GPS

My last tech tip for your legal nurse consulting business was to clean it up, and my recommendation was to blow it out – your keyboard and air vents, that is. Today we’ll look at some different aspects of cleaning up for your CLNC^® business. This time it’s your data, not your dust.

Every document, PowerPoint^® presentation and photograph you create or edit personally or as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant contains what is known as “metadata.” Metadata, or hidden data in Microsoft^®-speak, may include information about the file in which the metadata is included – in other words it’s data about data and may contain information about the quality, creator and/or characteristics of the data it’s contained in. Try this: open Word, click “Open” like you’re opening a file. Then single left click on any file followed by a single right click. In the menu that pops up scroll to the bottom and left click “Properties.” That shows you the underlying metadata telling you when the file was created, edited, who authored the document and when the file was last accessed.

Let’s say you use a legal nurse consulting file template created by someone else to create a document. Are you the author? Not according to the metadata. The author, should we look into the document properties, is the person who created the template – not you. Wouldn’t it be embarrassing if an attorney-client asked you who really wrote your report and someone else’s name showed in the Properties as author?

There are ways to avoid this. If you’re using Office 2007 you can inspect the metadata included in any document, clear it out and edit in the “correct” information (or you can choose to delete it). Simply open a Word document. Click the “Office Button” in the upper left corner then click “Properties” to see the simplest metadata. You can edit this to include your correct information. If you really want to get advanced, click “Document Properties” above the display of properties to see all the editable types of metadata you can store on a document. Another way to see the metadata is to close the document, navigate to the document in your Windows^® Explorer (not Internet Explorer^®) then right click on the document and left click on “Properties.” Now, left click on “Summary” in the “Properties” tab and then, click on “Advanced.”

Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, has also given us a couple of ways to remove the metadata when you finalize a document. If you’re using Vista, it allows you to do it simply by bringing up the Properties box and the metadata can be cleared from there. In Office 2007, to clear out the metadata, open the Word document you wish to take to the cleaner. Click the “Office Button,” click “Prepare,” then click “Inspect Document” (if it asks you to save the document, do so) then click “Inspect.” The results box will show the different types of information stored in your document. You can then click the “Remove All” button by each type of information to remove that info. Reinspect the document and you’re ready to send it – without the metadata.

Almost every Microsoft Office 2007 document, PowerPoint and Excel document can be purged in this manner. If you’re using Office 2003/XP, there is a plug-in available from Microsoft to remove metadata just like Office 2007.

Beside Word documents, CLNC^® consultants routinely send out contracts as Adobe^® PDF documents rather than Word documents so as to be sure that the party receiving them cannot edit them. Adobe PDF documents also contain metadata that can be removed or edited prior to sending. Simply open the document with Acrobat, click File, then click “Properties” and you can edit the data. You’ll need Adobe Acrobat^® 8.0 or higher to do this (or a third-party application).

If you’re not scared enough by your legal nurse consulting documents, wait until you see what’s hidden in your digital photos! Try this. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to any photo stored on your hard drive. Right click on the photo to select it and in the menu that pops up, scroll to the bottom and left click “Properties.” Now, left click “Summary” in the “Properties” tab and then, here it is, left click “Advanced.” You may see the date the photo was taken, the type of camera, whether a flash was used and more information. Some of the newer digital cameras can even add GPS data to tell where a photo was taken. Think about that next time you snap a vacation pic – if you like the spot you can always use your GPS to navigate back to the exact spot the photo was taken (and so can anyone who you share that photo with via email or on the Internet).

Luckily there’s a simple application named JPEG & PNG Stripper that you can download and install on your computer. It does exactly what its name implies and strips the metadata from your photos. This is mandatory before posting them on the Internet or sharing them with friends/family (because they can be shared ad infinitum).

Metadata isn’t as persistent as you’d think but if you’re not aware of it you may be giving away more information than you wish to when you give away your documents and photos. Time to take steps to stop the sharing.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

My husband Tom has a great sense of direction. You can plop him down in a city he hasn’t been in for 15 years and he’ll lead you to the nearest movie theatre or McDonalds through all sorts of detours without a pause. He’s even gotten us out of the woods (literally) with just a topographical map and a cheap compass (probably from a “kid’s meal”) after we misplaced a trail in a wilderness reserve.

My sense of direction, on the other hand, is terrible. I don’t try to hide it. If Neiman Marcus wasn’t in the Galleria (which is outside the 610 Loop in Houston) I’d never go there at all. Ever. I can find my way to the shoe department at Neiman’s, but when I’m in a big hotel, like our NACLNC^® Conference hotel, I’m particularly challenged. Tom will often use the ring of my cell phone as a sonar signal or beacon when he’s searching for me.

Business consultants (often the ones who have never managed a business themselves) will tell you: have a plan; have a plan; have a plan. I may not have been blessed with a sense of direction but I have been blessed with the ability to plan. I wake up each day with a plan. But I also know that we’re probably going to bust that plan before it’s even 9:00am. The Institute’s Strategic Plan is 5,000,000 pages (really 63 pages), but even that can’t define the whole direction the Institute is traveling in. We head off following our plan towards one destination and often end at another. For example, we’ll start a meeting on one project and before we know it we’re all fired up, brainstorming a new resource for legal nurse consultants.

Mapquest is great for getting you from Point A to Point B with clean, convenient restroom stops in between, but it has one severe limitation – if you hit a detour – you’re stuck. What kind of sense of direction do you have for your legal nurse consulting business? What kind of plan are you using in your life? Are you using something limited like Mapquest or a more flexible GPS?

My car has a talking GPS. Unlike a spouse, it politely tells me when I’ve made a wrong turn or detour (“Please, please turn left at the stop sign, please.”) and points me on the best route to my destination. The most successful Certified Legal Nurse Consultants have a little GPS voice in the back of their heads that tells them when to detour from their plan and when to get back on it. When opportunities arise they’re able to detour from their plan and are primed to seize opportunities as they present themselves.

You need to develop a GPS-like sensibility for your CLNC^® business. This will help you cope with the detours, expected or unexpected that show up. Walk into an attorney’s office for an interview and there are five attorneys, not just the one you expected, and your GPS will route you into the correct mode to address them all.

An attorney calls you with a case outside your area of expertise. Your inner GPS tells you to surf to the NACLNC^® Directory website and locate a CLNC^® subcontractor. A CLNC^® colleague calls and asks you to testify on your specialty and you’ve never testified before. Does your inner GPS plot the quickest way out of town? No, it points you to research to start boning up on what you already know well and then to Nordstrom for a power suit (the one you’ve secretly been lusting after) to wear to your deposition.

Our inner GPS isn’t always right, it may sometimes be wrong, but it’s still our inner compass. It’s guided by what we’ve learned, what we want and what we need. It has our best interests in mind (but bears watching). Sometimes it’s a polite voice and sometimes it’s not so polite (screaming to get our attention). It’s 50% intuition, 50% training and sometimes 50% absolute total guesswork. It makes sure we return to our path but frees us to take advantage of the occasional detour without panic or fear (at least too much fear). Occasionally, like the one in my car, your inner GPS needs to be updated (or rebooted) to adjust to current conditions – but then it works like a champ again.

When was the last time you touched base with your inner GPS? Was it today, yesterday or when you enrolled in the CLNC^® 6-Day Certification Program?

What’s the last thing your inner GPS told you? Did you listen? I’d like to hear your inner GPS stories and so would your CLNC^® colleagues. So please comment here.

Success Is Inside!