Liz, Author at Successful Blog Page

How to Build the Deeply Connected Network that Is Key to Any Strategy

September 26, 2011 by Liz

The Magnetic Attraction of Values

When we were writing the press release for the first SOBCon, I said,

Every business is relationships, and relationships are everyone’s business.

Our networks are relationships with people who help our businesses thrive.

If you look to your network, what will you find? What moves you to follow up when you collect a business card or meet a new contact? What brings you to invite a new company or a new person into that network that keeps your business alive?

It’s been said that …

If you want to know what you stand for, look at your friends.

It’s true in business as well as in our personal lives. It’s not what you say. It’s what you do that counts. We define and describe our values by the relationships we make. The values of the company we keep attract other people who keep those same values. We trust people who value what we do. We know they’ll choose as we choose and decide as we decide.

It’s an almost automatic, magnetic attraction.
The attraction occurs so naturally that we often don’t notice our common values until we grow our network without attention. Then like a bad download, we add a relationship that corrupts and we feel the loss we get an unexpected and negative response that doesn’t match our values set.

Trust relies on having our values aligned.
Trusted sources are foundational to strategy.

How to Build the Deeply Connected Network that Is Key to Any Strategy

They say …

Information is power.

The most powerful information isn’t published in Wikipedia or available to the masses via simple research. The best jobs never make it to the job boards. The best partnerships don’t get offered to everyone. Competitors don’t advertise their disadvantages or their future plans. It’s impossible to know about every startup about to launch and every web application that could expedite what you’re currently developing. Yet that scarce information is the rocket fuel that drives a brilliant strategic plan.

Strategic information like that depends on a deeply connected, values-based network of relationships. Access to prized information is what advances your position more quickly than any other resource can.

Developing a deeply connected network that brings that information to you is key to any strategic plan.

Here’s how to build a power network like that.

Know your values. Identify the values that need to be present to determine a “go” or “no go” decision in your business. Those values represent your brand and the foundation of the relationships that will help your business thrive.
Use those values to identify the network relationships you want to establish and cultivate. The people and businesses who share your values will be predictable and easy to trust because they will make the same decisions as you would even when the situation is not clearly black and white.
Become an information magnet and filter. Develop a sense of what information is available to everyone and what is not. Put to use what informs your position. Capture and catalogue scarce information that is irrelevant to you.
Pass on to others in your network information you’ve captured that will improve their position. If you share a trend building, a competitive initiative, or a new tech development about to be announced that could change their strategy, you’ll soon find they are sharing similar information with you.
Treat your network as highly valued. Offer them the same regard you would offer a world leader you admire. Hold them in the highest respect. Keep their secrets. Make time for them. Value their time even more than you value your own.
Show your clear appreciation. Point out their great work. Have gratitude not expectation. Realize and appreciate their achievement by filtering the connections you offer them.
Choose them wisely and trust their truth. Enlist only those willing to invest to equal depth. Seek a comrades that “won’t let each other fail.” Ask them often to challenge you to see and know the truth.

A deeply connected network isn’t measured by numbers, but by commitment. Five people who hold us to a true north outweigh 500 who say we’re always right. Reach for one or two who are willing to grow your mind, your heart, your resolve, and your vision as well as your bottom line and you’ll find that many more of the same kind will find their way to you.

A deeply connected network like that is irresistible.

On what values do you deeply connect?

Be irresistible.

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

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

Thanks to Week 310 SOBs

September 24, 2011 by Liz

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.

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.

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

Irresistible Consistency: Are You Suited Up for Soccer When Golf Is the Game?

September 20, 2011 by Liz

Right People, Right Positions, Right Game

In the NYTimes bestseller, Good to Great, author Jim Collins laid out the foundation of an outstanding enterprise class organization. When I heard him speak, last October he said that the winner is the one with the best team. To achieve the best team,

A leader has to identify the right people who are the smartest.
A leader has to put them in the right positions.
A leader has to value, reward, and celebrate teamwork.

Those who change the world are enormously consistent in how they do it. The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency. â Jim Collins, World Business Forum, 2010

It’s my experience that Mr. Collins’ short list brings constant improvement in situations where the game never changes. The hidden assumption is that the playing field, the conditions, the climate, the trends, and rules of business remain the same.

They didnât. They don’t. They never will. They won’t.

Are You Suited Up for Soccer When Golf Is the Game?

I don’t doubt for second that Mr. Collins knows that and chooses his people to match the game that’s currently in play. Yet, when I work on strategy with big corporations and small business, too often I find their still suiting up and running the plays for the game that was on the field yesterday. It doesn’t work if you’re suited up for soccer and golf is the game.
.
The Internet has moved the field, changed the rules, disrupted conditions, upset the culture, sparked new trends, shifted the playbook with new models and more flexible teams, and relocated the executive locker room.

The consistency that was a strength also built silos, sales scripts, and standard procedures that has lead some of those âsmartest peopleâ not to see what they see and not to know what they know in deference to rules build to ensure one-size-fits-all consistency.

Those companies suited up for a highly consistent playing field are finding their sales numbers and their service reports frustrated by customers who value responses that are custom-made for what they need. Because to over-value consistency is to focus on process, when it’s people who help a business thrive.

So how can we use Jim Collinsâ Good to Great research and insights to leverage the opportunities of the new people-focused game — the social business culture, changes in the way companies and customers communicate, constantly moving metrics and toolkits, trend shifts, and elastic team dynamics of the 21st century online and off?

What Are the Highest Values of Your Business?

For 21st century organizations to move fluidly and fluently through multiple platforms and cultures, we need to look at the old short list in a slightly new way. The winner will still be the one with the best team, but now to achieve the best team, leaders will ignite communities of like-minded leaders at every level inside and outside the organization — employees, partners, vendors, customers, evangelists, friends, and fans who also want to invest in taking something from good to great.

Long-term, loyalty — trust — is a value-based relationship.

Live your highest values.
Be able to recognize the people who share them.
Invite those people to help build your business.

Consistency will win — a consistency of valuing the people who share your highest values is irresistible business strategy.

What are the highest values of your business?

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

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

Right People, Right Positions, Right Game

How to Use Strategy to Build Opportunity into Your Life Now!

September 19, 2011 by Liz

Making Random Decisions Is as Reliable as Luck

Get up in the morning, get working, solve today’s problems go have fun is that the way life is working for you? Facing each day with a single-day view will get you through a life or a career, but at the end you may find that many of those days might have put to better use.

If you think of it making random decisions probably has about the same long-term results as relying on luck.

Strategy is a longer view, a stronger view, and a more useful way of leveraging opportunity too.

20 Everyday Situations That Strategy Could Turn to Opportunity Right Now!

With a mind toward strategy, you can leverage the opportunity in any situation, fix the problem your facing, open the door that isn’t moving and get things working FOR you. Strategy is not some high-falutin’ sort of thinking that only great minds do.

It’s a method of solving problems. Did you ever want to …

be more visible in your circle?
become the first, trusted source at what you do?
settle a conflict without becoming part of it?
help solve a problem with friend, family or coworkers?
enlist powerful people to your cause?
get sponsors for an event or meeting?
quit a bad habit or change unhealthy thinking?
get out of debt or pay off a loan?
negotiate a new or better position?
get upgraded to a better hotel room?
change how people see you?
raise money for your cause?
get a meeting with someone you admire?
find a new career that fits you?
organize a group trip?
motivate people to join you in something cool?
get a raise you deserve or raise your rates without worry
start doing what you were meant to do with you life?
do damage control?
start investing in a retirement you look forward to?

Too often we walk into all of the above situations without putting together a system for finding success. A clear strategy could turn any of those 20 (or most other) everyday situations into an opportunity rather than leaving the outcome to instincts and chance.

What Isn’t Strategy and What It Is

We use the word strategy as a synonym for the word way or the word plan. It’s not right, but it sounds cool. Bet you’ve heard people say things like this …

I’ve figured out how to use two tools to offer a new strategy for making money online.
My strategy is to say “yes” and then do whatever I want.
Our strategy this year is to focus on growing by 50%.
It was a bad strategy to spend money on that vacation.
Our long-term strategy is marry well and have a house with a great view.

Those are not strategies. Some aren’t even decisions or plans.

Strategy is more and more useful in our lives than most folks expect.

Strategy isn’t a business tool. It’s not a single goal, or a choice, or good idea, or a description of what we’re going to do. Strategy is a practical system that changes how we view and interact with the world.

Next time you have a situation that offers a change of any kind bring some strategy with you before you respond. Here’s how to do that.

Think about the outcome that you want to achieve — your goals.
Think about the people involved and what motivates them — their goals.
Think about your position and what you bring that adds value to THEIR goals.
Think about what you might offer to align your goals with theirs.
Think about how you can turn your what you want — your opportunity into a benefit for them.

Start by listening to what you know and asking questions to hear more about what they know. Offer a few suggestions that are unfinished, allowing everyone to participate in defining a great outcome. Call the group to action. Then claim and celebrate the agreed upon result! The hardest part is thinking it through before you begin.

How have you used strategy to build opportunity into your life right now?

Be irresistible!

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

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

Thanks to Week 309 SOBs

September 17, 2011 by Liz

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.

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.

Want to become an SOB?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

10 Steps to Save You and Your Team from Structure Damage

September 13, 2011 by Liz

We All Have Expectations We’ve Not Even Thought About

I’m not a person who likes to over plan. Still, when I get up in the morning I check in on my calendar and my obligations to have a certain idea of what needs to happen that day. After a little reflection — a few minutes of imagining, sorting, prioritizing, and ordering, I sketch together a loose picture of what, where, when, making sure to leave a couple of hours for the amazing fun surprise or the unexpected hitch in the giddy-up that might enter in.

And if other people weren’t involved this simple way of setting up a day would always win.

But alas, sometimes another person will shift the wind and the fine vision of a smooth sail will sink.
It doesn’t have to be an irritation, a devastation, or a break in a relationship.
It might be a good shift from one way to an even better way that is actually a win.
Still, I sometimes get difficult when the structure of my day caves in.

10 Steps to Save You and Your Team from Structure Damage

It’s a subtle effect, but I see it cause problems almost daily. One person sets up a situation that damages the structure of another person’s vision of how something was going to happen and that other person responds in a negative way. We call it drama, over-reaction, or being touchy, but really it’s a situation that can be avoid with just a little forward thinking.

This happens most often when we gather a new team. Everyone brings their old work ideas, interpersonal rules, and process structures to the new group and seldom do we all have the same clear vision of what we’re going to do. Here are some ways to manage expectations to save yourself (and others) from structure damage when planning your next meeting, event, or project:

Define the meeting, event, or project goal / outcome clearly.. Know why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Set meaningful priorities based on your values. Describe how you will recognize a great version of the meeting, event, or project.
Enlist the right participants. Identify, enlist, and invite the people who share the same values and priorities.
Determine roles and process that builds from the strengths of the participants. Explain the purpose and the value behind the activity. Take time to invite participants to suggest what their role should include more of and what it should include less of for optimal performance.
Review the objectives, the process, and the necessary resources with the participants. Ask them to help determine the time and materials needed to achieve the best version of success. While you work out the process also work out the vocabulary — agreeing from the beginning on what we call things will avoid semantic miscommunications that could explode!
Provide the resources and the time agreed upon to execute the meeting, event, or project.
Decide on a standard way of alerting the group to things that aren’t working.
Track and communicate progress.
Discuss outcomes and compare them to the original goal definitions.
Celebrate successes and change that exceeded expectations!

Planning a project, meeting, or event is a exercise in change. The act of forming a new team or adding a new event is an alteration of past events. Every person brings slightly different expectations to how and why we do things. Investing time to manage those expectations before we start can minimize the drama and the structure damage caused by those different visions of how the whole thing should work.

Depending on the size and scope of a meeting or project and the team gathering to make it happen, you may not need every step. But with an eye to the commonality of values, goals, vocabulary, process, and standards, you’ll know which need the most attention. Spend your time re-aligning places where people may have different expectations and the chances of structure damage will decrease exponentially despite a high rate of change.

The key to change is to manage expectations.

How do you minimize the stress of change when a new team gathers to work?

Be irresistible.

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

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.