In some companies, there are never any “problems,” just “challenges” or “opportunities.” But what do you do when faced with an insurmountable opportunity?

It could be a infeasible technology project, a marketing campaign with an impossible schedule-it doesn’t really matter. What do you do when you’ve been handed a project that you’re sure can’t be done? Most people respond with fear, wondering how they are going to escape blame for the inevitable failure. But you have a choice. You can instead decide it really is an opportunity. An opportunity to change the way your company does business.

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Everybody wants to succeed. Success, though, rarely comes easy. Nor does it happen overnight.

We often hear about overnight success stories, certain companies or individuals thrown into the limelight, having made millions from something or another. What we fail to realize, or rather the people calling them an “overnight success” fail to realize, is that there is usually a pretty substantial history building up to that success. Long hours, lots of money invested, family, goals or desires sacrificed, etc.

Sure, that “overnight” success might have come from an abnormal popularity surge, but that surge stemmed from a lot of hard work that few every truly understand.

So what helps bring success to any individual or company. Here are a few steps that, if followed, won’t guarantee success, but will position you better to achieve it.
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Creating a great office environment isn’t the sole responsibility of the PIC - person in charge.

While the business owner, managers and/or supervisors certainly have an effect based on their style of management, they are only half the the total equation. The other half are the employees themselves.

I recently came across several points outlining how to be happy. I realized that these can easily be applied to the work environment from an employee’s perspective. I fully believe that every person is solely responsible for their own happiness. Life is not about what happens but what you do with what happens. Similarly, working in a happy and productive (both in terms work completed and personal development) is, in part, each person’s own responsibility. Here are a few pointers to maintain a productive environment where you work.

See work as a gift, not punishment

This is every business owner’s dream: to have employees that see work as an opportunity rather than a requirement. I’ve always made it a point to create an environment where employees don’t dread coming to work on Mondays. But I also realize that I don’t have the sole power to do this. Each employee has to have the right motivation and the right mindset.

Coming to work with a negative attitude not only makes your day worse, but it creates a negative environment for everybody else. If work is seen as something you get to do rather than something you have to do, you can actually start enjoying what you do. This gives you greater enjoyment while producing better results that get you recognized for your contribution.

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If you are involved in employee communication then you already know that one of the most important aspects of employee communication today is measurement.

But so much of that measurement is focused on whether employees access the tools organizations use to communicate with them. You know, questions such as do they read the newsletter, do they access the corporate blog, do they find the information sessions interesting. None of these questions prove that your employee communication tools measure engagement which is what every CEO wants to know. There is one key reason; you are measuring the acceptance of communication tools, not measuring employee communication strategy. So here’s what you do.

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Negativity in the work place can be like a bad virus. When working with a small team, it’s important that you nip negativity in the bud as early as possible.

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A series of articles and posts caught my eye tonight. First I read Mike Murphy’s article on Meeting the Needs of Customer 2.0: Intelligence All Around (DM Review).

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Web 2.0 sites, technologies and communities crop up on a seemingly daily basis. It can get overwhelming to be a marketer in the trenches.

“What’s the bare minimum of Web 2.0 stuff that deserves my time and attention?” seems like the million-dollar, coping question. Many want to add only the so-called essential, proven nextnewshiny to their bag of tricks. Even then they do it begrudgingly because, well, change sucks.

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How frustrated are you when you have to reboot your PC in the middle of the day? A full shutdown and reboot cycle can take a several minutes - instead of staring at your screen watching the icons flicker to life, the hourglass grind away, etc., why not capture a few minutes of productivity?

You’ll spend less time thinking evil thoughts about Bill Gates, and you’ll get a mood boost from being productive!

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Scott Thurm recently wrote a piece in the WSJ Marketplace section - Now, It’s Business By Data, but Numbers Still Can’t Tell Future.

He talked about the growing trend of trying to run companies more analytically, more “by the numbers”, and the success some of those companies have had with this approach including those profiled in Tom Davenport’s book “Competing on Analytics” (reviewed here). He quoted Robert Sutton (one of the authors of Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense, reviewed here) who contrasted running a business by the numbers with running it based on “faith, fear, superstition and mindless imitation”! However, Scott then goes on to identify two key risks inherent in an analytic or data-driven approach.

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Project Management is essential for complex tasks. So how do you know when it becomes a Project? It’s not always easy to decide.

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