You Can’t Always Get What You Want
The Rolling Stones sang you can’t always get what you want. When I start working with clients they often tell me they can’t get what they want with their Excel worksheets. It’s often as result of being too ‘close’ to the data. They know the outcome but either aren’t sure how to get there, or are missing one or more steps. Sometimes you need a fresh set of ‘eyes’ to provide some alternatives or options which can fast track your productivity. This of course is what you need. So if you can’t get what you want, maybe you should try …
Cumulative Gains
Recently I worked with a new team who were quite proficient with Excel. Our session provided them with the opportunity to fill their knowledge gaps, check in and see what their colleagues knew and provide the time and space to explore better processes and productivity gains. In our session together, I shared a range of topics designed to immediately impact on their personal productivity. One of my favourites is macros. When I introduce the concept of macros, I see “light globes” go off as people appreciate the power this tool has to fast track their common tasks. Even the more …
Comfort
I’ve recently facilitated 10 days of training organisations in the Cook Islands. It’s a beautiful environment and one of the things I learnt was the importance of comfort. Now comfort means that when you are doing a task you feel more empowered, you feel in control, you feel not concerned that you’re going to make mistakes or that something is wrong. So whether it be you’re working in an Excel spreadsheet and you’re confident looking around of all formulas and you understand what the formulas are doing and you feel comfortable that the numbers in your documentation are correct. Whether …
Comfort
I’ve recently facilitated 10 days of training organisations in the Cook Islands. It’s a beautiful environment and one of the things I learnt was the importance of comfort. Now comfort means that when you are doing a task you feel more empowered, you feel in control, you feel not concerned that you’re going to make mistakes or that something is wrong. So whether it be you’re working in an Excel spreadsheet and you’re confident looking around of all formulas and you understand what the formulas are doing and you feel comfortable that the numbers in your documentation are correct. Whether …
Are you really insured??
When working with clients one of the things I often hear is that somebody used to do that but now they’ve left the organization nobody knows how to do it Many teams forget the importance of making sure everybody is on the same page with every day technology like Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. The challenge occurs when someone leaves and nobody knows had fix something that was taken for granted that somebody did all the time. Unfortunately what ends up happening is risk is increased and productivity drops as others try to complete the task that someone did easily and effortlessly on a regular basis. …
Take the Lead
Einstein is credited with saying the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Sometimes in business we expect change to come from above and feed down The easiest way to change is to take the lead. You take the lead and lead by example. This might mean responding to emails at a particular time of the day or encouraging others to call you or meet with you rather than sending you emails randomly When people see you leading by example and your productivity increase they naturally want to follow along …
Massage
One of my favourite self-care items is to have a massage. To me there’s nothing better than having a muscle stretched, rubbed and massaged to release tension. This got me to thinking about how massage applies to how we use everyday technology such as email, Word & Excel. We often get tight and constricted in our approach to doing things. It could be that we scared to do something different in case we get it wrong, or perhaps we don’t feel we have time to explore other options. Every now and then we need to take time out to massage …
Confidence
I delivered a program recently on presenting with Powerpoint. It was a combination of tips and shortcuts and lifting your presentation skills to some tips on actually presenting and using Powerpoint as a tool or presenting in general. Often when you are in a sales team, it can be a challenge. You’re just given product knowledge and maybe a computer and a template and told to go out and present. Often there’s not consistency. Yesterday I found out that this particular organisation they had a style guide, but they didn’t know what it was or where it was. So I …
Jigsaw Puzzle
Often when working with Word documents and Excel spreadsheet it can feel like a jigsaw puzzle. There are pieces missing and you know it would make life a lot easier if you knew the missing piece, but you don’t know what you don’t know. The challenge is constantly finding the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle to enable you to fast track your productivity. Rather than struggling trying to find the answers, the best thing you can do is ask your colleagues what the answer might be. You might be surprised to know that some of your colleagues actually know a lot …
Documentation Consistency
Recently I was in the fabulous Cook Islands presenting to various groups on technology related topics to help them work Smarter and not Harder with Microsoft Office products. So I was working with people on email management and what I realised at the end of the session when I had someone come up to me and say we need you to come in and we want you to come in and do the same program with all of our managers. It made me realise the importance of consistency. What happens in many organisations with email is you are given an …
