Time for some Business Spring Cleaning
April 2002

How does this spring find your office? Dusted? Organized? Efficient?

The smell of ammonia may hang in the air after the janitorial staff has gone or maybe the feather duster is your responsibility -- it’s the time for a good office scrubbing.

The Spring Cleaning tradition is also a good time to rethink your workflow. Yes, whether you are a CFO, a sales rep, a project manager or an IT analyst, work patterns aren’t always in order.

DUMP IT

Both paper and electronic files are often duplicated by accident. Use this month to search for redundant materials and reorganize your filing system. Create new folders, rename and reorder old folders and sub-folders. Useful file sorting could be by year, client or department. Dump duplicates and old hard copy once you’re archived and backed-up.

SHARPEN IT

Even the best IT support person can’t be totally responsible for your desktop or laptop performance. Invest a little time after your data cleanup to get rid of temp files, cookies, old emails and space hogs like graphics. Lastly, run a defrag or check that your scheduler is taking care of it.

MANAGE IT

Usually, the biggest revelation during cleanup is our ineffective habits. Are there parts of your job that should or could be handed off? At OffSite Works, we have another title for The Boss: it’s The Great Delegator. This title is well earned and you could take a lesson from her. If a task sits on your desk that you never get to, if someone else could do some function quicker or better, or if a project is outside the focus of your job: look around. Is an assistant, co-worker, department, or even a vendor better suited to take it on?

DELEGATE IT!

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