In this video I illustrate how the culture that social media is creating is now transforming other areas of business like project management, helpdesk and product support, and professional development and recognition.

All of these tools I am going to show you have free versions you can try.

Have you used these and what was your experience? Is this a direction you’d like to see get more attention?

The move from tapes to compact discs was a shift but largely of like kind. The shift from CD to MP3 was a shift much more dramatic and fundamental. This is why iTunes, ringtones, Spotify, Rhapsody and others could have been developed at the time of the CD but were not until the MP3 and other ways to package music up in a digital, portable file were created.

I can’t imagine life any other way.

An equally fundamental shift has taken place related to how software is created, delivered, used, and updated. Instead of being delivered on DVDs (like a CD but able to store more data), they are delivered in whole or in part over the Internet. In fact, many of us use these so-called “cloud” services and don’t even realize it. Anyone with a smartphone like the iPhone or an Amazon Kindle is using the “cloud” to purchase apps, get updates, and read books and the paper.

LegalZoom.com mentioned some reasons why the “cloud” is becoming so popular for small and medium sized businesses.

Today, increasing numbers of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are turning to the cloud for their technology needs. If you haven’t already heard of “the cloud,” cloud computing enables SMBs to access software and services via the Internet, rather than through local hard drives and servers. This method of computing has made it easier and more affordable for SMBs to use enterprise-grade technology solutions provided by third-party providers rather than invest in expensive technology, more personnel and system upgrades. These major cost savings explain why so many businesses have exchanged expensive storage systems and servers for the convenience and power of the cloud.

The article mentions four reasons for this cumulus craving:

1. Mobility
2. Increased security and reliability
3. Lower costs
4. Scalability

We would like to add an additional benefit and encourage a similar innovation within your teams.

5. Delevation
   The cloud provides applications that are securely accessible from any location with an Internet connection. This is covered in the first item mentioned, Mobility, and specifically mentions remote team members. However, we felt it deserved special mention that choosing cloud based services provides a competitive advantage by allowing you to retain the best help, whether they can work in your office or not. This greatly increases your recruiting options and allows you to take advantage of services like us with relative ease as the systems that make your business work are ready to be worked remotely.

A great option to test out our service is to have us research alternative, cloud based options for a software program or system you’d like to realize these benefits for. Learn more about services like these and how to elevate your workplace in one of our public webinars.

At Delevate, our goal might sound cheesy to some but celebration is what we look to create in the lives of our clients. To this end, I’m very excited to announce the addition of creative design and copywriting to our expanding list of services provided to you at a valuable fixed cost on a per minute basis with no minimums. Whether in graphic design or writing, the key element in success is delivering what you need to succeed in this ever changing marketplace.

• Creative elements such as logos, illustrations, charts, instructions, or mockups.
• Copywriting for product descriptions, how-to articles, blog posts, social media posts, or press releases.

Please put us to the test by taking advantage of our 7 Day Money Back Guarantee related to a creative or copywriting project. Just drop your contact info on the right and we’ll be in touch within 1 business day.

When you run a business or organization, knowing where the pennies – or nickels – go is critical.

It seems so simple right: money in, money out.

Well, the IRS estimates that Americans spend $30,000,000,000 on tax preparation in a single year. Just a single year and that includes all the software, accountants, bookkeepers, and likely many hours of head scratching on the clock.

How many of you have had a question from your accountant about receipts, bank statements, deposit slips, or the myriad other ways that money is tracked?

We all have and the shared experience of (gulp) “oh, shoot!” is dreadful. Besides the anxiety, the cost of fixing the problem can be very high. Paying a higher priced professional to fix your problems in her most demanding time of year isn’t cheap. Wages for accountants and tax preparers can be $250 per hour or more.

There’s a better way and I’m just going to highlight one aspect here.

In addition to having an affordable bookkeeper who specializes in the apps you use (like Quickbooks) working with you through the year to solve problems early and inexpensively, you need a tool to collaborate on all those documents we mentioned earlier like bank statements. Even if you have a bookkeeper, collaborating on the numerous questions that can arise out of a mixed use credit card statement can be overwhelming.

A great way to avoid the pain and time cost is to use a cloud-based document markup service like CrocoDoc.

CrocoDoc Doc Collaboration

It enables the closest thing to both of you standing over the same document and eliminates the need to first explain the context of the question only to then get to the real question.

For bookkeeping, you can avoid the end of the year mess by evaluating your bank and credit card statements, deposit records, and other financial documents including small conversations in context on top of the document. All of this can be saved for future reference if needed.

This can save lots of time, effort, money, and lost sleep. Elevate with Delevate and we’ll show you an example with your own statements in your first risk-free week.

Sign up and let us know how CrocoDoc.com helps you below or – better yet! – a good time to chat on the right about how our CrocoDoc using team can help your accounting and bookkeeping efforts.

Lee Tomlinson

Jon,

Just had to tell you that I am just thrilled with my work with Stephanie. She is amazing. She has done so many excellent things for me that I would have never gotten to on my own and/or would have messed up for having to hurry them.

She has kept tract of all our webinar attendees and all of our pre and post webinar mailings. She has figured out how to install a bunch of software programs to increase my productivity and record keeping that I had zero chance of figuring out on my own. She did some excellent (and fast!) research for me that I used in my last customer service seminar. She has combined a number of complicated presentation documents and reformatted them so they work for a variety of uses. (Another project I both had no time or patience or skills to accomplish) And she has made complicated travel arrangements (and a zillion changes) perfectly.

She’s terrific (not that you don’t know that) smart, responsive, fun, thorough, detail oriented and with an amazing ability when she doesn’t know something, to figure it out really quickly and get the job done anyway.

I will use her unhesitatingly in the future you can be sure of that!

Lee Tomlinson
The Customer Service Doctor
Delevating since Jan, 2012

Good communication is essential to successful delegation. Use these guiding tips to decrease miscommunication and increase productivity with remote team members.

Use video

Nothing helps facilitate communication like a face-to-face meeting. Setup an online face-to-face using Skype, as it incorporates video conferencing, instant messaging, file and desktop sharing all in a single, easy-to-use program. An excellent tool for visual communications with remote team members, vendors, and clients.

Additionally, if you need to explain something and can’t make a Skype call, use the free Screencast-o-matic.com to record a quick video of what is on your computer screen and talk them through it. Upload the video and send the link to your team member. They can watch it while listening to your comments and follow up with any questions.

There’s no substitute for seeing it as it is, real time or not.

Define expectations

Set clear performance objectives with your remote team members. Identify, define and prioritize them (objectives), this gives you and remote worker guidelines on where to focus your efforts. Consider using S.M.A.R.T. goals as a template for defining expectations.

Also set clear feedback guidelines so that it’s acceptable to make suggestions, have questions, need additional info, or a walkthrough. Too often this is where things break down when one expects that the remote team member should “just know” or “just figure it out” when this is risky and sometimes impossible.

Be present

Remember the golden rule of “do to others what you’d like done to you” and you will be fine. That said, focus on being present when communicating remotely. It can be tempting to multi-task (i.e. type e-mails, have side conversations, incessant interruptions, etc.) when someone is not physically with you. Try to remove any distraction that draws your attention away from being fully present (i.e. background noise, new email alerts).

This will also model the standard for how your remote team should engage others in and related to your organization.

Know your tools

Not knowing how to use the tools of remote communication will be a barrier to communicating effectively. Take time to learn the tools you need by attending vendor classes or webinars (or ours!), watch related Youtube channels, or ask your remote team member for a walkthrough as they are likely very skilled in many of these areas. This will significantly improve your experience and satisfaction with the person with whom you are communicating.
As the Norwegian poet, Tarjei Vesaas,  stated it, “Almost nothing needs to be said when you have eyes.”

Keep commitments

Understand the commitments of communicating with remote team members. Remote team members can become frustrated when commitments are not kept or renegotiated (rescheduled, postponed, cancelled prior, etc.). Be mindful of frequent rescheduling of meetings and be sure to answer questions in a timely manner. Lack of response often creates disengagement and distrust as it implicitly communicates a lack of value for the team member at your service.

This also models your expectations for dealing with those in and related to your organization.

Observe

Prevent miscommunication by observing all aspects of the conversation. If you just got some really bad news, perhaps stepping back is better than diving into the details of an important project. Observe the circumstances, the other person and consider your options before communicating. An excellent framework guiding communication is to remember E.N.A.T.A., is my communication effective, necessary, accurate, timely, and appropriate.

Prepare

Remember to work from an agenda if possible, it will provide a warning for a short time slot, discourage digressions, and establish trust and confidence between you and your remote team members. Agendas provided even 15 minutes prior or longer also allow remote team members to prepare so your project can be advanced, not just discussed on your call.

If possible, make sure your communication tools are working properly before staring the conversation (i.e. logged into services, video cam working, etc.) and have a ‘plan B’ just in case.

Delegate right

Not everyone is suited to be a remote team member. Consider giving new hires or contractors a small project to begin with to see how well they self-manage. Hire people who have proven the ability to work remotely to your satisfaction. Look for results oriented people who are consistent, reliable, and communicate well. Make sure the oft used mantra, “out-of-sight is not out-of-mind,” is not true for them.

Additionally, like going camping with all your supplies, the experience of all involved will be greatly improved by using encouraging questions, using video and screencasts, and thinking through your tasks to make sure all the “supplies” required are present prior to delegating.

Use these tips as a starting point for communicating with remote team members or as a reminder when communication seems to be breaking down.

To learn more about developing good communication habits with remote team members, register for one of our upcoming public webinars.

A random input is where most disruption begins. It’s a phone call in the middle of a meeting, a non-critical question in the middle of the creative process, an unexpected visitor while finalizing a project. So let’s explore five ways to minimize disruptions by minimizing our random inputs.

Say ‘No’

One of the most simple – and powerful – ways to minimize random inputs is by saying no. Start by listing your random inputs (i.e. people, phone, mobile, fax, mail, e-mail, chat, social networks, etc.), then ask yourself, are these all necessary? If you can eliminate anything then do so, you’ll save time, reduce stress, streamline work-flow, and liberate your mental faculties for more creative work and life.

Set Time

If you can’t say no, then set aside time for saying yes. Reduce interruption by returning phone calls and replying to e-mails at set times. Increase productivity by requesting your assistant to batch non-critical questions and other non-urgent items at set times – maybe even set and publish office hours for other associates to do the same. Look for any opportunity to minimize the number of inputs by batching similar tasks.

Combine

Some inputs can be combined, for example vendors who send bills by mail, fax or e-mail. By using a service like Bill.com, regardless of the input the bill is placed in one secure location for accounting to process, route for approval and pay. It also syncs with your accounting program saving additional processing time. Look closely at all of your business processes, list them and see where you can combine and streamline.

Delegate

Do you really need to be the first person to process random input? If not, then delegating can release large sums of productive energy to focus on your core business. Look over the lists you created earlier and consider what you can delegate. Document how tasks are to be handled from beginning to end. Be sure the task is understood and review it’s completion. Then spend your time doing what you do best.

Review

It’s essential to review your random inputs from time to time. Look to see how well your system is working as often as needed, but also plan to review at least once a quarter for continuous improvement. Your experiences will give you new ideas on how to continue minimizing.

Minimizing random inputs and thus disruption takes a combination of practice and experience. Start by making your list, find what you can say no to, set time for batching tasks, combine, delegate, and continuously review. The effort you make here will positively impact each subsequent process in your business.

Many of life’s inputs are at entry points such your phone, email inbox, fax, and voicemail. Often items can be weeded out, routed and escalated to help you focus on what you do best. Learn how to elevate your situation with solutions like this in one of our public webinars.