What you can tell from somebody's notepad

If you work in an office, you probably carry a note pad around with you.

Some people take a laptop to meetings and type as they talk, I'll address them in another blog some time - they're worthy of some special comment. But, if you're still in the old fashioned days like the rest of us, read on....

I have been doing some work recently in a very big organisation - one of the worlds top 10 organisations. While I've been there, I've been interacting with a couple of people who are at different places on the notepad spectrum. And they both project very different images.

I'll call the first person 'M' - he is in his late 40s and carries with him a Moleskine notebook. These italian pads trace their heritage way back to famous doodlers including Van Gogh and Matisse. Covered in oilcloth and bound with an elastic strap, Moleskine notebooks are the epitome of office chic. M writes in careful capital letters with his notebook in a landscape orientation using an aluminium bodied fine tipped felt pen. I find myself waiting for him to finish his notes before moving the conversation on.

The second person, 'B' has a loose leaf A4 pad that he folds over at the top. He writes with a blue Bic biro, or if he forgets that, he uses a red one. He occasionally scribbles in some ineligible scrawl or doodles spider's webs in the corners of his pages. But most of the time, he doesn't take notes at all. He agrees to do things but doesn't write them down. Maybe he has a photographic memory, but I'm not convinced.

You may think it's cowardly of me to write this in my Blog, incriminating them both. But I've already told them both what I'm about to tell you

When I hold a meeting with M, I go away confident that he'll follow up on what he agreed to.

When I meet with B, I go away doubting he'll do anything. In my presupposed mind, he'll just swim off to his next meeting like some corporate goldfish.

M and B work for a big consulting firm - they are both billed out to their customers at £1,000 per day. M seems good value for money. B seems like a waste of money.

Whether you're a plumber or a painter or a mechanic or a gardener, I'd expect you to have good tools and to look after them. If you turned up without tools or with poor tools, I'd have low confidence in your ability to do a good job. Why should people in offices be any different?

In personal impact terms, we call the tools you carry with you when you work "artefacts". Artefacts are the things you have that tell others that you're capable.

Artefacts are a big part of the image you project to the people around you, sometimes counting more for their opinions that your words or your work does.