"Where's my unread mail folder gone?"
The biggest problem for most is that though proprietory packages such as this are supposed to make it easier and quicker to get work done, there is always a reluctance in many office environments to change to a new way of working, often causing friction between the office worker and their IT dept, the former of the opinion "It wasn't broken - why have you fixed it?", and the latter "We did it to improve workflow".
The now irritated IT guys have become frustrated with the stubborn and unwilling-to-adapt blue-collar, responding with more-and-more patronising responses: "LMGTFY", or "It's all there in the help file, press F1...".
The equally-as-frustrated, hard-working office professional (who already has a pile of work to get through), faces having to almost completely change their routine because that small but turned-out-to-be very important function they used every moment of every day has disappeared! "Have those do-gooder busy-bodies in IT got nothing better to do than disrupting my already stressful work day?!"
Let's break this down:
"If it ain't broke - don't fix it"
While this holds true for many situations, we often don't realise that in actual fact a small change in how we do things can massively improve performance.
One day I noticed a colleague (let's call him Bob) was having a very stressful time. Bob was heavily bogged down with work and his usual chirpy demeanour had been replaced with one of a short-temper. Things were ticking over nicely in my department so I offered to help. Bob asked if I could fill out some spreadsheets for him, and proceeded to show me how he did it:
Bob: "It's really easy but there's lots of it"
Me: "Yeah no worries, I'll do what I can"
"There're 5 columns, in the first goes the minimum price, in the last the highest"
"Ok..."
"The middle columns are equal increments between these values, so what I do is I take my pocket calculator..."
Me: " .........! "
Now, Bob is a really bright guy, he's good at maths, and works hard.
He honestly thought this was the quickest and easiest method to getting the task done, so it never came up as an issue. He had no idea just how powerful Spreadsheet programs are, to him it was just a big old form to fill out.
Minutes later, after popping a few simple formulae into the spreadsheet, his mammoth tasks had reduced from 20 minutes per sheet to mere seconds!
So Bob is now much happier, for the first time in a long time going for a full 1 hour lunch break after clearing his entire back-log, I'm happy because I can go back to my desk without any extra workload, and the general karma in the office is that much better.
"If it ain't broke..." - are you absolutely sure it isn't?
(Of course now that Bob has had this carrot dangled in front of him he now has daily questions based around making things easier - guess who he bothers with those! ... Which leads me to: )
"LMGTFY","JFGI" ...
Now, people really don't like being patronised. Why should they? All of a sudden they've sat down at their desk one morning to find they can't just click on this button and double click that, scale this window and get on with their day - things just aren't where they used to be!
I mentioned at the start of this blog the client who had lost her unread mailbox.
Well, recently their company had asked us to assess their systems and suggest some improvements. One of them included upgrading Microsoft(r) Office to one which would be compatible with the new cloud (Office 365) platform for their email and document stores.
For those who don't know, Microsoft Outlook 2010 is considerably different to the old 2003 and older. It's got a hugely different look and feel to it. One of those changes is, by default, there isn't an 'unread' option down the left hand side. It seems we have now been told by the bods at Microsoft that we now have to look at our inbox, and scroll to the next email in the list with bold text.
"This is the new way to handle your ever-exponentially-growing list of incoming emails and you're stuck with it, OK!?"
"Well, actually no, we're not 'OK' with it!" screams the hard working employee who did nothing to deserve being told their routine has been scratched.
And the truth is, we don't have to. It's not a case of like-it-or-lump-it from Microsoft, or any proprietary software company. Improvements are always being made to systems, not to cause annoyance but to try to improve how we work.
A golden rule to upgrading software: If you're going to change it, make sure it's for the better, and if there's something you're going to get rid of, make damn sure it's not considered useful by anyone.
And in this case, Microsoft followed that rule. It may not be there by default any more, but you can put it back.
They've made it a part of a nice little tool called 'Search Folders', sitting there down the left hand side at the bottom, just below 'RSS feeds'. All you need to do is right click it, choose 'New Search Folder', and there at the top is 'Unread mail'. choose it, click OK and you're done, the 'filter' folder appears inside the search folders list. Maybe it's a bit unusable there, so drag it to the top, above that dotted line where your favourites are.
Now that wasn't so hard, was it? Actually, I didn't know about it! It had never bothered me because I didn't use my email client in that way. But a quick Google and hey presto, there's my answer. Every day's a school day.
So why didn't the client Google it and quit wasting my time?
- Because they don't have to - their tech guys are a speed dial button away (why have a monkey and grind the organ yourself?!)
- It can sometimes be difficult for people to articulate what they are looking for, and often when you Google you need to keep revising what keywords you're searching for, which can be time consuming.
- Or it may simply have not occurred to them that Googling it may have the answer!
So, if you're an IT pro, a Spreadsheet guru or a graphic design God, and people come to you with questions or peeves about how the new software doesn't work like the old, just remember, they're out of their routine and out of their comfort zone. Is it really such a big deal to show them a solution?
And if you're in a situation where your working life's been turned upside down because the powers that be want to keep their company up with the times, try to see if the new way actually is better, and if not, don't be afraid to ask about how a new method could achieve the same, or better, results.
