Bringing talented people on your team is only half the battle. Only if you can get your team to cooperate well will their joint efforts lead to increased productivity in the workplace. Find out what makes these great teams from movies and TV so effective and how you can transfer their skills to the world of your office work.
Read more »
When I first started in business, meeting notes were a formal thing. There was someone in on the meetings who knew how to take minutes, the format, and the important information to contain therein. As time has passed, I see less and less of this in the professional space, and I honestly don't see that we're missing much by keeping notes in new, less-formal ways. As always, though, innovation can lead to complication if we forget the reasoning behind the practice. With all of the note-taking options available to us, it can be easy to sacrifice efficiency and effectiveness for the sake of the new and shiny.
Read more »|
Photo by Rahul Rodriguez (edited), Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 |
E-mail is the communication tool in today’s business world. Surveys show, however, that often times, e-mails cause confusion and tension with lasting negative effects instead of promoting successful business relations. Here are strategies that help you avoid this from happening and make sure that your e-mails get the results you want. |
It's funny: I've never been more connected with my coworkers, yet I don't know that I've ever seen more office confusion than I have as of late. We're catering to the communication habits of millenials, and in a lot of ways, this has benefited the office environment. However, with an ever-increasing variety of communication methods, the need to ensure that we are using effective communication has never been more paramount to success. Here are some ideas for ridding your office of confusion by communicating effectively.
Read more » 
|
Project management is only for software developers or at best something suited for production needs, right? Wrong. Creative professionals like marketers and graphic designers can greatly benefit from adopting project management elements says Forbes. |
E-mail is a tool intended to facilitate communication and help you get your work done. If well managed, the inbox can become the central hub of your workflow through which you coordinate your work and conveniently exchange information that is essential to your business goals. Here are some practical and effective strategies for taming your e-mail inbox.
Read more »
Team-building is vitally important for a company of any size. Employees who are comfortable with one another are happier at work and are more likely to have an open dialogue, which can only help your company in the end. Here are some great activities for building morale that I've seen work over the years.
Read more »
I've been in my fair share of business meetings, some of them effective meetings that followed some agreed-upon business etiquette, some not so much. One thing they tend to have in common is a certain set of jargon, probably intended get a certain message across but usually succeeding only in confusing or angering people. There may be no perfect way to run a meeting, but there are some best practices. Here are some of the phrases I wish I could just erase from the business person's lexicon.
Read more » 
|
In my experience, one of the toughest things about being a new employee in an office is learning the business buzzwords. Every office seems to have its own set of buzzwords, an accepted lexicon forged from the various professional histories of management. The phrases aren't usually too difficult to decipher, but it can be frustrating to encounter outdated (or flat-out corny) terminology and be expected to use it. To avoid this for your new employees, consider striking these business buzzwords and phrases from your daily office vocabulary. |
Whether you're running a company or a department, it can be easy to focus your attention on your bottom line, increasing production and decreasing cost. Of course, focusing exclusively on money can mean sacrificing time you could spend focusing on your people, and since it is your people who make it possible for you to accomplish your business goals, this is an unacceptable option. So how do you ensure that you maintain office morale, whether the business is thriving or barely surviving? Here are a few ideas borne from lessons I've learned along the way.
Read more »