1) What are the deliverables and when are they due?

One of the biggest challenges for a virtual workforce is how hard it can be to actually create something. For teams that rely heavily on technology and computers, there’s constantly something vying for our attention (email, Twitter, Facebook, new tools and gadgets, etc.); simply staying focused on the task in front of us for more than five minutes is hard enough, let alone actually completing it.

How to fix it: It’s important to clearly understand what you’re trying to create and when it’s due.

2) Is everyone on the same page?

It’s surprising to see how often my team and I are on completely different pages with our understanding of goals and tasks for a given project, even with seemingly clear instructions to start.

How to fix it: Get everyone on your team in the habit of always using one common phrase, “Repeat it back to me.” Or at the very least, wrap each communication with a quick rundown of the highlights, especially next actions.

3) How and when do we communicate?

Much of the problem around a distributed workforce is a direct result of poor, inconsistent or even non-existent communication. How often and through what medium are you and your team expected to communicate with each other, and if you are the leader of that team, are you regularly monitoring what tasks have been completed and assigning new ones?

How to fix it: Establish clear expectations for the frequency and method of communication. Set one clear channel for communication and stick with it.

4) Is there trust and integrity throughout the team?

In a virtual environment, where you can’t just “pop in” to check on other members of your team, it can be hard to trust handing off important tasks and projects to others, which is why it’s so important to regularly evaluate whether or not team members are consistently meeting their responsibilities and commitments.

How to fix it: Schedule regular performance evaluations to monitor the team’s overall ability to meet deadlines and deliverables, and keep an eye out for weak links within the organization who consistently fail to meet expectations and honor commitments to members of the team.

5) Is everyone working to improve communication, feedback and organization?

We all have different ways of working. One person on your team may prefer an itemized task list in an online project management application, while another may prefer pen, paper, and a to-do list, but no matter the individual preferences, at the end of the day, everyone must come together to create a desired outcome. If you’re not succeeding at that, someone has to be responsible for fixing it. You may work individually to improve your own personal productivity and effectiveness, but as part of a distributed team, it’s important that your team share the responsibility for constantly adjusting and improving communications, feedback and organization.

How to fix it: Regularly check in with the individual members of your team to get their opinions about where communications, productivity, organization and effectiveness are lagging, and then get their ideas for improving it.

6) Is time allotted for innovation?

Periodically cleaning off our desks is something most of us take for granted, but it’s necessary working time, nonetheless. The same “housekeeping” processes should exist for the tools and systems within our team. There should be time for team members to explore possibilities for improving the overall setup. Just as rearranging and modifying our physical spaces can improve effectiveness and performance, so can tweaking and adjusting our virtual space.

How to fix it: Every other week or even once a month, designate a “clean up day,” where team members spend time finding creative solutions for regular problems and glitches in your current system, as well as cleaning up those already in place. Even something as simple as cleaning up files and inboxes can go a long way toward improving productivity and order.

Managing any team is not easy, and a virtual team adds additional challenges into the mix, which is why you should always be asking the questions and then making adjustments to maintain and improve overall performance.

What steps do you regularly take to improve the effectiveness of your remote team?

Photo courtesy Flickr user Travis Isaacs

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Maybe it starts with the long-awaited end of a project, a move, or even the reorganizing of a closet or the rearranging of a room.

For me, it started with the re-installation of my laptop’s operating system. Simple, right? But fifteen minutes into the process, I felt relief, “Thank goodness this thing will finally work as it should.” I immediately wanted to re-install the operating system on my desktop computer as well, just to have a completely blank canvas to work on; how nice it would be to have both my computers functioning like they were new again.

I started thinking about clean slates. Imagine if you could make every part of your life feel new again.

Maybe you get back to exercising and eating better every day. Maybe you eliminate your debt and cut all the fat from your spending. Maybe you move to a place you’ve been thinking about or paint your office that bold color that always catches your eye.

Sometimes we need to hit the reset button on our lives, not to forget or undo where we’ve been or what we’ve done, but to get a new lease on life, a new perspective, or a breath of fresh air that’s just enough to motivate us to live our lives and run our businesses in a better way.

Spring is just around the corner, and what better time to make a little room to clean a few slates?

Start in the Most Obvious Places

For me, that was my laptop. I had been aggravated with its performance for several months and had gotten to where I rarely used it, because it was too slow. That meant I was bound to a desktop, which seems crazy to me as a web worker.

There are other obvious areas that need my attention, too. My desktop computer is probably next, as well as my archaic filing cabinet that’s filled with junk I don’t need or even use. In fact, I could almost take the entire thing to the curb to go out with next week’s garbage, yet I keep it, and it’s just another reminder of the various canvases and slates that need to be cleaned in my life and business.

Be Inspired to Keep Going

As you clean out one area, a junk drawer or your desk, you’ll most assuredly think of other areas that need your attention. Don’t feel like you have to tackle it all in one day or weekend. Maybe set aside two or three hours every Saturday or Sunday for as long as it takes to get to the bottom of it all. How motivating could that be to think, “What will I tackle next? What will be the next clean slate in my life?”

And, you know, it doesn’t have to stop with junk drawers and computers. You might need to clean up some relationships in your life. Maybe you don’t call your mom or siblings or best friend as much as you’d like and could make some time to make those relationships stronger. Then again, you might need to tackle your health, spirituality, or areas within your business.

So often, we become hoarders, hanging on to all kinds of clutter and excess baggage that crowds our lives and our thinking. Clean slates are very liberating and make you start thinking of all the possibilities that are available to you, if you only make room for them.

Sometimes I get on what I call my “crazy cleaning sprees” and get rid of all kinds of excess clutter and junk. What’s the most outrageous cleaning spree you’ve gone on? Were the results good or bad, liberating or costly?

Photo by Flickr user John Loo, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

1. Plan your exit. Productivity for tomorrow starts today. Set a time to leave the office and stick with it. An hour before that time, have a wrap-up alarm remind you to start wrapping things up for the day, a great tip from organizational and productivity guru Julie Morgenstern in her book, “Never Check E-Mail in the Morning”.
2. Plan tomorrow. Set your intentions and priorities for tomorrow during the last hour of your day so that you hit the ground running.
3. Set your boundaries. At quitting time, turn off the computer (completely off so that you’re not tempted to “quickly” check your email), turn off the light, and shut the door. Don’t return until it’s time to work tomorrow.
4. Honor a bedtime routine. Two or three hours before you want to be asleep, begin a routine of winding down. This will be different for every person, but it might include: no more phone calls or connectivity with the outside world (unless it’s an emergency, of course), no more talk about work, a bath or shower, a cup of hot tea, light reading, journal writing, no television, and lights out at a set time.
5. Start the day off right. Wake up at a set time. Exercise or do yoga for fifteen or twenty minutes, unless you have another workout routine that you prefer. Eat a healthy breakfast (don’t skip this, as it affects your energy levels for the rest of the day). Set out with the right intention for your day by taking care of yourself first.
6. Maintain your boundaries. Don’t immediately go to your office and start checking emails or news feeds. You’ll be at your computer all day. Take some time for yourself and other priorities in your life, or they’re less likely to get done later in the day, especially after work.  Have some coffee, write in your journal, read, or go for a walk. Just take some time for yourself before jumping into your work day.
7. Avoid or limit email time. Avoid checking your email right when you go to the office, or if you prefer seeing if anything important is waiting, at least limit your time to fifteen minutes so that it doesn’t distract you from more important tasks. Email is a huge time suck; if you don’t control it, it will control you.
8. Avoid or limit news feeds and social networks. This is another time-suck that easily distracts from other priorities. Set specific times for keeping up with the latest news and updates, and then be diligent about staying away from the distractions.
9. Start with your list. Jump right to your list of intentions and priorities that you jotted down the previous day. You were probably much more focused and honest about what needed your attention when you were planning it out with a clear head. First thing in the morning, it’s easy to want to procrastinate or give too much importance to trivial tasks and to-dos.
10. Check in often. Set yourself an alarm for every hour or two. Don’t let yourself get too far off base from your intention/priority list. If you do get derailed, at least you’ll not lose much time this way.
11. Work in blocks. In a business, it’s easy to have a wide variety of different types of tasks. There might be client work, writing and publishing, and marketing-related tasks to be done. Groups these tasks and complete them in scheduled blocks of time, say two- or three-hour sittings.
12. Stay disciplined. When you finish with a particular type of task, like work for a specific client, don’t pick up that client’s work again until his/her designated time comes back around again. It’s easy to be tempted to do “just one more thing” for a project, especially when clients are emailing feedback and updates throughout the day, but avoid the temptation. Treat all time blocks with equal importance, whether you’re working on client projects or doing lead generation tasks. It’s all important, and if you don’t maintain a balance between current work and future prospects, you’ll experience peaks and valleys with your revenue as well.

It’s not always easy to stay on track. Time flies, distractions can beg for your attention, and deadlines loom, making you feel pulled in one hundred directions and unable to keep up with the demands, but by approaching your work with purpose and discipline, it’s a lot easier to get things done and feel great about what you’ve accomplished.

What steps do you follow each day to stay on track and productive?

Photo by Flickr user SC Fiasco, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

AOL today unveiled a relationship with new children’s digital studio A Squared Entertainment and the two companies’ plans for four original children’s web series. Each property will post episodes running 3-5 minutes long as well as related games and content, and AOL will syndicate the shows throughout the web.

Here’s what your kids will be watching:

Secret Millionaire’s Club — Warren Buffet (in animated form) mentors a group of kids on their adventures in business and finance. This appears to be a revived or ongoing project, as there are news stories on it dating back to 2006. The show is set to launch in the fall of this year.

Gigi & The Green Team (working title) — an animated Gisele Bündchen plays a superhero who protects the environment by night. Launching fall 2009.

Little Martha (working title) — a 10-year-old Martha Stewart (yes, also animated) “operates an event planning company from her tricked-out treehouse.” Topics include cooking, crafting and gardening. Launching spring 2010.

Kosmos — the late, now-animated Carl Sagan combines science with space adventure in the vein of educational series Cosmos. The series was developed by Ann Druyan, co-creator of Cosmos and creative director of NASA’s time capsule on a phonograph record, “Voyager Interstellar Message.” Launching spring 2010.

Bonus: Also announced today, The Broadroom from Meredith’s More magazine — “a humorous look at workplace issues facing women.” Candace Bushnell (Sex in the City, Lipstick Jungle) is signed to write and produce cross-promotional magazine columns; Ellen Gittelsohn (Roseanne, Designing Women) will produce; Jennie Garth (Beverly Hills, 90210) and Talia Balsam (Mad Men) will star; Maybelline will sponsor. (via MediaWeek)

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A few weeks ago, I blogged about how I was experiencing side project overload, and based on the number of comments, I am not the only one.

In that post, I said that “I’m starting to experience serious side project bloat resulting in personal overload. I’ve let my side projects take over to the point that I’m having a hard time making room for my paying client work.” I also offered a few suggestions for managing it: the “one thing” policy, combining activities, and finding co-leads. There are also some really great suggestions from other people in the comments.

The tips in my previous post work well for me, but I found that they weren’t quite enough. I needed more structure. I thought that you deserved a follow up post with more information about other changes I have been making to more effectively manage my time.

I’ve put in place a new structure for prioritizing and tracking the time that I spend on various activities. I’ve lumped them into three categories with daily target times to spend on each category along with a prioritized list of activities within each category. Here is an example:

Category: Work that generates revenue (my highest priority category)

Activities (in priority order):

1. Client work
2. Other paid work (like WebWorkerDaily posts)
3. White papers or training classes

Here’s the logic behind it. The problem that I need to solve is that I spend too much time on side projects and attending business development events (meetups, user groups, etc.) while things that would generate revenue in the longer term get put aside with no time to work on them.  I have a certain number of hours allocated to this category per day, which forces me to work on Nos. 2 and 3 if I don’t have enough client work for the number of hours specified. I’ve also intentionally set this number to be slightly over my typical client workload, which also helps encourage me to work on those longer-term efforts.

I also have a category for proactive business development, which is focused on those business development activities that I have a tendency to put off. Activities like proactive outreach, meetings with potential clients, and proposals are included in this category. I’ve intentionally excluded business development events from counting toward my time allocation for this category, since I already attend too many of those.

Right now, I’m managing all of this in a spreadsheet so that I can visually see what I need to do and track it, but I will need to move to a more robust application.

What is your favorite application to track your time over multiple criteria (clients, categories, etc.)? What other tips do you have for making sure that you work on the highest priority activities?

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