Category: 1-Minute Strategy

Tired of fighting with your keyring to pry a single key off it? Desperately trying to wedge your fingers into that tiny gap, and sometimes pinching yourself or damaging your nails when you do so? Admins have an edge here. If you’ve got a staple remover on your desk, those fangs are great to pry […]

So how come the art in your hallways isn’t produced by your employees, or their kids?

Prompt return calls (and create a little mystique) by adding a teaser to your voice mail message whenever you can. Examples: “By the way, I may have found the solution to your distribution problem” or “I’ve come across some very interesting information which should save you serious money.” This shifts the power of the dialogue […]

… it tends to look like a molehill. That’s just the inescapable way we perceive things in the office. Confine all complaints about how much is on your plate to the people who can appreciate and actually do something about it: those above you. Co-workers on the same level or beneath you will never truly […]

Think of all the times you’ve asked a co-worker to complete a task, and days went by with no word on its progress, and no reason you can think of why it shouldn’t have been finished already. It adds a small but aggravating layer of worry to your daily struggle. (Do I have to remind […]

Ever played the game called Telephone, where a message is relayed along a chain of people to see how accurately it comes out after passing through all those connections? The office is like that, and those who play Telephone poorly are doing their co-workers a real disservice. Paraphrasing, dramatizing or re-imagining someone’s words usually isn’t […]

When you’re anxious for any sort of tiny change to the daily routine, go into your PC’s Control Panel and go to Appearance and Personalization. There, don’t spend time scrolling through fancy landscape photos or shots of the rainforest; instead use just one click to apply a new solid color to your desktop background. In […]

Ever pulled on the drawer of a file cabinet only to find it’s been accidentally locked tight—and it’s been years since you last saw that darn key? Check out www.easykeys.com, which just needs the manufacturer’s name and code number off the lock to send you a new one. Voilà, the apple you had in there […]

Here’s the thing about meeting agendas: Everyone likes to make them nice and specific, with impressively bulleted lists, but lengthy ones can actually lead people to get a little distracted. They start looking too far ahead, become fixated on how much more ground there is to cover in the time remaining, and rush through or […]