Making careless mistakes online can end up having real-world repercussions for your business or your personal life. It seems like malicious hackers are only increasingly intent on wreaking havoc on digital assets, so there’s an increasing amount of attention needed to be paid to how you communicate with others and go about business online.
If you work in a field that’s interesting to young students or those who have recently graduated, you both may benefit from your offering an internship program. An internship is nothing more than knowingly taking someone into your organization who doesn’t have all the knowledge and experience to thrive. But this is the genius behind the internship — these people gain the skills to not only become a productive member of your industry, but to your specific company as well. It’s no small wonder why many people are able to turn their internships into full-time jobs.
Last year I left a company that ran on Pyrus to join a much larger company that simply relied on email to get everything done. It was hard to get reacquainted with email in everyday work, but it only means I discovered another industry which badly needs a Pyrus-style communications product: IT support.
If your business is going to be competitive in every respect, this means ensuring that you have the time to work on the most important tasks at any given time.
But this doesn’t always line up with reality. Minor problems that can’t be ignored will pop up from time to time. Small must-do errands will appear from nowhere when you have more significant things requiring your attention.
For better or worse, people are social creatures who are only able to get things done by communicating with each other. When these communication styles don’t mesh well, things can get bumpy between individuals. When those individuals work together, it can get uglier still.
A boss doesn’t need to be your friend, but it needs to be someone you can work with (and for) effectively. Otherwise your work life can become a torturous situation. For your sake, and your boss’s sake, here are some things to do when it seems like you just can’t get along with your superior.
There’s never enough time, unless you manage it carefully and keep a diligent calendar. And surely we all want some more open and free spaces on our schedules, so let’s revisit some key tactics in making short work of your work day.
Delegate, delegate, delegate. It’s easy to forget that if you’re in charge, you’re supposed to be spending your time quite differently from everyone. ideally this is because you have talents that are better plied elsewhere while still advancing the overall goals of a company. Delegating work to others frees you up to spend time doing that which you find makes you most effective. In general, if there’s an item in between you and your preferred task and that item can be delegated, then delegate the heck out of it.
They say you need 8 hours a night, but way too many of us dip into sleep as work time. Before long, you’re scraping by on 6 hours of sleep, perhaps even less.
But quality sleep is directly related to how you behave at work. Some forward-thinking workplaces even offer their employees nap rooms for a quick middle-of-the-day nap. Solid science tells us that regular sleep makes you happier, keeps you healthy, improves your mood, and maintains motivation and focus at work. If sleep isn’t one of the tools you’re using to find success at work, then you’re doing it all incorrectly.
It’s too easy to say yes to everything at the office. Whether you have your own boss to impress or your own employees to help, there’s a very real temptation to be the guy who’s available any time for anything. But this is hardly some sustainable model for how to govern a business. Knowing what is effective and appropriate to do is just as important as knowing what isn’t effective and is inappropriate when it comes to propelling your business forward.
You don’t need to make casual friends with your coworkers and hang out with them every weekend. But it can certainly help make the work week more manageable. Rather than “dealing with coworkers,” your workday begins to feel more like “hanging out with friends,” and that’s always a better option provided that you can still be productive together.
