Father of triplets, Mercury LLC
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Articles by Eric Bloom
7 hybrid work best practices for IT leaders
As IT leaders help their organizations move from a remote to a hybrid work environment, they will also be navigating these uncharted waters with their own IT teams. As a result, IT must quickly establish its own hybrid work culture and hybrid work best practices – both to maximize its own internal efficiency and to act as a testbed for other parts of the larger organization. Plenty of challenges await in the realms of fairness, communication norms, tools, and related matters.
6 tips on maximizing your staff’s client service
Eric P. Bloom As a manager, never forget the importance of teaching and emphasizing the importance of client service to your staff. Prior to the COVID pandemic, I was in Washington, D.C., for the second time in three weeks to provide training to a client. On my first trip to Washington, I was able to stay at a Marriot Fairfield Inn right next door to my client’s office.
Seven tips on managing college interns
Eric P. Bloom College interns are a unique category of employee. Rather than simply being hired to perform a task at an appropriate rate of pay, managers are asked to teach these temporary employees about the world of business, the “real” skills that will be needed when they graduate from college, and if possible, a little fatherly/motherly advice on how to prepare for the world ahead.
Elevens ways writing a blog can advance your career
Eric P. Bloom As a manager, there are many advantages of writing a blog, even if the only place it’s ever published is in handwritten form within the journal that you keep next to your bed. So often I hear managers, entrepreneurs, and professionals of all ilks say they should write a blog.
Elevens ways writing a blog can advance your career
Eric P. Bloom As a manager, there are many advantages of writing a blog, even if the only place it’s ever published is in handwritten form within the journal that you keep next to your bed. So often I hear managers, entrepreneurs, and professionals of all ilks say they should write a blog.
six tips on maximizing your staff’s client service
Eric P. Bloom As a manager, never forget the importance of teaching and emphasizing the importance of client service to your staff. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, I was in Washington, D.C., for the second time in three weeks to provide training to a client. On my first trip to Washington, I was able to stay at a Marriot Fairfield Inn right next door to my client’s office.
MANAGER MECHANICS 5 ways to enhance your influence in a virtual workplace
Eric P. Bloom Office influence is the ability to move a person’s thinking, actions and/or decisions in a way that forwards your business objectives. This concept holds true regardless of your physical working location. When working from home, there is still the expectation that business goals, deadlines and deliverables must be achieved.
Personal traits to look for when interviewing candidates
Eric P. Bloom In last week’s column I discussed seven job-specific soft skills that managers should look for when hiring new employees. This week’s column discusses personal traits that should be considered when evaluating a potential candidate for hire. Based on the particular job being filled, some personal traits are more applicable than others.
7 soft skills to look for when interviewing candidates
Eric P. Bloom One of the most difficult and important decisions made by managers is deciding which person to hire. The conventional wisdom related to candidate selection, rightly so, suggests that while technical competency is the key that opens the interview door, it’s organizational fit that should ultimately convert a candidate into an employee.
Boys Scouts taught columnist lessons on management
Eric P. Bloom It’s hard for me to believe, but it was almost 50 years ago this month that I received my Eagle Scout award. There were two of us, myself and a friend. Achieving this level within scouting was a significant amount of work, but it was also a lot of fun. What I didn’t understand at the time, as my friend Barry and I stood on the stage to receive our Eagle badges, was the lifelong lessons I had learned that would help me in various ways as I grew older.
Productivity in the Remote Workplace
Maintaining Productivity: Tips for Managers A manager’s goal when working with a mostly remote team is to organize themselves and the situation for maximum productivity and keep things running as smoothly as possible, despite the current shift in the normal workplace. The best way for managers to maintain a global expansion of productivity is to do what they’re already doing, but with more intentionality.
Eric P. Bloom column on knowing your department's role
Eric P. Bloom As a manager, you would think that knowing your department’s role and value would be an obvious requirement. That said, it’s not as simple as it seems. Definitionally, a department’s role is related to the specific work that it performs. A department’s context refers to why the department exists and the value it provides to the overall organization.
8 Step process to maximize delegation effectiveness (Part 1)
By Eric P. Bloom One of the great things about being a manager is that you can delegate various types of tasks to other people, instead of having to do them yourself. This may sound like a rather cavalier statement, but it’s true. As a manager, to do your job efficiently and effectively, you must delegate various types of tasks to your staff. If you don’t delegate, you will be overworked and your staff will be underutilized.
Programmed and lateral thinking for business managers
Eric P. Bloom I’d like to begin by describing the difference between programmed thinking and lateral thinking. Programmed thinking is the process of using structured methodologies and/or logical algorithmic processes to solve problems, make decisions and/or create new product offerings. Lateral thinking is, by its nature, more creative than programmed thinking and facilitates pattern recognition, language, and out-of-the-box thinking.
Eight tips for writing great meeting minutes
By Eric P. Bloom I don’t know about you, but whenever I’m in a meeting and the leader asks who would like to take the minutes, I always try to find a reason to look down at my notebook as if I didn’t hear him. I’m not a great notes taker and the task has never been on the top of my hit parade of favorite activities. That said, there are various advantages of being the note taker and simple ways to efficiently take the notes and produce the meeting minutes.
Tips and tactics for writing meeting agendas
Eric P. Bloom Believe it or not, a well-written agenda can enhance your virtual meeting and help you achieve your business goals.
Columnist Eric Bloom gives advice on how to manage talent in your company.
Eric P. Bloom As a manager, the concept of talent management (TM) should be near and dear to your heart from two perspectives. First, TM concepts can be used to help you enhance your team members’ skills, utilization and career growth. Second, from your personal perspective, your company’s overall TM initiatives may be able to help you expand your skills, grow professionally and maybe even help facilitate your next promotion.
How to spice up your staff meetings, Part 2
By Eric P. Bloom Tuesday Nov 10, 2020 at 10:29 AM Nov 10, 2020 at 10:29 AM In last month’s column, I discussed the importance of staff meetings and how they can easily bore you to tears in the process. Then, I went on to describe the first four of my ten suggestions on how to make your staff meetings more interesting, informative, and maybe a little bit fun. In this week’s column, I’d like to continue on last month’s theme and give you suggestions five through ten. 5.
How to spice up staff meetings, Part 1
By Eric P. Bloom Monday Oct 19, 2020 at 12:01 AM Wow, there is nothing like a good weekly staff meeting to get the creative juices going and the work intensity flowing. I bet that as your reading this column you’re thinking fondly and nostalgically about last week’s meeting and you just can’t wait for the next staff meeting coming up in just a few days. Oh boy, it will be fun, exciting, inspirational and an altogether great time! Oh, your staff meetings are not like this.
Getting bad news early is good news
By Eric P. Bloom Sunday Sep 13, 2020 at 12:01 AM In the business world it may seem odd to say that it’s good to get bad news. As managers, certainly we would always prefer to receive good news, but unfortunately we all know that’s not always the case.
What is your group’s management bench strength? Part 2
By Eric P. Bloom Sunday Sep 6, 2020 at 12:01 AM In last week’s column we discussed ten ways to help prepare senior individual contributors in your staff for future supervisory and management roles. In this week’s column, we’ll be discussing ways to help prepare your existing management team for more senior future leadership and management roles within your organization.
Five Steps to Enhancing IT's Influence in the Enterprise
Share Abstract This IDC Perspective address five areas in which CIOs and IT organizations can enhance and extend their influence in the companies they serve. COVID-19 has raised IT's prominence within the organization because of the need to modify business processes, enhance firewall and security considerations, provide home-based technical support, and implement companywide videoconferencing.
Be willing to let your team members fail
By Eric P. Bloom Sunday Aug 9, 2020 at 12:01 AM This may sound a little harsh, but once you understand the meaning behind this statement, I believe that you will see that I’m suggesting a way to help, not hurt, those who work for you.
Strategically picking meeting times based on biorhythms
By Eric P. Bloom Monday Aug 3, 2020 at 8:59 AM Aug 3, 2020 at 8:59 AM When during the workday are you most energetic, wide awake and ready to take on the world? On the other side of that coin, when during the workday would you prefer to be taking a nap to recharge your internal batteries? Enough about you, when during the workday do you think your boss, staff, clients, customers and peers are most awake or half asleep?
Hidden skills of your staff and co-workers
By Eric P. Bloom Sunday Jul 12, 2020 at 12:01 AM Do you know all the non-task oriented skills and abilities of the people on your team? Does someone in accounting have an undergraduate degree in English? Is your administrative assistant fluent in French and Spanish? Does your human resources representative fix computers on the weekend for extra money? Is the new writer just hired into the marketing department also an accomplished artist or photographer?
Hidden skills of your staff and co-workers
By Eric P. Bloom Sunday Jul 12, 2020 at 12:01 AM Do you know all the non-task oriented skills and abilities of the people on your team? Does someone in accounting have an undergraduate degree in English? Is your administrative assistant fluent in French and Spanish? Does your human resources representative fix computers on the weekend for extra money? Is the new writer just hired into the marketing department also an accomplished artist or photographer?
Seven advantages of just-in-time training
By Eric P. Bloom Monday Jul 6, 2020 at 12:01 AM Have you ever taken a technical training class weeks before actually using the information you learned? If you are like most of us, the majority of the knowledge gained within the class will be long gone from your memory by the time you put your fingers to computer, feet on the pedals or hand to the construction tool. The reason is that the information you learned was not immediately reinforced in the workplace.
Ten places to find department productivity killers
By Eric P. Bloom Sunday Jun 28, 2020 at 12:01 AM "My department is totally overworked and it’s starting to burnout my team. I can’t reduce my department’s workload and I can’t get permission to hire additional people. Any thoughts on what I should do?" Thanks for your question and I agree, you’re in a difficult situation and I give you credit for trying to find ways to give your staff some relief.
Panel Discussion: The Importance of Remote Working: Operating in a Virtual World
Sales Experts Advice and Tips MUST WATCH PANEL DISCUSSION[icon name=”binoculars” class=”” unprefixed_class=””] Remote working is not just the future but is the present reality for many workers and will continue to grow. Roles that are not dependent on a physical location or being part of a physical team will now have to justify working in an office which is a 180-degree change. The challenge is to ensure that you can operate efficiently and effectively with virtual teams.
Managing a Virtual Work-from-Home IT Team
Share Abstract This IDC Perspective provides insights into the people and task complexities of managing individuals and leading IT organizations in a WFH environment. These insights include technical and conceptual connectivity needs of your workers, requested WFH support based on task complexity and interaction level, the effect of WFH requirements based on each employee's personality type, and task assignment and measurement considerations.
Seven team rituals to enhance employee performance
By Eric P. Bloom Sunday Jun 14, 2020 at 12:01 AM Prior to COVID-19, did your team have any informal traditions, such as annual get-togethers, monthly pot-luck dinners or employee birthday cakes? Did you celebrate project completions with pizza parties? Did you have lost-the-deal pep talks and lessons learned meetings or any other type of event or action that helped your group feel like a team that cried together and celebrated together?
An interview with 'Promote Yourself' author
By Eric P. Bloom Sunday May 24, 2020 at 12:01 AM I had the true pleasure of speaking with Dan Schawbel about his book “Promote Yourself: The New Rules for Career Success.” If Dan’s name is familiar to you, his first book “Me 2.0” was a best seller. I asked Dan what suggestions he had for my readers regarding advancing their careers and building their professional brands.
Managing transitory teams
By Eric P. Bloom Sunday Apr 5, 2020 at 12:01 AM I received this question from a reader and decided to share my answer with everyone. "Help! My company continually creates and disbands teams on a project-by-project basis. It seems that by the time my group gets to know each other the project ends and the team is broken up. How do I manage people in this kind of environment?" First, great question and thank you for asking.
Influence and Productivity in the Remote Workplace
With a record number of people working from home due to the recent Covid-19 pandemic, it can be very difficult for employees and managers to keep things running as smoothly and productively as possible. It’s difficult to achieve maximum productivity while trying to make adjustments to more people virtually commuting and virtually working.
Required work vs. requested work
By Eric P. Bloom Sunday Jan 19, 2020 at 12:01 AM If you are the manager of a company department that is providing services to people in other internal departments, your work can generally be categorized in two ways: required work and requested work. Required work can best be described as the ongoing processes that your department performs day in and day out. That is to say, it is your department’s core company function and purpose. Examples include running the company payroll, producing budget vs.
Six ways email batching can save you time
By Eric P. Bloom Sunday Jan 12, 2020 at 12:01 AM When you decide to read and answer your email can have a significant effect on your personal productivity, particularly if you are a manager. As managers, we receive emails from a number of different sources that are important to us. These sources include: • Co-worker based: Your boss, staff, peers and others within your company • Externally based: Your clients, vendors, etc.
Driving IT Organization Transformation to Support Changing Public Sector IT Operating Models
Share TECH BUYER Dec 2019 - IDC Perspective - Doc # US45719219 Driving IT Organization Transformation to Support Changing Public Sector IT Operating Models By: Thom RubelAdjunct Research Advisor, Eric BloomAdjunct Research Advisor Abstract This IDC Perspective discusses changing public sector IT operating models and provides a step-by-step approach to leading government IT transformation (ITX).
Exercise the power of big thinking
By Eric P. Bloom Sunday Jan 5, 2020 at 12:01 AM There are many quotes and sayings that strongly suggest or quietly allude to how you think about things today can have a profound effect on your future reality.
Eight-hour day, 12 hours needed - Part 2
By Eric P. Bloom Sunday Dec 29, 2019 at 12:01 AM In last week’s column I began the discussion of management techniques that can be used to provide expanded day work coverage in a way that your staff will really appreciate because of its potential positive effect on your team’s personal work/life balance.
Eight-hour day, 12 hours needed - Part 1
By Eric P. Bloom Sunday Dec 22, 2019 at 12:01 AM The title of this column outlines an issue that happens to many of us as managers. Our problem is that the standard work week is eight hours long, say from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., but the business processes we manage require a 12-hour day to perform them, say from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. The question I’m often asked related to this topic is how to best staff this expanded work day.
Advantages of a multi-time zone workforce
By Eric P. Bloom Sunday Dec 8, 2019 at 12:01 AM As a manager, having staff spread across the country or around the world is a mixed blessing at best. On the downside, managing staff in multiple locations causes various logistical issues, cultural divides, language hurdles, travel costs and other problems. On the upside, time zones can provide you with increasable efficiencies. These business efficiencies include: 1. Cost-effective 24-hour client service and technical support coverage 2.
Spend time 'on' and 'in' your department
By Eric P. Bloom Sunday Dec 1, 2019 at 12:01 AM The idea of spending time “on” and “in” your department is best described using the example of a small one-person consulting firm specializing in management consulting. Like most small companies, the owner has two primary responsibilities; first, generating revenue by doing hands-on consulting and second, trying, to find future consulting assignments.
Spend time 'on' and 'in' your department
By Eric P. Bloom Tuesday Nov 26, 2019 at 5:43 PM Nov 26, 2019 at 5:43 PM The idea of spending time “on” and “in” your department is best described using the example of a small one-person consulting firm specializing in management consulting. Like most small companies, the owner has two primary responsibilities; first, generating revenue by doing hands-on consulting and second, trying, to find future consulting assignments.
Leadership is a combination of vision and articulation
By Eric P. Bloom Sunday Oct 27, 2019 at 12:01 AM When some people see or hear a statement that resembles the title of this column, they often say something to the effect of “Ya, ya , ya, I know, to be good a leader you must have a vision and then communicate with others. Bla bla bla." The reason for this, dare I say, uninspired attitude toward defining leadership as a combination of vision and articulation is twofold. First, is because it seems to be stating the obvious.
Managing digital natives and digital immigrants
By Eric P. Bloom Sunday Oct 13, 2019 at 12:01 AM The concept of digital natives and digital immigrants has been around for a number of years. There are various descriptions of what makes someone a digital native. The definition that I like best is a person who had the opportunity to use digital technologies during his/her formative years. These technologies could be video games, cellphones, computers or any other similar type of technology.
Managers must dance when the music plays
By Eric P. Bloom Sunday Oct 6, 2019 at 12:01 AM No, I’m not suggesting that you actually start dancing around the office, especially if your ability to dance is similar to mine. What I am suggesting is that, as a manager, there are specific times and key situations when we really earn our pay. Depending on how we act, these situations can get us promoted, get us fired or cause us to be forever ignored and un-promotable.
How to be relevant to the team you manage
By Eric P. Bloom Sunday Sep 29, 2019 at 12:01 AM There is an old expression that says if you are not part of the solution, then you are probably part of the problem. Before considering this expression as a manager, let's first consider it from the perspective of an employee. After all, if you are a manager by profession, you are most likely also an employee with a boss of your own. That said, as the employee, what happens when your manager is not: • A source of information and support?
Effective Practices for Leading a Multilocation and Multicultural IT Help Desk Function
Share Abstract This IDC Perspective provides guidance for managing IT's internal user services and help desk staff in multiple locations in geographically diverse companies. This may include help desk technicians stationed at various physical locations or centralized phone-based support staff remotely supporting a global user base; these staffers provide services such as first-level help desk support, phone system administration, or application security management.
Have an authentic management style
By Eric P. Bloom Sunday Sep 1, 2019 at 12:01 AM An enormous amount has been written regarding management styles, best practices, techniques and theories. I applaud the authors, social scientists, academics and business leaders who have put their thoughts into print and have greatly forwarded the occupation of professional management. In fact, I have read many of their books and their collective thought has made me a better manager.
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