Critical Skill 4: Part 1-Process Models

April 20, 2006 by Liz

Don’t Fear the Process

I was at a company where the core competencies were the highest I’ve ever seen. In three seconds, we could strategize where to sit in a meeting to make it more productive. We could layout a trade booth to maximize traffic flow and product exposure, leaving room for fun and improvization. We knew where we stood in the market and against our past performance on a minute-by-minute basis. We ate the low-hanging fruit for breakfast, and shot down our competition at lunch. We were good.

This day there was an executive strategy meeting — like we needed one. As you might guess, there was a new guy in charge, and HE needed one. My usual Pollyanna attitude didn’t have room for this interruption. There was real work that needed to get done. I resented this pretend work that was getting in the way.

“If he asks us to spell strategy, I’m out of there,” I said to another VP on the way in. It was worse than I thought. He flipped a chart and started talking about SWOT — Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats — which, by the way, is analysis not strategy. We needed that even less. [Read more…]

Introducing Customer Think

April 12, 2006 by Liz

Uh-oh I’ve Been Thinking Again

What happens when you cross thinking outside of the box with personal branding?

Customer Think–a series that takes Brand YOU outside the box to become Brand YOU & ME. We’ve let the world know who we really are and how to see the unique value we bring as individuals. It’s time that we do the same in return. We’ll be getting to know customers in a strategic, deep thinking way–from an outside-of-the-box, inside-of-the-customer perspective. So hang on.

You’ll be finding out plenty about customers, by finding out more about yourself. That’s the Brand YOU and ME part.

And just about everyone in our lives is a customer in some way, if you tilt your head to look at it from just the right angle. This isn’t your father’s business skills class, it’s life and business for the 21st century in that uniquely Liz way.

You know there will be nothing like it anywhere else.

Brand YOU and ME–can you think of a more natural way to promote your business, your brand, or yourself, than being able to think like your customers?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Thinking Inside-Outside the SEO Sandbox

April 11, 2006 by Liz

Learning by Getting It Wrong

Remember your first web site or blog? You had to learn so much about coding and Search Engine Optimization. Bet you learned most of what you know now by doing–OJT, On the Job Training, otherwise known as getting it wrong and fixing it. Those were valuable experiences.

The thing about learning by getting it wrong is that you remember what you did. Tweaking a template and having your sidebar fall off is WAY more powerful than anyone telling you how not to code something.

As much as I wish that WordPress had an undo button, I know I’ve learned more because it doesn’t.

Think like a Search Engine

SEO folks think like Search Engines. They buy and read Aaron Wall’s SEO Book and its updates. They follow and discuss Matt Cutt’s blog, and the Google Blog–probably not this one, the Google Blog, but this one Google Research Blog–or maybe all of them. They check in at Yahoo’s Search Blog, MSN Search, and with other SEO hangouts, such as Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Round Table, and Threadwatch. So I do some of that–the first half at least.

But reading doesn’t help me half as much as doing does.

Thinking Inside-Outside the SEO Box

I’ve been searching out experiences to help me think like a search engine. I use my stats to watch how search engines route traffic to my blogs. Sometimes they hit right on the page that has the content being searched for. That’s not interesting. I expect that. They’ve invested powerful resources into research in doing that right.

Sometimes they hit right next to where they should. THAT I find puzzling and intriguing, especially when the page in question is tagged with the exact search term that was entered.

It happened again this morning. Someone searched for “nextsplogs.” The searcher was sent to the home page of Successful Blog rather than to the page called SOB Business Cafe 04-07-2006, where Nextsplogs actually appears twice–in the text and as a tag. Is it because the term is singular in one and capitalized in the other? Hmmmm. I wonder.

I don’t like things I don’t understand, and I want to understand this.

I’ve learned a lot from watching my stats, but this kind of thing my stats can’t help me crack.

Build Your Own Search Engine

Just when I was about to give up on my chance of knowing, along came this post from the MSN search weblog, Build Your Own Search Engine. I thought, here’s a way to learn by doing. It’s not an actual full-blown search engine–it’s search engine macros–and it’s an early BETA version. That suits me just fine, though. It gets my brain and hands in the process and I can even watch how the parameters have to be tweaked to work right. Just reading the comments about it, I can feel myself getting smarter.

Go on over. Take a look. It’s an inside-outside the box way to learn SEO.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
MSN and Microsoft Joint Research Venture
SEO The Secret Life of Search Engines
Check Google Backlinks Through Yahoo
SEOÃ¢â¬âThe Value of Outlinks to MY Blog

Bad Strategy Deserves Bad Poetry

April 10, 2006 by Liz

Bad Poetry Night on Successful Blog

If you’ve got some bring it over.

I’m watching more than one company do everything they can to tell their customer to go away. Too many companies leave today’s customer sitting alone, while they try to think up “strategies” that will bring them new ones.

S-T-R-A-T-E-G-I-Z-E

They said the latest thing
and I came to realize
This company couldnÃ¢â¬â¢t strategize
They chased trends
like fireflies

Like kids loose in a candy store
they search every candy drawer
and shake every magic door
pinning hopes on that one big score

They’re on the corner preaching
to customers who don’t their need teaching

They see the world with tiny eyes
and let their wishes hypnotize
They can’t even spell strategize

No wonder they always talk about customers with fear.

Strategy in the hands of those who can’t spell it is even worse than a really bad poem.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Critical Skill 3: Fluency: with Ideas

April 9, 2006 by Liz

Stop Not Having Ideas

The first part of fluency with ideas is having them–LOTS of them. There she goes again. What is she talking about? She might have lots. Right now I’d be happy with one.

The trick is get to learn how to stop not having lots of ideas.

That’s not a typo. You can stop not having ideas.

Open the Valve

Ideas are being stimulated constantly in your subconscious so often and at such a rate that, if you let them all in, you wouldn’t be able to pay attention to anything else. You would literally be aware of stimuli that you have no need for, such as the feel of your shoes on your feet or the chair that you’re sitting on. That’s why we come equipped–at no extra charge–with a filtering unit, a valve-like screening device at the base of our brains–the Reticular Activating System (RAS). The RAS allows us to filter out most of that unwanted stimuli. It serves as a closed door allowing only life-skill information into our consciouness. Unfortunately with the door closed we don’t have access to some great ideas.

The good news is that the RAS can be trained. Firemen can make it let through the sound of the fire alarm. You can can use it to access things you forget that are still in your brain– great ideas when you put them together again. Ron Daugherty offers some ways to expand and explore your ability to open the RAS in his article, Understanding the Mind: 5 Keys to a Writer’s Creativity.

With Access Comes Fluency

With a little practice you’ll be able to access more and more ideas. Seriously, believe that they’ll come. Relax and make room for them, and they will. Getting them is just the first step toward fluency with ideas. To follow a language metaphor, the ideas are just your vocabulary. Now you have to be able to use them–pull ideas to match three basic scenarios. Here are ways you can practice to build up your fluency.

Brainstorming wild lists. When you have a few minutes waiting in traffic, pick an everyday object such as a plate. See whether you can come up with 25 things you might do with that object, silly or otherwise. As blogger, you should be pretty good at this. After all bloggers know a thing or two about making lists. Don’t edit. Be as wild and creative as you can. When you reach 25, try for another 10.
Freewriting. When you’ve got a few minutes and some paper and pencil, write without stopping about a simple pleasure, such as drinking coffee or running. Explain all of the impacts and outcomes it’s had on your life. Try to write 15 minutes without stopping.
Problem solving. The next time you or your child has a problem don’t begin to address it until you’ve identified at least five solutions. Not every solution needs to be doable or practical, but all of them need to fix some aspect of the problem, using facts that you know. Allow for an outrageous solution or two. Outrageous solutions often lead to extremely solid ones, once the outrageous solutions have been talked about. Think through what the impact of trying every solution would be and name all of the possible outcomes that could occur if you tried each one.

If you want to be truly future skilled, you’ll do each of these things verbally and in writing too.

Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking the Language of Ideas

The more you practice with your vocabulary of ideas. The more fluent in the language of ideas you will be. That means you’ll not only be good at speaking and writing your own ideas. You’ll also be good listening and reading other folks’ ideas too. You’ll get really quick at telling a great idea from a loser when someone else offers one.

Imagine the time and money a business might save when they know you can tell a solid idea from pipe dream that just sounds really good. AND that you can explain in writing how you know. Now there’s a concept on which you could promote your business and yourself. That would be an added value idea plus.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Have Failure of the Imagination

April 5, 2006 by Liz

Plan B No–Fail Fast and Move On

The meeting had just started. We were talking to the company’s major owner-partner. We had laid out the framework of how we would turn the company around. The partner turned to the company president and said, “And do you have a Plan B, in case this doesn’t work?”

I said, “If you don’t mind . . . ” and asked if I might edit his question. We knew each other well, and so he said, “Sure.”

My new version was, “Is the plan flexible enough that if you find one or more parts not working, you can adjust your plan and keep moving forward?”

. . .

After the meeting, the owner-partner queried what my thinking was in editing his question. I said that it was two-fold: that how he thought affected our thinking and that to talk of Plan Bs at that juncture was to give permission to fail at Plan A before we’d even tried to make it work.

I really don’t like assumptions that Plan A has a chance of failing. I really don’t like Plan Bs for that reason. I don’t mind failures. I like to see them coming, fail fast, and move on.

Failure of Imagination

I actually seek out failures of imagination. I have them on purpose often. This is not a literal “my imagination does not work” kind of thing. It is my imagination conjuring all kinds of failure situations.

I use imagined failures to get ideas for writing and for all kinds of problem solving. Here are a variety of situatons and ways you might use failures of imagination to bring you to a stronger outcome.

Getting Ideas for Writing

Ask questions such as these.

Personal Failures as Ideas

Questioning Other Folks’ Possible Failures
Why is this person not qualified to teach, say, or do this?
What would happen if I actually tried this?
Where’s the flaw in this argument?
What information is missing from this report?
What failures are in the famous person’s past?
How many failures preceeded this invention?
How long before this gadget breaks down?

Designing a Process

Ask questions such as these.

On an Interview or With a Client

Ask questions such as these.

On Your Brand Identity

Ask questions such as these.

On Promoting Your Blog

Ask questions such as these.

Positive Negatives

No need to jump to the negatives. Instead, use them to keep your life positive. The trick is not to focus on the unproductive, but to seek out unwanted outcomes to find fun, positive ways to avoid them. Think of imagining failures as building a safety net for the tight rope walk that is your brand and your business.

Having a failure of imagination can be a fantastic resource for protecting your business. It’s so much more fun than working out a Plan B that, if you think about it, could easily have the same failure opportunities as Plan A does.

Can you have a failure of imagination? Are you positive or negative?

–ME “Liz” Strauss