Management teams, expansion stage CEOs and operational support people all make mistakes.  The successful people make mistakes but learn from them.  So, how do I make the most of my mistakes?!

First, figure out what type of mistake you made. According to Scott Berkun's How to learn from your mistakes, there are 4 types of mistakes.

• Stupid: Absurdly dumb things that just happen. Stubbing your toe, dropping your pizza on your neighbor’s fat cat or poking yourself in the eye with a banana.
• Simple: Mistakes that are avoidable but your sequence of decisions made inevitable. Having the power go out in the middle of your party because you forgot to pay the rent, or running out of beer at said party because you didn’t anticipate the number of guests.
• Involved: Mistakes that are understood but require effort to prevent. Regularly arriving late to work/friends, eating fast food for lunch every day, or going bankrupt at your start-up company because of your complete ignorance of basic accounting.
• Complex: Mistakes that have complicated causes and no obvious way to avoid next time. Examples include making tough decisions that have bad results, relationships that fail, or other unpleasant or unsatisfying outcomes to important things.

Stupid and simple mistakes are boring. We will all do stupid things like stub our toes or make poor decisions that turn out to be mistakes.  There is not much to learn from these types of mistakes. To make the most of these mistakes, learn from them quickly and do not dwell on the mishap/mistake.

Involved mistakes take effort to amend or change the behaviors that led to the mistake. To make the most of these types of mistakes, you need to first admit that there is something you need to change in order to not make that mistake again.  We tend to make involved mistakes over and over again because we don't like to admit failure nor make the effort to change habits. Sometimes, you will need to ask for outside help.  The main lesson with involved mistakes is to learn your behaviors and work with yourself on changing the habits or decisions that led to the mistake.

Complex mistakes are ones that you could not necessarily predict.  There are not always clear reasons why the mistake occurred.  Scott uses a great example of a floating oil rig dormitory (read his article for full information).  The rig flipped over and killed 100 people.  They finally figured out what the initial mistake was after a long investigation.  The more complex a mistake, the more likely it can be broken down into stupid and simple mistakes leading up to the complex mistake.

"No amount of analysis can replace your confidence in yourself," Scott writes. "When you’ve made a mistake, especially a visible one that impacts other people, it’s natural to question your ability to perform next time. But you must get past your doubts. The best you can do is study the past, practice for the situations you expect, and get back in the game."

Overnight, Steven Slater has become a folk hero of sorts.  As you have probably already heard, Steven Slater is the JetBlue flight attendant that quit his job in a flagrant fashion.  You can check out one of the news stories at: Steven Slater, JetBlue Flight Attendant Out on Bail.

We have all had trying times during our careers. Maybe you're and expansion stage CEO who is looking for investors and getting nowhere; maybe you are part of your company's technical IT support and have to work the weekend again!  These are situations which can be extremely frustrating and trying on the nerves.  These are the situations that make people want to lash out inappropriately in an attempt to vent and soothe their mental landscape.  It is rare that these releases occur as Slater's did, though it is likely that many people, if not most, have at one time or another fantasized about undertaking a walk-out as grand as his.  This is why so many people are idolizing Slater's actions. 

For those of you not "in the know", Slater was trying to prevent a woman from getting her baggage from the overhead bin while the plane was still taxiing when the luggage hit him on the head.  Apparently the woman did not apologize and that was the "straw that broke the camel's back!"  He got on the intercom and proceeded to curse at the entire plane and quit.  His next move is what landed him in prison overnight.  He took a beer or 2 from the cooler and deployed the emergency slide, then proceeded to slide to the tarmac below and headed home.

Not Many of us will ever do anything like this and, while Steven Slater's actions allow those of us harboring these fantasies to live vicariously through him, the majority of us know that these small bumps will pass.  There are likely many lessons that can be gleaned from Slater's actions, ranging from customer service to employee HR services. Perhaps the most relevant lesson for those of us in the operational support field to learn from this is to be aware of our employees' needs and be on the lookout for changes in behavior.

Like Slater, I sometimes get frustrated by workplace situations (albeit I rarely have to deal with the type of frustrations a flight attendant deals with daily).  However, I have learned to take these frustrations in stride. The truth is that I love my operational support position -- and the frustrations that come with it -- here at my small Boston venture capital firm, OpenView Venture Partners, and will not be acting out like this anytime in the near future!

Are you an operational support person/executive assistant for a venture capital firm or an expansion stage CEO?  Here is a great tip for you to use!

Have you ever had a PDF that was just too large to send as a single file? Have you ever had a PDF of which only a small portion was pertinent to your needs?  I was reading the Professional Assistant blog again and came across a GREAT post on how to separate out specific pages from a PDF.  The 4 simple steps to accomplish this are:

These instructions are for Adobe Acrobat: (taken directly from The Professional Assistant blog)

1. Click on Document, Pages, Extract.
   
   
   


2. Type in the first and last page that you want to create a PDF out of.  For example, page 1 to 10.
   
    


3. Save this file to a new filename.


4. Repeat this step until all pages have been captured.  For example, page 11 to 20, etc.

As an operational support person at OpenView Venture Partners, a Boston venture capital firm, I will use this trick/tip often.  There are many times when we have a large PDF document and need to only send a small portion to an expansion stage CEO who is looking for investors.

Next time you have a large PDF, try this out!

My last post was about the importance of vacation.  I took my vacation to Bar Harbor, ME where I relaxed by doing some hikes around Acadia National Park, taking a ride on Lulu's Lobster boat, a whale watch and learning to do some real rock climbing.  This vacation was personally well timed but not professionally!

I left the office during the week before we were to host our Customer Service Management Forum for our expansion stage portfolio companies and our prospect companies looking for investors.  If you have read some of my older posts on forum setup and execution, you would know that the last week is normally used to tie up any loose ends and finalize all the details with the chosen venue.  I was not here to manage the critical last week! 

Upon my return from a relaxing vacation, I had to scramble to make sure that everything was in complete order.  This including finalizing the attendee list, making a couple of sets of name tags, printing and binding the slide presentations along with our attendee booklet, working with the venue to finalize food & beverage and audio visual, etc.  I got back on a Tuesday and the cocktail reception for the forum was on Wednesday... This provided me with a very small window to make things happen.  I ran down to the wire and thankfully,  everything was well executed.  

Professionally speaking, from an operational support point of view, the reason that my vacation was not well timed was because it caused me to feel frantic.  When you work frantically, you tend to make mistakes and/or overlook details.  As an operational support person, my job is to make sure that all the details -- no matter how small -- have been taken care of.

I have learned a great lesson from this vacation and immediately following Customer Service Management Forum.  I will desperately attempt to never again schedule a vacation so close to a large forum!

Do you have any experiences that did not go so well because of a poorly timed vacation?

Whether you work at a venture capital firm or are an expansion stage company looking for investors, we all need some time off to recoup and refocus.  The way I see it, for our Boston venture capital firm -- OpenView Venture Partners -- there are 2 times per year that really require a vacation: mid to late-summer and end of year, around late December.  It is during these specific times of year when business seems to be much slower than in any other time of the year.

I just read 'The Importance of Vacations for Stress Relief, Productivity and Health' which discusses the many benefits of taking an annual vacation.  Here is the gist of what the article states:

Vacations

• Promote creativity
• Stave off burnout
• Can keep us healthy
• Promote overall well being
• Can strengthen bonds
• Can help your job performance
• Relieve stress in lasting ways

If you would like more in-depth information on how vacations are beneficial to us and our employers, check out the article mentioned above.

If you have not taken a vacation yet this year, I would highly recommend it! Don't forget, vacation is for you to take leisure time away from work and devote it to rest or pleasure.  It's time to rest those dogs!

Have you ever had to schedule a meeting requiring the coordination of multiple calendars?  If you are an operational support person in a venture capital firm or an expansion stage company, the likelihood that you have run into this situation is extremely high.

I was reading 'The Professional Assistant' blog today and came across a post about a great feature in Microsoft's Outlook 2007 called Overlay Mode.  Outlook has allowed us in the past to view calendars side by side in order to visibly coordinate schedules.  The overlay mode allows us to see these calendars in a consolidated area. If you have a small monitor, this mode helps when trying to view multiple days as the screen can get cramped with all the calendars open across the screen. 

I found a video on You Tube that walks you through the process of overlaying multiple calendars.

I read an article on Grassland -- the blog for entrepreneurs -- about up and coming female entrepreneurs.  As a female working in a Boston venture capital firm, I thoroughly enjoyed reading about other successful women.

Women have traditionally been in operational support or CFO/COO type roles.  This article discusses Caterina Fake (co-founder of Flickr), Mena Trott (co-founder of Six Apart), Sandy Jen and Elaine Wherry (co-founders of Meebo), Gina Trapani (founding editor of LifeHacker.com), and Leah Culver (formerly of Pownce).  All of these women have totally broken the stereotype of a woman's role in a company.  They are entrepreneurs looking to shape management teams and change the tech world as we know it.

It is an inspiration to see these women achieve success.  If you are a female CEO of an expansion stage company and looking for investors, drop OpenView Venture Partners a line!

Self-Management is a key skill to success within small venture capital firms.  Each and every person, from management teams to operational support, must take responsibility for their own self-management. Here are five practical steps to help you get there.

• Direct yourself before you direct others. If you want to self-manage, start by being your own boss and giving yourself tasks to complete. It will be difficult to manage assignments given to others if you cannot manage your own. This is an important first step.

• Do not pass the blame. Take responsibility for your own work. If there is an issue with something that you may have mishandled, do not pass the buck or try and fault someone else.

• Focus on the few things that matter. Do not waste your time with tasks that do not fit with your goals.

• Manage your time effectively. Set deadlines and stick to them. If you give yourself a deadline, you are more likely to get work done on time and out of the way faster.

• Be honest with yourself. If you are honest with yourself, you will be able to manage more efficiently. You will also know what you can and cannot accomplish within a given time frame. In the end, you will be able to set expectations more realistically.

If you are able to follow these simple rules, you will be off to a good start in self-management and ultimately managing others.

Have you seen the show 'Undercover Boss'? It's about CEOs or high level executive team members going undercover as an entry level employee in their firm to see what life is like in the 'trenches.'  The executive will usually work a different entry level job each day for 5 days. In each case s/he is partnered with another employee or employees and does the same work that her/his partner or partners do. Fish-out-of-water hilarity often ensues as the bumbling boss demonstrates first-day ineptness at the blue-collar tasks that her/his employees handle expertly. S/He also talks with each employee to learn more about them, their personal situation, and/or their perception of their job. The boss is incredibly touched by the challenges faced by her/his working class employees, many of whom are revealed to have difficult life circumstances, and learns a valuable, frequently emotional lesson.

The crux of this show is to invert the common method of communication between employer and employee. On 'Undercover Boss', the boss is presented with an atypical view of her/his company and gets to see how things work bottom up rather than top down. It also teaches an important lesson regarding clear and open communication both within and outside the company. The key to this communication is friendliness, patience and a willingness to go beyond what is expected of you in order to facilitate new and ongoing relationships. Management teams, operational support, sales and marketing support, etc could all use this show as a lesson example to treat everyone you encounter in-person or on the phone with respect and friendliness. As an operational support person at OpenView Venture Partners, I speak with people all day long ranging from the wrong number to a prospective portfolio company CEO who is looking for investors. I need to make sure that I treat each and every person I speak with the same respect. 

As in 'Undercover Boss,' you never know who you are actually speaking with, so err on the side of caution and treat everyone equally.

Eyjagjallajokull (the Iceland volcano) has caused a major disruption with worldwide business meetings.  Management teams have been scrambling to find flights which go around the volcanic ash cloud in order to get to their scheduled meetings.  This frantic searching has wreaked havoc for operational support teams all over the world! 

We need solutions for potential missed meetings that can be implemented at a moment's notice.  There are a ton of online companies that offer video conferencing services.  Services such as GoToMeeting and WebEx allow you to set up and conduct last minute 'in-person' meetings simply and easily. 
Most laptops these days are manufactured with a built in web cam allowing for you to video conference anywhere.  Gone are the days when not being able to fly to the meeting location means that you will simply not be able to meet and possibly lose a business deal or that venture funding.

As an operational support person at a Boston venture capital firm, OpenView Venture Partners, I help plan all of the events we hold throughout the year.  This time of year is when most venture capital firms hold their annual meetings.  We are no different.

In the past, I have gotten stressed out each time this meeting comes around.  The point of this meeting is to give an update to our venture capital investors on how our portfolio is doing and what we are planning or the remainder of the year. 

During the planning phase of each event, I try to reflect on the past meetings and see what can be improved; the hotel (meeting space size, noise level of meetings around, food and beverage, audio visual, etc), invitations (when to send out original invite, bcc'ing attendees, invite content, when to send reminders), and meeting collateral (printed and bound documents, agendas, etc)

Once you figure out the items that work well and what you should change/adjust, you are on your way to planning a great event.

Today was our Annual Limited Partner meeting and it went really well! All the planning, emailing, and printing helped create another successful event!

It is that time of year when most venture capital firms host annual meetings for their venture capital investors a.k.a., limited partners.

As the sole administrative associate at my Boston venture capital firm, OpenView Venture Partners, the planning for a successful event is my responsibility. 

Here are some tips to setting up a successful annual meeting:

1) Choose your hotel / venue and be prepared to negotiate the terms of the contract.  The basic idea is that everything is negotiable. Once you sign the contract you are obligated to abide by every word of it.

     - Meeting room rates
     - Hotel room rates
     - Food and beverage minimums
     - Parking

2) Choose food and beverage options that allow for various dietary needs such as having vegetarian lunch and breakfast options. I always like to have the beverages inside the meeting space; drinks are the one item participants classically leave a meeting to get.  Make sure to have coffee, tea, water and soda available at all times of the day.

3) Work with the venue's audio visual team to convey your meeting's specific needs. I like to have a standard projection package along with wireless internet access for all participants.

     - Projection package
     - Wireless internet
     - Presentation mouse / pointer
     - Schedule a short run-through to work out any kinks
     - Arrive 2 hours before the meeting to troubleshoot any last minute audio visual items

4) On the meeting day, get set up and prepare to greet guests by arriving at least 2 hours prior to the start of the event. This allows you time to organize the registration desk, any printed meeting collateral, and set up name tags. Here is a short day of check list:

     - Set up name tags in alphabetical order on the registration desk
          *Make sure you have a plan to make additional name tags on the spot
     - Pass out meeting collateral to each attendee table
     - Make sure to have the wireless internet access code on a printed sheet on each table
     - Make sure that each table has a power strip to plug in a laptop if necessary
     - Make sure to have the venue's banquet managers contact information for any issues that may arise

If you follow these simple steps, you will have a successful meeting.  The more meetings you set up, the easier they become.  This process will become more finely tuned for each meeting you host.

At my Boston venture capital firm, OpenView Venture Partners, I have noticed the use of a product called bit.ly, a URL redirection service.  Our sales and marketing support teams, management teams and recruiting support teams have started listing the shortened URLs as a link instead of the long URLs that I have seen when linking to driving directions as an example.

Check out bit.ly or one of the other URL redirection services listed below (taken from Technical Lists: eConsultant):

1. tinyurl.com
2. eb.cx
3. elfurl.com
4. shorl.com
5. url.fm
6. shurl.org
7. qurl.net
8. notlong.com
9. shortlinks.co.uk
10. url123.com

As an operational support person at OpenView Venture Partners, I am going to start using these shortened URLs when I send notes for directions or a link to my blog!  There are bunch of these sites out there, so pick the one that seems to work the best for you.

As an operational support person in a Boston venture capital firm, I wear many hats.  The ever changing role of the administrative professional has brought around a necessary change for our antiquated holiday name, National Secretaries Day.  The IAAP (International Association of Administrative Professionals) has officially changed the holiday name from National Secretaries Day to the registered trademark, Administrative Professionals Day.

This is a day to acknowledge the hard work which your operational support teams do day in and day out. It is not necessary to get gifts, cards or flowers; a simple acknowledgment is all we really need.  I have already had a couple of people at OpenView Venture Partners say thanks and Happy Admin. Professionals Day.  The acknowledgment feels great!

How does your expansion stage firm celebrate the day?

Information systems support teams in large and small venture capital firms often have a stringent password policy requiring all employees to create a new secure password every 30, 60 or 90 days.  They frequently give strict guidelines that must be followed, such as:

• Must have both capital and lower-case letters
• Must contain both letter and numbers
• Must not be an actual word in the dictionary

To answer the very first question, yes a password policy is a good thing to have.  A password is the first line of defense against the unauthorized use of your computer, data and network.

As an employee, a password policy can be a complete pain and feel like a waste of time.  Password policies also raise questions of trust and can sometimes be ambiguous.  Can I let other employees use my computer to get information if I am not there to help them? What if my password is already highly secure? Do I need to change the password in every program that I have a password for? Should I only change the network password? How am I going to remember a new password every 60 days?

The whole point of having a password is to make your information more secure.  If you have a highly secure password that you have not written down, nor shared with anyone, you should not have to change it often.  Here are suggestions to keep your password secure:

• Never share your password with anyone
• Never save a password when prompted by your browser or any other programs
• Never send your password through email
• Never write your password down
• Use different passwords for different programs

If you want to check and see if your password is secure, you can check out Microsoft Online Safety password strength checker.

So, a password policy is a good thing, especially if you are one of the top venture capital firms. I do however think that if you create a secure password, you should not have to change it every 30, 60 or 90 days. I think creating a secure password that passes as 'very strong' in a password strength checker and changing it every 6 months should be sufficient if you follow the above security protocol.

I just came across a great website called Deskdemon, for operational support individuals to get advice, chat with their peers, find new resources and great websites, and much more. The site is geared toward all PA's, Administrative Assistants, Executive Assistants, and Office Managers. I am extremely excited to go through the various portions of  Deskdemon to see what information can be of use to me. 

I was initially smitten with this site for one reason and that is the forums section. Not only is this a great networking tool, it is a social network for operational support staff.  Some of the topics include 'Admin 4 Admins' and 'Help...Software Survival'.

If you support management teams, venture capital firms, sales and marketing support, Deskdemon is a great tool for you to refer to when you are looking to brush up on what is happening now in the operational support world.

At OpenView Venture Partners, I wear a couple of different hats: Executive Assistant to Scott Maxwell, Office manager, and HR support.  If you are anything like me, you will find Deskdemon to be a huge help.  Maybe I will see you in one of the forums!

As an operational support person at OpenView Venture Partners, a Boston Venture Capital firm, it is necessary for me to be as educated as possible with the tools that I use on a daily basis.  The one tool that I use every day, all day is Outlook 2007.  I schedule my boss's life using Outlook and can always use the extra tips, tricks and training.

I did some research to see what tips and tricks are out there for us operational support people and came to realize that I need a refresher course in Outlook.  Microsoft offers online courses to refresh your skills with Outlook and all Office products.

They offer courses such as: Up to speed with Outlook 2007, Reduce spam! Get your Junk E-mail Filter in top condition, and Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 to name a few.  I plan on taking a couple of these courses and will let you know how they go and if they are truly any value.

Remember, there is always something new to learn and we can always improve our process.

As an operational support person at OpenView Venture Partners, I often wonder, "Am I adding value to our firm's portfolio companies?"  The answer is yes, every person in our Boston venture capital firm adds value to our expansion stage portfolio companies.  I assist in organizing and planning the quarterly educational workshops and forums which benefit our portfolio with topics such as Content Marketing and Extraordinary Execution.  I aid our venture partners, associates and analysts in helping our portfolio companies by assisting in ad hoc projects, scheduling meetings and travel amongst many other tasks.

As operational support folks, we often feel like we do not have as large of a role to play in the firm as the partners, associates and analysts.  We need to learn and know the value that we bring to our firm's each and every day.

How do you schedule calls and meetings for a boss that seems to be fully booked all the time?  This is when a good working relationship between you and your boss comes into play.  When you have that HOT prospect looking for investors in town for a few short hours and you are booked solid, how can you accommodate that meeting?  You have to do some serious scheduling acrobatics! 

In venture capital firms, deals move along very quickly requiring a fair amount of scheduling flexibility. When you get that last minute phone call for a meeting you need to be able to discuss with your boss how urgent the matter is and if the other meetings you would be changing are as urgent.  If you can't reach your boss to have this type of a discussion, you will sometimes have to make the judgment call.  If your boss is definitely not available, maybe you have another venture partner meet with the prospect.

As an operational support person it is my job to make sure that I am able to keep my bosses schedule as organized as possible so these types of last minute meeting requests can be dealt with in a timely manner.

The final piece to the review puzzle is reciprocation.  You have had the conversations around your review, you've created an actionable plan and are executing on it; the final step is to reciprocate or share your progress.

As you implement changes and test new courses of action, it is extremely important that you periodically check in with you management teams to help reevaluate how you are doing.  You will be learning new ways to perform and not all will be perfect; you may find that you tried a new way of doing something and came up with a poor result.  This is all part of the development process as change does not always result in an improvement.

In order to grow it is necessary to learn how to give, how to get and what to do with reviews and constructive criticism. We should view this entire process as a way to learn more about ourselves and how we can be better at our jobs.  The process also helps us set firmer goals and have a stronger desire to attain them.

So the keys to this are, communication with your peers and management teams, integrating your new found ideas and goals into your everyday work life and reevaluating after implementation.