Quick Tip: Show Two Timezones In Outlook Calendar

By Matt:

From time to time I lead meetings with international counterparts, primarily based in either the UK or Australia. Being located in the United States myself, I'm always having to do quick math, adding and subtracting time-zones, as I try to figure out how I can get two parties on the phone without either one having to go to the office at 2:00 in the morning.

So for you globally minded corporate hacks out there, this Outlook-based quick tip should help you navigate the intricacies of the International Date Line without causing an aneurysm:

Display Two Timezones In Your Outlook Calendar:

1. From the Outlook menu select Tools > Options
2. Select the button for 'Calendar Options'
3. Select the button for 'Time Zone'
4. In the resulting dialog box select the check-box for 'Show An Additional Time Zone'
5. Next, select an additional time zone to display from the dropdown menu and give it a unique label so you can differentiate it in your calendar

Hopefully this little trick will help make scheduling cross-continental meetings a little easier... and if nothing else, it will give you North America based readers an excuse to squeeze in another break in the name of Afternoon Tea before lunch rolls around.


More Outlook Tips @ Corporate Hack

Working By Walking Around

By Matt:

I don't remember a whole lot from my high school classes. I was there. I learned things, so said my report cards.

But one thing that does stick in my mind vividly was a passage from a business text about Hewlett-Packard co-founder Dave Packard's principle of "management by walking around". It was such a straight forward simple idea:

Get up off your rear and go interact with the people that work for you.

Bring the team together, listen to your employees, involve everyone, make them feel important. Makes sense right? I said to myself, "Self, when you're a boss someday, you need to do this."

Fast Forward
Fast forward 10 years and, well, I'm not running a multi-million dollar computer manufacturing company. Technically I don't manage a team of individuals either, but I still find Packard's concept very valid.

I work in a building of 200 employees, and my job regularly involves the coordination of many cross-divisional individuals towards a common purpose. Meaning, I have to convince numerous people to focus on a goal that is collectively beneficial even though it's not a core focus of their day-to-day job. When all is said and done, one of my most useful techniques for getting things done in the team atmosphere has been a derivative of Packard's ideas - I guess you could call it "working by walking around".

Working By Walking Around
It's really the same core idea as Packard's - I will be much more effective in getting everyone on the same page if I get up off my rear and just have an actual in-person conversation instead of relying on phone and email. I maintain that meetings are generally inefficient, and I would much rather correspond by email, but we are humans after all, and sometimes a little face time is all it takes to get somebody on your side. Here are some "working by walking around" tips that I try to put to use:

• Build Relationships: Begin by simply leaving your desk and seeking people out. The end goal is to create genuine friendships so find a common ground - hobbies, sports, music, the latest episode of Lost. Friendships that center around the water-cooler tend to remain superficial, so make an effort to visit their office or desk, so long as this doesn't come across as intrusive.

• Not Just When You Need Something: It's easy to get in the habit of visiting a colleague only when you need something from them. It's also easy to get in the habit of having a genuinely friendly conversation, and then changing the topic to something work-related because you feel guilty. Resist these urges from time to time. There's enough work going on already - sometimes you need to take a moment to just be real and genuine with your co-workers.

• Sharing Bad News: When you have bad news you must share regarding a project, force yourself to convey it in person. It's much more difficult than sending an email, but delivering the message personally conveys a greater sense of joint ownership, and in my experience co-workers will appreciate your personal approach.

• Befriend The Assistants: It's human nature to be friends with our direct peers, therefore, in terms of organizational hierarchy - if you're a mid-level employee - be very careful that you don't overlook the assistants and administrators. At the end of the day, when you need to get something done, you'll need to have these folks on your side, so befriend them genuinely.

• Your Needs, Their Needs: If you come to a colleague with a need or a request, be sure you end the conversation with "Is there anything I can do for you?" You'll leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth if every time you show up at their door you have a new project for them to work on. At the same time, you can convey a genuine team atmosphere by offering your assistance, help, insight, feedback, and support towards their goals.
  

To be clear Working By Walking Around is not some superficial form of colleague manipulation in order to "get things" from them. It has both business-related and personal intentions, as well as payoffs. I genuinely like the vast majority of the people I work with, and this is because I have taken the time to get to know them on a level deeper than "Where are we on this?"

So while, yes, Working By Walking Around helps me get things done more efficiently and effectively, it also makes work-life exponentially more enjoyable. And enjoyment in our work leads to fulfillment, and after all... that's the point of all this anyways, isn't it?

A New Twist On Del.icio.us

By Matt:

Del.icio.us, the social bookmarking manager, has been around for a while now helping us share all our favorite online destinations. However, I've recently been using del.icio.us in a way that doesn't so much emphasize it's social nature, but instead takes advantage of it's ability to help me more efficiently get things done online.

Here's a quick look at how I use del.icio.us to write blog posts, pay my bills, and buy birthday presents for my wife:

First, a couple notes that are important to maximize the usability of del.icio.us. Firefox and deli.icio.us are the perfect pair, primarily because of these two features only available via the del.icio.us Firefox extension:

• Del.icio.us Sidebar: When you click on the del.icio.us icon in Firefox it brings up a handy sidebar panel that allows you to quickly search through your bookmarks, and browse your existing tag categories... 10 times easier than going to the actual website and wandering through your links.
  
• Do Not Share Function: When clicking on the tag icon in Firefox, the pop-up offers a 'Do Not Share' option which effectively hides the listing on your public del.icio.us profile. You will still be able to see the saved private links when logged into your account, but others will not.

Getting Things Done With Del.icio.us
Del.icio.us is a powerful tool for the productivity-minded. Here are just a few of the ways I put the power of del.icio.us to use...

• Writing Blog Posts: As I'm browsing across the internet, often I'll stumble across articles, posts, or websites that inspire an idea for a post. When I do, I save the page using my deli.ico.us browser button, being sure to add a few quick thoughts in the Notes box about my post idea, and then tagging it using a unique tag name. Later on, when I'm trying to think of topics to write about I simply review the pages I have tagged for post ideas.

• Paying My Bills: I have multiple financial accounts online, from bank accounts to student loan accounts, and so on... all with a different website and their own unique username and password. I don't claim to have the best memory in the world, so I've tagged all of these sites and I have included important log-in information in the Notes section. To protect my identity I always select 'Do Not Share' so that the information is not made public. Furthermore, you may want to make your notes somewhat "cryptic", so that only you can understand them, as I can't vouch for the security of del.icio.us' servers.

• Shopping For My Wife: Bad memory coupled with the difficulty of finding something new and unique to give your spouse at each holiday is a difficult conundrum, but del.icio.us makes it a little easier. If my wife mentions something that she would like, or if I stumble across something I think would suit her well, I save it with a "Gift Ideas" tag. And to make sure she doesn't stumble across the things plan to buy for her, I select 'Do Not Share' on these as well.

That's Del.icio.us
If you haven't experimented with del.icio.us yet, now is a good time to get started. Take a quick tour of the capabilities here, and then be sure to download the new Firefox extension. Do you have any tips and tricks on the way you use social bookmarking? We would love to hear your thoughts!

Well, Hello Lifehacker!

By Matt & Jon:

To our surprise and delight yesterday Lifehacker featured one of our recent posts about Taking Meeting Notes on their blog. If, as a result, you found your way to The Corporate Hack and are a new subscriber, we welcome you!

The response to our post yesterday on Lifehacker was interesting. There were a bunch of folks who thought our concept of sending follow-up notes to the meeting leader was a blatant attempt to suck up. There were those who felt this practice would ultimately lead to being designated the permanent de facto note taker for all future meetings.

But there were also some great insights from readers: EricSoderberg offered that taking and distributing notes ensures that your voice gets heard, even if you tend to not speak during the meeting. EricSlaw appropriately points out that notes must be sent immediately after the meeting as he's not getting paid for his word-smithing abilities. ProlificProgrammer got a raise for taking notes and posting them to his company's internal wiki!!

Jon wanted to offer this follow-up to the post in response to the many great comments:

I was absolutely blown away by the comments we got on this post -- tons of great insight and some surprising stories of how well this method paid off. One of my favorite anecdotes on note-taking actually arose recently at lifehack.org, another great productivity blog.

Turns out one of America's greatest inventors wrote over 5 million pages of notes in his lifetime. Thomas Edison took incredibly detailed and organized notes, yet had a powerful memory with which to recall them all. Edison is proof that taking detailed and action-oriented notes, and cataloging them for easy retrieval can greatly improve your business strength and flexibility.

Now, I understand we can't spend all day slaving over pen and paper (and a lot of meetings just aren't noteworthy!), but choosing the right time to jot a few things down can really pay off. Even if you don't send the notes around, having them on hand for future reference can really save you from looking foolish or unprepared.

If you haven't had the chance to read the original post yet, Quick Tip: Meeting Notes, please do! And be sure to give us your thoughts as well - we enjoy the dialog! In the meantime, here are some other recent posts from The Hack we think you might find interesting...

Recent Posts...
GTD 101: A Brief Overview Of Getting Things Done
Action Oriented: Create Meaningful To-Do Items
Pushing Decision Making Down
Quick Tip: Subdivide Tasks For better GTD

Getting Things Done Is Hard When You've Completely Forgotten Everything

Now, I definitely remember this. We take the left one... I think.

By Jon:

Here's yet another look into the world of GTD in relation to being proactive. I've got a really bad habit of using some parts of GTD and ignoring others. After all, the whole point is to be more productive and effective, but I've only been trying to make my job easier and free up more time.

Lately I've had a nasty problem of checking off a task and letting it leave my mind. Don't get me wrong, that's certainly an aspect of GTD -- getting your tasks out of your brain and into an organized list -- but I'm implementing it wrong.

Normally when I finish a task I just let it go and my mind moves onto something else. Weeks or months later, details about a task might be needed; instead of recalling the situation, I'll make some incorrect assumption and look foolish.

It became obvious that in order to cover my bases, I needed to become more proactive. Here's what I'm doing:

Keeping detailed handwritten meeting notes (in a Moleskine, of course)

Creating a folder of organized text docs of unique situations that come up in my somewhat repetitive work

Send myself or others reminder emails for upcoming to-dos

Set far-off and distant reminder tasks in my GTD app of choice

Adding a "notes" column to an Excel spreadsheet I frequently work out of to help maintain my projects

Obviously there's a lot of failsafes there -- I'm pretty forgetful. I've considered memory aid apps like Mental Case, but I'm not so sure I'm ready to subject myself to flash cards yet. On the bright side, there's something really inviting about the smile on that suitcase, don't you think?

Quick Tip: Subdivide Tasks For Better GTD

By Jon:

If you're like me, GTD doesn't stand for "Getting Things Done", it stands for "Getting Too Much Done". Many of my daily tasks have sat on my list for weeks, and every time my eyes roll over them I just leave them be. I had to take a step back and evaluate why this was happening.

Result? My to-do list wasn't good enough.

Looking at the things I've left on the list, I realize that many of them aren't individual tasks, but rather smaller projects. The reason I've ignored them is because multiple things have to happen in order to cross them off.

For each task, GTD'ers have GOT to try and break them down to the simplest forms, which are simple action-oriented tasks. Take a minute to review your task list and try and break down some of those nagging overdue items. Look for the simplest next action that will move you along towards completing the project. Often I've found that breaking something up and doing a small, easy chunk of it has dramatically improved productivity and help me finish the task.

Check out our other posts on GTD for more details on how we get things done.

Restructuring Drama

By Matt:

My company is going through a reorganization this week, and it has been pretty difficult. They kicked it off about five weeks ago when they told us, and announced to the press, that there would be a 15% reduction in workforce within the next 4-6 weeks. Since then we've all been anxiously waiting for the proverbial "hammer" to fall, and now the time is upon us. So far the week has been filled with a lot of closed door meetings, hushed hallway conversations, a general sense of foreboding, and the occasional awkward joke in attempts to lighten the mood.

This is the second restructure I have experienced in the corporate world, the first being last winter. Last year the slash-and-burn happened quickly and abruptly - an email was sent on a Friday morning, and throughout the day, one-by-one, each individual was called into their manager's office... some did not return to their desks.

This year, in attempts to be more considerate to employees, they gave us a long advance warning, and to their credit are doing their best to communicate issues delicately. But I'm not sure there is a way to do these things that isn't messy.

I'm curious to hear about reorganizations you have been through... is there a good way to do these things? Is it possible to witness 15% of your company being let-go and in the end say, "You know, that was a really positive experience"? I know we have some Human Resources readers out there, and would be interested to hear your take as well.