Intercultural Zone

5 ways slowing down boosts your effectiveness

by Patricia

Freelancers live life in the fast lane.

And it’s no wonder: we are our own marketing, production, administrative, and financial staff. Many choose to become solo entrepreneurs to have more time to devote to non-work interests and to achieve a better work-life balance. Passionate about developing our businesses, many of us end up sacrificing much of what means the most to us in the process.

Faster-better-easier becomes the mantra to overcome the 24-hour dilemma. The express lane is a danger zone, for your health and your business. Slowing down intelligently boots your effectiveness.

Focus and center:

Instead of rushing to make or return that important phone call, invest a few minutes in deep breathing exercises. You will be more likely to “hear” with your whole brain and respond appropriately.

Read the key words:

You’ve received an email with a fascinating project request and are itching to answer “Yes! I can! Choose me me me me because I’m sooo good and let me tell you why!”  Hang on for a sec’ and ask yourself some questions to try to decode the content first. For example:

- Is the writer asking What, How or Why questions? This could modulate the focus of your response (deliverable, process, qualifications).

- Is the writer seeking to move away from something (change service providers, save money, unsatisfactory deliverables etc.) or toward something (new communication or internationalization campaign for instance)? In the first case, you’ll likely be responding to a problem within an existing context and need first to reassure the prospect. In the second, you’ll have greater leeway to promote your full range of services and partner/brainstorm with the prospect.

Keep your blood levels steady and feed your brain

Often, my concentration is such I forget to eat and don’t even feel hunger or thirst – or don’t want to break the flow to make and eat lunch if my stomach does signal needing fuel. That’s the fast track to problems. Now, I keep an assortment of nuts and dried fruits on my desk to nibble on along with a thermos of herb tea in case I really can’t/don’t want to head for the kitchen. The brain burns 1.5 calories per minute, uses up to half of the body’s oxygen and is dependent on proper nutrition to for top neural function and neurogenesis.

Adopt power naps

Do you get drowsy after lunch? After exercising? In the middle of the afternoon? We all have our own biorhythms and tracking how you feel over a few days will help you figure out when you are most on the ball or not. Power naps are not just for those days when you did not get enough sleep the night before. Research shows napping can boost your skills and your performance. I’d never been able to doze off at will before and spent part of the summer training myself to do so. Even 10 minutes relaxing in a comfortable position with your eyes closed, attentive to your breathing, will help recharge your mental batteries.

One day a week, turn it all off

For some, myself included, turning it all off for one whole day is tough. Yet if you check email, work on your blog, or contribute to forums and various social media networks 7 days a week, you risk finding it difficult to achieve a meaningful work-life balance. Your family, your friends, and simply yourself deserve to have you 100% there at least one day out of the week! I’m working on this one…. (confession..my smartphone is email enabled…shush…)

Le réseau, ça dépanne !

by Patricia

Nous le savons tous, avoir un bon réseau est essentiel. Les atouts habituellement mis en avant incluent se faire connaître (marketing, notoriété, bouche à oreille), se tenir informé, travailler en équipe, se dépanner mutuellement et ainsi de suite.

Mais ce n’est pas tout !

Cet été, je me suis retrouvée dans un imbroglio idiot qui aurait pu basculer dans une procédure désagréable pour toutes les parties.

J’avais réalisé un projet pour un donneur d’ordre français. Toutes les précautions d’usage avaient été prises, y compris signature d’un devis détaillé ainsi que de mes conditions générales par ce client.

A la fin du projet, ce client me demande d’adresser la note d’honoraires à son correspondant étranger, qu’il lui ferait parvenir, m’assurant que je serais payée à réception.

Deux mois plus tard, la note n’était toujours pas réglée, la moutarde (de Dijon, bien forte) me montait au nez. Mes courriels à ce correspondant étaient bloqués par leur serveur (pour des raisons qui m’échappent). Mes appels ne servaient pas à grand-chose, aucun interlocuteur ne parlait français ou anglais. Et le client français était parti en vacances!

Enter le réseau !

Plutôt que de lancer une procédure désagréable, hop! J’envoie un SOS par Skype à une collègue dans le pays concerné, faisant appel à ses bons offices.

En une semaine, le problème était réglé.

Le correspondant avait essayé de régler la note dans les délais, mais le virement n’avait pas marché. Il supposait donc que mes informations bancaires étaient erronées. Plutôt que de me contacter ou de s’informer auprès de sa banque, il avait laissé courir. Grâce à ma collègue, nous avons pu découvrir que la banque en question était un peu particulière, c’est-à-dire qu’elle exigeait un BIC de 11 caractères au lieu des 8 fournis par ma banque et qu’il fallait donc rajouter 3 “x” pour que le virement passe.

Tout bête !

Ma collègue Isabelle résume bien le message de ce billet:

Au moins, je suis contente que nous ayons pu régler ça sans bureaucratie. En fait, nous autres gens de la langue, on est là pour ça en fait, pour améliorer les communications interlangues et permettre aux gens de faire des affaires sans frictions.

Montrons le bon exemple et renforçons nos réseaux pour être les premiers bénéficiaires de nos capacités!

6 steps to develop a translation specialization and make it work

by Patricia

So you want to specialize?

One of the Intercultural Zone’s faithful readers, Catherine Jan, emailed a few days ago with a specific request:

“Can you offer some advice on how to develop a new area of specialization?  I’d like to dig deeper [into the area of photovoltaics] and find work in this area. But I have no previous experience to refer to.”

That’s a great topic, Catherine, thanks for suggesting it.

Readers are invited to contribute their advice and to suggest other topics for future posts!

1. Choose the new area with care
Commitment

Developing a new area of specialization is a serious commitment. You’ll be investing time and energy for a future ROI. Where are you going to steal that time from? Your work hours (assess how many you can afford to invest)? Or the time you spend with your loved ones (getting their support is important)?

This new expertise has to prove sustainable.

• The subject has to be compelling: Does it speak to me? Do I have a real feeling for it? Will it satisfy my intellect for a long time? Would having to adapt 100 pages in one shot boost my brain or put me to sleep?
• Is the demand for this area of specialization durable, or is it some fly-by-night trendy craze businesses will ignore in a year or two?
• Is this area of specialization is narrow enough that I would provide real added value (and bill accordingly), yet not so restrictive as to make my new skills hard to market?
• What areas do I already specialize in I can leverage to land projects in this new field?

2. Plan
Road map

Make a business plan for this particular area, just as if you were starting a new business.

Figure out what you need to invest in, what that is going to cost, how you are going to fund these investments, over what period of time. The main ticket is your time. And it isn’t free. Develop an early prospect list. The ideal is to speak with some of them to get some of the info needed to conduct your own SWOT analysis. Estimate also what ROI you can reasonably expect within the next year or two.

Are the signals green or are a there a couple of yellow blinking lights? Continue Reading…

Knowing how your brain works can boost your productivity

by Patricia

A week ago Sunday was a dreary day in Paris and, freed from the urge to outside, I plunged head first into a fascinating book, John Medina’s Brain Rules. Medina is a developmental molecular biologist who has focused his research on how brain sciences influence how we learn and how we work. He writes in a lively, conversational style that makes this hugely complex field accessible to laymen.

You can get a peek at what the book is all about on www.brainrules.net.

In reading the book, I had a number of “light bulb moments”, making connections with tidbits and assembling them with new understanding. That is not surprising since

what we pay attention to is often profoundly influenced by memory… Different environments create different expectations…[Cultural differences]  too can affect how a given audience perceives a given presentation or class lecture.
(pp. 75-76)

I highly recommend this book to anyone who seeks to understand and improve how they learn, how they work, or to gain insight in the type of intelligence their child displays and support its development.

Within Rule 4, Medina sets us straight on a modern myth.

In today’s IT-dominated and connected world and open space “hot-desking” office environments, effective multitasking is viewed as a key organizational skill to acquire and hone. It is also a quality many rely upon to juggle tightly packed agendas and achieve some sense of work/life balance.

Medina explains why effective multitasking is impossible, and moreover, how striving to multitask actually wastes time and causes potentially serious mistakes. Continue Reading…

Writing errors influence client perception and behavior: a must-read survey

by Patricia

Professionals of the written word harp on this: poor style and error-filled copy have a direct bearing on:

• A company’s image
• A company’s reputation
• The perception of a given product or service’s quality
• The likelihood that a prospect will respond to a call to action

It’s one of my pet peeves. I’ve hammered the message here, here, and here, and again here and there.

Now, thanks to Sue Anderson-Lenz over at Marketing Lure, we’ve got numbers to back that up.

Sue ran a survey with 163 participants – business professionals largely from the US, “although the survey reached people in 16 different countries.” Note: it is not clear how many respondents were indeed from outside the US.

“One hundred percent of the people surveyed acknowledge that writing errors indeed influence their opinions. Nearly eight out of ten people have eliminated a prospective company — in part because of writing errors.“

And,

“Write‐in responses to one question reveal the impact that writing errors have on company credibility. Respondents said that errors will cause them to question the company and their leaders who permit writing errors to happen.”

Further,

“More than half of all respondents agreed that one error in any print material could be the kiss of death for a prospective company.
Four out of ten people expressed an extremely low tolerance for errors in electronic articles and books.”

Download a copy of Sue’s report from her blog: it’s a must-read -

For clients, as a needed reminder of the extent to which business success depends on good writing (no, it’s not an expense, it’s an investment).

And for professionals of the written word, as actionable data to support your positioning, dialog, and negotiations with prospects.

Advertising and humanitarian aid

by Patricia

Humanitarian aid organizations rely on advertising and communications just like commercial businesses.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of taking part in a guided tour l’Ujjef organized for its members of an expo at the Musée des arts décoratifs. The expo, La Publicité au secours des grandes causes, was a retrospective on how advertising has raised and shaped awareness of major humanitarian causes since the early part of the last century. The exhibit runs until May 9th, 2010.

A round table took place after the visit, asking  “Should and can humanitarian aid put itself on display?” Panel members included Bruno David, Founding President of Communication Sans Frontières, Rony Brauman, former President of MSF-France and Research Director of the Médecins Sans Frontières Foundation, Benoît Heilbrunn, semiologist and Professor of Marketing at the ESCP-EAP, and Oliviero Toscani, a well-known and sometimes controversial photographer (recall the Benetton campaigns in the 1990s). Continue Reading…

Silence: a powerful negotiation tool

by Patricia

Silence is a powerful tool to leverage in the last stages of your pitch where the key issue is your fee.

The discussion with your prospective client has gone well. You’ve listened actively, asked all the right questions, taken a good client brief, showed you understand his objectives, presented your USPs, and illustrated how and why you are the best professional to solve his problem. The client is interested in your services and enthused by the manner in which you propose to tackle the project.

The signals are all green. You’ve achieved precommitment.

Don’t let them turn orange. Continue Reading…

Conception-rédaction en langue étrangère : anticipez l’inquiétude du client

by Patricia

Gagner la confiance de son client est le socle de toute relation professionnelle réussie.

Lorsque celui-ci ne pratique pas la langue dans laquelle il vous demande un rendu écrit, cela peut être source d’inquiétude puisqu’il doit pouvoir justifier son choix de prestataire.

Quand le projet est une traduction, le client peut au moins s’appuyer sur le document en langue source pour essayer d’apprécier votre travail. Typiquement, en cas de doute, il fera appel à une connaissance capable de lire votre texte pour se rassurer. Et parfois, cela laisse la porte ouverte à des situations plutôt cocasses où la réponse pédagogique du prestataire fait toute la différence.

La perception de l'autre est imprévisible

Quelles précautions prendre, en revanche, lorsque votre client monolingue fait appel à vous pour un projet rédactionnel (copywriting) dans une langue qui lui est étrangère ?

Comment gagner sa confiance ? Comment le rassurer ? Comment vous protéger vous-même en cas de lecture de contrôle par des tiers qui n’étaient pas présents lors de la prise du brief client détaillé ?

Après tout, le texte que vous avez conçu et rédigé de toutes pièces peut plaire à Dupont, mais pas à Durand, tout est affaire de style, de goût : cela ne se discute pas, mais cela peut se gérer. Continue Reading…

Professional service firm web copy: speak with me, not at me!

by Patricia

Many professional service firms’ marcomm tools suffer from navel-picking copy. Sure, they aren’t the only ones, but in areas where a successful practice hinges on the personal touch, you’d think their marketing copy would at least involve you, right?

Wrong.

Take law firms. OK, maybe they are easy to pick on.  I put myself through university working as a paralegal; it’s a context I know fairly well. Continue Reading…

Retour d’expérience : Rédiger une proposition, 6 pistes pour réussir

by Patricia

Une fidèle  lectrice de ce blog, Sophie Dinh, nous avait promis un retour d’expérience après avoir mis en application, pour la première fois, les quelques conseils proposés ici et là.

J’ai proposé à Sophie, traductrice de l’anglais et de l’espagnol vers le français branchée informatique et santé, l’espace d’un billet d’auteur invité.

Parole à Sophie ! Et un grand merci à elle.

Enchaînement parfait. D’abord, je lis avec grand intérêt les deux billets de Patricia sur l’art d’élaborer une proposition efficace. Quelques jours plus tard, juste le temps d’assimiler, je décide de répondre à une annonce recherchant un traducteur. Continue Reading…