What's the most common problem reported among management using ManagePro?

Quick.  What's your answer - _______________

It used to be individual executives and managers discomfort in mandating the use of the tool as part of working on the team... which resulted in frustrated complaints such as  "We can't get our people to use it."

It turns out that all of that is quite a solveable problem using our coaching and deployment services.  The biggest problem now is... getting our "missionary" users to call for help instead of retreating into a solitary use of a team/enterprise tool while everyone else uses a different tool of preference. 

We can help.  We certainly understand what it's like to be a missionary, to believe in a tool, a process, and not feel like the rest of the world is jumping on board.  Less than 4% of the world uses goals as a added value in life, whether at work or on a personal level.  In fact, next month we will be starting a "Missionary Corner" in the newsletter and interview one missionary each month.  We'll have lots of people to choose from.  Maybe it will be you.  Over 3,000 people subscribe to the newsletter and over 70,000 organizations and individuals have purchased ManagePro since its initial release in the early '90s. 

To keep you thinking about that user acceptance and the deployment process we usually send some tips each newsletter, and sure enough, we've got 3 of them to share with you below.  Keep it simple by emphasizing 3 steps: 1) Focus on the goal (or deliverable), 2) Work the plan (to get there), 3) Document your results (regularly).  

But remember, the biggest tip this month, is to team up with us to help you solve the "getting people on board" problem.

3 of 50 Tips from our coaching and deployment service:

1. Goals: Many people write goals that really just list their job functions, responsibilities, or events - as if they were writing the events within MS Project.  But Goals become compelling and a lot more attention getting if written as Desired Outcomes - if you think in terms of a Desired Outcome statement, you'll realize how powerful MPro's underlying goal-orientation can be.

Here's Goal a written as a "process" function: "Complete an IT Request".  Now compare it to these Got to Get It Done statements:

• "Raise IT Time/Cost Efficiency Benchmark" or
• "Raise IT Customer Satisfaction Index" or
• "Achieve 100% IT Single-Iteration Completion" or
• "Eliminate IT Rework". - Hey; go ahead - show off - take the goal they gave you - and crank it up.

2. "Lost" Progress Notes, etc: Ever have this happen to you?  You put in a progress note, but now you can't find it.  One cause is that you have the habit of leaving lots of windows open, and in a database environment that can create record conflicts at times.  Bottom line your keyed in data isn't able to be saved.  Here's one tip; make sure you close each progress update, to-do or event details or sub-window after keying in data using the appropriate [OK ] button or [Send or Attach] buttons.  If you don't close the window and instead open another view, ManagePro will shuffle the open record to the back but may not always be able to retain your data, since the input isn't saved to the database until you Click OK and save the record. - the sub-window stays open anticipating you may still be making changes - - (unlike the main Goal Planner window, where your entries are saved immediately).

Remember that ManagePro is linking all the related goals whenever you have made an entry - so, if you need to correct/re-edit the last, say, Progress Note, wait for that processing to complete.

3. I Can't Find Things: Ever find yourself scrolling through line after line trying to find a particular title?  There are two solutions to speed that up.  Here they are:

a. In any goal planner view you can use the [Find] button.  It's alphabet sensitive, so just start typing the title of the record you are looking for and it will find it for you.
b. You can also use the Edit pull down menu and then click on Search.  Here you can type in any key word and it will do a search of all records, progress updates, to-dos, etc, looking for records that contain that word.  As you view the search results, highlight the record that you were searching for and then click the [Go To] button to transfer to its location in a planner view.