisis environment will require updated corporate strategy processes and business partners for a company to stay competitive. It is the leader’s responsibility to invent a competitive game plan.

3. Determination is a source of benefits

The coronavirus crisis became a major challenge for companies. They are losing their clients and have limited operation capacities. Nevertheless, a health crisis merely represents one obstacle out of many hundreds that a successful company should be ready to face. Other big threats, for example, can be financial liquidity, technology failure, and operations failure.

However, it is important to remember that business based on passion is fuelled by determination. The crisis is not fatal with smart planning and confidence. It can even improve the way a company operates and relations inside the team.

Crisis setting forces managers and employees to be more creative, to cut needless costs and to focus on active improving the customer segment. As a result, companies should become leaner and meaner, obtain a new ability to outperform rivals with innovative strategies after the crisis setting has gone.

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A guide to managing your team remotely

By | Business

For the majority of the companies worldwide working from home is the only option during the Covid-19 quarantine period. Fortunately, modern technologies make it possible for managers to administer the team and all the work remotely without great effort and expenditures. We want to provide you with a brief guide on how you can manage your team remotely in an efficient way.

Firstly, it is good to understand what challenges can the remote working cause for both managers and employees:

 

Lack of live supervision

Both managers and employees can express concerns about the lack of face-to-face interaction. Managers can worry about the productivity and willingness of employees to work. The remote workers in term can struggle with reduced access to managerial support and communication.

Interpersonal challenges 

Newly remoted workers need time and effort to adjust information and get used to new settings. Even simple requirements can appear to be difficult tasks when working in a home setting. This can cause an interpersonal challenge among remote co-workers. Lack of mutual knowledge about the team members can eventually convert to a lower willingness to understand each other.

 Social isolation 

The feeling of loneliness is one of the main drawbacks of remote working. Lack of informal social interaction with colleagues can reduce an employee’s feeling of “belonging” to the organization. This in term can increase the likelihood of the worker’s decision to leave the company.

Distractions at home

In case of a sudden transition to the remote work, employees have a greater chance to bare unexpected family responsibilities. Managers should understand that this kind of distraction is greater during the unplanned transition of work to home settings.

So how can managers support remote workers?

Managers can take some inexpensive and instant actions to make the transition easier for employees and reduce the chance of decline in productivity:

 

  • Establish structured daily check-ins: 

Daily one-by-one or team call is a regular and predictable form of communication that allows employees to consult with the manager, ask real-time questions and express concerns.

  • Provide different communication options: 

Richer technology benefits remote workers. For example, video conferences are especially helpful for the visual cues that allow for better mutual knowledge. Face-to-face conversations help team members to discuss the work, ongoing news, personal concerns and therefore, reduce the feeling of isolation.

However, it is better to use message platforms (like Slack, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, etc.) for the cases when quick collaboration is more important than the visual aspect. They benefit time-sensitive communication and make the conversations simpler and less formal.

  • Set “rules of engagement”:

Regulations of the engagement frequency help workers to stay more productive and satisfied. While some alternatives may be better than others, all employees must agree on the set of expectations for communication.

  • Offer encouragement and emotional support:

Especially in the context of today’s situation, managers need to acknowledge stress, anxieties and concerns that can be experienced by employees. It is good for a manager not only to frequently ask for the opinion and feelings of the remote workers but also to listen carefully to the response. The employee’s stress or concerns should stay the focus of this kind of conversation. With this support, employees are more likely to cope with the challenge and dedicate a better focus on work and productivity.

Help your business survive the Coronavirus

By | Business

Despite the global health consequences, the Coronavirus has a negative economic impact on small and scaling up businesses. We want to provide you with bits of advice on how entrepreneurs can protect their business while working from home.

1. Curate sources of your updates

A constant flow of information about the Coronavirus can make you very unproductive. Thus, try to limit your news alerts and keep up only with the most relevant ones. In this way, you will be able to save your nerves and the nerves of your business.

2. Use your social channels for good news

This is a difficult time for the whole world and unfavorable news is covered daily in all the broadcast channels. As a business, you can use social media and give a positive vibe to your audience. Think about the warming moments, success stories, heroes, leaders that you can share with people and make them feel happier and closer to your brand.

3. Educate yourself

Use this variety of online educational sources to expand your entrepreneurial knowledge about the crisis, finance, marketing and new business strategies that can be tested after the time of distress.

4. Forecast your risk

It is important to create a possible scenario of the outcomes for your business. Consider the worst-case scenario and work from it. What can be the most vulnerable aspect of your business? What measures can be taken to avoid it? How to fix it in case of emerging? You should be set up with all the necessary steps in terms of redundancies, cost-cutting and predictive mapping.

5. Reduce your expenditures

Cost-cutting should be done today. Eliminate any non-essential subscriptions, reduce online sponsored posts, minimize travel, pause any large costs that could be undertaken later on.

6. Do not rush with firing decisions

Employees still have notice periods and can claim unlawful actions if you are not careful. Redundancy is a painful decision that should be considered as the last resort. Ask your team and staff members if they voluntarily wish to compensate a pay cut or explore if they agree to donate back to the business their upcoming holiday. You can consult with free legal advisors that work with employment law or HR about the best decision for your company by phone.

7. Over-communicate with your team

Remote working can be successful; you just need to keep the team spirit. Talk with each other daily, update with news, organize online activities, organize group video talks. Besides, keep all your social channels active and ensure that your team has a clear route through them with a daily plan of action.

8. Explore the opportunities

Flexible working is an opportunity to demonstrate teamwork and test new strategies. Although this feels hard and fast, the advantage of working from home can introduce new ways of working within the company.

9. Work together

We are all together in this. There are no correct ways of doing things and there is no definite outcome. It is stressful, unknown and difficult. However, you should stay patient, thoughtful, attentive, and work with people, not against them. If there was ever a time to lean this, it is now.

Growth hacking tips for startups and scale-ups

By | Business | No Comments

1. Experiments is everything

It is often hard to be right if you are working online. Gut feelings of the marketers usually appear to be wrong, so only data and numbers can help to prove the assumptions. Thus, it is wise for companies to spend time and resources on experiments’ conduction. In a controlling experiment setting, it is their main and the only target to study consumer behavior and find the best method of revenue maximization through the acquirement of new customers.

2. Tracking is important.

Tracking is crucial for business growth. However, it is important to track metrics that can actually help with new partners or customers generation (as engagement rate of social media posts, the website bounce rate, conversion rate) instead of visual performance indicators (as to reach or impressions)

3. Use tools

Growth hacking is based on the usage of handy and modern tools that can help you test all the assumptions in swift time. Surf the Internet to uncover which ones you can use for website creation, automation, social media planning or even persona revealing of the potential leads or customers on LinkedIn.

4. Make it look like human

Automation is a very important part of scaling business, however, people still appreciate human factor and trust business more if they feel a human interaction. Thus, do not be scared to make a mistake or actually aim at making mistakes in your automated messages and emails to create a feeling of human synergy.

5. Catch them in 5

You have only 5 seconds to impress your potential customer on your website or social pages. So make a message about your product vivid and clear. The image and design are not everything, copywriting is extremely important in this catching business. Each copy or caption work towards selling the unique point of your business.

6. Psychographics personas

A buyer persona is a profile of your ideal customer based on real data. However, you cannot get a full understand of your customers with only information about their demographics. It is important to understand things like emotions, values, interests, desires, goals, hobbies, habits and other relevant aspects of their psychological characteristics to understand what and how they want it.  

 

The content comes from the course during one of the Startup Boot events.