Business Productivity Blog - Increase your productivity

In this first part of the series on conducting professional interviews, I’ll cover how to prepare for the interview.

It’s mid-July, right in the middle of summer. Many of you are probably on vacation while others are struggling to find the motivation to work. Finding the motivation to accomplish various tasks can be quite challenging, especially this time of year. If you are a people manager and you need to motivate others, this is […] Read More

Many employees within organizations complain about too many meetings. Not only do they feel they waste a lot of time in meetings, they also feel that most meetings are ineffective. In my blog post “Running Effective Meetings” I share some advice on how to run more effective meetings. In this article, I wanted to cover […] Read More

Whenever I conduct a business productivity workshop, I talk about the “do’s and don’ts” of email communication. I’ve spent many years at a large organization where email was misused in a number of ways which lead to drastic declines in productivity. Email is a great communication tool, but it needs to be used in a […] Read More

I’m thrilled to be posting this week’s blog article on our new website that went live on Friday the 15th of June. You will find my weekly Business Productivity blog under the name “Get Sharp” on the main menu, or you can access the latest blog post at the bottom of the first page. You […] Read More

In the blog post titled “Future plans for Business Productivity” posted April 9th, I shared with you some of our plans for the updated version of our web site. I’m happy to announce that we will be going live with the new web site within the coming week. You can read more about the changes […] Read More

It is widely known that working towards a goal is a major source of motivation. A study done by Locke et al. (1981)found that in 90% of the laboratory and field studies they carried out, specific and challenging goals lead to higher performance than easy goals, “do your best” goals or no goals. In many […] Read More

One of my ambitions with this blog is to make technology easier to understand for non-technical people. In today’s world, technical terms and abbreviations are part of the daily vocabulary even though many people don’t know what they mean. In this week’s blog article I wanted to give you a quick summary of what SEO […] Read More

This is the third and final article in the series on mentoring. Previously I’ve covered the basics of mentoring in “A Guide to Mentoring” and in the second article I gave advice to mentees on “How to be an Effective Mentee”. This final blog post is for those of you who currently are, or are […] Read More

Last week I wrote about the basics of mentoring – what the benefits are, who should be a mentor, who should be a mentee and topics that can be covered during mentoring sessions. In this week’s blog post I will share with you steps you can take to be an effective mentee. In a professional […] Read More

If done well, mentoring is extremely valuable and it can have an enormous impact on your career – and your life. I know that my career would not have gone in this direction if it weren’t for a mentor I had many years ago at Microsoft. Unfortunately, the term “mentoring” is used very broadly to […] Read More

Last week I wrote a summary of the things you can expect in Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows 8, that is due to come out later this year. In my early days as a systems engineer, I couldn’t wait to try new technology and I gladly installed unfinished code (so-called alphas and betas) on my […] Read More

Later this year Microsoft is said to launch its next operating system Windows 8. About two months ago Microsoft introduced the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. This is an early preview version of Windows 8 that you can download and install for free if you want to get a taste of what the new operating system […] Read More

Last week I bought a new mobile phone, and unlike everyone else it seems, I did not buy an iPhone. Since I’m a heavy user of Microsoft products and I have invested in Office 365 for our company I bought the new Nokia Lumia 800 which is a result of Microsoft’s and Nokia’s new partnership […] Read More

This week I’m back in my home country Sweden celebrating Easter with my family and renovating our new summer house. It’s quite a contrast to come home to zero degrees Celsius compared to the thirty-five degrees currently in Dubai. It’s also quite a contrast to spend my days tearing down walls and throwing out carpets […] Read More

Last week I attended a seminar in Dubai called “Business Networking & Sex” (as in gender). The speaker, Phil Bedford, shared some interesting facts about the importance of networking and how men and women go about networking differently. Whether you are a man or a woman, a good network is crucial for your career and business […] Read More

How many of you are using the Outlook Social Connector? Or perhaps I should ask how many of you know that there is something called the Outlook Social Connector? I would guess not too many of you. Currently, I’m working on a number of tutorial videos on managing your contact information in Outlook 2010, while […] Read More

[Note added March 4, 2013: Please see the latest article on Office 365 versions published March 4th, 2013.] Yesterday I attended a female entrepreneur networking event hosted by Microsoft in Dubai. I was invited to speak about my experiences as a small business owner using Office 365 in our day to day business. There was […] Read More

Last week I wrote about how to effectively give feedback. Even though most of us welcome more feedback in order to improve in our professional as well as personal lives, we give and are given feedback way too seldom. More often than feedback we are given praise, and even though this “pat on the back” […] Read More

This morning I was taking our 18-month-old son out for a walk in his stroller. He had his pacifier and his favorite stuffed animal (a blue mouse) with him. All of a sudden he throws the pacifier and the mouse on the ground. I pick it up and tell him, “When you do that they […] Read More

Last week I wrote an article about collaboration technologies, I gave you an overview of the definition of collaboration and the three major components of collaboration – communicating, sharing and accessing information. For each component, I listed a number of technical capabilities that enable modern knowledge workers to collaborate with one another. In this article, […] Read More

For many years the IT industry has been talking about the importance of collaboration and how companies should invest in appropriate collaboration technologies. The term “collaboration” is quite broad and the technologies to support collaboration are many. In this blog post, I want to demystify what collaboration means and give an overview of the supporting […] Read More

Up until a year ago, I detested negotiations. I’ve always heard that I’m terrible at bargaining. I would rather pay up and get it over with than stand and argue about the price. Then something changed, I attended Professor Niro Sivanathan’s course “Negotiation and Bargaining” at London Business School and it all changed. Now I […] Read More

Update: Microsoft SkyDrive has been replaced with Microsoft OneDrive. You can learn more about OneDrive here. There have been a number of updates to the SkyDrive service provided by Microsoft since this article was written, you can read more about the enhancements here.  After three productivity related blog posts in a row, I thought it was […] Read More

Gathering a group of people in a room for an effective brainstorming session is a wonderful way of generating new ideas. But all too often I’ve been in sessions where the person who is running the meeting says “Let’s brainstorm!” without introducing any rules or guidelines. Some people might throw various ideas out, but more […] Read More

Last week I wrote an article on how to prepare a successful presentation following 6 steps. In this article, I will go into more detail on how to deliver the presentation. As you learned in the previous article, in order to deliver a good presentation you need to be well prepared and you need to […] Read More

Being able to give good presentations is a key element in a business professional’s career. There is no such thing as a naturally good presenter, some people might be more natural speaking in front of other people, but presenting well takes time and effort. No one can deliver a successful presentation ill-prepared. In the coming […] Read More

As a relatively new “Tweeter” (someone who writes Twitter messages, or so-called “tweets”) I am by no means a Twitter expert, but after just a few months I have come to realize some unique benefits of Twitter that might not be clear to everyone, so I thought I would write this blog post to give […] Read More

I thought I would start off 2012 with a blog post on how to conduct effective meetings. So much time and effort is wasted at every workplace all over the world because very few people know how to run effective meetings. About ten years ago I spoke to a friend of mine who was working […] Read More

I thought I would end this year with a personal note and reflect on the year that passed and share with you some of the exciting things we have lined up for 2012. I’m writing this blog post from my hometown Stockholm – I love how technology enables us to work from anywhere! The first […] Read More