Category: Pamela Ayuso

Creating Goals for the New Year Ahead

Pamela Ayuso January 6, 2020

I always love the end of the old year and the beginning of the new. It is a chance to look at and drink in all the accomplishments and growth from the prior year. As always, not everything will have gone as planned. But as I look back, I try to learn from everything, the good and the bad. And I often find successes which are unexpected—these are my favorite ones.

It is also an opportunity to plan for the next year. The new year is always promising; it represents hope and something fresh, which I think is why it is the most popular date for making resolutions. Of course, these dates can come and go, just like any other date in the year, but you can use them to launch your new project or start a new routine.

Balancing Life: The Importance of Having a Routine

Pamela Ayuso December 16, 2019

We all have routines. They can include everything from what time we get up to how we end our days are work . Routines provide a structured guideline to how we spend our days.

Thankfully, routines develop naturally, but if you decide to use your routine as a tool, they can help you ensure you get the most out of your day. The idea is to set routines up so that you are taking care of the activities that are most important to you in an automatic way. Once a habit is embodied, tasks that might be more difficult to accomplish happen without having to think about doing them.

This is What Happens When You Manage the Balance of Organization and Freedom in Your Business

Pamela Ayuso December 9, 2019

There is an inherent tension in how a company is structured. Too much bureaucracy and creativity and dynamism are thwarted. Too much flexibility and carte blanche and mistakes start to accumulate. Processes are the answer to ensuring that a certain level of quality is consistently maintained, but too many procedures and we start becoming more like machines. Allowing self-organization and inventiveness to emerge within a business can promote the occurrence of breakthroughs that would have otherwise been impossible, but too loose a structure can invite chaos and angry customers.

The tension is inherent, yet unique to each company. The combination of structure, emergence, and flexibility that best suits an organization resides along a multi-dimensional continuum. Some companies may thrive on a higher dose of freedom, while others require a more balanced mixture. You may create the right blend based on the company’s goals, how its teams work together, and what it produces.

When Something Goes Wrong, Try to Get Something Good Out of It

Pamela Ayuso December 2, 2019

We’ve all had to deal with situations that we would not have chosen. Failures or bad turns of events are uncomfortable, and the easiest thing to do is to solve them and then move on. However, there is always gold hidden inside these events, even if it is just a sliver. Whether we are responsible for the circumstances or not, if something unfavorable happens, we can always learn from it and improve our world in ways we may have not appreciated before.

The more uncomfortable the circumstance is, the more beneficial it is to try to find the silver lining. It can give the event meaning and can help you move forward more easily than you would have otherwise. Sometimes finding a positive outcome from a disagreeable circumstance can be a struggle because some things are simply unpleasant or even sad, but again, there is always something to be learned.

Why Formatting is Beneficial for Your Company and Its Growth

Pamela Ayuso November 25, 2019

How we format the documents that we use to work with daily can have an enormous impact on our productivity. Formatting is one of those elements that, although hidden, can have a considerable effect on our workflow. Consistent guidelines for document configuration save time and produce better results.

The less time we spend trying to understand how something works, the more time we have available to focus on the content itself. Consistent formatting also helps us work more quickly because we know and identify the general guidelines. It also helps us regularly produce better results. If you multiply this concept throughout an organization, valuable time will be saved to do better work.

How To-Do Lists Can Boost Your Productivity

Pamela Ayuso November 18, 2019

When I was in graduate school, I put together my first real to-do list. It was not the type of to-do list where you write down all the assignments you have due in the next week or two. I had done plenty of those which included everything I had been procrastinating that needed to get done. This list was different. It didn’t just include projects for my classes but also personal items as well as commitments I had made in other activities.

As soon as I started writing everything down, I was astounded by how long it was. I hadn’t realized how much work I had been putting off or not even thinking about simply because I hadn’t written everything down. I learned a valuable lesson at that point – if there is even a slight hope that something will get done, I had to write it down first.

Get to Know Yourself and Understand Your Strengths

Pamela Ayuso November 11, 2019

There are many options are available today for getting to know your team and how to best work together. I think, though, that these exercises can be more useful for getting to know the person you will always have on your side: yourself. Sometimes it is hard to see ourselves as others see us and as we are, but these tests can help us see what we may have never understood before and to learn more about our preferences and how we act in different situations.

Great Advice for Process Implementation in Your Company

Pamela Ayuso November 4, 2019

Process implementation is a necessity in any company. Set procedures standardize your operations and allow you to deliver your product consistently. Between one task and the next, they also help you and your teams ensure no one forgets the basic yet fundamental steps inherent in any procedure.

Atul Gawande’s book The Checklist Manifesto (public library) presents a compelling case for using checklists in companies. He explains why procedures are so important, when you should use them and how to implement them. Throughout his book, Gawande provides useful advice on how to best work with checklists. He stresses the importance of formatting and how to present the content properly, for instance, which will help you get the most out of the processes at your company. The guidelines that Gawande describes will help you implement or improve upon your company’s processes.

Wrike for Business: How to Manage Your Work and Productivity

Pamela Ayuso October 28, 2019

Migrating to a project management app, Wrike, has been one of the most significant breakthroughs I’ve had in my productivity level. Not only has it been a superb discovery for me, but it has also transformed the way we work at my company, Celaque. Wrike is the backbone and the basis for how we record everything we do at Celaque.

I found and started working with Wrike a few years ago with my previous company, where I managed operations. In that role, I experimented to see how Wrike could work for each team member as well as for the company as a whole. We started to use it for processes and task management, evolving and improving upon how we utilized Wrike. When I co-founded Celaque, I knew that Wrike would be one of our primary tools.

As we continue to grow and as Wrike continues to implement new features, how we use Wrike is enhanced. It is a fundamental block of how we operate and communicate within our firm.

In the Midst of Nature: Finding Inspiration for Work

Pamela Ayuso October 21, 2019

I’m sitting, writing in a house that is surrounded by a forest. There are so many trees that you could almost call it a forest, except it is not. I can see a bird with a yellow body and a black head from my window as it flies from tree to tree. It hung upside down for a moment and then flew away. I see other birds in the distance, and I can hear many others still. Another bird with a red streak in its head and a brown body came to the same tree; this seems to be a very popular tree.

I see more of the yellow birds in the distance. They are playful and easy to find thanks to their bright, rich color. I can see at least five or six different birds right now. I started writing with my earphones on because when I am in my office, I always need music to block out external distractions. When I realized I could hear the birds singing, I took them off. It seemed ridiculous to be wearing earphones when I could instead be listening to the birds’ song.