http://sharp-end-training.co.uk/how-to-start-again/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-to-start-again http://sharp-end-training.co.uk/how-to-start-again/#comments Tue, 21 May 2013 11:09:56 +0000 Jonathan http://sharp-end-training.co.uk/?p=5214

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You just finished reading How to start again! Consider leaving a comment!

Blog post originally from Sharp End Training

]]> A few people we have spoken to recently have stopped, ground to a halt, got their head and hard drive full of “stuff”. We have spoke about this before.

All that work/life balance material/training courses/books/tapes is missing the point. There is JUST LIFE and EVERYTHING fits into it…
If you are like us, your computer will contains a mixture of projects you are working on, personal related material – downloads of car insurance, vital documents etc etc.

Next question what is in your head at the moment ?

I would guess it is a mixture of work related stuff, emails to reply to – that video you need to watch and a mixture of personal – collect grandma for tea, parents evening next week, home insurance is due.

See – it’s just life. And EVERYTHING has to fit into it…

So what’s the logical conclusion of this ?

Your head (and your hard drive gets full)

How to solve – How to do the personal detox?

Here are a few suggestions

1. Delete ALL your emails/contents of your inbox.
Your inbox was never designed to be a storage area. Stuff should stay in there ONLY as long as you need to do something with it. You are subconsciously carrying the contents around with you. Because you see it every day…

2. Make sure you have downloaded/printed off valuable items
The trend these days is an emailed serial number for software, for an insurance certificate or other valuable documents. Scrambling around looking for a vital phone number is no fun. Have a folder with essential stuff in it.

3. Delete all those half finished projects from your hard drive
Give it up. Take the mental step that the project is unlikely to ever be finished. Living in a building site is no fun – that is what you are virtually doing. Delete stuff – no delete a LOT of stuff – BE BRUTAL (or at the very least burn them to a CD/DVD and store it somewhere safe).

4. Delete/drop/sell any domains you are no longer using
This is a variation on the part finished project suggestion. Every undeveloped domain is baggage that is something that is undone in your head.

5. Cut down the number of ways people can contact you
If you are easily disturbed – you are saying that you put no value on your time. You because a boat – being tossed around on the seas of what other people want and when they want it.

Is this helpful?
I explore worklife balance and many other related topics in the second edition of my first book “Confessions of an Interim manager” which has just been published.
You can get it directly from Amazon.

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Blog post originally from Sharp End Training

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You just finished reading What's on your hard drive?! Consider leaving a comment!

Blog post originally from Sharp End Training

]]> If you have had the same computer for a while, chances are you are likely to have a lot of junk on your hard drive. (Note – This blog post leaves out all the technicalities of registry cleaning because the consequences of deleting such and such a file can be pretty dire.

But here are a few suggestions for what to do with the stuff on your hard drive and how to organise it.

First, is it backed up?

Read this post on doomsday for your business and head over to dropbox and sign up. Dropbox can work in many ways but one of the easiest is to work like a virtual hard drive. That is a clone. So when so save something onto your hard drive – it automatically gets backed up on dropbox.

After you have backed up with dropbox – and you are happy that your machine going bang won’t mean the end of your business – you can start moving things around into some sort of order.

(Repetitive clicking and searching to find the same files is mentally very tiring – also RSI anyone…)

Make new folders with generic titles

“Sales and marketing” for example – with sub folders for example “Press releases” or “Blogging”

Your “admin” folder would contain all your accountancy documents, spreadsheets etc along with all the serial numbers to the software that you use. (You DO keep these serial numbers safe don’t you…)

It might sound a bit grandiose but we have a folder called “corporate ID” – so hopefully – every time you see any of the logos – they should look the same.

Each folder almost be a tree structure and thinking through this logically – every blog post for instance will be in THREE places – namely
1. On your blog
2. On your hard drive (in case your blog gets hacked or your hosting company shut you down).
3. In your dropbox (In case your hard drive gets corrupted).

Oh and here are a couple of little utilities for sorting out your hard drive. (Remember though – you are responsible for what goes on your hard drive.

Duplicate File Finder Finds duplicate files by name/size/file type etc etc so you can free up junk

Folder size will help you concentrate your efforts on the biggest files and free up the most space.

Helpful, Leave a comment…

You just finished reading More thoughts on feedback! Consider leaving a comment!

Blog post originally from Sharp End Training

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Why is this ?

Well – people who are rude (I am talking about on TV now) are held up as sort of pantomime villains. They play up to the cameras and semi-formal feedback on dancing and singing shows on TV is the nearest thing most people see to “feedback.”

TV talent shows are heavy on emotion – It’s what gets people watching…

But the problem starts when average Joe or Josephine has to give or receive feedback. Removing the emotion from the feedback can be difficult.

In a complicated world, we often rely on the emotions we feel from another person to get an angle on what they are saying. See this post on strong opinions also.

So – How to remove the emotion?

Well – here is an example

“I think…” when giving feedback is pure subjectivity. It subtly says “This is my opinion”

“I think you were rubbish” – Is very unhelpful and it is easy to take offence at this.

“I think” if handled incorrectly can lead to the answer “I don’t care what you think” and ultimately – disagreements.

Here is an alternative
“I saw…” is a statement of fact.

It is an unarguable with in a professional setting and provides the basis for a more factual based discussion. I saw you with your hand in the cookie jar.

Other words to avoid when giving feedback

“Good” – What was good? The fact that it ended early? – that it was free? what ?

“Not bad” – Instead of saying what it WASN’T – try saying what it WAS.

What about you ? Do you unwittingly pick a fight – by dealing in emotion or do you deal in facts?

You just finished reading Why being nice is unhelpful! Consider leaving a comment!

Blog post originally from Sharp End Training

]]> One thing that is pretty deep on the so called “social web” is that every is really REALLY nice. Nice to each other, nice to strangers, nice to cats and dogs. Just really REALLY nice. (No problem with this before you leave comments – read on to find why it is unhelpful).

I unfollowed all the motivational quote type people a long time ago. Read this post for an explanation why. But I still see what we have called the “nice web” almost everyday.

“How are you?”

“Great thanks, You”

“Yep great”

Which brings us to feedback and asking for comments and opinions on websites, facebook pages etc.

Asking for feedback online (or any public place) is perhaps the worst possible place you can ask.

Why ?

Because people are hard wired to be nice. Anyone who isn’t nice runs the risk of being run out of town by the nice police and brandished as a miserable sod forever.

If it’s feedback you want – what you need is a real friend.

Someone who tells you how smart you are (in public) – because that is the done thing isn’t really a friend.

A true friend is someone who stands swinging the virtual baseball bat and gives you a really good beating (in private) so that you don’t have to grovel in public.

Feedback (real actionable feedback from trusted colleagues) is the breakfast of champions.

Do you surround yourself with trusted people give them a baseball bat and say hit me as hard as you can or do you ask for “glad handing” and call it feedback?

ONLY a mastermind group can help you cut through the clutter, the glad handing and noise online and offline. Working with a small group of people – you will build TRUSTED relationship with people you can trust.

If you still need to join a mastermind group – here is the link

You just finished reading Strong Opinions - Good or bad?! Consider leaving a comment!

Blog post originally from Sharp End Training

]]> The recent death of Mrs Thatcher caused an interesting discussion the other day. We were talking about strong views and opinions and if they were good or bad.

In these days where everything is instant and on tap (news, TV, weather information for just a starter) via the internet, the pressure is on to provide an opinion. Listen at TV interviewers talking to a guest expert – they will be permanently fishing for controversy as they ask their questions. That “controversial” statement will then be clipped and presented as “news” on future bulletins.

“Mr Such-a-body confirms ‘NO CHANCE’ of resetting targets this year despite what figures say”

will be the headline on next news bulletin.

And then – when controversy real controversy – does come – people in the news are fined/banned and knocked back into line. See this screenshot from the BBC sport website about snooker player Mark Allen.

The full article is at this link

For snooker players like Mark – and anyone is a relatively small industry (anyone outside the top 100 snooker players IN THE WORLD can pretty much forget making a living out of the game) getting a reputation as being awkward and difficult can be a problem.

Mark did actually go into a press conference with a sticky tape mask over his mouth – to make a point.

Rewind 30 years to the days of Mrs Thatcher – who DID have strong opinions…And still generates strong opinions to this day.

A friend of ours sent a eulogy to Mrs Thatcher yesterday to his email database and received spam complaints, unsubscribes (as well as replies of support). Mrs Thatcher was different though – she DID carry a body of support – enough that she could pretty much ignore all opposition

But being controversial (just for the sake of it) can induce the “Don’t know – don’t like syndrome” where people can research you, check you out via your forum posts, blog etc and decide they would rather skip you and do business with someone else.

Do you court controversy ? Do you actively look for things to “speak out” about?

Leave a comment below.

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You just finished reading Time management falsehoods! Consider leaving a comment!

Blog post originally from Sharp End Training

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Much bogus stuff and misleading material is written about time management. In this blog post, we talk about time management from a different point of view. Maybe one that you have not considered before…

Much time management writing and training focus (including our own) focus on time as a RESOURCE. The ultimate resource in fact. The one thing you can’t buy. You can buy other people’s (by employing them) but we all have the same 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 (or 366…) days in a year. It’s up to us how we use it.

At this point you may wish to revisit this blog post of multitasking

And there’s the rub.

Time (like money,) is a resource. (Same as bricks to build a house, wallpaper to wallpaper a room, money to pay for business expansion etc etc.

And what’s the one thing we never have enough of when doing any task ? Resources…

As an aside – planning and strategising for increased time management is always DOOMED to fail. Like any resource – the question is always WHERE is the extra resources going to come from? You are probably unable to magic an extra half hour out of thin air.

And so – when faced with time management problems – we buy more… resources to manage.

More books to read, more seminars to go to – more resources.

What would be a time management strategy to blow this out of the water?

By focusing time management efforts on RESOURCEFULNESS – then we can really make big gains. Instead of managing resources – (very dull) we can start to make things interesting.

Here are a few examples.

(Generally speaking – resourcefulness and personal effectiveness can be increased quite quickly by firmly but very politely speaking your mind when something is unhelpful to your situation or goals – but this is another blog post).

That networking event or meeting that is droning on – just do what everyone is thinking – remark (via the feedback sheet) to the host that the event was a poor use of your time.

The alternative? Sitting til the end to “be polite” is letting someone else plan and implement your time management strategy…

Instead of spending all that time learning a new skill – (these just become resources in your head that you need to manage – like all other resources, read this blog post on the human split test

If you really must invest in time management training, here is some.

You just finished reading How do you chose a day off?! Consider leaving a comment!

Blog post originally from Sharp End Training

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How do you decide when to go to the beach ?

So, we had our day off in the blog boost 30 day challenge yesterday.

The goal is to write a blog post everyday for the month of April.

BUT you ARE allowed one day off.

Benefits of writing a blog post everyday?

• Increased content
• More for search engines to index
• More to tell your twitter followers about etc etc

Yesterday, we did actually post about the training giveaway but decided to turn that into a page rather than a post. So that doesn’t count. But this got us talking in the office about days off and how and when we could take them.

If you work for an employer then usually THEY TELL YOU when you can have a day off. Bank holidays and seasonal closures for instances – the whole department or team is likely to be off.

(Interestingly the national media – on things like the weather forecast – still talk about “a busy trip into the office” – Don’t they realise that we are in the middle of the second decade of the 21st century…People do everything they can to avoid “commuting” at all. But that’s another blog post.

When you are a small business, you can usually CHOOSE when to have a day off. Want to work a bank holiday ? That’s fine. Want to award yourself a day off because you got a new client or just because you feel like it ? That’s fine too…

But how do you decide?

In corporate – for instance, if you wanted a day off – say to go to a family related event – you would log a leave request with your immediate supervisor who would either confirm that you could have the day off or “ask you compromise” (Corporate speak for saying no…)

In the small business world – you just – what ? Bunk off for the day or do you have some other mechanism?

What do you do ?

You just finished reading Why too many contact methods is asking for trouble! Consider leaving a comment!

Blog post originally from Sharp End Training

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Time to go back to the future?

Question for you – How many contact methods do you have for your business – shown on your website, brochure, business card etc.

Probably quite a few.. Let’s see how many you have from this list

• Phone (Work landline)
• Phone (Work mobile/cell)
• Phone (Personal/Home landline)
• Phone (Personal/Home mobile/cell)
• Fax
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Linkedin
• Website contact form
• Helpdesk
• Postal address
• And of course email – (Obviously you can double or treble this if you collect email on a phone/tablet as well as a desktop).

So – in theory – to make sure you don’t miss any messages, requests for help, customer or client enquiries – you need to be monitoring these channels pretty much 24/7/365.

Someone sends you a facebook message asking for a quotation – Is that a “support channel” you monitor for this purpose?
If you have accepted business colleagues as facebook friends then it absolutely IS a contact channel you must support. Business discussion in the midst of photos of family celebrations? I don’t think so.

Supporting all these channels is a pretty demanding and exhausting experience. Ask yourself – How often has an email gone to the “wrong” address

Let’s rewind in time.
10-15 years ago – How many of these channels were available to the average small business owner? Let’s revisit the list

• Landline
• Cell/Mobile (Maybe and coverage would be very patchy)
• Fax
• Email (To a desktop device)
• Postal address
• Personal caller (yes remarkable I know…)
• Website contact forms existed but didn’t work
• Twitter/facebook etc didn’t exist

Bearing this in mind – It is hardly surprising that messages get missed and time gets wasted “syncing” devices – backing up and chasing support requests.
So – question for you – Which contact methods do you support (accept contact from) and which do you ignore?

You just finished reading Feeling rough ? Who cares?! Consider leaving a comment!

Blog post originally from Sharp End Training

]]> When you worked in corporate and you were off sick, what happened? Usually nothing. Ok maybe someone from HR would be in touch to find out two things
1. Was your absence caused by something, anything, possibly in the slightest be blamed on your employer – in short were you going to make a claim and
2. When would you be back ?

But in general, nothing happened. Your absence never even registered on the radar of senior managers and the organisation as a whole didn’t really miss a beat.

This is because – quite fundamentally, you aren’t making the organisation any money. Tea and sympathy is all fine – but you can’t present it to the bank manager. (Note the two HR contacts listed above are designed to find out the cost to the organisation of your absence..)

Incidentally – most organisations will actually start going slightly off the rails when key people reach the third week of absence. This is because most annual holidays are 2 weeks in length. (But that’s another blog post).

Change dimensions a little, you are now a freelancer, virtual worker or whatever and you are your own Chief Executive.

And now when you are off sick – or maybe not sick – maybe you just need an extra day off. Maybe you have convinced yourself that you really do have a sore throat or toothache or whatever and you decide it really would be better if you stayed in bed.

Of course you can do that – you are the Chief – the boss.

Just remember though that as we have seen – tea and sympathy doesn’t actually make the organisation (You inc) any money…

You can find more forthright views on management and thinking a little bit differently in my first book “Confessions of an Interim manager”