Displaying All Posts by Joseph Lewis

Gaining Office Allies in the Right Places

When you first start at a new job, the one person you are probably most concerned with is your new boss. You want this person to like you, to help you, to defend you, to overlook your mistakes, and to applaud your successes. And this makes sense because your boss is always around and has the most control over your immediate future.

But while managing that very important relationship, it is equally important to pay attention to certain other people in your office as well. These other people can carry you to success or bury you before you even get started.

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How to Win the Ground War at Work

Joseph Lewis 6th November Career 10 Comments

A great philosopher once said that love is a battlefield. That may or may not be true, but you might be interested to know that work is also a battlefield.

To succeed, to win, you need to plan for the long term. You need more than skills and tactics, you need a strategy. But why bother dreaming up your own strategy when you can just steal one from Napoleon Bonaparte: “An army marches on its stomach.” Don’t see the connection? Let me walk you through it. Click Here to Read Article …

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How to Clean Up Your Slides in 5 Minutes

Joseph Lewis 28th October Software 10 Comments

What do you think about when you hear the phrase “clean up”? Maybe you picture cleaning up food after a party, or cleaning up a small biohazard after your dog. That’s the real world for you: Stinky. At least at work, cleaning up is a bit easier on the nostrils.

It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, sooner or later someone is going to ask you to “clean up some slides” in preparation for a meeting. This is because “someone” had time to doodle in PowerPoint but lacked the time or skill to create a proper business visual. Cleaning up slides is rarely an opportunity for fun, so let’s try to make it quick. And while we’re at it, let’s make that slide look sharp. Click Here to Read Article …

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School Did Not Prepare You for Work

Joseph Lewis 22nd October Career 36 Comments

Congratulations! You’re out in the real world, living on your own, holding down your own job, building your career one day at a time. You made it through high school, through college, through the job hunt, and now you’re here: at work!

But you’re not entirely comfortable, are you? Something is slightly wrong with the world, but you can’t put your finger on it. You like your job, more or less. You like your company and coworkers, more or less. Your career seems to be on track. And yet you feel anxious, out of place, rudderless.

I think I know what’s bothering you. Click Here to Read Article …

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The Search for an Awesome Candidate

Joseph Lewis 8th October Office Life 7 Comments

Once upon a time, hiring decisions were made by an elite few at a company. But in today’s team-based corporate world, more and more people are being included in the hiring process to read resumes and interview candidates. When you get pulled into this world, it can either be a fun break from your work that results in getting a great teammate or it can be an utter nightmare that never ends…because you hired the wrong person.

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PowerPoint Revolution: 21st Century Design

Joseph Lewis 6th October Software 13 Comments

In a previous article, I reviewed several common PowerPoint designs used in corporate meeting rooms around the world today, and what you can do to improve on them. But now, let’s aim higher. After all, we’re professionals. We should look and act like them, even behind closed conference room doors. It’s time we dragged our presentations into the 21st century. Let the Revolution begin! Click Here to Read Article …

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14 Awesome PowerPoint Resources

Joseph Lewis 29th September Software 10 Comments

PowerPoint is stressful, isn’t it? It shouldn’t be. There’s nothing special about it. You use it everyday. It’s just text, diagrams, and pictures. And yet it still manages to eat up whole hours of your time. You have to edit, review, and revise the same slides over and over for other people. You have to sit through hour after hour of slide-based meetings. And you’re probably not entirely proud of the slides you’re making or the slides your organization publishes, are you? Well, that’s just plain wrong.

In our ongoing efforts to bring you workplace information that is at least partially entertaining and very nearly useful, I am pleased to bring you the following presentation design links. Click Here to Read Article …

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PowerPoint Designs that Executives Love (But Shouldn’t)

Joseph Lewis 14th September Software 28 Comments

It would be easy (and fun!) to discuss PowerPoint (PPT) culture in general: how it ruins meetings, wastes time, confuses audiences, and is a general haven for bad design and writing. But instead, we will use this opportunity to discuss something useful. We will review design techniques that generally meet with approval and praise. We will also review why these techniques are actually quite bad and what you can do to fix them.

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