My latest post at Workshifting.com was sparked by this thought-provoking article on BNET about the impact of gender on how men’s brains and women’s brains function–and the impact this has on how we work.

As more people shift out of office settings, it seems we’re due for a conversation about how gender might impact workshifting–who  is likely to take to it, and what that means for teams of workshifters and those who manage them.

You can read the complete post here.

Photo by dno1967 (Flickr).

©2010 Independent Thinking. All Rights Reserved.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, then you know that there were a couple of weeks recently in which I posted very infrequently. What you probably don’t know is that I was in bed sick for a good chunk of that time. Although I wasn’t getting much work done, business didn’t stop for me.

Which brings me to my latest post for Workshifting.com. The topic is how to manage expectations when you have an unplanned work stoppage. The five tips include triaging, rescheduling deadlines, checking email, and more.

Go ahead, read the post, and then add your tips for avoiding a workshifting meltdown.

Photo by Simon Strandgaard (Flickr).

©2010 Independent Thinking. All Rights Reserved.

My latest column for IABC’s CW Bulletin is out, and it is about time: how we claim it as business owners, and how we can manage it to keep ourselves from being overwhelmed or letting critical tasks and projects slip through the cracks.

It can be a challenge for even the most organized. I’ve written before that it doesn’t take a superhero. While I wish I had a time turner, like Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter books, I live in a world where the wizardry is really just a product of hard work.

The column looks at 9 strategies for managing your business. They range from identifying the five business buckets to prioritizing the big stuff to understanding cash-flow cycles.

You can read it here.  Then come back and tell me: What would you add?

Photo by Laffy4k (Flickr).

©2010 Independent Thinking. All Rights Reserved.

I wrote here about the secret to a great client relationship (hint: it’s about how you communicate). Now I want to talk about a related issue: understanding how your audience is listening.

For example:

• Have you ever had someone say, “Well, I tweeted about that”?
  Okay, but I didn’t see your random tweet at a random-to-me time in a sea of tweets from the 500+ people I’m following.

• Have you ever had someone tell you they posted the event to their LinkedIn Group?
  Great, except I get a weekly digest and your event was three days ago.

• Have you ever had multiple people send you Facebook notifications for the same event, even though you’re on the organization’s distribution list and so have obviously received at least one event invitation (and possibly signed up already)?
  Gee, now you’re spamming me.

Here’s the problem: When you do this, you’re making assumptions about my behavior and how I use various social media channels. Get it right, and we’re cool. Get it wrong, and your message is lost. You become irrelevant. Or worse, I unfollow, unlink, or unfriend you.

Whether you’re asking directly, monitoring online behavior, or accessing analytics, it’s important to understand how people consume information.

What strategies do you use to understand how your audience is listening?

Note: This post originally appeared on IABC’s Communication World blog.

Photo by cogdogblog (Flickr).

©2010 Independent Thinking. All Rights Reserved.

[Note: This post originally appeared on IABC's Communication World blog.]

I was checking my e-mail, tweeting with friends, and reading through a backlog of blog posts last Friday while soaring across the United States at 35,000 feet. It was a great way to feel connected after a week of airplanes, hotels, and day-long meetings. But then I came back, and my Internet service provider had a major outage—leaving me offline and disconnected for several hours on Monday.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t the tweets or my e-mail that I missed. It was Google. And Dictionary.com. I was working on a report for a client, and I’m so used to being able to fact check, decipher acronyms, and check for precise word usage that the productivity snag was making me really cranky, really fast.

That got me thinking about the tools I take for granted that help me as a multitasking communications pro, business owner, and blogger.

Here are seven programs and tools that help me to be productive every day:

1. Google has become my backup business hub. Plus I can sync my Droid so that I can access Gmail, my contacts, and my calendar on the go.
2. Google Reader is indispensible. Without a good aggregator, it would be impossible to keep up with 10-15 blogs, let alone the 100+ I read regularly.
3. Ever since I loaded that first beta version of Google Chrome, I’ve been hooked by the speed and simplicity of the browser. I’m particularly fond of the bookmark sync feature since I typically use two computers (one desktop, one netbook).
4. TweetDeck is my Twitter desktop client of choice. The Groups feature is invaluable; I also run Facebook and LinkedIn feeds. I typically monitor the notifications window at the bottom of my screen, and pop in periodically to chat during the day.
5. Evernote enables me to capture random ideas for blog posts and other notes and access them wherever and whenever I want.
6. Post-it Notes, Sticky Notes, and 1 dry erase board. I’m big on both to-do lists and capturing ideas and potential innovations. I use my dry erase board as a visual reminder of projects and deadlines and as a place to aggregate blog post ideas for Communication World, Workshifting, and this blog. I use the Sticky Notes program (which sits on my desktop) for nagging items. Post-it Notes is for one-off items, from checking on the status of an invoice to a phone call I need to return.
7. My Droid, with its crisp big screen and Android operating system, is rapidly becoming an invaluable business tool. Plus it has amazing turn-by-turn GPS navigation.

What’s in your toolbox?

Photo by Ali Edwards (Flickr).

©2010 Independent Thinking. All Rights Reserved.

An interesting report from the Center for American Progress looks at the changing demographics of the U.S. workforce. Specifically, that 4 in 10 women today are the sole breadwinners in their families or are earning as much or more than their spouses.

The report suggests that policy changes are needed to address the new workforce reality. These include updating basic labor standards to account for flexible work schedules and improving the knowledge base on what constitutes family responsive workplace policies (including collecting and analyzing the effectiveness of existing work|life policies).

As workshifting gains momentum and more employers begin to reassess how and where we work, I think a focus on workplace flexibility will become more and more important–and not just for women workers.

©2010 Independent Thinking. All Rights Reserved.

Remember the Deck of Cards that the U.S. military unveiled after the 2003 invasion of Iraq? In addition to Saddam Hussein, it featured a who’s who of the regime’s inner circle. If you’d diagrammed it, you would have been ended up with a traditional hierarchical chart with Hussein at the top and the lines going down from there.

But that’s not how the military found Saddam Hussein. Instead, Col. Jim Hickey and his colleagues developed a social diagram to understand the Iraqi leader’s network of family, close friends, and tribal ties. (Stick with me here, I promise this post isn’t about politics or military strategy.)

At a recent New America Foundation panel discussion on Social Networks and Modern Warfare, Hickey stressed that filling in the pieces and capturing Saddam Hussein was the result of tremendous teamwork–not just by his troops, but in conjunction with special forces and others operating in Iraq.

Hickey also stressed that:

• everyone worked together to exchange information
• there were no silos
• they worked together to pursue opportunities
• no one asked for permission or ran decisions up the chain of command (i.e., they just went with it)

I’m going to suggest that the way the military pursued its objective offers three lessons learned for businesses:

1. We need to rethink influence. Hickey and his colleagues understood that family structures, not government officials, were the key to finding their man. We still over-rely on traditional org. charts rather than looking at how information truly flows within organizations. This has huge implications not only for how companies operate, but also for how we identify good business intelligence.

2. We need to do, then ask. Best Buy‘s Results-Only Work Environment is a good example. The people who developed the strategy didn’t ask permission to implement it; they tested it and proved it worked–and then sought permission to roll it out more widely.

3. Silos have to go. I’ve written about silos before. Hickey did something atypical of many hierarchical organizations: he shared information, and shares the credit today. Companies also need to let go of their fiefdoms.

What would you add?

Photo by striatic (Flickr).

©2010 Independent Thinking. All Rights Reserved.

During the IABC/Washington panel discussion on 2010 trends, I posed the following question: Is 2010 the year we break down silos? In retrospect, I asked the wrong question.

Breaking down silos is critical, but it’s not about whether we do it–it’s about how. In the communications world, I’m finally hearing more conversation around “integrated” again, but I still see media separated from PR separated from marketing within organizations. Agencies are often worse (think digital practice groups, for example).

When will companies be ready to stop organizing their operations around tasks? And how might this new look take form?

Photo by accent on eclectic (Flickr).

©2010 Independent Thinking. All Rights Reserved.

I’m taking a page from Chris Brogan this year. He annually identifies “three words that I use as guidance for how I should conduct my efforts in the year to come.”

My three words for 2010: incubate, endorphins, and endurance. I’m going to use them, hopefully wisely, to guide my business.

• Incubate—While I’m not particularly rash, I am prone to scattering my efforts and trailing off in new directions. This year, I’m resolving to let my ideas take form before I take action. After all, there’s not much sense in digging in before you’re ready.
• Endorphins—I’ve described being a solopreneur as needing to be innovative, to know how to identify and seize opportunities, to be a risk taker, and—of course–to be independent. For me, this works best when I’m forward-focused. Endorphins give you a natural high, and I’m resolving to keep them flowing to keep me on track.
• Endurance—Owning a successful business requires being committed for the long haul and accepting that it requires hard work every day. Now that I’ve hit 20 years, I’m targeting 25. I have a mantra when I’m running any significant distance. It’s forward motion, and it’s all about understanding that if you keep going, one step at a time, you’ll find your success.

What are your guiding principles for 2010?

Photo by Son of Groucho (Flickr).

©2010 Independent Thinking. All Rights Reserved.

I intended for my first blog post of the work year to focus on my overall approach to 2010, but instead I find myself looking backwards. Not to 2009 per se, but to the actions I took during my two weeks of downtime that have given me a running start into the new year.

You see, while I blocked off my calendar and did no billable work, I actually got a lot done:

• Set up a new computer, including transferring all my files from the old one, getting the network connection operational, and downloading TweetDeck, Skype, and other critical programs.
• Discovered the Sticky Notes utility program, which will nicely replace some of the physical post-it notes for to-do items. (It helps that I have a big, wide-screen monitor now, so that a sticky note can sit at the edge of my desktop without taking up valuable real estate)
• Closed my 2009 books, meaning every invoice, expense, and receipt has now been accounted for and all I have to do is print out the ledgers come tax time.
• Implemented Operation Inbox Zero. Well, technically Inbox 7, but they’re all items that will be acted on today–and then they’re toast.
• Sorted through e-mail folders, which involved skimming through old client files and deleting over 1,300 e-mails dealing with past projects, tasks, and the like.
• Implemented Operation Clean Office. This involved ruthlessly tossing all the books, papers, computer disks, and backup tapes from years past that had at one time fallen into that pesky “keep for now” status. A 4x4x2.5 pile of items into the dumpster later, I have shelf space, filing space, and a clutter-free desk.

I enter the new year with three takeaways:

1) Each of these tasks takes only 2-3 hours (except for the computer set-up, which ended up being more of an all-day affair. But that’s largely because I took advantage of the ritual to organize files, delete obsolete stuff, and so forth.)

2) Don’t think you can do everything at one. I tackled these tasks one-at-a-time over the two-week period, and then spent the rest of my day doing fun stuff. That made each task less daunting, and every day I made progress.

3) You have to schedule this stuff. A lot of the back-end administrative stuff gets out of hand when I’m busy with client work and/or business development. I was reminded (again) that I need to schedule time to handle these tasks on a weekly basis, much as I schedule everything else in my business. That way I’m hoping they take only 30 minutes a week and I keep my office under control.

So that’s where I find myself this first work day of 2010. What about you?

©2010 Independent Thinking. All Rights Reserved.