February is already over?? Where does the time go? I’m not done complaining about January yet!
I love being part of the Bureau community because it’s full of friends and colleagues who let me complain, and they also offer excellent advice from their unique perspectives. I collect the best of these and send them out in our weekly newsletter, which you should definitely sign up for. But you can also get them right here, collected once a month. Let’s see what we learned last month!
Leadership
A lot of companies struggle with inconsistency in strategic direction. They either lack enough data, it’s too disconnected, or different people interpret it in contrasting ways. It’s important to align on what data is being gathered and how it will be used. Parallax has some great insights on how leadership can make that happen by getting the fundamentals right.
More info for leadership growth:
Ageism: the last acceptable prejudice (Article)
Conflict resolution ideas from Alexerant (guidelines example)
Operations and Marketing
Sales can sometimes seem like a dirty word, especially to leaders who just want to focus on their passion for doing great work. But building an effective sales team allows everyone else in the company to focus on their strengths, while making it possible for the team to grow and embrace new opportunities. Check out the 5 Sales Operations Best Practices for a Professional Service Organization.
Other great info for effective growth and operations:
How Brands Can Engage with Wikipedia (Webinar)
Nightmare on Content Ops St (Podcast)
How To Strive For 100% Productive Utilization Agency Operations Guide
How Does Viget Start New Projects? (Article)
Tools and Resources
We can never get enough new tools at the Bureau, and this month we’ve got a great batch. For example, does your company send marketing emails around the world? You need to be careful about what you’re allowed to do in different countries. Here’s a handy, recently updated list of international email marketing regulations.
More tools to help you work smarter:
Snipd - Podcast knowledge tool
HubSpot lead generation calculator (free tool from HubSpot)
Reclaim.ai (AI-enhanced scheduling tool)
Apollo.io: Sales Intelligence and Engagement Platform
Mention (monitoring and social media management tool)
Well, that wraps up this installment. I hope the only madness you experience this month is the basketball variety. Once again, I think you should sign up for the Bureau newsletter for faster access to this great info, but if not I’ll see you back here next time.