Do you enjoy working with people? Part 2

Do you enjoy working with people? In these three articles, you will go through the steps always to be in your mind to enjoy your working day by simple tips. Lazy people who really wants to be rich without hard work can refer these articles. Actually hard work really does not matter until it is for a specific outcome.

Read this article also.

Shorten those memos

Winston Churchill, doing one of the toughest management jobs of all time running Britain during the Second World War sent a memo to the Admiralty at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic. It said: "Please let me know, on one side of one sheet of paper, what the Navy is doing to combat the submarine menace."

If the Navy could do this on one page, and it did, there is no reason why any memo you or I should ever write need take more than two. There is just no room in business for the. sort of verbiage that characterises bureaucracies: "With reference to your paragraph (iv), my department is of the opinion that on the basis of probabilities there is no compelling reason..." etc.

A good memo writer begins with his conclusion or recommendation in one paragraph, or better still, one sentence. Then he gives the reasons for it, in one paragraph each. Then, if he is proposing some action, he lists possible objections to it, if any. Finally, he says why these objections should be dismissed. And that is all.

This system means that every recipient of the memo gets to grips with it from the outset. He doesn't have to wade through a lot of words to see what the author is proposing or even to discover that the memo has nothing to do with him. Both writer and reader focus on the essential point from the outset; they think about the Polo, not the hole.

The same point applies to inter-business sales letters: the first sentence should tell the reader what you are offering him or asking him to do. The justification for your proposal comes next, then the sales pitch. You haven't time to wade through a load of waffle; neither has he. So why waste time writing it?

Keep phone calls brief

Not much infuriates me in these golden retirement days, but one person who does is the business caller usually a time-share resort salesman who starts his pitch with a "How are you?" routine. He doesn't know me. He doesn't give a damn how I am. His inquiry is as insincere as the "Have a nice day, now", spoken in a monotone, which is unfortunately spreading from America to countries which should know better. He is wasting my time and his own.

There are only three rules for business phone calls. The first is keep it short. The second is be brief. The third is don't spend time on it. Here is Donald Trump again:
"I believe there is an art to handling telephone traffic. The first thing you need to remember is to keep the conversation short. Not only will you make your points more strongly, but if you limit your calls to 30 seconds or less, as I try to do, you'll be able to start and finish one conversation while your secretary Is initiating another."

Cut down on meetings

Some executives like calling meetings because it makes them feel important. So do some chairmen. I've sat in on board meetings which, considering the expensive talent attending and the lack of real decisions, were just a waste of company resources.

Meetings are sometimes essential: for example, to point your team in the right direction on a new project, or to convey to them the implications of a new company policy. Many, though, are time-wasters because fifty per cent of what emerges is irrelevant waffle -gossip about clients or competitors, point-scoring by one department over another, self-promotion by the overly ambitious. Other meetings degenerate into pointless routine, as Andrew Neil discovered when he became editor of The Sunday Times:
"The monthly Wapping management meeting... was supposed to be a gathering of top Murdoch executives where problems would be solved and policies agreed. But the meetings were a waste of time: no decision of any importance was taken unless Rupert was there. So I delegated them to James Adams who, after a year of diligent attendance, realised that not a single decision had been taken and delegated the meetings to his deputy."
from Full Disclosure.
There are ways, though, of reducing the impact of meetings on your time and patience. You could try these.
•         Have your meetings less often. A full agenda for a fortnightly meeting, say, will keep people more alert, and focus their attention better, than a light agenda for a weekly one.
•         Have fewer people. In a policy meeting, three people will reach decisions faster than five or fifteen, because they will be less concerned with attracting others' attention to themselves, and so will introduce fewer irrelevancies.
•         Have a proper agenda, listing items for decision in their order of importance. This means that "minutes" and "matters arising" go at the bottom, not the top, stopping people from chewing up half the meeting's time while they go over the same old ground.
•         If a big meeting is inevitable, circulate the agenda in advance, so that people are prepared for it and spend less time thinking and talking on their feet.
•         Or, simply be a tougher chairman. As any reporter on my community newspaper will tell you, most organisations of whatever kind could cut their meeting times in half if speakers were made to stick strictly to the point.

Use the computer more

Bill Gates, looking at The Road Ahead, says that: "If you're twenty-five today and not comfortable with computers, you risk being ineffective in any kind of work you do." That's close. In fact, anyone of any age who is not comfortable with what computers can do for him is probably working too hard.

If you find yourself regularly doing step-by-step calculations on a production schedule, say, or "what if calculations on a range of financial outcomes, you are certainly doing it the hard way. As one simple example, a program I've been using since I retired a decade ago projects my future income from term investments. As often as I like, I can key in any changes in interest rates, inflation or income tax, and in seconds it will tell me what these investments will be worth at the beginning and end of each year from now on.

But this is just a "baby" program which I wrote myself in BASIC. Today, a program like Microsoft Excel, or a similar good spreadsheet, will allow not just step-by-step calculations of this sort but also almost infinite variations or analyses.

Too busy to configure such a program for your own needs? No matter: a university computer science student even a high school computer whizz can do it for you in no time, provided you brief him on exactly what you want the program to do, in what steps. Can't find a program to suit? Spend a bit more, and a programmer will write you one. There is really no excuse for going without.

Nor does the principle apply just to office work. The newest outdoor example I've encountered is a control program which directs an earthmoving machine to precisely where it should be to contour a landscape most efficiently. In the demonstration, one machine was doing the work that normally would require three. For anyone running a contracting company, the implications are enormous.