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Less-Is-More Blog by Pierre Khawand

Accomplishing More With Excel: Sorting Excel PivotTable Reports using columns instead of grand totals

Posted by Pierre Khawand on Mon, May 24, 2010 @ 08:39 AM

When you are working with a PivotTable report, you can easily sort the report manually or alphabetically in ascending or descending order, but you can also sort it by ascending and desending order of the grand total as shown in the report below: 

PivotTable Sort Grand Total

But how about if you want to sort the report by the PowerPoint instead of the grand total?

There is a way:

First: Right-mouse click on any of the location field (or any of the location items such as San Francisco for instance) and then from the popup menu, select the "Sort" menu item, and then the "More Sort Options…" sub-menu item. The Sort (Location) window opens up. 

Second: Click the "Descending" option and select "Sum of Fee" from the dropdown box:

PivotTable Reports Sort Options

Third: Click the "More Options" button. The More Sort Options (Location) window opens up. Click the "Values in selected column" option and then enter the desired range (in this case if we want to sort by the values in the Excel column, this would be $D$5:$D$10):

More options in Excel PivotTables

Voila! Here is the resulting report

Excel PivotTable Reports sorted by column
 

Additional Resources


Topics: Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Excel Tutorial

Tip-Of-The-Month: How to manage the e-mail overload, part 3 of many

Posted by Pierre Khawand on Mon, May 17, 2010 @ 08:16 PM

manage e-mail overload
So far, I wrote about 2 strategies (Using e-mail for what e-mail is best at, and Simplifying and optimizing the process) and today, I will continue with the 3rd strategy which is “Significantly reducing the output and the input.”  As you know if you have been following this series of articles which I started in March, my goal is to tackle the issue of e-mail management from several angles. The ultimate goal is to formulate effective and sustainable strategies, as opposed to quick and short lived fixes, for getting the e-mail overload well under control and leading more accomplished and happier work lives. 

I need your involvement

e-mail survey
The e-mail (and Social Media) challenges are not going away anytime soon. In addition, the benefits and opportunities that these technologies bring are humungous. I need your involvement in helping address these challenges and maximize these benefits. Here is how you can help.

  • Set 30 minutes of uninterrupted time on your calendar this week to:
     
  • Review the 3 articles that I already published on this topic (#1#2, as well as this article which is strategy #3)
     
  • Share your feedback about these topics by adding your comments to above articles as you see fit (see comment section at the bottom of each article page)
     
  • Start to implement these strategies and report on your experiences and the results you are getting and any additional feedback you might have.
     
  • Take the 5 minute e-mail and Social Media survey which will help you reflect on relevant issues and become part of this effort.
     
  • Encourage your team to do the same. E-mail after all impacts all of us!
And now back to Strategy #3: Significantly reducing the output and the input

Significantly reducing the output

manage e-mail overload
“Why worry about the output?” you might ask! Isn’t our main goal to manage our “in”box? Which is basically the input that comes our way?

You are probably familiar with the saying: “What goes around comes around.” And this is so true for e-mail. The more output we create, the more input will be generated. This is not just about quantity but also about quality. Sending e-mails that are not clear and not relevant to the core business issues at hand is likely to generate more questions, more distractions, and endless back and forth e-mails conversations that contribute little or no value. Copying people unnecessarily is sure to turn these conversations into an avalanche. So output is one of the root causes of input. That is why we will start with the output first.

By the way, strategy #1 (Using e-mail for what e-mail is best at) already paved the road and started the journey of reducing the output. Actually we can argue that strategy #1 is all about reducing the output when we apply it individually and it is about reducing the input when we apply it as a group. This brings an interesting question: “Is the e-mail overload primarily an individual problem or a group problem?” Of course it is both, but if you had to choose, which would you choose as the primary? 

I believe it is primarily an individual problem and secondarily (but a close second) a group problem. Why? Because when we sit at that computer, or iPad, or whatever device we use, and create that e-mail, this is an individual effort. Whatever I start in that e-mail is the beginning of a chain reaction that is likely to impact the group and pick up momentum; hence the extra care required in creating each and every message.

In addition to strategy #1, and assuming you have mastered that strategy and encouraged your team to do so, here are the next steps in reducing the output:

  1. Answer/send an e-mail only when it is related to your top priorities and your team’s top priorities, and only when you are adding significant value; difficult to do, but you will save a lot of time and people will start paying more attention to your e-mails when they get them.
     
  2. If you wish to share your knowledge and expertise or socialize with people and groups outside your team and your top priorities, find other ways to do so. E-mail is not the best tool for sharing knowledge and for socializing. 
     
  3. Another variation to step #1 above is to wait on, or not answer, the non-urgent and not so important e-mails. It is likely that the issue will go away or someone else will address it. People will also learn not to send you the not so important stuff.
     
  4. Answer/send 140 characters; if there is more to say, put it in bullet points or a numbered list. Make it clear and succinct. Elevate the standards for e-mail composition instead of adopting or accepting the lowest common denominator. 
     
  5. Address the core issues and not dance around them. Stop and check-in again if e-mail is the best way to do so. But if it is, get to these issues sooner than later. Save yourself and your team significant time and demonstrate and model direct and open communication.
     
  6. Delegate issues and decisions and don’t ask to be copied on them. Instead ask to be consulted only on as-needed basis, and to be updated when critical points are reached. Invest your time in developing the people instead of reading and writing e-mails.
     
  7. Keep checking with yourself as to whether you should move this issue to a medium other than e-mail. 

Significantly reducing the input

manage e-mail overload
As you put the steps suggested above into practice, the input will be significantly less. In addition, here are some additional steps you can take the further reduce the input:

  1. Unsubscribe from e-mail lists that are not related to your top priorities. Unfortunately most of us don’t have the luxury to go through secondary topics and issues. While this information may be helpful, it can also be very distracting. If you haven’t looked at these e-mails for a while, this is a sufficient indication that you need to unsubscribe.
     
  2. Add rules and filters to file selected e-mails into designated folders which can then be visited on an as-needed basis. Be creative with these rules, using sender’s names or e-mail addresses for instance, or keywords in the subject line or body, or whatever else can help you identify them.
     
  3. Add rules and filter to categorize (or color) and sort the important messages based on the sender such as your and your customers. While this does not reduce the input per se, it does guide you to the most important input first.
     
  4. Create an auto-reply that provides people with helpful resources and asks them to resend their inquiry if they still need help; This can work well if you happen to receive many generic requests that your senders can get answers for from self-service resources that are easily available.
     
  5. Delegate the first pass of e-mail processing to your assistant if that is an option; If you have someone assisting you with your office work, consider training them to go through your e-mails, categorize the ones that require your attention, and process or file the rest. 
Stay tuned for the next Tip-Of-The-Month article where I will discuss the next strategy: "Fearlessly facing the issues."

Also, stay tuned for the upcoming book on how to manage the e-mail overload and Social Media (these articles and the latest findings from our ongoing research and development effort will be part of the book)!

Topics: email etiquette, tip-of-the-month, email management

Accomplishing More With PowerPoint: Using SmartArt Graphics in Microsoft PowerPoint to enhance your presentation instead of hindering it!

Posted by Pierre Khawand on Thu, May 06, 2010 @ 04:54 PM

SmartArt graphics can be very effective and yet they can be overused or misused and therefore backfire instead of enhance your presentation.

Examples of good uses of SmartArt Graphics

This SmartArt Graphic (Continuous Block Process) clearly illustrates the sequential nature of these funding rounds:

PowerPoint tutorial SmartArt Graphic

The following SmartArt Graphic (Upward Arrow), which we use in our collaboration technologies workshops, shows the spectrum of purposes that one can have for one's blog.  The upward arrow depicts the increased value that blog authors can get from their blog as they start to move beyond publishing information into engaging and motivation their audiences:

PowerPoint Tutorial SmartArt Graphic


Example of not so good uses of SmartArt Graphics

This SmartArt Graphic here is ambiguous. It is not clear what the relationship is between People, Technology, and Process. The pyramid can be interpreted differently by different people. This will cause the viewer to have to think and make assumptions. As Steve Krug puts it in his book Don't Make Me Think, this will distract and confuse the user.

PowerPoint Tutorial SmartArt Graphic 
 

What do you think of this SmartArt Graphic?


PowerPoint Tutorial SmartArt Graphic

Do you have examples of SmartArt Graphics (or charts/visuals) that are well done and some that are not? E-mail them to training@people-onthego.com. We will collect them and publish the results in a future article.

Additional Resource

 

Topics: Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft PowerPoint Training

5 Ways to watch over your brand and quickly address issues! Learn from Delicious.com

Posted by Pierre Khawand on Thu, May 06, 2010 @ 04:37 PM

Last week I posted a blog entry titled: "Question & Answer: Can I import my browser bookmarks into Delicious? Can I make a Delicious bookmark private?". The blog entry answered these questions which were recently raised during one of my presentations in the South Bay.
 
The above blog entry was also posted on Twitter with a link to the original blog article. Soon after it was posted on Twitter, I got the following answer:

Delicious Social Media

Which was posted by the Delicious.com team, an active member of the Twitter community as you see below:

Delicious Twitter Team

Obviously, the Delicious.com team in this case didn't realize that my post was actually answering this question and therefore they proceeded with answering it. But that is not the point here. The point is that they are diligently watching out for their brand and addressing issues immediately as they come up.

Are you watching over your brand and your users like the Delicious.com team?

If not, here are 5 ways to get you started:

  • Use Twitter.com search to keep any eye on what is being said about your brand
     
  • Create a dedicated column in Tweetdeck to make this easy
     
  • Setup Google Alerts for your brand name and related keywords
     
  • Setup an RSS feed to relevant LinkedIn Answers topics that relate to your brand
     
  • Join relevant Facebook and LinkedIn groups and discussions

What did I miss? How else are you watching for your brand in Social Media and the blogosphere? What else might you  recommend?

Additional Resources

Recording of the 5 Social Media Tools by Jenny Blake lunch & learn webinar at the "Accomplishing more with less" group on Facebook

Topics: twitter, social media, business results

Question & Answer: How do I set a password to protect my Microsoft Excel Workbook?

Posted by Pierre Khawand on Sun, May 02, 2010 @ 05:55 PM

If you would like to password protect an Excel workbook, the process is easy and it is the same process by which you can also protect other Microsoft Office documents such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint. The steps below demonstrate how to assign a password for opening and for modifying an Excel workbook.

Please note while the steps below illustrate the process in Microsoft Excel 2007, the steps are pretty much the same in Microsoft Excel 2003 and even Microsoft Excel 2010. 

First: After you save your document, use the Save As option from the Office Button menu to open the Save As window.

Excel 2007 Password Protect

Second: In the Save As window, click on the drop down arrow next to the Tools button that is near the Save and Cancel buttons as illustrated below.

Excel 2007 Password Protect

Third:  Then from the list of options, select the General Option to get the General Options window:

Excel 2007 Password Protect

You can provide two different passwords, one for opening the document, and one for modifying the document. This allows you to provide certain people the ability to view the document but not edit it, while allowing only designated people to edit the document.

You will then be prompted to confirm the passwords you have entered, and then once you confirm, and save the document, you will also be prompted to confirm that you want to replace the existing document, in which case you want to click Yes to confirm.

One word of caution though: "keep the password in a safe place."

Additional Resources

The Microsoft Excel Techniques workshop (see upcoming Webinar on May 11, 2010)

Topics: Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Excel Tutorial

Question & Answer: Can I import my browser bookmarks into Delicious? Can I make a Delicious bookmark private?

Posted by Pierre Khawand on Sun, Apr 25, 2010 @ 09:33 AM

social bookmarking, deliciousIf you haven't ventured yet into Social Bookmarking, a whole new adventure is awaiting you. Social Bookmarking platforms like Delicious not only let you bookmark web pages for future reference, but also tag them, add your notes, and share them with the world.
 
And there is more! You can see the web pages that other users have bookmarked and therefore learn about what topics are popular and what resources are available out there. It is like having a real-time "magazine" that is edited by the "world" and delivered to us on a silver tray 24x7. Most importantly, it is not in the way and interrupting our flow like an e-mail update would. Instead, it is in the background at our service if/when we want it or need it.
 
There are two questions that came up recently about Delicious, one of the most popular Social Bookmarking platforms, during our lunch & learn webinars and also my recent presentations about managing e-mail and Social Media. Here are the answers.

Can I import my browser bookmarks into Delicious?

Absolutely. This process is made easy by the Delicious import function:

  1. Sign up for Delicious at www.delicious.com (you would need to create an account if this is your first time).
     
  2. Go to Settings (one of the links on the top right of the Delicious home page). 
      
  3. Select Import/Upload Bookmarks (one of the many settings that are available to you) and you will get to the import screen which would allow you to easily transfer a copy your browser bookmarks into Delicious:

Social Bookmarking, Delicious 
 
Can I have private bookmarks in Delicious?

Yes, you can have private bookmarks in Delicious. Even though one of the primary purposes of Social Bookmarking tools such as Delicious is to "share" bookmarks with others (sharing is what makes this "social" bookmarking), there are bookmarks that we want to keep private. Delicious allows us to easily do so by simply clicking on the "..." when we tag the bookmark.

Social Bookmarking, Delicious

Additional Resources

 

Topics: social media

Question & Answer: What wiki platforms would you recommend for getting started with wikis?

Posted by Pierre Khawand on Sun, Apr 25, 2010 @ 09:24 AM

wiki platformsMany wikis are available on the market today and they offer a wide range of capabilities. Some are hosted solutions and well suited for small teams who want to get started quickly and easily without IT support while others are enterprise solutions that can be setup within the company firewall and would require IT support.  

Here are some examples of wikis that we mention in some of our collaboration workshops:  

Many of the above wikis have free trials available and Twiki for instance is an open source solution which you can download and install on your server for free.

For an exhaustive list of wikis (more than 100 of them) and comprehensive feature comparison, refer to http://www.wikimatrix.org/  

By the way, if you are already using Microsoft SharePoint, one of the templates that are available is a wiki template. This allows you to create a new team site that is a wiki. While this is not a full featured wiki like the above mentioned platforms, it can serve your basic needs and can be a good starting point until a full featured wiki platform is in place.   

Additional Resources  

Topics: document collaboration, emerging technology

Tip-Of-The-Month: How to manage the e-mail overload, part 2 of many

Posted by Pierre Khawand on Sun, Apr 18, 2010 @ 11:23 AM

e-mail managementMany of the business professionals we talk to seem to report that they spend endless hours in their e-mail inboxes. They tend to "live" there checking e-mail every few minutes or even seconds, having a dozen of e-mail messages open simultaneously, hopping from one to the next, and then deserting the latest one as soon as they hear the beep or see the alert, to open yet another message. Someone confessed recently at one of our workshops that when no new e-mails show up, he sometimes catches himself pressing the send/receive button repeatedly as if he is desperate for more. Does it sound like an addiction? Well, it is.

There is a lot more to discuss about this addiction, and this will be one of the topics we will touch on in future articles, but for now, we are going to focus on simplifying and optimizing the process--the e-mail management process that is. This is the second out of five strategies that I layout out in the last tip-of-the-month in which I also discussed the first strategy: "Using e-mail for what e-mail is best at."

The simplified e-mail process

Instead of "living" in the inbox and working on e-mail messages in an ad-hoc fashion, how about treating e-mail like any other task with a beginning and an end. We will discuss below how frequently we engage into this task, but for now, let us focus on the mechanics of this task. Let us also give this task a name: "Processing the Inbox." Processing the Inbox consists of the following:

  • Going through the inbox one message at a time, starting with the most recent, and not leaving that message until we make a decision about it.
     
  • If a message is urgent, we handle it right away.
     
  • If a message is quick and easy, we hand it right away.
     
  • If a message cannot be handled right away, for one reason or another, we make a decision about when we want or need to handle it and flag accordingly (or categorize it, or tag it, or label it, depending on which e-mail application you are using):
     
    • If it has to be handled today, then flag it with a red flag
    • It it can wait until tomorrow or later, then flag it with a blue flag
    • If it can be delegated to someone else, then forward it to them, and flag it with a yellow flag

Processing the Inbox is not complete until you process all the new messages in the inbox (the messages that arrived since you checked the inbox last).

To see this process in action, view the free training module (see form in the left column) which demonstrates the step by step process (in this case for Microsoft Outlook 2003, even though the above process can be adapted to any version of Outlook or any other e-mail application that supports tagging or labeling such as Google Mail, and applications with add-on's that support tagging such as MailTags for Mac Mail).

The optimized e-mail process

Now that we have a process down, and we don't just do e-mail one at a time and endlessly, there is still an important questions to answer, and that is how often do we check e-mail? In other words, how do we optimize our workflow?

This brings us to the core issue that I have been evangelizing for years, and which I recently published in its most comprehensive form: The Results Curve--How to Manage Focused and Collaborative Time (free download available).  I won't discuss the details of the Results Curve here, but according to the Results Curve, it is best to check e-mail every 40 minutes, or whatever length of focused time you choose. So instead of checking e-mail every few minutes or few seconds or as soon as you hear the beep or see the alert, let e-mail wait until the next collaborative session.

This also means that at the end of the day, we need to leave room for an e-mail session, where we go through the messages we flagged for today, and handle these messages.

Before you answer your next e-mail, stop for a second and ask the question: Should I interrupt my current task and jeopardize my results, or should I wait until the next collaborative session?

Stay tuned for the next Tip-Of-The-Month article where I will discuss the next strategy: "Significantly reducing the output and the input."

Topics: email etiquette, tip-of-the-month, email management

Baby Boomers at work: Elderly care, healthcare, retirement, knowledge transfer, and cross generational issues

Posted by Pierre Khawand on Sun, Apr 11, 2010 @ 10:50 AM

baby boomersThe setting was our weekly Lunch & Learn Webinars, the topic was "Generations in the Workplace: Baby Boomers in Action", and our guest speaker was Peggy Wolf, who in addition to being a Baby Boomer herself, is also Senior Manager of Communications for the Services Division of Cisco Systems, and has been focusing for the past 3 years on Cisco's inclusion and diversity initiatives, and led the creation of a Multicultural, Multigenerational Toolkit for Cisco worldwide. 

The discussion covered a variety of topics and didn't stop at Baby Boomers, but got into cross generational issues. I enjoyed talking to Peggy and hearing her insights on this timely topic. Here are some extracts from Peggy's talk and stay tuned for the full recording of the interview to be posted at the "Accomplishing more with less" group on Facebook soon:

  • First: Baby Boomers have a whole new range of issues to deal with, more so than other generations, including aging parents that need care, own health issues that they need to mange, and therefore the additional need for flexibility and balance.
     
  • Second: Baby Boomers hold valuable knowledge and experience (Intellectual Property as Peggy called it) that need to be retained as this generation gets ready to retire. This brought up the bigger issue of what retirement looks like for Baby Boomers and which according to Peggy seems to have taken a whole new meaning. Retirement is no longer a clear cut transition but potentially a gradual and flexible hybrid approach which makes room for continued significant contributions to work related activities.
     
  • Third: Having the different generations in the workplace together presents some unique challenges and opportunities, especially with Baby Boomers and Gen Y who represent the largest percentages of the workforce, and have very different work styles and approaches--and a lot to learn from each other.

Let us hear your comments about Baby Boomers in the workplace below! And hope you join us in future lunch & learn webinars including the panel where we hope to have Peggy (Baby Boomer), Jenny Blake (Gen Y), and Adam Christensen (Gen X), join a cross-generational panel discussion.

Additional Resources

Topics: generations in the workplace, Lunch & Learn Webinars

Tip-Of-The-Month: How to manage the e-mail overload, part 1 of many

Posted by Pierre Khawand on Sun, Mar 28, 2010 @ 06:19 PM

In this series of articles, my goal is to tackle the issue of e-mail management from several angles. The e-mail overload problem is multi-faceted and not something that can be solved quickly. Most of us, bloggers and Twitterers are guilty of giving the impression that we can help our readers solve major problems by giving them the miraculous solution in a few paragraphs or even 140 characters. Let us stop this wishful thinking. Significant challenges require innovative solutions and persistent application of these solutions as well as ongoing learning and adjustment. This requires trial and error over a period of time until we find the winning formula.

If you are getting a large number of e-mails and feeling that e-mail is exhausting and out of control, I have some good news and some bad news for you. The bad news is that there is no immediate and easy solution (other than finding a new job and starting fresh, which is only a temporary solution). The good news is that there is a whole set of effective strategies that we can deploy to get the e-mail overload well managed. All together, these strategies are likely to bring us a significant relief and help us refocus our energy on the core issues and create more compelling results.

In the upcoming weeks and months, I will be writing a series of articles on this blog and elsewhere addressing at least five of these e-mail strategies and probably more. While many of these strategies are derived from the Accomplishing More With Less Methodology (see free e-book, workbook, and workshops), these articles will also include the latest findings from our ongoing research effort and will be part of the upcoming book on how to effectively manage your e-mail and Social Media activities. Hope you will join us in this effort and participate in the E-mail and Social Media 5-minute survey as well as post your comments on this blog.

The five e-mail strategies

Simply put, here are the five e-mail strategies:

  1. Using e-mail for what e-mail is best at
  2. Simplifying and optimizing the process
  3. Significantly reducing the output and the input
  4. Fearlessly facing the issues
  5. Attacking the root causes

Let us start with the first strategy and stay tuned for more!

Using e-mail for what e-mail is best at

When you have a hammer everything looks like a nail:

e-mail overload

Oh well! We have the hammer, and in this case it is called "e-mail." We have it and we tend to use it all the time. E-mail is easy. It is quick. It costs virtually nothing (if we are only looking at the hard costs). In addition, we can say whatever we want in an e-mail and not get interrupted by someone else's point of view (can be rewarding but dangerous). So no wonder why we are so quick to use it in almost any situation.

Blinded by the ease and speed of e-mail, among other factors, we tend to forget that e-mail is not the only tool for communicating. This is a list of some of the tools that can largely benefit us when used appropriately in conjunction with e-mail. What do you think these tools are ideal for and not so ideal for? Use this opportunity to jot down your answers and then compare with the answers below:

  Ideal for  Not so ideal for 
 E-mail  < jot down your answers >  < jot down your answers>
 Instant Messaging    
 Phone Calls    
 Web Conferencing    
 Virtual Worlds    
 Video Conferending    
 In-Person    

While there is not one answer, and no right or wrong answer, when it comes to how best to utilize these tools, here are some suggested answers as a starting point:

  Ideal for  Not so ideal for 
 E-mail  Factual/Asynchronous    Emotional
 Instant Messaging  Quick exchanges  Long exchanges
 Phone Calls  Discussions  Visuals
 Web Conferencing  Document sharing  Interacting/Seeing people
 Virtual Worlds  Interacting  Simple hardware setup
 Video Conferending  Seeing people  Simple hardware setup
 In-Person  Complex/Emotional  Remote people

Let us add a few more asynchronous tools to the mix

  • Blogs
  • Wikis
  • SharePoint
  • Google Docs 

Blogs, wikis, Microsoft SharePoint, Google Docs, and other information and document sharing tools, can tremendously help take the load off of e-mail. One of the examples that I give in our workshops relate to how blogs for instance (in this case, we are referring to internal blogs) can help the knowledge experts within the team or organization answer important questions once instead of time after time, and make these answers accessible to everyone within the team or organization. E-mail is not the best way to leverage and share knowledge.

Let us start using e-mail for what e-mail is best at! Before you write your next e-mail, stop for a second and ask the question: Should this be an e-mail or not?

Stay tuned for the next Tip-Of-The-Month article where I will discuss the next strategy: "Simplifying and optimizing the process."

 


 

Topics: email etiquette, tip-of-the-month, email management