New Normal
Interesting perspective in this Forbes article. In my twenty plus years as a corporate speaker trainer and educator, I have seen a lot of trends. Companies spending millions of dollars on customised solutions that do not achieve the financial benefits promised in the business cases sold to boards and executives. A colleague of mine, Dave (thanks Dave!) once told me, people want the “ab-cruncher” solution to their problems. In a time poor world, individuals and organisations want the outcome of the ab-cruncher, the six pack wash board stomach, but many aren’t always prepared to make the time, or put in …
Productivity Transformation
Whilst recently tidying up some paperwork, I came across a 1990 to current day timeline I’d put together of world events and technology changes. A range of incidents and activities have changed how we see the world and how we do business. We’ve seen transformation in energy as we look to sustainable alternatives such as wind and solar, as well as significant transformation in technology. From mobile (cell) phones, to smartphones, apps and cloud computing, how we use, access and leverage technology has transformed, but personal productivity hasn’t necessarily increased. Which raises the question…Why do we seem to be doing …
Stop sending, start talking
One of the challenges facing businesses today is the sheer volume of e-mail we send and receive and dealing with it. It’s easy to send an email asking a question to get something off our to do list and into someone else’s, but it does two things. It creates more work for you AND the receiver. They have to deal with your request in some way, even if it’s just reading it, and you have to ‘pick up’ the conversation when you get the reply. It stretches the response time. Unless the other person has their email open waiting for …
Is it time??
I recently spent a day in a room with 15 of my professional colleagues learning from them, sharing ideas and insights to make ourselves and our businesses better. I commit to doing this several times a year. I am also in several mastermind groups and attend professional industry conferences both in Australia and overseas. I’m often asked why? Connecting with others who ‘get’ what you do, whether it’s your team mates, industry buddies or even friends invigorates, inspires and energises me. It’s like pressing Ctrl + Alt + Delete and rebooting yourself. I do it because everyday I wake up to …
Corporate Memory
I received an email from a staff member at an existing client. She had taken on a change management role within this global brand and was reaching out to organise a telephone conversation. She wanted to get an overview of what exposure and work we done with the organisation in recent times so that she could determine where they, and we, were headed next. I spent 30 minutes on the phone with her, taking her through what we had done, dating back many years and also offered to send over supporting documentation that we had on file that would be …
It’s all in the preparation
I’ve been speaking, training and consulting for over twenty years and one of the things that still surprises me is the comments I get from participants about my presentations. I’m regularly told “gee you make everything seem so easy”, or “how do you remember all that?”. There is no real secret to presenting, making things look easy or remembering things. It just takes practice. I recently presented a program for a client to educate their organisation on some new software. I was familiar with the programs and whilst I could have just turned up and spoken about the programs to the audience, I …
Pet Peeves
One of my pet peeves is people or organisations that “hide” behind email or text messaging to avoid difficult conversations. If I’ve decided I don’t want to work with someone, I pick up the phone, let them know and give them feedback as to why. If I mess up, I also prefer to pick up the phone and explain myself rather than send an email. If someone else has messed up, I prefer to chat with them, let them know that things happen and focus on what we are going to do to fix or rectify the situation. When we …
Time vs Money
I recently keynoted at a professional industry group luncheon on a range of quick Word & Excel tips, tricks and shortcuts. As part of the presentation I asked people to share their top 3 tips from the presentation on a card, which they gave back to me at the end of the program. I mention the 3 tips card at the start of my presentations to act as a reminder that I want them to walk away with tools they can immediately use. I want to make their investment of time worthwhile, because I believe time is more valuable than …
Specific is better than generic
Specific is better than generic. That’s why we have specialist doctors. Whilst we may initially visit a general doctor for a referral to say, a cardiologist, we ultimately go to specialist doctors for help with specialised needs. So why is it when we come across a problem, such as how to do something in Excel, Word or even Outlook, the default position is to go to Google for the answer? A search via Google will instantaneously bring up a buffet of resources for you or your team to work their way through. However valuable time is lost looking for the …