Nick Usbourne’s
contest to write short lines that “protest the ridiculous jargon and cliches that permeate business language” has spawned some great entries. The winning entries have been applied to
mugs which you can buy at cafepress
. I think the price is a bit steep, but you have to like mugs which proclaim:
If my undivided attention is mission critical, we might have a problem
Shift my paradigm before I have had my morning coffee and I will core your competencies
and
Sorry I’m late, but my paradigm shifted over my integrated solution and I couldn’t gain traction
You can see
who submitted what catchphase
on Nick’s page. My favourites of the “also rans” come from Donald Carson:
I’m implementing a synergistic beverage action plan
Finally a concave interface for all my mission-critical caffeinated initiatives
and (how could this not have been a winner?), from Simon Young:
We appear to have begun an upstream shift while simultaneously experiencing a paddle deficiency
If you are ever tempted to write or speak like this,
try being ruthlessly specific instead
. In the words of contestant Mary Hughes:
If you still say ‘Think Outside the Box’ you don’t.
October 17th, 2005
Dwayne (
), Bren (
Slacker Manager
), and Skip (
Random Thoughts from a CTO
) just launched a really interesting blog and Google group today, called
Never work alone
. Here’s how they explain it:
What’s Never Work Alone all about?
We’ve all been through “trial by fire” management situations, and have faced difficult management and leadership dilemmas at various points in our careers. As active participants in the brain trust on the internet, we also understand the tremendous power of Community. The goal of Never Work Alone is to provide a community for managers and leaders to share their experiences and challenges, help each other grapple with issues, learn from each other, and advance the state of the art in enlightened leadership.
Basically, once you have
join the Google group
, you can e-mail in any management dilemma with which you would like some help. Dwayne, Bren and Skip will select one e-mail per week and put it up for discussion on the Google group. Anyone in the group can respond with anything he or she thinks might be helpful and the bloggers will then summarise the group responses on the blog.
Years ago I read Tom Peters’
and in almost every chapter he suggests that getting together with kindred spirits is a great way to learn and develop. I really love the way Dwayne, Bren and Skip are providing online facilitation for that meeting of minds.
Unfortunately, the name also makes me think of the football (soccer to the Americans). So, with apologies to
Gerry and the Pacemakers
and the
Anfield kop
:
Work on
Work on
With hope in your heart
‘Cos you’ll never work alone
No, you’ll never work alone
Great project - good luck with it, guys.
October 10th, 2005
This is great news for Outlook users:
NEO (short for Nelson Email Organizer) is now available for free
.
NEO works with Outlook to index your e-mail and gives you several new ways to categorise and work with your contacts and messages. Your mail is still sent and received by Outlook, but you handle it in NEO. On installation, NEO syncs with Outlook to categorise your existing messages, then automatically stays in sync as you send and receive. Any plug-ins that you use in Outlook still work - I use
SpamBayes
, for example, to filter spam.
NEO works with Outlook’s folder system, so I have now set up a folder for each of my projects. This means that I can have mails from person X stored in more than one folder (because X is working with me on more than one project) and I can have mails from several different people stored in folder Y because all those people are working on that one project. If mail is not specific to a project, I file it in a single Reference folder, which I have nominated in NEO as my “Quick File” - I simply press ctrl-i and the message is filed.
Of course all that sounds like a recipe for disaster when it comes to finding mail again later, and it would be if I was relying on Outlook alone. But NEO provides not just a folder view, but a Correspondent view as well. Using Outlook Folders, I can view all messages related to a given project, regardless of who sent them. Using Correspondent view, I can view all messages to and from a given person, regardless of project.
If NEO doesn’t recognise an incoming or outgoing email address, it automatically creates a new Correspondent “file,” which it keeps in the New section of the Correspondent view. Periodically, you can check and amend the properties of New Correspondents before making them Current. Correspondent “files” can handle multiple email addresses too - it’s a simple drag and drop to set that up.
If you don’t send or receive mail from someone for a while, the Correspondent is moved into the Dormant part of the view. You can specify how long any Correspondent should be held in New or Current, before being moved. Bulk mail - newsletters and such - are similarly dealt with. It’s a real time saver to be able to “Quick File” all my newsletters into Reference, but still see each newsletter individually in the Bulk Mail view.
If that’s not enough, NEO’s search, unlike Outlook’s, is lightning fast.
If you are used to Outlook, this is a slightly different way of thinking about email, but the learning curve is not steep and
NEO provides truly excellent demos and tutorials
.
, take note: I now feel much more confident about filing e-mail and I find myself far less resistant to processing my inbox. The other surprise benefit is, now I no longer use Outlook for email handling, I have been able to make it a far more productive space for managing projects and tasks (hint: close Outlook’s distracting folder explorer and remove all e-mail-related icons from the Outlook Bar).
How good is NEO? Since I downloaded NEO Free at the weekend, it has become indispensable. The only thing I miss about the Outlook email interface is the ability to
tickle email
. In every other respect, NEO is superior. I have joined the referral programme, so I make a few dollars if you click a link here and buy the souped up PRO version, but to be honest I can’t see myself making a great deal of money when the Free version is so good. Seriously, if you are an Outlook user,
download NEO Free now
.
October 6th, 2005
Since Jason reminded me of
the power of setting a date and sticking to it
, I realised that I have been procrastinating about the redesign of this site. My use of the
Blix theme from King Cosmonaut
- excellent though it is - was only meant to be temporary, yet months later my custom design is still no more than a flicker in Photoshop’s eye.
To give myself a date to aim for, I have signed up for the
November 1st CSS Reboot
. This is a kind of online festival in which 700 or more site owners will relaunch their sites with shiny new designs. I will be among them.
October 6th, 2005
I know at least one of the regular readers here is planning a white paper, so this
research data on white paper title effectiveness
from Marketing Sherpa is timely. Follow the link now, because the article will be subscription only after 16 October. The research looks at some of the 3.5 million white papers downloaded from CNET Networks B2B sites over the past 24 months, in a bid to find which titles were the most popular, in particular with highly qualified prospects, as opposed to those who are just window shopping.
Key research findings - your white paper will be downloaded by more interested prospects if you:
-
Keep your white paper title short and simple:
Long titles, puns, jargon and brand names turn prospects off, whereas a scannable, relevant title will generate a lot of downloads from interested prospects. “Hook, Line and Sinker: Phishing attacks going professional” is a no no. “Phishing and the Threat to Corporate Networks” works well.
-
Break long titles up:
If you must use a long title then use a colon to break it up, like this: “Hosted CRM vs. In-House: Which Direction Should Your Company Take?”
-
Use the present participle:
Which means offer
ing
action steps eg “Eliminat
ing
,” “Identify
ing
,” “Prevent
ing
,” and so on
-
Check your search keyword statistics:
Once you have identified what your prospects are searching for, include those keywords in your white paper title. The difference might seem subtle, but the impact could be big. For example, white papers with “spyware” in the title were 77% more likely to be downloaded than white papers titled “anti-spyware,” because prospects typically search using the name of the problem they hope to solve, rather than name of the solution.
Lots of common sense here, but worth a read nonetheless.
October 6th, 2005