That Funny Email? No One’s Laughing
In his column, Words at Work, David Silverman ponders the difficulty of adding tone to written words, and the dangers of miscommunication when the intended humor is lost on the recipient. “In business, anything not explicitly written (as a friend of mine once told me after reviewing my documentation of a meeting’s minutes) does not exist. An interoffice communication is not The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and there should not be room for disagreement about what it means.”

Businesses use Twitter to communicate with customers
Jon Swartz of USA TODAY talks about social media’s role in customer service and cites specific examples of how companies are taking advantage of it. “The popular communications technology has helped companies quickly and inexpensively respond to customer complaints, answer questions and tailor products and services. It has supplemented current customer services, easing the load on call centers and expensive mailers that most consumers abhor. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and online software services such as LiveOps, Salesforce.com and RightNow Technologies are all are being used to improve customer service, retain users and gain a competitive advantage.”

The time is right for open source management apps
Forrester Research says managers think open source software is now at the point that it can be used for enterprise work tasks, reports Denise Dubie in ComputerWorld. “Forrester polled more than 2,225 software decision-makers at enterprise and SMB companies in late 2008 and learned that 55% of those surveyed are interested in, implementing, expanding or piloting open source applications. Just 2% of those polled indicated they were planning to decrease their use of open source and 1% said they would remove the applications. Another 33% were either not interested or unaware of their company’s plans with open-source software.”

Online Marketing Tips Video: Online Reputation Management
Search Marketing Gurus’ Li Evans present a video on social media monitoring and relationship building to protect your reputation. “You cannot ‘manage’ your reputation out on the internet, it’s very, very difficult. But, what you can do is manage relationships. You can build relationships with people inside forums, whether they are the community leaders or they’re bloggers, you can get out there and actually build relationships that can help you in a crisis situation. If you’ve established a really good foundation of relationships, a lot of times, bloggers or community members will come to your defense when something bad is happening. So this is a really great way to help get the word out about you, but also your reputation in crisis situations.”

Mind Mapping Project Management
Tactical Project Management on mind mapping advantages for information gathering and project documentation, including a run-through of popular applications: “Mature project management organizations often have a set of templates that project managers are required to publish lessons learned, status reports, meeting minutes and scope statements. Mind maps can be also used to collect and organize the information prior to populating these standard templates. Ideally, the PMO or PM methodology’s governing body would accept the mind map as an acceptable format. Using mind mapping tools enable the PM to effectively perform the work and efficiently meet any administrative template requirement.”

How to Disarm Combative Conversations
Harvard Business’ Holly Weeks gives management strategy tips for dealing with abrasive individuals in the office. “To achieve success in difficult conversations, you have to give up completely the combative approach. And don’t fool yourself that you can give it up partly. That only works if our counterpart partly gives it up too — and that is beyond our control.”

Practical Database Change Management
Frank Kalis puts the spotlight on databases, encouraging IT to be as proactive as they are in client application change management, and presents a sample workflow on SQL Server Performance. “Just like applications, most databases evolve over time in-line with the latest business requirements. Changing the database component therefore is (or better: should be) an integral and crucial part in every application life cycle and I’ve realised that this part is not given nearly as much of attention as it should. The purpose here is to introduce you to database change management as it is handled in our workplace.”

Persevering in the face of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt

Michael Hugos highlights several quotes from the book “The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles” by Steven Pressfield. “Whether we call it that or not, lots of us (most of us?) are freelancers. Some of us earn a living as serial employees (a year here, eight months there, two years somewhere else). Others skip the employee part and work as contractors or start their own companies. So if the traditional play it safe options are disappearing, I might as well do what I really want to do because then, even during periods when the going is tough, at least I can always say I’m doing what I want to do. There’s just one big question though: What is it that I really want to do?”