Sean Wallbridge
While my attitudes and approaches to things sometimes change, here are a few things that I believe lead to a happy consultant, business and customer.
- Keep your inbox tidy (and your work life less cluttered and stressful). Emails should get one of the following actions:
- Acted on immediately, if it takes less than 5 minutes
- Tasked to someone else or yourself if it requires more attention
- Scheduled it needs attention on a particular date
- Filed if it is purely informational
- Deleted, if there is nothing else to be gained from it
- If you have knowledge to share with the team, blog it, don’t email it. Blogs are:
- Searchable
- Can be filtered by category
- Can be filtered chronologically
- Are available to people after today (if it is sent as an email, newbs never get the value of the information)
- Can have comments, so they can be improved or updated
- Always check your backups and procedures when a full moon is coming. Always be prepared for alien or robot invasion
- You aren’t the only person that might be having a bad day. Always give the person at the other end the courtesy of having a bad day and cut them some slack
- Send customers updates *BEFORE* they ask for them. Even if the news is that there is no news…
- When capturing business requirements, always write down any quotes the client makes such as “I need to be able to sleep at night that my data is safe”. These phrases, captured, always help when they see the quote/bill later. They are telling you the truth/how they feel and hearing it quoted back to them will still mean something (plus it demonstrates you were listening)
- Tell the truth, it is easier to remember