Working on Excel

I have been working on Excel during these days and I have the problem that I didn't know how to return multiple values from a lookup: some formula like VLookup but that it returns more than one value.

I have found these very useful links

http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/excel/HA012260381033.aspx


http://www.mrexcel.com/articles/CSE-array-formulas-excel.php


I have tried to resolve my problem using the help explained in the first link but it does not work as I need.


I have finally created a macro to build the incoming array I need.


The next problem I'm facing seems to be something without solution, because I cannot use the references in a "list" of the "Data validation" wizard:

One day later....

I was tired last night. To overcome the problem I pasted the formula in a cell and then I got the reference from that field. I hide the cell and everything works as desired.

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough

This Abert Einstein's phrase helped this week to discuss with one colleague while building a sales presentation. The main issue with the presentation was that the concept about what this presentation wants to show was not clear.

Once the concept was understood, the model, value proposition... and all te other slides were easy to understand.

The problem was in the first 2 slides, where the concept was explained: if the reader/listener does not get the idea, how is s/he going to understand what we solve?

After some proofs, the colleague has found a solution with a simple slide.

Apart of the exercise of thinking about a solution, the main obstacle has been to motivate the other to change some aspects of the material that was considered genial and that it really wasn't. He really can improve it as we have finally done.

Again another interesting exercise for the mind and the imagination that helps to overcome the daily chasing activities that I'm involved during these last weeks.

Adapt tasks to biorhythms

Are you a early person or a late person?

I'm early person, so this is because I try to do all important things in the morning.

Read and write are tasks that I use to perform in the first hours of the day. I make the most of time doing this.

Second part of the day is to have meetings. Meetings meetings and more meetings.

I close the day answering mails, approving issues and doing administrative things.

Change Freeze

This period of inactivity is established to protect the IT infrastructure, application and/or other business activities from any change activity that may undermine its stability and operation.

For instance, during Christmas that there is a lot of staff on holidays and each time more and more companies agree this type of stops.

In addition service providers are happy because they also have fewer problems to achieve SLAs and staff can also enjoy this vacation period.

Everybody knows about this period of inactivity but suddenly they realise that this period is coming and they need to deliver something.

What’s happen then?

There is an avalanche of change requests before Christmas, overloading the change management service.

Buying Vs Selling

I have been reviewing the client value cycle empathy guide used by our methodology, and one of the key elements they repeat and repeat is:

"Understand the buying process, not the sales process."

Easy? Yes, but they remind you are going to forget it

:-)

Asset Management

I'm happy, I'm going to lead an improvement plan on a global asset management service.

It's not a big deal, nevertheless the idea of understanding the asset management lifecycle, the billing processes of the assets, the way that this type of services are managed and the standard processes that govern it.... it's what makes me happy.

:-)

About the important and urgent things

Once of the PMO we are working has a lot of tasks to do.

The type of workload is this typical level of things to do that makes that you can be working 24 hours for the next 5 months and after that, you will have the feeling that you need other 5 months to be up to date.

As always, we need to be very accurate in order to execute the objectives of the account and perform what is important and relevant for the client.

It's true, we have always some things that appears in the middle of the day and it takes a level of priority higher that desired. This makes us to have a permanent sense of urgency that can cause us to lose.

This easy message is something I'm repeating periodically in order to get the people focused on the important things keeping the other eye on the urgent issues. We don't want to finish the year without reaching the objectives of the PMO.