Welcome to the Library of Personal Trade Secrets

In 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.

What about fees?

Access to The Library of Personal Trade Secrets is absolutely free — for now. I'll keep it free for as long as I can. If a fee ever becomes necessary, Charter Contributors (like yourself) will receive a free subscription for a limited time, in recognition of your founding contributions.

Offer a Personal Trade Secret

To contribute to the Library, fill out this form and click "Submit". All fields are optional except "Email", "Contribution", and "Headline". You'll receive a message thanking you for your contribution, and within a day or so, you'll receive a password that will let you view the entire collection.

First name
Last name
Title
Company
Contribution	Please limit your contribution to 200 words or so.
Headline	60 characters or fewer — a brief summary
Category	Select a category Business Travel Conflict Meetings Organizational Change Workplace Politics Workplace Technology Other
Email
Re-enter Email Address
Comments & suggestions	Comment on this facility, or make a suggestion for improvements. Is it useful? How could it be more useful? Were you looking for a category you couldn't find?
Please answer this question	Please forgive me, but I have to ask this question to filter out robotic spammers: How many sides (total) do two squares and two pentagons have? Use numeric characters only: 0-9. Ask me a different question, please.
	Top