Here are some interesting posts from around the ‘Net to catch up with over the weekend:
What are you reading this weekend?
Or are they? An article in September’s Inc magazine describes how Cynthia Rowley got a contract to design a new line for Pampers. The New York Post ran an item on the Page 6 which mentioned her interest in diaper design. She says in the article: “I guess Procter & Gamble keeps up with the gossip columns”.
There’s three lessons in this. Yes, “they” really are listening, reading, scouring the net, twitter, facebook and so on to find out about you. That can be good (lesson 1). Express your passion for a product or a company, talk intelligently about your industry, make connections, and you could be asked to do something you’ve always wanted to. It could be bad (lesson 2). Whatever you put out there which is negative, is also being read, analyzed and judged. If you wouldn’t say it in person, or behave that way in front of your boss, don’t put it on the web.
The third lesson is that inspiration often comes from combining two disparate ideas: in this case, fashion and diapers. In order to get that inspiration, you need to be reading outside your industry, meeting people outside your industry and thinking about what you learn. Expose yourself to something new, and create something new.
FilerFrog is a neat Windows utility that adds a bunch of useful file handling tools to your context (right-click) menu, handling tasks like moving files and image resizing. As it only adds one top-level item, it won’t clutter your context menu, but all the tools are just a couple of clicks away. FilerFrog used to be a commercial product, but it’s now available for free.
Here’s a rundown of the things that FilerFrog can do:
FilerFrog is a free download, with versions available for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows machines.
Let us know what you think of FilerFrog in the comments.
Most of us are probably an expert in something, and we naturally get questions from people who want to learn more about our area of expertise. It is relatively easy to just jot down a few paragraphs, grab a couple of links and send off that email to the person asking the question. But think about how many times you’ve answered a similar question over the past month or the past year. Those 15 minutes chunks start to add up really quickly when you multiply them out across dozens of requests. That’s where reducing, reusing and recycling your work can have huge productivity benefits over time.
Today, for example, I met with someone who is moving into her first community manager position. After the meeting, I sent what looked like a pretty impressive list of 17 links to relevant information, but it took me less than five minutes to compile what she needed because I had most of it available in canned responses and other online documentation. Being prepared and ready with common answers allows you to be extremely responsive with details and comprehensive answers to questions without spending much time on them at all. Here are a few of the things that I do to reduce, reuse and recycle my work.
Don’t underestimate the power of online documentation. These frequently asked questions are a great way to come up with ideas for blog posts or other documentation that you can reuse over and over. I use my personal blog to publish most of my community management posts, and I have a “getting started” page where I’ve collected the posts that provide a good introduction to community management. A wiki is another good option for reusable documentation when you are working as part of a project, team or online community. The community that I manage has a wiki where we collaborate on FAQs, guidelines, technical documentation and many other documents. When I start to see questions coming up in the community on a common topic, it is often a sign that something isn’t well documented.
After your core set of documentation is established, many individual questions can be answered by sending a link or two. Whether you use a blog, wiki, collaboration tool or website, spending a few minutes writing online documentation now can save hours later when you reuse it again and again.
Once you have a good set of online documentation, you can start organizing it into collections and FAQ documents. I mentioned that I have a “starting point” page on my blog that simply links to collections of documentation, organized by topic. I also do this in the online community with FAQ documents and pages that organize information to make it easier for people to find. In many cases this lets me send people a single link or a couple of links that provide them with a whole collection of information on a particular topic. As I add new content, I go back occasionally to these collections and add additional information or links to some newer documentation on the topic.
When someone emails you with a question and you take the time to put together a complete, thoughtful answer, you should store it as a canned response ready for the next person who asks a similar question. I often use the canned response functionality in Gmail to do this, and your email client might have something similar available, but if not, you can always store snippets of emails for reuse in a text file or your favorite note-taking application. Now, I’m not saying that you should just blast these out to people as-is. I usually take the time to personalize them and add a little more information that is especially relevant to their situation. Each time I use one of these canned responses, I also take the time to see if it needs to be updated with some new information or additional links and then I save those changes for the next time I need to use it.
Most of my canned responses are actually collections of links to online documentation, so three ideas aren’t separate as much as they build on each other. You could also use the same techniques within a corporate environment with private collaboration tools inside your firewall. Whether the information is public or private, having great online documentation formed into collections and used as canned responses to inquiries is a great way to reduce, recycle and reuse your work.
What are your tips for reusing work?
Photo by Flickr user Nick Bramhall used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.
We know you all know by now not to have an email address which suggests something other than a professional image when you’re looking for a new job or just corresponding with other professionals. (You did know that, right? No ‘Fridaysareonlygoodfordrinking@hotmail.com’ to the chairman of the board or on your resume please.)
I was writing @ replies on twitter, when I realized not everyone knows the next step of professional personal email addresses, which is no complicated number/letter combination. No M1ke6453@hotmail.com. The harder the address is to type, the more likely the typist is to make a mistake. If they make a mistake, you might not get the invitation to interview that they are sending.
The most appropriate formal email address is firstnamesurname@provider.com. That’s it. You should have multiple email addresses to keep your personal and employment lives separate. Yes, it’s a bit more work to check them, but it’s better than not getting an email which gives you the information you desperately needed for a needed report or one that offered you your dream job.
“Forge your own path. Discover a route from one place to another that hasn’t been paved, measured, and quantified. So many times we want someone to tell us exactly what to do, and so many times that’s exactly the wrong approach.” – Seth Godin, LinchpinMy friend Betsy Talbot and her husband Warren are forging their own path and making their own way. Two years ago, they decided that they wanted to travel the world. Life was too short, they decided, to wait for that dream life to magically create itself. They had to figure out a way to make things happen — their own way, right now. They created a plan for saving money and paring down to make room for an around-the-world trip of one to two years, and one month from now on October 1, just over two years from originally setting out their intentions, they will be embarking on an adventure of a lifetime.
Betsy and Warren’s story is very inspiring, but unfortunately, the most probable initial reaction as an outsider is to think, “I could never do something like that. I have [x, y, z] obligations, and anyway, even if I wanted to do it, I wouldn’t know where to start.” The thing is, I have known Betsy for many years now, and she’s just like a lot of other people I know, myself included, and yet, somehow she and Warren have made this happen, so what’s their secret?
One thing that struck me that Betsy said recently was, “I’m becoming more comfortable with the unknown.” I don’t think it occurred to her that she and Warren had become comfortable with the unknown quite some time ago.
I’ve watched them carry out their plan over the past couple of years, and at almost every step of that journey, they were not exactly sure what to do or how things would go, and yet, they kept going and remained confident that they would figure things out along the way, and that’s exactly what they did.
As business owners, we have to get used to not having all the answers, knowing that if the answers were easily found, anyone and everyone could attempt to start a business, and they would all succeed at it.
I think our first instinct, anytime we don’t have the answers or when things don’t seem to be moving along as smoothly as we might have expected, is to think, “I must be doing something wrong,” when in all likelihood, it’s just that what we’re doing has never been done before in quite the same way, and maybe that’s a good thing.
Instead of immediately thinking we should change course and do things the way someone else has done them, perhaps we might step back and ask ourselves, “Is there really one answer, one right way to do this? Has this even been done before, or do I simply need to become comfortable with creating my own way?”
Perhaps the biggest part of it is learning to stay the course, even when the course doesn’t yet exist. There’s no path laid out ahead of you, and you’re learning to navigate as you go. Learn to keep going, in spite of not having clear directions. Create a plan you believe is most likely to succeed by studying the cues of those who have succeeded before you, but accept that you are forging a new path in many ways, so the answers may not always be immediately available.
How have you learned to become comfortable with the unknown?
Photo by Flickr user VinothChandar, licensed under CC 2.0
When Windows 7 launched last year, Microsoft offered a discounted Windows 7 “Family Pack.” It was a boxed package that contained the Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade for both 32- and 64-bit systems and a product key that could be used on up to three machines; at $150, it was a pretty good deal for families — and workers with more than one machine to upgrade. Unfortunately, the Family Pack was only available in limited quantities, and was sold out in the U.S by December.
The good news is that, in time for Windows 7′s first anniversary on October 3rd, Microsoft is bringing back the Family Pack. It’s the same deal as before — three upgrade licenses for $150, although you’ll probably be able to find it a bit cheaper online. If you haven’t already upgraded your machines to Windows 7, it’s definitely worth considering as, once again, it’s only available “while stocks last.” The Family Pack will also be sold in Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Australia and “many other markets” on or after October 22nd to mark Windows 7′s first anniversary in those territories.
Have you upgraded to Windows 7 yet?
Some people use their email for everything — storing files, emailing notes to themselves, etc. If you fit that description, you should check out Notes for Later. It’s a simple free service that’s useful for keeping making notes of websites to remember at a later date. Sign up, and the site generates a custom bookmarklet that, when clicked, sends an email to your inbox containing the current web page’s URL, the time and date and any text that you’ve highlighted on the page.
Of course, there are plenty of other, more powerful services that are probably more suited to this kind of task already: bookmarking tools like Delicious and note-taking tools like Evernote, for example. However, for the person who spends most of their time in their inbox, Notes for Later is simple and extremely quick to use: Just highlight your text (if required) and click the button. Then when you need to find a note, it’s just a question of searching your inbox.
Each note is stored in a separate email with the URL of the page saved as its subject line; if you’re going to be using the tool extensively, I’d recommend creating a new folder and a filter or inbox rule to keep the Notes for Later emails out of your main inbox. It should also be possible to use the tool for collaborative note-taking — if a team was doing research, for example, they could all send notes to a central email address.
What do you think of Notes for Later?
One day last week, someone asked me if we’d heard of an author with a new management book out. I hadn’t, so I downloaded the book to read on my Kindle and replied, I’ll let you know when I’ve read it. “Wow, you rock” came the reply. To be honest, I was a bit shocked, since I didn’t think I’d done anything special. (I’ve started it, by the way….).
Later Mark and I had a conversation about a phone call he’d had that day. One of our previous attendees had had a problem and emailed Mark. It wasn’t the kind of thing that could easily be discussed by email, so we set up a 15 minute phone call. The attendee was astounded that Mark would take the time to talk to him and promised to follow up.
Maybe, we thought, only 10% of executives would give someone who asked a genuine question the time of a reply. But we offer Mark’s email address at every conference, and you know, only a tiny number of people take him up on the offer. Even less follow up – and we love the people that do. We talk about them as our friends. We look forward to going to the towns where they are. There’s some people who send me an email every now and again, and I think of them as my friends – even though our friendship started as them asking me a question they thought I could help with.
If you have a question and you think someone you admire could help, ask. I’m sure you’ll be surprised at the response. And don’t forget to follow up. If someone asks you a question, try to help. And, if you want to be friends with someone, reach out. It won’t happen if you don’t.
In his book, ‘Why We Make Mistakes’, Joseph Hallinan describes an experiment whereby volunteers are given a logic problem involving cups of water. There is a solution, but it’s relatively complicated. In a second experiment, they are given more jugs and cups of water and this time the problem can be solved in two ways: a replication of the first problem’s solution and a second, far simpler, solution. The people who participated in the first experiment nearly all followed the solution they’d found previously. But 95% of a second set of volunteers who hadn’t seen the first problem found the simpler solution.
Hallinan summarizes: “People in the initial experiments had become so set in their ways that they were blinded to the newer, simpler solution. But to those who came to the problem fresh, the simpler solution was obvious.” That is one of the problems with the continuous improvement meme – in your company, you might make a 1% improvement each year. But a new company who is coming to the problem fresh may be able to come up with something completely new. Incremental improvements in laptops are nothing next to the ipad (depending on what you want to use the device for 
).
One of the ways to get out of the space you’re in mentally is to explore paradigms outside of your company, industry or country. There’s an article on the BBC website today about the application of the ‘no-frills’ airline business concept to the hotel industry. How many people in the hotel industry thought, when they got on a budget airline, how does this apply to my industry? How does it apply to yours? How does Starbucks or Apple or Amazon or Dell or Expedia apply to a legal firm or a plant manufacturer or a papermill? It’s asking questions like this that allow for more than incremental improvement.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11114802
http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Make-Mistakes-Without/dp/0767928067/ref=sr_…
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