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Getting More Done (Without Time Travel)

I love finding new books that blow my mind. Some are revolutionary ideas that I’d never thought of. They are the kind of books that rock your world and (sometimes) change the way you perceive reality. Others you know you should be doing, but you’ve never found the motivation or had enough ‘pain’ to pursue them.

When I read the following quote, I realized I wasn’t doing some of the things I knew I should be. Like taking the time to cool down after an intense workout, it should be done but doesn’t always happen.

Less But Better
– Dieter Rams

Mind = blown. I have stretched myself pretty thin over the first few months of this year. I’m not complaining, it’s actually been great. My freelance career has been booming and my role at SOUTH has been expanding on what seems like a daily basis. Business is good!

But…

How to Network like a Pro

Are networking events actually worth attending?

I’ve always been curious of what people get from these gatherings. Some people swear by them and others despise them.

I had an epiphany last week during an event that may seem very obvious. There are certain ‘Connector’ personality types that benefit from these gatherings more than most of us.

The epiphany wasn’t that these events were beneficial to some people and not others. It was that I needed to find some Connectors if I wanted to make my attendance pay off.

Who are the Connectors?

They are the professional networkers.

They are the movers & shakers at these events. They can put me in connection with potential clients and they can introduce me to people that share a common interest with me. They know who I should talk to even if they don’t know me.

They have their own permanent badges with their full name, title, and company that they proudly display. They know almost everyone at the events and unlike most of us, they look very relaxed in these situations.

These are all more than likely some type of Connector.

In The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Malcolm Gladwell describes Connectors as people that know LOTS of people, they cultivate acquaintances (not necessarily deep friendships), because they occupy multiple “worlds” they know a variety of individuals, and they seem to collect, “people the same way others collect stamps.”

Tom Rath & the StrengthsFinder 2.0 series explains that the Connectedness trait can be shown as an ability to see yourself as, “a bridge builder for people of different cultures.”

They intentionally seek out new relationships, even if they’re not incredibly deep ones. They are always meeting new people and they are always in front of others trying to connect the dots.

The Connectors are the people who can connect you to 90% of the people in the room through one handshake, instead of having to shake everyone’s hand individually. The best professional networkers seem to have these connecting qualities.

How are Champions important for my business?

We don’t all have time to attend 3 luncheons each week. And most business owners are reading this shaking their heads saying, “In no way am I a connector, I actually hate most people.”

I get that, I used to be the same way when I worked in retail. It’s hard to go to events like this if you don’t see value in it.

That’s why you should find someone else to do it for you. Someone that is much better at connecting than you are. It’s like sending in a spy with all sorts of information to leak it out into the community.

Can you identify a customer that is well connected in your community? Or maybe an entry level employee that seems to know an abnormal amount of people? What about a fellow family or church member that has extra time and seems to always make new friends?

If any of these people can network more easily than you and they seem to be better connected, consider asking them to go in your place to the next networking event you get an invite to.

If word of mouth is important to your business, you need champions. The best champions are professional networkers.

They may not walk around telling everyone who you are right away with a bull horn. But when the time is right and the conversation has been primed, they will plug you like you deserve.

A 3rd party promotion can be way more beneficial than one coming from a company representative, especially an owner. A 3rd party promotion comes across off as more sincere since the promoter is not technically getting paid to do the promoting.

And when they promote, people listen.

Connecting Topics

Imagine if that current employee you sent to a networking event wore a neon green t-shirt with your logo on the front right next to their pre-made badge. Pretty cool, eh?

That actually sounds ridiculous, I know. I’m not suggesting you buy neon green t-shirts and hand them out to advocates of your brand. What I am suggesting is that you offer those Connectors something to talk about for you.

When you send a Connector into an event as your company’s Champion, they need to have material to talk about. New initiatives that are happening, upcoming projects, or positive things that you’re doing in the community.

This may sound risky to you, or maybe even sound like a waste of time. But if you have high dollar customers, as my new company SOUTH does, the investment made in one person over lunch is easily paid off when they send one customer your way.

If you have lower priced commodity products, like mass produced furniture, everyone is always on the lookout for where to get a good deal. The more people you touch, the better your business will grow.

Identify Connectors in and around your business, recruit them to attend some of these events for you, and give them topics to talk about. Speaking of tactics…

Ideas for Encouraging your Champions

Here are some ways to get individuals to talk about your brand for you.

Make them VIP
- One time I was ‘awarded’ a Wild Wings VIP card since I frequented the establishment weekly. It was usually to entertain my sales guys or customers and I paid 99% of the time with personal or company funds. They gave me a VIP card that offered me discounts for spending X dollars and I loved it. I told everyone I knew, and it made me come back again and again just to show my card off. I helped spread their business through word of mouth.
Bribe them
- Yes, that’s a strong word. But it’s a simple concept, give them something for free. It doesn’t have to be huge, it just has to be sincere and transparent. Give them something such as a free upgrade, or a free sample of your product. You want them to have a reason to talk about you in a good light.
Ask for the ‘sale’
- If you don’t share your intentions, these connectors will never know why they are being treated like royalty. You have to explain that you’re working on a new word of mouth program, that you are looking to show value to the “people of influence” in the community. You’ve pinpointed them as a person of influence and that you would like them to be an advocate of your brand just for being them.
Don’t ask for specifics
- Inquiring how many cards they give out during a typical networking event is way off the mark. Just tell them that you think they are influential and that you would like to make in impression on them since they hold high standing in the community. Some people will be downright flattered and that alone will make them want to talk about you.
Don’t waste your time on the wrong people
- Celebrities don’t necessarily equal connectors. You want to find the people who make real connections. If you’ve been to a few of these events, you can easily spot them. They are the ones that you see at multiple venues. They’re the ones who seem to know half the people in the room, and not necessarily because they are speaking.
Cultivate the relationship
- Take them out for coffee, invite them over for dinner, or ask them go to the beach with you. It doesn’t always have to be about your business, you just need to get them to know you & your brand.

Once you’ve built relationships with the right people, they will do the networking for you. They’ll talk about you at work, on vacations, and at these networking events.

The more of these Connectors you have promoting you, the more business can be sent your way.

If you have enough people out there championing your brand, you don’t have to try and attend every networking event in town. You already have brand advocates out there promoting for you. Which means you can focus on your business and go to events sparingly.

As Gladwell explains in The Tipping Point, word of mouth epidemics are spread only after a Connector gets a hold of an idea. Identify the Connectors and spread your own word of mouth epidemic. That’s how to network like a pro.

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How else can we effectively spread out business through word of mouth?

I look forward to hearing from you below or on Twitter (@mikemccann3), have a great rest of the week!

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Why Email is the Death of Customer Service

I recently heard a story about someone attempting to spend a moderate sum on invitations to a bridal shower. It was appalling to hear the type of customer service she received and the way the company communicated with her.

Although I’m all too familiar with a lack of customer service, this story is worth expounding on because it contains some valuable lessons. We have all sorts of ways of communicating with customers, but we need to be accommodating to them and not just do what is convenient for us. In a lot of ways, email is the death of customer service.

For Whom is Email Sufficient?

One massive, sometimes fatal, mistake I see many businesses make is their inability to put themselves in the customers’ shoes. Calling us when we are at work, or emailing us when we would prefer a call. Or faxing us… ever.

For example, someone I know needed some wedding invitations made. There was a very close deadline that was rapidly approaching due to a lack of competence shown by the company making the invites (not the customer). There were some changes made that needed approval the same day. The company knew the deadline was that day, and they just emailed the customer proofs without a follow-up call.

Now something that is not urgent doesn’t require a call, and if they called all of their customers instead of emailing them, that may increase their workload significantly.

But, when that customer has a same-day deadline they need to treat that customer with extra care to ensure the deadline is met. Especially after the company has dropped the ball and created this urgency. In this case, extra care would be a follow-up phone call to make sure the customer knows their proofs have been emailed to them.

It’s a Generational Thing

We, especially those of us that have grown up with email & instant messaging, think it’s OK to only communicate via written word. I have friends that I solely communicate with via text. If they call me I think they’re on their death bed or they are going through a quarter-life crisis.

That sort of communication is OK with me, but not for generations before us. They build trust and confidence through hearing people’s voices and seeing their faces, that is how business has been done most of their lives.

It’s actually quite ironic that we (as a generation) spend so much time on our phones, yet very little of it is actually spent talking with people.

I do fear that many of us (technically Gen Y, although I feel like Gen X) have become too dependent on electronic communication and we lack a lot of the people skills that the generations before us had to develop. Although this is an entirely different subject, where we grew up and our previous experiences play into how we communicate.

Email is Easy

Sometimes an email is needed (as with documents that have specifics and/or photos) but a phone call can set you apart from your competitors when it comes to customer service. This is not a justification that everything we send is that important. There are still plenty of times when we need to use the phone.

One major assumption many of us make is that everyone checks their email all day long, like I don’t. Have you ever had someone call you and say, “Did you get my email? I sent it 30 minutes ago and I haven’t heard from you, just wanted to make sure everything was OK.”

I check my emails once or twice per day unless I am waiting on something urgent or I am expecting something big (this practice alone has saved me hours of productivity).

Some people check their email all day long, which is wasteful and extremely time consuming, but even worse is that they assume everyone else does the same. Still worst of all, they get upset if you don’t check yours constantly, as if you have nothing better to do.

Scared of the Phone

I was very fortunate in that my first two jobs during & out of college forced me to be on the phone and out in front of people. Even if I had been the type to want to type all day (see what I did there?) I would not have been able to do so or I would have failed miserably.

A lot of Gen Y (particularly the youngest of us) is scared of the phone and think that only pissed off people lie on the other side of it. That’s not true!

There are tons of happy people on the phone, but we don’t know that because the only time we use it is when we are forced to. By that time, the person on the other side is definitely pissed. Which could have been avoided if we would have just called them in the first place.

Over-Communicate

The moral of the story is to find the right communication mediums for your customers and use it. If it’s an urgent matter, do not leave your communication up to email. Phone calls show urgency and show an extra level of care for your customers.

One of the things I always do for businesses when making their websites is suggest and email or phone call option to hear back from the business. If people don’t want emails, don’t email them. If they prefer to stay off the phone, oblige them.

It’s not about you, it’s about your customers. When we can all learn that, our customer service approval will go through the roof!

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Besides Comcast, have you ever had communication issues with a company?

What was the issue?

Leave me a comment below or chat with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear from you.

Have a great day!

Is Your Business Capitalizing on the Newest Social Trend?

As our world has become more digitized, there are more people every day that are working from home. Less people are going into an office and less people’s co-workers are seen in person. Many of us (including me) stare at a computer screen for 8-14 hours a day and the most connection we get from our work is a phone call or a Google Hangout… if we’re lucky.

How did this happen? And more importantly what’s going to become of this?

We are social creatures and we can’t hide from each other forever. Today we’ll talk about whether or not your business is capitalizing on the newest social trend: meetups.

A Brief History

As technology has improved over the years, more people (and companies) have found advantages to staying home to work. If someone stays home from work there is less overhead at the office, when people stay home to work they often get more done than if they were working in an office, and if someone is completely remote the are location independent of their work.

This could never have happened 30 years ago since email (not even the internet) was just becoming popular only 20 years ago. We have just recently come into an era when people feel comfortable doing business with someone that is not physically present with them.

The rise of Skype, Google Hangouts, FaceTime, and other visual communication methods have given us comfort in the fact that we can always reach our remote co-workers. Still, most work is still done via written word: email, text messages, and other forms of instant messaging. We just want that comfort that we can see our co-workers if we want to.

The Build Up

In 2012 approximately fifty million workers, 40% of the workforce here in America, could do their job remotely, as opposed to only 2.5 million in 2008. The trend is becoming more and more popular and allowing more people to be location independent.

I have worked remotely for about 7 months now and there are major advantages like fewer distractions, increased productivity, less meetings, and more. But there are also downfalls such as a lack of interaction with people for projects (you can only do so much through a screen for so long), the lack of camaraderie, and the lack of resources (people down the hall) when you get stuck.

In my opinion, and in the data’s opinion, remote work has more upsides than down and we have more remote workers every year. But now that so many people are working from home, they have less social interaction. We are social creatures and we crave social interaction.

There are days when I itch just to go downstairs in hopes of talking to someone in the elevator because I’m going stir crazy. It doesn’t matter if you’re an introvert or an extrovert, we all need to interact with others!

Now that more people are working remotely, they are more willing and excited to meetup with other people. We want to get out of the house, we want to meetup with other people since we don’t have nearly as much human interaction at work. What we are ‘missing’ from our work, we are attempting to pick up in other places.

Unconsciously, the leader of the WordPress Meetup I went to last week stated this right as we were getting started, “Wow, this is our biggest group yet! How many of you are first timers? Over half the room, that is great!” In a room full of 30 people, over half of us were new to the meetup, apparently a huge increase from only a month ago.

The meetup trend is growing and as more people work remote, more meetups will continue to happen. The question is whether or not your business will take advantage of them and begin to facilitate them.

The Meetup Trend

Meetups have been happening for years, but we often refer to them as parties, get-togethers, and interest groups. Someone has an interest and wants to find others that have those same interests. In my recent cases it has a WordPress meetup and blogger meetup.

Many are facilitated through like Meetup.com, which is free to use and free to join. These can be groups for interests ranging from jogging to atheism to bourbon. The only limit you have on the meetup is how many people will decide they are interested in that topic as well.

So how can you incorporate meetups into your business? How can you capitalize on this trend of people wanting to get out of the house?

Maybe you have a bourbon enthusiasts website and you want to grow your audience. You could start a local group and talk about bourbon and then invite the people at your meetup to join your site. Or maybe you have a personal training business that you are trying to grow. You could start a workout meetup once a month that you lead and be sure to let everyone know that you are for hire as a personal trainer.

And if you have a somewhat mundane business, like selling mattresses, you can still take advantage of this trend. Most mattress stores are spacious, so start a meetup on a something you are interested in personally and host it at the store. You now have people who are going to sit in your store once a week/month and stare at all your furniture for an hour. Who do you think they’ll call when it’s time to buy furniture?

There are many ways to be capitalizing on the newest social trend of meetups, you just need to get creative and put yourself out there!

What sort of meetups do you attend? Are they beneficial to your business?

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Leave a comment below or chat with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear from you.

Have a great week!

Corporate Communication Concepts: Technology Helps

Email is dying on the vine. I don’t know that it will ever go away, but it is on it’s way out. I’m sure some people said the same thing about fax machines a few years back, but look at how they still linger around. As social media becomes more and more ingrained in our society, our communication is becoming more social as well.

Today I’m going to explore some corporate communication concepts and scenarios that I’ve experienced. As more and other forms of communication arise, we need to know how to incorporate them into our businesses. Remember, speed and agility are good thing in business and technology can help us improve in both of those areas.

An Intranet

Towards the end of 2012, I recognized the need for improved communication within the furniture company and I made a push to set up an intranet. No I didn’t spell that wrong, an intranet is an internal system of communication that is not shared with the outside world. Scot Berkun does a great job in The Year Without Pants outlining how WordPress used blogs for their internal communication systems.

One of the great leaders in the organization, Dennis Reed, and I came up with a google site that housed stock photos, pricing documents, and availability reports that could be accessed anytime. These were normally items I would have to send out to people via email, but that was taking up too much time and it seemed wasteful to me. Instead of one person distributing 1 document to 50+ emails, why not put that single document in the same place every day and update it as soon as it was ready? Hence, the ABG intranet was born.

Now I didn’t expect this to catch on like wild-fire, I knew it would take six months to a year for everyone to fully grasp the concept. But if the company as a whole could embrace technology, we would have had a huge upper hand within the industry. There are multi-million dollar companies that operate off of pen, paper, & a single fax machine in the furniture industry. Imagine if technology was embraced and what that could do for the business???

corporate communication concepts

GetLua

In the beginning of 2013 we met with a company called Lua about using their technology to improve our communication. Lua provides users the ability to call and direct message (their form of email) people in their own private network through a mobile app. The key to their software was accountability, everyone can always see if & when you open your messages, ensuring that everyone is on top of their work at all times.

We had just expanded from one location to three in Charleston and it was my duty to make the three stores cohesive in all ways. One of our biggest challenges in that scenario was logistics. We were dealing with physical products, not something that is email-able. The products need to go from the main warehouse to the ancillary stores, from store to consumers, and occasionally from store-to-store.

We met with Lua to improve our delivery system, and determine if they were a good fit for us. If they were, we would consider using them with the entire company to replace the afore described intranet. In this particular scenario, it could have been a good fit had our system been further developed.

When we met with the guys from Lua, our system was still maturing and we hadn’t seen what sort of snags would actually come up. Ultimately, we weren’t in a position to purchase their technology at that time. Even though it wasn’t a huge investment, it would have raised the cost of the delivery system and we didn’t have a budget set out for it.

The biggest “win” for me was that we were actively looking to replace the ABG intranet, which was soon to run out of capacity and needed an aesthetic facelift in the worst way. It was a step in the right direction, even though we did not use it, we were seeing what was available in the world.

funny communication pic

Google Hangouts

The intranet was simple in the beginning, an MVP if you will, but it did everything we needed and more. I saw this as an eventual place where personal success stories would be shared as well as tactics and forums for discussion/help.

People did not catch on to it like that, and it’s quite possible that I did not do my job as a leader to promote it that way. When I recognized this fact, I came to the conclusion that cohesiveness needed to happen in some other way. Enter the Google Hangout.

I talked about Google Hangouts (think Google’s version of Skype) when I spoke of Epic Day, but this was actually my first interaction with them. I began using Google Hangouts each week to talk about marketing & recruiting tactics. I held them at the same time each week and anyone that could join me that was interested, I was showing up no matter what.

It was around this time that the deterioration of my opinion was sinking in and my departure was just around the corner. I never finished my work improving the corporate communication at the furniture company, but I knew (& still do) that store to store communication is the key to the growth of that business. It can’t come from one source, the lines of communication have to be open across the board if real growth is going to take hold.

Conclusion

If you see an opportunity for improved communication, implement it. Don’t wait, don’t second guess yourself, do it and see the magic unfold. By the time you weigh the pros and cons, you will be left in the dust by your competitors.

I outlined some of the lessons I learned from Epic Day earlier this year and one was our need for more communication despite g-chats, hangouts, emails, and monthly get-togethers. If we had better communication, Trav and I both agreed we could have ended up somewhere completely different than we did. I can only watch from a distance with the furniture company, but I sure hope they embrace technology to improve their corporate communication.

Where is your opportunity?

What sort of technology does you company use to communicate?

How can you leverage technology to improve communication within your organization?

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Chat with me on Twitter or leave me a comment below, I’d love to hear where your company can improve their corporate communication concepts!

Have a great weekend!

Why Some Organizations Will Almost Always be Faster than Yours

When we think of the archetypal business model, we think of a pyramid with the CEO up top then tiering down to upper management, then the managers, then the front-line workers. The more difficult the decisions, the higher up it must be passed along to be decided. What we get with this model is an entire front line of people unwilling and unable to make decisions while forcing the upper tier(s) to spend all their time thinking for others instead of planning. So how do we avoid this?

Source: www.rossanaroja.com

Empowering People

When we examine businesses that thrive and those that collapse, we see some that are clinging to the hierarchy described above while the start-ups that seem to be taking over the world are thriving. We are seeing this because the start-ups are much more nimble, and now that they are able to attain cash up front from VC’s (venture capitalists) they can afford to bring on other great minds to work alongside them that share their passion.

When this happens, the smart people that started the company are able to focus on growth because they can hire other smart people to surround themselves with. Since they are surrounded by capable people, they don’t need to make decisions for them and the founders can focus on growth. They empower their people to make decisions and trust that they will make the right ones, allowing start-ups to make fast decisions. Meanwhile in corporate America, time is wasted passing the buck up the ladder like an a scene from Atlas Shrugged.

Hire for Quality, not to fill Space

So we know that fast organizations have few tiers and they empower their front line people to make as many decisions as possible. That’s great, but how do we get those people that are responsible enough for us to trust? Don’t skimp on the hiring process.

Spend some time and money up front to save headaches in the long run. Be picky about who you want to work with. Do they mesh with the team? Can they solve problems? Can they think on their feet? Be sure to have all these questions answered before they are brought on. It’s going to cost a little more, but it’s going to be worth it. The older I get the more I realize that the cheapest isn’t always the best.

Training

But Mike, it’s too hard, I don’t have that kind of time or money.

First off, yes we can, I guarantee that we haven’t used all the tools at our disposal. Have we ever dropped what we were doing and put ‘HIRING’ at the top of our to-do list above all else? Use some of that fancy internet I talked about above to find some online resources and dabble in social media since you’re now a master at of.

Secondly, if we can’t find them, make them. I spoke at length about investing in our people and the benefits of doing so (ironically, that came from one of the most stringent hierarchy systems, the US armed forces) back in November. What is it we want our people to know?

Effective customer service tactics
How to upload pictures to a website
Improved closing ratios on sales calls
Standard accounting practices
How to use Microsoft Excel

Most skills in the workplace are learn-able things, but we must take the time to teach people up front if we want to save ourselves the hassles in the long run. Set up work-shops and teach people on the job or give them paid OT to come and learn. They will appreciate the investment we make in them and will be more eager to perform for us. Most people are inherently smart, unfortunately we don’t give them the opportunity to prove it to us.

If it were too hard the entire collegiate athletics system outside of Division 1 would crumble. Coaches deal with this and thrive in situations because they use the resources at their disposal to the best of their abilities, they cannot make excuses. The only difference is that their success if much easier to identify: W or L.

Reprimanding

When we give our people this much responsibility, they’re going to make mistakes. They will handle something differently than we expect, they will drop the ball, and ultimately the company will take a step back because of it. BUT, if we are prepared for it and if we have built a culture of learning, we can learn from it properly.

It will be crucial for their development that we handle their mistakes properly. Second guessing their every move only after it is made is not the way to encourage growth. Giving them as much information as possible up front and then teaching as they go is the best way to build their confidence. Don’t just tell them what they did wrong, encourage them when they do right as well.

Using a ‘reprimand sandwich’ as I heard it referred on Dave Ramsey’s Entreleadership Podcast is the best way to keep spirits high, while pointing out mistakes. Sandwich a reprimand for a mistake in between two positives for the most effective way to teach a new person. Everyone reacts differently, but this is the safest when dealing with a new person that is still building confidence.

Take the time to learn how your people learn so that you can teach them best. And learn how they respond to criticism as well, some people thrive by being publicly reprimanded and others will quit on the spot for something like that. Everyone is different, it is our job as leaders and managers to figure that out.

Remember that the goal is to make our organizations fast by empowering out people to make decisions, this will allow us to spend our time planning for the future so we can grow our businesses.

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Does your organization put decision making in the hands of your front line people? What are the positives and negatives associated with this type of management?

Leave me a comment or connect with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this follow-up technique!

P.S. 7 Days till Christmas!

One trick to Improve Communication Skills & Be More Decisive

At work we can be accused of poor communication when something is not followed through or we don’t approach a project just like our superior expected us to. We may have unintentionally hurt someone’s feelings or even given conflicting orders to the people we oversee.

If any of these have happened, here is one simple way to avoid these pitfalls and start to improve communication skills.

Write it down

Turn that thought into words. This is a very simple concept that I touched on in Follow Through that has helped me tremendously in more phases of my life than just accomplishing goals. We have millions of thoughts per day ranging from what food to eat to what is on our to-do lists to sexual desires to why some squirrels can fly and some can’t.

We cannot always control our minds and these thoughts will happen. However, we can clarify some of these thoughts by writing them down.

It is easy to have a thought, we all do this each day. The next step in clarification is verbal communication – I’ll touch on non-verbal communication another time. It is harder to have a conversation or even talk to ourselves in the mirror than it is to have thoughts racing through our brains. We don’t need any conscious use of our brains, random thoughts will happen whether we like it to or not, but speech forces us to hone in on that particular thought. And when we can speak it, we have a much higher quality of clarity than when it’s rattling around in our brains with the other million thoughts.

Still, even more difficult than speaking our thoughts is to write them down.

When we write them down we don’t use the words ‘like’ and ‘sort of” and ‘um’ are added to give us time to clarify points, we are forced to put in a focused effort so our writing is clear. If you don’t believe me, you can check out this interview (interview has been taken down) that I did over the phone and then had transcribed (via Fiverr for $5) to see how difficult it is to read verbal communication.

When we consciously transform our thoughts into written words, we have to really focus on what we’re saying in order to make that message clear. This is the most focused form of communication we can offer to those around us.

Enough about theory, let’s talk about how to apply this to our work (and home) lives. First off, we need to learn to recognize when clarification is needed.

Picture yourself leaving a meeting with 14 new objectives to accomplish and you’re not sure where to start. Although I hate email, this is the perfect place to clarify thoughts with one. Email the person that was running the meeting or the person giving directives with a message that states what you took away from the meeting as well as what you perceive your follow-up actions to be and ask if this is correct. If you’ve done a good job listening and writing our your objectives, you will get a simple “Yes, that’s correct. Thanks for following up,” back AND you’ll have yourself a nice, clear to-do list for your own personal use.

Way too often we forget that a hand-written note goes a million miles further than an email or a text does.

No I’m not referencing sticky notes, I’m referring to thank-you cards and apologies. The art of the hand-written note has been lost over the years so when we receive a hand-written note it stands our in our minds.

Next time someone at work (guys this goes a long way at home, too) does something very helpful for you, try using a hand-written note to say thank you. Your impact will be great than ever, and they won’t soon forget that! And the same goes for apologies, if an action was very hurtful an email isn’t the best way to express regret.

Finally, when we write our goals down we create a sense of accountability. It’s easy to dismiss our ambitions as thoughts when we have so many each day, but not when we have them written down. Not when they’re sitting on our desk, or refrigerator, or bathroom mirror.

When we define our goals, we know what path we want to be on in life and our actions will reflect that commitment. For example, when I write down that “I am going to put away $250 each month into savings for a year” it’s an easy decision for me when a buddy asks if I want to fly to watch a football game next weekend. That will cost more than $250 plus I wouldn’t be working, meaning that doesn’t align with my goal of saving $250 each month. Easy decision, I forfeit that trip. Sacrifice is not easy, but we do it so that we can enjoy much great things later on in life.

Learn to write things out and you’ll learn to improve communication skills in the office and at home. Do you have any written communication tips?

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Leave me a comment or chat with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear from you. Have a great week!

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Communication