Recently, Maranda Gibson posted a great post here on the Accuconference Blog about music as inspiration to getting things done.  With her words in mind, I started up the ol’ iTunes and turned my thoughts to… well, coming up with thoughts. 

Being creative can be tough sometimes, and it’s often less tough in numbers.  This is where brainstorming comes in.  I found this list of 100 ways to be more creative, from the Idea Champions, and cherry-picked a few that go great with brainstorming and teleconferencing:

12. Invite your customers and vendors to brainstorming sessions – And why not?  After all, if you’re coming up with products for them, or a better work system, where better to get ideas and information from?  Using conference calling makes it easy for them to participate and respects their time.

51. Schedule time with the smartest people at work – It’s always good to surround yourself with good—and smart—people.  A lot of the time though, they’re putting their smarts to use elsewhere.  At the least, always invite the geniuses to your teleconferences.  If they join in, it could raise the quality of your brainstorming ideas.

71. Ask five people how they would improve your idea – A perfect adaption of this idea is to dial-out to five people about halfway through your brainstorming conference call, while your participants are taking a break.  Present to the Five the ideas you’ve come up with and get their fresh perspectives. 

87. Invite an outside facilitator to lead a brainstorming session – Again, with the worldwide availability of teleconferences, you have the power to have almost anyone as a speaker or participant.  How cool would it be to have William Shatner or Sean Connery as your facilitator?  (Assuming price was no object of course.)

These are my ideas based on the Idea Champions’s ideas.  What do you do to make your brainstorming sessions more creative?

I know, I know, how does one smile with a voice? Dismiss the sheer mechanics and physic failures of that sentence and think about the underlying meaning.  We all deal with customers on a daily basis and no matter what you do, who you are, or what your job title is, you still have people you have to deal with. 

Since you never know what opportunities are lurking around the corner, when faced with a situation that you could be dealing with your next client, that smile should always be in your voice.  Sure, we have all fallen victim to the bad day syndrome, where we just feel like we're going through the motions. How so we kick that feeling and get a smile back in our voices? Here are a couple of things we do in our office to get the smiles back:

-We have this board on the door to the office that we use to remind everyone of important calls that day.  When the call is over, it becomes a place to write down funny things we over hear in the office or some of the silly things that come out of our mouth when we're talking to customers. Right now, there's a message from the boss men telling us to be happy.

-Don't be afraid to take a break from your desk. Sometimes, when I need to get up and detach for a second, I'll just slip over to the window and look down at the cars. Sure, it's the same cars every day, but at least it's not my computer screens burning into my eyes.

-We laugh. Everyone here in the office gets along really well and we don't have a problem taking a break to tell funny stories about things our kids have done, things our spouses said, anything really.  That little bit of laughter helps you to decompress, even if just for a second, you can let loose. 

It's always been said that laughter is the best medicine. What are you doing to stay healthy?

How many purposes for a meeting are there?  Thousands probably.  What was the purpose for your last conference call?  Did you have a goal that needed to be accomplished?  Did you reach that goal?  So here's the "other hand," as much as got done, how many teleconferences have failed to meet the goal you set out for it?

Looking at the big picture, if you didn't reach your main goal, how effective was everything else that got covered during the meeting?  More important, how can you be more effective next time?  I read a post on WikiHow that answers just that very question.

Beginning with my favorite, (their fourth point), "Be clear about the purpose ..." For me, I call it the "end game."  In other words, how do I want things to be after it's all said and done?  Let's say the purpose of your next conference call is to educate the sales staff on a new product that should increase revenues by 20%.  And that's the end game: the sales staff increases revenue by 20% with the new product. 

To make that happen with your conference call, we look at WikiHow's other points:

• First, with your end game in mind, clarify and organize your ideas.  If it seems like too much, boil it all down to three main points for your presentation.  Build your presentation only with stories, facts, and ideas that support those points. 
• During the conference call, keep those points at the forefront to stay on-topic.  Be alert to deflect any question, statement, debate, or whatever that could divert the meeting from the end game.
• Then there is the excellent point number 8: Listen.  Yes, you are the one dispensing knowledge, but in listening, you can learn how much they are learning.  What points do you have to repeat?  Where is there a misunderstanding?  What, if anything, will keep you from reaching your end game?

So what is your word for "end game"?  If not mentioned above-or in the WikiHow article-how do you make sure to accomplish your conference call meeting goals?

Getting inspiration can be difficult. No matter what you're doing it always seems like there can be a road block.  For me, one of the hardest things that I do is writing.  Don't get me wrong, I love writing, and I'm pretty much doing it 95% of the time, both at work and at home.  There are times though, when you just get stuck. There's never been anyone in the world that hasn't experienced that. So, how to get through it?

Well, there are things that work differently for each person, but I have found that music is my inspiration. I have my iPod on me at all times. Different kinds of music can spark different kinds of reactions in you as you work, too. For me, if I have an idea that blindsides me and I need to get it out, it's usually something fast. I'll slow it down when it comes time to edit. 

I have a habit of going for the same song over and over again, for a while it was "Hysteria" by Muse, right now, it's All American Rejects. (In case you haven't noticed, I have a wide array of musical choices). I've seen more and more authors giving credit in their published works to the bands that they listened to while they composed their story. Blog writers have started to do this too, by tagging their posts with current music playing information.

I only get my musical suggestions from what's recommended to me, since I rarely listen to the radio, new music escapes me sometimes until someone asks me if I've heard this song. Music can be the thing that opens the doors to communication with a potential client or even a new friend.

Are you sharing your current musical choices with the people around you?

I've talked quite a bit before about web conference presentations, PowerPoint presentations, and even PowerPoint presentations for your web conferences.  We've looked at "Zen” presentations, using black slides, telling stories, and of course, the "Less is More” rule.

Well, I'd like to add to that illustrious list today with the help of a .pdf "ReThink!” PowerPoint presentation by Oliver Adria.  The link puts you at the beginning of his slideshow that demonstrates as it explains a newer, more interesting kind of presentation.  And following the eternal, Less is More, there are 76 .pdf pages, but they comprise at most 30 "slides.”

Adria breaks his presentation into three sections, Old Habits, One Message, and One Story.  For this post, we're going to concentrate on what he suggests to do with Old Habits… namely, dump them.

What does it mean to get rid of old PowerPoint habits?  It means abandoning rules like, 7 words for each line, 7 lines for each slide, and only display each slide for 40 seconds each.”  (Now, if you've been following this blog, you're allowed to feel smug that these rules haven't been your rules for a while.)

My favorite part is .pdf page 20 where it shows a PowerPoint slide template, then tells you to forget it.  I am not ashamed to admit that there was a time when I was a slave to that template.  So seeing a blank page as the suggested starting point felt good.  The trick now is what to do with that empty canvas.

One idea of course is to use Adria's theme which is to not have a theme.  His slides contain large fonts and small.  His words appear in the right corner, left, bottom, top, and basically anyplace but where they're expected.  Pictures are used, but only occasionally and sporadically, and I think this increases their impact.

Abandoning old habits is difficult, but at least with PowerPoint habits, starting with a blank slate is already exactly what you have to do.

Why didn't the team finish the project in time?  How did she accomplish so much in such a short meeting?  Both good and bad communication doesn't just happen, there are root causes underneath. 

I came across two articles that at first seemed to be polar opposites.  After reading them in depth however, I realized that both were about the underlying causes of effective or defective communication. 

The first article, from AllBusiness.com, studies the roots of poor communication because:  "Only by understanding the root cause can you effectively work to solve the underlying issue."

A very good point.  And the number one root cause?  Fear.  Fear of failing, fear of losing a position, fear of ridicule for a bad idea, these different manifestations can shut people's mouths, even when it's best-for them and/or the team or project-to speak up.

Confusion is another big producer of poor communication.  Who is in charge?  What role does each person have?  Where do I send my part of the project?  Confusion can take a highly-capable group of people and make them produce sub-par results.  At best, multiple solutions are conceived and developed.  At worst, you get cross-purpose actions clash and fail.

Fear can be allayed and confusion routed by good communication.  But what are the underlying principles of that?  From BNET.com, the Corner Office blog, I read four general, but solid principles to build your communication foundation:

• Be direct and concise – "Say what you mean and mean what you say."
• Be honest and genuine –People can tell if you're being genuine, even if it's only subconsciously.
• Be present and open – This is a bit Zen, but a more practical application would be to listen with your ears and mind.
• Be confident but measured – Stand by your views and statements, but remember that others have their own thoughts and views.  In other words, avoid putting your foot in your mouth.

"…it's customary now for professionals to lay BlackBerrys or iPhones on a conference table before a meeting—like gunfighters placing their Colt revolvers on the card tables in a saloon. 'It's a not-so-subtle way of signaling 'I'm connected. I'm busy. I'm important. And if this meeting doesn't hold my interest, I've got 10 other things I can do instead.''"

Do you have a computer that is always connected to the internet virtually anywhere, that is very close to a desktop replacement, that you can hold in your hand?  How we communicate, how we do business is changing… yet again.

Nothing used to stand out more at a business meeting than a laptop on a conference table open and ready, its owner typing and clicking away.  Not only was this a bit distracting, but you couldn't be sure if they were taking notes, returning an email, or playing solitaire.

With the coming of age of computers that are also mobile phones, not much has changed; it just got less noticeable.  But this isn't a bad thing.  Customers expect to be able to contact whoever, whenever.  Fortunes can be won or lost on the timing of an email reply.  And the speed of business these days makes it difficult to tuck-and-roll if you fall off.

And the possibilities!  Be on that conference call, but at the same time check the quarterly numbers, look up clients, browse their websites, view the latest TPS report, email action items, text the person running late, and twitter updates on your company's private account. 

And while you're doing all of that, make sure to flip back to the internet browser to see if anyone has indicated they have a question on the live-updating teleconference screen… because you are also running the call.

Did you have to call a customer service or technical support agent today? 

Did you thank them?

It seems like such a strange question but have you ever thought about it before? They really try to answer what question you might be having or what issue could be occurring. When you hang up the phone with them and they have solved your issue or answered your questions, thank them and tell them why.

I was thanked today by a client that I barely spent three minutes on the phone with. Their question was easy and they were in a hurry, and he was off the phone in a couple of minutes. When he hung up, he said, "Thanks, you were a big help." It's so small, but it's made me smile all day.

Sometimes the nicest thing can go a long way and just letting someone know that they are doing their job well can brighten their day. Think about that little surge in your chest when a client or a manager pulls you to the side and tells you what a stellar job you did closing the deal or that your presentation was great. You can ride on that for days. Customer/Tech support agents are no different and we like to hear that too.

Don't be afraid to ask for someone's supervisor to say something nice.  In our office, when that happens, it gets emailed out and passed around for everyone to see so that we can all get that little boost. Since most jobs are team efforts, we share our excitement and good comments with the whole office.

A little bit of kindness goes a long way so telling the person who helped you today, "Thanks a lot, you were a big help" can be the thing that makes them smile and put a little extra pep in their step.