Strategies for the Workplace

Thinking About new Tasks

Analyze every task before proceeding.  If you have no choice, at least you know what you might be getting into.  If you have a choice, the analysis may lead you to embrace or avoid the work.
 

How to Decide

“I’d rather have spent more than I needed to than less than I should have.”
While this advice may seem self-evident and trivial, the point is to pause and evaluate risk rather than simply agree that risk exists and then dismiss adverse events as unlikely and therefore immaterial.  It never hurts to ask yourself, “What could possibly go wrong?”, to inform a decision.  Decision over-optimism is not good, and neither is decision paralysis.

Forecasting from Historical Data

Determine whether you might benefit from historical data and can gather it or whether you have a novel situation where historical data has no bearing on a forecast.

Standards and a Network Effect

By adopting a standard, each party, gains access to the other parties — no need to incur a customization cost for each integration.  As the network grows, competition reigns, innovation is rewarded, and efficiency is maximized.

Single Point of Failure

Recognize that single points of failure and other concentrated risk can exist and to mitigate them through redundancy, distributing authority, and so on.

Statistics Can Mislead

Approach others’ statistics with a degree of skepticism and try to understand what is being reported, and perhaps why it is being stated a particular way.  Similarly, consider how you should report your statistics.

Orchestration

As an exercise, before you are about to send an email, consult a thesaurus and throw in a few synonyms.  Substitute a few less-common words for ordinary ones.

Addressing a Shortfall

Goods and services do not sell themselves, and in the planning process as well as during periodic reviews of progress, you need to consider what barriers are inhibiting sales and how to overcome such hurdles.  What’s more, these comments hold when selling yourself, an idea, etc.

Negotiation Groundwork

t is vital to understand the level of eagerness on both sides of any negotiation. Ideally, you can take it or leave it, and your negotiation counterparty is hungry.  Conversely, if you are eager and they are not, you can expect to get a poor deal.  

Suite vs Product Line

If your organization has a single product or service, you have nothing to sell in response to the question, “What else do you have?”  If you have a set of unintegrated, stand-alone offerings, this can be described as a catalog.  A product line may characterize things that have similar branding and, perhaps, some limited coordination.  A product suite is the name for things that truly work well as a group.