I was having lunch with a friend the other day when he started complaining about the upcoming employee review process at his company. He was already spending hours filling out the review forms for his direct reports, and this year was going to be more stressful than usual. Business is down, and expected to remain slow for quite a while, so he’s going to have to lay off several people that actually did a good job this past year. Needless to say, his own performance is suffering right now and his staff is probably spending too much time, at work and at home, stressing about this situation.
Only an HR person could love the annual performance review ritual. Everyone else hates it. Why should good work go unrewarded for up to a year? And why on earth would anyone put off a reprimand, remedial training suggestions, or regular mentoring until some artificial date in the future? If there’s a genuine, healthy dialog between boss and worker, as there should be, then issues are addressed as they come up and there’s nothing left to discuss at the "annual review." If problems are left festering the boss isn’t doing his or her job. Hard/good work that isn’t rewarded promptly with bonuses or salary adjustments just fosters resentment and causes higher employee turnover.
Anyway, yesterday’s Wall Street Journal has an article written by Dr. Samual Culbert, a consultant, author and professor of management at the UCLA Anderson School of Management in LA. He says "It destroys morale, kills teamwork and hurts the bottom line. And that’s just for starters. " The article is entitled "Get rid of the performance review! " and you should read it before subjecting your team to another round of reviews.
Posted in Business
It seems like every time I print a Web page or e-mail message the last page off the printer is mostly blank. Sometimes it just has an ad that I don’t need, or the last part of a privacy notice from an e-mail, or even just a page number. These extra pages get thrown away by the millions every day, wasting paper, toner, ink, time and money.
A company called GreenPrint Technologies has come up with a clever solution, at least for Windows computers. They have created a simple print driver that can be installed on any Windows machine. After that, whenever you print something you will first see a preview of the document, and the Green Print software has automatically highlighted those pages that it believes to be junk. It takes just a click to block one or more pages before it ever hits your printer.
The software is really easy to use. It lets you configure the type of pages it should block, for example blocking pages that only contain a single graphic, or blocking pages that only have a footer. It even keeps track of your savings over time. And there is a PDF feature so you can decide to create a PDF file instead of sending the document to your printer.
There are free (for home use) as well as paid (for business/commercial use) versions of Green Print. Install the software today and start doing your share to eliminate this micro-waste.
Posted in Business
We’ve been using Microsoft Project for years to organize resources and create time lines for our projects. It’s a good tool, but for $1000 (only $600 for the non-professional version) I could never recommend it for small companies, or small project teams. Now there are a couple of really good tools for managing projects that fit even the smallest budget.
One desktop program that we recently started using is called OpenProj . As the name implies, it’s an open source application and seems to have a fair amount of support. They ask for donations, but basically it is completely free. (Please consider making a donation if you end up using the program. We should do whatever we can to encourage the open source community.) You can find the program here:
http://openproj.org/
The Web site has versions for Windows, Apple OS X, and Linux.
The other option we recommend is Zoho Projects . Unlike OpenProj, this is a hosted application, meaning there’s nothing to download or install. Just go to the Zoho Web site, make a free account and start your project. Besides being easier to set up (nothing to install) the big advantage of Zoho Projects is that your project files are available on any computer with an Internet connection. So you can start working at the office, bring it up on your notebook at Starbucks, then use your home computer on the weekend without missing any files. You can also share files and collaborate with other team members using the built-in forum feature.
The first project is free, with an unlimited number of users. Try it out for yourself here:
http://projects.zoho.com/
With these low cost, easy-to-use tools your project schedules and resources shoud be much better organized.
Posted in Business
Guy Kawasaki came up with this excellent idea several years ago. It’s very simple and easy to follow, but not many people get it, so I continue sitting through long presentations, with unreadable fine print on the screen, that the presenter reads to the audience. If it’s a sales presentation I’ve been very tempted to throw him out. Unfortunately, in many business situations that’s not a practical option so I’ll just do what I can to spread the word.
Here is the basic rule:
"A PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points."
Think of it as the "elevator pitch" applied to a larger audience.
Here’s the link to the full description:
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2005/12/the_102030_rule.html
For the sake of your audience, please follow these rules. You never know, it might make you a better sales person.
Send in your comments if you have tried this in real life. I’d love to get your positive, and negative feedback.
Posted in Business
