3 Great Tools to Increase Productivity
“If all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail,” goes the old trope. How do we apply it in business? If your problem-solving toolkit is limited, then the solution to very different problems will all look the same.
For example, let’s say you are highly proficient with Excel.
Need a tool to track when people are available across different organizations for an on-site meeting? How about Excel?
Need a tool to identify and prioritize a list of initiatives? Excel should work.
Need a tool to put together a quick project plan? Let’s use Excel.
In other words, it is easy to use the tool you know or are comfortable solving different problems with, even if there are better tools to use.
Read on for 3 tools you can use to solve frequent and pesky business problems...
Interested in adding some new tools to your toolbox? The following three web applications are perfect for the jobs listed above.
BTW… I’m not an affiliate nor do I receive any compensation from any of the suggestions below. These are just three cool tools I’ve used myself or have seen used effectively.
Find the Best Time for a Meeting Across Organizations
The Problem
You need to find what dates work and what dates don’t work to get a group of people together. Could be a group of people from different companies or perhaps a team of volunteers.
The Tool to Use
Xoyondo is a fast way to schedule your meetings and events. Attendees enter their names and availability and it quickly becomes clear which date is the best.
Identify and Prioritize a Roomful of Opinions Quickly
The Problem
You have a large group of people in an audience and need to identify problems, opportunities, strategies, or anything else quickly.
The Tool to Use
Poll Everywhere allows people to enter what they think is most important and then everyone in the room can upvote / downvote selections in real-time. This tool is cool. I saw it in use with about 50 people in the room who entered their opinions and then everyone watched the top issues emerge on the big screen right before their eyes.
Caveat: Poll Everywhere is a bit cumbersome to use, so plan on spending some time with it before you launch it in front of a live audience.
Create Project Plans Quickly
The Problem
You need to come up with a plan to complete a project or initiative but don’t want the overhead of full-blown project management software.
The Tool to Use
KanbanFlow is a flexible and easy-to-use project management tool that allows you to set up task cards, assign owners and dates as well as color code and filter activity in multiple ways.
Just having these three tools in your tool box will allow you to:
Schedule the best time for a meeting (Xoyondo),
Identify the issues that need to be addressed (Poll Everywhere), and then,
Come up with a plan to complete what needs to get done (KanbanFlow)!
All have Freemium options and most of what you need to get done can be done by using the Free plans.
Now, you’ll need a tool to track the time you’ve saved by using these three tools. How about Excel?
