Successful Blog

Images & Words: Are You Ready to Make Opportunity and Change the World?

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When I started blogging in summer 2005, I wanted to keep the writer’s discipline of writing every day. No one could have predicted, that it would lead me to several blogs, a fabulous business partner, a conference and consulting business, and place in a fabulous community. When I started photographing the sunrise in spring 2011, I wanted to keep a writer’s discipline of remembering to look out my window every day. The photos are starting to write stories with me. Now I’m starting to wonder where that will lead …

How to Make Opportunity and Change the World

Our businesses and our lives are in a constant state of change. We can try to tie things down, keep things where they are. It’s a battle that we’ll never win. On the other hand, they say some things never change. And the more they change the more they stay the same.

Change is like the rain. It’s not good or bad. How we see it is what makes us think that.
Do you see change as a problem or an opportunity?

See the opportunities.

Do you live in the sun or the shadow?

It’s your choice you know.

Do you see the clouds on the horizon …
or the color beyond them?

Maybe it’s time to move your focus.

Sunrise looks empty without the clouds

Notice how everything contributes.

Sunrise – sometimes it’s where you look for it.

Find and define new ways of seeing things.

Carry a sunrise in your heart today!

Shed light on the good things that you can make happen.

Problems and opportunities are the same things seen with a different attitude.
The minute we quit fighting a problem it becomes an opportunity.

To make opportunity, we need to trust enough to see what we’re not yet imagining.
To change the world, we probably should change how we see what’s wrong with it.

Are you ready to make opportunity and change the world?

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Break the Conspiracy to Build a Peak Performing Team in 2012

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Don’t Be Led Astray By the Conspiracy of the Team Player

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I’ve been thinking about the concept of the “team player” and the one time I had the outstanding pleasure of playing on a true team that built a business. I built a team or two and saw them dismantled by situations that undermined and contradicted true collaboration.

Why is that we do so much talking about being part of “the team,” when the underlying message is something different?

Think about it.
We learned to walk, talk, eat without benefit of a team.
No team could teach me to balance a bike or tread water to save my life.
Anyone who’s tried to pass on their experience at any of those skills knows that we learn them individually.

At school, we get individual report cards.
We get graded or assessed on our own performance.
We’re not supposed to share our homework.
We graduate as one person.
Our job applications are about what we as individuals have done.

We get hired alone.
We get raises and reprimands on our own.
We get an individual performance appraisal — it might speak to our team’s performance, but the rest of the team isn’t in the room.

And when we get fired, “the team” is told not to talk to us.

Where’s the team in all of that? What is a team anyway?

How to Break the Conspiracy of the Team Player to Build a Peak Performing 2012 Team

It’s a conspiracy that we ask people to be team players in situations that don’t offer a team. To break the conspiracy, we have to shift our thoughts to the community that is the team by valuing their contribution more than their job roles.

A true team is a group of people with complimentary skills who coordinate, delegate, and collaborate in ways that enable each person to invest peak performance moving the team forward to it’s highest goals. Great teams, like great leaders, are self-aware in that they know what each person should be doing more of and what each person should be doing less of — how each person contributes to the strongest team. When the team loses or adds a team member the team looks to fill a skill set that the team needs to be even stronger at what they do. Leadership is a quality shared by every team member no matter the level or area of expertise.

How do you get to a team like that?

  1. Hire leaders who share your values. Look for self-aware people who know their skills and have their ego intact. Leaders want to build something they can’t build alone. People who share your values will choose the same decisions as you will.
  2. Hire to the team. Don’t hire individuals. Hire one high performer and determine the key area at which he or she excels in his or her given job role and focus that role to take advantage of that. Then look for the additional skills in your next hires. In other words, adjust the job descriptions to enhance the performance of the best talent you find.
  3. Build out the team the same way. When a someone leaves the team, pull out the existing job description and have the team compare it to their own existing skill sets. What skills on that description are already covered well by two or more people on the team? Rewrite the new description to balance what you’ve got. For example if your marketing person leaves team and everyone on the team is social business savvy, write the new job description to find someone who “gets” social, but “lives” marketing data and analytics.
  4. Expect true team behavior and incentivize it. Lay out your goals and hold a quarterly appraisal for team performance that is tied to earnings. Move the team to solve their own problems ciollaboratively in the same the build their budgets and strategies. High performing teams thrive when they have
    • common goals — an agreement to work to achieve the same mission.
    • open communication — honest sharing of information that allows the team to move things forward efficiently
    • shared values — an agreement on what defines the standards of good behavior and good work
    • commitment to the group — every member inextricably bound to the team’s success
    • processes that support a culture of teamwork — the focus is on great performers who attract and nurture other great performers, because they’re truly fans of great performing teams.

    5. If it’s your goal to build a true team, trust the great performers you already have to help you start.
    Be a fan of great performers who are fans of great performers. Ask them what they need to perform at their peak and give them as much of that as you can. Constantly remove roadblocks and keep finding ways that they can do more of what they do well and less of what they do only adequately. Encourage everyone to notice others’ strongest skills and how the team might better use them..

    How will you break the conspiracy of the team player to build a peak performing team in 2012?

    Be irresistible.
    –ME “Liz” Strauss
    Work with Liz on your business!!

Thanks to Week 322 SOBs

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muddy teal strip A

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.

muddy teal strip A

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.

deep purple strip

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

Choosing and Deciding: How Do You Sort a Path to Opportunity?

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Knowing the Right Path

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It’s the end of what’s been not the best year. The economy is still uncertain. History tells us that it’s times like these that great leaders and great business are born. Inside and outside of traditional business, people are finding their path to opportunity, showing up with their skills, and claiming their reward.

Survey the landscape and three groups stand out.

  • People who are following a path to opportunity set out by someone else.
  • People who are forging their own path to opportunity.
  • People who can’t seem to find a path to be on.

Which group describes what you’re doing?
What are the first two groups doing that the third group is not?

Choosing and Deciding: The Key to Sorting a Path to Opportunity

Every change, every cycle, every downturn and upturn in the economy offers opportunity. The question is how do you find the best opportunity for you, your business, and your team? No matter the economy, we see old and new companies succeeding — How did SAS in Cary, NC get to be #1 on CNN’s 100 Best Companies list? How does Zappos keep growing their happiness business? … and individuals who are doing the same thing. — How did Susan Gregg turn her closet into a $50 Million business? How did Michael Mothner turn a tough interview question into a $12-13 Million business?

How did those folks find success how did they figure out where they’re going and stay true to that?

Obviously every business and individual who’s enjoying success has sorted and found their unique path to opportunity.
Key to that success — leveraging opportunity — is understanding the difference between choosing and a deciding and know when do each. What kind of choosing and deciding sorts the world of possibilities so that we can get on to that same sort of success?

When the Possibilities Are Endless You Need to Choose

Naturally the first step is defining and describing our unique version of success. If the possibilities seem endless, then you need to start with choosing.

Choosing allows us to try alternatives. The origins of the word choose are in French and German words that literally mean to taste or to test. A choice is what happens when we survey a box of chocolates knowing that whichever we take now, we’ll return later to take another one. The choice is a selection that resembles a bungie cord – make a choice, enjoy it, and bounce back to make another version of that choice again. We can choose more than one, even if we’re choosing one at a time.

If you’re choosing, do this.

  • Start broad.
  • Look to your past successes. What common threads do you find in all of them?
  • Identify 5 -7 categories, skills, problems you’ve been solving, or topics to focus your quest.
  • Take time to experiment. Mix and match a few ideas that have worked for you in the past.
  • Try out the possibilities to see what fits.
  • Talk to people who know you about the results.
  • Use each test to narrow your options.

As you keep trying on the options, you’ll begin to see what fits your values and your skills (or that of your team/business). Use the choosing to focus in on a clear vision of where you want to go or what you want to do. Brainstorming, ideation, conceiving new products and new initiatives all start with choosing from the wealth of possibilities available to you.

When It’s Time to Move Forward, Decide

Open options work great when we’re testing and trying, but when it comes time to be building and buying too many options paralyze. Moving forward requires commitment to one option, one direction or it will be too easy to get pulled aside.

Deciding allows us to determine a path. Decide literally means to kill off all other options. Deciding is what happens when we face the junction of many roads, knowing that whichever we take we’re moving on a path that means undoing to go back to that juncture again. We can commit to only one decision, but that commitment determines our direction, sets our destination, and fuels our ability to stay on course.

If you’re deciding, do this. Ask and answer 3 questions.

  1. Can you see the destination? Every time you succeeded you could see the finish when you started — the college degree, the thriving business, the trip across country. Define and describe where you are going or you will never get there.
  2. Is your head in it? Have you the skills, the DNA, and the ability to learn what you need to know to do this? The perfect opportunity is at the crossroads of your skills and the challenges that you enjoy most. Boredom comes when things are too easy. Anxiety sets in when things are too hard. Failure is certain when we choose challenges we weren’t built to meet. I’m 6 ft tall, so despite my grace and my 14 years of dance training, I’m never going to be a ballerina. But in my own way, I’ve become an information choreographer.
  3. Is your heart in it? Will you love the going there enough to keep it fun even when it’s not? Your heart has to be the keeper of the vision, the holder of the commitment that you make to yourself and the decision. We call that integrity. Can you trust your heart to be bigger than the fear that is sure to show up?

Knowing when to choose and when to decide is critical to sorting a clear path to your true north. Choose to sort out your best options then decide on which path will be your own.

Do you use choosing and deciding to your best advantage?

Knowing where you’re going is irresistibly attractive.
Who would follow you if you don’t?

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Have You Found a Way to Make Small Talk Work for You Yet?

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Could We Just Get On With It?

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The holidays come with their obligations. The running, the gathering, and the inevitable holiday parties. The parties with friends and families can be true memory makers, filled with traditions and great reunions. The parties with coworkers and strangers can be a little intimidating, filled with small talk and expectations.

Small talk used to make me crazy. It was painful to listen to the ritual, empty conversation that didn’t go anywhere. It felt so inauthentic — people saying things and pretending to care about them. I’d try to participate but it was energy draining. “Could we just get on with it?!!” Small talk seemed such a time waster. How could so many people spend so much time getting no where, talking about the weather?

Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything. — Mark Twain

I admit I didn’t understand. As a result, I not only wasn’t good at it, but I was disruptive.

I’d try to add humor, switch it up a little, and every attempt would fall flat. People who small talk like their small talk a certain way.

My aversion to small talk made networking events and big company meetings excruciating. An introvert with a mile wide shy streak, I could sense a small talk conversation 60 seconds before it started. I practiced defensive networking. I’d walk around, smile, and hope someone as uncomfortable as I was would discover me. My fear of babble was getting in my way. Worse, I was probably telegraphing something like disdain.

My inability to small talk wasn’t working for me. It was time for a new view: If so many people found it useful, maybe there was something to it. Maybe I should pay attention, do some observing.

What I found out is that small talk comes in more than one flavor. The second flavor might be what has left many of us with a bad taste.

Don’t Let the Small Talk You Hate Ruin the Small Talk that Makes Relationships

The first thing I noticed when I started observing is that small talk has a pattern and purpose. You’ve probably noticed it too. Small talk is used to fill silences. What I didn’t catch for quite a while is that small talk comes in two forms — one that serves people who already know each other and another for people building relationships.

The Small Talk that Builds Relationships

Small talk is a space filler and a social lubricant. People use conversation to move together over time. It’s a social bonding ritual in which people define relationships, set boundaries, find similarities and differences. Small talk enables people to learn another’s social position, validate similar interests, and establish a platform for a continuing conversation … “Oh yeah, Jesse is my movie buddy. Love talking movies with him.”

When relationships are new, small talk is how people learn each other’s boundaries.The opening remark and it’s response follow the rules of a conversational dance. It really works so easily and doesn’t have to be insincere or shallow if you know these rules.

  1. Small talk starts with an agreeable statement or question. Start a conversation by noticing something, such as “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” or “That’s a stunning necklace!” Smile and make it easy to talk to you. A simple agreeable statement or question is a way small talkers of making a positive initial connection. If you don’t feel comfortable talking about the weather, or the food, or the latest techie gadget, comment on something about the other person. Share something you’ve noticed that you’re enjoying at that every moment
  2. The response to the first question or statement usually builds on the first question or statement. Respond with a little more than was asked for … “Yes, I live for the tulips on Michigan Avenue.” or “Thank you! It attracts amazing people. Are you always so great at noticing nice things?”

    3. Accept the invitation the opening agreeable statement or question offers you. Continue the conversation by sharing something, passing the conversation back, and listening to your new acquaintance. Offer only as much detail as fits your new relationship.

Starting the conversation is actually the easier way. Notice something worth commenting on in an agreeable way.

If you’re at that holiday party with strangers and coworkers, remember this to have more success in starting a conversation. Don’t approach two people talking, they’re probably having a deeper conversation. Look for a group of people standing together. Then look at their feet. The way we stand gives away how engaged we are. The person most open to a new conversation will be the one whose feet are pointing away from the conversation.

A little practice at the agreeable opening statement or question made my experience of small talk so much more refreshing. Now I find it’s a great way to open doors to new relationships with amazing people. I highly recommend it.

If Small Talk Is So Good, Why Does Everyone Hate It?

Small talk shows up in other situations. One in particular may be what has earned small talk it’s bad name. That would be the small talk that happens before someone, particularly someone in authority, uses to find a common ground and an even relationship right before he or she delivers bad news. I call that “the three things before the but.” You may have experienced it. For the naive or new to the experience, it’s a kind of being blindsided. To those who have previously experienced it, it’s still painful because once burned it’s easy to recognize what’s next. An example might be …

You’re a fabulous writer, a charming person, and very charismatic, but … you’re fired.

The worst part of this version of ritual, warmup conversation is that it doesn’t matter how true the “three things before the but” may be, the way that they’re used to deliver the hard news renders the three compliments unbelievable. The three compliments were pulled together to manipulate the tone and smoothly move the conversation. This conversational tactic destroys trust.

Have You Found a Way to Make Small Talk Work for You Yet?

People who say the “three things before the but” aren’t building relationships.
People who smile and talk about the weather while shaking hands and stealing your wristwatch aren’t building relationships.
People who smile big, talk about the weather, ask about your kids, but forget your name over and over aren’t building relationships.

They all may be using the art of talk as a social lubricant, but their using it to serve themselves not a relationship.

It’s not the small talk that’s the problem or the opportunity. It’s the motive that drives it.

Choose wisely and you’ll find that small talk can open a world of new relationships. Break the ice, invite others in, and sincere small talk can build you a network of amazing people.

Though I never think of it as small talk when I do it. I think of it as fun conversation.

Have you thought about small talk lately? Have you found a way to make it work for you?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

I’ve spent a couple of days on Twitter. Actually too many to count. My first tweet was March 16, 2007 and

Thanks to Week 321 SOBs

by

muddy teal strip A

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.

muddy teal strip A

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.

deep purple strip

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