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Five of the Best Online Project Management Tools
While it's possible to guide projects with nothing more than whiteboards and email, most complex projects require software to track all the moving parts. In a dynamic work environment, online and cloud-based tools offer the most flexibility for the cost. There are hundreds of applications to choose from, but these…
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Create a Custom AutoFill Series in Excel
Excerpted from QuickClicks Microsoft Excel 2016 Reference Guide You have a set of offices and sales regions, products and specific business time units (quarters, semi-annual) that you enter repeatedly. AutoFill would be helpful, but the default AutoFill lists do not contain these terms. What can you do? Create a customized…
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DOL Penalized for Overtime Violations (Video)
Lisa Smith discusses the Department of Labor being penalized for overtime violations in the video below. Transcript Wage and hour issues are a serious subject with the Department of Labor. No employer wants to be in a position to pay heavy fines and penalties because they violated overtime laws or…
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Spotlight Excel Formula: Convert Text to Numbers
Numbers stored as text can present problems for lookup formulas and regular calculations. There are a few ways to convert Text to Numbers in Excel using a formula. We’ll look at three separate scenarios and see how we can use a formula to make things work the way they should.…
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Create a 3-D Power Map in Excel
Microsoft’s latest release of Excel has some powerful updates. Our latest 2016 highlight is the popular Power Map add-in. This feature can plot geographic and temporal data on a globe or custom map in a three-dimensional presentation. You can view data changing over time and create animated presentations called “tours”.…
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Energizing and Engaging Your Audience: Four Questions for Effective Public Speaking
Like most activities, preparation is the key in public speaking. Here are four questions to ask when you are preparing a talk that can help you maximize your impact with any group. Who is my audience and what is the context? These are basic questions, but too often, presenters are…
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Public Speaking Anxiety?: It’s Just a Conversation
I was 26 years old and had just learned that my presentation was selected for a large conference. There would be 200 people in the audience, the organizers told me, "so, be prepared." I was so excited! As the sun rose the day of the presentation, my excitement changed to…
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Sweating Bullets!
A few years ago, the following conversation ensued between me and a colleague at work. Me: Hi Kate! I’ve not seen you in about a month. You must have been traveling. Kate: Yes, I was at three of our plant locations this past month. Me: Really! What were you doing?…
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Employee Retention: 3 Make or Break Factors (Video)
In this video blog, Lisa Smith discusses some employee retention strategies. Transcript Do you sometimes struggle with recruitment and retention issues in your organization? Well, if you do, I have a survey that you'll enjoy. Recently, the Society for Human Resource Management surveyed a variety of workers across the United…
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How to Create a Secondary Axis Excel Chart (AKA Dual Axis Chart)
If you have two data series that are related, but not comparable, it might be tough to chart it. For example, let’s say you have data representing the sales of products. You also have the production costs. When you subtract the production cost from the sales data, you get the…
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