326 Posts Found

Microsoft Excel is packed with useful data management features that don’t see a lot of use, like pivot tables, index and match, and conditional formatting. If you’re just using excel to sum and chart columns, this graphic can show you some other tools to help you become the spreadsheet ninja you always wanted to be.

Of course, real spreadsheet ninja probably already use these features on … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: LifeHacker | Subject: Productivity / Work Tips

There are a number of reasons why the productive conversations in a meeting seemingly go nowhere. Attendees are often immediately running to another meeting where their attention shifts to a new set of issues. Or people leave the meeting without clarity about what was agreed upon.

To make sure productivity doesn’t slow after you walk out of the room, do two things after and in between … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Paul Axtell | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Productivity / Work Tips

Knowing how to develop and deliver a data-driven presentation is now a crucial skill for many professionals, since we often have to tell our colleagues a story about the success of a new initiative, the promise of a new business opportunity, or the imperative of a change in strategy — stories that are much more compelling when they’re backed by numbers.

In the past four years, … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Alexandra Samuel | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Personal Development, Productivity / Work Tips

How can you create beautiful infographics without using Photoshop? I’m not a Photoshop expert, so I take days to create a basic infographic. I’m a Paint ninja, but I can’t create nice infographics by using Paint. So I searched for fast, easy, and cheap (even free) alternatives. [Easel.ly, Piktochart, Infogr.am, Venngage, Canva, Visme, Infoactive]

Content: Article | Author: Tamas Torok | Source: MarketingProfs | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Productivity / Work Tips

A Stanford professor offers a better way to make decisions.

Content: Article | Authors: Kathleen M. Eisenhardt, Theodore Kinni | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Personal Development, Productivity / Work Tips

Guy Kawasaki evangelizes the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a pitch should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.This rule is applicable for any presentation to reach agreement: for example, raising capital, making a sale, forming a partnership, etc. This infographic will help you fine tune what to put on your ten slides. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Guy Kawasaki | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Productivity / Work Tips

Whether you’re working from home full-time, living life as a road warrior, or simply working the occasional day away from the office, you’ll be most effective if you have the right digital infrastructure for remote work. What needs to be in that toolkit depends on the kind of work you do, your personal working style and your family life. Whatever the particular circumstances of your … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Alexandra Samuel | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Career, Productivity / Work Tips

Researchers have confronted us in recent years with example after example of how we humans get things wrong when it comes to making decisions. We misunderstand probability, we’re myopic, we pay attention to the wrong things, and we just generally mess up. This popular triumph of the “heuristics and biases” literature pioneered by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky has made us aware of flaws … [ Read more ]

Content: Thought Leader | Author: Gerd Gigerenzer | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Personal Development, Productivity / Work Tips, Risk Management

The 11 guidelines listed below are intended to help you do a better job of influencing decision-makers. In some cases, these decision-makers may be immediate or upper managers—in other cases they may be peers or cross-organizational colleagues. I hope you find these suggestions to be useful in helping you convert your good ideas into meaningful action.

Content: Article | Author: Marshall Goldsmith | Subjects: Career, Personal Development, Productivity / Work Tips

Effective leadership often relies on your ability to persuade others. If you manage a team whose members come from different cultures, learning to adapt your persuasive techniques is crucial.

Content: Article | Author: Erin Meyer | Source: INSEAD Knowledge | Subjects: Career, International, Management, Personal Development, Productivity / Work Tips

New research by Francesca Gino, Gary Pisano, and colleagues shows that taking time to reflect on our work improves job performance in the long run.

Content: Article | Authors: Carmen Nobel, Francesca Gino, Gary Pisano | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personal Development, Productivity / Work Tips

I’ve been studying decision-making at the top for many years and what I’ve found is that good decisions nearly always result from robust decision processes. Similarly, decisions that go wrong nearly always stem from procedural or organizational failures. In fact, just five mistakes account for the vast majority of poor decisions.

Content: Article | Author: Michael C. Mankins | Source: Bain & Company | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development, Productivity / Work Tips

If you have ever finished a presentation to a polite smattering of applause, you probably didn’t start out by asking yourself the right questions. As IESE’s Conor Neill explains, most communication fails because the speaker isn’t clear, specific or realistic about what he or she wants from the audience. Winning the argument is all well and good, but the ultimate prize is winning audience action, … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Conor Neill | Source: IESE Insight | Subject: Productivity / Work Tips

The ActionMBA is a self-guided learning program to master all the essential skills, best practices and ideas to achieve maximum impact with our businesses and careers. Whether you are a non-profit, artist, author or entrepreneur, there are common skills and knowledge we all must master to get our ideas to the largest possible audience.

The ActionMBA is about systematically identifying and mastering all of those skills … [ Read more ]

Content: Online Resource | Author: John Bardos | Subjects: Education, Free Stuff / Tools

Decisions are the coin of the realm in business. No company can reach its full potential unless it makes good decisions quickly and consistently and then implements them effectively. For more than 25 years, the three authors have consulted to organizations of all sorts and noticed all these organizations share one consistent trait: when they focus explicitly on decisions, they improve their performance. This article … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Marcia Blenko, Michael C. Mankins, Paul Rogers | Source: Bain & Company | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development, Productivity / Work Tips

Stanford’s Chip Heath and McKinsey’s Olivier Sibony discuss new research, fresh frameworks, and practical tools for decision makers.

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Chip Heath, Olivier Sibony | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development, Productivity / Work Tips

People make decisions—often in very different ways. Learn more about five distinct styles and the preferences that shape them.

Content: Article | Authors: Dan P. Lovallo, Olivier Sibony | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development, Productivity / Work Tips

The technique of deliberate practice can dramatically improve performance, but knowing its limits is as important as understanding its value.

Content: Article | Author: Phil Rosenzweig | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Personal Development, Productivity / Work Tips

An expert on public speaking explains how to manage anxiety and deliver a smooth presentation.

Content: Article | Author: Matt Abrahams | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Personal Development, Productivity / Work Tips

The key to preparing for behavioral interview questions is to ensure that you have proper coverage for all of the core behavioral question types. To put it another way, you want to make sure that you have a story that applies to every question your interviewer might ask. What you really want to avoid is being prompted with a question you didn’t prepare … [ Read more ]

Content: Online Resource | Author: Matthew Kuo | Source: MBA Excel | Subjects: Career, Free Stuff / Tools