Contribute to the
Library of Personal Trade Secrets

Do you have some little secret tricks you use that make you and your team more effective? Do you wish you could know what secret tricks others have? Here's a way to share your secrets without risk. To become a member, all you have to do is contribute a personal trade secret.

n whatever role you play, you have and use "personal trade secrets." For instance, if you travel by air to make a presentation, you might carry with you a backup copy of the presentation on CD, in addition to the one on your laptop, in case your laptop dies. Or maybe you call ahead to purchasing and ask for help in filling out a req, to make sure it goes through on greased rails. Or maybe you tend carefully a personal relationship with one of your peers, to your mutual benefit.

These invisible activities make you more effective. They help the teams you belong to — or lead — perform at higher levels, and they make your company more competitive.

Note to link spammers: Contributions submitted on this form are all reviewed by me. Links to or mentions of Web sites offering pharmaceuticals, airline tickets, payday loans, or other favored topics of spammers will cause me to classify your contribution as spam, and it will be discarded.By contributing a description of one of your personal trade secrets you'll gain access to the contributions of others. If your contribution is accepted, you'll receive a user ID and password to give you access to the library we've accumulated here.

To ensure your safety, your contribution is completely anonymous. I do require your email address, to help me resolve any questions or ambiguities, but these are rare. I won't add your email address to my database, and you'll receive no ads or solicitations from me as a consequence of making a contribution.

Tips can be references to useful books or articles, they can be advice from others, or they can be original to you. Check out some samples from the collection.

Although I personally review all submissions, my purpose is simply to screen out prank submissions and duplications. I edit the contributions only for appropriateness for the collection and for consistency of style. I wouldn't necessarily adopt any of them myself — you'll have to judge what fits for you. Remember that even if you don't adopt one of these personal trade secrets, it can be helpful to know what some people out there are up to.