Words. Words. Words. Written by Nan S. Russell
They're only words. Some believe school-yard taunt: "Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me." They're wrong. Words can hurt you in workplace.I'm not referring to caustic ones spoken (or received) tainted with sarcasm, irritation, anger or frustration, carrying an emotional punch. I'm talking about simple, everyday, normal word choices. These words, like black ice, are not an obvious danger at first glance. But, they can impact your results. So, user-beware. Words create impressions, images and expectations. They build psychological connections. They influence how we think. Since thoughts determine actions, there's a powerful connection between words we use and results we get. Think about these two words: spend and invest. Would you like your bank to spend your money or invest it? Since spending implies money is gone, you probably want a bank that invests. Now apply these same words to corporate budgets and see how that influences thinking. Early in my career, I saw budgets as allocated company money I had permission to spend. And I did spend it. I never thought of budgets as investing in company's future until I was given profit and loss accountability for a new department and discovered my flawed thinking. I learned that in order to grow department, I needed to budget with an investment mentality. Shifting words shifted my thinking and my results. Try these words: problem and challenge. Would you rather a boss see your mistake as a problem or as a challenge? It's more than semantics. Problems are fixed; challenges are met. Different words evoke different feelings. I have a more positive frame of mind meeting a challenge than fixing a problem. But a word of caution. I'm not suggesting you play buzz-word game like a colleague of mine who walked into my office saying, "Do I have an opportunity for you." We both knew differently.
| | Seven Cs to Avoid Procedure Writing Errors Written by Chris Anderson
You have permission to publish this article free of charge, as long as resource box is included with article. If you do run my article, a courtesy reply to chris@bizmanualz.com would be greatly appreciated. This article is 472 words long including box and word wrapped at 65 characters per line. Thanks for your interest. Seven Cs to Avoid Procedure Writing Errors You do your best to make sure your organization is operating as effectively as possible. But if your policies and procedures are incomplete, outdated, or inconsistent, then they are not driving performance improvement they should. When employees try to use incomplete or undefined procedures, waste and costly errors soon follow. Case Study: Little Mistakes Add Up Quickly Without knowing it, employees at a local auto parts company were having a costly problem determining when to accept customer credit. The company actually had a detailed credit application procedure, including an exhaustive error correction routine, but procedure had one fatal flaw: it was not properly indexed. Indexing Improves Usability Without a way to readily locate and reference applicable procedure in operations manual, employees could not find it and were simply not using it at all, leading to an inconsistent process and wildly varying output. Potentially valuable customers were regularly turned away by some staff members, while others accepted bad credit risks because they were unsure of which ones to reject. A small omission like this can add up to thousands of dollars in lost sales and good will. Even most thorough procedures inevitably have gaps that come from being "too close" to process or not following basic rules of effective procedure writing.
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