Running Great Meetings

There are meetings that make you cringe. Make you think of procrastinated work , that
your heart wishes to make more urgent. And then, there are some meetings that you forward to. That you want to be in time for. Don't you wish you could run meetings like that? Meetings everyone compliments are uber smooth. This is what you can do.

• Agenda is the key. Announce the agenda at start, stick to it during the meeting and conclude concisely at the end

• Timing sets the mood. Good meetings start and end in time. No one likes to waste their time waiting for late comers, don't you think.

• Moderation should not be left to maturity of the participants. It is an important task, as much as the note taker, and requires conscientious effort. Assign a moderator at the start of the meeting (it could be the person presiding over the meeting) or anyone else. Make this person responsible for mitigating differences in opinion, and moving on to the next agenda item without beating a dead horse.

• White boarding an idea, a concept or a topic of discussion works best to look at it in a breadth first, depth later manner. It works well specially when audience comes from varied contexts and backgrounds.

• Breaks are essential in mentally engrossing or long discussions. Ordering lunch if the hour demands so or giving participants a breather for coffee is good.

• Minutes offer a feeling of accomplishment to everybody, of work done during the involved hour. Follow up with Minutes on the same day, or the next morning if the meeting ends late in the day.

Spot turbulent times at work early

• Decreased work responsibility, like your individual responsibilities being split between your immediate seniors and juniors, should indicate that you are not adding any value

• Withdrawal of employee benefits like company provided transport, medical cover limits etc. hint trouble

• Sudden downsizing in the team size, specially letting go of contractual workforce

• Frozen hiring, specially if it is the hiring season is On

• All-travel-on-hold, unless approved by all up-line managers until one below the CEO. ;)

• Resource shrink, be it hardware, software and even simpler things like coffee, food, stationary

Effective Emails in the New Flat World

If you have read Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat (you may buy the book from Amazon or from Flipkart if you are in India. I personally am a big FLIPKART fan.), or something else around similar theme, the post's title today would make a lot more sense. In case you have not, never mind, in essence, the idea explains that the world today operates in a 24*7 environment, with one geography taking over the previous time zone's workpiece in a transparent manner. While workflow software and VoIP phones are big flattening forces, who today, can fore go the importance of written communication, most of which happens over emails (well, yeah, we all know, over Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter too these days - thankfully, as of 2012, the office communication still happens over emails).

• Write the meat of the mail first in the main paragraph

• Decide on the tone of the email and chose your words around it. Weather its fun, strict, professional, indirect, diplomatic, salvaging - choose the tone carefully, and do not mix  more than two in one email

• Chose your words carefully. Polite words in a strict tone work wonders

• Always end the mail with either a concluding moral or requiring an action from the audience.

• Begin and end with civilities. In a professional setting, beginning may be omitted to give your communication a more direct  manner.

• Never, NEVER, I mean really never forget the subject line.

Gifts for Workplace

All of us, at some time or the other struggle with what would make a perfect gift in a given setting. For someone you know at a personal level, the options are quite some. Finding a gift for someone in the workplace is an altogether different arena. (And something I still struggle with, after working for many years, with many people, in many organizations, from many geographies). A non-controversial and basic list such as the one below may help you next time you want to gift someone from your workplace.

• Mugs work well with peers, someone within your team or lunch group 

• Desk adornments like a clock or a mirror piece can be given to your friendly senior

• Team picture in a modern frame is perfect for occasions such as as send-offs

• Cocktail set from Magpie is a huge hit as a wedding gift (wow, that rhymed!)

• Laptop bag is sure to make a useful gift 

• Monogrammed pens are still the best gift for someone to whom you wish to express your gratitude. 

P.S.  - There could be times when people (would be gift receivers) are not any of the types to use or appreciate such gifts. Shopping coupons from a popular store are easiest for such testing kinds.

Strengthen a Resume

• To have your name and contact on the footer of each page - helps if someone was to print your resume and misplace the loose sheets in parts. 

• Start with the strengths - be it your education, skill set or the brand you wish to highlight, always structure your resume to showcase your strengths in the first half. - the simpler things like initiatives, and personal info should be reserved for the end.

• Refrain from putting any confidential information like your passport numer or your salary details in the profile - since most resumes are uploaded online, it is better to include information in a descriptive yet non disclosing manner. e.g. - Passport - Available instead of Passport number X-XXX-XXXX.

• Use lots of keywords for your profile - depending on the target job, your profile should include nouns and verbs which are prominent. Eg - In IT Support, words like administration, deployment, documentation may come handy. Most engines would zero down on your resume depending on the presence of certain domain specific keywords.

• Always use professional font of uniform size with no bold or underlined facets. Arial, times new roman, Verdana and Georgia work best.

• Once complete, always give it a second look at the complete resume on computer screen with narrowed eyes and in print to make sure it neither looks too light or too overwhelming.

Some of the most important tasks are mundane, and however much we may try, it is easy to give up on a resume when it is still not in the best of shapes. After all,

Get most out of your LinkedIn account

Update your profile regularly with your experience and skills. Once a month is good, twice even better

• Connect with everyone you know, have known or are likely to know soon. While the debate on how correct is it to add a coworker on Facebook continues, you can be sure Not to go wrong when adding any remotely related person on LinkedIn 

• Follow your P(prospective, present and past) employers. LinkedIn will come up with suggestions to follow companies in similar arena and competitors. You may choose to follow those too 

• Join groups of your expertise - this is a easy practice to keep up to date with the latest happenings, meet new people in same field and get tracked by recruiters 

• Make your profile public and searchable, else the whole purpose of being on a professional networking site would fail

•  Subscribe to the network updates' weekly newsletter if you are like me and do not like logging in to see what is happening around. This email would update you on who moved where, and who connected to whom, along with new groups and associations. 

Happy Professional Networking, Y'all!

P.S. - This is not a sponsored post, just giving back my love for LinkedIn. :)