There’s No Such Thing as a Dumb Question!
When I present at conferences or in-house professional development events, I regularly get a sheepish hand raised and the phrase “this is probably a dumb question…” spoken as the precursor to a question. When I hear this, two things immediately come to mind. The first is recognition of the huge leap of courage the individual has taken to ask the question, and the second is, the trust they feel in the moment that I may be able to answer it. When I respond, I always reassure the person that it is not a dumb question, and that it is likely …
What Happens if it Breaks?
I was recently working with a client who had a manual process that their team would go through to produce regular reports in Excel. It wasn’t a high level or challenging process, it was basically do this step, then do that step and so forth until they reached the end and the resultant “report” was created. Whilst this worked a bulk of the time, problems arose when something wasn’t quite right, and they needed to troubleshoot the formulas or they recognised that results were not what they should be. All they had been shown was a process. They never understood …
There is no “ab cruncher” for technology!
I regularly go into organisations and meet frustrated people, and as a result, I get frustrated! Why do I get frustrated? Because so often people made things harder than they needs to be. Everybody is looking for the “Ab Cruncher”. The one piece of technology, the tool or the process that is going to make our lives perfect. Then when that happens when I just sit back and enjoy the ride, right? That’s how it works isn’t it? Not at all. Reality is everyone is looking for the magic pill or thing that will fix everything. It does not exist. …
Never underestimate the importance of planning
On a recent trip to the US, I visited the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock Arkansas. Spread out over three floors, the library houses all manner of information related to the Clinton Presidential era including a reproduction of President Clinton’s oval office – with replica furniture and artifacts. Of the many items on display that chronicled the Clinton era was a glass case that housed two pages of one of President Clinton’s State of the Union addresses. The State of the Union Address is delivered by the President of the United States to Congress at the beginning of each …
The Habit Loop
I was recently reading The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins. If you haven’t seen her TedxSF talk, “How to stop screwing yourself over” it’s worth a watch. In the book she raises a concept introduced by Pulitzer-prize winning author, Charles Duhigg known as The Habit Loop. The Habit Loop is a process we complete unconsciously that produces an outcome. It’s the equivalent of a mental macro you might have to perform a set of steps in a spreadsheet. The three step process consists of a 1 – a cue or trigger that initiates the unconscious behaviour, 2 – a …
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 …
You don’t need more work!
I recently worked with a sales manager who was a specialist in their industry. On a regular basis (twice a month) they would receive data from their IT department detailing sales by representative in a single Excel worksheet. The sales manager would save a copy of the file for each staff member, rename it with the staff member’s name, remove all the worksheets for other staff, then email the file to the relevant staff member for them to update current status of returns or claims. This task was done on average once a week. When the files were sent back the sales …
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 …
It will take more than 5 minutes!
One of the challenges with being a professional speaker, trainer and educator in the field of productivity with everyday technology is managing expectations. I’ve lost track of the number of presentations where at the end someone comes up and says, “I just have a [quick/simple/easy/or insert other related word] question.” Most of them want to explain their document or spreadsheet to me. What it is doing or not doing and want me to tell them in that exact moment how to fix it. When I tell them I need to ask questions or require more information, they are often disappointed. Some will even say, I “Googled it, …
What do your colleagues know?
I recently worked with a digital marketing manager and one of her team. They were reviewing two sets of data that needed to be compared and decisions made to determine if the data was up to date. They were both quite skilled with Excel…..and that was the problem. They were exploring creating a complicated formula that would check one to the other when I was asked for feedback. A few clarifying questions and some simple suggestions that didn’t require formulas of any kind, enabled them to have a short discussion and support each other in finding a simplistic solution that …
