Here's the collection of articles I've shared on social media outlets over the past week:
- Why Innovation Is So Hard: A few good points on why innovating sometimes feels like it's a difficult thing to do and what you can do to improve!
- Present Slides, Distribute Documents: Do your meetings sometimes feel like someone is just reading you a slide show? You can read a slide show yourself, can't you? Why not distribute the slide show ahead of time?!
- How to Evaluate Personal Characteristics When Hiring: Being a good fit is incredibly important when hiring someone. How can you improve gauging how good of a fit someone will be with your work culture? This article gives you a few strategies.
- Look Out! When the Visible Becomes Invisible: Invisible work "clutter" can be holding your efficiency back at work. Check out this article for why ignoring things at work and letting them build up can get dangerous... and of course, how to avoid it :)
- The Single Most Essential Building Block of Success: This article talks discusses how your mindset and perspective on challenges can gear you toward success. Complete with 10 tips for becoming more resilient!
- Having a Really Lousy Day? Some Ways to Feel Better: We all have bad days. This article has some great practical tips (13 of them!) for you to improve your day. My favourite is number 2: do something nice for someone else. Definitely a great way to make your day better.
- Are You a Workaholic or an Outlier?: This article discusses what being a workaholic means and the differences between when it may be a good thing versus a bad thing. The real takeaway point is to remember to do what you love.
- 29 Reasons to Start a Bog Today: Ever considered starting a blog? For me, it kind of happened over night... but I'm betting there are lots of people at least on the fence about it. Why not give it a shot? Check out this article and you might get that little nudge you need to take the plunge!
- Why I Wake Up Early and 3 Reasons You Should Too: In this article, Julia Boorstin touches on 3 reasons why she's a morning person. For some people, it's a matter of playing catch-up with the other side of the world but for others, it's just a way to become more productive.
- 5 Ways To Lead No Matter Your Title: Some of the best leaders at a company are home-grown and not brought in from somewhere else just because they were good leaders. In this article, Angie Hicks talks about 5 different ways you can put leadership skills into play even if you don't have "Leader" in your job title.
- So You Want To Pick Someone's Brain? Do It Right: Sometimes I think this kind of stuff is common sense, but I'm definitely being proven wrong on this one! In this article, Linda Coles talks about a handful of things to consider when reaching out to someone to ask them for their opinion on something. Think about it... Why would you do it differently than if you had the opportunity to do it in person?!
- Be SMARTe: How to Clarify Confusion: This article focuses on hiring and resumes, but I think the concept applies in the more general sense. Lou Adler puts it well right at the beginning, "if you can’t describe exactly what you want, don’t be surprised if you don’t get it". Using a simple set of guidelines, you can formulate what you're looking for in a clear and concise manner that helps reduce assumptions and confusion.
- To Become An Expert, Do This One Thing: In this article, Whitney Johnson makes a great point: you need to leave your ego at the door if you want to build up your skill set in an area where you're a beginner. Just because you might be accomplished at some things, you need to get into the beginner mindset.
- Are You Grounded in Trust?: Stan McChrystal writes about a parallel to trust in your business and team. Trust is incredibly important, especially in small businesses, because it let's people focus on what they are experts at. In order to keep your team operating efficiently, everyone should feel like they can trust the other team members.
- How to Focus Innovation: This article identifies the 6 'W's that you need to answer when considering innovation. Gijs van Wulfen describes these steps as the necessary formula for innovation. He then outlines a group of questions that you should ask about your innovation in terms of it's placement in the market. Certainly a lot of things to consider, but they all seem worthwhile.
- The Joys Of Screwing Up: Being fearless is neccessary for innovation according to Jeff DeGraff. When we become afraid of taking risks and pushing the boundaries, innovation stagnates. How can you innovate if you're never willing to take risks?
- 7 Tips for Surviving Life As a Middle Manager: Nothing I would consider ground breaking here, but Dennis Berman has done an awesome job of summarizing a lot of excellent middle management tips. You may have read about some of these in some of the articles I've shared, but it's certainly a great list to refer to!
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