Archive for Management
Pain or Passion – Keys for Nurturing Customer Relationships
It’s hard to come up with fresh materials for social media. Every weekend when I plan out my tweets for the week, I’ve settled on having a general theme. It helps me gather material and puts a focus on things that come up spontaneously throughout the week. As I have said before, life in general […]
You can lead a horse to water…7 UI design tips for increasing user adoption
We’ve all heard the saying, “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” Maybe you can’t MAKE him drink, but… you can ENTICE him to drink. You can provide beautiful, convenient and tasty water so that he WANTS to drink. Let’s apply this analogy to software UI (screen layout) design. […]
Spring Cleaning for the mind
During a meeting last week we were discussing a book to review during a quarterly education event coming up. Cleaning out my desk drawers the week before, I stumbled upon a miniature edition of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I suggested we use that as our book review. It’s timeless and still very relevant. […]
Managing a Procrastinator or How to not be “put off” by those who tend to put things off
We have all known procrastinators or have been one at some point ourselves. Managing a procrastinator can be a frustrating and difficult situation. Let’s face it, procrastination not only affects our business but it affects our sanity. One of the obligations of a good manager is to mentor those we manage and help them achieve […]
5 tips to help manage procrastination
Last week was National Procrastination Week so it inspired a theme for some of the articles in our monthly newsletter (which ironically is one week late.) That is just dripping in irony. For years, I have been a proponent of time management and organization. But I can and do procrastinate when there is something I […]
Is it legal to monitor employee emails?
Last week I got an interesting email from a client regarding the legality of monitoring and reading employee emails. There were some internal issues that were causing concern and they wanted to know what tools to use and how to go about implementing the process. Before looking into tools, I wanted to ensure that it […]
Practicing Gratitude can Help Your Business
Many business consultants and books promote the theory that people buy from people they know, like and trust. It follows that to be successful, you should do things that will build your likability and trustworthiness. In this issue of our PEC newsletter, we have outlined many ways to express gratitude to your customers by keeping […]
Saying Thanks on Social Media
Our newsletter theme this month is giving thanks (appropriate with November right around the corner). Each of us was challenged to create an article about gratitude, thankfulness, and how to say we appreciate our customers. Since I love social media, I decided to focus on that and how it can help you engage your customers […]
Mind Mapping: a creative way to make lists and share ideas
Lifehacker.com says, “Mind mapping is one of the best ways to capture your thoughts and bring them to life in visual form.” Mind mapping allows you to capture your thoughts or those of a group in a very unstructured way and then tie those thoughts together as you go along. It is great for brainstorming […]
A solution for tracking hours in real time
For those of us in service-based businesses it is important to track the time we spend on various projects. A contact manager like Act! is great for tracking appointments and to-dos, but as our lives get busier and more complicated, we find we need a more fluid system. That is why I went searching for […]