The Gilman Company Blog

The Best Candidates for Creative Jobs are Night Owls

If creativity is an important part of the position you're trying to fill at your company (writers, graphic designers, programmers), you just might want to ask whether that candidate is a night owl.

Generally, scientists agree that night owls are more creative than so called "morning people" who usually hit the sack early. According to Wired Magazine, in a creativity tests, early birds struggle. It's not clear why night owls tend to be more creative, but it seems like there should be a connection with living outside of the norm that says you're awake when the sun is shining and asleep when it's not.

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Cheepskate Tip of the Week: Online Price Comparison for Office Supplies

This isn't about larger business equipment acquisitions, like new furniture for an entire department, new servers or a company wide upgrade of mobile phones or wireless devices. You may want to go with vendors that you can trust, talk to and meet in those cases. This is about those quick trips to the closest brick and mortar to buy something that would make your life easier and more productive or to stock up on the things you go through regularly. This is also about ordering from the same catalog every time, because that vendor knows what to do, how to bill you and your generally pleased with filfilment.

You will pay a premium for the convenience of driving to the local retail spot to purchase supplies like this, including your time or your staff's time out of the office and the travel expense. Or, you're placing orders through that fat catlog Without even knowing how much anything costs. You're number cruncher processes the invoice without a second look and there's no cost savings oversight. That doesn't make sense. Ask your accountant to track these expenses and see how you did last year. Then imagine that you can have anywhere between 5-25% of that money back in your pocket.

NOW...
After you've looked at your spending, just for fun, go to an online price comparison site, like www.pricecomparison.com, Google has one too, and see how much you can save on your next supply order. Is saving $50 on that desk printer worth filling out a quick form? Of course the terms are important; look closely at those and try to get an idea of the type of customer service you can expect from this online vendor. Call the cusomter service number to say hi and see what happens.

Bonus tip: if you haven't centralized this process, that would be a good way to track your cost-savings progress. Choose someone with good clerical skills in your office and have all of your office supply purchases go through that channel. Have that person produce monthly or quarterly expense reports. The oversight? A supervisor's signature and approval on each supply order.

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World Domination Move of the Month: Gmail Goes Offline

In what can be characterized as a move against Microsoft's Exchange, Google recently announced a new version of Gmail that will allow users to access their Gmail account without an internet connection. Believe it or not, there are still places where access to a wireless network is not available, such as in planes or in remote areas and at times when connectivity isn't always stable.

With Gmail offline, there may be a viable alternative to MS Outlook and the technology behind the offline version of Gmail has already been applied to Google Docs and Google reader. Does a Google productivity suite on par with MS Office pass the laugh test? Yes!

What's really happening here? Google has innovated to meet an important set of needs and has done it in a way that could unseat a long standing and somewhat stagnant product. Google is competing on a different level and they've done this by effectively leveraging their momentum and carefully cultivating the heart of the venture that is Google: ad sales.

More on this story at COMPUTERWORLD.

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Giving Face Time: The Art of the Walk By

Every day is a mixer. Beyond chance meetings in the elevator, take the initiative and the opportunity to give a little face time to colleagues or associates within your organization that may be out of your typical circle of operations.

While you're at it, try straying from the platitudes of dead end niceties (i.e. How are you? - Good. - Yourself. - I'm doing well, thank you.). Ask a benign but detailed question about specific things that this colleague does. "How is the ____ project going?" Test your abilities to keep it light and don't get lured into a detailed and long conversation. It's not a "water cooler" chat and it's not merely a polite acknowledgment.

Yes, it's easy to get shored up in small group. Up your "walk by" face time giving and you'll learn more about your organization, who you're working with, what the possibilities are and build relationships that you can leverage in the future.

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The Bad News: No Raise. The Good News: You're Not Fired.

With many options on the table to reduce costs and keep operations lean during the economic downturn, putting your next scheduled round of raises off should come before a round of layoffs. Here, consider an announcement to your employees that your company has been affected by the economic downturn and that layoffs are a last resort. In an effort to minimize the possibility of such a drastic step, along with other measures, doing away with raises is a reasonable step. This doesn't mean, however, that the review process should be left behind. Keep the same review calendar and combine reviews when your regular raise regimen is in place again.

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Hardcore Post: Chance Meetings With Strangers...

There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.
Fyodor Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment

Every so often, you meet someone like this in business. You can't be sure what it is, but something clicks. You don't know why it happens because sometimes it happens with people who don't appear to be viable business partners, associates or customers. Either way, in business that unique click could be worth more than associating with someone who seems to be a more practical resource.

How often do you move forward on a practical business approach when the personal relationships are strained? Imagine moving on a unique approach where the personal relationships couldn't be better. If you're determined to explore that unique initial interest or connection, you just might discover a substantial amount of value or, at the minimum, a new way to think about your operations, strategy or personal outlook.

About Hardcore Posts.

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Living by a Hiring Freeze and Avoiding a Meltodwn

So, at this point your cash flow looks like it just might weather the storm or maybe your willing to dip into your reserves to avoid  a layoff, but your prudent and you're still feeling the pinch, which is why you have announced a company wide hiring freeze. But, other than giving notice to your staff that your company is concerned about the impact of the economic climate, have you thought about best practices here?

You can't exactly leave critical positions empty and you may not have successfully groomed adequate replacements for management. Those positions can't be frozen. For non-management positions, you can restructure groups or departments to successfully shift the duties lodged in vacant positions.

If your company has an online segment as well as brick and mortar segments, consider freezing brick and mortar related positions while replacing vacated online segment positions. One obvious trend in this economic downturn is that online sales haven't been hit as hard as brick and mortar sales.

If you have a department or group productivity measurement tool in place, or if your gut is a reliable resource here,freeze positions in groups that are not as productive or move employees from unproductive groups to fill vacant positions in groups that are productive.

With many options on the table in a hiring freeze, this could be a gift, forcing you to streamline productivity in HR and prioritizing resources based on bottom line productivity.

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Going Niche: Balancing the Relevance of Your Product

Depending on how established your product or service is, redesigning or enhancing your product or service to meet a more limited group of needs, to focus on a niche group, can be expensive. On the other hand, if your sales are flat, making your product or service more relevant to a select group is a way to kick up some dust, focus your marketing efforts and distinguish you from the mob of other companies that are in the same market. If the product development Gods are on your side, you just might draw more consumers to your niche group. If you can own this niche group and make it grow, you'll never be more golden.

Hardware Upgrades and Your Productivity/Cost-Savings Ratio

Yes, technology is great and technology is good. But if you try to squeeze another year out of that ailing workstation, server or laptop, your lost productivity will soon outweigh your cost savings. Throw in the possibility of a more serious problem like an extended system failure or losing critical data for good (AKA a tragic disaster), and retiring your outdated hardware will be a pleasure. Or you can always learn the really expensive way.

How to know when to upgrade? Just a few examples: software upgrades don't take like they used to, more bugs than usual, you wait for your computer to process functions, you give system compatibility excuses, you don't have enough disk space, you're maxed out with upgrades, there are odd tricks to getting your equipment to function properly, you don't use certain software due to system requirements, etc., etc.

If it's still alive, try donating your outdated equipment to a local community center or have it recycled, and then let your customers know how incredibly responsible and community minded you have been about staying technologically advanced.

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Productivity Boost #436877: Microsoft Office Features

For Microsoft Office users out there, a quick productivity slam dunk is to learn how to use features of Outlook, Word, Excel and others that you have never used. Office is packed with countless features that can boost your productivity, save you time and improve your work product. In fact, chances are there are more than a few MS Office features that you haven't taken the time to learn about which will get your work done faster and improve the quality of your work product.

Set some time aside every few days to learn a new feature of the Office tools that you use most often, then do some community service and update others in your work circle about these new found features. Or just keep them for yourself and bask in greatness. But, if you happen to turn into a productivity and shortcut junkie, produce a monthly shortcut newsletter or blog to share wealth of productivity throughout your organization.

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