I found quite a lot to think about in this TED video. From thinking about how we view the world by the lens we choose to view it with, be it media, news, who we spend our time with, etc. to rethinking the relationship between being productive and being happy. Could we have it backwards? Instead of basing our happiness on meeting goals, are we more likely to meet our goals when we start out happy, with a grateful and joyful attitude? Lastly, can we train ourselves to be extraordinary instead of average by embracing happiness and ignoring “normal”? Personally, I’m going to give Shawn’s advice some serious thought.

My wife has written an interesting perspective on the huge waste of time that is created when a job description is vague and doesn’t really identify the job you might be applying for.

It struck a chord with me not only from previous job searches, but also from things I’ve seen and heard in both the technology and legal industries. (Especially in the legal technology area!) It seems all too common for there to either be “formal” job descriptions, that describe the job as it was done the last time someone in HR got on the everyone needs a formal job description bus, no matter how many years ago that was, or something thrown together at the last minute by people who have never done the job they are now advertising for.

The latter situation comes about because of a pure lack of planning. Someone resigns and everyone is caught by surprise. There’s no succession plan, no cross-training has been done, and there’s no clear immediate steps identified for replacing that person. It usually takes longer than the two weeks notice to even make any sort of decision about hiring a replacement, therefore there’s no input on what to look for from the person who has actually been doing the job.

On the other hand, the former situation comes about because there was, at one time, an attempt to develop succession plans, and identify the steps necessary to assure work continues to get done in the interim, but those plans have not been updated in years. Things change, quickly, in any technology area. New tools are brought in, roles change, staff members assume new responsibilities, etc. Dusting off the years old descriptions is not going to give you a clear understanding of the skills you are currently looking for.

In both situations, you wind up reviewing resumes and maybe even interviewing a lot of people who aren’t good fits at all for the job you currently need to fill.Wasting your time, and theirs.

A.k.a:  “Things you can do when you work at home, that you can’t do in a cubicle.”

Such as take a few minutes and get some aerobic exercise when things are slow, or when you’re waiting for data to process/load/index. When you work in a cube, your coworkers might not appreciate that.

Thanks to Amy Bowser-Rollins for letting me be one of the case studies on her Litigation Support Guru site. It was sort of fun to think about my answers and get them written, hopefully they provide some insight for someone!

This is where I work almost 40% of my work hours, in my new home office. I don’t believe I’ve mentioned anywhere on the blog that particular change in my position. Basically, I spend about 5 hours at the office each day, drive home on my “lunch” hour and spend the evening hours (the hours where I’m supporting our West Coast offices until 5PM their time) working from home. The schedule allows me to have a quick dinner with my wife when I get home, at a somewhat normal dinner time, then retreat to the office to get back to work, and then already be home when my work day ends.

As with everything else involved with this schedule, this does provide some interesting challenges. First and foremost was creating a good work environment within our house. I think we’ve accomplished that.  It’s comfortable, but also in it’s own space within the house, away from the temptations of home. So far, it’s working out well.

I’m sure, as I go forward, I’ll be blogging about some of the other challenges, especially about how working in a centralized location, for a firm with offices all over the country, and then on top of that, not being in the office a significant portion of the day, presents challenges with building an internal network. I’d be interested in hearing any ideas for handling that challenge. If you’ve been in a similar situation, please leave a comment. Or, if you have any advice for a part time, first time, telecommuter, feel free to leave a comment too. I’m always open to suggestions!

Interesting food for thought from Forbes the other day, that has drawn quite a bit of attention around the online world. What Prospective Employers Hope to See in Your Facebook Account.

The chart displaying the reasons candidates were rejected has obviously gotten the most attention, but the other chart, about what they saw on a social networking profile that made them hire someone is probably more worth looking at.

The interesting thing on the reasons candidates were rejected graph, to me, was the 11% rejected due to their profiles demonstrating poor communication skills. That’s not something we really tend to think about, we tend to focus more on the wildly inappropriate photos, or comments, but it does make sense. If your resume touts your brilliant writing skills, and yet you are constantly using poor grammar in your posts, don’t seem to know the difference between “there”, “their” and “they’re”, or simply can’t seem to put together a coherent sentence on your FB profile, should they believe your resume, or what you write every day? There’s nothing quite like the frustration of working with someone who cannot communicate well, and there’s nothing quite as embarrassing to an organization than an employee who cannot write professionally. Giving employers evidence that you might just be a poor, unprofessional communicator, gives them a reason to look for another candidate. In this economy, it only takes one reason to rule you out of the pile of potential hires.

On the flip side, we see that the things that employers like to see on your profile are things like good communication skills, creativity, a bit of personality, etc. Obviously, if you take the time to cultivate a more professional image on your social networks, it helps show off the skills your resume is bragging about.

In my experience, nothing says you are passionate about your field like using social networking to both learn more about, and share your own knowledge, of that field. Even more, if you are sharing information about your field, and writing about your field, prospective employers have a whole catalog of writing samples to show them just how well you can communicate in writing, about the exact topics you would be communicating about in the position. That’s not a bad thing to have out there.

Just a little something to think about the next time you post something to Twitter or Facebook, good writing matters.

I was tuned in to a webinar yesterday by the Cowen Group when one of the speakers talked about the need for a deep bench in Litigation Support. Being a sports fan, I instantly understood exactly what she was saying.

Her point was that the firm’s clients experience and expertise when it comes to e-discovery, is going to be all over the place. Some will be very sophisticated, and have well-defined processes that marry quite well with the firms internal processes. Others will be completely clueless, and whatever process they hack together may require a lot of flexibility in your internal processes. It’s important to have a staff with the capabilities to handle any and all of these situations. That means having people who can directly interface with clients, with the lawyers, and with the IT folks. It means having folks who can handle the back-end technology to take whatever it is a firm gets from a client,  opposing counsel, or a third party, and get it into a form that the firm’s attorneys can review.

Much like a sports team, having a deep bench doesn’t mean that you will win every game. It does mean that you’ll be better prepared to handle adversity, and uncommon situations, which will mean you’ll win more often than teams without that deep bench, though!

That got me thinking though, about all the time I spent in my career as the only IT guy, or the only Lit Support person in a firm, etc. Obviously, in that case, you aren’t talking about having a deep bench in terms of the number of staff members, but you still need a deep bench of knowledge and skills to reach in to from time to time. That means not only being adept with the technology, but with written and verbal communication skills, training skills, professionalism, critical thinking and many other skills.

The other thing you need is a deep bench of resources, be they reference materials, websites, blogs, peer networks, online social networks, etc. If you can’t have a deep bench of people, you’d better have a wealth of resources you can tap in to when you need them! That’s why blogging, and eventually social networking, have always appealed to me. I can’t know everything. I don’t have the time to research everything on my own. I can’t read every article about my field that is published. But I can be connected to people who become my deep bench. They are sharing information about ediscovery, technology, productivity, speaking tips, etc. and we’re all building our own knowledge and skills as we go along.

That sure beats not having anywhere to turn when you need some help from the bench!

Some interesting observations from a new survey focusing on IT and Social Network usage within larger businesses, but one bit in the article really jumped out at me.

End users gave many reasons for doing an end-run around their IT departments: IT is too slow, they have little confidence in the department’s problem-solving abilities, they felt more comfortable working with people they knew. (Emphasis added)

There are real risks to being nameless and faceless within your own organization, as we’ve discussed before. If you’re in an IT support role, one of those risks is end users hitting up their social networks for assistance, instead of you.

On the flip side of this, your end-users have options other than working directly within the IT framework. You may think they are doing things using the tools you’ve provided, and within the constraints you’ve put in place just because you don’t support other options. Don’t think for a second that savvy end users can’t work around that, and use the information available to them online for the support you won’t provide.

The world has changed, people can and will work around their IT departments if they have to, and how safe will job be if they feel the need to do so more and more frequently?

This is a story about something that I experienced at the ILTA conference, but really isn’t related to the conference, it’s just an observation.

I wasn’t staying at the Opryland hotel, the conference bank of rooms was sold out, so I found myself staying at the Radisson and shuttling over to the Opryland each morning. Normally, when I travel, I try and remember each day to leave a tip for the housekeeping staff that cleans up after me, but during a busy week like this one, it can and does sometime slip my mind. Luckily, I did remember the first morning of the conference this time. I also remembered every other day as well, for one simple reason.

The housekeeper left a thank you note, and signed it with her name.

Now, my wife tells me this is a Southern thing, but I’ve stayed in hotels in the South before (though maybe not as classy as this one), and this is the first time I’ve seen this. Either way, each morning it wasn’t a matter of remembering to leave a tip for the housekeeping staff anymore, it was whether I remembered to leave a tip for Gissel. There’s a huge difference in perception when it’s a real, live person who’s name you know as opposed to the “black box” that magically cleans the room each day.

Granted, I never actually saw Gissel, and couldn’t begin to pick her out of a crowd, but she became a human being by virtue of those notes, and that changed my perception of how important it was to treat her as such.

Think about how this applies to your own career, especially if you work in a black-box type of environment. It’s easy to mistreat the people in an organization who aren’t real people to you. It’s quite different to yell about the incompetent IT people when you know who they are. People who know your name, and who you are, generally are easier to work with.

Something to keep in mind, not to mention the importance of thank you notes.

I was reading Doug Cornelius post about Compliance Lessons from the Tour de France, well, because I enjoy the Tour, and had to see what sort of compliance lesson was being learned.

I’ll let you go read it yourself rather than try to rephrase Doug’s point, but the last paragraph of his post really jumped out at me.

A rule was broken by almost half the participants but there was no meaningful discipline. How would that work inside your company? If the rule is being broken by that many people, maybe it’s a bad rule?

Let that sink in for a little while. Doug, naturally, is talking about his area of expertise, but the implications are the same for IT security, social networking policies, etc. If half the people who work for you are breaking the rule, maybe it’s time to consider whether the rule has any purpose. Especially if they are actually having to break the rules to do their job more efficiently. If half the people in an organization are routing around an IT policy, the policy is a problem, not a solution.