Tips for Communicators

Keep Your E-Mail Moving Efficiently

These days, e-mail can quickly become avalanche mail.  It can bury you - unless you manage it aggressively.  Here's how:

• Set your filters at high levels to prevent unwanted mail from getting through.
• Immediately enter the address of any offending mail in your "junk" utility.
• Answer new messages as you receive them. 
• Keep your e-mail inquiries - and your answers - brief.
• When action is need, quickly forward the message to someone else if possible.
• Delete mail once you're done.  If you must save an e-mail, create an online folder and transfer the message there.
• Organize your inbox by date so that you can see at a glance any unanswered messages.
• Ask to be removed from "cc" lists unless it's essential that you see the information being sent.
• Use an autoresponder to provide routine information, or redirect messages to a colleague or subordinate.

Your Top Ten New Year's Resolutions

Here are ten great new year’s resolutions that can help you turn 2008 into your most productive and successful year ever:

1. Get to know the productivity-building software on your computer, such as search features, task and reminder lists, and noteware.
2. Identify at least three promising new contributors and solicit material from them.
3. Make a call at random to a reader once each month and solicit reaction to your most recent editorial content.
4. Take one step to boost your own career, such as participation in a conference panel or volunteer service in your professional organization.
5. Arrive at the office 30 minutes early once each week, and work on a value-added project that you’ve been putting off.
6. Ask your boss what you can do in the year ahead to make his or her role more effective.  And then, follow through with any suggestions you receive.
7. Begin or boost your personal networking program.  Make new contacts through your professional group, or through professional discussions online.
8. Identify one key technology skill you’d like to learn, such as a new software program, and set up a self-study plan to master it.
9. Improve your physical health by beginning a serious exercise routine.  If you’re already exercising at peak, vary your routine to build more personal flexibility and stamina.
10. Begin at least one new activity that takes you outside your comfort zone.

Speed Things Up

Want to add speed to a writing or other editorial task?  Here are a few common sense suggestions:

• Design the work around a strict schedule.
• Work during your most productive period of the day.
• Turn the work into a contest, and race against a pre-determined time deadline.
• Freewrite or freetask around the subject.  Then, come back and polish later.
• Invigorate yourself with the tool of choice – a brisk walk or cup of coffee, for example.
• Plan and outline first.
• Get all your materials at hand before you start working.
• Shut the door.
• Announce to your colleagues when you’ll have the task finished.
• Dictate.  Or just verbalize your writing to an imaginary audience.

Move Fast!

When you want to build speed into a project or task, use one or more of these tips – and watch things move fast:

• Ask – don’t tell – the people around you that they’re crucial to making things happen fast.
• Challenge others with goals, not deadlines.
• Use incentives, not directives, to motivate.
• As you move along swiftly, congratulate success, but celebrate mistakes as learning experiences.
• Focus on opportunities, not rules.
• Aim for quick results, not longstanding procedures.
• Use digital, not paper, communication.
• Offer special praise for intense effort, not deliberative reflection.

Turbo Charge Your Meetings

To make your meetings powerful and productive, use these unusual, but highly effective, techniques:

• When you must make a decision, first determine the decision method:  vote, consensus, delegation, or  empowerment of the chair, for example.
• When you’re trying to boost the pace of a short meeting, ask members to stand up.
• Refer issues to subcommittees – but then ask subcommittees to meet right then and there, and reconvene the meeting after a set period of time.
• Ask a member (possibly the chair) to follow up on to-be-completed tasks several days before the meeting.
• Place time limits on each agenda item.
• Instead of “minutes,” ask your meeting secretary to compile a brief summary of discussion and “action notes.”
• Appoint members to specialized functions, such as “timekeeper,” “facilitator,” “translator,” or “resource expert.”

Handle Everything Once

Each day you probably receive a blizzard of mail, memoranda, e-messages, periodical articles, and more.  Rule of thumb:  handle every incoming item only once:

• Read it, whether for information or entertainment.
• Answer it.  Don’t delay.
• Refer it to someone else who can more appropriately act on the information or message – a colleague, subordinate or superior perhaps.
• File it if you believe you’ll need to refer to the information in the future.
• Pend it in a “holding” file for a conference or staff meeting.
• Toss it if the item has no intrinsic value or you’re finished with it.

Get into the “handle-everything-once” habit and you’ll find your days become less cluttered and more goal-oriented.

Ten Great Ways to Manage Your Time

As a busy communication professional, the more effectively you manage time, the more successful you’ll be.  Here are ten time tips you can use right now:

1. Set goals annually, monthly, weekly and daily – and review them once every 24 hours.
2. Note all appointments and tasks on a single calendar and work management system.
3. Arrange daily tasks in priority order, and work on the top priorities first.
4. Aggregate similar tasks together and schedule time to handle the task blocks on a regular basis.
5. Handle each piece of paper or electronic message once.
6. Handle your toughest jobs when you feel most alert.
7. When you must concentrate, shut the door or work in a quiet place.
8. When beginning a new project, plot it out – complete with objectives, strategies and deadlines.
9. Break big projects into bite-size tasks.
10. Develop and use a logical, easy-to-use filing system for all papers and e-content.

Turn New Year's Resolutions into Action

It’s easy to make new year’s resolutions.  But in the fast-paced communications world, it’s equally easy to relegate those resolutions to the “tomorrow” pile and focus attention on the pressing concerns of today.  Don’t let this happen.  Use these tips to make your new year’s resolutions the basis for positive change:

• Make your resolutions practical and specific.
• Develop concrete “plans” of action for each resolution – sequential strategies that help you move.
• Set deadlines and benchmarks.
• Write your resolutions down and place a copy of your resolutions where you’ll frequently refer to it.
• Find resources, such as advisors or mentors, who can help you overcome obstacles.
• Congratulate and reward yourself for passing critical benchmarks.
• When you encounter obstructions, don’t abandon your resolutions.  You will face problems.  Simply resolve at the outset to tackle them creatively and assertively.

What to Do When the Words Won't Come

You’re trying to write copy – but you can’t seem to get the words out.  What to do?  Try one or more of these suggestions:

1. Freewrite.  Get whatever comes to mind out on paper without editing.
2. Timewrite.  Give yourself an impossibly tight deadline – like 20 minutes – and fill that time with forced writing.
3. Outline.  Spend a half-hour creating an outline.  Even if it’s not perfect, use it to get yourself started.
4. Generate topics.  Make a list of words or phrases associated with the subject matter.  Then pick the top half-dozen words and build copy around them.
5. Read.  Spend a half-hour reading an article or book about the subject you’re covering.  You’re bound to get a few ideas.
6. Write leads.  Generate five to ten lead paragraphs.  One of them may well turn out to be the perfect opening spark.
7. Inspire yourself with quotations.  Pull a few quotations about your subject, or ask a colleague to say a few words about it.  Build your opening copy around one or more of those quotes.
8. Tell a story.  Tell a story about your subject – aloud, and into a cassette recorder if you wish – and then turn the resulting text into your copy.
9. Piecewrite.  Try writing the opening paragraph, fifth or sixth paragraph, tenth or twelfth paragraph, and closing paragraph.  Then come back and fill in the blanks.
10. Inspire yourself with writing.  Read some copy about an entirely different subject, but pay attention to style and structure.  The result:  fresh ideas about tackling your own subject matter.

Create a Resource Directory

You probably have dozens – or hundreds – of valuable contact names scattered among your files, database records and business card collection.  To maximize the potential of these names, consolidate them in a computer-based resource directory.

Using Microsoft Outlook or another contact manager, create records for each of your contacts (such as vendors, writers and information sources).  Include full names, organizational affiliations, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses.

Create a series of “categories” detailing the relationship each contact has with you.  Categories might include vendors, sources of statistical information, industry contacts, colleagues, competitors, association contacts, and key industry employees.  You’ll customize your category list to your own needs.

Assign each contact in your resource directory one or more relationship categories.  Then, whenever you need information or help on a task, you can pull all the listings within the category associated with your need.

One other valuable feature of a resource directory:  In the “contact notes” section, include information you gathered at the time you met the contact, pertinent information pasted from the contact’s e-mail correspondence or Web site, or a handy Web address.