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#Leadership : 5 Common Communication Misfires (And How To Avoid Them)…Tech enables Faster Communication, But that Also Means there’s a Greater Chance to Say Something you Didn’t Intend.

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Miscommunication happens frequently in life and work, partly because technology allows us to communicate faster, but not necessarily better. While some miscommunications are merely annoying, others can create conflict or be a disrupting influence in relationships.
Free- Iphone with Gadgets

Based on being both the giver and the recipient of unintended communication gaffes, here are five reasons why I believe they occur, and what to do to prevent them in the future.

1. WHAT YOU ARE THINKING MAKES NO SENSE TO ANYONE ELSE BUT YOU

Writing or verbalizing what we’re thinking can be challenging, especially if we’re trying to multitask when we shouldn’t.

My team suffers a lot from this when I delegate a task and expect them to know exactly what’s going on in my brain.

The solution is to let others know everything you’re thinking, even if you’re not completely clear on it yourself. The idea is for you to work ideas out together, so you can reach the best possible outcome. I also like to verbalize my instructions as well as write them down in a recap, so others know exactly what I mean. Over the years, this has helped me sound a lot less like a jerk.

 

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2. YOU ARE SAYING TOO MUCH AND MAKING THINGS MORE COMPLICATED

In my first business partnership, I would do a brain dump that included things that didn’t need to be said. This not only caused miscommunication, but it also ultimately ended our working arrangement.

I’ve also noticed this occurs with the creative people who have a tendency to cloud their main point with a lot of words that complicates their message.

To master the fine art of getting to the point, write down what you want to say, then start to trim it back until you can create as simple a message without losing the primary idea. You most likely don’t need adjectives or exclamatory phrases to get your point across.

3. YOU AREN’T CONTROLLING THE TONE OF YOUR MESSAGE

While overthinking your message rarely results in better communication, it’s important to remember that you don’t have any control over what’s happening on the receiving end. If that person is already in a bad mood, they may read something in a way you never intended. Although you can’t control the reaction of the receiver, you can make a concerted effort to take any emotion out of a communication and keep a professional tone in all business communications.

I personally always remember, “You can say anything to anyone, but how you say it will dictate whether you get a positive or negative reaction.”

4. YOU’RE USING TEXTING SHORTCUTS OR EMOJIS TO REPLACE WORDS

I’ve used a smiley face to let the person on the other end know I’m pleased with their message. However, when I start seeing texting shortcuts and emojis I’m not familiar with, I don’t know how to take what the person is saying, and I certainly don’t have time to go look up their cutesy emoji.

I was angry one day with an employee. Later that day, when I thought everything had settled down and was okay, she sent me a text with a string of emojis of a baby, baby bottle, a hospital, and a pink bow. I thought, “Oh, so the little snot is calling me a baby! She surely should know it was not wise to call the boss a baby!”

In another conversation over the phone, someone told me how happy that employee was because she had just found out that day about my new baby daughter. But my temper had flared, and I nearly fired her over a message that she intended to be sweet.

Even if you’re well-versed in emoji etiquette, you shouldn’t assume that everyone will know the intent and meaning of acronyms and graphics. Stick to professional language and save the shortcuts for your best buddies.

5. YOU MAKE TOO MANY ASSUMPTIONS

There are times when people don’t really listen because they think they already know what the person is going to say, or they are busy preparing their own answer. The same idea applies when you assume you know what a person means in their email or text message without actually really reading it for context. It could be that you are tired, emotional, or distracted, or the messages could be coming from someone at work that you don’t necessarily like.

Slow down and read a message more than once while clearing out your assumptions. Focus, reflect, and then read it again before you draw conclusions. If you are still not sure, ask questions to make sure you understood the message correctly. I find people with this skill can be hidden leaders in my company.

Effective communication takes practice. I know haven’t perfected it yet. I do take a step back from a message that made me angry in order to give the person the benefit of the doubt. And I keep these reasons for miscommunication to remind me to take more care in how I read, write, and verbalize what I am sending out or receiving.

 

FastCompany.com | JOHN RAMPTON  | 11.07.16 5:00 AM

Your #Career : Is Your Job Doomed By Technology?…Is Any Job Safe? The Answer is No. It’s Something We’re All Going to Deal With. However,That’s Not the Right Question. The Real Question is: How Will You & Your Field Adapt to Technology?

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At the Milken Institute Global Conference I’m attending in Los Angeles this week, brilliant minds are debating some of the most important topics affecting society, from prospects for global markets to “the promise of the cancer moonshot.” One I went to yesterday was a doozy: “Jobs and Technology: Is Any Job Truly Safe?”

Free- Bench on a Lonely Beach

“Is any job safe? The answer is no,” moderator and self-employed journalist Dennis Kneale said opening the session, after noting he lost his Fox Business Network job two years ago. “I found the media had almost no jobs and no growth. What happened to me is coming to you guys next and every sector everywhere maybe. ”

But when the panelists were asked whether any job was truly safe, they said… That’s not the right question. The real question, according to the panelists, is: How will you and your field adapt to technology?

How Jobs Have Changed and Will Change

Wendy MacLennan, 54, knows that first hand, as a fantastic story about her by Sue Shellenbarger in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (“An Engineer Returns to Work After Years at Home With the Children”) explained.

MacLennan had been a car designer at GM and Ford before taking 24 years off to raise her four children and teach at a home-schooling co-op. She was rehired at Ford in 2014 as a systems engineer and project manager designing hybrid vehicles. Because technology had changed so much, the new job, she told the Journal, “was way harder than I thought.” She described it as “like being dropped off in a land where you don’t speak the language.”

Goodbye overhead projectors, MacLennan found; hello virtual-meeting software. And the paper drawings she used to do had been replaced by computer-assisted design software. But MacLennan didn’t give up and neither did Ford, which gave her hours of online training and courses. Recently, the Journal said, MacLennan was named Employee of the Month in her 600-person department.

That story had a happy ending. But will yours? And what about other American workers?

Three of the panelists were hopeful, though hardly giddy — Alan Krueger, a Princeton economics professor and former chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors; Michael Chui, a partner at McKinsey Global Institute; and Kate Mitchell, co-founder and partner of the Scale Venture Partners venture capital firm.

One — Martin Ford, an entrepreneur and author of Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future — was more downbeat, though not fatalistic.

 

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Pessimistic About Jobs, But Not Society

Ford, described by Kneale as “the most pessimistic on the panel,” said: “I am pessimistic specifically about the future of jobs over the long run, but not over the future of society or the economy.” Ford added: “A huge number of jobs, especially routine, predictable ones across the board in industries and occupations and skill levels will be susceptible to automation. Machines are encroaching on the fundamental capability that sets humans apart.”

(More: How to Future-Proof Yourself at Work)

Mitchell, a fan of the growing “gig economy,” disagreed. “I don’t think we’re doomed. Is any existing job truly safe? We all need to be concerned,” she said.

But, Mitchell added, “the National Association of Manufacturers says there are 600,000 jobs going wanting due to a lack of people who can handle the skills of those manufacturing jobs.” In other words: yes, there will be dislocations, but there’ll also be opportunities.

Technology Will Increase, Not Eliminate, Jobs

And, she said emphatically: “Is the goal of technology to eliminate jobs? Absolutely not. What technology can do is increase jobs.”

However, she added, workers need to tech up. “Eight of 10 jobs today require digital literacy,” said Mitchell. “Computer science and data analytics have replaced English as the language people need to know around the world.”

Chui said McKinsey looked at more than 900 occupations and determined that “less than 5 percent of occupations can be fully automated, but 45 percent of activities can be adapted by technologies.”

Krueger conceded that “the nature of work is changing dramatically.” What technology has done, he said, “is, along with globalization, diminish demand for workers with a low level of skills.” But, he noted, “throughout history we have always feared that technology will replace jobs.”

The Jobs We Don’t Know About Yet

Then he presented a stunning, encouraging statistic: “I did a project looking at job growth from the mid 1960s to 2005 and found that the vast majority of job growth came from jobs that hadn’t been invented yet in 1965.” With a nod toThe Graduate, Krueger said, “plastics” jobs grew below average. Job growth, he concluded, “is very difficult to predict.”

Mitchell underscored Krueger’s point about hot jobs being “new” types of jobs by noting that computer scientist is now the most popular job in Colorado, Utah, Virginia and Washington.

Krueger also noted that the Uberization of the economy has invented and ballooned the number of contractor jobs — what he calls “alternative work” — that didn’t exist a few years ago. Citing his research that appeared in The Wall Street Journal in March, since 2005, the number of workers in “alternative arrangements” has risen to nearly 16 percent of the workforce, up from 10 percent a decade ago. “All of the net job growth form 2005 to 2015 is accounted for by growth in alternative work,” he said.

Indeed, the number of UberX drivers — they’re the ones who drive their own, standard cars — has doubled every six months for the last four years, Krueger noted.

But, Ford responded, independent contractor work is not “reliable income”and doesn’t provide fringe benefits in many cases. “Technology enables all this freelance work and the gig economy. It may be just the fist step heading to full automation,” he said. ”Uber is investing very heavily in building self-driving cars.”

Forbes.com | May 4, 2016 | Next Avenue

 

 

Your #Career : 4 Mistakes That Are Sabotaging Your Work-Life Balance…Do you Practically Live at Work? Better question: Do you Constantly Think about your Work away from Work (i.e. home, vacations, family gathering, etc.) ?

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Achieving a healthy balance between work and your personal life is possible, but it can be difficult. If you want to overcome those difficulties, you’ll have to make an effort to put an end to some of your bad habits. It’s possible you could be standing in your own way.

Free- Lock on Fence

Here are four behaviors you must change if you want to create symmetry between your work and personal life.

1. Not using your vacation days

Failing to use vacation time will leave you stressed out, overwhelmed, and more likely to make mistakes on the job. While you may be concerned about returning to a pile of work, you need time to recharge. Research published by Project Time Off found that employees are also hesitant to take vacation because they fear they will be seen as replaceable. Furthermore, employees are leaving vacation days on the table in response to concerns they will be seen as less dedicated to their company.

 However, the results of giving in to these fears and concerns can have negative effects on your overall well-being. Studies have found that overwork can make you sick. If you want to have a more balanced life, it will be important for you to get away from the office from time to time. You’ll be happier, healthier, and have more energy to enjoy life.

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2. Relying too heavily on technology

Technology is a great way to stay on top of your work and communicate with co-workers, but it can rob you of sleep and productivity. Between answering emails all day and constantly checking your mobile phone for updates, it can be hard to get quality down time or rest. A Bank of America trends report found that 71% of respondents sleep with their smartphones and about 23% fall asleep with their devices still in their hand. Set aside some time each day where you abandon all the tech in your life. Resisting the impulse to stay connected 24 hours a day will help you have more peace of mind.

3. Saying ‘yes’ when you should be saying ‘no’

You don’t have to accept every special project or do every favor that comes your way. It is important to set boundaries so you can avoid spending every waking moment at work. While being a team player is great, you also have to recognize when you are being stretched too thin.

“Keep in mind that being overloaded is individual. Just because your co-worker can juggle 10 committees with seeming ease doesn’t mean you should be able to. Only you can know what’s too much for you,” said the Mayo Clinic.

4. Not planning ahead

Your work will start to melt into your personal life if you don’t engage in proper planning. One way to achieve some sense of balance is to draft a to-do list. This list will keep you on track and help you make room for things outside of work.

“At its most basic form, planning is nothing more than figuring out how you will get from one place to another. Every day people plan: people make a list of things to buy at the grocery store, workers determine the best route to travel to and from work each day, and we plan out how to finance that new car,” said management expert John R. Knotts.

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 CheatSheet.com | January 2016 |  

#Strategy : 4 Ways Big Data Will Change Every Business…If You’re Still Saying, “Big Data isn’t Relevant to my Company,” You’re Missing the Boat.

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It Doesn’t Matter What Field you Operate In or The Size of your Business; as data collection, analysis, and interpretation become more readily accessible, they will have an impact on every business in several important ways.

 

If You’re Still Saying, “Big Data isn’t Relevant to my Company,” You’re Missing the Boat. I firmly believe that big data and its implications will affect every single business— from Fortune 500 enterprises to mom and pop companies— and change how we do business, inside and out.

It doesn’t matter what field you operate in or the size of your business; as data collection, analysis, and interpretation become more readily accessible, they will have an impact on every business in several important ways.

1. Data will become an asset to every business.

Even the smallest businesses generate data these days.  If the business has a website, a social media presence, accepts credit cards etc., even a one-person shop has data it can collect on its customers, its user experience, web traffic, and more. This means companies of all sizes need a strategy for big data and a plan of how to collect, use, and protect it. This also means that savvy businesses will start to offer data services to even very small companies.

 It also means that businesses and industries that never thought big data would be “for them” might be scrambling to catch up. Let me just make this as plain as possible: If you own or operate a business, and you have questions about how to improve that business, you have data, your data is an asset, and it can be used to improve your business.  Simple as that.

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2. Big data will enable companies to collect better market and customer intelligence.

Like it or not, the companies you do business with know a lot about you — and the quantity and diversity of what they know about you is increasing every year. Every company (from car manufactures who will monitor our driving to tennis racket manufacturers that know how often and how well we play) will get much better insights into what customers want, what they will use, what channels they use to buy, and so on.

The other half of this equation is that companies will need to be proactive about creating and maintaining their privacy policies and all the systems and security needed to protect that user data. As we’ve seen with the recent backlash againstSpotify and to a lesser extent Microsoft 10, most people will allow companies to gather this data, but they want transparency around what’s being collected and why and they want the ability to opt-out.

3. It will improve internal efficiency and operations

From using sensors to track machine performance, to optimising delivery routes, to better tracking employee performance and even recruiting top talent, big data has the potential to improve internal efficiency and operations for almost any type of business and in many different departments.

Companies can use sensors to track shipments and machine performance, but also employee performance. Companies have started using sensors to track employee movements, stress, health, and even who they converse with and the tone of voice they use.

In addition, if data can successfully be used to quantify what makes a good CEO, it can be used to improve the HR and hiring process at any level.

 Data is breaking away from the IT department and becoming an integral part of every department in a company.

4. And data will allow companies to improve the customer experience and build big data into their product offering.

In the best of all possible worlds, companies will use the data they collect to improve their products and the customer experience.

John Deere DE -2.23% is an excellent example of a company that is not only using data to benefit its customers, but also as a new product offering.

All new John Deere tractors are equipped with sensors that can help the company understand how the equipment is being used, and predict and diagnose breakdowns.  But they’ve also put the sensors to work for the farmers, offering access to data about when to plant, where, the best patterns for ploughing and reaping, and more. It’s become an entirely new revenue stream for an old company.

As we invite more connected things into our lives — from smart thermostats toApple AAPL -0.92% Watches and fitness trackers — there will be more and more data, analysis, and insights that companies can sell back to consumers.

These are just the top four impacts I predict big data will have on businesses of all types in the near future. Is your business ready to capitalize on these opportunities?

Bernard Marr is a best-selling business author, keynote speaker and leading business performance, analytics and data expert. His latest books are ‘Big Data‘ and ‘KPIs for Dummies‘.

 

Forbes.com | September 8, 2015 | Bernard Marr

 

 

Your #Career : 7 Technology Trends That Will Make Or Break Many Careers …No Matter What Field you Work In, If you’re Hoping to Get Ahead in your Career, You Need to Be Mindful of Technology Trends.

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By Educating Yourself on What is New, What is Growing, What is Likely to Be the Next Big Thing, you Can help Tech-Proof your Career. Below I’ve outlined some of the technology trends I see that will have the greatest impact on a wide variety of jobs and industries — well outside the people in the IT industry who develop, build and maintain them.

 

 

No Matter What Field you Work In, If you’re Hoping to Get Ahead in your Career, You Need to Be Mindful of Technology Trends. We’ve seen it all too often in recent history, that a new technology takes over and suddenly those who can’t keep up are no longer needed.

But by educating yourself on what is new, what is growing, what is likely to be the next big thing, you can help tech-proof your career. Below I’ve outlined some of the technology trends I see that will have the greatest impact on a wide variety of jobs and industries — well outside the people in the IT industry who develop, build and maintain them.

  • Big DataObviously I write a lot about the impact big data is having and will have, but it will almost certainly impact many careers and fields in the future. Human resources, marketing, scientific and medical research, psychological research, product development, customer service, finance, and manufacturing are all fields beyond IT that will be affected by big data.
  • Internet of ThingsI recently wrote about how the Internet of Things will affect many different businesses, and that means it will touch many careers as well.  Everyone from the person who designs new smart devices, to the app developer who develops the software to control those devices all the way to the garbage man who uses smart sensors to tell which cans need emptying will be affected as this technology takes hold.

 

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  • MobileMobile has been big for a while, and many careers are being created in the development of the hardware, software, and services associated with it. But very soon we are going to go beyond mobile to computing everywhere. This will include wearable devices, devices mounted on walls and on other appliances (like your fridge). All of this will transform the ways in which we market, sell, communicate, innovate, collaborate and educate.
  • Cyber securityThe demand for cyber security and the related field of cyber forensics, will only grow.  Even if you’re not making security your career, many people’s careers will hinge on how well they pay attention to and prioritise cyber security within their company.
  • E-AssistantsWhile systems like Siri and Cortana are sometimes useful and sometimes laughablyun-useful now, we are on the cusp of the rise of the e-assistant, programs that will be able to assist in many different areas. Soon everyone from retailers to maintenance crews will have a Siri-like assistant to help with their job. So not only will we use them more in our careers, we will also need more people who understand how to build, program, and maintain them.
  • SocialSocial isn’t just about Facebook any more. Many companies are integrating social networking aspects into their front end and back end systems. Brands create their own social networks where customers and fans can interact, while companies use sophisticated back-end applications to help employees communicate beyond email in real time. Using these systems will become ubiquitous, as will building and maintaining them.
  • GamificationGamification is going to move into more and more realms of our life not so much because it’s the hot new thing, but because it’s psychologically proven to work. Companies like Microsoft are using gamification to motivate their sales force, while other entities are using it in education and personal development. The opportunities in this arena are growing all the time.
  • Cloud computingIf you haven’t already, you’ll soon be entering the cloud. Many, many businesses are now taking their internal applications and data into the cloud because the data is actually safer and easier to control. Cloud-based office applications, like Google Docs, are already overtaking their single-station counterparts in usefulness. In fact, this very post was written in Google Docs and saved in the cloud before it was posted here.
  • Video communicationsYou can tell you’re living in the future, because the video phone is finally here!  As video technologies improve all the time, video conferencing and communications will continue to grow as a field. If you haven’t encountered it already, you’ll almost certainly soon find that conference calls are being replaced by video chats, whether to the person in the next building or around the world.

By keeping abreast of advancements in these fields, and even just understanding what they are and how they might impact the work you do, you can help to tech-proof yourself and your career in a changing landscape.

Bernard Marr is a best-selling business author, keynote speaker and leading business performance, analytics and data expert. His latest books are ‘Big Data‘ and ‘KPIs for Dummies‘.

 

Forbes.com | September 1, 2015 | Bernard Marr