Microsoft Office 365 provides fantastic collaboration options.  If your company is using Office 365, no matter your role, you’re likely using Microsoft Outlook or Outlook for the Web. Using Outlook effectively can enable you to work more productively and efficiently, both individually and in a team environment.

Updated: May 10th, 2016:  This June and again in September KnowledgeWave will be partnering to bring our clients the option of attending a training for The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF). TOGAF is a detailed method and a set of supporting tools for developing an enterprise architecture. It may be used freely by any organization wishing to develop an enterprise architecture for use within that organization.

As a conscientious manager, the day may come when you look to improve your team's project management in the interest of better efficiency and tracking. I found myself in exactly that same position a couple of years ago when I was managing a number of small departments. We had many different initiatives going on with very little formal project management. People were working hard and trying to do the right thing, but we were lacking an overarching system for managing our projects. That meant the scope was often ephemeral, the timelines and budgets were fuzzy or non-existent, and accountability was variable. I knew we could do better.

Have you ever received a .pdf from someone and needed to make comments for review or edit text in a .pdf just like you do in Microsoft Word? Adobe Acrobat Pro DC allows the user to have lots of control over their documents. Productivity and efficiency are improved with the multitude of features! In this blog post, however, I’ll focus on how to add text to a pdf and how to add comments to a .pdf.

How to use Adobe Acrobat Pro DC to add a comment to a pdf:

Click Tools and then Comment.

Just as there are many approaches to workplace training and delivery, adults respond to training in different ways for different reasons. People vary generationally in the way they absorb and process information, and they also vary in naturally predisposed learning styles. Efficiency demands that training satisfy each of these more or less equally, but actually designing it to this effect can be a nightmare mess of conflicting elements that inclines many to ignore these distinctions altogether. Learning proficiencies can be divided and described in any number of ways; Presented below are two of the most useful and widely-implemented models of learning styles, followed by advice on how to address them both directly and indirectly. The process need not be as complicated as it first appears, as long as the differences and basic characteristics of these styles are understood and kept at the back of the mind.

It's pretty well-established that we believe a company's greatest assets are its employees. When productivity runs dry, however, how do you get your employees excited about their roles and the company mission again?

Making the decision to scale your business is a good thing, as it typically means you are experiencing some sort of sustainable growth. If you're thinking scaling and growth go hand-in-hand, Les McKeown—in a contribution to Inc.—states otherwise: "It's one thing to grow your business (and a lovely thing it is, too)—but it's another entirely to scale it. Scaling—the ability to grow rapidly and at a compound rate, compared to the arithmetical, two-plus-two-equals-four rate of growth that non-scaling businesses achieve—requires new skills from the business' owners and managers."

In considering training for employees in your organization, you as a manager may be quick to assume that your entry-level employees are the ones that need it. While they require a substantial amount of training in the onboarding and beyond, your new employees are not the only ones who need all of the attention.

 You may be familiar with our previous post on leading through change during the roll out of a new software platform, where we discussed the challenges associated with adapting to a new software. While leading through change is essential, collaborating with other members of your organization will help you to increase the rate at which you can get everyone up to speed.

We all want well-trained, productive employees on staff. Yet even though that dream is in high demand among employers, it isn't a reality for every organization. One of the biggest bottlenecks that commonly keep professionals from reaching their full potential is a lack in effective training or onboarding. Without effective onboarding and training opportunities, your employees will continue to lack the skills they need in order to contribute to company growth and success.

Employee training. Some people think of it like the ante in poker: it’s the minimum stake to be in the game.

If you are like us, then you think of it more as a strategic advantage. Invest in developing your team, and your team will be invested in the success of your organization.

In today's competitive business environment, there is no shortage of training methods available to you. But if you have been immersed in a training program or two before, you know there is a clear difference between an effective-training program and one that runs your team stagnant. With the vast number of training methods and resources available to you, it can be daunting to determine which of these sources are going to equip your employees with the tools they need for better performance.

Here at KnowledgeWave, we take pride in 2 key distinctions that really set us apart: our blended approach which combines video training with live online instruction, and our ROI calculator.

In a technology-driven world, an IT professional can feel overwhelmed by troubleshooting requests. When technical issues pile up the core of the problem is often overlooked. Thus, your IT professional or department gets trapped in a never-ending cycle of even the simplest of requests, such as teaching digital immigrants how to format headers in Word.

When it comes to operational business efficiency, you need the buy-in of upper management before incremental changes can be made. Ultimately, the solution you bring to the table must be less about leading the way with the latest software, and more about delivering value from the top to the bottom of the company. According to the Harvard Business Review: "[T]he CIO and IT must be seen less as merely developing and deploying technology, and more as a source of innovation and transformation that delivers business value, leveraging technology instead of directly delivering it."

As Baby Boomers continue to retire at an accelerating rate, their immediate successors within Generation X will only be able to fill half of their positions, leaving the remainder open to less-experienced Millennials.