Takin' Care of Business

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Takin' Care of Business

Professional skills are becoming increasingly important in today's work world. Jon Buck shares his thoughts on how developing your professional skills can increase your workplace success.

Jon Buck is a Business Skills and Applications Educator atBenchmark Learning. His education philosophy is centered on using multiple learning styles to make material familiar and relevant to each student. Jon uses his training background in the government and private sectors to deliver effective training in management, human resources, communication, time management, customer service, team building and employee development. Jon is also an Adobe Certified Expert and teaches Captivate, Acrobat, FrameMaker, Photoshop, Dreamweaver and HTML/XHTML/CSS. Jon's past employers include the United States Air Force, where he trained more than 350 officers and enlisted members in established processes and procedures, and U.S. Bank, where he trained managers and trainers in presentation skills and Adobe technologies. He also specializes in video editing, sound editing and curriculum development. Jon spends his free time as the Program Director for Rosemount Youth Wrestling.

9 Ways To Handle Interruptions Like A Pro

3/16/2010 2:31:00 PM

Are you easily distracted? I bet you are. If I told you this link led to a list of funny pics of deranged kittens, you’d likely click through and quickly forget our conversation.

That won’t happen this time!

Interruptions do the most damage when we allow their appearance to affect us long after we’ve returned to our initial task. This can happen for a few reasons:

We treat any break in our work flow like ...

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Jon Buck

Business Skills
11 Simple Ways To Avoid Burnout

3/10/2010 11:24:00 AM

Are you exhausted, annoyed, and ready to throw in the towel on something that once made you leap out of bed with joy every morning? I know that feeling well. It’s one I suffered from often in the past and still encounter occasionally. It typically signals an impending burnout.

Not the type of burnout you get from dropping your 93 Honda Civic into 3rd gear at 6,000 rpm’s. The type of burnout that makes you ...

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Jon Buck

Business Skills
5 Types of Emails You Should be Automatically Filtering

3/2/2010 2:14:00 PM

How many emails do you have in your inbox right now? Are you an inbox zero freak like me? Or do you have emails piled up and unread that you’re hoping you’ll get time to get to?

I’m not judging – I used to have as messy an inbox as anyone. And even now, if I go on vacation or don’t check my email for too long, I can get in a heap of trouble: ...

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Jon Buck

Business Skills
9 Tools for Simple Productivity

2/23/2010 10:32:00 AM

Generally speaking, I wouldn’t call myself a minimalist. More accurately, I’m nothing even remotely close to a minimalist. I buy too many things, try too many things, love things bursting with features, and am a firm believer that more is more.

But the more I work, the more I realize that there’s enormous value in a tool that doesn’t do much, but excels at what it attempts to do. There’s no need for all the ...

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Jon Buck

business skills Collaboration Tools professional business skills communication professional development ITIL Project Management
Are You a Productive Person? Look at the Number of People Who Are Waiting On You to Get Back to Them

2/16/2010 9:41:00 AM

During the course of the average working day, we make a number of promises to get back to people. We make some of them verbally or in writing directly. At other times, we quietly make a personal promise to ourselves.

Many of us are resigned to what we believe is God’s cruel trick – not giving us enough hours in the day to respond to everyone. Others complain that they can never find the time....

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Jon Buck

Business Skills
Procrastination – NOT a Problem!

2/4/2010 10:51:00 AM

“I’m feeling guilty because I procrastinate too much”

A quick search on Twitter confirmed my hunch. There are a lot of people talking about procrastination, and the tweets I surveyed are filled with feelings of guilt, regret and remorse.

The word “procrastinate” is a heavy one, and I believe that people are trying to solve the problem the wrong way, leaving them with baggage that just won’t seem to go away no matter what they ...

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Jon Buck

Business Skills
9 Tips for Effective Networking

1/28/2010 11:13:00 AM

One of the most useful things you can do for personal and professional success is to network effectively. And as with most activities, there is a right way to network and a wrong way to network.

If you have the time, I recommend reading ‘Never Eat Alone’, which is the seminal work on networking and Ferrazzi has a talent for describing the most effective techniques of Networking in an easily understood and accessible way.

If ...

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Jon Buck

Business Skills
How to Create Practical Checklists

1/21/2010 10:22:00 AM

The humble checklist has been used for may years as a memory aid. Checklists help to ensure tasks are completed to the right quality and standards. The best example of a checklist is the daily “to do” list, a reminder of what needs to be accomplished this day. In some cases checklists are a literally a matter of life and death. The article “Checklist Reduces Deaths in Surgery” highlights the power of well designed checklists ...

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Jon Buck

Business Skills
Effective Meetings-Managing Meeting Problems

1/14/2010 9:52:00 AM

If you are called upon to chair meetings, you will doubtless encounter some common problems that occur when any group of people get together. While these problems are common, if they are left unmanaged, they will cause long term problems. Unmanaged meeting problems will result in wasted time, frustration, and a general dread of attending meetings in which these problems occur unchecked.

Before we discuss some strategies for addressing these common problems, one basic ...

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Jon Buck

Business Skills
New Study: How Communication Drives Performance

1/7/2010 9:17:00 AM

"Courage, innovation and discipline help drive company performance especially in tough economic times. Effective internal communications can keep employees engaged in the business and help companies retain key talent, provide consistent value to customers, and deliver superior financial performance to shareholders."
Watson Wyatt 2009

According to Watson Wyatt's newest communication survey for 2009/2010, companies that are effective communicators "have the courage to talk about what employees want to hear," "redefine the employment deal based on ...

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Jon Buck

Business Skills
How to Increase Your Leadership Effectiveness

12/30/2009 2:37:00 AM

Great leaders are not born. They are made—to a large extent, self-made—by following five simple steps, says Marshall Goldsmith

It's an age-old question: Are we influenced more by nature or nurture? Applied to leadership, the question becomes: Are great leaders born or made? It's one of the most frequently asked questions in leadership development.

Let's start with the definition of "leader." My good friend and mentor, Dr. Paul Hersey, defines leadership as "working with ...

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Jon Buck

Business Skills
Tips for Successful E-Newsletters

12/22/2009 2:09:00 AM

We are celebrating the fifth anniversary of Better Writing at Work, our monthly e-newsletter, or ezine. Based on my five years of experience, I share these tips for creating and writing electronic newsletters. Please share your tips too.

1. Be sure your content is practical, something your subscribers can use. Be honest: Readers can't use an announcement that you have expanded into a new territory or achieved a milestone. They can use tips, guidelines, checklists, ...

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Jon Buck

Business Skills
A Good Way to Change a Corporate Culture

12/17/2009 3:50:00 AM

"I'd like to talk to you about a big project," the woman told me on the phone. "We need to change our culture."

She was a senior leader in a professional services firm, where people really are their most important asset. Only it turns out the people weren't so happy. Theirs was a very successful firm with high revenues, great clients, and hard working employees. But employee satisfaction was abysmally low and turnover rates were ...

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Jon Buck

Business Skills
3 Different Approaches to Problem Solving

12/10/2009 10:43:00 AM

The owner of a Chicago business wanted to know exactly how tall his building was. He recruited two employees, one an Engineer from the Production Department and the other a Physics Doctorate from the company's QC Department. They were each given a $100 budget and told to find out the exact height of their building.

The Physics Doctorate used the money to purchase three stopwatches, a calculator, and several golf balls. He then asked some ...

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Jon Buck

Business Skills
10 Best Productivity Books of 2009

12/3/2009 1:13:00 AM

Granted, the year’s not done yet, but publishers start to slow down new releases right about now, so it’s not likely we’ll see another contender for “best of 2009” until January. Plus, Christmas is coming up, and I wanted to give you plenty of time to read some of these books before you give copies to your friends and relatives.

But really? It’s never the wrong time to recommend a list of great books.

These ...

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Jon Buck

Business Skills
Happy Thanksgiving + 12 Lists That Help You Get Things Done

11/24/2009 11:43:00 AM

I hope you all have a safe and happy Thanksgiving! Have a great time with family and friends eating, watching football and parades and relaxing. Perhaps you can use some of the lists below to help you keep your holidays organized and stree-free. Enjoy!

12 Lists That Help You Get Things Done

At the center of just about every personal productivity system are lists – GTD has it’s context lists, Pomodoro has it’s action inventory and daily ...

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Jon Buck

Business Skills
How To Resolve Office Conflicts In 3 Easy Steps

11/19/2009 2:49:00 AM

Not everything in life is smooth-sailing. The workplace, in particular, is a fine breeding nest for all sorts of problems ranging from the personal to the professional. It is for this reason that it is necessary to have proper conflict resolution techniques in the workplace.

Without these techniques, there would be chaos and instability in the group dynamics. Pretty soon, the whole team would just fall apart. However, having conflict resolution techniques in the workplace ...

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Jon Buck

Business Skills
Make Email Your Servant (Not Your Master)

11/12/2009 10:26:00 AM

Let’s be clear. Your email is not your work; it is simply a tool to help you do your work. But like any tool it can be ineffective or even dangerous when used wrongly. Here is how to make email your servant not your master.

1. Check your email inbox at set intervals. Do not have your email on and active in front of you all the time. For most people it is better to check ...

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Jon Buck

Business Skills
Getting Things (Re-)Started: Dealing with Mental Blocks

10/29/2009 1:31:00 PM

In any significantly big project, there are bound to be times when you lose the track of what you’re doing, when for whatever reason you stop moving forward and, what’s worse, can’t seem to find the motivation to get going again. When we “fall off the wagon” like that, a kind of psychological wall starts building up, making getting back in the swing of things seem more and more daunting. An ugly cycle develops: as ...

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Jon Buck
Top Ten Ways to Handle Email Overload

10/21/2009 2:05:00 PM

One of the biggest problems we face today is handling large quantities of information. Our technology and access to information is impressive but it’s a double-edged sword. It fills our minds and our lives with clutter.

The challenge is to sort, filter, organize, discard and assimilate the massive amounts of data we’re exposed to on a daily basis.

On an average day I receive over 150 emails—some days as many as 500. It’s easy to ...

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Jon Buck

Business Skills

business skills professional business skills professional development Business Writing Project Management

*The thoughts and opinions in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Benchmark Learning.

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