Thursday, April 29, 2010
Learn your customers needs with the Three Minute Rule | Harvard Business Review
The Three-Minute Rule - Anthony Tjan
At our venture capital firm, Cue Ball, we are pretty maniacal about understanding customers. We encourage our portfolio company CEOs to dive deep — very deep — and learn about their customers along every possible dimension. My Partner, Dick Harrington, and developed a customer-driven approach and capability set that we put in place at Thomson which ultimately was a key driver of the company's transformation into a global media and information powerhouse. We wrote about this in a 2008 HBR article, Transforming Strategy One Customer at a Time.
While there are obvious ways to gain significant customer understanding, such as surveys and focus groups, some of the most interesting insights come from less direct analyses. Take our three-minute rule as an example. You can learn a great deal about customers by studying the broader context in which they use your product or service. To do this, ask what your customer is doing three minutes immediately before and three minutes after he uses your product or service. At Thomson, one of our products provided investment analysts with financial earnings data. What we hadn't fully appreciated — until we applied the three-minute rule — was that immediately after getting our data, a large number of analysts were painstakingly importing it into Excel and reformatting it. This observation led us to prioritize developing a more seamless Excel plug-in feature with enhanced formatting capability over other product development initiatives. The result was an almost immediate and very significant uplift in sales.
The three-minute rule also helps highlight unique cross-selling opportunities. Many years ago, I remember doing some ethnographic research on female drug-store shoppers. One fascinating pattern we saw was that a significant number of women picked up a disposable camera after putting newborn diapers into their shopping carts. Follow-up interviews confirmed that snap-happy moms were often new moms. Placing disposable diapers close to inexpensive disposable cameras furthered this purchase pattern and would not have otherwise been an intuitive merchandising or cross-selling strategy.
One final retail example is described beautifully by my friend Paco Underhill, a shopping-pattern guru. In his book, Why We Buy, he describes how shoppers who do not have a shopping basket or shopping cart go quickly to the checkout when their arms get full. Okay...so what? A casual observer says that is obvious. A savvier approach might be to interview people in a checkout line with an armful of goods to ask where they were three minutes earlier and if they would have considered buying anything else if it hadn't been so difficult to carry so many items. Underhill concludes that more establishments should consider putting shopping baskets in the middle of the store to keep customers in shopping mode longer (since research showed that few would go back to the front of the store to get a cart once engaged with shopping).
These situations illustrate the narrow-mindedness to which it is easy to fall prey. In the Thomson example, we were thinking of ourselves as a data provider, though we were really part of a broader workflow solution. We failed to realize the importance of customer context over our own product capability. In the cross-selling and shopping-basket examples, the three-minute rule reminds us that rearranging the context of a shopping experience to better meet customer patterns can be extremely effective. Customers seek solutions, but it is likely that your offering is only part of one. The three-minute rule is a forcing mechanism to see the bigger picture and adjacent opportunities.
So what are you doing three minutes after reading this?
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
US Internet Penetration Growing Steady - IAB SmartBrief
In 2010, 221 million people in the U.S. will be online, about 71% of the total population, according to eMarketer. Their numbers will continue to grow, reaching 250 million in 2014 -- more than 77% of the population. Change is happening within the U.S. Internet population on many levels. The average age of Internet users is rising in tandem with that of the general population, and racial and ethnic characteristics are more closely mirroring those in the offline population. To find out more about digital marketing and eMarketer's report "U.S. Internet Users, 2010" click here.
Well of course!!! Happiness Leads to Higher Income: Harvard Business Review Daily Stat
| APRIL 28, 2010 |
| Happiness Leads to Higher Income |
| Greater happiness is associated with higher future income, research shows. A one-point increase in people's assessment of their happiness on a five-point scale was linked to a 3% higher income five years later, according to a study cited by Saatchi & Saatchi. |
| Source: Small Actions Big Impact: Foundations of the Personal Sustainability Project (PDF) |
Design matters - where you put the salad bar brings 250% increase in veggie eating! | FastCompany
Uncommon Act of Design: The Secret of Getting Kids to Eat Veggies? Move the Salad Bar
BYEnjoy The Thrill of Achievement - Peter Bregman | Harvard Business Review
Peter Bregman
How Not Achieving Something Is the Key to Achieving It
Many years ago, when I first started my consulting firm, a friend of mine, Jane*, who worked for a large company, suggested I speak with her colleague, a man named Fred, who might be in a position to hire Bregman Partners.
So I called Fred, mentioned Jane and asked to meet with him. I'm very busy, Fred told me, let's just talk on the phone.
But I knew the phone wouldn't cut it. How about lunch?, I suggested. Or a drink after work? Or maybe just fifteen minutes in person somewhere?
Fred finally agreed to a short lunch. Then he canceled. We rescheduled. He canceled again. We rescheduled again. He canceled again. It was clear he didn't want to meet with me. I almost gave up.
Here's what I realized though: if I could avoid reacting to my feelings of frustration or hurt, then the cost to me of rescheduling the meeting was a two minute phone call with Fred's secretary. And the upside was potentially enormous.
So I kept rescheduling until, one day, several months later, Fred didn't cancel and we had lunch. Which was very quick, of course, but long enough for me to ask him to let me submit a proposal. A couple of weeks after I sent it to him, he left me a short message explaining that I had missed the mark but he'd keep me in mind. Right.
I felt affronted. All that work I put in and all I got in return was a voicemail? Again, I almost walked away.
But instead I called and asked for another lunch to understand what I misunderstood. He declined but suggested I speak with his colleague, Lily, who was in a different department and might have a need for my services.
So I set up a meeting with Lily. Who canceled. As I prepared to reschedule I noticed something unexpected: I started to enjoy the process of trying to get in, the challenge of making the sale. It became a game to me and my goal was to keep playing until, at some point, I'd say the right thing to the right person and get my foot in the door. I was, surprisingly, having fun.
And I was starting to be good at it. Scheduling. Rescheduling. Finding a way to keep the conversation going. You'd think it wouldn't be something hard or useful to become good at but you'd be wrong on both counts.
Most of our jobs hinge on repetition. That's how we become good at anything. The problem is we give up too soon because anything we do repetitively becomes boring.
That is, unless we have a peculiar taste for the task; if it captures our interest. For some reason, maybe we don't even understand — and we don't have to — we enjoy it.
That's how I learned how to do a handstand. It always seemed completely out of reach for me. But then someone told me they learned as an adult. So I figured I could learn too. It took six months but now I can, somewhat reliably, stand on my hands.
Which has led me to believe that anyone can do anything. As long as three conditions exist:
- You want to achieve it
- You believe you can achieve it
- You enjoy trying to achieve it
We often think we only need the first two but it's the third condition that's most important. The trying is the day-to-day reality. And trying to achieve something is very different than achieving it. It's the opposite actually. It's not achieving it.
If you want to be a great marketer, you need to spend years being a clumsy one. Want to be a great manager? Then you'd better enjoy being a poor one long enough to become a good one. Because that practice is what it's going to take to eventually become a great one.
In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell discusses research done at the Berlin Academy of Music. Researchers divided violin students into three categories: the stars, the good performers, and the ones who would become teachers but not performers. It turns out that the number one predictor of which category a violinist fell in was the number of hours of practice.
The future teachers had practiced 4,000 hours in their lifetime. The good performers, 8,000 hours. And those who were categorized as stars? Every single one of them had practiced at least 10,000 hours.
And here's the compelling part: There wasn't a single violinist who had practiced 10,000 hours who wasn't a star. In other words, 10,000 hours of practice guaranteed you'd be a star violinist. According to Gladwell, 10,000 hours of practice is the magic number to become the best at anything.
Which is why you'd better enjoy trying to achieve your goals. Because you'll never spend 10,000 hours doing anything you don't enjoy. And if you don't enjoy the trying part you'll never do it long enough to reach your goal.
Eventually, after five or six cancelled meetings, Lily and I met for lunch. Which, as it turned out, was perfect timing. When we finally met, she had a real need, which hadn't existed when we first started scheduling a meeting.
By this time, I was familiar to her and the company even though I had never done any work for them. I had been around for months and they trusted me because I followed through on every commitment I made to them.
That year I signed a large contract with Lily's company. Twelve years later, they're still a big client of Bregman Partners. And they still cancel lots of meetings with me.
*Some information has been changed to protect people's privacy.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
With social networking Men are from Mars and Women from Venus: IAB Smartbrief | Forbes Report
Original Post: http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/26/popular-social-networking-sites-forbes-woman-time-facebook-twitter.html
What Men And Women Are Doing On Facebook
Jenna Goudreau,Women use social networking tools to make connections, while men use them to raise their status.
Facebook, the largest social networking tool in the world, is dominated by women.
According to BrianSolis.com andGoogle ( GOOG - news - people ) Ad Planner, the 400-million member site is 57% female and attracts 46 million more female visitors than male visitors per month. Plus, women are more active on Facebook. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg says women on Facebook have 8% more friends and participate in 62% of the sharing. "The social world is led by women," she concludes. And they're leading that charge online.
Where Do Women Social Network? Top 10 Sites
Women are the majority of users on many of the biggest social networking sites, including Twitter, MySpace, Bebo and Flickr. Men, meanwhile, are most active on sites like Digg, YouTube and LinkedIn, which are more content-oriented and promotional than discussion-based.
However, women don't just visit different sites from men, they usesocial media differently than men. Experts believe the difference between how men and women operate online mirror their motivations offline. While women often use online social networking tools to make connections and share items from their personal lives, men use them as means to gather information and increase their status.
"We're women--we like to talk about things. Women use social media as a way to connect," says Jodi Kahn, the head of iVillage. A recent joint study fromBlogHer and iVillage supports her theory, reporting that three-quarters of women use online communities to stay up to date with friends and family, and 68% use them to "connect with others like me."
On message boards and forums, Kahn says that both sexes seek information and advice, but women tend to get more personal. She says women want to learn about real people experiencing similar conflicts. "Women are online solving real-life issues. If I'm a mom who is about to start potty training, it's important to me to hear how other real moms are doing it," says Kahn.
Men, on the other hand, are researchers and social climbers. Professor of social media marketing at UC Berkeley, Lorrie Thomas, says men use social media as an "interactive Rolodex," storing contact information for future use.
Sherry Perlmutter Bowen, a gender and communication professor at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, says she's seeing men use social media to gather information and boost their influence. "I see males espousing their wisdom on social media sites and using social media to sell, to compete, to 'climb the ladder,'" she says.
According to Bowen, thesegender differences are rooted in communication styles learned since birth. "Girls and boys are often raised in two distinct cultures where they learn different rules and norms for behavior and talk: Girls learn to build relationships by sharing social information. Boys learn to compare and compete with others, always striving for more success."
Psychologist Leslie Sokol, author of self-help book Think Confident, Be Confident, believes virtual communication differences between men and women can be tracked back through history as evolutionary methods of survival. Throughout time, males have been in competition with each other, even in the animal kingdom, she says. "The sexiest bird with the brightest plumage and best territory got all the women." Because it was in their best interest not to show weaknesses or give away their strategies, men became more reserved as an adaptive method, she says.
Sokol believes that women, the gatherers and community builders, had to work as a team to survive. They needed to use each other as resources and adapted to be more supportive by sharing their plans, shortcomings and advice. Today, women are still more likely to be forthcoming and verbose than men, she says, a difference that is reflected online.
Diana Windley, 39, is a good example. The assistant vice president of marketing at Goldenwest Credit Union in Utahuses several networking sites mainly to keep up with friends and read and discuss things she likes, rather than using it for business or promotional purposes. She also blogs about her life as career mom. Everyday she signs into Facebook to reconnect with old friends from high school and college and to build new relationships with neighbors and extended family. On Twitter she aims to make connections with people who aren't in her immediate circle but share similar interests in career, parenting and religion.
On the other hand, Allen Chen, 31, a communications assistant at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, uses networking sites as mediums to discuss ideas rather than share personal information. He logs onto Facebook several times a day to post interesting articles, which solicit responses from his 175 friends. He also uses Twitter to keep up on current events by following news outlets and "strangers" who share common interests in sports and technology.
Elisa Camahort Page, cofounder and chief operating officer of BlogHer, believes men leverage social media for broadcasting their ideas and skills vs. women who find connections with others by sharing the ups and downs of their daily lives.
Men are more active blog participants, she explains. They are more likely to read, write and post comments to blogs. Surprisingly, both men and women report that their most common blog topic is "my life," she says. However, the second most popular topic for men is business and career, and food and fashion are tied in second place for women.
Men are also more active users of YouTube, with about 20% more men visiting the video-sharing site per week, according to the BlogHer-iVillage study. Camahort Page believes men prefer the site because it is more passive. "[YouTube] is about finding, consuming and passing along content, but it's not about conversation."
Not surprisingly, the different ways men and women approach social media are beginning to be noticed and exploited by advertisers. Scott Staab, group creative director of marketing agency T3, whose clients include JCPenney and
( UPS -news - people ), has recently been interested in women social gamers. Women are the majority of online social gamers (such as the Facebook application FarmVille) and often play with their friends, he explains.Staab says that a woman who advocates for a brand online is more likely to influence her friends. "Some of our clients skew highly female, and we are going into social gaming because it's an area that we know women spend more time." Companies would be smart to create their own games to draw in users, Staab says, because "it doesn't have to be about pushing product all the time. It's about brand engagement."
According to Kelly O'Neill, director of product marketing at marketing consultancy ATG, beauty store Sephora targets women by tapping into social networking sites to advertise promotions and sales. In a recent ATG survey, twice as many women as men said they frequently share purchasing activities on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. So Sephora advertises promotions with its Facebook page and often tweets about sales to its Twitter followers. Plus, fashion brands Tommy Hilfiger and
( URBN - news - people ) have honed in on women's dominance in social media by creating virtual fashion shows to engage them online.Patty Kennedy, founder of communications firm Kennedy Spencer, uses her knowledge of gendered behavior on social networking sites to better target men and women for her clients, which include
( KO -news - people ) and P&G. Kennedy Spencer uses "transactional" sites like LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter to attract men, sharing content like articles, facts and games that they hope will spark their interest. It uses conversation-based sites like Facebook and "mom blogs" to spark dialogue among women.Says Facebook's Sandberg, "If you reach women [online], they will tell their friends." What may be an evolutionary fact turns out to be a marketer's dream.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Friday, April 23, 2010
Great new ways to gauge feedback with Twitter! Harvard Business Review:
Use Twitter to Collect Micro-Feedback
"Ugh," you may sigh to yourself when you receive a colleague's request to fill out a 360-degree feedback instrument with 150 items. Of course you're lucky if you only get one; you may get a half dozen requests or more if other colleagues attend the same development program.
Feedback is best when provided as close to the moment of performance as possible, as shown in studies involving everyone from medical students to athletes. A Corporate Leadership Council performance management study found that frequent, fair and accurate informal feedback could impact individual performance by 39%.
But lengthy feedback forms discourage frequent and immediate responses. In addition, more and more employees work remotely, and may not have daily or even frequent interaction with their manager. Enabling employees to solicit feedback in short, immediate bursts may actually be more effective than performance reviews or lengthy feedback systems, since excessive feedback can be overwhelming and hinder performance.
Susan Hutt was an executive in a San Jose-based software company when she realized a few years ago that the workplace was undergoing a major shift. One challenge Hutt faced was the realization that their millennial-age employees (called the "trophy kids" by Ron Alsop) were starved for the type of attention they were used to receiving in school and at home. They expected immediate and contextual feedback, and wanted to use it to help them progress rapidly in their careers. Quarterly and annual reviews could not offer the immediacy and authenticity they needed. Many employees believed these reviews were just about making salary increase decisions, and not about evaluating the employee's performance. To alleviate this, Hutt added an on-demand microfeedback system. Here's how she explained it to us:
"Most of the younger millennial-age employees here use MSN Messenger because it's more immediate and short. They don't use email that much. Using technology, employees can get relevant feedback from a broad set of people fast. They can manage their own feedback and career."
The microfeedback tool enables employees to gather instantaneous peer feedback that, like Twitter, is limited to short responses. For example, one project manager at the company had an on-site meeting with a customer to wrap up an engagement from the prior year and plan for the next year. Afterwards, he sent around a request asking how he did on driving the conversation in 2009.
Hutt ran an all-hands meeting at the end of each quarter, and then sent out requests for feedback to five people. "Was it relevant," she might ask. "Did it cover the content you need?"
"People can be more honest and give you real feedback," Hutt said. "People have to think about their response because it's short. All the responses are organized so I can look back at it and see trend lines from the dashboard. That helps me to adjust my messaging over time."
Although Hutt used an online system that let them collect and trend more systematically, the same idea could be realized using Twitter. After conducting a presentation, for example, ask the audience to tweet you their feedback. Even in the midst of a client meeting, sending a tweet to a peer saying "Great job handling the tough question on release date," provides immediate, specific feedback while the memory is fresh, and they can look at the feedback later on their stream of tweets.
If you work with Millennials, the likelihood is high that they are going to be comfortable using Twitter. Some Internet traffic measurement services show Twitter users increasing 50% to 100% month over month. Twitter is on its way to becoming a mainstream tool for multiple generations — in fact, a survey by comScore found that 45-54 year olds are the top demographic group for using Twitter.
if you're a manager, you could ask employees to tweet you the answer to a question such as, "One thing I could be doing better to make it easier to do your job is ..." Using the @ symbol and your Twitter handle, employees can send you direct, meaningful feedback. Or you can ask a broader group what they think about the implementation of a change, such as a new expense-reporting tool, by using the hashtag approach to finding content on a subject.
Of course, as we wrote earlier, using social technologies requires openness. Are you ready to let anyone in the Twitterstream read the feedback your employees provide you? If not, a private microblogging tool for the enterprise such as Yammer, Rypple or Socialtext Signals may be the way to go at first.
Have you come up with clever ways to use Twitter or a private microblogging tool to provide immediate feedback? If you have, tell us about it!
Jeanne C Meister is an internationally recognized workplace-learning consultant dedicated to delivering competitive advantage, innovation and improved business results for organizations. Jeanne is the host of the blog newlearningplaybook.com. Karie Willyerd is the Chief Learning Officer of Sun Microsystems and has been the Chief Talent Officer or head of executive development for three other Fortune 500 firms. At Sun Microsystems, she has led the organization to win over 20 awards for innovation excellence in learning. Jeanne and Karie are the authors of the book The 2020 Workplace (forthcoming in Spring 2010).
Beauty Pagent for CEOs? | SmartBrief on Leadership: Economix
A C.E.O. Beauty Contest
By CATHERINE RAMPELLChief executives look more competent than the general populace, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are, a new study of facial features finds. From the abstract:
We conduct beauty contest experiments, using close to 2,000 subjects to study the facial traits of C.E.O.’s. In one experiment we use pairs of photographs and find that subjects rate C.E.O. faces as appearing more “competent” and less “likable” than non-C.E.O. faces.Another experiment matches C.E.O.’s from large firms against C.E.O.’s from smaller firms and finds large-firm C.E.O.’s look more competent and likable.In a third experiment, subjects numerically rate the facial traits of C.E.O.’s. We find that executive compensation is linked to these perceived “competence” ratings.Our analysis explores these findings in more detail and shows that the facial-trait rating can be explained by a quantitative scoring of the “maturity” or “baby-facedness” of the C.E.O.That is, more mature looking C.E.O.’s are assigned higher “competence” scores. This finding is potentially worrisome because psychology research shows that baby-faced-looking people often possess qualities opposite to those projected by their facial traits.Accordingly, we find no evidence that the firms of competent looking C.E.O.’s perform better. Essentially, the “look” of competence says very little about effective competence.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Teens and Texting is Tantamount to Terrific! Marketing Charts News
Original Post:
Cell-phone texting has become the preferred channel of basic communication among US teens and their friends, with cell calling a close second, according to findings from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
Most Teens Own Cell Phones, Text
Seventy-five percent of 12-17-year-olds now own cell phones, up from 45% in 2004. Those phones have become indispensable tools in teen communication patterns. Fully 72% of all teens, or 88% of teen cell phone users, are text-messagers. That is a sharp rise from the 51% of teens who were texters in 2006. More than half of teens (54%) are daily texters.
Among all teens, the daily use of texting has now overtaken the frequency of every other common form of interaction with their friends. The next-most-common form of communication, talking on a cell phone, is used by 38% of teens on a daily basis.
Interestingly, basic face-to-face communication is only used daily by 33% of teens. Face-to-face communication is still more commonly used by teens every day than other technology-enabled forms of communication such as talking on a landline phone (30%), social networking (25%) and instant messaging (24%). Email, only used every day by 11% of teens, appears to have become a passé “legacy” technology among the under-18 population.
Teens Send Numerous Texts
The average US teen sends a large volume of text messages per month. Among the 87% of US teens who send at least an occasional text message:
- Half of teens send 50 or more text messages a day, or 1,500 texts a month, and one in three send more than 100 texts a day, or more than 3,000 texts a month.
- 15% of teens who are texters send more than 200 texts a day, or more than 6,000 texts a month.
- Boys typically send and receive 30 texts a day; girls typically send and receive 80 messages per day.
- Teen texters ages 12-13 typically send and receive 20 texts a day.
- 14-17-year-old texters typically send and receive 60 text messages a day.
- Older girls who text are the most active, with 14-17-year-old girls typically sending 100 or more messages a day, or more than 3,000 texts a month.
- However, while many teens are avid texters, a substantial minority are not. One-fifth of teen texters (22%) send and receive just one to 10 texts a day, or 30 to 300 texts a month.
Unlimited Text Plans Lead to More Texts
Not surprisingly, teens with unlimited text plans send more texts than teens on limited or pay-per-message plans. Three-quarters of teen cell phone users (75%) have unlimited texting. Just 13% of teen cell phone users pay per message. Those with unlimited voice and texting plans are more likely to call others daily or more often. Teens with unlimited texting typically send and receive 70 texts per day, compared with 10 texts a day for teens on limited plans and five texts a day for teens who pay per message.
Teens Spend Free Time Texting
American teenagers send an average of 10 text messages per hour they are not in school or sleeping, according to research by The Nielsen Company.
By analyzing more than 40,000 monthly US mobile bills, Nielsen determined American teens sent an average of 3,146 texts a month each during Q3 2009. Their counterparts 9-12 sent an average of 1,146 monthly texts each, or four per hour not spent asleep or in school. In comparison, the average number of monthly texts sent by all mobile users combined was a little more than 500. In Q4 2009, users 9-12 increased text usage by 8% and almost doubled their text message volume.
About the Survey: This study is based on the 2009 Parent-Teen Cell Phone Survey which obtained telephone interviews with a nationally representative sample of 800 teens ages 12-17 years old and their parents living in the continental US and on nine focus groups conducted in four US cities in June and October 2009, with teens between the ages of 12 and 18. The survey was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International. The interviews were done in English by Princeton Data Source, LLC from June 26 - September 24, 2009. Statistical results are weighted to correct known demographic discrepancies.
Do You Carry The Mark of a Great Leader? Harvard Business Review | Marshall Goldsmith
The Mark of a Great Leader
Years ago, when most organizations were based on the hierarchical business model of the Industrial Age, great leaders were those who were unemotional, rational, even mechanistic. Those days are gone. Today's leader, especially one who is in charge of a dynamic, global organization, finds himself or herself in desperate need of one key trait — self-awareness.
An organization's success today depends on such a variety of talents and skills that no one leader could possibly be gifted in simultaneously. There are technological issues, global issues, financial issues, human resource issues, leadership issues, employee issues, legal issues, and more. A leader who is self-aware enough to know that he or she is not adept at everything is one who has taken the first step toward being a great leader.
This sort of personal mastery entails having a heightened understanding of one's own behavior, motivators, and competencies — and having "emotional intelligence" — to monitor and manage one's emotional responses in a variety of situations. This variety of situations is not limited to the home office, or the boardroom. It is of a global nature, across cultures which are very different and can be difficult to navigate, especially for those who are not comfortable, knowledgeable, or willing to admit their individual strengths and weaknesses. Everyone has a shortcoming or two — leaders who are willing to admit these, who strive to improve, and who seek out a consulting team to fill in the gaps will 1) encourage followers to do the same and 2) make room for others whose talents lie where theirs don't.
Have you ever worked with a micro-manager? This is someone who thinks he or she needs to be involved in everything that happens within the company. These leaders are closing out the talents of others by not divesting themselves from the day-to-day problem-solving activities of the company. Great leaders let go of the day-to-day, problem-solving activities of the company. Rather, they choose to maximize strategic and relationship-building efforts. These contribute to the forward momentum of the company rather than causing a "bottleneck" at the leader's desk. No one person should do it all — and if they are self-aware, most people will realize that they really aren't capable nor knowledgeable enough to do it all.
Do you recognize the difference between what you need to do versus what you should pass along to your team? Does your boss?
Following is a short list of things you can do to achieve self-awareness and personal mastery in leadership.
- Monitor your performance. Note areas in which you excel and need improvement. Communicate these to your team.
- Realize that failures and mistakes are just one step on the road to success.
- Recognize that being aware of the impact that your behavior has on other people is a critical leadership skill.
- Remember that when criticism is difficult to accept, there is probably some truth to it.
- And, finally, learn to give yourself and others credit for improving
.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Under-25s are three times as likely as average to watch most of their TV on the Web.
Emarketer Daily
Harvard Business Review: 3 ways to overcome barriers to change
| 3 Ways to Overcome Barriers to Change |
People often react to change by resisting it, and smart change agents know that being aggressive only makes people increasingly defensive. Here are three ways to move around the defenses and closer to your goal:
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Seth Godin: "I Quilt!" - This is so so so so right on! Let's all quilt today!
Original Post: http://sethgodin.typepad.com
"I quilt"
When you've had enough, can't tolerate your job any longer and are ready to quit, perhaps you could try one last thing.
Quilt instead.
You've got nothing to lose, right? I mean, you're going to quit anyway, so what's the worst that could happen to you?
So quilt. Spend hours every day integrating the people you work with into a cohesive group. Weave in your customers as well. Take every scrap, even the people you don't like, and sew them together. Spend far less time than you should on the 'real' work and instead focus on creating genuine connections with the people you work with. Including your boss. After all, once you quit, you're never going to see them again anyway, right? Might as well give it a try.
Careful... it might change everything.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
LjjSpeaks: Interim Director of Communication, GRCC.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Flip That Flaw into a Feature! | Scott Anthony, Harvard Business Review
Featuring the Flaw
"These places brand themselves 'eco-tourism'," he said as he chowed down on his channa masala. "Then they can shove you in a basic room with no air conditioning, TV, or room service and charge you $300. Bitten by mosquitoes? That's just part of the back-to-nature experience!"
- What are the competitive alternatives to your idea?
- Where are you better?
- Where are you worse?
- Are there people who consider existing alternatives out of reach?
- Are there circumstances where using existing alternatives problematic?
The next time someone tells you to a fix a potential flaw in your idea, flip the problem on its head by seeking a customer that would consider the flaw a feature.
