The need for structure in your business
I’ve been on holiday in the South island of New Zealand for the past 2 weeks. That’s why this blog has been silent for a while. I took two cousins from England for a tour of the West Coast, southern lakes and Fiordland. We spent a lot of time in rain forest and it rekindled…
read more »Selling your house? Give your home office a makeover first
Friends of mine moved house recently and I caught up with them in week two in their new home. By then most of their life was sorted and everything had a place in the kitchen, garden tools were stored neatly in the garden shed, the linen was neatly stacked in a hall cupboard and the…
read more »What does gardening have in common with filing?
Last weekend I was in the garden cleaning up around the rengarenga lilies that had been home to snails for some time. (If you don’t know these plants, they form low bushes of long fleshy leaves and a myriad of white flowers in spring and summer). As I pulled off shredded leaves that the snails…
read more »Keeping your electronic files safe
Recently I’ve been working with some small business owners who don’t have any back-up system for their electronic business transactions. I’m not talking about their financial transactions or stock inventories as they are usually captured in some formal system that is backed up off site or written manually by hand. It’s things like the contact…
read more »Paper or electronic filing – or both?
Do you store your business information in paper format or in electronic formats? Or both? Do you remember the logic behind your decision about what to file where and in want format? How do you decide what to do with incoming items? It can be very confusing when you start to think about a filing…
read more »Male secretaries – whatever next?
Organising what’s in your office, on your computer and working out what to do with all that email isn’t the most exciting part of your business. You’d much rather be working with your clients, earning money, networking with the aim of getting new clients and – well actually anything but filing papers or electronic files…
read more »Simply filing
Last week I wrote about the amount of time wasted in businesses because people can’t find bits of information quickly and easily. Following on from that, there are two important aspects to consider when it comes to organising your information. First you need to store it somewhere – and you need to be able to…
read more »What causes lost productivity in your business?
What activities come to your mind when you are looking to improve productivity with your team? Sickness? Long coffee breaks? Smoking breaks? Absenteeism on the day of major sports events? But what about the time you spend looking for all your sales receipts at GST time? Or the time you spend rewriting a letter or…
read more »Good habits around email
Last week in this blog I talked about the dreaded email in box and gave you some ideas on how to keep it in control. I promised to give you some hints for good email habits. And here they are… Email Good Habit 1 Turn off email alerts so you aren’t distracted every time a…
read more »De-mystify your email inbox
When I’ve been talking to people in recent weeks, their eyes have lit up when I say that I can help them manage their email inbox. Email inboxes seem to be dreaded by many people for a variety of reasons. For instance: Your inbox is so full that new incoming emails are blocked so you…
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