Category: 1-Minute Strategy

The next time someone asks you “When can you have this done?” resist the understandable temptation to blurt out the earliest, and possibly unrealistic date, just to please someone and show your efficiency. Instead, ask “Is time a factor for you?” The answer will give you much more of a sense of the real schedule […]

You wouldn’t want to use it as a style guide, or for almost any business-to-business correspondence, but getting familiar with some of the lingo found in the Urban Dictionary can help you add some modern flair to a routine document or presentation. Dropping terms like “phoneslinger,” “hate hug,” or “textretary” can be a real (and […]

It’s time, of course. If you suffer an injustice at the hands of a co-worker, remember that each minute you brood over it is another minute that person is stealing from you. Do you really want that precious time to go into a jar marked Voluntarily Surrendered, Lost Forever? Draw a hard line and move […]

Pens, coffee cups, notebooks, computer monitors—so many things vanish from our desks, either naturally or because co-workers get a little bit light-fingered. Stop losing everything that’s not nailed down by grabbing a sheet of small and playfully distinct stickers and applying them liberally to your possessions. The more whimsical the sticker, the more strongly you’re […]

It’s easy to forget that when it comes to what’s really going on in the world, we tend to see things from only an Americanized perspective. With a couple of clicks, assignmenteditor.com will show you newspapers from all over the globe so you can get a better sense of how people living beyond our borders […]

The nametags you create for a meeting or a conference influence its tone. Ask attendees to submit their hobbies, hometowns, or names of pets in advance for inclusion on the tags and you’ll foster an informal, friendly atmosphere; make their job titles bigger than anything else and you’ll shift the tone in the other direction. […]

Moving your computer from one workstation to another? Use your smartphone to take a quick photo of the wiring hookups so you can very easily duplicate them on the other end.

Sure, you’ve got a hot idea, but only by creating a prototype of it, no matter how crude, can you both convey it in a more exciting, tangible way and let people know you’re serious enough about it to go the extra mile. Even drawing a sketch on a piece of paper will make any […]

Informal group interviews are a great way to learn how job candidates react to their co-workers every day, not just in a one-on-one, whatever-you-want-to-hear interaction. Start a creative group discussion and you’ll get a glimpse of how well the individuals listen, interject, assert themselves, and build on the comments and ideas of others.

We’ve all done it—sent an email mentioning an attachment which, whoops, you neglected to attach. Avoid this head-slapper by getting into the habit of attaching your file first, before you even fill out the recipients in the To: line and compose the email message itself.