Less-Is-More Blog by Pierre Khawand

This question comes up from time to time in our Microsoft Excel workshops. VLOOKUP is one of the very helpful functions in Microsoft Excel. It allows us to lookup values from various lists and use the results as necessary.

For insatnce, I might have the following list:

And if I would like to find the Class Title that corresponds to Registration Number 10024, I can use VLOOKUP as follows:

=VLOOKUP(10024,A7:D16,4,FALSE)

In this case, VLOOKUP tries to find an exact match for 10024 and if it finds it, it returns the Class Title. In this case, it would return Word.

But what if VLOOKUP doesn't find the desired results. For instance if I am try to look for Registration 12020 (which doesn't exist in the list), then VLOOKUP would return: #N/A

While this may not be a big deal in some situations, it can be quite distracting if I am using VLOOKUP to populate a column in a report from another table (which is what VLOOKUP is best at). Suddenly my report may have several of these #N/A's which ideally would be replaced by something more user friends or be suppressed all together.

How can you manage or suppress the #N/A?

To manage or suppress the #N/A's, you need to make use of 2 functions:

• ISNA() which determines if the result of the VLOOKUP is #N/A
   
• IF() which allows you to replace the #N/A result or suppress it

This is the syntax of the "smarter" VLOOKUP statement:

=IF(ISNA(VLOOKUP(12020,A7:D16,4,FALSE)),"Not Found",VLOOKUP(12020,A7:D16,4,FALSE))

Or if you want to suppress it all together:

=IF(ISNA(VLOOKUP(12020,A7:D16,4,FALSE)),"",VLOOKUP(12020,A7:D16,4,FALSE))

Additional Excel Resources

Microsoft Excel Techniques workshop

Advanced Excel PivotTables

Microsoft Excel Macros

If you are been using Microsoft Word Styles (if you haven't, it is highly recommended that you do--see note below), and you want to get your Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, and the rest of the headings to automatically assign numbers as shown below, you may have already found out that this is not something that you can do by editing the Headings Styles.

1. My Topic

    1.1. My Sub-topic

        1.1.1. My Sub-sub-topic

2. My Next Topic

    2.1. My Next Sub-topic

        2.1.1. My Next Sub-sub-topic

etc.

So how do you get the headings to show the multilevel list

The answer is actually easier than what you might think.

• From the Home tab, click the Multilevel List button (next to the Bullets and Numbering buttons)
   
• From the menu, select Define new Multilevel list, and the new window opens up

This is where it all happens:

1. Select each level starting with level 1 (in the top left list)
    
2. For each level, select the appropriate heading in the "link level to style" dropdown list that is towards the top right
    
3. Do this for each of the top 3 levels (associating level 1 with Heading 1, level 2 with Heading 2, level 3 with Heading 3) and keep doing it for move levels if you think you will need it.
    
4. Click Ok, and and voilà!

Now you will be able to assign Heading 1, Heading 2, etc. to your text, and they will be automatically numbers as shown here:

If you haven't been using Microsoft Word Styles to format your documents, this means not only you are spending too much time formatting and editing, but that you are not taking advantage of many of the features that the Styles would enable you to do.

Additional Microsoft Word resources

Microsoft Word Techniques webinars and self-paced classes

If you haven't explored Virtual Worlds yet, or if you have but still seeking more ways to leverage them, the observations below, from one of the workshops that I conducted in Second Life, shed some light on how Virtual Worlds can provide virtual teams with unique experiences and benefits that aren't otherwise possible. Keep on reading!

The workshop was the same but the setting was very different. Instead of people gathering in a training room or around a conference room table, we were gathered (as avatars) around the conference room table in Second Life. The level of experience varied, some being first timers in Second Life, while others having many hours of experience. However everyone got a chance to attend the orientation session and learned what they need to know in order to navigate and communicate properly.

The assignment

The next team-building exercise was about to start. We divided the team into small groups. Each group is assigned a task which involves searching for specific clues and relevant information around the island, collecting them, and reporting back to us within a specified time period. This requires that the small group members strategize on how they would approach this assignment and then execute and continue to communicate and collaborate during execution.

The challenges

In addition to the assignment itself, the group members had to deal with many group related issues:

• Some team members were more experienced than others (in Second Life). Accordingly the experienced members had to make some difficult decisions: Should they help their group and stay all together, or should they proceed on their own to get the assignment done faster?
   
• The groups were not given enough data about the assignment so they had to make some assumptions and decisions based on insufficient data.

The debrief

The time is up and some groups made it back on time while other didn't. Once everyone got back, we compared the results and discussed what went on.  This discussion was as rich and insightful as any discussion I have seen in person. We got to the core issues quickly and it was no longer about avatars but more so about the people. The issues became real. We reviewed what went on and how the different approaches and communication styles contributed to each person's experience and to each group's performance. Here are a couple of examples to illustrate these discussions.

• Someone made the decision to stay with the group even though her skill level is much more advanced. She could have gone much faster searching for the clues and relevant information on her own. However she saw more value in helping her group members and working as a team instead of getting the task done. We discussed her approach and the pros and cons of this approach. This brought some constructive discussions about how to manage daily situations where there might be significant discrepancies in skill level, and how to creatively balance between individual performance and group performance.
   
• One group member was frustrated with the above assignment because he wasn't "getting it right." He seems to have misinterpreted the assignment, and his group seems to have jumped into the execution phase without much strategizing. This was poor team work with incorrect assumptions which resulted in frustration and poor performance. Does this sound familiar? However, having observed this in the Virtual World, the group members got some valuable insights into how they can do it different in their daily work.

Got it?

There is nothing "virtual" about the above learning. It is as real as it can get. It is only possible because of the rich 3-D environment and rich communication tools that Virtual Worlds offer. Virtual Worlds are opening up the possibility for virtual teams to interact and strengthen their working relationships and collaborate more fully than ever before!

As we continue to promote collaboration technologies (such as blogs, wikis, and Microsoft SharePoint) and help teams use these technologies to reduce their reliance on e-mail and on meetings, we are always looking for easy ways to introduce these concepts to first time users.

This video "Wikis in Plain English" by Commoncraft continues to be top on our list when it comes to explaining what a wiki is and how it can be useful:

Even though the video is about a camping trip, the same concepts apply to any initiative or project in the business world! So instead of adding to the e-mail overload, get your wiki going and get your work done with less e-mail!

Additional resources

Lunch & Learn Webinar: Structured Wikis at Work- Enterprise 2.0 in Action

Emerging Collaboration Technologies: Blogs, Wikis, SharePoint, and more!

A few days ago, I posted an article about the Old terminology, new terminology: "People connecting with other people." A related topic that I have been thinking about is the "old" inbox and the "new" inbox. However the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there is even a newer inbox: The Social Media Inbox. What do these inboxes mean and what are the implications of the advent of the Social Media Inbox? Keep on reading!

The old inbox

I still remember the days when the inbox meant internal e-mail only. I was in Southern California at a technology company with about 100 employees at the time and everyone had access to Microsoft Outlook and used it for internal e-mail and for scheduling internal meetings. The external world was not "visible" to internal employees. There was no Internet, if you can imagine. Only a few people had access to MCI and a few others to Compuserve. These privileged people were able to connect to the external world but still had to go through hoops to do it.

The new inbox

Then came the Internet and suddenly the "new" inbox was born. The new inbox is connected to the whole world. This brought amazing opportunities and also an unprecedented e-mail overload. Every person ended up with a handful of e-mail inboxes ranging from work, to personal, to "throw-away" ones just to keep unwanted messages out of the way. Soon after came the invasion of the mobile devices and e-mail on the go. Consolidating messages into one e-mail application and/or synchronizing between multiple applications and devices became necessities and many of us have done some degree of consolidation and synchronization along the way.

And now meet the "new new" inbox: The Social Media Inbox

Then Web 2.0 snuck upon us! Now we are all part of the creation process and part of the conversation. Like never before, we the people can share information, participate in conversations, and build our own social networks. We are in direct contact with the people who once were invisible. Suddenly we are no longer just in our e-mail inbox(es). We are now as often or even more often in our new and expanded inboxes: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, Yahoo Groups, Google Groups, YouTube channels, del.icio.us bookmarks, StumbleUpon articles, and you name it, which all together I am calling the Social Media Inbox.

This inbox is emerging as a powerful force and even the most authoritative search engines are re-inventing their search approach to include the Social Media Inbox.

So what does it all mean? What are opportunities and the challenges?

The Social Media Inbox brings some unique opportunities and some rather unique challenges as well. On the opportunities side:

• We are connected with 100's of millions of people and are able to have real time conversations with them
• We are learning what they are like and how they think (market research)
• We are discussing our brand and the value that we bring to the table (marketing)
• We are influencing their buying decisions (sales)
• We are exchanging ideas and building on each other's ideas (innovation)
• And the list continues!

On the challenges side:

• We are faced with more information overload than ever before
• We are constantly interrupting our core activities to keep up with what is going on in the world
• We are not necessary leveraging this new inbox to the extent that we could
• And the list continues!

What does your Social Media Inbox (SMI) look like and how are you managing it?

If you haven't yet expanded your definition of the "inbox" and explored the Social Media world, this is the time to do so. Some exciting opportunities are awaiting you. If you have, this is the time to reflect further on the opportunities and challenges and how they can be managed to help us be more effective in the workplace and beyond.

As we continue to explore this topic and explore best practices to manage the SMI, we need your help! Please share your thoughts below or fill out this short Social Media Inbox survey (5 to 10 minutes) and we will share the survey results with you.

Take the Social Media Inbox survey and become part of the conversation!

We get this question often which makes perfect sense. After all, if you are using Microsoft Outlook, and have the benefits of the Outlook Calendar, doesn't make sense to want to view your SharePoint Calendar events in the same Calendar and not have to go to SharePoint to manage these events?

The answer is yes you can view your Microsoft SharePoint Calendar events in your Outlook Calendar and it is simple to set that up. Below are the steps that are involved in connecting your SharePoint Calendar to your Outlook Calendar, however, keep in mind that if you are using Outlook 2003, this would be a one way connection. You will be able to view the events but not edit them or add new events. However if you are using the Microsoft Office 2007 suite of applications, you will be able to make updates in Outlook 2007 and these updates will show up in SharePoint.

Here is the process of connecting your Microsoft SharePoint Calendar to your Outlook Calendar

From your SharePoint Calendar, select Action, and then select Connect to Outlook

As soon as you do so, you will be prompted for your user name and password and a new calendar will be created in Outlook:

And now you can view this Calendar in Outlook and if you are using Microsoft Office 2007, you will be able to update it from Outlook.

More Resources

• The complimentary lunch & learn webinar (Microsoft SharePoint Tips)
• The upcoming Microsoft SharePoint Techniques workshop
• The upcoming Managing and Organizing Your E-mail Inbox workshop
• 3 ways to get rid of e-mail--Using Microsoft SharePoint
• Question and Answer: When should I use Microsoft SharePoint and when should I use a wiki?

"Motivation Day 2K10" (organized by California Staffing Professionals) started today with a keynote by Craig Silverman, Partner and Vice President of Sales & Marketing at Albin Engineering, which was indeed insightful and motivating. Among the many things that Craig shared with the audience were these questions which he encouraged everyone to reflect upon and answer:

• How do I rank my ability to ask good questions
• How do I rank my ability to listen
• How strong is my understanding of my clients businesses and how they buy
• How good is my ability to track metrics, progress, and results
• How strong is my ability to develop great relationships

There were additional reflections, but I just want to highlight these areas because I would like to suggest that these apply not only to our success with our motivation in pursuing business goals, and our effectiveness in dealing with customers, but just as well in our Social Media effort.

The Social Media experts continue to stress the important of listening to the conversation instead of simply broadcasting messages (Brian Solis) and staying on brand instead of entertaining everyone with our lunch or weekend plans (Jason Alba in his lunch & learn webinar with us last year) and Elaine Starling (in her lunch & learn webinar last Fall). So could we extract some simple but valuable Social Media best practices from these insights?

A few simple best practices for our Social Media conversations

Best Practice #1: Observing and listening before jumping in and/or hijacking the conversation.

Best Practice #2: Contributing with relevant and compelling content; not the chatter! or use the 80/20 rule. In this case 80% compelling, 20% chatter.

Best Practice #3: Tracking progress and results using metrics that are carefully defined

This is a start, and now your turn to add to this! Please share your comments below!

More resources

• Craig Silverman's blog
   
• Brian Solis' blog
   
• Old terminology, new terminology: "People connecting with other people"
   
• How to avoid being overwhelmed and consumed by social media?
   
  

Brian Solis & Deirdre Breakenridge in their book Putting the Public Back in Public Relations talk about the new terminology in the social media era. Old terminology, before Web 2.0 and social media, refers to messages that get broadcast to users. New terminology refers to conversations that are shared with people. Brian and Deirdre also refer to what Josh Bernoff from Forrester wrote about his frustration with the term "users". Web users are no longer "users" he says. Knowing that we are at 80% of Net penetration in the US for instance, these "users" are now "people" looking for information. In the social media era, "users" are "people connecting with other people".

The most important part is not the terminology but the thinking that goes with the terminology. Thinking in terms of people and conversation changes everything. It creates a two-way street that allows all of us to change and learn in the process.

I believe that in training (or "learning" in the new terminology) and productivity ("accomplishment" in the new terminology) a similar terminology and mind shift are happening. Here is a start for comparing old and new terminology:

You additions and comments are welcome!

When it comes to formatting Microsoft Word documents, we still see so many inefficiencies and inconsistencies, not to mention documents that are not user friendly and not easy to navigate. But there is a way to change this.

Using Styles in Microsoft Word can remedy the situation (or at least a step in the right direction), not only making formatting easy and efficient, but also enabling easy creation and maintenance of table of contents. If you use Styles, you can create a compelling table of contents (with all the bells and whistles) instantly and as your document continues to evolve, update it at once.

Are you ready?

First: Instead of directly formatting your headings (the headings of the main sections of your document), use the Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading 3 Styles to do so. These are paragraph styles. This means you don't need to select the whole text of your heading in order to format it. All you have to do is click anywhere in the text, and click on the desired heading on the ribbon, and the formatting gets applied.

In Microsoft Word 2007, this is what the ribbon looks like with the Styles easily available:

Second: When you are ready to produce your table of content, select the References tab, and then click on Table of Contents:

Third: Select one of the formats from the popup menu that gets displayed when you click on Table of Contents, and magically, the table of contents appears. Not only it appears, by default it displays the page numbers, hyperlinks to each section, and looks pretty! Of course you can change all these options as desired.

Stay tuned for more Microsoft Word 2007 tips this week in the complimentary lunch and learn webinar Microsoft Word 2007 Tips by Kim Silverman.

More resources to check out

• Microsoft Word Techniques workshop
   
• How to find some of the familiar Microsoft Word 2003 commands in Microsoft Word 2007

It is a human tendency to take the path of least resistance. To do the easy stuff first. As we do the easy things first though, what is ahead of us is always more difficult than what we currently have. We end up living a "difficult" life with a persistent anxiety about what is next. After all, with this approach, what is next is always more difficult and we end up with more stress and less results:

Let us take a look at the alternative. If we reverse this tendency and do the most difficult first, observe what happens:

What happens is that our anxiety is gone. The next task is now easier. Most importantly, we face the real issues, get real data, gain experience, develop skills, and increase our confidence. We most often rise to the occasion and reap the benefits. Even if we don't fully succeed at the task, we still succeed at learning from it, and being able to apply this knowledge again and again.

Here are 3 ways that can help us adopt this new approach of heading towards the most difficult first:

1. Start with sound task design. As I suggested a few weeks ago (see When the task seems overcomplicated or overwhelming, reconsider the "task design"!) start by setting the right expectations, then line up the necessary resources, and don't forget to break down the task into manageable components.
    
2. Get support and advice. More often than not, the help we need to approach the most difficult is just around the corner or even in front of our eyes. All we have to do is look around and ask. People are more willing to help and provide support when we make it easy for them to do so.
    
3. Just do it. We have heard the "just do it" a million times but hearing it and applying it are two different things. It is only when we dive into the action that we can truly experience the learning and the emotions that go with it. It is all wishful thinking until we action.

Your turn to get better at managing stress and getting business results through action with the most difficult action first! Your comments below!