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Friday, 1 July 2011

Newsletter Issue 203, July 2011 Hi guys,



Sam Young Newsletter

Issue 203, July 2011
Hi guys,
Check out Three Steps to Success below.
Some End of Day Stress-Reducers are listed below. 
Don't forget, if you want to be taken off my mailing list, click here to send me a reply e-mail and I will remove your name.

Three Steps to Success

Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL Technologies and leader of more than 72,000 IT professionals in 29 countries found his company dying on its feet. He told HR Daily that his company "asked ourselves some fundamental questions".
"First, what is the core business we are in? The answer, we are in the business of creating differentiated value for our customers.
"Second, who creates this differentiation in value? It gets created in the interface between our employees and the employees of our customers - the value zone.
"Third and most important, if that be true, what should the business of managers and management in any company be? The obvious answer is enthusing, encouraging, enabling those people in the value zone."
Like Nordstrom before them, HCL decided to try inverting their organisational pyramid to make their board, management and supervisory staff more accountable to their frontline staff. Nayar told HR Daily that this process began by examining transparency in the organisation; that any of HCL's 92,000 employees can ask a question of any other employee or manager via their intranet, and that every staff member can see all questions and answers. No one is anonymous; everyone 'owns' their comments and questions and all staff can see how HCL's values work as a 'whole organisation'.
Great work. So how do you repeat what HCL did to create whole organisation value for yourself?
  1. Identify your core purpose. Do you know what is it you do well? What it is that creates your unique selling point? What it is that makes your customers come to back to you? If not, then you need to know - you need to make it your business to know.
    How you find out is to ask yourself what is your enduring reason for existence? Can it ever be fully acheived? If so, it is not your core purpose. Does your purpose change? (then it is not your core purpose). Does it inspires change within your organisation? Is it beyond merely making money?
    As part of your core business, you also need to know what your core values are. Ask yourself "If today I started a new organisation, would I build it around these core values?". Would you do so in any industry? Would you remain true to this core value even if you were not rewarded for it? If you can answer yes to these questions, then your core values stand, adding to your uniqueness.
  2. Find the value zone in your business. The value zone is the frontier where frontline employees interact with your customers. Make yourself familiar with where this happens, where you add value in your business - and by that, you have to destroy the "CEO gap" and level yourself with the rest of the organisation. Know what it is that your company does better than your competitors.
  3. Enable the value zone. As leader, you must influence and drive change, be a collaborator and a team player obsessed with ENABLING your frontline staff. Axe barriers so that staff can make decisions, and empower them to add value for your customers. If you are clear about what your company values are, then staff can make a myriad of decisions which are aligned with organisational values, without the need for prescriptive policies, procedures and "could you please hold while I just check with my supervisor".
References:

End of Day Stress-Reducers

HBR ran an excerpt from their latest On Point collection, "Guide to Managing Stress".
With articles from a range of gurus including Tony Schwartz, Amy Gallo, Rosabeth Moss Kanter and John Baldoni, HBR put out an email teaser for the On Point called "Leave Your Bad Day at Work".
As HBR said in their teaser, we all have those days when it feels like everything you touch turns to custard; where you might as well not have bothered getting out of bed in the first place. However, so as not to take that stress right back home with us at the end of the day, they advise that we can do these things to reset our systems:
  1. Clear your mind. Take a few deep breaths. Think about the things that matter to you outside of work. Prepare yourself mentally to walk out the door and leave the day behind.
  2. Do something easy. Send off a report, reconcile a balance sheet, or reply to a few straightforward e-mails. Get some things off your to-do list to restore a sense of control.
  3. Get up and leave. Once you've completed the task, don't check your email once more or stop by someone's desk. Just leave.
Now that's nice and easy to read. Much harder to do, but I am going to work on it!

Webmail Phishing Avoidance Tip

There is a spate of phishing attacks happening, largely on Gmail accounts, but also on hotmail and yahoo mail, which could happen to anyone with webmail.
Individuals get sent phishing messages, which are well-written and broadly targeted messages, that look professional and legitimate, and are from well-known sites such as banks, online services or news organisations. The message looks absolutely genuine, but when you click the link, it takes you to a different web address. On that page, unless you have been watching the URL, the site again looks legitimate and there some users enter their email login and password.
Oops - you have just been harvested, and your online email account will be hacked.
To avoid being hacked, there is ONE main thing that you can do to save you from phishing. NEVER click on the links in an email. Ignore the link. Go to the website yourself and navigate yourself to the page the link refers to. Then you can rest easy :-)
To super-double-check legitimacy, hover over links to see if what shows in the tip is the same as what shows in the link. If you are ABSOLUTELY sure it is OK, copy & paste URL yourself so that you are in charge of where you are going to.
Thanks to Office Watch for Mere Mortals for this tip at http://news.office-watch.com/t/n.aspx?a=1571
 

TLAs for SMEs

Here are this newsletter's TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) for you:
  • UEFI, Unified Extensible Firmware Interface. A specification that defines the software interface between your operating system and firmware. It replaces the old BIOS from IBM PC-compatible PCs.

Please feel free to email me with any TLAs that you want to get the bottom (meaning!) of.

Tips, Short+Hot Keys
In this newsletter, we look at all you can do with Alt, Shift, Ctrl and X:
  • Access, Excel, Frontpage, IE, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, Windows Explorer, Word "Cut" Ctrl & X
  • Publisher "Delete a selected text frame or table frame containing text" Ctrl & Shift & X
  • Windows "Maximize the active window if it is minimized" Alt & Spacebar & X
  • Word "Display Mark Index Entry dialog box while working" Alt & Shift & X

Hot Linx
For the workplace considering reducing their planetary resource consumption, check out how to make savings at http://www.globalstewards.org/work-ecotips.htm
Denmark Post launched digital stamps that can be purchased via text message. A code is sent to the user which can be written on the envelope instead of a traditional stamp. Check it out at http://www.postdanmark.dk/
Canadian-based Zipzoom lets buyers announce what they're in the market for, giving sellers a chance to bid for the opportunity to serve them. Personalised quotes are sent directly to the consumer. View online at http://www.zipzoom.com/en/Home2
ZOMG! Check out the schmick new words added to the online Oxford English Dictionary at http://oxforddictionaries.com/page/newwords_may2011

                                Catch you again soon!! E-mail your suggestions to me here

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