You’ll always find someone on the phone at parties
In 1978, Jona Lewie released a song called You’ll always find me in the kitchen at parties! I think today, it that song would be You’ll always find people on the phone at parties! I went to a friend’s house recently to connect with someone who was visiting for a couple of weeks from overseas. There were about 15 people there when I arrived, sitting around, chatting, having a few drinks and eating some snacks. During the evening, I was totally surprised by the number of people who, when pings sounded from phones, reached into their handbag or their pocket …
Demand vs Demanding
Sometimes we over complicate things. I see it when I work with clients. They spend hours trying to come up with a complicated formula to complete a calculation when all it needs is a hyperlink to a cell containing the result they need. Sometimes we make things harder than they need to be. A reply all instead of a reply to just the sender. All of this takes time and energy. A quick check of email can end up taking 45 minutes out of a day responding to questions and enquiries that often don’t progress your agenda which can leave …
Don’t over complicate things
A client reached out to me wanting to discuss a formula to feed information from one worksheet to another. It should be “easy” (for me) they said, but they had struggled for two years to find an answer before reaching out. Once I understood what they needed, they really didn’t need a complicated formula, in fact they just needed to combine some copying and pasting techniques to cross check data, something most users of Excel could do if they knew the process. Sometimes we make things harder than they need to be. Next time you think a complicated formula is …
What’s next?
I was recently asked where I think technology is going in the future as it relates to productivity. What’s the next BIG thing? For many, the buzz is around AI (artificial intelligence), my thoughts, however, are closer to home. Rather than adding MORE stuff, in my opinion, the greatest gains are to be made in increasing productivity and efficiency with the things we use every day. When we focus on adding more stuff, all we do is add another layer of complexity. With more to learn, interpret and integrate into our already stretched activities and workload. Adding more without strategy …
Hunger for Connection
On a Monday morning a few months ago (pre COVID-10) whilst sitting in a coffee shop writing, a man came in to get a coffee. What he said made me lift my head up from my writing. He said today he was working from home and whilst he had a coffee machine at home, he said he came in for a ‘coffee and a chat’. Business today is more ‘connected’ than ever. We can work from home, on an airplane, almost anywhere if we have an internet connection! Whilst technology provides the ability to create documentation, analyse information and process …
Reputation and productivity
The choices organisations make to manage their business and human capital in these uncertain times will not only impact on their productivity now but will have an even bigger impact on the future of their business in general. Whilst human nature is to go into protection mode in crisis and seek security, now is not the time for lots of knee-jerk reactions and decisions. The decisions organizations make, and the interpretation of those decisions by staff are going to have far-reaching consequences. The need to be careful, considered and communicate effectively to staff to ensure support and commitment both now, …
We’re not wired to be constantly connected.
I recently read the book Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport who’s a Computer Science Professor at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Professor Newport is a specialist in computer science. One of the things he said in his book that resonated with me was the fact that as human beings we’re not actually wired to be wired. You’re probably thinking, what does that mean? As human beings, over the last fifteen or so years we’ve started to see technology become more ingrained in our day to day operations whilst technology delivers many benefits to streamline our processes and documentation, it has …
What’s next??
It’s a challenging time in business with stand downs, layoffs and furloughing of employees as well as understanding what can and can’t be done during this period. Understandably employers and executives are worried about business expenses and viability. Some organisations are experiencing growth – online conferencing platform Zoom, food delivery services and the like. But the question is, how long can they/we last in the current situation? When will this end? What will it look like when we come out the other side, which we will? Government and businesses are doing the best they can to keep things going. Employees …
I’m looking for help…
That’s what the message said. In my presentations and in-house workshops, I regularly ask people where they go when they have a technology question. Aside from the one internal “go-to” person every organisation has, the answer I normally get is Google. Whilst that is great, they often tell me they tried what Google said but they ‘couldn’t get it to work’, were unclear about the how, or it they couldn’t apply it to their situation. So why do so many people go to Google for help when they often don’t get the answers they need? 1. It’s easy 2. It’s …
