Jessica's Monthly Management Memo: August 2024

I love the energy as fall approaches - it's kind of a like a mini new-year with that fresh feeling. You know what I'm talking about - it's back-to-school vibes, even if we're not going to school or have kids that are.

Let's get to your Monthly Management Memo - as always with something bold, something new, something borrowed, and something to pursue.

Something Bold - Do This at Your Next Meeting I was working on a retreat agenda for a client and one of the priorities for the time together with the team was improving staff morale. I decided to do one of my favorite activities - I like to call it a "round of appreciation". I thought it'd be fun to make an accompanying playlist, so I'm sharing it here in case you'd like to do this activity with your own team. Here's how it works: each person on your team write their name in the center of a piece of paper. Sit in a circle or rectangle. Pass your paper to the right. Play a song while writing a note of appreciation to the person whose name is on the paper. When the song ends, pass the paper to the right. Repeat until you get your own paper back. If there's more than 6 or so members of the team, you might just play the first 90 seconds of each song and then move to the next song.

Something New - Implementing Project Management Software These days, my most common requests for workshops are for project management (generally) and Asana (project management software for teams). I've been giving so much advice about how to implement Asana that I decided to write a blog post with my best advice so that more teams can benefit. Here are my four pieces of advice if you're trying to use Asana or any other software like it (Monday, Clickup, Trello, etc.). If you need a workshop on this topic, let me know!

Something Borrowed - Make a "User Manual" Kelly at Little Bites Coaching recently shared ideas for making "personal blueprints" or "user manuals" for yourself and your team. I've heard and loved this idea over time (and I've made something similar for myself). It's about writing down how you work best and how others can work well with you. This excellent guide from The Ready is a great starter tool, and Abby Malik (former CEO) shares her own user manual here.

Something to Pursue - Mark Your Calendar What are the important cultural and religious holidays for your staff members? If you don't know, it's a good chance to add that to your next check-in agenda. Mark your calendar with those dates each year so that you can be supportive when you're planning team retreats, important events, and asking staff to work late for a big project. Next month are the biggest Jewish holidays of the year, so marking your calendar for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur can be a good start. If you've got employees with kids in America, see if you can avoid late afternoon work meetings on Thursday, October 31 when Halloween celebrations are common.

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Bring your team, I'll bring my A-game. I love helping team with workshops on topics of productivity, team culture, and effectiveness at work. Find out more and book a free chat to see if I can be helpful for your organization at https://jessicaeastmanstewart.com/workshops.