How You Sound

Put special attention to your choice words, tone of voice, speed of speech and thought organization process. These usually matter more than content of your speech. An articulately delivered speech will help you be branded as knowledgeable, confident and competent. Remember, how you sound comprises 90% of your credibility.

Take note of these common mistakes: couching statements as questions; using preambles; explaining; asking permission; apologizing; using minimizing words; using qualifiers; not answering question; talking too fast; inability to speak language of your business; using nonwords; using touchy-feely language; sandwich-effect; speaking softly; speaking at a higher-than-natural pitch; trailing voice mails; failing to pause or reflect before responding.

How You Look

There is this common notion that “the best and brightest are rewarded with promotions and choice assignments.” This is entirely wrong. Those who are competent enough, sound and look good are ones who move forward in their careers. Statistically, research shows that 55% of your credibility comes from how you look; 38% from how you sound; and, only 7% from what you actually say.

Carry yourself properly by avoiding these mistakes: smiling inappropriately; taking up too little space; using gestures inconsistent with your message; being over- or underanimated; tilting your head; wearing inappropriate makeup; wearing wrong hairstyle; dressing inappropriately; sitting on your foot; grooming in public; sitting in meetings with your hands under table; wearing your reading glasses around your neck; accessorizing too much; and, failing to maintain eye contact;

How You Respond It is important to know how to respond to ways others treat you. And some of common pitfalls women do as a response to a certain gesture are as follows:

Internalizing messages; believing others know more than you; taking notes, getting coffee, and making copies; tolerating inappropriate behavior; exhibiting too much patience; accepting dead-end assignments; putting needs of others before your own; denying your power; allowing yourself to be scapegoat; accepting fait accompli (irreversible or predetermined decisions); permitting others' mistakes to inconvenience you; being last to speak; playing gender card; tolerating sexual harassment; and, crying.

By: Regine P. Azurin and Yvette Pantilla http://www.bizsum.com "A Lot Of Great Books....Too Little Time To Read" Free Book Summaries Of Latest Bestsellers for Busy Executives and Entrepreneurs

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The importance of efficiently deploying a process is also Dependant on number of persons that will be following procedure. The greater number is, more value that an efficient deployment provides. Think of claim processing department of an insurance company, people analyzing mortgage requests in a commercial bank or a big call center. These units normally have a great number of people executing same process.

The objective is that people executing process perform it as close as possible to new version of process, in shortest possible period of time. These two variables are extremely important to generate value and to recover resources invested in reengineering process.

Some of practices that can contribute to this objective include making procedures easily available in a format that facilitates its look up, training, controlling, incentivating process compliance, etc... But applying this techniques alone is not a synonym for success.

The real challenge is to get participant buy in. These is were social and cultural factors must be taken in to account, and change management, knowledge management, management of expectations, etc... come into play.

Experience has shown, especially with knowledge workers, that involving process participants in decisions that affect them, ensuring that they are well informed and making them feel that their opinion is being taken into account, is more effective than forcing them to follow new processes. Although there are some cases were strict discipline must be used to enforce compliance with process, it is usually better to reward good attitudes than to punish non compliance.

Once process is being carried out following new process it is also very important to enable feedback to system. Process participants' opinions are extremely important to enhance process and it is likely that they have some good ideas to improve it. For example, performing a specific task in a way that can be institutionalized as a best practice, incorporated to procedure and deployed to every participant in process.