5 free online tools that you might actually find useful (you know, for business)

1.     Twitter

Common perception: 

It’s a way to tell people what you just ate for dinner

Newsflash: 

It’s a way to find out what your potential clients need right now

You don’t need to tweet anything yourself. It is unlikely that anyone in the world wants to know your every unedited thought. I wish this message would get through to athletes everywhere, who seem intent on Twitter-assisted career suicide by sharing every response to the boss/coach/owner’s latest statement without any pause for thought.

The key to Twitter is to follow and listen. Follow all of the customers you have and all of the customers you want. They are talking constantly on Twitter. At some point, a 15-year-old marketing consultant told them all they’d be bankrupt in 6 months if they didn’t start tweeting every day. And they listened. The result? Genuinely live information reaching the market faster than any corporate PR announcement or press release ever did. ‘ABC Ltd is pleased to announce Jane Smith as the company’s new head of engineering and construction jobs.’ This kind of information should be gold dust to your sales teams in staying ahead of the game.

2.  YouTube

Common perception:

A total distraction

Newsflash:

It’s the best training resource in the world

Yes, there are dogs in party hats and teenagers kamikaze stunts on skateboards. But there is a lot more besides. YouTube is to training what the Nintendo DS is to parenting. It may be a shortcut, and it can’t replace the real thing – but it’s extremely useful when you’re stretched.

YouTube contains videos from genuine experts on every subject from How to Input a Table of Contents in MS Word, through to explanations of the Liquid Natural Gas industry. Running a business in New Zealand and don’t know enough about doing business in China? How about an interview with the New Zealand Enterprise Commissioner & Consul General in Guangzhou? It’s called ‘Doing business in China.’

PowerPoints are good. Training sessions are great. But unless you’re going to commit resources to the design, production, execution and updating of these materials, you may find YouTube better value for money. Its available 24/7, anywhere in the world and can be immediately accessed. It’s also free.

3.   Trello

Common Perception: 

What’s Trello?

Newsflash:

It’s a life changer

If you haven’t discovered Trello yet, you might be one of a good number of people whose world it could change forever. Are you using MS Outlook to perfectly integrate all your action lists with your calendar and e-mails? No? Nor am I. If you’re one of the 0.1% who have actually mastered the full functionality of Outlook and found a way to make it practical and interactive across your team, congratulations. You may stop reading and go for some frozen yoghurt from that stall you like in the mall. 

For everyone else, there is Trello. Trello is an online system of post-it notes on the wall. Like the post-it notes on your desk and computer, you can move them around, add a new one easily and take down the ones you don’t need. Unlike the post-it notes, you can share them with others across the web, attach notes to other people, organize them into easy lists and protect their security. You can change their color coding, keep them in various different projects, and get updates every time someone adds or subtracts anything. Most importantly it works because it’s like your post-it notes. It’s simple and visual for the non-superheroes amongst us who just don’t want to forget anything.

4.     Skype

Common Perception: 

It’s an instant messenger where my staff can distract each other all day, or avoid picking up the phone for tricky stuff

Newsflash:

It’s free international video conferencing.  

I talk to my team almost every day using this tool. I feel like I’m in the room with them. This is helpful, because with Talascend’s global footprint and our global engineering staffing framework – I’m not often actually in the room with them. This tool has changed the way we operate. Get a $30 web cam, click call and start enjoying the instant benefits of a tool that used to cost high-end big businesses a fortune. And on the weekend, you can call your mom and make her day.

 5.    Join.Me

Common Perception:

GoToMeeting and WebEx are the only solutions

Newsflash:

No they’re not

Join.Me requires no permanent downloads, is available immediately and is completely free. All you need is a phone (or better still Skype) and you can share your screen (and control of your screen) with anyone you like in a secure and simple environment. No planning required, just a link you cut and paste in seconds. Sometimes you just need to see what your colleague is talking about. Join.Me lets you do that.

So there it is – five tools that can make a genuine contribution to your business. Yes, there are down sides to each of them. But one of the best pieces of advice I was given when I wanted to ban a distractive tool from a team I was running was this – you have to manage the people, not throw away the tool. If your systems are blocking any of these tools – I understand why, but I’d urge you to find another means to manage their use that doesn’t involve dispensing with the real benefits of the technology.

I’d also urge you to make sure your perception of every available tool is accurate. You could be missing some major opportunities to streamline the way you work, whether it’s just your own workload you’re balancing, or if you’re managing a team, a region or an entire business. 



Richard Spragg writes on various subjects including global engineering jobs, staffing and marketing in the technical sector.

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Must everyone evolve from innovation to advertising in the end?

It’s a long time since Google built the world’s best search engine. It’s quite a long time since the development of Google Maps, or Google Earth. At the time, these things were revolutionary and made significant contributions to daily life for a lot of people.

What’s Google’s latest innovation? It’s not a rhetorical question. Google+? Surely not. Even if it’s a new offering, it’s not exactly innovative. No more than Google Mail anyway.

Where’s the innovative beef?  

Nowhere. That’s where. Google is an advertising company. It’s raison d’être is to sell advertising space on its media to private organizations in return for money. Rather a lot of money in fact. Google made $38bn revenue in 2011. Not all from advertising, admittedly, only 96%.

James Whittaker, the disgruntled employee who’s fair minded and heartfelt resignation letter garnered so much attention earlier this year pointed to this evolution from innovation to advertising as the death of the company he seemed to honestly love. The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus.

Social Media advertising - the next great 
internet bubble?

Facebook has been on the same trajectory. Gone are the constant additions in functionality and tweaks to the way Facebook works. Not entirely actually, there have been various substantive adjustments in the area of advertising, and how ads appear on our pages.

Twitter, it seems, is next. The descent from innovation to advertising is first seen by the developers who  are the first to know what’s coming, but only in the same way that the canary in the mine shaft is the first to know what’s coming.

Lately there are rumblings from the development community that they are being pushed towards developments, for example expanded tweets with image functionality, that scream advertising. Prepare ye the way of the sales people.

Underlying this inevitable evolution is a fact that nobody round the social media boardroom table seems to be nearly worried enough about. The concept of social media advertising is enduring a substantial wobble. GM pulled all of their Facebook advertising, claiming it simply doesn’t work. And over the last few months, the marketing consulting industry has started to gather around the idea that the much prized ‘likes’ may not be worth that much.

Social Media’s big players are blowing a huge bubble, and only one thing happens to bubbles in the end. 

See also - The Death of Facebook
Richard Spragg writes on various subjects including global engineering staffing and global engineering jobs.

Lessons from Wimbledon, for Andy Murray (and the rest of us.)

So Wimbledon draws to a close again. The All England Tennis championship is down to the last two ladies and the last two chaps.  

Unfortunately for the US audience, there was no chance of an American winner this year but never fear, the British have had their share of hopeless years. The last person to lose to a Briton in a Wimbledon semi final died in the battle of Stalingrad in 1942.

Wimbledon: home to more than the odd 
philosophical soundbite. 

Until about an hour ago that is.

As Andy Murray overcomes a tough draw, huge amounts of pressure and the super-high expectations of the British public and media, to reach a Wimbledon final (the first man since 1938) he will have to dig deep.

Fortunately, the world of tennis has produced more than the odd philosopher, with pearls of wisdom to help him through it. And you know what? I think there’s a lot we can learn in business terms from these white-shorted philosophers, especially those of us who work for Talascend as we continue to fulfill our corporate values of accountability, expertise, enthusiasm and integrity. I'm shamelessly plugging these values, partly because I can, and partly because we actually take them very seriously. 

Accountability

“It's one-on-one out there, man. There ain't no hiding. I can't pass the ball.” Pete Sampras

He didn’t get to be the greatest player who ever lived for very long. I’ve often thought it unfair on Pete Sampras that Roger Federer arrived so soon after him. Jack Nicklaus saw over twenty years pass before Tiger arrived. Michael Jordan’s still enjoying his status as the greatest ever. Pete Sampras retires in 2003 with 14 singles titles and is almost immediately surpassed in most people’s eyes by his successor. One of the reasons he achieved so much, according to those who know him, is that he never needed anyone’s approval but his own. He held himself accountable for every single performance and remained completely internally driven. Great sportspeople, like great business people I would say,  accept praise, reward and notoriety gladly, but they don’t rely on them to drive performance.

“As soon as I step on the court I just try to play tennis and don't find excuses. You know, I just lost because I lost, not because my arm was sore.” Goran Ivanisavich

Goran killed Wimbledon in 2001 when he won as a qualifier, beating half the major seeds on his way through. So exciting was his final with Pat Rafter, that it more or less rendered everything after dull and mediocre. What I’ve always loved about this guy is that whenever he was interviewed he never looked for excuses. He lost a lot in Grand Slam finals, under a variety of circumstances. But if he played badly – he said so. Sometimes you have to accept that your own performance was lacking and just put your hands up. The people you work with will accept that more readily than a hundred excuses.

Enthusiasm

“For the first couple of years I played really bad tennis. It was so bad that they booed me off the court.” Richard Krajcek

Success was a long time in coming for the big Dutchman. Enthusiasm’s easy when you’re doing well. The real test of enthusiasm is when you suck and you know it. We all have bad runs in our business;  it’s particularly hard at the start, but our ability to persevere and to stay optimistic is what will eventually set us apart. Breaking a dry spell with a good win is hard for us all, but it’s not as hard as winning Wimbledon, which Krajcek did in 1996.

"What is the single most important quality in a tennis champion? I would have to say desire, staying in there and winning matches when you are not playing that well.” John McEnroe

The Mac goes even further. With the right amount of desire and perseverance you can win even if you’re not on your game. Pete Alleyne’s talked about this already – attitude versus ability. You can overcome obstacles with a desire to succeed.

 Expertise

“Find something that you're really interested in doing in your life. Pursue it, set goals, and commit yourself to excellence. Do the best you can.” Chris Evert

Work out what you want to do, understand your specific goals and then commit yourself to achieving them. I have literally nothing to add to that.

“I've been playing against older and stronger competition my whole life. It has made me a better tennis player and able to play against this kind of level despite their strength and experience.”

Maria Sharapova

I like Maria Sharapova’s quote on a number of levels. Firstly the humility of believing yourself to be surrounded by better players even when obviously, you’re not. But realizing that your expertise increases by being weaker and less experienced than those around you is vital. If I ever found myself to be the most experienced and capable person in a room, I would start looking for the door. (But it hasn’t happened yet, so we’re good.)

Integrity

“Family's first, and that's what matters most. We realize that our love goes deeper than the tennis game.” Serena Williams

Integrity is about commitment. It’s about doing the best you can because it’s the right thing to do and behaving in a way that genuinely acknowledges that there are more important things in life than business, reward and profit. My family’s far more important to me than Talascend’s ever going to be and that’s as it should be. Integrity is about throwing yourself into your work even though we all have something we’d rather be doing. We look forward to the weekends when we don’t have to work. There’s nothing wrong with that. Nobody ever died wishing they spent more time in the office. That’s why we rely on our integrity to care about what we do and to push ourselves forward. It’s what makes us professionals. Because you can be involved in something or you can be committed to it. Both take the same amount of time.

“The difference between involvement and commitment is like ham and eggs. The chicken is involved; the pig is committed.” Martina Navratilova

So there you have it. The Talascend values, brought to you by some of the world’s best Tennis players. I recommend you tune in Sunday to see if history is made, and don’t forget to look out for the moments of post-match interview genius.




Richard Spragg writes on various subjects including global engineering staffing and global engineering jobs.

Urgency vs Importance - the key to business sanity

I want my lunch. It’s 12.30pm, and I want my lunch.

Two distractions in the last hour have stopped me  from completing this blog (which was the job I gave myself the last hour before lunch to complete.) The blog is important, the interruptions were urgent (although neither turned out to be important). But what could I have done differently? They were urgent. It’s not always easy to make the distinction between urgency and importance. Stephen Covey, a clinical psychologist and expert in organizational psychology, uses a simple diagram that was something of a revelation to me when I was first shown it by an old boss. It is a set of four boxes. The diagram divides all of the tasks and responsibilities we have into four categories, called ‘Quadrants’. Covey calls them I, II, III & IV. (Pictured.) As a basic definition, an urgent task is one where speed is the most pressing factor. An important task is one that has a significant impact on the business and your role in it.                                                             

 

Whether we realize it or not, we are constantly prioritizing things in this way. For example, calling a client to confirm a start date for your candidate may be the most important thing on your to-do list, but it is not as urgent as finding the contact lens that has just fallen on the floor. The contact lens has no significant impact on your job in the long term, but it must still be done first.

For a sales person, writing the Meeting Report from yesterday’s visit is very important. Everyone appreciates the need to fully document our interactions with key customers. The knowledge accumulated from these visits contributes significantly to our understanding of our customers and potential customers. It is more important to develop this long term understanding than it is to place one single person. But you still make the call to your customer to confirm that start date first, because it is more urgent.

 

At first glance the answer to all this might seem simple. Spend as much time as you can in Quadrant I, avoid  everything in Quadrant IV and spend what time you need to Q II and QIII as necessary. But the reality is much more complex than that. You might think that a CEO would spend all of his time in Quadrant I and a clerical worker would spend all their time in Quadrant IV. But it’s not the case. Whatever your role, you have urgent and important tasks. The receptionist who greets the big client visiting the office is performing a function of significant importance and urgency. The first impression could make all the difference and this interaction will be their first encounter with anyone at Talascend – it’s very important. As to urgency – imagine your client left standing there for 5 minutes while your receptionist finishes some new hire paperwork.

Balancing importance and urgency in your day to day tasks is the road to sanity in time management,  falling into the common pitfalls, will send you hurtling in the other direction. Basics first. Spending all your time in Quadrant IV will get you fired – and quite rightly. Activities like surfing the net, making personal calls or going to get coffee are not the things careers are made of. But QIV has its place, and more of that later. Quadrant III is the deception Quadrant. This is where time is sucked away. A lot of things in this quadrant are masquerading as urgent when they are actually not. Badly planned meetings, phone calls that are twice as long as they should be, some types of paperwork etc. Interruptions are the most common sources of distraction in QIII like the two I ran into in the last hour. 

It’s difficult. 

If a member of your team says ‘Can you come and help me with this?’ you need to go and help. If it turns out not to be important or urgent – that’s going to cost you. Good time management will ensure you don’t spend too much time in this quadrant, as will clear communication. A friend who works at Google insists that you can control distractions to some extent. If he speaks to an external vendor who might have something he is interested in, He will ask them to call back between 2pm and 3pm. This is also his open office hour for his staff’s minor issues. It allows him to schedule distractions.’ I know I’ve got to have these  conversations,’ he says, ‘At least this way I know when they’re coming.’

Spending all your time in Quadrant I will send you to some kind of institution. Nobody can do it. Quadrant I tasks carry inherent elements of stress (deadlines and pressure mostly) and to be done well need to be balanced with other tasks – even, surprisingly, a little bit of Q IV. QIV is closely linked to QI. In between two urgent, important tasks like finishing a board report and doing a press interview, a friend of mine at Amazon.com always takes a break, he says he will wonder out of his office, get a diet coke and spend five minutes talking to a colleague about football. Even if it means being a little late. He will do a better interview that way. What he’s doing is visiting QIV to help him do a better job in QI. If we don’t plan to spend a little appropriate time in Q IV, we will end up there anyway. Because that’s where we run when we burn out. Spend six or seven hours on any given day focused entirely on something demanding, and you will not be productive for the last two hours. It’s too late to take a sensible break then – you’re done. You’ll end up in QIV – walking round the parking lot, leaning back in your chair with your fingers pressed to your temples trying to re-motivate yourself. If you’d only planned to spend twenty minutes that lunchtime sitting in the kitchen with your iPod on reading a newspaper, and walked outside for a Starbucks for 15 minutes late afternoon – you’d have been fine. You might even have got a couple of extra hours out of your day.

This brings us to QII. QII is your source of sanity and control. Here lies  strategy and planning. Not spending enough time in this quadrant is the reason productivity falls apart. This is where you manage your time in all the other quadrants. Obviously, it’s easy to sacrifice the important in favor of the urgent. Nobody is going to lean over your shoulder and tell you to stop making sales calls so that you can sit quietly for an hour and make a list of things you want to accomplish over the next 12 months. That’s not how a business works.  But every successful business person from Donald Trump to Sir Alan Sugar is on the record saying that it is vital that you make time to do this. Stopping to check that you’re doing the right things is essential – even though it means stopping. 

Most sales and recruitment people are bad at this. It’s because we believe there is nothing more important than picking up the phone and selling. There are metrics to be hit, targets to achieve and money to be made. Surely the best way is to just get on with it? No. It isn’t. What we’re really doing when we do this, is driving our car around aimlessly hoping to stumble back onto the right road, rather than stopping and getting the map out. Chances are the fastest way to get there is to stop. As Yogi Bera said, ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, you may not get there.’ A sensible amount of time planning your week will make that week more productive, even if it means productivity time is spent on it. If you just throw yourself headlong into unstructured and unplanned activity – it doesn’t matter how hard you work or how talented you are, you’re going to spin your wheels without progress – costing you much more time than the  planning would have taken.

At the end of the day, all of this is about forming positive habits. Warren Buffet says that the chains of habit are too light to be felt until they’re too heavy to be broken. A sobering thought, but it’s equally true that good habits are self perpetuating and that the smallest positive impact of good time management on your day to day working life will make your life easier, and motivate you to do even better. Ultimately, nobody can manage your time for you. The right answer could be different for everyone. Understanding the difference between urgency and importance and planning time to carry out tasks accordingly is a starting point.

Now it's lunchtime.





Richard Spragg writes on various subjects including global engineering staffing and global engineering jobs.