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- Comments are an easy way to attach information to your data. Unfortunately, they often block data in adjacent cells. You can hide them, but that’s counter-productive. Still, having comments pop up as you browse a spreadsheet can be annoying. One easy-to-implement solution is to make the comment’s background transparent. Youll...
- Tags: Uncategorized
- Blog posts 2007-04-17
- Your thoughts on "poaching"
- I’m interested in knowing if “poaching” is an issue with you or not. In the context of hunting or fishing, the term "poaching" means doing so where one isnt supposed to. In the context of a help desk or field support organization, I use the term to refer to...
- Tags: support, Helpdesk, Customer Relations
- Blog posts 2007-04-01
- No means no... and who needs that?
- I was talking to an animal communicator one time, and she claimed that when you speak to your dogs (or cats or horses or who knows, gerbils even), you should never use negative terms. She said that they dont know what "no" means, or "don’t." Not being linguists (good dog,...
- Tags: Calvin Sun
- Blog posts 2007-03-21
- Don't Be a Powerless Leader
- A client of mine once put it so eloquently: We lead most effectively when we aren’t trying to be a leader. — Precisely. — In our over-marketed society, any intentional attempt to lead comes across as a sales message and thus, especially among young people, triggers skepticism and defenses....
- Tags: Accountability, Blohowiak, leader, Leadership, Management Skills, Mindset, Personal Development, Power, Self Examination
- Blog posts 2007-02-22
- Good Indexing May Improve Database Performance
- Tons of data, complex calculations, busy forms, and even network traffic impact a database’s performance. Your first line of defense against poor performance is a good design that includes appropriate indexes. An index is an underlying structure that determines how Access stores and retrieves data. By default, Access applies an...
- Tags: Uncategorized
- Blog posts 2007-04-15
- Don't give it away for free!
- IT workers in the UK are slowly starting to work less unpaid overtime than before. Last month the Trade Union Congress TUC published figures showing that the average IT professional in the UK puts in six hours and six minutes of unpaid overtime; that’s a reduction of 36 minutes...
- Tags: News, overtime, Trade Union Congress
- Blog posts 2007-03-03
- Mission Statements are a waste of time
- Before you read any further, take a moment and repeat your organization’s Mission Statement. If you could actually remember it, now compare what you said with the actual text of the written statement. Chances are you couldn’t remember it. Many can’t even come close. ...
- Tags: John McKee, Management, Career, Boss, Leadership, Coaching, Performance, Company Culture, Mission Statement
- Blog posts 2006-11-09
- Being on the other end of the line – version 2
- Having been a bit hard on our helpdesk the other day I feel I have to put things right. There was a record in my database that I couldn’t clear because some of the required options weren’t available. - When I close a call...
- Tags: Customer Relations, Help, Helpdesk, Uncategorized
- Blog posts 2007-02-28
- Getting Things Done -- Or Not
- “I didn’t get anything done today!” How many times have you said that lately? Especially after an exhausting day!?! If you’re getting further behind the faster you go, ask yourself one piercing question: How do you spend your time? And then this one: How sure of that are you?...
- Tags: Accountability, Blohowiak, leader, Planning, Time Management, TimeTracker
- Blog posts 2007-03-06
- Leadership and Systems Thinking
- You probably can describe and quite finitely diagram the technical aspects of your work systems. What about the human dimensions? One of the interesting things about the way we commonly think about systems is that by definition, we are to emphasize actions as components of the overall system and...
- Tags: Mapping, Accountability, Leadership, Self Examination, Assumptions, Blohowiak, Mindset
- Blog posts 2007-02-14
- Take advantage of chances to build caller rapport
- We all know how frustrated and angry callers can be. We know how they can complain about us if they think were failing to treat them correctly. So, when the chance arises to build rapport with callers, take advantage of it. Here are some tips...
- Tags: Customer Relations, Helpdesk
- Blog posts 2007-03-19
- Another Sony Meltdown?
- OK, it’s not strictly a security question in the traditional sense, but you can’t get much less secure than having your computer catch on fire, wiping out your data and possibly a lot more. Bloomberg News http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=apKbeNxil5UI reports that Sony Corp. has apologized...
- Tags: Apple, Battery, Fire, Laptop, Sony, Sony Corp.
- Blog posts 2006-10-24
- PIM synchronisation with the help of .mac
- Recently, I know, I’ve been talking a lot about the joys of switching to Mac; and at risk of annoying those who don’t really care, I wanted to mention how I deal with personal information management PIM synchronisation under Mac OS X.Synchronisation of personal information such as appointments, contacts and...
- Tags: Synchronisation, Software, Os X, Mac, General, Data Synchronisation, Apple
- Blog posts 2007-04-23
- Leadership and Systems Intervention
- Leaders need to intervene, interrupt, and sometimes disrupt the existing system. If you’re leading, you’re messing with the state of things. That’s because leadership is always about creating a new and different future. Managers devoid of leadership deal with the future, too. That’s because planning is a classic management function,...
- Tags: Blohowiak, Leadership, MEADOWS, Mindset, That&rsquo, s
- Blog posts 2007-03-02
- Learn to manage your team with consistent communication
- If you are an IT manager, do you manage each of your staff in the same manner, or do you manage them differently depending on the individual personality? Or, if you are someone in a non-managerial role, do you notice being managed differently than some of your peers? ...
- Tags: Communication, general, It Management, Management, team
- Blog posts 2006-10-30
- Back up my Mac: SilverKeeper gets it done for free
- While browsing the TechRepublic software vaults, I decided it was about time I found an automated backup solution for my iMac, which I use to store all of my master RAW photos, music, documents etc. I had been waiting for the release of Leopard (OS X 10.5) that has a...
- Tags: Software, Mac, General, Backup
- Blog posts 2007-04-17
- Holidays and customer relationship-building
- It’s December, and I’m in a Christmas kind of mood; I have in front of me a stack of Christmas cards that I need to send out. However, this stack is not for relatives and friends; it is for my customers. You don’t send holiday cards to your customers and...
- Tags: card
- Blog posts 2006-12-03
- "Harmless" management decisions are often disincentives
- Today’s message is about people, or perhaps I should say, a reminder that the employees that work for you are living, breathing, human beings with thoughts, feelings, lives, and problems. They are not machines. Often, you will see management defined as planning, organizing, commanding, controlling, coordinating, and communicating. While technically...
- Tags: motivation, General, Decision Making
- Blog posts 2007-04-15
- Are you encrypting data?
- But you don’t have to be vulnerable. There are plenty of options available today for securing/encrypting your data and many of these options are just overlooked.Consider in recent news the security breach where hackers obtained access to more than 40 million credit card accounts. Could this have been avoided?Yes! If...
- Tags: General, steven s. warren
- Blog posts 2007-03-13
- Victimized by micromanagement
- A close friend of mine told me about a recent experience she had in the workplace, and I thought it was worth sharing. My friend, who is a senior manager in her organization, needed a new admin assistant. She decided--with her manager’s approval--that she would pursue the temp-to-hire process, as...
- Tags: micro-management
- Blog posts 2007-02-18
