Inside-Out Thinking Archives - Page 12 of 20

When Is Being Good Not Good for Business?

February 27, 2008 by Liz

Good Isn’t Good Enough

A good friend of mine is a designer. His ideas are good. His service is good. The artwork on his blog is good and the information is easy to access. Everyone I know thinks he’s an all around good guy.

He’s the guy everyone invites to every event. They ask his advice and solicit his input. His reputation is impeccable. He has a pile of references. Everything about this guy is good, except his business. No one chooses him for their projects.

Could it be that he’s the wrong kind of good? Can being good be not so good for business?

When Is Being Good Not Good for Business?

In a blogosphere of 80 million blogs, being good isn’t enough to get noticed — that’s something folks might not recognize right away, but eventually we all tune in. This conversation is bigger than that. Some folks I know are more than good and it’s that very fact works against them in at least five ways.

Good makes some folks think they don’t need to be nice. Having the skills to do a job well doesn’t go far if folks don’t like to work with them.
Good makes some folks think that the world will eventually come to them. It’s naive to think that the rest of world has time to find out what we don’t have time to tell them in a compelling way.
Good makes some folks focus on perfection. They end up adding quality only they can see. That drives up their costs and lowers their understanding of how clients see their work.
Good makes some folks unable to talk about the price of their work. They feel that a true artist or a “good person” shouldn’t ask for money.
Good keeps some folks from being great. It’s hard for some folks to take risks when they’ve achieved a place of some stature. Thoughts turn to defending against what might be lost rather than what could be won.

What good is being good if it’s not good for your business? Being centered on those we serve is more fun and less complicated to do. Deciding how to offer a unique value to the people we work with and for makes a whole slew of “good” issues disappear.

In what ways do you think being good can be not so good for business?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Analyze whether you’re getting in your own way. Work with Liz!!

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7 Ways to Carve a Path to the Future of Your Dreams

February 26, 2008 by Liz

Perceived Leadership

How do some folks always seem to know where they’re going? Are you one of them?

We learn in school the ease of having our time and our next steps arranged by someone else’s plan. Our limited decisions decide our rewards and failures. So we feel we’re some part of the system. Yet, through necessity we have no real controlling decisions. We learn perceived leadership that has no real risk and no real power.

Following a preset path is great if it goes where you want to end up. It’s not so great when we find ourselves on a path leading to somewhere we don’t really belong. Unfortunately, no one tells us when to switch over to our own power.

7 Ways to Carve a Path to the Future of Your Dreams

We graduate as leaders who might be excellent at following the larger plan. But there’s no official transition from doing that to carving our own path. Some of us jump in naturally and start walking. Some us follow what’s laid before us until we find ourselves out of a job. It’s easy to be swept along without ever owning our decisions, but that’s a risky business and ultimately not fulfilling.

Here are 7 ways to carve your own path to the future of your dreams starting now.

Have a purpose. It’s powerful and attractive to have a defining direction. Without a purpose, circumstances decide where and how you land. The wind or the world can blow you anywhere. When every road leads to nowhere, who bothers to choose?

Get determined. It’s your life. Breathe for it. Eat for it. Keep the folks who support you close. Disregard those who shoot you down.

Speak for yourself. Speak with care and carefully, but say what you mean as clearly as you know how. Don’t discount what you’re saying. Say the guy was wrong, even a jerk, if you solidly think so. Tell the real story — respectfully — without fear of how you might look. Stand for what you think by saying it out loud.

Have a strategy. Char said it well, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” Wishes are granted. If you’re wishing, you want someone else in control.

Hold your own hand. Be your own teacher. Don’t stop your progress until someone has time to show you how. Plan a way to what you need to know. Do the research. Write your own lesson. Then do the homework. That’s incredible power.

Pay attention to your intuition and instincts. You years of experience didn’t all get recorded as words. Some things your body knows. Trust that your post decisions have taught you how to respond to those now.

Decide what success looks like to you. Seek out opinions and value them for exactly what they’re worth. You’ll always have more experience and more information about being you than anyone else can know.

It’s totally in our power to reach our dreams and our destiny — we can start on our way right here and right now. We can turn off the voices that tell us what we’re not . . . , what we should . . . , who’s supposed to . . . they’re not in charge of what we do with our lives. I offer this bit of wisdom to their noise.

My future is at the end of the path that I follow. I’ll carve it myself.

What do you need to decide to start toward your future?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Take charge. It’s not as hard as you might think. Work with Liz!!

How to Think a Way Out of a Losing Situation

February 11, 2008 by Liz

Stuck and Going Nowhere

Have you done an evaluation of your situation lately? When you think about where you are and were last year, are you gaining ground, losing ground, or standing still?

A small company client was hit hard by the changes that came out of September 11, 2001. Since that time, their business has been stalled or declining. Even they described their situation as “stuck and going nowhere.”

When I started asking about the problem, the answers formed a curious pattern. Reasons they offered included:

Their customer base had dwindled.
The “no call” law on telemarketers had hurt their sales.
Direct mail no longer worked.
They couldn’t get funding because they didn’t have connections.

Do you see the pattern? Every cause — every wall, pothole, and barrier — they offered was something outside of them. Other companies had faced the same things and found solutions, but this company was focused on the causes — they only saw what they couldn’t control.

A fine company and some great managers were stuck for 6 years because they got thinking in the wrong direction. They had painted themselves into a losing situation. Their view was that they were unable to fix their problems.

How to Think a Way Out of a Losing Situation

Not a person, not a business, can get to success without a few failures and losses. It’s the downs that build the skills to keep us climbing upward. At the center of winning is the ability to look at a losing situation and think a way out. Here’s how to do that.

Think back to when you were last winning. How long has it been? What about you or your business was different then? Look for the differences between the you or your business then and now.

Think about the hidden payoffs of losing. If you’re truly stuck and can’t see a way out, you must be getting a hidden reward for being where you are. Is that you’re able to lay down responsibility? Is it that people give you attention? Is it that you don’t have to try winning again? Whatever put you in the situation, you’re the reason that you’re still there.

Think away from the center. Get some perspective. You’re not the first or the only to have been there. Thinking you are keeps you focused on the wrong things.

Think yourself out of the fairy tale you’ve bought into. Are you waiting for a knight, a mentor, a patron to fix it? Needing help and waiting for someone to rescue you won’t change where you are. Knights, mentors, and patrons are attracted to people who show signs of winning.

Think about a far off future unchanged. If that doesn’t motivate you to find a new answer, maybe you like where you are.

Think up one small positive action. Then MAKE IT HAPPEN.

Walls, barriers, and potholes don’t stand a chance of holding back a winner.

Can you think your way out of a losing situation?

Of course you can.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
SOBCon08 is May 2,3,4 in Chicago. Register now!

Using Common Wisdom and Goals to Avoid Perceived Productivity

February 5, 2008 by Liz

Working Hard and Getting Nowhere

Every company that I work with has some issue with perceived productivity — people working hard at things that add no value. It might be a team that’s lost direction or a culture that does things as they’ve always been done. It could a department who never evaluates the effectivenees of their process.

I suppose that comes from a misaligned perception that hard work is equal to a positive contribution. It’s not so. A positive contribution is any work that moves us closer to our goals — sometimes that’s hard work; sometimes it’s simple and elegant.

When we work at home, it’s easy to fall victim to the lure of productivity that gets us nowhere. We feel like we’re working. No one says our time investment isn’t worth it. In the past few months, people have said these things to me:

I’m all I can and in the last 6 months, I’ve only made $600.

I work 14 hours a day. I guess you need money to make money.

In my last job, I was a high performing VP. Now I can’t get a client to talk to me.

Every time I asked what they were doing. They answered with common wisdom about successful blogging.

I spend hours writing high-quality blog posts.
I spend hours writing comments and social networking.
I tweak my blog to make it more inviting.

If you’ve got a blog, you know that it’s work to do all of that. It’s highly productive work, if the goal is to build a first-rate blog audience. But the folks who came to me had a goal to build a client-based business. They were working hard on some things that wouldn’t take them where wanted to be.

It was perceived productivity. Wisdom needs to match up wth where we’re going.

Each person took a minute to apply their goals to what they were doing. The wisdom matched to their goals made a new purpose and new direction. Every high-quality blog post and every hour spent networking and commenting was considered in light of their business. A slight shift made a big difference. Time spent became highly productive.

Wisdom + goals = direction, purpose, productivity

Ever been victim to perceived productivity?

I have. Now I keep my goal in front of me.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

How What You Know Can Kill a Business and Thanks for Listening When I Call

January 31, 2008 by Liz

Once You’re Inside . . .

We all do it. We misfire on a key point that shoots us in the foot every time. It’s a major disconnect that I see almost everywhere.

We think we can be the business and still represent the customer. As a result, we end up only thinking that we’re delivering on what the customer wants or needs. The reality is

We can’t be the business and the customer at the same time.

A certain kind of thinking goes into building a product or service. Decisions are made about how the offer works and why it works as it does. When it comes time to judge the value of the finished offer, those who did the thinking can’t forget what they know about how it was made.

It’s impossible to participate in the thinking that builds something and then to respond as if you don’t know what that thinking is.

Unfortunately, businesses everywhere — from entrepreneurs to corporations — try to do exactly that. What happens then is that we offer our customers, clients, readers a flawed product or service assuming that they know why we made it as we did.

I reviewed an interactive site where, four clicks inside I was lost in “helpful” information. I was unable able to find navigational signs to get to the content that was past the “lessons” up front.

Their intentions had been excellent service, but the result had the opposite. The developers didn’t know about the barriers . . . because they knew why each “lesson” was there.

That’s how what you know can kill a business. It’s hard to not to know what you already know. It’s hard to see the disconnects from inside the system.

So if you’re one of the folks that I call to talk about what I’m working on . . . thank you so much! The questions you ask really help to keep me on track.

Have you bumped into products that offer you plenty of extra “stuff,” but not the one thing that you want?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Time to Check Social Media Return on Investment

January 22, 2008 by Liz

Infinite Room Is NOT Infinite Time

We live in a world of Social Media, where we can choose from a seemingly unending list of new universes — places where any small group suddenly finds we can join up to be our own majority. Like-minded thinking is one of the pleasures of getting together on any social site.

Don’t like how I think?
Click on.
No harm. No foul.

The infinite Internet has room for everyone.
It’s not hard to find like-minded thinkers anymore. As the number of Social Media sites grows, we can’t keep adding to our lists.

We don’t have infinite time to spend.
We need to know that time we’re spending is time well invested.

Time to Check Social Media Return on Investment

It’s easy to get comfortable on a social media site, especially if we’ve never fit so well anywhere before. But, now that the choices are so many, maybe we should check to be sure that the time we’re spending is time is adding something, not wasting away.

Here are five values to check the return on your time investment. Maybe you’ll find some time to save.

What’s the big idea? What do people do there? Do they exchange information, look for jobs, act like schoolkids? Is that focus important to you? Do you look forward to time spent there?

Who’s there? Are the people there friends, fans, or contacts? Are they there for relationships or information or votes? Are there people to learn from and people you aspire to be more like? Can you see them? Can they see you?

What are they saying? What do you take from the conversation? What ideas are on offer? What ideas directly apply to what you do? How often do you see real value?

What’s the time/goal orientation? What do the people focus on? Do they come to achieve; then leave? Do they hang out for conversation? Are their goals in line with yours?

What is the payoff? Is this site redundant with another place you visit? Can you accomplish the same thing in a better way? Would more time here return more value? Would more time somewhere else make this site a non-starter? What do you get there that you can’t get anywhere else?

I quit visiting certain places, got back that time, and have suffered no loss. Well, actually, I’ve gained. The folks I interacted with in those places are in all of the other places I’ve still visit. So I’m trimming my social media portfolio to only those that work for me and my business.

What about you? Time to rethink your Social Media Investments?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!