Check list for return to work interview for member of staff that has has been off for stress

Hope I never need to use this but could be a useful check list for preparation should the need ever arise:

Check list for conducting return to work interview for member of staff that has been off for stress

Body language - power posturing and consciously using your body to change how you feel

TED talk by Amy Cuddy - your body language changes who you really are

Creating a true profession - people, purpose and potential

Attended a professional association cross sector networking event at the University of Brighton, hosted by the Chartered Institute of Management.  Speaker was Simon Bowen, CMI director who was both entertaining and informative.

Key points:

• UK employees rating their managers: 
• 21% highly effective
• 36% effective
• 43% ineffective or highly ineffective
• UK productivity is 21% less than rest of G7
• OECD quote 'management and leadership no 1 factor in total productivity gap'
• Only 1 in 5 managers is trained
• In rapidly growing organisations, 68% of managers have high trust in leaders
• Among those in decline, only 15% fully trust their leaders
• Management 2020, enquiry how management and leadership in the UK will need to change by 2020 to deliver sustainable economic growth available here.
• Session conclusion: Great management in 5 easy steps
• Stop excluding, start including
• Stop controlling, start coaching
• Stop confusing, start clarifying
• Stop resisting change, start embracing it
• Stop competing, start collaborating

Evidence of attendance.

Accounting for Extraordinary times

CPD webinar with:

• CIMA president Andrew Miskin, 
• Dominic Barton, Global MD of McKinsey, 
• Helena Morrisey, 
• CEO Newton Investment Mngt and 
• Barry Melancon, President and CEO of AICPA.

A diverse Q&A session for 1.5 hours.

Presentation tips

Presentation tips

Valuing talent

A whole suite of information and tools about valuing talent, including case studies.  Source CIMA.

The case for daily reviews

Increasingly regular fortnightly 121s and daily retros have increased my daily reflection.  This article from CGMA makes the case even better.

Preventing and detecting payroll fraud

Some good ideas from CGMA on detecting and preventing payroll fraud.

Making change happen

A 1 day CIMA course in Crawley

Agenda

My mind maps of the useful points from the speeches (note there are multiple tabs) - open access but it may be necessary to set up a free Lucid Charts account.

Handouts (access to this is restricted due to copyright).

Why your boss is more important than your job title and useful interview questions

Thought provoking article with some interview tips.

Shortcuts and shortcuts to shortcuts

Lessons learned from thinking about shortcuts this week:

1. Breevy is an app for PCs that allows creation of shortcuts.  The more you think about it the more exciting this gets: names, email addresses, jumping to directories, whole paragraphs can all be created.
   
   I started off with a shortcut system that started with semicolons and ending with a space but have now moved to one starting with real letters and ending with double dots.  This gives me slightly longer to remember I have a shortcut for the word and gives me the option of adding an S a the end for a plural.
2. Breevy can be made to sync with Dropbox (banned at some work places) and is limited to PCs.  Text Expander is another option, works for Ipad and Macs (not tested by me) and has a beta for PCs.  This looks good for synchronisation but costs US$40 a year.
3. Ipads have settings/general/text replacement which is basic but does the trick.

Thought about backing up Windows favourites:

1. Right click favorites (in Windows Explorer)
2. Open in a new window
3. Select all with the mouse
4. Copy
5. Create a new directory in backup destination
6. Paste

Notes from podcast: Simplicity in Computing by Brett Kelly

Focus area: making messaging more efficient

Actions

Turn off Linked in notifications

Check if Spam Sieve could be added to my email system

Think about quick responses to emails - extend use of Breevy

Use text expander for iPad (like Breevy)

Use Breevy for addresses and email addresses

Start shortcuts with single dot or end with double dot

Create structure for shortcuts

Shortcuts for Evernote tags 

Email gate?  If not known sender gets them to type code

Consider out of office that says 'will not be read, pls resend when I get back if still an issue'

Things to look at one day

Sane box (mail client)

Mail mate (mail client)  - Evaluates mail and learns

Spam sieve - Works on user defined rules

Tweetbot- allows muting

TM1 refresher

Had a TM1 refresher with David Bonser, TM1 Developer.  Lots of useful tips and some good ideas about designing future slices in a way that will reduce system requirements, by hard coding semi-fixed variables.

Excel tables

Useful article about Excel tables - including their drawbacks

Economics briefing 4 Aug 2016

Mindmap of HSBC economics briefing with Amanda Murphy, Head of UK Corporate Banking and Mark Berrisford-Smith, Head of Economics for HSBC UK Commercial Banking.

Enhanced aspects of Excel

Attended presentation by  Kate Watson for CIMA on enhanced aspects of Excel.

Good refresher on lookups, match. index, pivot tables with slicer etc.

Key points for me to follow up:

1. Using calculated field in pivot tables
2. Think more about using Indirect(cell name) and in that cell have a dynamic name that refers to a range of cells.  This could be really useful for data validation where second choice is dependent on first choice.
3. Power pivots (not covered but sounds like can be used to connect multiple data sources)

Kate said she would send out links to materials which I will link here when they arrive.

Process Excellence

Mindmap from Process Excellence BPP online course 2 Sep 16.  Note there are multiple tabs, one includes into to 6 Sigma.

Economic briefing 27 Jul 16 HSBC

Mind map from HSBC economics briefing 27 Jul 2016.  Key point seems to be it is still too early to interpret the post Brexit economic indicators.

Economic briefing 20 Jul 16 HSBC

Mind map of notes from webcast.

BPMN Business Process Modeling Notation

A useful summary/introduction to BPMN useful for anyone creating process maps: Lucid charts

The link is provided by Lucid Charts who provide cloud based diagram software.  It's really good for process maps and mind maps.

Economic briefing 11 Jul 16 HSBC

Mind map of notes from web cast

Effective apologies: handy for reference for when it all goes wrong

Article containing a handy check list based on research from Negotiation and Conflict Management Research journal.

What's new in Excel 2016 for Windows - Excel

Lots of new toys here.  IFS looks especially useful.  What's new in Excel 2016 for Windows - Excel:



'via Blog this'

Useful article for brushing up on Excel sums and sumifs

The reminder about being able to use wildcards in sumifs became useful within a week of reading the article.  http://itsnotaboutthecell.com/2016/02/16/500-days-of-sumsumifs/

Using Excel to rank excluding duplicates

Purpose: when there is a field containing text values, with some blanks, rank the values but exclude duplicates and blanks.

Link to example spreadsheet

Passing off

Brushed up on Passing off  (thanks Wikipedia): "The law of passing off prevents one trader from misrepresenting goods or services as being the goods and services of another, and also prevents a trader from holding out his or her goods or services as having some association or connection with another when this is not true."

Using block chain for security

This link is to a UK government produced 5 minute briefing about block chain (as used by Bitcoin) with some ideas how this could be used for other secure applications.  Think medical records, land registry but also of course, financial accounts.  The impact apparently could be bigger than the Internet.  Definitely something to research further.

Book review: The Checklist Manifesto - how to get things right, Atul Gawande

Summary
An easy holiday read with a serious message: check lists work- they let you concentrate on the skilled work without forgetting the routine tasks.

Atul Gawande is a surgeon who was tasked by the Wold Health Organisation (WHO) to find a way to dramatically improve medical safety with a very small budget.  The Checklist Manifesto follows his story making and improving check lists with interesting case studies from aviation, construction and investment as well as medicine.

The result?
Trials in 8 hospitals (four in rich countries) showed a 47% reduction in deaths and 36% reduction in major complications.

Is this transferable?
It certainly is.  There are 2 types of lists: those where you think you have completed the tasks, you pause with your team and check before continuing, and those where you work down the list - read then do.  I have found check list invaluable from everything from month end procedures to what kit to take sailing.  My experience (and the conclusion of the book) is that even though you may know a subject inside out, the list is vital since in concentrating on fixing problems, we can often miss routine steps without the discipline of a check list.  Big extra bonus - the results of the trial also showed a strong improvement in team cohesion.

Worth the read?
Yes.  193 pages.