The New Year Improvement!

Merry Christmas All,

Hope everyone had a great Christmas. A time to reflect and a time for family. Now it's time to get ready for the New Year. The New Year brings another decade to a close. The advancements that occurred during this past decade are amazing. Some that have made our lives more efficient and others that have glued us to the web checking email, Facebook, LinkedIn, and various other social media sites. Not sure if being connected has improved our efficiency, but it has definitely wired us in.

Being connected has caused many of us to rely upon faceless communication and faceless transactions. Unfortunately, I don't see an end to this trend. Faceless communication has turned relationships into a sterile environment. Whether you are communicating with a friend of many years, using it for business, or prospecting a product or service faceless communication will eventually hurt each of us in the future if relied upon too heavily.

For the New Year I encourage you one day a week to do nothing but face-to-face communicating. At home, your friends will love you for it. At the office, you will be more productive. Think about it, a question in a work e-mail is undoubtedly misinterpreted and spirals into multiple future e-mails which does nothing but wastes time and company money.

Finally, do yourself a favor when you do use e-mail at work, don't copy your manager or VP with daily questions to a co-worker about a project. You were hired to do a job and they don't need to be bothered with you trying to cover your butt. Just get the work done!

Until next time....