How to Communicate More Productively
Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is credited with saying “The deepest desire of the human spirit is to be acknowledged.” I’m a big believer in communication without technology. That might sound strange coming from someone whose expertise lies in productivity with technology, but the “angle” I take is that just because we have technology doesn’t mean we should use it all the time. When it comes to communication and technology, here are some ideas to help increase your communication with others without relying on technology. Stop Using Emails to Communicate Everything I’ve never heard …
How do you plan to measure your productivity this week?
How do you plan to measure your productivity this week? Workplace expectations haven’t changed much in the last twenty plus years. When I started working in the late 1980s, “productivity” was measured by the number of hours you spent in the office. That was the way you “measured” it. Today it seems to be unconsciously measured by the number of emails that are being exchanged, who has received them and the time they were sent, like a digital badge of honor. More often than not, busyness is perceived as a sign of being productive, but does busyness equate to productivity?” …
Some things can’t be unseen…
I recently received an email from a prospective client. They reached out to me via email seeking a quote for intermediate Excel training. Rather than send a generic email back containing pricing to fix a self-diagnosed problem, my preference when I receive an email like this is to pick up the phone and have a conversation. I can’t quote on something when I don’t know what it is or what is needed to help fill the gap and solve someone’s problem. I called the person, we had a great conversation. I prepared a survey to go out to the team …
I wish I’d known….
I recently shared a graphic from business management platform solution provider Domo.com that visually presented the results from it’s Data Never Sleeps 2017 findings which Forbes.com quoted as being 2.5 quintillion bites of data. One of the challenges facing anyone in a leadership role is understanding and interpreting the “big data” that technology can produce. Whilst having more information at our fingertips is often presumed to be better than less, reality is if you can’t, or don’t know how to, analyse it, it really doesn’t matter. I was doing some one on one coaching with an executive in an organisation …
Making reports easy!
With so much reporting needed today, one of the challenges can be taking data in Excel and putting it into a Word report. Using a simple copy and paste is one of the most common things we see users do. But what if you need to insert larger sections of data that are landscape mode instead of Word’s traditional format, portrait?? Section breaks in Word enable you to change the layout of the page from portrait to landscape and back to portrait again. You can potentially save yourself hours of frustration in report preparation knowing this one element of Word. …
Per-fect vs Perfect
Many teams spend a lot of time crafting their client presentations or marketing materials. Liaising with the marketing and communications department, to ensuring the organisational logo is displayed in the appropriate location for brand consistency. However, rather than make our presentations perfect, I believe we should be perfecting our presentations instead. Recently I took time out to watch a documentary that has been around for awhile but I hadn’t had a chance to watch, The Comedian. It is a documentary on Netflix that follows Jerry Seinfeld and his step back into stand up comedy after the end of the successful …
Close the Loop on Risk
CAccording to an article by fortune.com, This Is the Top Reason People Quit Their Jobs—It’s Not Money, executive job board Ladders found in a survey of 16,500 members that the two most cited reasons for people leaving a role were boredom and long hours. Boredom doesn’t just happen. It progresses over time through long hours resulting in frustration and staff “switching off” because they’ve had it. When I work with executives and their teams, one of the most common things clients say is, “we used to have someone who did that but they left.” Sometimes it isn’t until a team …
Are you a professional??
A few years ago I saw Jerry Seinfeld perform in in his home town of Manhattan. I’d seen the documentary, The Comedian on Netflix. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it as it provides an excellent insight into how, despite his professional success he is always working to make his performances better. He is known for his meticulous crafting, trialing and refining of content and I on this night, I was in awe of his ability to observe common everyday actions and activities and shine a light on them in a different way. As a professional speaker, trainer …
Collaboration
Ever driven somewhere only to arrive and realise you don’t actually remember HOW you got there? I don’t mean how, you actually got there, you know that you drove there, but you have no conscious memory of the drive. It’s almost like you travelled on “auto pilot”. A common route you take turning each corner and arriving at your destination unconsciously. So every year, I go to the United States to attend a professional speakers conference. A few years ago it was in Orlando the Walt Disneyworld Resort. Going there was exciting, but I wanted to share with you something …
Plan B, C, D & E
On the odd occasion when I present at conferences or events something goes wrong. On this occasion we’d tested everything, the audio and the data projector prior to me presenting and everything was working fine. There was a break before I started and I took the opportunity to check everything again….glad I did because the data projector had gone all blurry. My first thought was the focus had been knocked, so I checked that, no everything was OK. We restarted my computer and the data projector but still blurry. With 5 minutes before we were due to start, I ran …
