Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Monitors: Does Size Matter?

I have been using the 24″ desktop monitor I’m currently typing on for what feels like forever. It’s connected to my laptop because that screen is really small. Most of the time, it works just fine for my needs. But there are times, like today when I was hosting a Twitter chat, when I could have benefited from multiple monitors or an oversized monitor. My single monitor did not allow me to quickly scan the chat feed while making comments and responding to questions. And if I tried to hop over to Google to look something up, God help me.

On the Hunt for Evidence

I started looking into multiple monitor and oversized monitor use to see if there were documented productivity differences. In a 2012 New York Times article, Matt Richtel mentioned a study by the University of Utah, which found that productivity among people working on editing tasks was higher with two monitors than with one. Although financed by NEC Display, investigator and professor of communication James Anderson said he did not let his sponsor influence his findings. Since the NYT took his word for it, we will too.

Professor Anderson claimed that more monitors cut down on toggling time among windows on a single screen, which can save about 10 seconds for every five minutes of work. If you have more than one monitor, he told the Times, “You don’t have to toggle back and forth. You can take in everything with the sweep of an eye.”

This was exactly what I was thinking during my Twitter chat.

“I Think I Need Glasses”

On the other hand, having two or more monitors doesn’t necessarily mean the information on them is actually useful. For example, your individual displays may be very small, involving lots of scrolling, maximizing/minimizing, and squinting as you balance working with different documents, spreadsheets, and web pages. According to Lifehacker Australia, that’s where the ultrawide (oversized) monitor comes in.

Ultrawide monitors are traditionally any display that’s about 21:9 aspect ratio, designed to have a similar aspect ratio to traditional movie theatre screens. Depending on the size of the display you purchase, you’re looking at screen resolutions of around 2560 or 3440 pixels wide by 1080 or 1440 pixels high, in display sizes from 29″ to 34″ diagonally. Twenty-nine inch models are often competitively priced, but 34″ designs generally attract a premium.

For more thoughts, head over to Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Be at Peace While Chaos Surrounds You

When I entered the business world for the first time, I took my Type-A self with me. I was accustomed to executing, perfectly, everything I wanted to do. The thought of my company having a mind of its own terrified me, but I learned quickly that this was the reality. There was so much about Corporate America that I could not control, and I had a decision to make. Was I going down with a stress-induced stomach ulcer, or was I going to become more comfortable with nonsensical approaches and difficult situations?

I took the latter path, but it was years before I could say I was okay when things at work did not turn out the way I wanted them to, or when I was put into situations that made me supremely uncomfortable. Here’s some advice for how you can get to this point faster than I did.

Start One Step at a Time

Many Americans lead unhealthy, sedentary lives because the thought of eating the right things and exercising makes them feel uncomfortable. The prospect of change seems so overwhelming that they avoid it altogether. The thing is, there’s a happy medium. Pick something at work that causes you discomfort and expose yourself to it in small doses. For example, if you don’t like public speaking but your new job requires it, how about starting by speaking up in a team meeting? While you’re doing the test activity, note how you feel and whether anything bad happened as you faced your fear.

Some Problems Aren’t Meant to Be Solved

No matter what you do, if you work in an organization with other people, you will not be able to configure your environment to your exact specifications. So, let go of the notion that you are responsible for ridding the company of its issues, its crazy people, etc. Tell yourself that you are going to do your job to the best of your ability, and that you will relinquish power over situations you can’t control. When you stop railing against the system and realize that some degree of company turmoil is par for the course, you will experience less discomfort and negative emotions in general.

For the rest of my advice, check out the full post on Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Could Your Employee Be Uncoachable?

Executive coaching is professional intervention with a focus on developing the skills needed to drive change, manage complexity, build top performing teams, and maintain a strong personal foundation to thrive under challenging conditions. It can be worthwhile, but also very expensive and time-consuming.

The hard truth is, there are times when you should make the investment in an employee, and times when you should save your money. My friend Marshall Goldsmith wrote an article detailing some of these circumstances, and I’ve added a few of my own.

She doesn’t think she has a problem

Some successful adults, said Marshall, have no interest in changing because their behavior is working just fine. You could employ the best coach in the whole world, but if your employee doesn’t care to change, you’re wasting your time, the employee’s, and the coach’s.

He is pursuing the wrong strategy for the organization

Some employees have strong beliefs about the way the organization should operate, and those beliefs may be at odds with yours. If this guy is already going in the wrong direction, said Marshall, all your coaching will do is help him get there faster.

She’s in the wrong job

An employee might feel that she’s in the wrong job with the wrong company, that she’s supposed to be doing something else or that her skills aren’t being taken advantage of properly. To tell if you’re dealing with one of these people, Marshall recommended asking her: “If we shut down the company today, would you be relieved, surprised, or sad?” If you hear “relieved,” send her packing. Coaching will not make an unhappy person happy.

For more signs, see the full post on Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Let's End the Collective Death by Conference Call

According to new InterCall research on workplace conference call behavior, 82 percent of employees admitted to focusing on other work or non-work distractions while on a call. Rob Bellmar, executive vice president of conferencing and collaboration at InterCall, recently offered some great tips to Harvard Business Review about ending conference call abuse. Here are his highlights.

Stop striving for inclusiveness

Online calendars, scheduling apps and email distribution lists have created a monstrous meeting invite reflex. It has become too easy to send blanket, one-hour meeting invites to 10 people when only five are relevant to the agenda.

Businesses need to break free of the notion that all attendees should be on a conference call from start to finish. Rob advises that managers can stagger invitations and plan upfront which topics will be discussed at various points in the meeting.

Start using video

Video conferencing remains a point of contention, and its adoption curve is a matter of psychological acceptance. The idea that everyone in a meeting can watch what you’re doing deters many workers, as does the dissonance between what we see in the mirror and what’s reflected on our laptop or tablet screens.

But Rob cites research from Wainhouse, which found that of the employees who use webcams and similar tools during meetings, 74 percent like the ability to see colleagues’ reactions to their ideas, and nearly 70 percent feel it increases connectedness between participants.

For more con call tips, head over to Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Are You Teaching Your Employees to Fish?

The New York Times recently reported on a 30-year-old man who shot his rich dad because the father had the nerve to decrease his allowance a few hundred dollars. The dad had been paying the son’s pricey Manhattan rent and was also giving him spending money. He cut the latter down a bit and paid for it with his life.

This is obviously an extreme example of what happens with Baby Boomers overparent their Millennial children, hovering over them like helicopters and protecting them from any remote adversity or failure. But more generally, I fear that these parents (no offense Boomers) have produced a generation of employees who arrive at work completely unable to problem-solve.

Managers constantly complain to me that their reports need way too much hand-holding. Well, the truth is, we don’t help the situation when we bail them out more than we should because it makes our lives easier.

Remember the old adage: “give a man fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” When it comes to your team members’ productivity, it’s in your best interest if they are as self-sufficient as possible. Here are a few suggestions for making that happen.

Give Them a Blank Piece of Paper

Consider delegating things that you have traditionally done yourself. Provide any necessary training and after a complete debrief that offers a clear direction, assign a task that has clear boundaries but also allows your employee to be creative in exactly how she gets it done. Giving a report the freedom to be independent is an important first step.

Demonstrate Your Confidence

Employees who haven’t had much experience completing work or making decisions on their own are often insecure. Tell your report that you hired him for a reason, and that you have complete faith in his ability to successfully complete the task. If he starts to freak out, tell him that no one ever died as a result of your company’s daily operations. It’s just work, and work will always be there.

For more where this came from, check out the full post on Intuit's Fast Track blog.

An Insider's Guide to the Hows and Whys of LinkedIn

LinkedIn has become an integral part of our professional lives. I hear a lot about the site from career advisers, but when I really want to learn what’s going on, I turn to the folks making things happen at LinkedIn’s Bay Area headquarters I chatted with Crystal Braswell, a manager of corporate communications and also a member of DeVry University’s Career Advisory Board. Here’s what she had to tell us.

What are the biggest mistakes you see people making on LinkedIn?

The biggest mistake would be not completing your profile. Simple changes like adding a profile photo or summary section can make a huge difference. We know that profiles with a photo are 14 times more likely to be viewed than those without one, and a complete summary and experience section that includes relevant keywords will make it easier for other professionals to find you.

Sometimes the best opportunities – from a dream job to speaking, mentorship and skilled volunteer positions — appear when you aren’t even looking. In fact, only 20 percent of jobs come from submitting an application for a job posting. The rest come through networking. [Read later: 5 Networking Tips You Haven't Heard]

Now, if you’ve taken the time to complete your profile, make sure you’re also giving people a sense of what you do AND who you are. What have you accomplished? Are there any hobbies that are relevant to your profession? Have you volunteered with any nonprofits in your community? Make sure it’s all on your profile. This stuff matters, and it’s what elevates your profile, transforming it into a rich portfolio that paints a complete picture of you as a professional. You never know what little tidbit might push you out in front.

Hmm, now I think I need to revise my headline. What’s yours?

I say I’m a “tech geek and PR pro leading LinkedIn’s higher education and content initiatives.” It’s more interesting than just using my job title and lets my personality show through at the start.

What’s the most interesting use of LinkedIn you’ve heard about recently?

One of my favorite recent stories came from someone who found her dream job at a media outlet. After finding and applying for the job, she took to LinkedIn to find the recruiter hiring for the role, and then used “Whose Viewed Your Profile?” to get that recruiter’s attention and land an interview. She then turned the online networking opportunity into an in-person one, connecting with a senior producer at the outlet and locking in 30 minutes to talk to her. She used LinkedIn in all the right ways, and it paid off for her!

For the rest of Crystal's great advice, have a look at the Intuit Fast Track blog.

Study: Project Managers are Stressed and Overworked

According to Workfront’s new Project Management Survey, conducted in late 2014 with 384 North American PMs, project managers are being inundated with too much work, lack of visibility into the work being done, and the use of disconnected tools to do the work. As a result, they are left without insights into the work they are doing and are stretched too thin.

Fifty-five percent of the surveyed PMs said that in 2014, their workload increased significantly, causing 38 percent of project managers to say no to new projects, work overtime, and outsource at least 6-10 hours of work per week.

Disparate new tools don’t ease admin pains

Surprisingly, nearly a third of the PM workweek is spent updating project status instead of working on projects. Of the survey respondents, 27 percent listed “project information scattered across too many disconnected tools” as their biggest problem at work. Thirty-three percent are still using spreadsheets and email to manage their projects, and 18 percent are spending loads of time entering the same data into different systems.

While 58 percent of the respondents are using Agile methodologies including Scrum, Kanban, and Extreme Programming, 62 percent stated that more than half of projects are completed using traditional project management methods that may or may not be effective.

Sixty-six percent of PMs don’t have a formal request management system, so projects come in from all over and are difficult to prioritize and track. All in all, many PMs are so “all over the place” that they aren’t in a position to derive crucial information and take action on it.

Lest we chalk these issues up to inexperience, Workfront actually polled an impressive group of PMs. More than half had over 10 years of experience in project management, and 84 percent had completed formal PM training or earned PM certifications. A majority have been in this field a long time, and their jobs aren’t getting any easier.

For the rest of the post, head over to Intuit's Fast Track blog.

 

Want to Keep Your Rep? Better Answer That Email

I’ve talked before about how responsiveness – or lack thereof – can make or break your reputation at work. Typically, I complain about people who never answer emails unless there’s something in it for them at that moment, or who take weeks to do so. However, it turns out that most people’s definition of responsiveness is even stricter than I would have thought. It turns out that your colleagues don’t want to wait for you at all.

Same Day Response is the New Normal

MailTime is an app that converts email to a text message format via the smartphone. The founders recently conducted a study of 1,500 professionals to evaluate email etiquette in 2014-15. What they discovered may surprise you.

Most people (52 percent) expect you to answer work-related emails within 24 hours, and 19 percent want that response within 12 hours. The more time that goes by, the less people tolerate. Only 3 percent think it’s appropriate to answer emails within a week. More than that? Forget about it.

Wi Fi: A Blessing or a Curse?

As technology becomes more and more instantaneous, it’s no longer acceptable to pretend you didn’t see a message right away, or even to cite the “I was traveling” excuse. Wi Fi is everywhere, so except for those precious few hours on the plane (for now, while you still have to pay extra fees), you’re on the hook to get back to co-workers within hours. Unless you’re 80, the 90s model of checking email once or twice a day is long gone.

Slow Responders Reap the Consequences

There was a time when people thought email was going away, but things have evolved quite differently. For the time being, email is still the default method of communication inside the global business world.

What happens when you take too long to respond to a message? To start, you could lose business. In my own line of work, prospective clients frequently email several speakers/writers at once and go with the person who sends back the most satisfactory response in the least amount of time. Second, you’re in danger of a misunderstanding. The sender may think the lapsed communication means you are trying to ignore him, or that you don’t think he is important.

When you get into the habit of failing to respond in a timely manner, people start to question your competence, level of organization, and work ethic. They resent having to chase you down for an answer, and they start to avoid working with you. Word gets around, and pretty soon, your overall reputation is suffering.

For more on the hazards of delayed responses, have a look at the full post on Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Is America Getting Killed by Overwork?

During the recession of the late aughts, organizations laid off a ton of employees. Many of them didn’t replace these people, but the amount of work remained. Nearly seven years since the recession began, individual American professionals are feeling the fatigue of doing the jobs of two or three former colleagues.

In their State of Workplace Productivity Report, Cornerstone on Demand cites the results of a new study demonstrating that nearly 70 percent of American employees are suffering from an overabundance of work, and two-thirds feel that work overload is the most significant factor negatively impacting their productivity.

Overwork is a Damaging Epidemic

As I see it, there are two issues here. The first is why Americans are overworked to begin with, and the second in the relationship between overwork and the loss of productivity. Beginning with the first, the staffing shortages I just mentioned are a primary reason employees are burning more of that midnight oil. Jobs were scarce during and immediately after the recession, and employees willingly took on extra responsibilities in order to stay safe. Even when things got better, many companies realized they could do just fine with less and never staffed up again.

Technology is also a factor in overwork. Advances in data and computing reach mean that we can work anywhere, anytime – and we do. We take our devices to bed so that they can interfere with our sleep and relaxation time. We work on teams with members all over the world, so we’re constantly on task outside of traditional business hours.

Then, there’s telecommuting. While telework certainly increases flexibility, remote employees end up working more. After all, there’s no commute, no distractions, and no noise. It’s only natural that the amount of work that’s actually completed in a day goes up. Plus, telecommuters are constantly worrying about proving themselves to their skeptical bosses, so they’re careful to work more than expected.

And finally, working until you can’t work anymore is in the American DNA. Think about the people who founded this country – those tenacious, “not afraid of backbreaking labor” Puritans! If you travel to most other countries, you’ll see that our work ethic is pretty unique. As a culture, we don’t leave the office while the sun is still up, we don’t take extended leave for any reason, and it’s just fine if work interferes with our personal lives. It’s expected, and everyone’s doing it.

For more on this epidemic, head over to Intuit's Fast Track blog.