Successful Blog

The Mic Is On: Joe Hauckes Wants to Know Your Business

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It’s Like Open Mic Only Different

The Mic Is On

Here’s how it works.

It’s like any rambling conversation. Don’t try to read it all. Jump in whenever you get here. Just go to the end and start talking. EVERYONE is WELCOME.
The rules are simple — be nice.

There are always first timers and new things to talk about. It’s sort of half “Cheers” part “Friends” and part video game. You don’t know how much fun it is until you try it.

With Guest Host Joe Hauckes
an Original Open Commenter


Joe Knows Biz, But His Alien Is Curious

How Are You Making Things Happen Online?

What’s this? A golden opportunity to promote your business, to network, and to learn a few tricks of the trade. Share successes. Swap strategies and stories.

Tell us how you make things work online. Joe will be coming with the questions (and a few answers) and hoping that you’ll be bringing your best ideas and business link.

  • What works for you?
  • What have you seen other folks do that you could never get to work?
  • Who do you think has it down?
  • What do they do that you wish you could do?

Join us tonight and bring links your business to add to the discussion.

The rules are simple — be nice.

Do be nice. 🙂

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related article
What is Tuesday Open Comment Night?

Hidden Assumptions and Business Likeability

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Twitter Conversations and Reality

One strength of Twitter is the speed, reach, and ease of connection that is social business. In a few tweets and direct messages, we can gather a team and make a project happen.

The Likeability Factor as Tim Sanders defined it — friendliness, relevance, empathy, and authenticity — is a critical component to online social business. We make business relationships and referrals from our “friends” list on Twitter.

Social business connections happen so quickly and easily. It’s not hard to develop a false sense of a person’s abilities. Extended online business conversations that explore theory, philosophy, and expertise can overshadow the reality that we’ve never actually seen or worked with a person.

Hidden Assumptions and Business Likeability

As a young manager making my first hire in the offline world, I was swayed by whether I liked the candidates sitting across from me.

But when folks can’t or don’t do the job, they become problematic no matter how likeable they are in a more social context.

Tim Sanders suggested likeability was necessary, not a replacement for, traditional skills sets. It’s easy to get caught in hidden assumptions about these equally important business “abilities.”

  • CAPABILITY – Does this person actually have the skill set that job requires? Conversation is not the same as the ability to actually do something well.
  • “RESPONSE ABILITY” – Does she respond quickly, thoughtfully, with a focus and a solution that will last longer than 140 characters?
  • BELIEVABILITY – Does he tell the truth, even when it’s not easy? Have we actually experienced that?
  • ADAPTABILITY – Will the person understand when change happens without responding like a frustrated 4-year-old?
  • ACCOUNTABILITY – Does she own what she does, fix what she breaks, and strive for quality?

BUSINESS LIKEABILITY – competent, trustworthy, and a pleasure to work with.

No time before has any culture had the power to build deep, strategic networks so efficiently. The connections have incredible potential to keep our businesses growing with minimal overhead and maximum accomplishment. No time before has business been so global and fluid. We’re learning to navigate a new reality.

We have to keep remembering to ask questions.

Do online conversations to lead to hidden assumptions more often than the offline equivalent?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Open Mic 7pm Chicago Time: Joe Hauckes Wants to Know Your Business

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Join Us Tonight

JOIN US TONIGHT AT 7PM

With Guest Host Joe Hauckes
an Original Open Commenter


Joe Knows Biz, But His Alien Is Curious

How Are You Making Things Happen Online?

What’s this? A golden opportunity to promote your business, to network, and to learn a few tricks of the trade. Share successes. Swap strategies and stories.

Tell us how you make things work online. Joe will be coming with the questions (and a few answers) and hoping that you’ll be bringing your best ideas and business link.

Join us tonight and bring links your business to add to the discussion.

The rules are simple — be nice.

Do be nice. 🙂

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related article
What is Tuesday Open Comment Night?

Panning for Gold: How Do You Find Relevant and Valuable Information?

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Are Off Course 98% of the Time?

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Did you know that an airplane flying from New York to LA is off course 98% of the time?

Just as a driver is always moving the steering wheel to keep the car pointed in the right direction, the pilot is constantly adjusting based on the information he’s taking in — from the instruments, from the crew, from air traffic control, from every source he recognizes as relevant and valuable.

Wise individuals and great companies do the same thing. We get to our goals by constantly adjusting. Yet, for some reason, we sometimes fool ourselves into thinking that we or the organizations we work with have control over the forces outside and around us. It’s just not so.

We can manage what’s within our power to manage. But more importantly, we can adjust, innovate, and grow if we if we find the relevant and valuable information about the rest.

How Do You Find Relevant and Valuable Information?

Individuals and organizations that are growing are curious and information hungry. We are personally involved in work and business, but we don’t take information personally. We work through an information gathering process again and again in a spiraling, overlapping, scaffolded fashion. We use the latest listening tools, but even more we use our ears, eyes, hearts, and minds to decipher what is relevant and valuable to their goals.

  • Listen actively. It’s so powerful to set aside filters that would have us hear only what supports our current world view. Looking for other perspectives, other voices, different, radical, outrageous ideas offers a diverse pool from which to choose and challenges our assumptions.
  • Test what you hear. We ask folks who are talking about what they’re saying to confirm that the message we received is clear. Then we ask other folks if that message makes sense in their lives too.
  • Adjust and adapt to the new information. We steer. Steering isn’t all controlling. It’s altering our world view to include what we have just learned.
  • Share. We make sure that the right folks know. We tell other people. Organizations tell customers, employees, shareholders, prospects, and key stakeholders.

Sounds a little like panning for gold — with each pan we use a finer sifter. With each pan we get closer to what we want to know.

While you’re listening, consider and reconsider what you’re listen for.
How do you find relevant and valuable information?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Why Can't Everyone Think Like We Do? What to Do about the People Who Disrupt Our Lives

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Why Does He Care So Much about THAT?!!

Life is going. Things are urgent, important, and vibrant. I’m in the zone, making things happen, feeling the vibe. Then it happens.

Someone points out a tiny crack. Even worse, he’s worried about it, fretting about it, suggesting extreme precautions for fixing. And I can’t believe that anyone has invested the time … to write 100 little sticky notes that say exactly the same thing when one big note would have worked; to interrupt the conversation on a heartfelt idea to point out I’ve mispronounced a word; to check whether I want to order special paper for a document that’s late.

I’m not good at reviewing the soil composition when I’m moving mountains. I’m also not good at the opposite when someone brings up the mountain when I’m analyzing the soil.

The disruption is the same.

I tend to be drawn to people who think like I do. It’s so much easier to relate to them.

Why can’t everyone think like we do?

What to Do about the People Who Disrupt Our Lives

It’s a fact. We think that people who think like we do are brilliant, easy, and wonderful. They truly are intuitive, perceptive, and world-changing leaders in every way. But you know, the ones who we need most are the people who think differently.

We call them “difficult,” because they’re challenge to understand. That’s the value of being around them.

People who think differently than we do care deeply about things we don’t even think about. Therein lies their strength.

We should celebrate the people who disrupt our lives.

  1. Start with thank you. The second that you want to say “WHAT?!!” say “Thank you for saying (seeing, asking about) that.” Whatever issue (problem, outlandish idea) someone brings, know that he or she invested time thinking about it and bringing it to your attention. Say that you know that.
  2. Value the execution that comes from commitment. People who go to unimaginable extremes to make sure something is right care more about that something than we ever will — therefore they execute it better than we ever would. Rather than being perplexed by their values, value their commitment.
  3. Change their title from obstacle to safety net. Let them be on the team. Let them in on your goals. Invite them to take care of what they do well and know they’ll have your back on that.

Innovation, progress, and safety come from brave, valuable voices different from our own. The very differences that make them valuable also make it hard to hear them.

If you believe opposites attract, maybe you should.

Ever had an irritating, interrupting difficult person save your butt? Did it change you somehow?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Thanks to Week 182 SOBs

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Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

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They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

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Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss