Other series and post ideas

Here are some other ideas that I have for series and posts.

Productivity ala Google-

• How you can turn Google Calendar into your own personal secretary
• Why Google Reader and Alerts are better than Lassie (How to train Google Reader to bring you all of the news you need now, and warn you of trouble)
• What Google's Picasa can do for your business's image (using Picasa to organize your images and create beautiful pictures for you business documents)
• Why Google Documents will change the way you do business (collaborating on spreadsheets, word documents, and presentations from anywhere and with anyone)
  

Productivity ala 37signals.com:

• Why you should trade your briefcase for a "Backpack"
• How "HighRise" can help you manage your customer relationships
• Why you should gather your team around the "Campfire" for a little chat

-Does your organization have the right balance of centralization/decentralization?

(will cite The Starfish and the Spider - Brafman and Beckstrom)

-Expensr, mint, and buxfer.com - How they are useful and which one is right for you

-How shoeboxed.com can give your small business no reason to fear the "tax man"

-How you can use your phones the new way with GrandCentral (grandcentral.com)

-Why you too can have a personal secretary - the jott.com lowdown

-Why quickbooks groups should be your best friend

Also I think a series on content management systems (and open source software) for small business may be appropriate.

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Books I have read recently that relate to Software/Business/Productivity and I think would make great sources for additional topics for articles:

The World Is Flat , E-myth Revisited, How to Win Sales and Influence Spiders, The Small Business Survival Guide, The Long Tail, Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations

General books I like:

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (listened to the book on CD, reading it currently), How I raised myself from failure to success in selling, How to win friends and influence people

- by Tori Johnson, January 2008

Productivity ala blogs: How to use blogs to brainstorm and write operations manuals

**UNFINISHED DRAFT**

In his highly acclaimed book, The E-myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It, Micheal Gerber explained why business owners must work on their businesses and not just in their businesses (i.e. they must spend time developing their business, not just doing the day to day work). As a key element of working on one's business Gerber stressed that creating operations manuals is essential, regardless of the size of the business.

The purpose of this article is not so much to convince you that such manuals are necessary, but to teach you how to create them in a new, innovative and productive way: The blog.

In the previous posts of this series we looked at how blogs give you excellent tools for collaboration...

Productivity ala blogs: How blogs can organize your workforce

In the first post of this series we learned that a blog is not a dairy, it is a genie. Blogs give people and organizations the ability to organize, publish, and promote themselves all at the click of a button. Today we will look at how a blog may be just the tool you need to organize yourself and your workforce.


First of all, let's look at a few of the common features of a blog:

1. A blog has entries (articles) that are posted in order by date
2. Entries can be put into categories or tagged (labeled)
3. Entries can link to other resources on the internet
   
4. Others can comment on the entries (if allowed)
   
5. Multiple people can be allowed to post entries

How can these features be harnessed to help your organization? As Andy Wibbels brought out in his book BlogWild: A Guide for Small Business Blogging, organizations can benefit greatly from an "internal blog," a private blog that only you and your employees can view and use.

What would we want to have an internal blog for? Two words: communication and community.

Since blogs take relatively little technical skill to use (if you can send an email you can post on a blog) and disseminate information with so much speed, they can be an excellent way to spread news in an organization and receive feedback from multiple people all at the same time. This feedback comes in the form of comments left at the bottom of the article. In addition to general feedback, relevant internal and external sources can be cited using links. All of this creates a centralized knowledge base of information and an archive of past work and news. And since a blog is organize by dates, categories and labels (and is "searchable") it is easy for everyone in the organization to find the particular information they need.

In short, an internal blog can become the hive or hub of your organization. Around it all of your people can congregate and collectively contribute to the continual improvement of the company.
We will look into this collective contributing (collaboration), and how it can be used to document and enhance your business systems, in the next article of this series:
"Productivity ala blogs: How to use blogs to brainstorm and write operations manuals"
So stay tuned!

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resources on the use of internal blogs:
http://www.llrx.com/features/internalblogs.htm
http://www.bigblogcompany.net/index.php/products_services/individual/internal_blogs/
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2006/tc20060214_402499.htm
http://www.blogtronix.com/CorporateBlogging/54

Productivity (and profit) ala blogs: You own the media

For the uninitiated blogs might seem too personal and unprofessional for business use. After all, they are a some kind of "diary," right? Not exactly.

More and more blogs are flexing their muscles, outstripping traditional mediums and displaying their awesome ability to organize, publish, and promote. The blog of today is better likened to all of the forms of media from the past century (newspaper, magazine, radio, and television) rolled into a petite webpage created with the click of a button. Talk about a genie in a bottle!


In this series we will look not only at how blogs can promote your business and message, but how they can organize and revolutionize it too!

Stay tuned next time as we take a look at how blogs can organize your workforce.

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Additional posts for the series:

Productivity ala blogs: How blogs can organize your workforce

Productivity ala blogs: How to use blogs to brainstorm and write operations manuals

Productivity ala blogs: How to use blogs to write books
(Will explore how Chris Anderson used his blog thelongtail.com to write The Long Tail. Also Andrea J. Lee and Andy Wibbels - BlogWild)

and, my personal favorite...
Productivity ala blogs: How to use blogs to write business plans

Productivity ala Google: Why YOU need gmail

Although it has been three years since its launch in 2004, amazingly it is still possible to find business owners who are unaware of the magic that is gmail (and google apps).

If you are one of them now is the time to catch up. Why do you need gmail? Three words:
Productivity, productivity, productivity.


Case and point:
It's 3:45 and my boss, the owner of a small interior design firm asks me to check his email for a reply from one of his clients (the email software is made by a ubiquitous PC software maker that will remain unnamed :). After waiting for the 50 junk mail messages from hell (the usual suspects: viagra, debt consolidation and the like) to download to the inbox I could not contain my frustration. "Why not use gmail?"

He did not give a direct answer. But from what he did answer the reason was clear to me: fear of trying something new and unknown.
Does that sound familiar? Does the junk mail sound familiar?
It won't once you make the switch to gmail. In this series I will hold your hand and rescue you from email mediocracy.


Stay tuned for the rest of the series where we will take a look at:
Why the folder is dead - kiss your "black-hole-folders" goodbye
Why there is no junk mail in gmail paradise
How gmail can improve your communications
Why these advanced gmail tips will rock your world
The double-edged sword of near-unlimited capacity

A Flat World: How the rules of the game have been changed forever

The forces of globalization have flattened our world. New players have entered the "playing field" from every corner of the world. What does that mean for you and the level of productivity you will need to remain competitive?

The follow African parable imprinted on the floor of a factory in China gives a powerful hint, and a powerful warning:

"Every Morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.
It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning a lion wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle.
When the sun comes up, you better start running."

The message: in our global world, whoever you are, you are going to have to run a lot faster. I first read that quote in the book The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. It is an eye opening book. It lists ten forces that are flattening the world, tearing down walls and increasing competition for jobs and everything else many times fold. This flattening will require you to develop new and better organizational skills. It also graciously will give you many new tools for productivity, and thank goodness because you are going to need them!

We will look at each of the ten flattening forces and how they effect you in the next post of this series on "A Flat World."


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Additional posts in the series:

A Flat World: How these ten forces are flattening the world and effecting your productivity

Art of Virtue: How 13 virtues can change your life

In my previous post in this "Art of Virtue" series we all learned a valuable lesson from Benjamin Franklin: we need to change our habits!

Today we will look at the details of the "Art of Virtue" and how they can help us make that change. The method involves focusing exclusively on one of thirteen positive character habits for an entire week while recording how you fared at keeping to it. The next week focus is on another habit, and so on, until all of the habits have had a turn. Benjamin Franklin explains it best.

From the Autobiography By Benjamin Franklin:

"I included under thirteen names of virtues all that at that time occurred to me as necessary or desirable and annexed to each a short precept which fully expressed the extent I gave to its meaning. These names of virtues with their precepts were:

1 TEMPERANCE: Eat not to dullness drink not to elevation
2 SILENCE: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself avoid trifling conversation
3 ORDER: Let all your things have their places let each part of your business have its time
4 RESOLUTION: Resolve to perform what you ought perform without fail what you resolve
5 FRUGALITY: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself that is waste nothing
6 INDUSTRY: Lose no time be always employed in something useful cut off all unnecessary actions
7 SINCERITY: Use no hurtful deceit think innocently and justly and if you speak speak accordingly "
8 JUSTICE: Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty
9 MODERATION: Avoid extremes forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve
10 CLEANLINESS: Tolerate no uncleanliness in body clothes or habitation
11 TRANQUILLITY: Be not disturbed at trifles or at accidents common or unavoidable
12 CHASTITY
13 HUMILITY: Imitate Jesus and Socrates

My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these virtues I judged it would be well not to distract my attention by attempting the whole at once but to fix it on one of them at a time and when I should be master of that then to proceed to another and so on till I should have gone through the thirteen And as the previous acquisition of some might facilitate the acquisition of certain others I them with that view as they stand above "

So if we want to develop these habits we must take them one at a time, one week at a time.
But first, let's take a look at our current habits,... next time on TenaciousFrog .

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Other possible posts in the series:
Art of Virtue: Why examine your habits
Art of Virtue: Why developing habits is better than learning "tricks"
Art of Virtue: How to modify the method to fit your particular situation and character
(will cite How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger)

Art of Virtue: What We Can All Learn From Ben...

Franklin.

Benjamin Franklin, in his highly influential autobiography, dedicated an entire part (of the four part book) to a method of building virtuous habits. To this method Franklin attributed all of his successes in science, in politics, in business, and in life.

Even if that high recommendation does not move you to give this method your utmost attention, I have recommendation better: try it out for yourself and see if it does not recommend itself to you.

That is what Benjamin Franklin did and he learned something from it that we should all consider: All the tricks, tips, and faddish personally traits in the world will not help you if you do not develop a balanced character through changing your habits.

In this series we will discover how this method, the "Art of Virtue" can help you change your habits and develop your character.

So stay tuned for the next post in our "Art of Virtue" series when we will take a look at how the method works!

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Other possible posts in the series:
Art of Virtue: How 13 virtues can change your life
Art of Virtue: Why examine your habits
Art of Virtue: Why developing habits is better than learning "tricks"
Art of Virtue: How to modify the method to fit your particular situation and character
(will cite How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger)

I'm Listening

Everyday outside a busy train station in downtown Tokyo a small man with his hair dyed orange sits on a tiny orange plastic chair across from another tiny plastic orange chair and waits. The sign in his hands reads "I will listen to your story" in Japanese and everyday, without fail and despite some bewildered stares, someone sits in his little guest chair and spills his/her guts.

You may think this man is "nuts," but I think he understands something very valuable. He knows that, of the many needs we have as humans, there is likely no greater need than "the need to be understood."

Likewise, I know that to create a useful blog I need to hear you and seek to understand your needs. Only when there is listening and mutual respect can a community develop. And that is what I want to create around this blog, a community of people working toward building better organizations via great business software.

So, I am listening. What are your organizational problems? What obstacles are you facing? What information do you need? And how can I serve you best? Let me know!

I will listen to your story

Scheduling

----do not edit below this line----


The link to these sheets on Google Docs ---> Schedules on Google Docs

They are free for you to use and distribute under creative commons:




This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.