Cure post-vacation blues
Feel more rejuvenated after a summer vacation by coming home on Saturday, so you can spend some time Sunday catching up on e-mail and voice messages. Monday morning will be lot less hectic.
Declutter and simplify your writing
If there’s one technique that can instantly improve your business writing, it’s this: Trim and simplify. When writing in a hurry, it’s easy to include unnecessary words or cram too much into a single sentence. Result: Business writing easily becomes cluttered or “grandiose” sounding. Trimming can eliminate redundancies, while simplifying can make sentences easier to understand.
Give full attention
Stay in tune with your staff by refusing to multitask when someone pops into your office. Put your work down, look the person in the eye and focus on what he or she has to say.
Telling the boss his decision is bad for business
Question: “Salespeople in our company receive no salary and are paid totally on commission. The owner has just announced that he is slashing our commission rate. Because he wants to focus on getting new business, he also will be paying us almost nothing for serving established customers. This gives us no incentive to service our existing accounts. The owner says this is necessary because the company is losing money. However, he hasn’t reduced expenses or cut the pay of any other employees, including himself. We have lost all respect for this man, and our morale is in the gutter. He can obviously do whatever he wants, but why would he do this?” — Discouraged Salesman
Rethink your e-mail addiction
E-mail, that revolutionary productivity tool, has a dark side. It can create divisions between co-workers, hurt productivity and destroy focus, say critics. Some even draw a comparison between e-mail and gambling. To counterbalance the negatives, companies have been imposing “no e-mail Fridays” or “no e-mail weekends.” Anyone can take measures to keep e-mail addiction from getting out of hand, though.
Read for success
What’s on your reading list this summer? Slip a business book into that bag of fiction that you’ll haul down to the beach.
Smartphones as scanners
Newer smartphones have such good cameras they can double as barcode scanners. That means while shopping, you can use your phone to: 1. Compare prices on the spot. 2. Store your membership cards on your phone, rather than crowding your key ring.
Put learning to work
Boss send you to a seminar? Create an action list while you are there showing how you will put what you learn to work back at the office. Share it with your boss when you return as one way to prove the value of her investing in you.
Excel in Access — Access in Excel
Use the best features of Access on your Excel workbooks and vice versa by using Microsoft Office interoperability features.
‘That’ or ‘Which’? Rules to decide
Restrictive vs. nonrestrictive clauses, and more.