In today's fast-paced and complex business world, hiring an expert can be a game-changer. Experts add a great wealth of experience and skills to your company. They can help your company to tackle unique challenges and achieve success.

That’s how somebody reached out to me! Let me briefly talk about my latest occurrence last weekend.

Exactly a message like that - “You made a mistake”- reached me last weekend on Instagram. My first thoughts: That’s a very interesting way to start a conversion wanting to sell something?

Know what You’re Talking About!

What happened:

Getting out of bed, grabbing a cup of coffee quickly, jumping into your shower, getting dressed and boom….. - leaving for work try to catch the bus, metro or getting stuck in the traffic. Is that you? Well, if no - great, if yes try a morning routine.

How you start your day will impact how you spend your day. I personally have a simple, steady morning routine since years. I remember starting out working, I was the person jumping out of bed almost directly into the metro (having taken a shower of course 🤣.

As soon as I took more responsibility, I soon discovered that it wasn’t a good idea to “jump from my bed into the office”.

In busy times "time management has become a normal expression. I know many of us struggle with time management problems. However, can we manage time? Nope, 24 hours will be 24 hours no matter what we do. However, let's have a look what I found in Wikipedia about time management.

No One Hit a Target, Which Was Not Previously Named

In other words, no (clear) goal, no employees, at least not the right once. I know that sound a bit harsh, may be simple. However, I believe that some companies are struggling to find good and matching employees, because they are not clear what they are looking for.

Let us look at the cause, why I feel that some companies are not clear on what they are looking for.

The Art of Planning!

Project management could also be called the “Art of Planning”, at least that is my opinion😀. There are many tools around like Gantt charts, Scrum Method etc. to support you. However, tools can only support you, you will have to do the work and structure, plan and organize your projects.

Most of the time you are busy with daily work while leading projects at the same time. Is that you? Then read this. Is it a good idea to lead many projects at a time having daily business at the same time? No! However, in daily business it is unavoidable. Everything must be finished in time and budget. That makes planning essential and a great project plan indispensable. If you have daily business and lead a project at the same time, you must ensure that both gets done. Human resources must be aligned, so you get your project and your daily business done.

The Secret to Being a Great Manager: Quick, Smart Decision-Making Done Right

Let’s talk about management skills. Basically, it's all about being a boss that knows how to run a business and/ or a department smoothly, achieving the company goals, taking care of their employees, being organized……. etc. - many skills, right😀?

But what is necessary to be a good manager? What should you focus on and what is most important? What is the key skill or ability in my opinion and why?

First let’s look at the key skills and leave the most important one to the end.

I believe there are a few key skills you need to be good at to make that happen. You don’t have the skills yet, but want to become a manager? No, problem, the good thing about skills is that you don’t have to be born with them, you can learn them!

Let me start with a question: “Do you believe that feedback equals criticism? Or do you believe feedback can be both positive and negative whereas criticism is only negative?”

Let Us Look at the Definition of Feedback

“Feedback refers to information or reactions that are provided by an individual, group, or system in response to a particular action or behavior. It can be positive or negative, and it is used to evaluate the effectiveness of a process or to improve the performance

Define your goals clearly

All team members must understand the purpose and goals of their work. That enable them to navigate through obstacles and enables them to add more value by developing ideas how to reach your goals.

Make sure you provide clarity on what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and what success in your opinion looks like.

How To Increase Your Personal Productivity

Many ideas, options and choices can get you easily overwhelmed and distracted. Instead of getting things done, you start one thing, then another unable to bring your task towards the finish line. This might leave you feeling stressed and unsatisfied, which again has a massive impact on your energy level. Let’s look at a strategy to reduce stress and increase your productivity and satisfactio.

Strategic planning your day, month or year will help you

Tell a story!

Communication is key! Try to understand your target audience and what is important for them! Ask your audience questions about their daily obstacles and challenges.

Use communication skills to explain the reports to your colleagues, always keeping in mind that they need to understand what to change, maintain or omit in their business.

Communicate in a simple way. Finance and controlling are not complicated, the way it is taught and told is complicated.

If you are the owner of the company, make sure that your employees understand what your goals are, and how the numbers in the reports contribute to your business plan. Align reports with the entire company strategy – focus on that.

Finance reports should focus on simplifying the finance topics. Finance and reporting trainings should be fun and interactive. Choose examples from “real life” to bring finance closer to your employees or colleagues.

Simplify

Simplify and take out the complexity. Take out anything, which is not serving you to reach your goals and to fulfill your business plan. But how? Here are some ways to simplify within your company.

Be aware that there is a huge difference between activity and productivity. Just a small reminder! That topic is for later. Let's focus on how you could take out the complexity within your company.

Prioritize

First, prioritize your goals, if you have not done that already setting up your business plan last year.

To prioritize is almost an overused word in my option and to make it worse priorities are used in the plural.

Originally priority only existed in the singular, which totally makes