We’re almost at the close of 2011, and it’s been quite a year. If you’re like me, then a good rest over the holidays is badly needed. But what next? 2012 can be a GREAT year for us, when we focus on productivity.

I’ve just read a post on the Harvard Business Review blog, Five Things You Should Stop Doing in 2012, and it shares some great tips on how to sharpen up our productivity.

My two favorites are stop doing work that’s not worth it and stop making things more complicated than they should be.

For most people, their annual performance appraisal is due over the coming weeks (is yours?) This is an ideal time to bring up issues connected to the above points.

Over time, some tasks we’re doing lose their effectiveness, because the world moves on, and technology speeds things up (or makes tasks redundant). Often, though, these tasks aren’t reviewed to ensure that they’re a good use of our time. These things might be stock-checks, or regular meetings… you’ll know what you do that isn’t effective.

Use your performance appraisal as a point to ask “should I REALLY be doing this any longer?”

This is a powerful question.

And ally this to the second point. Tasks we regularly perform can become unnecessarily complicated, because the process is inflexible. Such as filling out paperwork that nobody reads, or sending out letters that clog up the mail-room. When a task is ‘new’, our competence in it is low, so check-sums and balances are used to help identify problems. But when we’re adept at a task, we no longer need those checks and balances.

I’m not suggesting that we take additional unnecessary risk; some things HAVE to be done to comply with regulations or policy.

What I am suggesting is you review the effectiveness of every sub-task (like filling out a section on a form) and review whether it really adds to the quality of your product/service, increases profit, or reduced risk.

And it’s OK to challenge policy too, if that policy is ineffective.

This is a powerful challenge.

So use your coming performance appraisal as a way of introducing these questions and challenges. Done objectively, it can be a powerful means of stimulating change, and innovation.

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

Some tasks seem to take much longer than they should, don’t they?

But it’s no surprise, when you think about it…

1. Tasks take too long because there are too many people involved. Too much subjectivity (opinions, tastes, preferences and the like). Too many diaries to get in sync. Too many egos. Too many jobs to justify the existence of.
2. Tasks take too long because they are too big, and unwieldy. Big tasks scare people. Tasks are not manageable in bitesize chunks.
3. Tasks take too long because of process. Process (i.e. bureaucracy) can stop tasks starting, continuing, and even stopping when they should. Too much process stops people actually executing (getting on with the work). Too much process means that tasks can be too expensive, or time consuming, so they don’t get done.
4. Tasks take too long because people don’t see the benefit of doing them. When workers can’t see the benefit of completing a task, it can be stalled or dropped in an unfinished state. If you don’t know what a task results in, why do it?
5. Tasks take too long because they are the  wrong task. Some tasks shouldn’t even be done in the first place, because they’re inefficient, unethical, or plain stupid. Workers know this, so they stall or delay in completing these tasks.
6. Tasks take too long because they are being performed alongside other tasks. Other tasks compete for time. Unplanned work gets in the way. Too many concurrent tasks creates complexity and uncertainty.
7. Tasks take too long because they are difficult. Difficult tasks (not to say impossible tasks) are delayed in favor of easier tasks. Difficult tasks require energy that people just don’t want to give, or have.
8. Tasks take too long because people don’t want to do them. Some tasks are just not pleasant, or interesting. Some tasks aren’t cool. Some tasks are below our pay-grades. Some tasks make us look stupid. Some tasks are embarrassing. Sometimes, we just can’t be bothered.
9. Tasks take too long because they are too badly defined. Too little information to know how to start, process or end. Too little data as input. Too much confusion about what a good result looks like. Too much ambiguity in the task’s definition. Some school examination papers are like this.
10. Tasks take too long because the people doing them are ill-equipped. Too little time, too little knowledge, not enough tools, money or resources. Incompetence.

Now when any number of factors are combined, the likelihood of the task NOT being done on time is exponentially greater.

Just imagine: a badly defined, difficult task performed by a large number of busy people who don’t have the tools to do it…… think it will be late?

Bet you’ve had a few of these in your time.

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

Do some tasks take much longer than you want them to? Do you dread some tasks? Well it’s likely your are suffering from procrastination.

I have a friend who, if procrastinating was an Olympic sport, would be a triple gold-medalist. Some tasks take her an age to complete – much longer than they really should. What’s more, she hates these tasks. And it’s amazing how inventive she can be about what other jobs should be done first, like sharpening pencils or cleaning her PC monitor.

Procrastination is a psychological effect. It is when we replace high-priority and urgent activities with less important tasks, therefore putting off the important stuff to a later time (which, by the way, may never come). For example, we might have an urgent report to write, but writing the report is boring, so instead we tidy our desk.

Why do we procrastinate?

Procrastination can be a result of anxiety. Perhaps we’re worried about poor performance in the task, or, we don’t know where to start and can’t (or won’t) get help.

Researchers from the University of Michigan, St. Joseph University, and Ohio State University have also researched the links between the benefit of completing a task and our willingness to do the task. They found that people who feel more ‘entitled’ (i.e. expect to gain a lot from performing any activity) have less patience for activities that don’t provide them with an immediate benefit. In other words, people who believe themselves to be a high-achiever feel less inclined to do things where they don’t get an instant result.

What effect does procrastination have?

Procrastination often results in stress (because that task hasn’t been completed!), a guilty feeling, and a severe loss of personal productivity. The feeling of guilt can be compounded when we know that the lack of action impacts other people.

And here is worst of it. These feelings can then have the effect of further procrastination. It becomes an expanding, vicious cycle.

If we procrastinate, are we bad, or lazy?

No. It is quite normal for most people to procrastinate to a certain extent. I do it. My mom does it. And we’re not lazy. Nor is my super-procrastinator friend.

‘Chronic’ procrastination can be linked to an underlying psychological problem, and often these people don’t seek help because they don’t want to be seen as lazy or unambitious.

For most people, procrastination can be overcome by a few coping tactics. Although this isn’t an exhaustive list, below are a few things to try that I know work for me, and they’re beginning to work for my friend too:

1. Visualize the benefit of performing the task – imagine what our world will look like once it’s done. Often, this is as simple as knowing you don’t have to think about it again. Try and form a vivid image of yourself after the task has been done. This helps us perceive the immediate benefit.
2. Ask someone for help – it’s amazing what a bit of help can do. It can result in a new understanding of the task that makes it easier, or even just emotional support.
3. Avoid low points in your day – I get tired after lunch quite often. Do you? If so, then avoid performing this task then as it will be even more difficult. Either do the task before the low point, or postpone it briefly until afterwards.
4. Manage your time – if you don’t have a set deadline, then create one and hold yourself to it (I find committing this to someone else helps my commitment.)
5. Break the task up into smaller chunks – it’s far easier to focus on a small task than a big one! Identify the sub-tasks, prioritize them in a logical order of importance and start from the top.

If you’re a procrastinator, then I hope these tips help, and please share your experience by leaving a comment below.

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

Only a few years ago, the gossip in the workplace centered around the water-cooler; a meeting place where the latest news about colleagues and management-decisions were discussed and often bitched about. More recently, the water-cooler is becoming lonely. Social media is taking over as the gathering point for gossip. Has it for you?

If you don’t Facebook, you probably know someone who does. (Why don’t you Facebook?) Or maybe you prefer something more high-brow like LinkedIn. Social networking platforms enable you, your friends and your colleagues to relate to each other, provide support , argue – whatever you feel like talking about. It’s a gossipers paradise. You don’t even need to be in the same country, let alone floor of an office.

And why not? It’s fun! It’s an easy way of sharing your news and taking a quick break. We all need a break. Because of that, more and more people are using Facebook in the workplace. Do you?

Why do you use social networking whilst at work?

Sarah Perez shares the results of research conducted by Nucleus Research on the blog ReadWriteWeb. Their study tells us that 87% of the 237 people who responded admitted that their use of Facebook has nothing to do with their work, which resulted in 1.5% drop in their productivity. If this research is read by your boss, what would the reaction be? I expect that FACEBOOK.COM would be blocked right away… or maybe you’d accept a 1.5% pay cut? (Err… nah! Don’t think so)

Do you agree with the conclusion of this research? Does your Facebooking time result in less work?

Personally, I don’t agree. For many people, taking a break from work – even a few minutes – gives us time to sort the clutter in our heads and allows us to get focus and clarity on the job in hand. If you’re like me, a short-term distraction gives your inner-brain an opportunity to solve the problems your working on without you becoming tired or frustrated. I’d say my productivity increases, significantly.

In 2008, the conclusion that Facebook reduced employee productivity was also being challenged by Goldsmith College in London, UK (as reported by the Telegraph newspaper). The research discovered that most of the 1,700 workers surveyed felt more productive after an ‘e-break’ (using the Internet) than they did following a traditional kind of break.

Sarah Perez also shares research performed by the University of Melbourne which confirms this view. The research concludes that people who take short breaks are, in fact, 9% more productive. Those are not just Facebook breaks, but any kind of break.

At least with a Facebook break, we remain at our desk and contactable…

Where it Went Wrong… (an example)

Did you see this story?

“Teenage office worker (Kimberley Swann) sacked for moaning on Facebook about her ‘totally boring’ job”.

To summarize the story: Kimberley Swann added comments to her Facebook profile that she was bored in her job. She didn’t mention her company name in the updates, but those who know her will guess who she is referring to. Her ‘mistake’ was that her boss was also one of her Facebook friends, so he read the comments, got pissed off, and gave her the boot.

Do you think this is fair?

If she had said that at the water cooler, would Kimberley have been treated the same way?

The two sides of this debate are a) employers don’t want their reputation damaged in the public eye, b) employees want to share views on their life (of which work is a significant aspect of) with friends in a private forum.

So doesn’t the debate center on what is ‘public’ and what is ‘private’? In the case of Facebook, you actually have to be a ‘friend’ of someone to see their updates, which requires mutual consent. In the case of other platforms like Twitter, you can follow the updates of anyone you like, providing they don’t block you or mark their updates as private. So is it reasonable to claim that anything you write as an update to your Facebook profile is ‘private’ and therefore confidential?

It’s a grey area. How does your employer know how selective you are about who you make friends with online? Employers are bound to take the side of caution. Still, does it make it fair to restrict what an employee says in a private forum, no matter who is a member of it? I think it is unfair – damned unfair – but I don’t make the rules.

Until social networking becomes accepted as the norm by employers (which is an inevitability), should we exercise some restraint if we want to avoid any kind of recrimination, regardless if we think this is right or not?

My advice – use common sense. If you must bitch, make sure there isn’t anyone connected to you who will be offended. Yeah this is really boring but if it’s my livelihood at stake I’d rather make sure that wasn’t under threat.

The other thing I suggest you do is to find out if your organization has policies that specifically govern your use of social media. You could simply ask your boss what the deal is with commenting on Facebook.

Organizations must begin to treat its staff like responsible adults.

Contribute to the Debate

Do you think Kimberley Swann faced rough justice? Or was she just being naive? And do you think that your use of Facebook at work is legitimate?

Share your view in two ways:

1) Take the Facebook at Work survey to see how you compare with your peers. Results will be posted on 15 October 2009. Subscribe to the RSS feed to see them.
2) Leave a comment below and tell us your opinion

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

Creating a successful IT freelancer business is not an easy prospect, at least to start with, and the stress of keeping the business moving forward (and doing all the admin tasks) is compounded when you’re not sure when your next invoice will be paid or where your next gig comes from. Does it need to be a brown-trouser moment?

Heck, you got out of corporate-ville for a reason – you want to be in control and probably earn stacks of cash whilst you do, but your penalty is the uncertainty and effort you need to put in, often during unsociable hours.

However, it doesn’t need to be difficult if you follow some basic steps and your common sense which will keep you sane and your head level as a successful IT freelancer.

Be Upfront With Everyone Right From The Start – Be upfront with everyone you associate with (friends, family, customers and associates) that you’re a freelancer and your job is to earn revenue to keep the business moving. Spend as much time as you need to explain that you will focusing on your business, especially when you’re launching it, and that you will be devoting a lot of time to building it up. You’re making a commitment, and you need their support.

It’s important to be crystal clear that your intentions are to build a successful business – not line your pockets or act as a charity. Share your view of timeframes and key events which you are working to, and make sure that people understand that during those key events you won’t have time for anything else.

Keep Your Expenses As Low As You Can – Your income is going to be unpredictable! Some months will be bear with very little coming in, and then some will also feel like bumper months. It’s important to avoid spending too much during those bumper months, as your next one maybe arid! So don’t go and blow cash on a new iPod because your bank balance increased by more than the usual monthly amount.

It take discipline to view income as a long-term benefit and keep your costs low whilst you can predict how the money will be spent or pay your taxes.

Plan To Make Considerably More Than Your Target Income – You’ve got to aim high as in reality it’s rare to earn more money than you expected to. If you need $4,000 per month to cover business expenses and your personal income, then aim much higher – say $10,000. So your sales and prospecting activities need to target $10,000 in order to ensure that when reality bites, you can cover the bills and your income.

When you predict revenues that barely cover your expenses you will inevitably have to lower your expenses or take less income during bare months.

Look For ‘Cross-Sells’– Getting a foot in the door is a prized outcome for salespeople. Making an initial sale often leads to more sales of complimentary or higher value products. Why should you be any different? One you have built a stable relationship with a customer, begin to look for opportunities to cross-sell other services to your client. This could be anything from simply more of what you are currently contracted to delivery (OK, not strictly a cross-sell) to selling in the services of an associate, which you could take a small cut or fee from. Use the fact that you have already sold to your advantage.

Be A Savage Invoicer – As a permie, you wouldn’t take crap from your boss if your salary was late. Would you? So why accept excuses and breaking of your payment terms from your customers? As a freelancer, cashflow is king. You must be totally ruthless in holding your customers to their payment terms and chasing every invoice, even if you have to pay someone to help you do it for a while. Once a customer is allowed to slip once, then they’re much more likely to slip again. [See my other article on chasing invoices here.]

Plan Your Week, Ahead – There is an old proverb ‘He who fails to plan, plans to fail.’ Just because you’re an independent freelancer, it doesn’t mean this won’t apply to you! I’ve found it easier, in fact, to slip on projects if you don’t have a boss supervising you. The result: a disappointed customer, and no repeat business.

It’s a simple remedy: create a weekly schedule of activities where you’ll track your projects, report to customers, create and send invoices, etc. And stick to it! Without the discipline to stay on plan, you’re putting your business at risk.

Another side-effect of being more rigorous in your planning is that you have greater visibility of how much time administration activities take, giving you a choice to a) stay as you are, b) make them more efficient by improving your process or finding tools to help you, or c) outsource them entirely. Having the knowledge gives you the option.

Minimize Loafing – Permies have some leeway in how much non-productive time they can spend. You must have done it, or seen it: it’s the browsing the web during the lunch, or chatting about the game last night to your colleagues. Not all time in the work place is productive. As a freelancer, this time – loafing – is at your cost. Because you won’t be getting paid for it. The occasional ‘five minutes’ can add up to many hours during a week, and it’s these hours that are burnt income. This isn’t the same as taking a break – it’s important to factor in down-time during your day to recharge batteries – this is the wasted time you lose due to being distracted.

It’s much easier to be distracted at home due to your home comforts, TV, and the trappings of hobbies. Just as Drew Douglass says in ‘Mistakes I Made as a Freelance Web Developer and How To Avoid Them’ :

just because we work from home doesn’t mean that we should act like we are at home all the time

You have to monitor what distracts you – is it the TV? The Radio? Your favorite porn-site? Tweet alerts from TweetDeck? Whatever it is, if it’s causing you to loaf then quit it before it costs you dearly!

Important: make sure you record all the time you spend on projects so you can accurately bill your customers; you need to know how much time you’re really spending on different projects to manage your time properly. If this is a current nightmare for you, consider using a physical device which makes the whole things easier, like these from AlliedTime.com.

Choose The Right Projects at the Right Time – Once your business gets off the ground and, with good tidings, customers are coming to you (rather than you chasing work), you will have choices in which projects you do, and when. Often, you will be delivering more than one project at the same time. It’s real important to focus on the right project at the right time. It’s tempting to keep switching between projects on a whim, but the process of switching mode absorbs a lot more time than you might realize and the outcome is reduced productivity. So it’s an absolute must to choose projects that are ‘congruent’, that is, have common aspects that enable you to optimize your delivery. For example, two concurrent projects where one is based on the West Coast, and the other on the East Coast won’t allow you to travel between customer sites often and easily.

Complete and Finish – I am not a natural Completer-Finisher. This puts me at a disadvantage. As a Freelancer, you don’t get paid until the job is done (generally speaking). So not pushing a project to completion and starting another means that you won’t get your invoice honored. I have to really push myself to complete a project so I can get the bill out. Finish… and get paid!

Be Courageous in Calling Out a Bad Project, as a Bad Project – Sometimes, a project doesn’t go to plan. Maybe your customer has changed their minds too often, or you’re not equipped to deliver like you thought you were. Your heart might not be in it. For whatever reason, some projects just don’t happen in the way you expected, and it’s a courageous freelancer who puts a project on hold to rectify the problem.

Here’s the thing – not calling this out hurts you more in the long-run. Why? Well these projects tend to cost you more, they don’t deliver to customer’s requirements, they damage your reputation, they damage your confidence, and they’re NOT FUN. Mustering the courage to call this out in order to correct it is the best thing you can do. Sometimes, you just have to drop the project all together. Or a crisis talk with your customer is an opportunity to make essential changes. Better late, than never.

Do YOU Have Any More Tips?

Have you discovered an essential tip that enabled you to build your freelance business? Share it by telling us YOUR story…

“For the very best employee time clocks to help increase your business productivity, look to AlliedTime“

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

Are workaholics the saviors of an organization? Do they add more value because they work more hours?

A CEO of a reputed organization once said he has been working more than 90 to 100 hours a week for many years, and jokingly adds he should have done more. And in another reputed car manufacturing company dozens of employees and managers get cash rewards and appreciation certificates for not taking a single day leave during the last three years. In yet another case, a jet set CEO was proudly patting his own back stating that he loves his work so much that he often does not see his family or kids for several weeks , and cannot remember when he took a couple of days leave or a vacation.

Nowadays the list of such work crazy people are increasing at an exponential rate. And you can very easily spot such people as they will be constantly talking on their mobiles, checking their hand held devices for text messages or always connected to their office via their laptops for never ending emails and so on. Such people have their hands and minds loaded with projects, countless unfinished tasks, endless meetings, emails and constantly sweating the small, medium and big details. When questioned they claim to enjoy their job so much that they just work, work and do more work, especially to impress the media. And they also proudly believe they can be role models for others. However, contrary to what they believe or self congratulate, such habits are nothing to be proud of, and nor should they be your role models as you will shortly see. In reality, workaholics are always driven by deep internal needs, rather than external ones. Here are some ugly facts about workaholics.

1. A New York tour operator once proudly said, “New York is a city that never sleeps.” For this an elderly tourist calmly replied, “And it definitely looks like it.” Super workaholics are not necessarily the most efficient people even if they stubbornly work 18 hours a day. In fact they are the least efficient of people. They may appear to be working, but internally their brain would have turned off. The output they produce or the ideas they generate when the brain and essential body systems turn off is nothing but trash and mediocre stuff.

2. Workaholics often believe themselves to be perfectionists and role models , and often the media also portrays them as so. But in reality they are neither perfectionists nor can be role models to anyone sensible and knowledgeable about the hazards of overwork. They may have plenty of hollow followers who are as lunatic as themselves, but no sensible person will agree or appreciate this kind of burnout.

3. High workaholics suffer from a disease called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and an inability to let go. Most of them suffer from the indispensability syndrome to constantly prove something great everyday and every minute. They cannot bear being left out and want to be involved in everything always. They are terrified of being left out of the loop or some information.  They are unable to delegate . And they believe nothing can work if they are not involved.

4. Excessive workaholics are appreciation seeking addicts with a deep craving for recognition and appreciation . They suffer from a deep inferiority complex and try to cover it up by proving they can work long hours and days without a break. Just like drugs, once a person gets into the appreciation seeking habit it is very difficult for them to stop. They constantly seek appreciation and will keep doing things to invite more appreciation, even if their mind and body refuses to tag along.

5. Working non stop is perhaps the lousiest of work habits and work life balance. It is also the perfect road to ruining your health and those of others. Poor health and lack of a solid family life leads to poor performance and relationships at work. Workaholics not only ruin their health but also of their subordinates and their family members. Of course, they may earn more money than ordinary workers and access to more materialistic pleasures. But when they get a heart attack, stroke, high blood pressure and other nervous disorders it is their family and dependents that will be bear the brunt of looking after a human vegetable. Hence every workplace and home needs mentally and physically balanced individuals that can create pleasantness instead of chaos, stress and constant pressure .

6. Workaholics often don’t know whether they are workaholics. They falsely believe they are role models to the younger generation or their peers. But people will often pretend to appreciate a workaholic in front of them. But they laugh and ridicule them behind their back.

7. Finally no one on their death bed ever says, "I wish I could have worked more." And we can conclude this article with a great quote from Bertrand Russell, “One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.”

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

Being a freelance web developer, I rely very heavily on my personal and business connections and relationships, and odds are that you do too. Having a lot of connections and/or references and friends “in the business” can be extremely helpful to anyone, but it’s really what and how you interact with these people that makes all the difference. Today, we’ll have a look at some of the strategies one may use to increase the success of their company and/or business as well as their productivity.

Making a Great First Impression

Oh how cliche it is, “first impressions are everything”. We all know its true, our first impressions we make with a perspective client will make all the difference down the road? But in todays world, where people don’t always meet face to face, how does one ensure a great first impression? There are a few tools and tricks to ensure your success.

The First 30 Seconds

You’ve got about 30 seconds (maybe less) to make a great impression on this person. How do you look? Is it appropriate? A pin-stripe suit might be overkill for a simple discussion over lunch. What is the first thing you do? A confident smile and firm greeting say a lot about yourself. Now, do you take the time to ask them some questions about themselves? People want to feel as if what they have to say is important, take some time and have some good ol’ small talk with them. Ask if they’ve eaten or how their day has been. It is the small things like this that make all the difference later.

The Next Five Minutes

So you’ve had a nice little talk and ordered a iced mocha latte or your other favorite over priced drink, and now what? Do you have a plan? A great thing to do before meeting with any potential client/customer/connection is to draw out key points you would like to discuss that day. Make a flow chart of which topics you would like to discuss, and how you will react if it does (or doesn’t) go as planned. Having points and topics in your head before meeting gives speaks highly of your confidence and vision, as you will come off with a person with a plan.

Honesty is Key

Our story continues, and your now in the very thick of the meeting, and its your time to shine, your time to prove that your up to the task. So how do you prove it? Most importantly, be realistic. Do not make promises you cant keep. People like it when they feel others are on the same field as them and are being honest with them, tell your client any reservations you may have. Let them know of any possible pitfalls, and more importantly, let them know your plan to handle the situation should it arise. In addition, its OK to be the expert! You’ve worked damn hard and spent years (most likely) doing what you do, so let them know! Theres absolutely nothing wrong with sharing your expertise, just try not to come off as boasting or egocentric.

Get Out That Card!

Odds are you have a business card. Who doesn’t? However, the odds that your client will remember and hold on to your card is not as high. Quite frankly, a piece of paper with your name and number on it just isn’t enough anymore. Get creative! Make them remember you by your card, after all, that card represents your entire business and reputation. There are plenty of resources for getting creative with your cards, check out some of these if you need some ideas:

• Creative Business Cards
• Even more examples of making creative business cards.

Communicating Online

As I noted in my previous post, Mistakes I’ve Made as a Freelancer , email is fantastic but also impersonable. Just because email, skype, and similar styles of communication are convenient, doesnt mean your client wishes to sent in front of the computer checking email all day. Do you ask your clients/acquaintances how they prefer to be contacted? It might be worth the extra phone call or lunch meeting, if it means you land the job.

Networking Online

Ah yes, the one you all knew would be on the list. Online Social Networking. The phrase itself is almost cliche even now. For the sake of this article, I will only cover a few of what I believe to be the most important factors when it comes to social networking and communicating with you clients socially online.

Do NOT get on every social networking site that exists

I can’t tell you the amount of times I have heard a businessman or woman talk about their myspace page in relations to business. It’s really hard not to laugh. Dont get me wrong, there are some fantastic sites out there for social networking, such as LinkedIn.com , but you have to be careful. Nothing screams unprofessionalism like a 45 year old respected businessman with his own myspace, facebook, and friendster accounts trying to promote his business.

Be Available

Can your clients get in touch with you quickly if they need to? If they send you an email, can they expect a prompt response? Clients and future customers feel secure in knowing that if they need help, its right around the corner. Join Skype and let them know your skype idea so they can immediatley contact you. Skype is fantastic for businesses and people that work from home, I highly encourage checking it out if you do not use it already. Let them know your email, and even more importantly, check it often and reply quickly!

What do you do?

What are some of your tips? How do you use your relationships and connections to increase your success? Do you find yourself using any of the techniques above (or do you disagree with any)? Let us know what you think!

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

Email is no more just another way of communication in this Web2.0 generation. Our dependence on robust email has increased significantly, and every time we open our Outlook, it can sometimes remind us how careless we have been in organizing our emails and contacts. When we deal with 100s of email every day, it often becomes an unrewarding experience to work with Outlook for searching emails, especially if they are buried inside fragmented conversations! It is not something we love to do.

A group of young and talented guys from California understood this pain and came up with a solution for MS Outlook and they called it as Xobni which is "inbox" spelled backwards. This solution came as a plug-in for MS Outlook. Though Xobni is in its early stage, but it’s such an intelligent piece of software that even Bill Gates has called Xobni "the next generation of social networking".

Xobni has further pushed social networking into the next generation by helping us identify the level and type of communication that we can have with a person or group, keeping in mind the need to communicate differently with different people. Both LinkedIn and Facebook , which probably, are among the top choices for professional and social networking, have integrated in Xobni.

Xobni sidebar LinkedIn module crawls to the LinkedIn website for the person’s profile information and returns with his photograph, if available, their current job title and employer name without we actually going to the LinkedIn site. This feature enables us to expand our professional network from within Outlook.
The technology used by Xobni helps us to identify the degree of relationship with our contacts, who we exchange most mails with. It provides us statistics like the time of the day the person is most active online, which surely helps us to identify the efficient way to reach out to a person in our network.

For any search keyword such as person’s name, the Xobni search box returns in less than a second, the facts about the person, such as how many emails you’ve sent or received from them, their Xobni rank, and what time of day you typically correspond with them. Xobni’s Outlook plug-in organizes emails into fully searchable threaded conversations linked back to those people.

Now you don’t have to compose a mail to request for a person’s phone number, Xobni has an inbuilt feature to send mail to request a person’s phone number. It also helps us to manage our meetings directly from the sidebar.

Another great feature of Xobni is that it automatically extracts a contact’s phone number from their signature, and if you have Skype installed then clicking on the phone number will place a voice call to that person through Skype. Web Search Integration feature inside the Xobni Search Bar will look for results using Yahoo’s web search in addition to your email. The first returned result is displayed at the top of the Search Results panel.

Adam Smith , the mastermind behind Xobni has been named one of MIT Tech Review’s 35 Young Innovators Under 35 .

With all of these productive tools and features embedded into Xobni, it’s hard to believe this program is free.
The team at Xobni hints that this may just be the beginning and they believe that Outlook is "the first platform they’ve integrated with." And in future they may come up with something more which may be worth waiting for.

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.

One of my more popular articles recently has been ‘12 Behaviors Most Disliked by IT Professionals ‘ in which I shared the 12 things IT professionals hated the most about their leaders. In this article, I will be addressing one of these – when the objectives of different leaders are misaligned.

I reckon this is one of the most destructive bahaviors you could find in an organization, as for most professionals, it is an impossible situation. When leaders who are also peers have different and conflicting objectives, they will behave differently and mandate instructions to subordinates that conflict, and therefore confuse, so it creates a hot-bed of politics and power-struggles that destroys productivity in the workforce.

Let me use an example. It wasn’t too long ago when I was running a change program in a Financial Services company that had a Director at the top who had been told to run programs cost effectively and reduce the number of freelancers on the team. Coming within budget was her objective . So she applied a lot of control of headcount and resourcing, which actually resulted in under-resourcing for the scope of deliverables the programs had been charged with. So, many deliverables were descoped or delayed. But this wasn’t the problem – in fact this is perhaps the best way of dealing with the situation. The problem was that a peer of the Director, who was the client and sponsor of many of the projects, was advising workers on the program to not worry about the spending, but bring in as many resources as needed. Delivery whatever the cost was his objective . The client VP is influential and pulled strings to secure the resourcing. But then there is more. Both of these guys leader was the COO, and her objective was to ensure everything was delivered and on budget. Delivery of everything to budget was her objective , given to her directly from the CEO. But the COO gave the objectives to the Director and VP, right? Well yes, but they weren’t aligned, in fact they were in conflict.

So how did this end up? Chaos, delay and low morale. The misalignment between the objectives created a lot of confusion in the workforce. The mandates filtering down from the COO were reinterpreted sometimes, sometimes not, so from day to day workers could be given very different tasks to achieve different objectives. The ultimate result was delivery of nothing, a lot of wasted money, and a disillusioned (well, pissed off) workforce.

Wait though, I am not suggesting that leaders who are peers all have to have the same objectives. No – what I am suggesting is that conflicting objectives, when delivered through the same workforce at the same time, should be avoided. It’s perfectly OK for leaders to deliver their objectives with separate teams, or at different times. The best situation is when peer objectives are complimentary, and therefore the peers really are a team, contributing to the goal of their superior but specific to their area of strength or responsibility.
Another example of where I’ve seen this go wrong is when I was briefly involved call-center software company. It was a small business (<50 people) and was led by a COO, CFO, VP of Marketing and their boss, the CEO. The company had grown quickly and had captured it’s market. In that year, the CEO had set objectives with the members of his team that were confined to a particular target, so the COO was asked to be ‘Obsesssed with service’ and the CFO was asked to be ‘Obsessed with profit’ and the Marketing guy was to be ‘Obsessed with promotion’ – pretty much nothing else mattered. Well you can imagine what happened. In such a small organization, there aren’t enough resources for separate programs or initiatives. The projects were doomed from day one to be torn way or the other whilst the Execs exerted their power and influence to focus energy and resources onto their narrow-band objective. I observed a lot of stress and towards the end a serious lack of trust and confidence in the leadership. The place was rife with disrespectful comments about the Executives. It was hell. Eventually the CEO woke up to his mistake and rectified it by creating a much more integrated set of objectives for the leadership team, who all worked towards the same balanced scorecard.

But it was too late for the IT professionals who worked there. Many had already left, and the ones that remained were suffering from low morale. I guess it took another 6 months for the organization to recover and get back on track.

Misalignment of objectives is an age-old story. There are many examples in history. Think of how Montgomery and Patton’s objectives conflicted in World War 2, resulting in lost opportunities (look it up!).
The lesson is this, make sure as a leader you and your peers are not working against each other. In fact it is not just for leaders. Any member of any team must ensure that they are working to compliment the work and purpose of their colleagues. This is the definition of a team isn’t it? Also, people with influence and in positions of power must be sure that they are not undermining the efforts of their peers and their followers.

©2012 SimonStapleton.com. All Rights Reserved.