To get plans done successfully, you need to first develop a plan that is easy to understand.  Then you need to get people to work together to implement the plan. This sounds easy, but it can be very difficult to achieve in practice.  Developing a plan that is understandable and doable for everyone involved is usually time consuming and stressful.  But it doesn’t need to be. Simple One Page Plan TASKey has developed a simple one page plan template that makes it easy to develop a plan for any task in minutes.   The one page plan template has been used by tens of... [More]

Plans take time and effort to develop and implement, but this is a good investment. If you can also save time, effort and stress by reusing a plan, then the investment has even more value. Ideally, a plan that will be reused should document the goal; context; who did what, when and with whom; and the specific resources that were needed. Most plans need to be updated while they are being done. So in many cases, reusing an initial plan is likely to miss critical information.  Making the plan match what actually happened increases the value of the plan to implementers and provides ... [More]

“Accountability cannot exist without proper accounting practices; in other words, an absence of accounting means an absence of accountability” – Wikipedia entry on Accountability.Just as financial accountability requires records of financial transactions; personal, team and organisational accountability requires records of what has been done to achieve goals.  Both financial accountability, and personal, team and organisational accountability requires progressive records in context, because people quickly forget what needs to happen or what has actually happened.But what... [More]

Service providers need an efficient interaction with clients to get work done and minimize stress.  But both service providers and their clients have many competing priorities that make productive interactions hard to sustain. One of the greatest challenges is getting on and staying on the same sheet of music.  Any lack of clarity about what needs to be done and who is going to do it, wastes time and effort and builds stress. TASKey has developed a simple way to create an agreed action plan and to politely follow-up so tasks get done with a minimum of fuss.  A simple Plan-on-a... [More]

Planning can be one of the most difficult workplace tasks, but it doesn’t have to be.  TASKey has developed a simple Plan-on-a-Page template that makes planning easy. The Plan-on-a-Page template has been used by tens of thousands of people in over 175 countries.   The feedback has been that even people with no management training can create a workable plan in around 10 minutes. Most people already have some form of a plan in their head.  The Plan-on-a-Page makes it easy to put this plan into a form that is easy for other people to understand and implement. The key ... [More]

Developing plans that are easy for all team members to understand and implement is not easy.  However without a workable plan, a lot of time and effort is wasted trying to achieve a task goal. The core of team planning is to develop and complete a list of all the items/To Do’s that will achieve the task goal.  The list is usually developed in a team meeting and hopefully each team member then manages and does what they need to do. Communications and more meetings are used to keep the master list up-to-date and to ensure that team members have completed their To Do’s.&nb... [More]

There are a lot of critical management processes that can be significantly improved by using technology to automate all or parts of the process.  At TASKey and working with our clients, we have found that using software to automate and coordinate many enabling management processes saves time and effort, reduces stress, and achieves goals faster. Management is about helping people to work together to achieve business goals.  The functions of management are: Goal Setting, Planning, Organising, Leading, Monitoring, Communicating and Coordinating.  There are many parts of managemen... [More]

It can be argued that the greatest weakness in workplaces is the inability of relevant people to keep shared tasks and To Do’s synchronised.  This inability wastes a lot of time and effort, causes stress, strains interpersonal relationships, and constrains productivity. To Do’s are the working level actions done to complete a task.  They are generally managed by individuals who personally make lists to keep track of their To Do’s from plans, meetings and other communications.  It doesn’t take long for personal To Do lists (even when maintained) to get ou... [More]

Most people use some form of a To Do list to remember and decide what they need to do next.  The problem with To Do lists is they take a lot of time and effort to create and keep updated. Imagine what it would be like to have software that scans relevant projects and tasks to find your To Do’s and produces an always up-to-date To Do list for you.  All you need to do is tick off To Do’s when they are complete. TASKey’s smart To Do List software automatically: finds projects and tasks that are relevant to you updates task plans, meeting actions, other peoples ... [More]

Achieving accountability is relatively simple for a single task.  However as the number of tasks increases, achieving accountability becomes harder and harder.  Unfortunately in the real world, most people are involved in many tasks, so a simple way to manage personal and organisational accountability is urgently need. The basic building block of accountability is a single task.  With bigger tasks and projects, simply a number of single tasks aligned and implemented together.  Each single task has a context and workflow of To Do’s required to complete the task. &nb... [More]