For those who are already up to speed with the most recent versions of Microsoft Office, these tools may be old news. Â But perhaps you are still using Word 2003, where these tools are hidden deep within toolbar menus, or perhaps you haven't yet had the chance to explore Word 2010 and use it to its full potential.
Styles
If you're used to individually formatting all the headings and subheadings in your documents, then this simple tool will transform the way you use Word forever. Â Type the text for your main heading, highlight it and click "Heading 1" in the Styles toolbox on the "Home" tab. Â Don't like the font? Format your text the way you want, right click on it, and click "update Heading 1 to match selection". Now all the text you select as "Heading 1" will be ready-formatted exactly how you want it! Check out "Colours" and "Fonts" under "Change Styles" for ready-made combinations, or "Themes" under the "Page Layout" tab for a complete Style package!Â
Table of contents
This is where the Styles tool really starts to save you time. Â If you have Styled all your headings and subheadings, simply go to the "References" tab, click "Table of Contents", pick the one you want and see it magically appear before your eyes, ready-formatted!
Cover pages
Another handy tool to quickly make documents appear more polished and professional. Â Go to the "Insert" tab, click "Cover page" and select the an appropriate style to your document. Â It's as easy as that!
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Convert text to table
This is a neat one that I only discovered recently! If you already have some text typed out, rather than drawing a table and copying the text into individual cells, simply highlight the text, go to the "Insert" tab, click "Table" and head down near the bottom of the menu and click "Convert Text to Table". Â
Smart art
Here, you can create quick graphics that effectively break up a report or jazz up a presentation, and save you designing your own using individual shapes. Â
And there you have it - 5 tools to get you started with Word 2010! What's your favourite feature?
Speed read: Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point"
There are many 21st century 'gurus' out there with great knowledge and business wisdom to impart - but how often do you get the chance to sit down and read their books? And how do you choose which ones will be the most interesting or useful?
Epidemics
Gladwell describes The Tipping Point as one dramatic moment in an epidemic when everything can change all at once. Â In business, epidemics are perhaps more commonly phrased as âtrendsâ or âfadsâ, where a product or idea captures the mainstream in a big way.
Gladwell believes that epidemics are the function of:
The people who transmit infections
The infectious agent itself
The environment in which the infectious agent is operating
Through the use of stories and examples, he attempts to understand and assign rules to these functions, which he calls The Law of the Few, The Stickiness Factor and The Power of Context, and ultimately discover the point at which ideas, products, messages and behaviours âtipâ to become epidemics.
The Law of the Few
The Law of the Few is one which describes the people who carry the infectious agent. Â Gladwell states that the success of an epidemic is heavily dependent on a small group of people who have a particular and rare set of social gifts. Â He splits these people into three categories:
Connectors
Connectors are people specialists, who usually promote characteristics of self-confidence, curiosity, sociability and energy. Â They draw people to them, and are good at maintaining a large network of weak-tie acquaintances. Â For this reason, they are well placed to transmit information from one group of people to another.
Mavens
Mavens are information specialists, who are driven by a willingness to help people. Â They are information brokers, with no particular agenda other than to distribute, and to collect more information. Â
Salesmen
Mavens might be information brokers, but they are not salesmen. Â Salesmen are persuaders, and only they can affect actual behaviour. Â They do this subconsciously through their voice patterns and body language.
These are the three groups of people that Gladwell believes are instrumental in creating an epidemic. Â
The Stickiness Factor
The Stickiness Factor says that simple changes in the structure or presentation of information can make a big difference to its level of impact, and that there are specific ways of making information memorable. Â People like to believe that it is the inherent quality of the idea that they are promoting that determines its level of impact when, in actual fact, the message is tipped by tinkering on the margin with the presentation of their ideas.Â
An excellent example is the childrenâs television programme, Sesame Street. Â The concept was first developed by television producer Joan Gantz Cooney in the 60âs, who wanted to use television to reduce illiteracy in disadvantaged pre-school-age children. Â The problem was that television was considered an ineffective learning tool due to the lack of engagement and interaction in watching it. Â But Cooney and her creative team beat the odds, drawing on techniques from advertising and Saturday morning television, and inviting celebrities to sing and dance in comedy sketches. Â
Sesame Street is the most academically scrutinised childrenâs TV show in history but, every time it has been tested, it has been proven to increase the reading and learning skills of its viewers. Â The team discovered that by making small but critical adjustments to the way the lessons were presented to the children, they could make television âstickyâ.
The Power of Context
The Power of Context implies that epidemics are sensitive to the conditions and circumstances of the times and places in which they occur, and that all behaviour is sensitive to environmental cues. Â The Rule of 150 demonstrates that the context of people can greatly affect human behaviour. Â This is the idea that the size of the neo-cortex in the brain is directly proportional to the number of strong-tie relationships that a species can maintain at any one time. Â For humans, this number is 150.Â
Gore, an outdoor clothing manufacturer, has integrated this concept into their organisational structure restricting the number of people working in any one office or factory to 150. Â The aim of this is to utilise the strength of peer pressure in improving efficiency, as because employees know all of their colleagues personally, they are more likely to maintain their role in the team effectively; more so than if they were just a number, working under an authoritarian boss.Â
Implications for business and entrepreneurship
The implications of Gladwellâs rules of epidemics for business are clear: if an entrepreneur can harness these concepts to their advantage, then they can turn their own product or idea into an epidemic.Â
This applies to commercial opportunities, where the rules of âstickinessâ could be utilised in pitching to investors or advertising to customers, and âthe law of the fewâ could be useful in understanding how âfadsâ spread from one group of consumers to another.Â
It is about understanding who the key people are, what makes information practical and personal to them, and understanding the environment within which they operate.
If you need someone to help pick out the key information from a report, a seminar or even a business meeting, just get in touch! [email protected]
Welcome to my sparkly new blog! I'm Yva and this is where Iâll be sharing my experiences as a âgradpreneurâ and the lessons I learn along the way. Â My business is a...
Well...hereâs the first dilemma; how to describe it? You only get one chance at a first impression, after all!
The theory behind a good âelevator speechâ
Describe the benefit to customer, before you even give your title or industry label, leaving the listener intrigued and begging for more information. Â
At this networking event, I was far too quick to say âI provide admin support to other businessesâ, which is a blunt statement, associating me with preconceived ideas of what an admin person does, and in danger of killing the conversation dead. This doesnât tell the listener how I can help them and their business, and doesnât communicate the ethos of Boost Business Support or me as a person.
My services benefit customers in three main ways:
They save people time
They relieve the burden of tasks that are fiddly or not enjoyable
They support growth, both personal and business
What I need is a short, snappy hook that gets those benefits across in a fun, memorable and intriguing wayâŠ
Quantify the benefits of your product or service to the customer. E.g. It's 75 megaflops faster/cheaper/lighter than the alternative. Â
This helps to make your claims defensible. So taking the benefits I have identified above, one quantifiable aspect is how much time I can save customers. To get an idea, according to the NatWest Quarterly Survey of Small Business in Britain, the average small business spends over 3 working days per month completing paperwork in order to comply with regulations. If this is only what is required by government, imagine how much time a business owner spends on administrative duties in total! And imagine if there was an alternativeâŠ
Another quantifiable aspect of what I do is price. The most obvious alternative to hiring a virtual assistant is hiring a temp, which often works out more expensive than hiring a VA, despite lower hourly rates.  I wonât delve into a worked example for comparison just now (find one here, from the Society of Virtual Assistants), but there are a few key variables: no overheads, no supervision, no training, no minimum hire, no red tape - only pay for what you need, exactly when you need it. Â
Define your target market.
This is so that the listener can judge whether your product or service is for them. Â If it's not, perhaps it will be in the future, or maybe it's for someone that they know.
There are lots of markets that I could tap into: academics, job seekers, students, writers, professionalsâŠbut I need to appear focused and committed to my customers. So I'll be concentrating on small business owners.
And all this needs to be delivered in 30 seconds or less, must sound natural and not like a sales pitch.
I need to be able to comfortably answer the question: âwhat do you do?â without sounding too rehearsed, with enough flexibility to answer questions from the listener, leaving space to listen back, and still get my message across.
Putting all that together, here's the result:
âWhat do you do?â
âIâm every small business ownerâs right-hand-man! I relieve managers of administrative burdens to save them time and hassle, which allows them to get on with what they do best and maximise their profit. Did you know that business owners spend the equivalent of over a month, every year, doing administrative tasks (at least!)? As their business grows, I can also provide them with tools and structure to support their growth, and I do it all with people and planet in mind.â
