We can be pretty cynical about the kinds of technical arrogance we see in the computer world. But, in this case, Microsoft got it right in a big way at their Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington D. C.

So, let me ask you – when was the last time the Chief Operating Officer of Microsoft went ape about your company? And, when did it happen in the Walter E. Washington Convention Center? Yeah, happens every day, huh?

What was Kevin Turner so excited about that he closed his keynote speech with a video and salute to this particular company?

It’s Never 2 Late – Never!

He was excited enough about the potential of a Microsoft partner company called It’s Never 2 Late. He was excited about Jack York’s vision of changing the lives of older adults.

You see, as long as Sheryl and I have known Jack (gosh, over 10 years now) he’s had a single-minded drive to help senior citizens connect, enhance and empower their lives by connecting to the computer world.

Jack would never say it’s been easy. In fact, if most of us went up against the odds he’s encountered, we’d have thrown in the towel long ago.

Not Jack.

“I just know this is a good thing to do. It really does change lives and you can just see it when it works. We just need a little more technology juice behind us to make it work.”

Um, so, do you think Microsoft might just have the juice?!

Take a look at the video above. If you want to skip right to the place where Mr. Turner introduces the video about It’s Never 2 Late, just skip to the 1 hour and 39 minute mark.

With Your Head In the Cloud

The Microsoft Partner Conference was often about something called “Cloud Computing.” But, Kevin Turner ended his speech, in front of over ten thousand of their most important partners, reminding all of us that technology just has its head in the clouds if it’s not about truly serving people.

As one of the seniors, Milton Greidinger, says in the video:

“It’s like a godsend. That’s a good word, godsend.”

And, that’s a good job, Kevin. And that’s a godsend, Jack.

You should be. You may have heard someone say, “I can get anything I need on the web from Google.” You may even have said it yourself. It’s hogwash.

Studies show 9 out of 10 people think they’re getting what they need from their Internet searches. That means your employees, your executives and even your board of directors.

There have been many studies about our searching skills, but one of the most famous is the Pew Internet and American Life Project’s “Search Engine Users,” which is sub-titled “Internet searchers are confident, satisfied and trusting – but they are also unaware and naïve.”

So now, if you haven’t heard of the “Deep Web,” “Invisible Web” or “Hidden Internet” it’s time to stop reading this article right now and  search these terms on your own. (Then, come back please!)

OK, I’m glad you’re back.

Did you find out in a few seconds of searching that you might be, um… shockingly out of touch?

Follow-up Question, Please

Here’s a follow-up question. When you searched for these terms, did any of you search somewhere other than the web? How many of you did your search in the “News” area of Google (or Yahoo or Ask.com)?

If you did, you found things like this article about Google’s “Deep Web” search initiative – “Google: “We’re Not Doing a Good Job with Structured Data.”

How many of you searched “Video” or “Blogs?” Did any of you search Twitter or the Questions section of LinkedIn?

Through Twitter you might have made your way to this: “Google’s PDF Search Throws Some Light on the Dark Web.” It’s about increasing the effectiveness of PDF search. Wow!

And, that’s only the beginning. We could go on – and on.

The Cost

Not knowing how to target your searches is costing you and your company time and money every day.

If you’re missing most of what a search engine can help you find, you are lost. If you don’t know that search engines (even the best of them) can get to only a fraction what’s on the web, you’re seeing the world of information about as clearly as the photo you see above.

We call search effectiveness “the language of the 21st Century.” It’s the language of search skills and strategies that ensure you target just the right information quickly and effectively.

More importantly, these skills keep you from being sucked in by the hawkers and swindlers.

Time to start learning this new language, don’t you think? That way, you’ll see the world of information clearly – like this:

Our idea is this – don’t wait to give out those awards. Give out your biggest and most coveted honors early and often. And, furthermore, give them out to employees just starting out, to members who barely qualify for your professional designations and to all those daft and dewy-eyed dopes who keep dreaming up impossible hopes (thank you again, Rodgers and Hammerstein).

What?! Well, hear us out.

In essence, that’s what The Boulder County Business Report does when it presents its Annual IQ Awards. For nine years now, this event has honored start-up companies who do new, innovative and risky things.

Yes, it is true that long-term employees, associates and members might also be doing new, innovative and even risky things – but, think about it. Think about that venerable icon that won your last Lifetime Achievement Award. Ask yourself, “Did they get the award for doing something new?”

You know the answer.

Ask yourself if they are doing anything new and innovative like:

Creating new and simpler ways for people to buy things on your web site? (ClickBank.com)

Providing new ways to sift through and manage critical news about your competition and customers? (FiltrBox.com)

Offering a luxury travel club where you only stay in homes worth several million dollars (Quintess.com)

Coordinating non-profits to assure students in need have backpacks of school supplies (CrayonsToCalculators.org)

These are just a handful of the 30 or so incredible nominees for this year’s IQ Awards.

(By the way, our friends over at Eventvue.com have been nominated in the “Internet/Software – Business” category. We wrote about them recently in “The Wall Street Journal Weighs in on Our Blog.”)

Most all of the candidates in the 10 categories are just starting out on their journey to a lifetime of achievement. Each winner will get a huge boost in morale, attention and cold hard cash.

Think about it. Who needs the time in the spotlight and those calls from investors the most? In your organization, do you give your recognition to the folks with the grey hair or the folks with the great ideas? Do you highlight the achievements of the past or the visions of the future? Will your membership grow because you look back or because you are moving forward?

These IQ Awards are on to something big. Go see them and take notes. Oh, and also say hello to some of the most innovative thinkers in the country. Not a bad way to spend an evening.

Editor’s Note: You can catch the action this Thursday, Aug. 14, at the Stadium Club at Folsum Field on the University of Colorado campus in Boulder. 5:30 PM so don’t be late. (Register online at www.IQAwards.com or call the Boulder County Business Report at 303-440-4950)

The Boulder County Business Report held its 8th annual IQ Awards last night in Longmont. The event honored Boulder and Broomfield county companies for creativity and innovation.

These awards don’t just focus on creativity and innovation alone, however. They recognize creative ideas that make businesses work. One of their few rules was:

“The idea should be one that can lead to a “sustainable” business – one that is not just a design on a napkin but a product or service that has the best potential to help build or grow a successful and profitable company.”

Pretty prestigious event. Previous winners include such easily recognizable brands as SpectraLink, Intelligent Office, GoLite, Nautilus, Crocs, Webroot, IZZE Beverage and Noodles & Co.

Last night there were 30 new nominees in 10 categories. All of them were winners, but 10 of them went home with awards. Want to learn how to be more creative and innovative? Spend time learning about any of these 30 companies.

I talked to Bill Schafer and Bud Klepper from Range Fuels. Oh, no big deal. They’re just making it possible to run your car on wood chips (they call it “cellulosic ethanol”), something that USA Today, Red Herring, Newsweek and others think is pretty creative.

In fact, just yesterday Red Herring featured their CEO, Mitch Mandich, in an article titled “Executing on Cleantech.” He said:

“I really wanted to do something to make a material difference in the world.”

And that was the theme for the evening. Creativity and innovation that is being put to use to make the world a better place, to improve our neighborhoods, our relationships and our planet.

There were too many companies to mention here, but the biggest applause of the night came for Lee Shainis of Intercambio De Communidades, a nonprofit company that not only teaches English, but also fosters understanding and builds community with their intercultural exchanges.

And virtually every winner mentioned the support of the communities of Boulder and Broomfield counties. Mark Elder from Aztek Networks said in his acceptance speech, “This is a community that really helps you get it done.”

That kind of support was on display last night with almost more sponsors than nominees. Vectra Bank’s Gary Gomulinski said they have supported the IQ Awards for years because of an affinity for the creative impulse. “Our company also likes to work outside the box to come up with creative solutions, so we support the event.”

The judges give their time also – interviewing, reading about and studying the over 300 applicants. Theresa Szczurek (who has had a few innovative companies of her own and now hangs out at Technology and Management Solutions) has been a judge since the very first IQ Awards. She told me “It’s such a worthwhile cause – and a chance for me to give back.”

Boulder may have once fiddled while its economy burned, but it’s now burning with colossal support for innovative and creative businesses – the good kind; the kind that want to save the world.

Susan Graf, executive director of the Boulder Chamber of Commerce, may have said it best in the Daily Camera just a few weeks ago:

Boulder’s a terrific place because it is so supportive of small business. We have more support services for small business than any community I’ve ever found, and between the Small Business Development Center and the Boulder Innovation Center, the Colorado Technology Incubator, Techstars — there are just all of these groups whose sole purpose is to help businesses start and grow and be successful here.

By the way, Techstars of Boulder was one of the winners last night. Correct that – everyone in Boulder and Broomfield counties was a winner last night.

In 1964 Peter Drucker coined the term “knowledge workers” in his book, Managing for Results. Major changes, he argued, would be brought about in business and society by information. There turned out to be just one problem, however. Someone forgot to make sure that knowledge workers have the skills to find that information quickly and efficiently.

New studies just keep coming out about the cost to American companies of inadequate Internet search skills. Consider these recent findings:

A 2006 Butler Group survey, Enterprise Search and Retrieval: Unlocking the Organisation’s Potential, reports, “as much as 10% of a company’s salary costs are wasted on ineffective searches.”

A 2007 Accenture survey finds that, “Middle managers spend more than a quarter of their time searching for information necessary to their jobs, and when they do find it, it is often wrong.”

Susan Feldman calculates in an IDC research white paper (The High Cost of Not Finding Information) that employees spend 3.5 hours each week on ineffective searches – at a cost of $5,251 per employee per year.

Susan Feldman goes on to write in her report, “People spend about 9 to 10 hours a week, on average, looking for information. Of that time, they don’t find the information they’re looking for a third to half the time.” And, she’s talking about information within the company, not on the Internet! Those searches, she reports, are even less effective.

Who needs to be trained to search for information effectively? Certainly many executives we call upon are surprised to hear there might be a need, or a problem.

An executive for a Denver company scoffed, “Well, sure I search the Internet, but I’m not getting any training to do it!”

A Fortune 500 VP of Human Resources in Orlando laughed and said, “I never thought you’d have to train something like that!”

The founder and publisher of Selling Power magazine, Gerhard Gschwandtner, wrote on this blog, “Any Tom, Dick and Mary can log on and search the Internet, that doesn’t require much of a brain.”

How ‘bout you? Are Tom, Dick and Mary from your company ready, willing and able to find what they need? Your employees don’t need another inspirational speaker. They don’t need more total quality mumbo-jumble. They don’t need to be spied upon, recorded or tracked.

They need to know how to find critical information quickly and effectively – and then they need the trust to put that information to work for the good of your company. Now, that’s what we’d call inspirational.

CEOs, like almost everyone else, assume they already know everything they need to know about effectively searching the Internet for critical business information. The PEW Internet and American Life Project has reported this phenomenon in their study called “Search Engine Users,” and summarized in this sentence, “Internet searchers are confident, satisfied and trusting – but they are also unaware and naïve.”

What can Sheryl Kay and Michael Benidt do about that? How can we reach these top decision makers and leaders? How can we “sell” them on the need to improve their company’s Internet savvy?

That’s where Anthony Parinello comes in. His specialty is selling to CEOs. He calls them “VITO” – the “Very Important Top Officer.” Parinello teaches sales people how to sell to VITO. We need him.

Mr. Parinello says that we must Think & Sell Like a CEO (the name of his newest book from Entrepreneur Press). He writes that we need to do 7 things if we are going to get our message across to CEOs. After reading his list, we thought we’d test ourselves – and grade ourselves. What kind of VITO power do we have and what kind of VITO power does our topic have.

Ready? Here goes – the Piranello 7 followed by our own self-assessment (the 7 are the ones Selling Power magazine published this January in an article by Heather Baldwin called The Seven Fundamental Assumptions of CEOs):

1. Knowledge is power. CEOs seek knowledge. They understand that the more they know, the better their decisions. Thus your message must expand his or her flow of critical information, not clutter that flow.

We teach how the Internet can be the cure for too much information, not the cause of it. When they learn how to correctly retrieve information, CEOs are able to quickly get to the most critical information, saving time by filtering out the less important stuff. Grade – A.

2. Passion and commitment make the difference. CEOs typically are very passionate about what they do. Make sure your own enthusiasm for the topic under discussion complements the CEO’s enthusiasm.

This is a mission for us. The lack of Information Intelligence skills at every level, from the highest ranking company officers, to their employees to the students in our schools makes this a challenge for our entire society. That fact “gets us up in early in the morning, keeps us up late at night” – and makes us write warning articles like this one. Grade – A.

3. What’s good for me is good for the company. CEOs self-identify strongly with their organization and “tend to feel very good about both,” says Parinello. Ask yourself whether what you’re doing supports the CEO’s best view of him or herself and his or her company, says Parinello.

The fact is that even a small investment in learning about Information Literacy pays dividends to the learner. Very few people are doing it, so it’s a competitive advantage. It also makes the CEO more creative, more motivated and more confident – and it will do the same for his executive team, his managers and his employees. Grade – A.

4. You can do, get, and be anything you want if you see a big enough picture. CEOs don’t focus on tactics; they focus on strategies. They take “50,000-foot views” of the world, says Parinello, and tend not to get bogged down in details. Are you focusing on the big picture? Or are you stuck in selling features and benefits?

Internet search is most often taught as a series of technical skills. Our approach to Information Literacy takes accessible Internet search skills and combines them with the CEOs own ingenuity, creativity and commitment to create a powerful new way of looking not only at information, but at human potential. Grade – A.

5. Good things happen when you get people to buy into your message. Every successful CEO knows the importance of communicating persuasively and effectively. If what you are doing will help the CEO get the message out and communicate effectively within his organization, you’ll have instant status with him.

Learning how to get to the right information can empower the CEO’s message. But, software engineers and technologists should not be teaching these topics (want proof? – just think PowerPoint). There is nothing more powerful than information that surprises people – delivered clearly, passionately and persuasively. Grade – A.

6. You can never get enough good ideas to support your plan. “CEOs love to consider ideas they can connect directly to the plan or vision that gets them up early in the morning and keeps them going late at night,” says Parinello. Ask yourself whether the ideas you’re presenting directly support the CEO’s plan.

The most amazing thing about Information Intelligence is that it works in every company and for every plan. It isn’t a new strategy or approach – instead, it enhances and supplements the mission and goals already in place, adding to the plan and vision – not changing them. Grade – A.

7. Results are what count. CEOs know they must deliver tangible and intangible results in their own markets and in the markets of their prospects and customers. It is essential that the issues you plan to talk about help the CEO create positive results for shareholders, customers, and prospects.

When leaders are empowered with Information Literacy skills they become better leaders. Employees become more motivated and more committed when given the skills and the trust to use them. The Internet itself gives us as trainers the ability to offer pre-work assignments, follow-up lessons, evaluations and instant assessment. That gets results. Grade – A.

Are we nuts? Do we really think that our target market is CEOs of big companies? Perhaps we are nuts – since 9 out of 10 people aren’t listening, including CEOs. But, you know what? We’re confident that we can “communicate on the same level as the CEO sitting across the table from us.”

Here’s what we’d tell VITO when we walk in: “Information Intelligence is more than just a collection of new tools, tips and resources – it’s the creativity, ingenuity and innovation that goes into it. The power of Information Intelligence is in you, and it’s in your people.”

So, if you are in charge of a big company, we’ll be contacting you soon. Will you be one of the 1 in 10 who takes our call?

“Timothy Bishop doesn’t go out and rebuild downtowns. He is an arson who lights fires in the hearts and minds of downtown citizens.” – Pug Ostling

In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 they burned books. In Ellensburg, Washington, they are igniting fires in their business community by reading them.

Yes, Timothy Bishop and a lot of other people are in the process of saving downtown Ellensburg. (See Just Try to Stop This Downtown Train). Their association has started a book club specifically for the downtown merchants – to read and discuss ideas that can re-energize their businesses.

Here’s a link to the full list of books to be discussed this year at Brown Bag Business Basics, just in case you want to join in. It’s a cooperative project of the Ellensburg Public Library and the Ellensburg Downtown Association.

You’ll notice that on February 15 they will be discussing Mark Sanborn’s The Fred Factor.

That ought to be enough time for us to get Mr. Sanborn to offer up a little “value added” tidbit for Tim’s book club. You see, Mark wrote an article for our blog recently and has been hanging around asking how else he can be of service. And Bishop is getting ready to reinvent their fundraising effort for what he calls “Round 2.”

We think Mark will be glad to help the book club as he will surely recognize these four “Ellensburg Factor Principles:”

1. Nobody, and I mean nobody, can prevent Ellensburg from being exceptional.
2. The quality of Timothy Bishop’s relationships is evident from the nationwide donations and the comments from Pug Ostling, David Burris and Shelly Schlumpf on Just Try to Stop this Downtown Train.
3. Not that they have much choice, but the Ellensburg Downtown Association is doing it all with ingenuity, imagination and pluck – not dollars.
4. Ellensburg is truly reinventing itself – combining the talents of a book club, the D&M Coffee Shops, Alpha Kappa Psi and lots of other volunteers.

Yes, “Fred Ellensburg” we call them.

Here’s Pug Ostling again, to close today’s ceremonies. But, before we do that – please, log on to www.savedowntown.org and donate $10 or more to this good effort. Here’s Pug:

“On the economic chessboard of Ellensburg’s future, King Wal-mart, Queen K-mart, et al, position themselves to gobble up the small pawns of independent merchants; corral the knights and horses; and monopolize the formerly castle-controlled real estate. But for what it’s worth, my money’s on The Bishop.”

And the Fred Factor. Stay tuned.

Jared Sandberg’s article is titled “Can Spending a Day Stuck to a Velcro Wall Help Build a Team?” For an opinion piece, it’s properly balanced and correctly researched. But, it’s also a great reminder of the lengths that some companies will go to try to motivate and rouse their employees.

The bottom line, in his opinion, is that these sorts of crazy motivational concoctions are well, crazy. He quotes Margaret Neale of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business about such motivational approaches, “What they don’t do is improve team performance.”

Better yet is the vigorous discussion board that accompanies this article. It’s called “Cubicle Culture Forum” and once again – sorry, if you don’t subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, you can’t get to the article or the forum links in this post.

My favorite quote among many on the Cubicle Culture Forum was this one: “I’ve been fortunate to work under outstanding bosses in good companies, and also had the agony of working under terrible supervisors in dysfunctional organizations. Not surprisingly, every “team-building” exercise I’ve been forced to participate in was in one of the latter settings.”

So, what does motivate employees? What can improve team performance? In this Dilbert Age, is it still possible to inspire the troops?

Perhaps the ways we look to inspire, encourage and build commitment should be changing just as much as the world around us is changing. The biggest change in the world today has to do with access to information. The Internet has made information instantly available, but, unfortunately not instantly retrievable. That actually takes some training and some skill development.

In fact, this instant access to information is why TIME Magazine chose, ahem, YOU as the Man of the Year. Thought you’d never make it, didn’t you? Of course, they also chose each of your employees as the Men and Women of the Year.

And, frankly, once your employees have been chosen as the Men and Women of the Year, you’re going to have to think of new ways to motivate them. Our suggestion, somewhat admittedly self-serving (but this is, after all, our blog), is to motivate them with information.

AFTER ALL:

Employees have been cross-trained, sensitivity trained, multi-tasked and quality circled.
They’ve been enhanced, advanced, mission driven and value positioned.
They’ve even been downsized, right-sized, smart-sized and out-placed.

Don’t you think it’s time for just plain informed?

What motivates employees? The same thing that motivates you. Trusted members of any team must have access to the information that will help them do a better job. This is a no-brainer when it comes to your senior staff. You would never think of keeping critical resources and information from them. But far too many companies continue to think that marching orders or stupid motivational tricks will somehow substitute for “information literacy” skill-building.

Today, you can no longer keep information from your employees, so you better help them manage the onslaught and develop the skills to effectively search the Internet and then put that information to use for your company.

What are people most interested in learning? Studies show that young people just starting out in business today will work for as many as 1,400 different companies – and that’s just before they finally finish graduate school. Get over it – and accept it. These folks are not going to work for you forever. If you don’t fire them, they’ll leave anyway. They’re movin’ on.

That puts career skills right up there at the top of the list for any employee. Teach me something that I can use to advance my career, and I will stay forever – or at least until the end of September.

Teach you employees how to navigate through the explosion of information available today and you’ll be almost unique. Most employers think that their employees already have these skills. Most employers think that they – and their senior staff – already have these skills.

Don’t think so? Here’s Gerhard Gschwandtner, the founder and publisher of Selling Power Magazine, “Any Tom, Dick and Mary can log on and search the Internet, that doesn’t require much of a brain.”

In response, here’s Sam Richter, the president of the James J. Hill Business Reference Library in St. Paul, Minnesota (the oldest business reference library in the U.S.), “The comment that ‘Any Tom, Dick and Mary can log on and search the Internet, that doesn’t require much of a brain’ is just completely wrong. How do I know? I’ve trained thousands of sales people and executives over the past year on how to effectively use online search programs to locate information on prospects and 95% have no clue how to effectively use even popular search engines, much less the Invisible Web and other premium data sources.”

Of course, you knew that. How do I know? Because you would not have read this far if you didn’t at least suspect that your company has to do something different to motivate the troops.

So what will you get if you decide to motivate your employees with information? Delight, surprise, thanks. But, you get more than that. You will get involvement – because they now have true tools to contribute every hour of every day. And, you will get ingenuity and creativity – because developing the ability to craft successful searches prompts you naturally to call upon your most creative abilities.

You’ll get motivated employees because they know the skills you are teaching them are skills they can use to advance their careers. And you just might be surprised. They may thank you so much that the career they choose to advance fits nicely inside your own company. And that will save you lots of recruiting money.

When it comes to motivating employees, isn’t it time for “just plain informed?”

The same thing is true of Internet search. Its explosive power comes from combining two or more timesaving tips. It won’t send you to the principal’s office, but it might just explode your business to the next level.

Let’s look first at two very quiet and seemingly everyday types of tips for searching the Internet. The first is Google Preferences; the second is called “Find on this Page.”

Google allows you to set your own search preferences. “Preferences” is just to the right of the Google search box, right there on the main page. Go look for it – now!

What can you do with “Preferences?” You can “filter” your results to reduce objectionable material. Or, you can choose the “unfiltered” brand (hey, never let it be said that you don’t learn anything here). You can change Google to be Spanish Google or French Google (or even Elmer Fudd Google). This is great if you are trying to learn a new language (don’t try to learn Elmer Fudd, OK?!) You can even search for only those web pages written in a certain language – say, only those written in French, Danish or Romanian. And, pretty cool – you can tell Google to open all results pages in a new window – so you don’t have to wait on the “back button” each time you go back to your search page.

But, the “Preference” we like the most – and the one we are going to use for our chemistry experiment today – is the preference to show more than 10 results per page. You can choose up to 100, which is what we suggest. These days, with faster Internet connections, it’s fine to set your Google preference to 100 results. What are you waiting for? Yes, kids, you can do this at home. Now, please.

Why is it better to have 100 results? Because searching the Internet is usually a “hit and run” proposition and no one has the time to look through 300 results, 10 on a page at a time. Instead, we tend to search in “scan and scat” mode. It’s more efficient to “scan and scat” 100 results quickly, without having to keep clicking on the next page of 10 results. Taken alone, this tip will save you time and help you find information you might have missed in the past.

But we need another element from the Periodic Table of Internet Tips to achieve a truly explosive brew. Let’s use “Find on this Page.” Whenever looking at an Internet page, you don’t have to read through the entire text of that page to find what you are looking for. Just go to “Edit” on the “Menu Bar” (I’d like to go to a bar right now) and choose “Find (on This Page)…” (or, for you keyboard shortcut people, CTR + F). Then, type the word or name you are looking for – and your word will be magically “selected,” or highlighted in color. This comes in very handy on those long web pages of people’s names – or just on any page that is very text intensive. And, on its own, it’s another time saving tip. It makes the searching process much quicker, almost tolerable.

If you’ve never tried “Find on This Page…” – try it now. Go to www.refdesk.com (probably one of the greatest information starting points on the web) and use Find on This Page for the word “Chemical.” Then, watch how that term is “selected,” – highlighted in colored text. (Now, click on the link, “ChemicalElements.com.” Clever, huh?)

Now it’s time to combine these two tips – let Google return 100 results and Find on This Page – to allow you to harness the truly explosive power of Internet search.

With your preference set to 100 results, Find on This Page becomes almost a weapon. In a second you can quickly scan for any corollary or qualifying term in 100 results. If you’re willing to do a page or two more, you could be precisely scanning 300 results in seconds – far beyond what most Google searchers ever have the patience for, and far faster.

Let’s test it. Go to Google and then do a search for “periodic table” – just like that, putting the phrase in quotes. You’ll be looking at the first 100 results out of some 24 million. Now, we want to do a Find on This Page for the word, “kids” – (so, go ahead, do it). The first instance of the word “kids” is at least 30 results down the page, but you got to it instantly. By the way, it also happens to be a pretty neat chemistry site for kids.

You can also use Find on This Page for symbols like @, $, & – which can save you time when you are hunting through pages for an e-mail address or financial information.

Think of it. By just combining two relatively common Internet tips – to let Google return 100 results and Find on This Page – you can quickly get to information you never thought possible. And, this is just one example. There are scores of other ways you can combine search tips and skills to put Internet chemistry to work for you and your company.

Beyond that, consider the breakout power you can realize by providing Internet search skill training for your employees. Teaching Internet skills is like dropping a pebble in a pond. The ripples boost your employees’ creative thinking. By learning just a few time saving tips and Internet search resources people begin to think in new ways – and, before you know it, come up with ideas and solutions they would never have thought of before.

Think about it. When even one of your employees finds critical competitive information by applying their own ingenuity to the search, you’ll have something a lot more valuable than just time savings and more accurate results. You’ll have an explosion of creative power, motivation and job satisfaction. You’ll have liftoff.