Friday Business Zen: Attitude Is Contagious
While in a meeting yesterday, I noticed one of my colleague’s screensavers, as cliche as screensaver messages can be, this one got me thinking, it said:
“Attitude is Contagious: Is yours worth catching?”
The economic challenges that we are all facing right now have an undeniable effect on our attitude. Some handle the stress of layoffs and cost cutting in different ways, from cynicism to criticism and sometimes even downright anger. Our attitude, however, is not just a coping mechanism, it is one of the many factors our peers and supervisors use to judge our ability to do our jobs and motivate others. Along with job performance, it can make or break hiring and firing decisions.
Is your attitude worth catching?
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Upgrade Your Brand
We see Brand names all over our star athletes. They are aggressivley pursued by NIKE, UNDER ARMOUR, SPEEDO, VISA and hundred’s more to be the symbol of why we should want to be like Mike. A brand is more than a symbol. It is an idea, and it represents an aspirational and uniqueness that boasts it’s offerings will make your life better. They are all around us. The connection we feel by the ad and the success of the celebrities that promote it are all elements that create the value of a product, service, and organization.
What does this have to do with Generation Y’ers who sit in their cube making far less than Michael Phelps made on his deal with Visa, and Omega watches? Alot. Phelps found out quickly how a Brand can be tarnished by association when he mistakenly was captured “celebrating” with a bong in November 2008. He lost his sponsorship with Kellogg’s cereal, and found that his personal Brand was effected simultaneously.
Our personal brand is valuable and needs to be protected. In the world of twitter, Facebook, and cellphone video, we are held more accountable then ever for our actions and words due to technology.
How can you improve your Brand?
Make sure your google results with your name possess only clear and positive perspectives on your professional abilities and activities. Create and own your domain name. Many HR offices are using social media to do research on you before interviewing and hiring.
How do you protect it?
Watch what you say/post on twitter, Facebook, and how you act on a videophone cameras. We have seen way too many celebrities caught by photographers in some pretty comprimising positons.
More importantly how can your Brand get you the job you are searching for?
You know your Brand best. If what you do at work does not capture your Brand completely, start Branding yourself on your own website, through Linkdin, Facebook, and other social media sites.
For more ideas on how to successfully Upgrade Your Brand check out personalbrandingblog.com Dan Schawbel is called a “personal branding force of nature” by Fast Company and released his book ME 2.0 today.
Seth Travis is a young communications professional residing in Pennsylvania. For more information on Seth’s Brand and expertise visit: http://newlycorporate.com/seth-travis/
5 Tips for Choosing Web 2.0 Tools for Your Team
Your Boss: “Hey, Gen Y Young Professional, we need a good way to do <insert task here> on the interwebs, go check your facebook-ey thing-a-ma-jigger and let me know how we should do it.”
That’s how it all starts, whether you are pulled into it, or you volunteer for it out of sheer passion, many Generation Y young professional are asked to analyze options and tools for doing business on the web. As I thoroughly enjoy this task, and have had the opportunity to do it a number of times for portions of the company I work for and my own small business ventures, I figured I would share 5 tips I keep in mind when I go about choosing the best web or software solutions.
1. Focus on the task or goal. All too often I find myself looking at flashy solutions that are pretty but don’t really address the ultimate goal. Write the goal or task down and keep it in front of you as you analyze options.
2. Integrate it. Find out where the solution fits and then find a tool that can integrate into other systems in the business process or flow.
3. Keep it fresh! Look at the history of the tool, plugin or site. Is it constantly being updated? Does it have an active and open development team/company? A tool that is actively being updated in a robust way will keep your company users happy with the latest features and fixes.
4. Leave it in the cloud. My experience tells me that when a company brings a tool in house on their servers, it is like driving a car off of a lot, it immediately begins to become obsolete until the company pays a ton to upgrade it. Just use it, let someone else update it.
5. Stay social. I know social media is all the rage right now but, there is some truth the the benefits of social tools. Look for social features and road maps as they will aid adoption and allow users to help and interact with each other more freely.
Have you been asked to research tools and web solutions for your team or company? How do you address it? Share your tips in the comments!
Get a Clue from LinkedIn
Is your company realigning itself to adapt to the changing economy? Whether your company is big or small, there are probably changes brewing. Often the changes are not transparent because the company is working strategically to adapt the business to changing forecasts. Another reason for a lack of transparency is because the company may want to be sensitive to employees who were or may be affected by the changes. And while the rationale of being respectful to people loosing their jobs careers is understandable, the mystery of who is coming and who is going makes it hard to get things done.
So where are people turning for knowledge about their co-workers? LinkedIn! If you’re not on LinkedIn, what are you waiting for? It’s Facebook for professionals without the annoying updates from that weird girl you sat near during high school English class who throws virtual snowballs at you and tries to get you to save the earth with a lil’ green patch. (I’m all for saving the earth but keep your snowballs and patches to yourself!) LinkedIn is a great way to stay on top of who’s coming, who’s going and miscellaneous organizational changes.
In March 2009, Fortune reported that LinkedIn’s traffic has more than doubled in a year. ”Unlike the job seekers (and those fearing unemployment) that troll its jobs boards, LinkedIn is thriving in the recession: Overall, traffic has more than doubled to 6.9 million users in February from 3.3 million a year earlier.” Statistics indicate that activity from Lehman Brothers current and former employees spiked 315% from August to September 2008. LinkedIn’s fastest growing region is Detroit, MI.
Visit LinkedIn and get answers about what’s going on with your co-workers and former co-workers.
Read more about LinkedIn
Should be you “friends” with your Boss? via Brazen Careerist
LinkedIn Privacy Settings- What you need to know
Love or hate Linkedin? Tell us why! Leave a comment!
Sail through your next presentation
A presentation is relative and are often prepared for audiences that can be subjective at the very least. How can you make your mark with the team and your boss without sugar-coating the content of the message? Try these simple steps for a successful presentation that you can be proud of and your team will applaud.
1. Story board your message - introduce your purpose for the meeting, notate your data/information with simple and relevant language, and tie your findings to a summary and action plan.
2. Confirm your findings with the right audience – Walk through your numbers/discovery with the expert before displaying it in new york times font on a white screen.
3. Follow the powerpoint laws provided to you by your speech 101 professor in college – I call it the 4X6 rule, no more than 4 to 6 words per line and 4-6 lines per slide. Unless important to the presentation, paragraphs should not be included on a slide.
4. Add your personal style for a successful presentation – they are meant to inform not entertain, but you can include relevant color schemes, or use a comic as a team ice breaker, but the focus of your work should reflect adding value to your team and your organization.
5. Practice – whether your meeting is at 8am or 10pm, remember all of the excruciating pitches you have sat through and don’t make your team suffer like you have. Smile, breathe, and remember pausing to collect your thoughts will allow your audience time for the information to sink in.
*Helpful Hint – if you don’t live for presentations, and fear public speaking more than death like most americans, find one of your favorite speakers, and zero in on what makes them so dynamic and grab a few tricks from there bag!
7 Rules for Email in the Office
Email has become the technology for intraoffice communication. Four years into my career I’m finding that mastering this medium is vitally important for both productivity and perception management. An email faux paux is just as bad as bombing your elevator pitch; sometimes it is worse because it can be copied and forwarded as a digitally perfect reminder of your mistake. Email can cause productivity headaches as well. How many times have you spent valuable time cleaning your inbox rather than getting real work done?
I propose these seven rules for better email in the office.
1. Walk, Meet or Call Before Emailing.
Remember, communication did exist prior to the advent of email. Those old standbys like walking to someone’s desk, setting up a meeting, or calling them on the phone are still viable options. I think it works best when you have a real conversation with someone and then, if a record is needed, summarize the conversation in an email. Some of the worst email train-wrecks occur when trying to troubleshoot, negotiate or problem-solve via email. These conversations are not suited for a medium with a built-in time delay.
2. CC With Care
There are no standards for email etiquette, but I can’t ignore the common practice of people filtering emails in which they are not in the TO: line. I live by this rule: if you expect someone to reply or take action, put them in the TO: line. If you put someone in the CC: line that means you need them to be aware of what is going on but don’t need them to do anything. To put it differently, don’t expect someone to take action if they are in the CC line.
CC’ing with care also includes use of Reply All. Very bad things can happen when you use Reply All. I’ve seen it result in insulting comments about customers being sent to customers. This is pretty much the worst thing that can happen if you are in sales. For example: Sales guy sends support request to support guy and CCs the customer to let the customer know support is now handling the issue, support guy then Replys All with a comments like “oh no, not this idiot customer again”. Customer sees the reply and all hell breaks loose.
Finally, be proactive in trimming the CC list. If an email eventually finds its way to you and you can actually fix it, send an email to the group letting them know that you are taking ownership of the issue and are reducing the CC list. If anyone really wants to stay in the loop, they’ll request it. Most will be happy to be relieved of the clutter in their inbox (especially executives).
3. Be Brief, Be Professional
An email at work is not a blog post. It is not a Facebook message. And it is certainly not your pulpit. Your job is to pack the most message into as few words as possible. People get hundreds of messages a day, and they don’t want to read some rambling approximation of the issue at hand. They want facts and they want clear, articulate responses. Lists and bullets are better than giant bricks of text. Here are some suggested formats:
Project status
- where we’ve been
- where we’re we are today
- where we’re going
Problem
- symptom
- possible cause(s)
- fixes tried so far
- next steps
4. Ask Yourself, “Am I Forgetting Anyone?”
Messages have senders and receivers. Your message will fail if you don’t include all the appropriate recipients. Failing to do this can result in people being blindsided or sometimes having their feelings hurt; people can get that left-out feeling. Also, you may be stepping on someone’s toes. You may be doing their job and they might not like that.
5. Let Someone Else Handle It
Don’t be over-eager. If you know someone else in the email chain can handle the problem and is likely to be pro-active, don’t beat them to the punch. Let them reply. Whatever you do, don’t add to the problem by sending a message saying “I think Bob will reply, so let’s wait for his answer”. We need to fight the collective ADD that is sweeping the nation. Just wait a few moments and let the other players make their contribution.
6. Avoid Attachments
One of the biggest annoyances of corporate email is the size limitation on your inbox. I swear, they all seem to be less than Gmail. You don’t want to be the person who put someone else over their size limit, so take measures to avoid or at least minimize attachments. You can post documents to servers and then send links to them, or you can zip files before you attach them. You could also just announce the presence of a document and instruct recipients to email you if they want a copy.
7. Keep Your Signature Short
If your signature is longer than most of your messages, you have a problem. Here’s the basic format I recommend:
Name
Company, Title
Phone
Legal Disclaimer (only if absolutely required)
Excel Tip of the Day- Open spreadsheets in excel instead of a web browser
If you use excel a lot, there are many ways to optimize windows and excel to work better for you. Here’s a quick tweak that will take less than a minute to perform but will increase your efficiency. Here is how you can open spreadsheets in excel instead of in a web browser.
Here’s how it works on Office XP
1) Open “My Computer”
2) Click on the Tools Menu
3) Click the tab that says “File Types”
4) Scroll down to “XLS” extensions
5) Click the button that says “Advanced”
6) Uncheck the box that says Browse in the same window
7) Click Ok. Close your browser and test the new setting.
Do you have a great excel tweak to share?
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