How Managing a Startup is Different than Managing an Established Company

Jun 15, 2017 by Guest blogger

managing a startup

If you’ve worked in the corporate world for a while but are entertaining the idea of starting your own company, then congratulations! Starting your own company may be a daunting prospect, but it can also be very rewarding. There are a few ways in which managing a startup is probably different from your previous experiences…

In one study about startups people were asked the what’s the best way to learn more about entrepreneurship and just over half (51%) answered, “Start a company.” While there’s absolutely no substitute for direct experience, it’s still best to do some research before diving into creating a startup.

You may have significant experience working in business, or even managing a large team of people, but that experience doesn’t always translate perfectly. To illustrate this point, here are a few key ways that managing a startup differs significantly from working as a manager at an established company.

Higher Risk

One of the first things to keep in mind about running a startup is that it’s a riskier prospect, all around. Every decision you make will have a much more lasting impact on the future of the business. Even something as small as ordering supplies can have major consequences for a small company that is counting every single penny.

While this can be a terrifying prospect, it can also be quite rewarding. Managers of startups have more direct responsibility for the fate of the company. While that means that a mistake could be disastrous, it also allows for much more innovation. Someone who is interested in making a lasting impact at their company has many more opportunities to do so in a startup environment.

More Flexible Company Culture

At an established company, things move much more slowly, and the company’s culture tends to sort of congeal. Once the culture has set, it’s difficult for anyone, even high-ranking executives, to shift that culture. Meanwhile, at a startup, the company’s culture is much more fluid. As the manager of a startup, you have more leverage to define the company’s culture, and its habits for everything from effective communication to hot to cut costs when running a start up business. You can define goals, traditions, and the way people interact with each other.

More Experimentation

When a company has been around a while, it tends to develop its own patterns of getting things done, and those patterns don’t often change. After all, once they have spent so much time figuring out how to accomplish their tasks, why change from a proven method? It works, so why rock the boat?

The counterargument is that sometimes, the established way isn’t always the best way. Sure, it will work, but is it really the most effective option? An established company will have its own workflow management system in place while startups have the agility to try out and switch between different systems and find out what really works the best for them.

Increased Hiring Involvement

The manager of a startup will have much more direct involvement in the hiring process, or even be the one resposible for hiring from reaching out to sealing the deal. Even when it comes to positions not directly related to their areas of focus, in a small startup, everyone’s opinion is valuable. After all, even if their work does not intersect directly with the new hire’s, each new person brought in makes up a significant portion of the business.

When hiring at a startup, there’s also a good chance that each hire will eventually become a manager or team lead as the company grows. That means that your hires will have much more direct impact on the company’s success and culture moving forward. At a larger company, there’s even a chance that all the hiring will be done by a large committee. There’s a lot more responsibility over the hiring process at a startup.

Lewis Robinson is a business consultant specialized in social media marketing, CRM, and sales. He has managed two startups and currently freelances as a writer and consultant.

10 Effective Ways to Increase Productivity Using Technology

Jun 6, 2017 by Guest blogger

Increase Productivity Using Technology

Any business that succeeds in today’s world is most definitely using technology to increase productivity. If used correctly, technology can make every task simpler, faster and easier to execute – or even execute the task for you.

Here are 10 effective ways to increase productivity using technology – all of which you can implement in your company today:

#1 Have 24/7 Access to Important Information

In a secure way, create a cloud system that allows your employees to gain access to important files to make updates, add files or check on something in your team chat wherever they are in the world. With a secure system in place, you can have quite an advantage since your employees don’t have to wait until they get to the office to make any changes.

#2 Make It Easier to Work Together

A smooth collaboration between your suppliers, customers, partners and employees is a sure way to boost productivity while reducing costs at the same time. With the right systems in place for effective communication, file management, calendar events management and other similar new technologies help easily collaborate on any project while knowing where everyone stands.

#3 Be Available

Depending on your business, quick response time can determine revenue or the speed of delivering a project. If it’s essential for your business to be available, set up a system for it. Whether it’s a universal networked phone that rings multiple phones or an email system that connects with your entire staff, creating a universal system can ensure inquiries are answered in a timely manner. Just make sure you don’t create unnecessary urgency and stress for your team by also keeping in mind that team chat culture matters.

#4 Be Organized

Countless hours can be wasted on menial tasks such as keeping track of hours on a project, tracking mileage and even tracking business expenses while on the road. Often, all of this often also means wasting time of management who must approve and file the paperwork. Consider investing in cloud-based time tracking systems that allow your employees to easily log in wherever they are and update their information.

#5 Keyboard Shortcuts

Instead of highlighting a piece of text, right clicking the mouse, hitting copy, then moving the mouse yet again to click paste can easily waste 20 seconds. Yes, it doesn’t sound like a lot, but if you’re performing a task that takes 20 seconds and should only take two, and you’re doing this 100 times per day, it can really add up. It may be wise to learn the basic shortcuts for your favorite chat for teams and any other software you use daily, such as Word or Excel to help save quite a bit of time throughout the day.

#6 Monitor Productivity and Goals

Online business intelligence tools allow managers track the progress of any goal as it’s being completed by your team. This, in turn, can help managers offer reinforcement, coaching and help determine where the project currently stands to make sure it gets completed on time. You can also encourage the staff by rewarding their successes with monetary or non-monetary incentives.

#7 Be Automated in Some Areas

Find the tools that may be able to automate a process so that you can use your employees on tasks that matter. Tasks, such as scheduling, responding to email or even paying the bills, can all be automated with the help of software.

#8 Track Your Time

The best time management tools run securely in the background on your computer and mobile devices and can create a detailed report, tracking the time spent on applications and websites. Depending on the software you do choose, you can set up alerts if a certain amount of time is being spent on an activity or even blocking websites in general. By cutting getting rid of this wasted time, you can be assured you’re maximizing your work output.

#9 Consider Video Conferencing Tools

If some of your team do remote work, you have to give some thought to effective communication in a remote team. Video conferencing tools like appear.in can be of much help. Instead of flying an employee into town and spending money on food, a hotel room and airline ticket, using the right video conference software will help cut down on your out-of-pocket expenses. Most of the video conferencing great for talking face to face, and even screen sharing, so you can present as if you were in a meeting room in person.

#10 Make Sure You’re Using the Right Technology

Lastly, make sure you’re using the right technology tools as some tools can be a blessing while others can be a curse. Improving your productivity can be done if the right tools are utilized, and to so, determine where you need a productivity boost in your everyday operations and research a tool to help fill the gap. In today’s technological world filled with thousands upon thousands of tools, you can definitely increase productivity using technology.

This is a guest post written by Stephanie Lynch, a freelance writer and co-creator of Howmuchisit.org, helping people find out what unknown things cost in life. She also enjoys traveling and spending time with her family.

Bye-bye “All Conversations” view, hello “New Messages” animation!

Jun 1, 2017 by Katheriin Liibert

New messages

We’re always working to make Fleep better for you. Recently, we got rid of the All Conversations view and introduced an animation to indicate when new messages have been marked as read. These updates follow the most recent update to the conversation list.

New messages read animation

Whenever new messages are posted in a conversation, they are shown with a New messages indicator. Previously, this was a static indicator that did not show you when the new messages were marked as read.

Now, we’ve added a nice little animation to the indicator. The orange New messages indicator is transitions into a gray checkmark when the new messages have been marked as read in the conversation.

This should help you notice when new messages are marked read and when they’re not marked as read! The indication is also in sync with what is shown to other conversation members with the Seen-by indicator.

All Conversations sunset & new Home view

We used to have an All Conversations view that was more or less a duplicate of the conversation list, but in chronological order. As it makes little sense to keep a duplicate conversation list, we decided it was time to sunset the All Conversations view.

Since many of our users like to “close” or exit the conversation once they’re done with it, we introduced a new view that can be used for just that. So, if you mark any conversations as unread, or click on the Fleep logo on the top of the conversation list in the desktop version, you will be taken to the new Home view.

web - Home view

We hope you enjoy these updates. Questions or feedback? Get in touch with us via support@fleep.io. You can also find Fleep on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

Productivity Tips for Small Business Teams

May 29, 2017 by Guest blogger

Productivity Tips for Small Business Teams

Compared to large-scale companies, small business teams have a lot on their plates. Being part of a small business, these teams, no matter what department they are or task they are responsible for, have to work together to get things done. It’s important to keep your small teams motivated and productive as much as possible.

To give your teams a helping hand, here are a few productivity tips for small business teams.

Streamline your communications

Communication is everything. Effective communication in a team can make or break your productivity. Using a good chat for teams can help you out here (do keep in mind that team chat culture plays a major role as well). If your team works a lot with external collaborators, partners or clients, then you have to consider how you organize your project communication. Replacing long and messy email threads with a project messenger may be a good idea.

Streamline the Workflow

If you’re shopping for Christmas presents, very rarely will you write up your list and then proceed to go to the shops once a day, buying individual gifts each day before repeating until you’ve completed your list. Usually, you’ll take a good look at your list and plan which shops are near each other or sell similar items so you can get your list completed as soon as possible.

The same should be done for your team’s workflow. By grouping together similar tasks and setting predetermined times in the day to carry out certain tasks, such as catching up with team chat, you can ensure that your teams stay on task and that their attention isn’t constantly divided between jobs. Not only will jobs be completed quicker, the assignments will also be completed to a higher quality.

Get Organized and Prepared

When your teams sit down to work, it’s counterproductive if they are spending the majority of their time pulling necessary resources together that will allow them to complete the task. When setting tasks, prepare all the materials needed for them ahead of time – clear descriptions of the tasks, folders, a collection of documents or give them access to a database in which they can access all the content and information they need instantly.

A great example of this is in the customer service ticket industry. It’s counterproductive if you are experiencing a large number of customers who are asking the same questions or are having the same problems with your product or service. By implementing an easily accessible ticketing system, once one member of your customer service team has answered a question, the rest of your team members can quickly refer back to that original answer if they have a customer who asks the same question. This system increases productivity, solves customer queries quickly and allows time for more work to be accomplished.

To ensure that all information is accurate, allowing your teams to avoid mistakes which in turn allows them to complete their work even more proactively and more efficiently with Big Assignments to check through and correct large volumes of content which ensures the accuracy of the work of with Custom Essay. This way your teams aren’t constantly looking through work, trying to decipher poor spelling or poorly written sentences, common with customer service employees who are trying to write down information fast whilst communicating with their customers.

Organize Meetings

Meetings can be a huge drawback to many team members, especially those who just want to get on with their work. However, meetings are important for a number of reasons. Most importantly, meetings ensure all members of your team are on the same page. Meetings also help to take time to bring the team together, reminding everyone it’s all about teamwork.

Tom Wright, a team supervisor at Resumetion explains, “I try to get my teams together at least once a day to discuss and motivate them for the day ahead,”

“By having a quick meeting, usually around 5-10 minutes, I can briefly explain all the business interests for the rest of the day as well as giving the employees a chance to have their say and ask any questions.”

Tom says, “I have always found that this helps to pull the teams together and helps to make all the employees feel valued. A great way to imagine is to imagine a football coach giving a quick motivational speech to their team before the big game”.

A key tip here is to have a meeting daily, and keep it short and sweet. Usually early in the morning works best, just as everyone is about to get started, a pep talk if you will. Instead of chatting away for an hour or so referring to a huge list of points, devote your meeting to one, maybe two, priority points. This way you can guarantee the attention of your staff whilst addressing the biggest points on your list.

Delegate Tasks

If you’re managing a small business team, it’s important for you to place your employees in roles that suit them. If you know that Person A is great at typing, has great computer skills and is happy to churn out results whilst sat at a desk whereas Person B is less accurate at a computer but is great at customer service roles on the phone, put these people in the positions that suit them most.

The same can be said for delegating tasks by outsourcing some work. There are a vast number of online tools and services, such as UK Top Writers and Best Australian Writers, which are perfect for outsourcing otherwise menial tasks that need to be completed. This allows your teams to keep their attention to the more important tasks, driving up the productivity levels in your small business.

This is a guest blog post written by Brenda Borg, a consultant and tutor for college students and entrepreneurs, blogger at Letsgoandlearn.com. Brenda likes to travel around the world and share her experiences.

4 Ways To Improve Communication In A Remote Team

May 3, 2017 by Guest blogger

Communication In A Remote Team

More and more people are discovering that remote work can be the best way for you to boost productivity. You can create your own hours and get things done from the comfort of your own home.

However, when you’re working in a team, it can be hard to communicate well remotely. When you’re all in different locations or even different time zones, that’s not surprising. Here’s how you can improve communication in a remote team, wherever you are.

Have regular meetings

Thanks to video conferencing, you can all stay in touch no matter where you are. Take the time every so often to check in with each other, using a video conference. Within our team we’ve found that video conferencing can give you the face to face contact you really need to communicate well. We have an integration for video calling in Fleep with appear.in – but you can use any video conferencing software you find convenient for you.

If you’re all in different time zones, make sure you time them carefully. Be fair, too. If one team member needs to get up super early for a conference one time, give them a better afternoon time slot next time.

Use emoji

Emoji may seem like something that should remain in a teenager’s text messages, but emojis can be crucial. Why? Because when you’re communicating via messages, the recipient doesn’t have the benefit of tone or body language. What you could mean to be light hearted can seem quite accusatory to them.

Using emoji sparingly here and there is not just fun, but helps make it clear what you’re thinking. We have built-in support for emoji in Fleep, as well as our own Fleep emoticons to help you out!

Use team chat responsibly

Team chat is a great way to keep in touch with your team throughout the day. When you’re looking for a quick answer to a question, firing off a message can be the best way of getting it. When you use such team communication tools though, you need to make sure you’re using them responsibly.

First of all, remember that team chat culture is key. That is to say, how your team uses the chat for teams, often determines whether or not the tool helps your team get work done. Things like whether people expect immediate responses, whether each team member is in charge of their own attention span – they all matter.

Secondly, grammar matters, even in your team chat and project communication. Bad grammar can cause confusion and irritation with your colleagues and partners. If you feel as if you need help, a writing communities like Paper Fellows or Academized could help you out.

Useful communication tools

With the right tools, you can even further improve communication in a remote team. Here are some of the best online tools that your team can use.

appear.in: This is one of the best web conferencing, video chat and screen sharing tools around.
Fleep: This is a team chat tool that can be used on almost any device, and helps your team stay focused on what’s important.
Word Counter: This tool can help your team keep their messages short and to the point when they need to. Enter your text in and you’ll get an accurate word count.
Do My Assignment: This writing service can help you craft important messages and emails, when you need them the most.
Write My Essay: This service is excellent when you need to improve your grammar. Work with an expert to see where you need to improve.
Cite It In: Use this site to get the right citation for your sources, every time.

Better communication with a remote team is based on understanding everyone’s needs. If you take care of each other, you can all perform well.

Mary Walton

This is a guest blog post written by Mary Walton, who is a freelance writer and blogger at Simple Grad.

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