Gemmy S. Allen is Management Coordinator and Faculty at North Lake College, Irving, TX of the Dallas County Community College District. She is the co-author of the textbook Management: Meeting and Exceeding Customer Expectations, published by Cengage. Her awards include being named Outstanding Mountain View College Faculty Member and receiving the Golden Oak Award, Oak Cliff Chamber of Commerce; the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development Excellence in Teaching Award; and the award for Mountain View College Innovator of the Year. She served as a member of Microsoft Mentors, the Microsoft/Compaq College Advisory Council and the St. Philip’s College Model Electronic Commerce Curriculum Advisory Committee and is founding teacher, Virtual College of Texas — “Internet Teachers at Every College.” In addition, she has co-authored several discipline-specific, Internet-related books, developed several online classes, made numerous presentations to industry, and has led workshops in the United States, Australia and Mexico.
The Dell End-User Security Survey (see attached) of 2,608 professionals who handle confidential data at companies with 250 or more employees found that “a staggering 72 percent of employees are willing to share sensitive, confidential or regulated company information.”
Unsafe practices included:
Opening e-mails from unknown senders at work “potentially opens the door for spear phishing attacks in which a cybercriminal seeks unauthorized access to sensitive information from a specific organization or individual by posing as a trusted source.”
The report says, “companies must focus on educating employees as well as enforcing policies and procedures that secure data wherever they go, without hindering productivity.” Then, Dell recommends companies “create simple, clear policies and ensure they outline steps for handling common scenarios that employees face.
Why is a simple, clear policy necessary for handling confidential company information?
Outline steps for employees connecting to public WiFi when handling company information.
Outline steps for employees using personal e-mail accounts for work.
How might employees keep from losing a company-issued device?
Have you thought about moving to get a job once you graduate?
Why are employees willing to move for a job?
How can managers and companies convince employees to relocate?
Larry Kim is the founder of WordStream, and wrote an article for Inc. listing the seven traits of a great leader.
What does it take to be a great leader?
Do you have all of these traits?
Which traits do you need to work on?
Jack Ma, Chinese billionaire, founded Alibaba group, a family of successful Internet-based businesses.
Top 10 Rules for Success
What do you know about Alibaba?
What kind of rejection did Jack Ma have to overcome? How did he overcome it?
What kind of rejection do managers have to overcome?
What kind of rejection have you had to overcome? How did you overcome it?
"It is imperative for anyone who strives to become a better visual communicator to familiarize themselves with the basics of color theory and how to choose the most effective color schemes for presentations, infographics and other visual content."
Before communicating, managers should consider which colors they will use. "While warm colors communicate energy, optimism and enthusiasm, cool colors send a message of dependability, professionalism and peace."
Choose a company. What are the colors used in its communications? What do those colors mean? How do those colors match the company?
Why should managers think about what colors mean before making a presentation?
What is your next presentation? What three colors will you choose for your PowerPoint background? Explain.
How can a manager create the best place to work?
How can a manager make an office a place where people actually want to be?
The above infographic gives seven tips for creating a great place for work. Which one(s) do you think are most important? Why?
In the interview above, Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg talks about the origins of the social networking giant.
Have you heard about Facebook? How would you describe it? In the interview, Zuckerberg describes it as, "Something where you can type someone's name and find out a bunch of information about them."
Dave Bailey says that there is an art to describing a product in one sentence and the format the description is: "You do X and Y happens." X is the input and Y is the output. Bailey says this makes the product easy to understand, easy to remember, and, most importantly, easy to talk about. What other products are described this way?
Do you have a Facebook account? If so, why did you join?
Why do people join Facebook?
Signs help us find our way. Wayfinding moves users between areas and helps them arrive safely at a destination. The infographic above gives a history of wayfinding, relevant regulations, and the four types of wayfinding signage.
Find an area at school or work that needs signage. What would you suggest and why?
Do you know your personality type? In the attached report, ENTJs supervised the largest average number of employees. Most entrepreneurs were ENTP.
What is your type? Do you lean more toward management or entrepreneurship?
All of us have a preferred style on each of the four dimensions of personality type:
• Extraversion vs. Introversion - one’s style of managing and replenishing personal energy• Sensing vs. Intuition - one’s style of gathering and processing information• Thinking vs. Feeling - one’s style of prioritizing personal values• Judging vs. Perceiving - one’s style of organizing and structuring daily life and work
Pricing consultant Casey Brown shares helpful stories and learnings that can help you better communicate your value and get paid for your excellence.
How can you define your value?
How can you communicate that value?
Mindflash has some on-boarding tips to help keep employee turnover rates down and on-boarding success rate high.
Why is onboarding important for employees?
What can a manager do to keep new hires from leaving their jobs within the first 45 days of employment?
No one likes to be evaluated. A survey by TINYpulse asked 100 employees and 100 managers, "What exactly is so terrible about performance reviews?" The answers included terrible timing, missing pieces, and not being fair.
How can a manager make a performance review more likable?