Management Lessons From Our Elementary School Days

Think back for a moment to your elementary school days. Chances are, some of your best memories revolve around celebrations. Whether celebrating a classmate's birthday, a favorite holiday, an accomplishment for the class, or even the 100th day of school, everyday celebrations are an essential part of many elementary school classrooms.

Why are these types of celebrations so popular?

For one thing, they offer everyone, including the teacher, a bit of a mental break from the daily grind. When people return from a break, they're ready to sit down and work some more. Without a break, it's easy to get burned out.

Secondly, they help to keep the atmosphere happy and joyful in the classroom. Everyone functions better when they work in a positive atmosphere.

And finally, they offer the teacher and classmates the chance to recognize the accomplishments of the group as a whole, as well as those of individual students. When students know their efforts are recognized, the motivation to continue to perform and earn more rewards is strengthened.

While most working adults are far removed from elementary school, that doesn't mean these basic lessons learned in childhood no longer apply.

What business leaders today can learn from their elementary school teachers

Elementary school teachers understand that the best way to keep people motivated is to celebrate their accomplishments. When you find ways to congratulate people or teams who meet particular goals at your organization, you'll also be encouraging them to continue to strive and accomplish more. Employees who feel as though their accomplishments and efforts are recognized are more likely to feel satisfaction at the workplace and trust that their efforts contribute to company success.

How businesses can create the environment on an adult scale

Working to keep the atmosphere light and pleasant can also contribute to a positive work environment. While most professional environments wouldn't be able function with parties every week, there are plenty of other ways to encourage a positive workplace. Cards, token gifts, bonuses, announcements of accomplishments at meetings, and similar strategies can all help employees feel appreciated. Even personal notes from management will let employees know their leaders notice the efforts of everyone below them. Save the parties for more memorable occasions, such as the holiday season.

Employees who feel appreciated have greater company loyalty. Loyal employees tend to be fantastic company evangelists, while also contributing to the stability of the company. The result is a stronger company that can move forward more effectively. Loyal employees tend to speak positively about the brand to their friends and family, as well as online. Creating a positive company environment will help to make the entire company a welcoming place for employees and customers.

When companies have specific goals in mind, it's tempting to just expect everyone to put their noses down and work. In reality, companies that work to create a rewarding atmosphere where employees feel happy and content are likely to accomplish greater things and have employees who feel more loyal and appreciated by management. How happy an employee feels can have an incredible impact on their productivity. So take the time to foster happy employees, and get started building your company today.

Posted by Chuck Gherman

To contact Chuck Gherman for more information about how Printing Arts Press helps organizations with their Human Resource needs through print communications please visit www.printingartspress.com.

Outside the (Paper) Box: Creative, Innovative Uses for Paper

Chances are, you already know how indispensable paper is to marketing and business. But did you know that paper can -- literally -- save lives?

Around the world, some very bright, creative people are coming up with some very innovative uses for paper that truly represent "outside the box" thinking. Here are a few of our favorite paper inventions that have the power to change the world for the better.

Origami Microscope

When you hear the word "origami," your mind probably imagines cranes, paper airplanes, and funny pointed hats. But Stanford University professor Manu Prakash and his team of researchers have taken this folded paper art to a whole new level with the Foldscope .

This ground-breaking invention consists of a flat sheet of paper, an LED, a watch battery, and a few tiny optical units that can be folded together -- just like origami -- to create a functioning microscope. This portable microscope offers a number of benefits, especially for medical personnel in developing countries. For starters, it's easy to assemble, as it consists of just a few parts. The foldable design itself is printed directly onto a sheet of paper.

Plus, it's lightweight. The microscope's optical devices are about the size of a grain of sand -- so it's easy to move from one spot to another and simple to store or take into the field. The Foldscope is inexpensive, costing from $.50 to $1 to manufacture, yet powerful, with the ability to magnify objects up to 2,000 times and to project images onto almost any flat surface.

Best of all, the Foldscope provides healthcare workers with a cheap, simple, and effective way to diagnose diseases such as malaria, improving the lives of those in developing countries.

Drinkable Books

In many parts of the world, safe, drinkable water isn't readily available; diseases related to contaminated water lead to more than 3 million deaths each year. Many of these deaths could be prevented if people had access to filters -- and knowledge -- about water safety issues.

That's where Water is Life comes in. This non-profit organization partnered with researchers at the University of Virginia and Carnegie Mellon University to create a (paper) book that not only teaches recipients about water hygiene, but also comes with built-in water filters (its pages) that eliminate 99% of the waterborne particles and microbes that cause diseases like E. coli, cholera, and typhoid.

The  Drinkable Book  performs almost like a coffee filter; when water passes through one of its specially treated paper filters, germs and bacteria are killed by a special coating of silver nitrate nanoparticles that render treated water as safe as tap water in developed nations. The book costs just a few cents to produce and provides enough filtration to last up to four years.

Water-Condensing Billboard

Finally, researchers from Peru's University of Engineering Technology took a familiar sight -- the billboard -- and transformed it into a  water-producing tool . More than 10 percent of Lima's 7.5 million residents have little to no access to potable water. But UTEC's innovative invention gathers moisture from the air during humid summer days and runs it through a series of condensers.

The water is then cleaned through a reverse-osmosis system, and Lima residents can access the clean water through a faucet at the bottom of the sign. This amazing invention provides almost 100 liters of water per day.

As you can see, paper isn't just for brochures and business cards anymore. It's -- literally -- saving the world!

Posted by Chuck Gherman

To contact Chuck Gherman for more information about how Printing Arts Press helps organizations with marketing their needs through print communications please visit www.printingartspress.com.

Networking Tips Straight Out of High School

Back in high school, there were always a few classmates who seemed to find schoolwork effortless. They were able to easily achieve the top grades while the rest of the class struggled. As finals week rolled around, these students often found themselves inundated with requests for study help. Some would come from friends, but many came from complete strangers who would suddenly try to buddy up with the smart kids in an effort to curry their favor.

Typically, the smart students would react to these requests in one of two ways:

1. The requests that came from friends -- people the students socialized with outside of class -- were met with assurances of help.
2. The requests that came from strangers were often dismissed.

Why the disparity?

No one likes being taken advantage of. While it may have been just as easy to offer study help to members of either group, the smart students didn't like people suddenly trying to be their friend, only to be 'dumped' once the other person passed an exam. It wasn't that they didn't want to help. They just preferred to help genuine friends they could trust to actually care about them.

How this relates to networking

People often look for shortcuts to take with networking. They don't want to go through the trouble of building a relationship with a new connection; they just want to know if the person is going to be interested in doing business together or not and then leave it at that.

The problem with this method is the same problem that many struggling students found when they tried to suddenly befriend the smart kids at the end of the year: No one likes to feel that they're being taken advantage of.

When you're on the other side of the relationship, you don't want to have someone approach you and just immediately start trying to sell you. You're more interested in doing business with someone you've already built a relationship with and you trust to be concerned with your business as well as theirs. If a connection that you've gotten to know over the course of several years reaches out and offers you a trial of their new software and invites you to sign up for a newsletter, you're far more inclined to accept that offer than you would if the same invitation came from someone you just met.

Making this principle work for you

Networking takes effort. There's no getting around that. Forming these valuable connections, however, has the potential to really grow a business. To help make your networking overtures successful, keep these tips in mind:

• Discuss business, but don't try to sell after just a meeting or two.
• Keep detailed records of contacts, such as meeting dates/conferences, birthdays, anniversaries, and similar dates. Send cards on applicable days.
• Keep a rotation of connections that you reach out to on a regular basis, such as once every few months to maintain the relationship.
• When making a sales pitch, frame it in a way so the other party sees how it might benefit them as well.

Networking can be instrumental in growing a business. However, taking shortcuts and trying to sell to a new contact you've just met will probably have the success rate of trying to get the high school valedictorian you've never spoken with to study with you the day before finals. Taking the time to build a relationship can make a world of difference. Keep that in mind when you set out to build your network, and you just might be pleasantly surprised at what networking can do for you.

Posted by Chuck Gherman

To contact Chuck Gherman for more information about how Printing Arts Press helps organizations with marketing their needs through print communications please visit www.printingartspress.com.