Strategies for the Workplace

Organizing your thinking and expressing it in an easy-to-digest form can help you or a team turn something muddled into something clear.  Don’t be afraid to use a very simple format and the humble two-by-two diagram can help.

An inflection point is an event, activity, or condition that marks a significant transition from the circumstances before and what comes after.  For example, an inflection point may mark when the fortunes of a business, product, or service changes from modest growth to rapid growth or slows from rapid growth to modest growth or even decline. 

There are things you need to do in order to get other people to do work you need.  Investing in the process and the quality of the up-front work will pay dividends; short-changing the process can result in no useful deliverable, wasted time and money, or worse.

The point is that if you have a multi-step process and consistency is important, develop and adhere to a check list or have a great reason why you don’t.

The point is to decide when you need to decide something before you decide it.  It may be useful to make some decisions later than you initially think, although don’t assume this is costless.  Should changes be possible near execution time, be certain everyone knows that this can happen and that you have effective communication channels to ensure all participants get the update.

Apply the appropriate level of analysis for the situation and check, periodically, if you are continuing to get a good return for additional effort.  In other words, think, but don’t over think.

You may be presenting a product or service and your audience will need to know whether they are looking at something that is unfinished, mostly done, finished, etc.  You will want to be clear about the state of the instance they are viewing. 

Eager to be helpful and perhaps to appear knowledgeable, you may be tempted to answer a question without understanding fully what is being asked.  Many seemingly straightforward questions are asking something slightly different from what they may first appear to be asking.

Feedback, like everything else, should be categorized and prioritized. This podcast suggests some ways to handle feeback.

When thinking about any course of action, it is prudent both to check all assumptions and ask questions, such as which is more correct, a statement or its opposite.

Basis points (bps) are a unit of measure for interest rates (and other percentages), where one basis point is 1/100th of one percent.  The finance industry uses basis points to reduce ambiguity.

Getting into a market (and staying competitive) involves a clear-eyed analysis of what it takes to participate.  Ideally, you are already in a market and the barriers to new entrants are very high.  Before entering a new market, look at the barriers carefully.  When in a market, be realistic about the potential for new competitors to emerge.

Your job has many facets.  Looking only at compensation, broadly defined, there are many elements, such as pay and benefits, but also other things such as your title or how many people you manage.  Rather than assume your employer weighs each element the same way you do, be explicit about what's more and what's less important to you.  This episode goes into the topic in more detail.

Do not simply add a new item to a list; always place the addition into a priority ranking. When your manager asks you to perform a new duty, make certain you review your current, prioritized task list, and be clear where the new activity fits.