Trello

Trello (Free & Paid versions available) serves as an amazingly flexible system for project management professionals globally. But I’ve found that it is also perfectly suited for our purposes in creating a Value Plan. Trello allows us to first create an “organization” within which we can create a number of “boards” for different projects. And within each project, we have the capability to create “cards”. Each card can be assigned to multiple people, can be labeled, given a timeline, and a checklist. And most exciting of all, is that cards can be moved between boards as their status changes. I strongly urge you to take approximately 1-2 hours of time to get completely familiar with the functionality of Trello. There are some fantastic tutorials listed on the tools section of the Value Plan website for you to follow.

Trello also has a more robust “Gold” and “Pro” version of its service that I personally use and recommend. But for those of you on a tight budget, the free version is perfectly usable and useful and will help you gain an understanding of whether or not the Trello system supports your way of data collection, and process management. If not, there are many other more traditional tools available to you.

Freemind

Freemind (Free) gives you the ability to create free-form mind maps as you build your M.E.C.E. Question Trees. Although Tony Buzan is the rumored creator of Mind Mapping, and he has a fantastic book and site to prove it, there are also a number of other freely available tools that will also work. A Mind Map framework is more flexible than a Microsoft Excel worksheet, and is the perfect platform to frame your data collection and analysis process as you build and answer your M.E.C.E. Question Trees. While Tony Buzan does have an excellent book and paid software solution which I recommend, please also explore the many outstanding tutorials available for free via YouTube that will help you gain basic mastery of this free, open-source Mind Mapping software called Freemind. This entire learning process should take you no more than 3 hours.

Evernote

Evernote (Free & Paid versions available) enables you to take clips from the Internet and organize them by tags or within notebooks.  And even more powerful is Evernote’s search capability within these files that you collect. This is my go-to tool to organize all of the various data that I collect into one central place and file it correctly so that I can find my notes and refer to them later in time. The downside of Evernote is the learning curve.  I’ve been playing with and using Evernote for a while now, but I still find that I need to stop and watch a few tutorials now and then to make sure I am up to date with the current set of capabilities of this extremely powerful application.  If you don’t mind these types of regular brush-ups, then Evernote is definitely worth the effort.

Dropbox

I’ve been using Dropbox (Free & Paid versions available) for many years now and am extremely impressed with its simplicity and ease of use. Google Drive and others are also extremely popular, but I find Dropbox to be the most platform-agnostic, and easiest for my students to access from anywhere in the world.

Flipboard

Flipboard (Free) is a fantastic content curation application that functions across all of your mobile and fixed devices.  What I like most about Flipboard is the stunning visual presentation for the magazines that it creates automatically for you.  If you want to create a centralized platform for gathering news, information and images from across the web, and share them with your team, customers or followers, Flipboard is an amazing tool for this.  It is fundamentally different from Evernote in how it enables you to work with the information you collect, so you should review the pros and cons of each of these applications, and determine whether or not Flipboards magazine approach is worth the 30-45 minutes of time you’ll need to master this platform.

Qualtrics

Hands down the best online survey research tool available for marketing researchers. I have worked with many of the other free and paid online survey research tools, and none of them have impressed me as much as Qualtrics (Free & Paid versions available). It is easy to use, its surveys are beautifully presented, and the data formats that they provide for your analysis are world-class. I highly recommend them for any online survey that you plan to field.

Atlas.ti

There are many free and paid tools available to help you analyze the qualitative research data that you collect. My absolute favorite amongst all of them is Atlas.ti (Free Trial & Paid versions available). Now available for Mac OSX as well Windows, it offers researchers an amazing array of tools to deeply explore and uncover the key concepts and their relationships within your qualitative data. The folks at Atlas.ti also have created a wide array of training alternatives for those who are new to their software as well to seasoned experts.

Here are links to both their in-house training videos: http://www.atlasti.com/videos.html, and their YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/ATLASti01

eLance

You may be wondering why I would list both eLance and Fiverr in with the data collection and analysis section, but if you are looking to hire a special team or individual to help you with this process, then look no further than these two platforms.  They have a wide range of people around the world available to work with you.  And as I have had positive experiences with freelances on both of these platforms (as well as some negative ones as well), I am confident that you will also be able to find people to help you with your research at an affordable price if you need the additional helping hands.

I have personally worked with freelancers through eLance on multiple occasions for more than five years now with results ranging from truly outstanding to horrific. It may be best to read some “rules of engagement” or simply learn by trial and error. But overall the time that I have saved, and the results that I have been able to achieve because of the help that I have hired has been remarkable.

Fiverr

I also love the surpise of working with freelances on Fiverr and finding out how much I can get for so little.  While the quality of the deliverables varies from individual to individual, the cover image for this book was designed by a graphic designer on Fiverr for a very small amount of money.  You’ll find many other fun and interesting jobs offered there, so it is worth checking out!  As with everything though, remember that you get what you pay for!

PechaKucha

The idea of recovering the countless hours of wasted time listening to presentations has made the appeal of the Pechakucha 20×20 approach even more appealing to me. Please check out their website to see some amazing presentations, which are updated regularly, and also to find a wide range of resources for you to upgrade your presentation style to the Pechakucha way.

Adobe Photoshop

The learning curve for Photoshop and the other Creative Cloud programs is enormous, challenging, and frustrating.  But worth it.  Especially if you are trying to make your own compelling visual images or movies, having the ability to quickly modify and enhance your photos and visual imagery is a huge plus.  This may be a week-long or even month-long project (I personally learned Photoshop using Lynda.com…Thank you Deke!), but again, I believe it is highly worthwhile and valuable over the long term.

Fotolia

While I highly recommend looking through Flickr’s Creative Commons Licensed photos first, there are times that you will definitely need to purchase photographs, images or videos.  I’ve used Fotolia for many years, and have never been disappointed with their quality and scope.  Living in Japan, I have come to enjoy their multi-language search functionality as well.

If you have a bigger budget, Getty Images is a first-class site for images and stock photos, but for those who are on a more limited budget, Fotolia has always been valuable for me and students who have been looking for affordable, professional photography options.

iMovie

Free for all Apple iOS users, this very intuitive, easy-to-learn movie-making program wins hands down when compared against any other software I’ve tried.  The professional quality of the output is definitely not as good as some of the professional movie-creation solutions like Adobe’s Premier, but definitely good enough.  This was one of the first real reasons I had to switch to a Mac, and I have not been disappointed with the quality of the results.

Animoto

The ability to weave a story out of photos is a unique art, and Animoto allows anyone to be able to do this, irrespective of the computer that you own.  Give yourself a “Creativity Challenge” each week or month, and try to create a compelling story on Animoto, or any of their competitors.  This will get your storytelling juices flowing, and enable you to tell more effective stories in your business presentations as well.