Productivity Bits

MAY 5, 2011

Copyright © 2011 Marlon Ribunal. Visit the original article at [link]. Post written by Marlon Ribunal. Follow me on t witte r. Ten years of intelligence gathering. Two major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thousands of lives have been sacrificed. Millions of dollars have been spent on logistics and fighting the wars offshore. Osama bin Laden is dead. Forty minutes of military operation with surgical precision.

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Equipment Training 2011 AT&T 210

On The Job

MAY 3, 2011

After a week lounging around on the beach, I'm back on the job and trying to catch up with my blog. So, here's the latest column I did for Gannett/USAToday: Unfortunately, criticism is a part of the working world. • A co-worker criticizes your contribution to a report. • The boss criticizes the way you handled a client. • A co-worker criticizes your contribution to a report. • Even the lunch delivery person criticizes you for not having correct change.

Learning 193

Learning UPS 193

Stephanie LH Calahan

MAY 2, 2011

The other day I mentioned on Twitter that the "in-between" time where you are in a waiting pattern can be the most non-productive.  @pinwheelgirl shared her perspective and it inspired this post.  To see our conversation, take a look at the picture to the right.  The most recent comment is on top and historical follows.  Do you experience quiet time?

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Twitter Facebook AT&T 184

The Small Business Blog

MAY 1, 2011

Not so long ago I was asked to give a keynote about how ‘cloud computing’ is changing the world. The keynote I delivered was on how the Internet had changed the world – or as Steve Jobs would put it, ‘made a dent in the Universe!

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Speaker: Tim Buteyn, President of ThinkingKap Learning Solutions

💢 Do you find yourself stuck in never-ending review cycles? Are you wondering if your Subject Matter Expert actually got that last review request? Are you having trouble trying to decipher impractical or conflicting feedback? 💢 If any of these scenarios sounds familiar, you may benefit from a crash course on managing SME relationships!

Collaborate

Customers Rock!

MAY 5, 2011

I am so excited to share the news with all of you that I have a book coming out in July! And it is thanks to you, my faithful Customers Rock! readers, that it is happening. The book is called The Hidden Power of Your Customers: Four Keys to Growing Your Business Through Existing Customers , being published by John Wiley & Sons. The hardcover edition will be released on July 20, with eReader versions to follow.

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Customer Service Social Media AT&T Interviewing 165

Productivity Bits

MAY 3, 2011

Copyright © 2011 Marlon Ribunal. Visit the original article at [link]. Guest Post. This is a guest post from Judi Huck. Judi is the community manager of the task management application Producteev.com. She is an active member of several community management groups and passionate about inspiring others to become contributors – whether in the Producteev community or elsewhere.

Management 158

Management Google 2011 Calendars 158

The Small Business Blog

MAY 3, 2011

The weekly top 5 tips post is always full of helpful hints and advice for small, home and micro business owners. 1. If your product or service is revolutionary, it will be able to generate press regardless of the geographic area in which you operate. 2. Show your face at big industry conferences and events.

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Eco-Office Gals

MAY 5, 2011

There’s a certain sense of purpose that comes with fresh cardboard boxes and the loud swak of wielding a tape gun with reckless abandon. Add a few jumbo-sized smelly permanent markers, and boxing up old office files and materials seems almost adventurous. But the novelty quickly wears off. Stuff gets tossed haphazardly in boxes, the permanent marker labeling becomes indecipherable, and by the time the boxes are ready to be dumped into a storage unit you could care less about anything other

Filing 152

Filing Expenses Purchasing Phones 152

Ian's Messy Desk

MAY 2, 2011

Image via Wikipedia. Solving problems creatively means getting past your self-limiting thoughts. Creative problem-solving has countless uses. Too often, people associate creative problem-solving with crises or difficulties, or think of it as something that’s used for games and puzzles or special kinds of jobs. Creative problem-solving skills are required for achieving exceptional performance in most tasks.

Skills 145

Skills Expenses Project Management Training 145

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Interviewing

Andrea Kalli

MAY 2, 2011

Why You Should Spend Less Time Focusing on Spreading Your Social Media Circle and More on Specialization. . Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, LinkedIn – the mere mention of most social networks is enough to get a new media marketer working hard. These ultra-popular websites dominate the ‘net today, with an afternoon’s worth of traffic equalling the annual output of many other successful websites.

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Social Media Facebook Twitter Networking 142

The Small Business Blog

MAY 4, 2011

The Open University just published their Quarterly Survey of Small Business in Britain and I want to share one graph with you here. As you can see micro and small business are suffering in this economic climate more than the mid-size and large businesses – why do you think that is?

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2011 159

Eco-Office Gals

MAY 6, 2011

An important announcement has been released regarding EOG’s favorite theme company. Studiopress will be raising the price on their Pro Plus All-Theme Package next week. If you’re not familiar, the Pro Pack gives you all 36 current child themes, *plus all future child themes* with updates and support for each. The price has been $249.95 forever, even though they’ve added tons of new child themes in the last 6 months alone.

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2011 UPS 149

Small Business Labs

MAY 3, 2011

One of the most interesting trends we follow is the growing importance location plays for technology startups.  The Boston Globe's The Road to Awesome looks at this issue from Boston's point of view.  It seems that many of Boston's most talented young interent entrepreneurs are moving to Silicon Valley and New York.  The article trys to figure out what the Boston area needs to do to keep these folks.  Key quote: "Boston likes

Mentoring 141

Mentoring 2020 Twitter UPS 141

Advertiser: Aggregage

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Policies

Eat Your Career

MAY 4, 2011

One of my favorite lines from any movie is when Jeff Golblum, looking at the wrath of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, offers this profound thought: Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should. I love this because it’s so applicable to my career coaching clients. This is the problem many people find themselves in with work.

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Skills Google Facebook Interviewing 139

The Small Business Blog

APRIL 30, 2011

Lately much has been made of the downtime experienced by amazon’s hosting infrastructure. Amazon’s clients – some of the big names in the cloud computing industry using the platform experienced outages too, and so did their clients.

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Virtual Moxie

MAY 3, 2011

Sally wrote a question to Pick Anastacia’s Brain. She asked: My clients see no point in equality in our relationship. I know I’m a business owner, but how do I get it across to them that I’m not a flunky? Virtual “assistant” doesn’t mean I have to take their crap, right? Oh, how right you are, Sally! And they may just be jerks, who, no matter what, will never admit that you are more than that.

Interviewing 135

Interviewing Management UPS 135

Small Business Labs

MAY 4, 2011

We've been surprised by resiliency of the U.S. and global economies.  Despite a series of strong shocks (oil prices, unrest in the middle east, rising commodity prices, etc.), a recent survey of economists by USA Today shows they still think the recovery is continuing and the U.S. economy will grow moderately in 2011.  But as the Business Week article A Tale of Two Recoveries points out, small businesses have grown more pessimistic about the economy over the past few months.

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2011 2010 International Management 131

Speaker: Tim Buteyn

Let's set the scene: you’ve identified a critical performance gap in your organization and need to close that gap. A colleague suggests training, but you suspect there’s something going on that training can’t address. How can you determine if training is the right solution before you commit your budget and resources to a new training program? In this webinar, you will learn how to determine if training is the right solution using the Behavior Engineering Model.

Training

Make or Break Moments

MAY 3, 2011

I have been working for EnviroScience as a contract writer, and in the process, I’ve learned quite a lot about Milfoilsand aquatic weed control. Each time I write something about a Milfoil weevil and the weeds they eat, I think two things: 1. Lake Chautauqua. The lovely, shallow lake that the Chautauqua Institute is situated on [.].

Learning 127

Learning 127

The Small Business Blog

MAY 3, 2011

I’m sitting here waiting for my flight to the US to depart and I’m flying with Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic. I’m thinking back a few decades to when it was I heard the name Virgin or Richard Branson for the first time.

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Step It Up VA Coaching

MAY 5, 2011

by Donna Toothaker. “Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.&# — Aristotle. We see it happen all the time in blogs, social media, or mass media — someone gains a certain amount of success and notoriety, and suddenly, critics come crawling out of the woodwork. It’s a risk we take when we dare to put ourselves “out there&# in the public in a bigger way.

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Social Media AT&T Learning Skills 122

Small Business Labs

MAY 2, 2011

After almost disappearing - when was the last time you were on a intercity bus? - the bus is now the fastest growing way to travel. Innovative bus companies like Megabus and Bolt Bus offer convenient service, comfortable seats with power outlets, WiFi access and super cheap fares purchased online. The buses don't use a bus station, they pickup curbside at locations listed on their websites.  This makes it very easy to quickly add or reduce service.  The sweet spot for

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Travel Policies Purchasing AT&T 109

Speaker: Tim Buteyn, President of ThinkingKap Learning Solutions

We’ve all been there. You’ve been given a pile of dry content and asked to create a compelling eLearning course. You’re determined to create something more engaging than the same old course that learners quickly click through, but how do you take this “boring” content and create something relevant and engaging? Many instructional designers will say, “Boring in means boring out.

Policies

Loosely Speaking

MAY 3, 2011

Staying on top of social media and podcasting has been my focus for the past couple of years. Today I took a look at my Firefox bookmarks and was shocked at how outdated (therefore useless!) they have become. Ditto my blog reader program files. So, before your next scheduled backup, take a trip down memory lane and do a little spring cleaning: weed out those old favorites!

Social Media 100

Social Media UPS Filing 100

Brilliantly Better

MAY 3, 2011

Tweet It’s time for my monthly assignment: the report about the April monkey. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, please read the introductory post. Basically, instead of writing new years resolution, I decided to go for a different approach. Each month I am going to tame one inner “monkey”. An “inner monkey” is an underdeveloped part of myself, a long time avoided promise I made to myself, or something along these lines.

Stress 68

Stress Yahoo 2011 Holidays 68

Small Business CEO

MAY 6, 2011

Your website is the front door to your business. It’s imperative potential clients and customers know where to find you, and once there, have a clear idea what your company does and how it can benefit them. Implement these simple, inexpensive tips to ensure your website is achieving those goals. 1. Not claiming your Google Place Page. Look up your business in Google Maps and click on your business listing (or “Place Page&# ).

Google 64

Google Budget AT&T Goals 64

BioTeams

MAY 5, 2011

I spoke at the inaugural TEDx event in Belfast on March 23. My argument was that we have all experienced high-performing teams but mostly not at work (sports, music, adventures, holidays, family etc)! In the video The Lost Secrets of High-Performing Teams I remind us of what we may have forgotten about great teams and make a plea to bring these sensibilities back into our work teams.

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Social Media Holidays Collaborate Networking 52

Speaker: Chester Santos – Author, International Keynote Speaker, Executive Coach, Corporate Trainer, Memory Expert, U.S. Memory Champion

In October, scientists discovered that 75% of patients who experienced brain fog had a lower quality of life at work than those who did not. At best, brain fog makes you slower and less efficient. At worst, your performance and cognitive functions are impaired, resulting in memory, management, and task completion problems. In this entertaining and interactive presentation, Chester Santos, "The International Man of Memory," will assist you in developing life-changing skills that will greatly enha

Networking

Service Untitled

MAY 2, 2011

Customers frequently offer feedback; sometimes it is solicited, and sometimes it comes back as a complaint or a question. No matter how the delivery, it comes down to what you do with the feedback that keeps customers and affords an organization the opportunity to build customer loyalty. More often customers are displeased with a company’s service than with the product.

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Customer Service Equipment Training AT&T 46

Brilliantly Better

MAY 1, 2011

Tweet When people ask me “how can you do all that stuff that you do, like writing on your blog , writing iPhone apps , traveling and so on? When do you have time for this?” I usually answer “How can you NOT do EVERYTHING you want to do in this life?” And, depending on the other person type, this answer usually ignites a new sparkling and fulfilling conversation, or pretty much ends the relationship.

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Lifestyle Social Media 2011 Travel 64

Small Business CEO

MAY 2, 2011

Technology has certainly changed the way we do things, the way we run our business. We are all constantly on-the-go and instead of doing just one thing at a time, we can now do everything (well, almost everything) at the touch of a button. In a recent Business Journals study , it is found that small businesses are increasingly relying more on technology, especially the internet, as a critical business tool.

Social Media 61

Social Media Purchasing Networking UPS 61