Most people think it’s difficult start a career as a business consultant. I used to think the same in my early 20s when I started in IT. In retrospect, I should have made more efforts to establish myself as a consultant earlier; the benefits certainly outweigh the downsides. As luck would have it, I was forced into a consultancy role when I lost my 9-5 job. Time to learn to hustling and bring in business. Harvard Business Review refers to it as The Hustle Strategy. More on that later.

3 Types of Consultant

Before we start, there are 3 types of consultants:

1. Academic — those with academic achievements, e.g. PhDs, who are brought in to solve/explore/test problems. Their skills match the problem at hand. So you have it or you don’t.
2. Management — those with senior management skills, such as in M&A, legal, international business development and
3. Solutions — this includes the broad spectrum of 9-workers who’ve ‘repositioned’ their skills, want to work for themselves and/or have others working for them. This, I assume, it where you fit in. It’s where most consultant start out.

How to get started as a Consultant

The next question is: how do I get started? Here’s one way of approaching it.

1. Focus — identify your top 3 skills (not technologies). Be honest. If someone put a gun to your head and said “what are the three things you do best?”, then you’d say ”what I do best is…”
2. How do you see yourself — write a pen portrait (100 words max) of how you see yourself. So, if you were introducing yourself person to someone at a conference, you’d say “Hi, this is Amanda she,….” Remember, focus on the benefits you offer, not the tools. Tip – Start to visualize the person/consultant you want to become.
3. Role Models — identify 3 business leaders and use them as role models. For me, Richard Branson is a good example, for you it might be someone else. Read everything about these people, soak up how they made it. It’s not in the words of their bio – but the energy, the drive they had. Having a role model gives you a frame of reference, something to use as a compass/anchor.
4. Meet and Greet — Contact 10 people who are in a similar position as yourself. Meet up, for example, on a Saturday afternoon and see how you can help each other. Remember, you’re looking to link up with people for the long haul. Ignore the tire-kickers. Find 1 or 2 decent people that you trust and keep connecting with them.
5. Be the Glue — Define one common goal with these folks and make it happen. For example, aim to run an event, workshop, training course (whatever) by a specific date. You have to have targets, otherwise nothing will happen. It will just be talking shop.
6. Action Plan — doesn’t need to be fancy. List what needs to be done, assign names, and dates.
7. Examine your USP – I know this sounds lame but you have to differentiate yourself from the competition. This is the key. If you become ‘that guy’ who does, for example, Facebook training, Social Media business communications, Proposal development for biotechnology or whatever, then laser focus on this. Your aim is to dominate this one area. You have to become ‘that guy’.
8. Promotion — once you’ve all your ducks lined up, start getting the message out. Write guest articles in blogs, contribute to events, share information on LinkedIn, send free White Papers to people in your target market – do whatever it takes to promote yourself (and your colleagues) so that you become you become ‘that girl’. Girls, when I say ‘that guy’ I mean both guys and girls. You know that, right?
9. Personal branding – get your site, business cards, sharp suit etc in place. People still judge on appearances. If you look successful…
10. Network — Look for places to get out and meet people. People do business with people they meet. Again, it doesn’t have to be fancy. Find fast ways to meet up and find out where it’s happening.
11. Stick to the plan — If you keep this up for 3 months, you’ll change your perception of who you are and also by meeting people, you’ll learn new things. While the web is great, the human touch is what counts.
12. Follow the leader — Tom Peters, Chris Brogan, Richard Branson, ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ have all helped me in different ways.

Tip – if you’re a single mom, link up with other parents who want to run their own business and take turns minding each other’s kids:  that way you both get one night a week to get out there and network.

Chris Brogan made a very interesting observation recently when he said that he tries to be there ‘before the fire starts’. What he meant was that everyone wants to help (i.e. sell you something) when things go wrong but it’s the people you know before it happened that count. I bet there you’ve been in that similar situation yourself. It’s the people you already know that you trust. See: Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust

One last thing – the harder you try, the luckier you get. Take it one step at a time. Remember the turtle and the hare. Use everyday opportunities as ways to close the gap between where you are and where you want to go.

What’s your first step?

What advice would you give to those who want to start as a Business Consultant? What’s the one mistake they must avoid? What’s the best tip you ever got on starting your own business?

Ross Kimbarovsky asks: “How do you decide what to do next? Should you write a blog post? Answer emails in your inbox? Make several sales calls? Spend time on Twitter? Or should you call a team meeting to discuss a customer problem?

Ross adds that successful people are successful in part “because they are good at setting priorities. And while there are many different ways to set priorities, I wanted to share how I set my own priorities.”

Getting Things Done – How I Set Priorities from Ross Kimbarovsky on Vimeo.

Getting Things Done: How I Set Priorities

For me, it’s all about planning. And planning, by extension, is decision-making.

1. At the end of every business day, I review what I’ve done. Takes 5 min. What did I forget to do? This goes to the top of next day’s schedule.
2. I get up around 6am to get a head start and beat the kids getting up.
3. I ignore the emails for 1 hour. Nothing is that urgent.
4. I plan my day – what is critical goes first, then what I need to do and the rest can wait
5. When all of this is done, I check emails, watch cats doing ninja tricks and what not
6. I have a super quick review at 11.45 before lunch
7. I have a super quick review at 2.45 to make sure I’m still on track.

All this is done on my pad. Writing it down seems to make it more permanent. I like to cross things off when I’ve conquered a task!

Small rewards as we go along. Nothing fancy.

Closing my inbox during the work day was/is the biggest way to save time. And, of course, turn off the phone.

How do you organize your day?

Tom Peters says, “the value of services will continue to fall” and that the only way to survive is to differentiate yourself from the competition. Is this true? How do you as a technical writer make yourself stand out from the crowd? If you don’t, what impact could this have on your career?

How to Differentiate Yourself as a Technical Writer

Here are five suggestions to do this:

1. Video Blogging – use your Camtasia skills to create videos that show how products work. Cisco is doing a great job in this area. They gave flip cameras to the IT people and encouraged them to make short, snappy videos that show how to use their hardware, networks, and systems. Which would you prefer? To read 20 pages or watch a 3 minute video?
2. Screencasting Training – now that you know how to make the videos, why not use this to teach others to do this same. Position yourself as a screen-casting expert, setup the blog, get involved, and show others how this works. FWIW there is a very active video marketing group on LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/ivanwalsh) that you may want to join.
3. Web-based Training – if you’ve spent years writing guides, you must have developed an in-depth knowledge of 2 or 3 fields. See which of these are most in demand (Google searches and forums will be a starting point) and then develop training modules that you can present online. Lynda.com does a great job in offering training over the web. Sign up with them and see how it works.
4. Social Media Writing – you know how to write, right? Well, most people don’t. As Social Media continues to explode leverage your writing skills and show (“the benefit o f communicating well on Facebook is…”) others how to get their message across on these Social Network. Look at how Debbie Weil does it. http://www.debbieweil.com
5. Business English – the upside of all these jobs getting shipped to India, China, Brazil is that their Management teams want to do more business in the west. How can you help them write better reports, communicate more clearly, protect them from being misunderstood – you get the idea!

These are just five ways you can stand out from the crowd and position yourself as a specialist. My suggestion is to look at who is doing this right, e.g. Debbie Weil, and study them diligently. Then develop an action plan and start getting the rewards you deserve.

What other careers can you think of? Is it possible to differentiate yourself as a Technical Writer? How would you do it?

PS: Tom Peters is here: Thriving on Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution and Debbie Weil The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right is here.

Do you feel loved? Many technical writers feel unloved. They feel they don’t get the respect they deserve. I hear this on LinkedIn and Facebook: “people don’t respect the work I do.” Well, if that’s the case, here are a few ways to get more respect and move into a more rewarding career.

Signs That You Get No Respect

Are you trying too hard?

Define Respect – first, you need to define what you are really looking for? What in others would demonstrate that they respect you? It is financial rewards, credit, acknowledgment or other things. Check that you’re not being over-sensitive or running yourself down. People who don’t respect themselves, never earn respect from others. It’s one long downward cycle.

Getting Bullied – if you feel you’re the butt of their jokes, getting run down, disrespected and ridiculed, then maybe, maybe, maybe there is some bullying going on here. You need to face these people and assert yourself. If you don’t, the same pattern will repeat itself at the next job.

Office Trolls – these people don’t respect anyone. They’re emotional vampires. Don’t take it personally. Even if you do a great job, you’ll never earn their respect. But here’s the thing. Would you want their respect, anyway?

Lack of recognition – if there is a trend/habit of certain staff getting rewarded, while you continually get overlooked, then flag it (be careful – this can back-fire if you’re seeing to be whining) or find ways to address it.

Or just accept that you work with a bunch of jerks!

What to do next

Be active – if your work environment doesn’t see the value in what you do, then get out there and start looking for alternatives. Remember, it’s always easier to get a job when you have a job.

Re-Positioning Yourself – technical writers with 5+ years experience should/could be looking at re-positioning themselves as Content Strategists, Web Content Consultants and other roles where your ‘knowledge’ in more valued. This is where the real money is. It may take you 12-18 months to make this transition but once there the rewards, respects, and career development make it worthwhile.

Perception – Technical writing is often seen by mgt as a service, in the same way that testing, customer support etc are services, i.e. useful but not *always* essential. As long as you’re a writer, people see you as providing a service. And the services industry is very far down the food chain.

Interesting places to look – if you have a taste for adventure, Brazil, Australia, India, China, Poland, Dubai, and others in the Gulf are actively seeking experienced IT professionals. While there are many barriers to moving to these counties, such as language, food, families, health etc, US multi-nationals with offices in these locations can be very supportive of people willing to give it a try. Google, Oracle, IBM, and most of the Nasdaq 100 have offices in Asia. If you’re interested, call them or visit their website. It can’t hurt to look.

What do you think?

What suggestions would you give to someone who wanted to develop their technical writing career or re-position themselves, for example, to move out of documentation and into a new field?

Which of these would you hire to join your Technical Writing Dept? Someone with great writing skills but little technical knowledge or, for example, a Computer Science graduate with deep technical knowledge but average writing skills?  We’ve been talking about this on LinkedIn and here are some thoughts.

Why Writing Skills Are More Important

• Technical writing is about writing.  Words are the foundation upon which the rest is built.
• If you don’t have the writing skills, then regardless of how well you know the application, you can’t explain how it works.
• Your ability to drill down and describe complex functions may be beyond your grasp.
• To resolve this involves arranging sessions & workshops with developers, IT architects etc, all of which cost time/money.
• If writing skills were not necessary, programmers could write the user guides! Ever see a well-written user guide from a 22 year old Java developer? There are exceptions but…
• Technical writing is about communication. Technical writers are trained to interview people and extract the relevant information.  Of course, listening skills are not exclusive to technical writers but many (that I know) feel they grasp the importance of this more than others.
• Writing skills give you the tools to communicate – and to help/teach others to communicate.

FYI – One of the trends I see in Tech Comms, is the changing role of the Technical Writer / Technical Communicator into an educator, facilitator, and becoming the central point of contact for technical information distribution (i.e. technical information coordination).

The counter argument is as follows.

Why Technical Skills Are More Important

• Technical knowledge is the starting point. You need to know how the system works, otherwise all the writing skills in the world may be of little use. If you don’t know what it actually does, what can you begin to write?
• Most ‘non-technical’ technical writers (e.g. graduates with English degrees) waste/take up developers’ time asking questions about how the application works, instead of actually generating content. While there is some leeway here with new technologies, developers have their own deadlines and can’t be expected stop coding to explain the innards to the application.
• Those with technical skills can hit the ground running – it’s the responsibility of the Technical Editor to refine the text.
• Those with technical skills know which questions to ask. As they understand the application/industry/codebase they can ask the hard questions that ‘non technical’ writers would not see in the first place.

Which would you hire?

If you were running a technical writing dept, which type of person would you hire?

A technical writer with strong technical skills, but prone to the occasional typo, or someone with perfect grammar, sound writing skills, but low on technical knowledge?

PS – you can connect with me on LinkedIn here – http://www.linkedin.com/in/ivanwalsh

Putting advertising in user guides may seem rather flaky at first, but it could work. Here’s why. One of my ‘pet projects’ is to connect the lines between Sales and Technical Documentation. To me, they both serve the same purpose. Serve the customer. While they both start at different points, the end goal is the same. Unfortunately, these two departments rarely work together. Let’s take a look at how we can fix this.

Japanese made English Bread sold in China

For this to work, I need to justify Why and explain How. Otherwise, well, it’s just nuts. Ok, here’s the run-down on how to get your ads into tech docs.

• Captive Audience – IT professionals read technical docs (user guides, reference guides, system admin guides etc) every day. They have to. You don’t have to go hunting them down; they’re already there. You have your audience and you know what they want to read – relevant, technical information.
• Longevity – unlike other types of documents, such as business plans, tech docs live long on the network, hard-drive or sit on the shelf. But they don’t get thrown out. People keep them as reference and flick through when needed. Compare this with those useless flyers that clog up your mailbox – you bin them without a thought. But you keep your Canon Powershot User Guide, right? And you keep the Car Manual, I bet.
• Use Co-branding – if you’re a small IT company, you can get a larger (richer) partner to sponsor an ad in your guides. Let’s say you develop a software security application, you can get Symantec to sponsor an ad in the Sys Admin guide. If they sell/develop complimentary products, then it’s a no-brainer.
• Location – ads on the cover sheet may seem tacky (and detract from the subject matter) but placing them before/after the Table of Contents could work. Also, you could place them at the end of the document. The place no-one reads but traditionally where most companies take out full page ads.
• Promotions – as these are time sensitive, you can schedule them with things like Release Notes which get replaced quite often. You can use these to give a quick plug to an upcoming event, show.
• Special Offers – You can also use it to encourage people to download new product releases, subscribe to newsletters, podcasts – whatever, as long as there is a benefit to the reader.
• Social Media – we couldn’t leave this one out. Most user guides have chapters, each of which discusses a specific subject. Before each chapter starts, insert a squeeze page with links to your Facebook, LinkedIn or other Social Media channels. You can go one step better and direct them to video downloads so they can ‘see’ how the product works.

The challenge is to see where advertising fits into your documentation – and how you can leverage it. Many will try to run down this idea.

Remember: we already do this online, why not do it offline?

User Guides are not works of art. We’re all in the business on being in business. If advertising keeps us all in jobs, then let’s explore the idea.

What do you think?

If you were asked to include advertising in your documentation, where would you start? What’s the main obstacle to doing this? Do you know someone who is already doing this?

Yes, I’m that terrible person who interviews technical writers and asks those awkward questions. Here are some of the things I’m looking for when I interview people.

First, companies expect that graduates will have the same (more or less) writing skills – that’s a given. So, what they’re looking for are other qualities.

Such as?

• Problem solving skills – describe a problem you had and how you overcame the issues. Be modest & don’t tie yourself up in knots.
• Collaboration – demonstrate how/where you collaborated with others. I don’t mean email or twitter but, for example, how you took responsibility (“the project was running behind schedule, so we decided to hold a workshop…”) and how this resolved the issue at hand.
• Technologies – talk about an area you have some expertise. Show how this solved problems (always be the person who solves problems and gets things resolved!) and the benefits it offers.
• Memberships – if you’re a member of the STC or local IT group, talk about it. Paint a picture of someone who is savvy, interested in the community and likes to interact.
• Goals – they want you for the long term. Hiring is expensive. Interviews cost money. Describe your career path and where you want to be. Discuss how this company helps you realize your goals.

Can you see the difference this makes?

Instead of hiring a person just because they’re out of work, the company is getting someone who shares their vision.

Interviews – other things to remember

• Who does the interview – many companies don’t have a technical writing team. This means the IT manager (or PM) will do the interview. If this is the case, do your prep work and expect questions about code, schedules and other area.
• Privacy — HR people may ‘hint’ or suggest that you discuss your lifestyle. Keep it simple but be polite.
• Tests – many companies will ask you to do a 45 min test. Expect this. Don’t be alarmed if they pull this out of the bag at the end of the interview. They shouldn’t do this but some people are like that.

Things not to do at your interview

I’m looking for someone to write documents – someone who is low maintenance. You need to be that person. With that in mind, don’t:

• Arrive late – give yourself time to part the car, find the office, have a drink and calm down, especially if it’s a long drive to get there. Have a light snack (e.g. banana) before going in.
• Wear heavy cologne or perfume. In a small room, it can be over-whelming
• Eat garlic or other such foods before the interview. See above. Mouth freshener never hurt.
• Run down your previous employer. If reflects poorly on you and makes you look petty. Talk them up.

“It’s a great company but I want to move into XYZ, so I thought I’d speak to you.”

Be the type of person you’d like to hire.

Steer clear of the following:

• Religion
• Politics
• Gossip
• Extreme ideologies
• Age
• Family

None of these are their business. Allude to them, e.g. your family, if you wish but keep it brief. Don’t get too buddy-buddy. This is an interview. Keep it professional.

and then…

• Ask questions. This is the single biggest mistake interviewees make. They don’t ask questions. They think that being silent shows respect. Of course it does, but open up. You must have questions. Ask them. I want to hear what you think of the company.
• Show your interest. I used to print out the company annual report and discuss sections with the interviewers (when looking for work) – this blew them away.
• Quote things for their site.
• Talk about the company — as though you already worked for them.
• Social Media — have you joined their Facebook page? Do you follow them on Twitter. If not, why?

Don’t think of yourself as just a technical writer. You’re a potential asset to the company and if THEY make the right decision, they will hire you!

See the difference?

What the most difficult question you were asked at an interview? What is the biggest mistake you made at an interview?

Let’s say you’re setting up a new Tech Docs Dept. You need to create new guidelines, style guides and naming conventions. Should you call the user ‘documents’ User Guides or User Manuals? Which one is Right?

I was asked this question by a colleague in India who is setting up a Technical Publishing Dept in Bangalore.  He wants to go with user guide—me too, actually.

1. When I worked in the UK, it was (mostly) referred to as a User Manual.
2. Whereas in the US, it was a User Guide. I think the Americans (and me!) like things to be short and to the point. Guide is just that little bit quicker to write, especially when you’re creating MS  Word templates.

Saying that, there is no right and wrong, but I did a little fact finding first.

What Google says about User Guides

I searched Google and came up with these results.

• 15,600,000 for “user guide”
• 10,700,000 for “user manual”
• 5,210,000 for “user’s guide”

What surprised me here was that User’s Guide was so widely used. I’ve always found this a bit annoying. I just don’t like apostrophes, I guess.

Top 5 Most Popular User Guides

A quick check on the most popular user guides showed the following. Not what I expected.

• Google Earth User Guide – http://earth.google.com/userguide/v4/
• iPhone User s Guide – http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/iphone_user_guide.pdf
• Patron User Guide – www.ebrary.com/corp/…/en/User_Guide/ebrary_Patron_User_Guide.pdf
• Adobe Reader Help – www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/pdfs/acrruserguide.pdf
• User Guide Tutorial – www.klariti.com/technical…/User-Guides-Tutorial.shtml

IBM Technical Documents

Next, I checked IBM and Microsoft  to see what term they used.

• 15,324 for user guide
• 1,047 for user manual

So, they prefer user guide. Though, you’d think they’d make this mandatory. Of course, it’s not easy when you have offices in every corner of the world, so let’s cut them some slack.

Microsoft prefers User Guides too

The folks are Redmond were more consistent with

• 1.8 million for User Guides and only
• 73k for User Manuals

And, to be fair, many of the user manuals were actually guides when I checked. Someone check that search engine!

Is Apple different?

Yes, of course.

Apple prefers the term User’s Guide. Like I said, I never bought into this. I prefer short, snappy titles. We don’t call them System Administrator’s Guide, do we?

Well, of course, some do.

Things to consider when naming your documents

• Avoid obscure or unique terms for your documents. Use industry standard terminology.
• Ask your target audience what they expect.
• Create a Style Guide or adopt one, e.g. the Microsoft or IBM style guide.
• Develop a naming convention, e.g. a structure approach so that all documents are named, filed, and indexed correctly.
• Develop a numbering convention. Show people how to number documents, for example, when to go from 1.1  to 1.2 and when to go from 1.2 to 2.0.
• Be consistent.
• Be patient when they get it wrong.

My career really began to take off when I saw myself as an ‘enabler’ rather than a writer. My identity of who I was changed from a guy who cranked out docs to someone who helps others get their projects done.

People want to learn, do your best to help them get there.

What do you think? What’s the most practical way to name documents and setup a new Technical Writing Dept?

Creating a training plan? Before you do this, you need to step a step back and work out what your colleagues need to learn.

Why?

Well, otherwise, you risk developing a training plan that overlooks the areas where people really need to skill up.

The advantage of a well-developed training is that it lets you focus your skills, as a trainer, and match the training course to the audience.

One way I do this is to develop a Target Audience Questionnaire.

Download: Free Target Audience Questionnaire

What is a Target Audience Questionnaire?

Audience Analysis is used to profile, i.e. learn about, your target audience, so that you can then offer better products, services, training, books or whatever… that match their specific requirements. This is different than gathering requirements, which is more a wish list, of what people want.

Audience Analysis is a snapshot of what your users/readers/viewers etc are doing here and now. Marketing plans also use these to get an better understanding of how to segment their audiences.

For technical writers and trainers, you can use this Target Audience Questionnaire when developing your next set of documents or training plan.

What’s important is that you see the value in this activity.

The more you know about your target audience, the more likely your material will suits their needs.

So, let’s get started.

What goes into a Target Audience Questionnaire?

You need to cover four sections in your questionnaire: document details, objective, experience, tasks.

1. Document Details

The first page of the questionnaire—usually near the header—captures information related to the actual document, for example, the name of the course, the individual, date, and department. Depending on your project, you may want to adjust this to suit your needs.

Some technical writers use version controls on their documents, as well as the document’s status, for example, Draft, Revised, Final or Approved.

Course:

Name:

Date:

Department:

2.Objectives

In the objective section, describe the goal of this questionnaire.

• Who are the project stakeholders for this project?
• Who is been asked to complete this questionnaire?
• What is your motive for doing this?
• What is the benefit to the reader?
• When does this questionnaire need to be completed by?
• Where will the information be kept, share, distributed, and archived?
• Why should the reader/user/employee complete this questionnaire? Is it compulsory? Is there a date by when this must be completed?
• How does this questionnaire fit into the company’s overall strategy?

Sample text:

“To help us provide the most appropriate the training to our employees—so you have the necessary skills, knowledge and confidence in your own abilities—please study the following questions and answer them to the best of your abilities.”

The questionnaire must be completed by [date].

The questionnaire is approved by the [project board].

Contact [identify the person] if you have any queries about this questionnaire.

3. Level of Experience

Identify your level of expertise with these tools based on a scale of 1 to 5.

(1=No Experience; 5=Extremely Experienced).

1.         Adobe Acrobat (not Acrobat Reader)

2.         Adobe FrameMaker

3.         AuthorIT

4.         DocBook

5.         DocToHelp

6.         DreamWeaver

7.         Epic Editor

8.         ForeHelp

9.         Interleaf

10.       MadCap Blaze

11.       Madcap Flare

12.       Microsoft Excel

13.       Microsoft Visio

14.       Microsoft Visio

15.       Microsoft Word

16.       RoboHelp

17.       Techsmith Camtasia

18.       Techsmith Snagit

19.       WebWorks

20.       XML editor

4. Tasks & Activities

Please indicate all answers that are applicable to your role.

1. How often are you asked to provide [technical documents/status reports/management reports etc]?

(a) Several times a day

(b) Several times a week

(c) Several times a month

2. What format (s) do you provide the information in?

Charts

Diagrams

Documents

Maps

Pivots tables

PowerPoint

Verbal

3. What is the nature of these requests?  (If possible, please provide examples of each item indicated)

(a) Summary (e.g. totals, averages, status etc.)

(b) Detailed (specific lists, inquiries regarding specific projects, documents, releases etc.)

(c) Operational

(d) Analytical

(e) Other (this may include revisions, merging, editing, publishing, translating, re-formatting, printing etc)

Once you have these in place, you can then begin to write your documents or start developing that training plan.

Does that make sense?

What do you think?

How can I improve this plan and make it better?

Downloads

Business Requirements Template

Functional Requirements Specification Template

All the screenshots in your Word document are different sizes. What’s the quickest way to get them all the same size? Is there a shortcut? Yes!

[ad#ad1]

You’ve taking your screenshots and placed them in Word. But something’s wrong! They’re all different sizes. Your document looks terrible! How can you resize all the images in 1 minute?

You can fix this by resizing the images and giving them a uniform appearance.

Instead of resizing each one manually, use the repeat key (F4) to automate the process. Here’s the trick!

1. Right-click on an image

2. Select Size.

3. Adjust the Height, for example 7.5 cm.

Tip: The Width is adjusted automatically if the ‘Lock Ration Aspect’ option is selected.

4. Click OK.

5. Select the next image and click F4.

F4 repeats the last action you performed.

If you want to update all the images in your document, do one, and then use F4 to automatically resize the rest of them.