Successful Blog

Five Ways to Manage the Present and Create the Future at the Same Time

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Do You Over Focus on the Present?

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I had the privilege of listening in and live tweeting for two days as world-class thinkers spoke to an international audience about business and the state of the world at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. It’s been my experience that when leaderships gathers to share current thoughts, though they might prepare and speak individually, if you listen carefully to their words and the big ideas an overriding theme evolves.

One overriding theme this year at the World Business Forum was the character of leadership is the foundation of great business, innovation. Vijay Govindarajan — a leading expert on strategy and innovation — spoke to three strategies for creating the future.

  1. Manage the Present
  2. Selectively Abandon the Past
  3. Create the Future

Vijay says stratefy has nothing to do with competing for the present, but everything to do competing for the future. However, we cannot compete for the future if we are not taking care of the present. The thinking process it takes to excel at managing the present is fundamentally different from that of managing the past and future to grow.

This three minute video gives a great summary of Vijay Govindarajan’s points.

Vijay speaks to the enterprise, but any small business owner, entrepreneur, consultant or freelancer knows that living in the present and building the future is the only way to survive.

Here are five of my ideas for managing the present while creating the future.

  1. Reserve time to claim what you’ve learned. Take a hour a day, a day a week, or 3 days a month to do the work of keeping your business in line.
  2. Study your losses to find the lessons. Keep the lesson and leave the losses behind.
  3. Assume that every new idea holds an opportunity in the form of a problem.
  4. Keep the realistic present in focus and keep asking people What a future version of this might look like? <-- Note: that's a different question than What is the next ____?
  5. Surround yourself with people who will tell you when your ideas are brilliant and when they are brilliantly stupid.

In an ever-changing venue with an increasing influx of information, the winning objective is not to know what we know, but be able to respond and react to changes with solid experience and a learner’s mind.

How do you manage the present and create your future at the same time?

Read more about the World Business Forum 2010 at WBFNY.com and WBFNY-bloggershub

Be irresistible.

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

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How Will You Find Out Whether Your Community Is Bored, Broken, or Inspired to Take on the World?

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(Updated in 2020)

10-POINT PLAN: Assessing and Setting a Benchmark

Finding Out Before You Start

Ever asked someone to change something she’s been doing for years? It’s not the easiest endeavor. Even when we hate what we’re doing it’s become comfortable to us. For some people in some circumstances, it might even be part of our identity. Change is heady stuff.

No matter the value of the reward. It comes with the thought, “maybe the situation I’m leaving is somehow better. I wonder …”

One way to overcome the psychology of change is to measure.

Measurement proves to the people involved that the change is providing the progress that was promised, even when the progress only feels like work.

But before we can measure progress, we have know where we are when we start.

How to Benchmark Who’s Bored, Who’s Broken and Who’s Inspired to Take on the World

It’s an art and a science to gather the people who help our businesses thrive into a true community.

A community isn’t built or befriended. It’s connected by offering and accepting.
Community is affinity, identity, and kinship that make room for ideas, thoughts, and solutions.
Wherever a community gathers, we aspire and inspire each other intentionally . . . And our words shine with authenticity.

How do we know whether any of this is truly happening? How do might we benchmark our community connections before we start moving forward?

Evaluating Individual Relationships

A few years ago, Gallup came up with the q12, a 12 question survey to measure employee engagement. Though they were intended for employees, they work well for any person, any barn raiser involved in creating a working community — employee, manager, vendor, partner, customer, friend of the business. Here they are:

  1. Do you know what is expected of you at work?
  2. Do you have the materials and equipment you need to do your work right?
  3. At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
  4. In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?
  5. Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?
  6. Is there someone at work who encourages your development?
  7. At work, do your opinions seem to count?
  8. Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?
  9. Are your associates (fellow employees) committed to doing quality work?
  10. Do you have a best friend at work?
  11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?
  12. In the last year, have you had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

In the Q12 test it becomes easier to see which points of performance are being frustrated by resources and which are being frustrated by personnel issues.

Evaluating Social Relationships and Networks

When the q12 is paired with a simple informal social test called a sociogram, we can lay out an important picture. A sociogram points out channels of influence, communication, and interaction. Simple questions such as

  • Which person would you ask to teach you something new?
  • Which person would you ask to attend or a gathering of your friends?
  • Which person would you want to offer you a recommendation on the quality of your work?

Those choice that receive many choices are stars. Those who receive none are isolates. Groups who mutually choose each other have formed cliques.

Whether we’re working with few freelancers, a team, or a corporation having firm idea of where we stand before we move forward is ideal. If we find someone from outside the system — someone who looks something like me, easy to talk with and sure to keep thing confidential, we can learn by using these two two sets of questions how people feel about the community that is forming. We’ll draw an idea of how bored, broken or inspired the community might be.We’ll be well on our way to pick out the champions who can pick up the tools and begin building new things with us.

They will raise a barn, not work away as they build our coliseum.

What are you doing to find out whether your community is bored, broken, or inspired to take on the world?

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Why B-2-B Is B-2-C … And Social Media is Biz Dev!

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What Do Business Customers Want?

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I sneaked into publishing through the back door, first I freelanced. Then I worked for a contractor who built products for bigger publishers. It was definitely a b-2-b business. I was all about serving my customers. I was also clueless about how to do it.

I thought my customers were the clients who paid me.

It wasn’t until I became a publisher hiring other contractors that I realized how off my thinking had been. I’d been looking a short-sighted wrong direction.

Why B-2-B Is B-2-C … And Social Media is Biz Dev!

The business to business model (B-2-B) isn’t that hard to understand if you think a few seconds about it. What do business people want most? They want to grow their businesses. They want to know what successful people in their jobs at other businesses are doing to be successful. We can bring that to them in two simple ways:

  1. We can use social media tools to connect them to other people who do what they do. Social media tools are fabulous for starting and building deep networking relationships. Great social media strategists are fluent at making those relationships happen.
  2. We can use social media tools to build occasions online and offline where they can learn about companies like theirs who are growing. Webinars, seminars, teleconferences about business development, integrated marketing, reaching out to customers in new and more relational ways can be key to helping our clients’ business thrive and grow.

What I didn’t get then is that if we stop with thinking of our client as our customer we leave them to do all of thinking about how their customer might respond to what we suggest, offer, and recommend. But if we look through our customers to the people they serve we become their partner in business development.
We grow our own business by aligning our goals to help them grow theirs.

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Do you know how to serve your customers’ customers? Do you think B-2-B and B-2-C at the same time and turn social media marketing into business development?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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How Do You Influence Yourself?

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Why I Start SOBCon with the Litany Against Fear

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At SOBCon2010 this year, we had a top-notch agenda and a brilliant audience attending … and about 25 more people than before. The format was new one and the sponsors — intuit, Allstate, IZEA, and ReneNews were involved in the planning as never before. At SOBCon Colorado, we were facing an entirely new venue and most of the people attending were new to the event.

In both cases, we were set on delivering an irresistible experience that is SOBCon. Key and central to the central to the SOBCon experience is a high-trust environment. The more quickly we establish that, the more everyone would get from the entire experience. I thought about that long and hard. The question was …

How do we get an audience to let down their defenses when they’re in a room of strangers? How do we bring them into the room and let them know they don’t need a safety net? How do we establish that trust?

We do it many ways … Terry sings. I begin with the the Litany Against Fear.

Fear-Less and Influence Yourself First

In 1965, Frank Herbert wrote DUNE, the first in his acclaimed series of science fiction books. Early in the story the young, Paul Atredies was asked to hold his hand in box where he would feel excruciating nerve pain. If he removed his hand, he would die. He survived by reciting the Litany Against Fear.

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I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain –Dune, Frank Herbert, (Wikipedia)

When Paul removes his hand from the box is whole, but he is without fear … Fear- Less.

Trust cannot exist in the same space as fear.

I use the litany for many reasons.

  • to offer the idea that trust is a choice.
  • to suggest that if we can’t trust ourselves, how can we think we will trust each other?

    • and most important to influence myself …

  • to set aside my own fear publicly and be ready to trust myself.

Influence is a powerful stuff. What if we influence ourselves first?

How do you influence yourself?

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

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The HUGE Gap Between Reach and Trust

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Do You Trust Yourself?

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During a discussion of The Difference Between Begging for and Building Influence a a few weeks ago, @StevePlunkett asked me to do a long think about credibility and reach. I’ve been doing just that and now I’m writing another post his challenge inspired.

The Pulitzer Prize Paper, Reach, and Engagement

Once upon a time, I subscribed to the Chicago Tribune. (I apologize to the New York Times and my friends who Yankees fans. I also live in Wrigleyville.) I subscribed to daily delivery during the period that the Tribune won 11 Pulitzer Prizes. I’m not certain that I read any of the winning articles. Though the paper came as promised, with a job in the city, my schedule often didn’t offer me the time I wished to read it. Even when it did loosen a bit, I didn’t read every word of it.

So though the paper reached me. I wasn’t exposed it. I was on their list and I would bet that I was counted in their ad fees based on circulation.

My point is that reach only meant I was paying for it.

I don’t watch television, so I don’t need a TIVO to skip the commercials. On the rare occasion that a television movie or event might attract me back to the huge screen monitor that we usually use as a computer, we end up talking through the ads or channel surfing just because we can.

I know a number of people online who own online tools that charge small fees and send out informational mailing lists. I know thousands more that belong to social sites and read blogs that carry ads. Whenever I ask about the ads, I find that we’re becoming advertising blind … except when we’re shopping or looking to see what sort of ads our friends are using.

So, technically those ads are reaching me, but they’re equivalent to a sales rep who knocks on my door but never gets an answer.

Then a new algorithm emerges from social media. If I pay close attention and “prune” my power network just right, I should be able to connect to the perfect 150 power people who have each also connected to another 150 power people and so on outward. A mere two generations out would be a network of 3,375,000 power people. But just to hedge the bet, perhaps I should connect to 150,000.

Thing is any message I send to my own group only gets read the same as the Tribune did … when they have time. Probably less than that, because I don’t have 11 Pulitzer Prizes behind what I’m saying.

Let’s not even talk about the email newsletters and direct mail that gets pitched without being opened.

Reach is not a guarantee of engagement, participation or even exposure.
Reach is merely a possibility.

Andrew Smith at marcom international points out,

“For decades, PR has been seen by many marketeers as “cheap reach via editorial” – in other words, the goal of PR was to gain editorial coverage that provided the greatest number of opportunities to see – at a significantly lower cost than advertising.”

But even cheap is expensive if no one is paying attention.

And even when I do pay attention, can you assume that I trust what you’re saying?

No. Not unless I know you.

Reach and Trust

We interact with thousands of people through our lives and if we’re a corporation that number of interactions can grow to millions. Still the fact remains that people prefer to work with people we know and business moves faster, more easily, and with fewer micro-decisions when we can depend on people we trust.

The ability to reach millions with our message means hardly anything if they don’t trust the people or place the message is coming from. Now that we work online even Google has been trying to figure out how to trust.

A good marketer should always be able to reach more people. A great marketer knows that ideal customers who share the marketers’ values might actually pay more for products and services that incorporate those values in everything. An irresistible marketer knows and trusts those customers.

Reach is not nearly as powerful as attraction.

What Moves People to Trust You and Your Brand?

Trust … credibility … authenticity … transparency These words have become key terms in the social business lexicon. But they’re not new to business. Relationships have been the foundation of solid partnerships since growing businesses started growing. Ask any number of successful Venture Capitalists, if they have to choose, they will tell you that they will put their money on the team they can trust.

What moves us to trust?

Steven M. R. Covey, who wrote the book on Trust, points to 4 Cores of Credibility — So that’s where I went to start my think on credibility, with his words. integrity, intent, capability, and results. Together they carry the four reasons we trust ourselves, our friends and the people and companies with whom we choose to work.

And we’re finding that social business has made it more complicated than we might think.

It’s no longer about only about how far our message can reach or how many people will receive and consume it. The question is whether a credible message can travel that far and still be believed.

  • Integrity. A guy runs up to you on the beach, opens his coat and says, “Wanna buy a watch?” Your response is likely to be negative. It’s hard to believe that watch is the deal that he says it is. A man of integrity probably wouldn’t choose that form of work.

    Integrity is the ultimate of walking your talk. he etymology of integrity is “wholeness, soundness” from the Latin, *intetritatern* “sense of uncorrupted virtue.” It makes a foundation upon which a person’s true character can stand. It’s a person’s character who gives “his word,” shakes a hand. makes a promise, and signs a contract.

    Integrity is what we rely on when we say that a person (or a company) will never lie to you, that he has no hidden agenda, that her behavior is stellar, that they will always make good on what say they will do.

    Whether we’re acting as a company or an individual looking in the mirror is what we say we believe totally in line with our standards? Integrity is the conviction to stand up for what is true and valuable to you and to trust yourself to always choose for your values no matter what people are around you. Integrity builds trust and respect in its Have we the personal and professional strength to say “no” to deals and relationships with people who stay sitting down.

    Do you show up as the same person everywhere people find you?
    Do you live your company’s message with the people you work with and with your customers?
    Do you ever keep promises to yourself, your friends, your family, and the people you work with?
    Do you tell the hard truth as easily and with as much love as you tell the great things?

    Decide to BE what you believe. Stand for something.

    How do your actions demonstrate what you believe?

  • Intent. Ever get an email or a request from a friend that sounded like it was just for you, only to find out that it was a sales pitch and he or she send the exact words to a whole list of people? A person of pure intent would never set up a situation that would make you wonder about what his or her agenda might be.

    People and companies live with intent. They lean forward and stretch toward building open relationship before promoting self-interest. It’s good intent to understand the power in partnership that is forthright and mutually beneficial. Think of Warren Buffet and the respect he has earned. He’s a great combination of integrity and intent. And through good intent, Warren Buffet accomplishes many things that benefit others and his own companies.

    Do you reflect on what motivates you and how that might work for others?
    Do you move yourself outside the center to get a more balanced view of world?
    Do you make the success of other people mission critical to our own success?
    Do state your true intentions to yourself and to others before you act?

    Share your plan and your purpose. Focus on mutual benefits.

    How do you make it easy to see what you’re up to?

  • Capabilities. Think of the leaders who inspire. They have knowledge, talent, skills, ethics, attitudes, and identity. They’re not just smart and visible, but they attract us to follow them because they know where they’re doing. They have means and the confidence to do the job and the way they talk about their capabilities raises everyone on their team.

    Do you know your strengths, talents, what comes naturally, and why people follow you?
    Do you have the expertise to do what you set out to do?
    Does your style attract and encourage relationships and learning?
    Do you establish a culture that is open and supportive?

    Be constantly learning. Know what value only you can bring. Do the same for others.

    How do you use your abilities to inspire confidence and leadership?

  • Results. Talent and skills are nothing, if we don’t do, produce, and respond to the right things. People and companies we trust focus on delivering the right results to meet the highest expectations. They bring all of their resources to fulfill their promises — faster, easier, and more meaningfully than anyone might have imagined. Their record for results precedes them.

    Do you show up, make clear decision, and put your best work into all you do?
    Do seek out a team of people who are smarter and more experienced than you?
    Do you focus on delivering outstanding satisfaction to every customer?
    Do you look to consistently raise the bar higher?

    Be engaged. Take responsibility with intent to win.

    How do you make outstanding and successful things happen?

The difference between reach and credibility is the difference between sending a message out to everyone who might listen and communicating integrity, shared intent, competent commitment, and consistent performance.

What all of us wish for is to be able to trust without fear or worry of the wrong results. We prepare for negative consequences because positive outcomes don’t hurt us. In those relationships where trust is truly present, we’re relieved of the burden of having to build extra safety nets because we know that you are looking out for our best interests — we know you’ll be standing beside us if something goes wrong.

The huge gap between reach and trust is that with trust I believe …

I will always be able to say I bet on you and I won?

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

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Attention! Jim Kukral Knows Customer Evangelists Rule

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ATTENTION! Jim Kukral’s Book will make you money! One month ago today, Jim Kukral’s groundbreaking book officially launched and if you’ve not read it yet, what are you waiting for?

Attention marketing is all about attracting attention to your business and your brand — in such a way that you turn that attention into revenue. And that’s what the new book, “Attention! This Book Will Make You Money” is about. — Anita Campbell, Small Business Trends, August 14, 2010

The books opens with a challenge and a genuine opportunity to work with Jim himself … all you have to do is get Jim’s Attention!t Then every page after delivers on ways that a thinking small business can get the right kind of attention in a marketplace where attention is everything.

I’m delighted to share this guest post by Jim Kukral, the man who wrote the book on Attention!

Customer Evangelists Rule
by Jim Kukral

If you’re like me you’re a super fan of a select few things, which makes us both customer evangelists. Being a customer evangelist, or as some call them, super fans, means that you go out of your way to tell other people about the things you love so much. It’s a business’s wet dream to have a rabid fan base of proactive promoters out there spreading the word about you. Or at least it should be.

Assuming you want to be an evangelist for something you love, be wary before you set out on your journey to tell the world. It can be tricky navigating between short-sighted corporate executives who have no vision or tolerance for exuberant customer evangelists and your vision for how you’d like to promote their product. I’ve personally dealt with this situation, having become a vigilant fan of a major hosting company. I went as far as to spend an enormous amount of time and effort and money working on a video commercial to promote the company, only to get contacted by the company’s legal representation telling me “you can’t do that”, in so many boring legal words. Ugh. I guess I should have asked them if I could say how awesome they were before I did it, right?

Smart businesses embrace their customer evangelists and help them by first acknowledging them and then second by providing them tools to help them spread the word. I’m an evangelist for a dietary supplement called JoeBees. It’s bee-pollen that comes in capsules that give me tons of energy (I don’t drink caffeine), better digestion, and helps me sleep like a zombie on NyQuil. I love this product, and I will take every opportunity to tell the rest of the world about it whenever I can, and I do. Joe B., the owner of JoeBees.com, gets this and has personally reached out to me to help me in my quest to promote his product, often sending me free samples to give away and personally phoning me multiple times to just say thanks.

What a concept! Let me ask you this. When was the last time you picked up the phone and called your best customers or fans? You don’t know who those people are? It’s time to find out, and find out fast. If done right, before you know it you can have your own group of customer evangelists out there preaching to the world about you. Or, maybe you’d just like continue spending more and more money on advertising?

Being an evangelist means you want to tell people about what you love. It makes you feel good to do so.

That’s probably what most marketers don’t realize about the power of word of mouth and customer evangelism. It’s not about “getting something in return”; it’s about sharing. It’s about making ourselves feel good by helping others, and a little bit about our ego. The challenge for you is to tap into that feeling from your biggest fans and help perpetuate it.

———

For over 15-years, Jim Kukral has helped small businesses and large companies like Fedex, Sherwin Williams, Ernst & Young and Progressive Auto Insurance understand how find success on the Web. Jim is the author of the book, “Attention! This Book Will Make You Money”, as well as a professional speaker, blogger and Web business consultant. Find out more by visiting www.JimKukral.com. You can also follow Jim on Twitter @JimKukral.

Get Jim’s book and get some attention!

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

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