Office1000 Blog June Archive

Things to Remember When Facilitating a Meeting

By Blog Stories at 06/11/2008 10:42

Part of anyone's professional life is either attending or facilitating a meeting. Saying that you can decide on your own for your company or group's future is a stupid thing to say since you are a group in the first place. Everybody should have the right to contribute his/her ideas to the group. This is why meetings are formed to discuss those ideas democratically.

Let us say that you are the appointed facilitator of a particular meeting. It is your first time to facilitate such an event. What are you going to do? There are many points to remember. Here are some that, I think, you should take note the most.

• Start exactly on the appointed time. Let us all be professional and do not wait for others who are still not there. Over time, they will realize that you start your meeting on time and those latecomers will change their acts. Just be sure that you already have a quorum or else you won't be able to decide on the issues you will be meeting about!
• State the agenda of your meeting and stick with it. I've already attended a lot of meetings wherein we just digress from our agenda and end up talking about things hardly related to the purpose of the meeting. While doing this, ensure that everyone is participating. It is supposed to be a meeting and not a lecture, anyway.
• Help your group come up with decisions. Even though you will not restrict your members from arguing points, it is still important that you will agree on something by the end of the meeting.
• Summarize what you have met about. Perhaps it would be best to have one of these digital recorders for future reference. This will also be the basis of your evaluation of the meeting.

Dealing with the Visitors

Even though it cannot be said that is a very important element of an office setup, an intercom phone system set up in your office may prove to be useful. For those who do not know, an intercom, or a door phone, is a phone system that may be set up by the entrance of your office and may be used by visitors to communicate with you, people of the office.

True enough, it is not an important part of the office, especially if it is just a small one. Anyone could always go to the entrance and ask the visitor about what he/she is doing in the office. However, it is a good system to have when you are running a large office. Who knows, it may take a full minute just to go to your door and ask who the intruder visitor is. Just imagine if this will happen dozens of times every day. Sure, if it is a large office, a receptionist should have been there to coordinate with visitors, but we may always not know when the need arises.

The use of an intercom is not only shown inside the office. In fact, its importance is especially emphasized when it comes to a home setting, because it is unrealistic to hire a receptionist inside your home! An intercom may be needed when you are, say, cooking some pancakes then someone buzzes at the gate. Annoying, yes, but you can't just leave the person outside, can you?.

Whenever you decide that an intercom is something that you need inside the office or inside the home, don't forget to consider the Panasonic Door Intercom Phone, which is compatible with Panasonic's KXTA824 and KXTAW848 phone systems.

What Happens When Your Keyboard Breaks?

Ah, the mere idea alone is scary!

Well, it isn't as if the idea only exited inside my brain. I actually had the misfortune of having a dysfunctional keyboard right when I really needed it. As far as I can remember, I was creating a database program using Java (not a good choice for a database, I know) then as part of one of my requirements. If I am not mistaken I only had a week or so to finish it and I was still in the process of familiarizing myself with the language plus the fact that I have other things to do, so I really had to finish the project early so I could still have more time to do other projects.

When you are programming using a PC, I naturally had to use the keyboard as that is the only way for me to enter text. My keyboard was so much used so I wasn't that surprised when it broke down.

While the sudden breaking down of my keyboard didn't make much impact (I could have bought a keyboard anytime), I still had to go to the nearest store and buy a new keyboard. Buying a keyboard online would mean that I would still have to wait for a day--so that wasn't a good option. Either option would be eating some time, hence, less productivity. If I only had an extra keyboard, less time would have been lost. Despite the delay, I still managed to to finish the database still with spare time to kill. However, today I already have two keyboards (one is stored) so that I won't have to go through the same time-consuming even of running to a store in case my present keyboard breaks down again. Nothing really beats someone who is ready.

Getting Ready for the Company Trip

Part of anyone's office life is the office field trip. The objective of such trips is to take a well-deserved break from all the hard work made inside the office. Depending on the size of the company, the trip may comprise all departments or just a few of them. Some of the office trip destinations that I could think of are beaches or mountains. It really depends on your boss and the season.

While everybody is planning about the trip--what food to cook, what equipments to bring, and the such--some things may really go out of plan and dampen your trip. One such instance I could think of is bad weather. Imagine your office planning an outing to some mountain or beach when storm suddenly comes. These kind of events can be really irritating because they destroy the purpose of your trip, which is to have fun.

You don't have to go through all these when you were just prepared more than what you had prepared for. I mean, if you were just able to know the weather forecast, then you could've canceled the trip immediately or just moved it to another destination. The weather channel is good enough, but in case you do not have access to television at a given time, then better have one of these handheld weather forecasters from Oregon Scientific.

The handheld forecaster features a 12-hour and 24-hour weather forecast, temperature and humidity indicators, and an alarm and snooze function to wake you up during the trip.

Remember, it's always best to be ready when it comes to everything. Do not mess up your trip and be prepared with a weather forecaster like that of Oregon Scientific's.

Correction!

I think I can safely say that one of the most important tools in the office is the correction fluid. Why, it's because everybody makes a mistake that we have to correct is we want to things to go well. For pencils the answer is a block of eraser, but for ink, the answer is correction fluid. Just open and brush the white ink over the error and wait until it dries up and write over it. The error is gone!

However, there are somethings that I do not like about correction fluid. Having to wait for it is one. What if the erasure should be made immediately and yet you cannot write over the error since the ink is still drying up? What's more is that when you don't brush on the error well, the texture won't be smooth and suitable for writing over.

These are just small concerns, but that is not an excuse to try and address these concerns, right? Well, the answer to this problem with correction fluid is simply a correction pen. Much like correction fluid, correction pens cover an error and may be written over. Both are colored white for easy writing. Unlike correction fluid, on the other hand, you do not have to wait for the tape-like substance from the correction pen to dry up. Furthermore, the 'terrain' is even so that you won't have to write on 'mountains'. For your correction pen needs, use only the trusted brands like Pentel and its Pentel Presto! correction pen refills.

Save our planet. Conserve paper. Don't throw paper away just because you see a single mistake. Use a correction pen instead.

Meet the Inspector

What comes to your mind once you see a clipboard inside the office? Just what thought comes when you see this piece of wood, or plastic, or metal, or other other hard material? Is it more paper, more trash? Do you think of good-looking people walking around in the office, writing down notes? What makes you stir every time you see the clipboard? I'll tell you what I think. When I see a clipboard, I think of authority.

Yep, perhaps it is one of those people that we would like to see as rarely as possible. The person holding the clipboard does not have to be your direct boss. He or she may be in the form not of a boss but of, say, an inspector. It may be an inspector from the government, or it may be an inspector from your big boss' office. Whoever he or she is, I am sure you will agree with me that you'd rather work alone that have him/her looking behind your back, watching if you are doing your work well.

These kind of people, however, serve their purpose, and that is to strike a balance and ensure that you and your coworkers do their jobs. You cannot blame your big bosses, anyway, if they just want to ensure that they are getting their money's worth. You cannot blame the government as well because they just want to make sure that your company is adhering to standards set.

In the end, of course, the number of inspectors sent to your office will be nothing if you will make sure that you are doing your job well. Even though authority in the office can be a scary (irritating?) thought, nothing will happen as long as everything is in good condition.

Lightweight Document Protection

Some documents are just more important and delicate than others. These are the type of documents that, when lost or damaged, might lead to losses in your company. One type of such documents that I could think of are contracts with your partners or clients in the business. These documents have to be protected very well or this may result to complications you wouldn't want to have.

While having duplicate copies is still the best way to go to protect your interests, they only serve as your last resort. This is no excuse for you to just store your contracts in a very unsafe place that is prone to theft or severe environmental conditions. For this reason, I recommend this polysheet document protector from Easi File.

Much like shelves but less hard, these polysheet document protectors are antistatic polyethylene envelopes that will keep your documents safe and sound. Maybe it is rather quite odd to store your documents inside polyethylene envelopes instead of simply putting them inside a shelf, but this might subject them to mixing along other less important documents, and might result to them being lost. It has a multi-compartment storage that allows you to separate documents based on their categories, and they can be hung from a single hanger strip. Best of all, these document protectors are more portable compared to the conventional shelves. Because it is lightweight, it's easier to carry these documents around with you.

It may look like an odd way of protecting your documents, something that is unlike to what we've been used to--but if it will make document-keeping better, then why not try it?

Lighter is Better

There are trips during which we have to bring a lot: our laptop, a week's worth of clothes, hygiene stuff, and other things that people normally bring during long trips.

Some trips, on the contrary are just short, most likely just an overnight stay. During these trips, it would be impractical to bring so many things to work on when you will be returning immediately. It would also be impractical to carry with you a large luggage when there is nothing much inside.

For overnight things, it is best to store your clothes and other belongings in something like this 22" Wheeled Overnighter from Samsill. This small stroller bag comes with a compartment sizing 14in by 7in by 22in, perfect for a small book, three sets of clothes, a formal suit perhaps, and some food items that cannot be seen in your destination. It also expands by an additional 2 inches so that you can even insert your pillow and notebook. It is connected to a handle and a pair of wheels for easy transportation--though you can actually carry it if you want to. It also comes with an ID tag for identification purposes.

Remember that, when flying off somewhere, it is preferable to go with less items than with more. If there is less weight on your hands, your hands will be freer to move around and serve your more important needs. Lighter is better. Take that in mind and do it whenever you can. And if you did, don't forget to put it inside your Samsill Overnighter bag.

The Life of a Princess

It is most probable that some of our female readers have once desired to become princesses. That is a fact that cannot be denied. Like how some young boys imagined their selves as warriors who continuously fight monsters to save the world from evil, some young girls perceived their selves as princesses who are beautiful, classy, and refined.

These little girls, if you will look at it from a stereotypical point of view, like dolls and a lot of 'womanly' stuff, from teacups to Disney Princesses wall clocks. Stereotypically speaking, these princesses would spend their time in the confines of their rooms, outside of which they are protected by their guards.

It is during these times that these little girls think that life as a princess is all about gowns, tea, flowers, and other such things. It is, of course, normal for them not to think of the responsibility such a title entails. It is normal for them not to think that they should serve as role models to the public and not as mannequins whose goal is to serve as some form of entertainment.

It is a just a phase, I guess. We all went through a phase of being carefree, anyway. I am quite hoping that after a series of tea sessions, they would finally come to realize that life is not like a fairy tale that you live happily ever after in the end. Hopefully, the idea that life is a continuous struggle will get into their minds. But that is in the future. Let them live, for now, the princess-y life they have come to known. As for our mighty warriors, well, they'll grow out of it, too. Just don't expect that time to be any nearer.

Pen Oh Pen! Where Did You Go?

Much like keys, we often lose our dear pens. These handy dandy tools that we use for writing always seem to get lost. Just put it on top of a table, or in between your notebook sheets, and the next time you look for it, it's already a ghost. Sometimes I wonder where they go.

They are pretty difficult to find as well, given that they are small and elusive. These pens just roll their way into nothingness, into roads that nobody knows. It seems that these pens have minds of their own, leaving their old masters alone. It's a rather bad habit to do, these pens who just leave without even saying goodbye. How are we gonna know that they won't come back anymore?

I rarely had a pen in my life whose ink I fully exhausted. It's either the ink dried up or, more commonly, it rolled out of sight, forever lost in my eyes. To make matters worse, sometimes I do not have an extra pen with me, so I am compelled to borrow friends. Sometimes I wonder if they took it on purpose. Sometimes I wonder if my pen accidentally rolled into their hands--but, heck, either way I'll never get it back.

So if there is one thing that I should remember when buying pens, it's that I shouldn't buy the expensive ones. I should buy the cheaper pens in the bargain bin. That way, whenever the pen decides to leave the miserable me, the mourning is less shorter than had it been a thousand dollar fountain pen.

So where do all the pens go? I honestly do not know. If I knew, would I ever tell you, anyway? Finders keepers as they say!