Successful Blog

Are You Building a Birthday Cake or a Business?

by

The Difference Between a Plan and a Strategy

cooltext443809602_strategy

Do you know the difference between a plan and a strategy? Every strategy is a plan of sorts, but few plans are strategies. Thinking strategically takes a broader view and considers more variables than the planning that most of us do. Some ventures and adventures require a plan. Others require strategy.

Knowing which is which can mean the difference between watching the game and owning the team.

Are You Building a Birthday Cake or a Business?


BigStock: Birthday Cake

When we build a birthday cake, the plan — a recipe — takes place in a closed system. The birthday cake builder controls all of the key circumstances that will affect successful achievement of the goal.
And so the result is predictable.
We start building a birthday cake and we end with the birthday cake we set out to build. Rarely does an economic downturn affect it. It’s unlikely that another human unexpectedly tosses in a cupful of ketchup. A failure is a problem with execution or a flaw in the plan.

A plan is set of action steps to achieve a stated goal. Plans usually assume a closed system.

Birthday cakes can be build in a closed system.
A business can’t.

Building a business takes place in an open system. The business builder has inputs from outside the system and far less control. A business grows in an open system of change. It takes more than a plan to take advantage of the opportunity to grow that every change represents. That’s what makes a strategy the better road to growth.

Strategy is a realistic plan to advance over time by leveraging opportunities uniquely available to you.

  • Have a Mission — set an ultimate philosophical, economical, and / or political purpose
  • Assess and Reasses Your Position Every time You Gain Ground — Look, listen, measure, test your current situation, climate, resources, opportunities
  • Use Changing Climate, Conditions, and Trends — Find the advantage in interruption and unexpected — use change as a ally to grow.
  • Move Forward Tactically in Increments — Size, choose, and commit to campaigns that reflect obstacles, goals, and prizes

Don’t just plan to grow. Leverage the opportunity that shows up everywhere you are.

Do you use and leverage only resources you can control?
Could be you’re building a birthday cake not a business.

Be irresistible.

Be irresistble.
—

Improving Productivity – Meeting Madness

by

by
Adria Saracino

cooltext443809602_strategy

Meetings are often cited as being unproductive – either because they run on too long, are unfocussed, fail to result in actions – or indeed just because you find yourself attending so many of them you haven’t got time to get any actual work done.

Fortunately help is at hand – Simply Business has pulled together this productivity infographic detailing solutions to common productivity problems with meetings:


Click image to open interactive version.

Want to keep your meetings short, on-track and productive? Check out our tips below:

Do you feel like meetings are a waste of your time?

Marissa Mayer from Google holds an average of 70 meetings a week – so you can be sure she knows how to run meetings effectively – check out her tips:

  1. Set an agenda ahead of time which outlines what needs to be discussed and accomplished within the meeting.
  2. Ensure someone is taking minutes and capturing actions.
  3. Micro-meetings. Mayer slices longer meetings into 5-10 minute segments to discuss specific projects. This keeps even longer meetings tightly focussed and on-time.
  4. Don’t politic, use data. This is particularly pertinent when looking at design. Mayer doesn’t believe in making decisions based on ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ – instead data/metrics should be used to make decisions rather than personal taste or gut feel.

Do all meeting attendees come away with defined actions?

If not, they probably didn’t need to attend! That point aside, the prompt circulation of meeting minutes is critical. Apps like Minutes.io allow you to quickly take and circulate meeting minutes plus it works online and offline.

Everett Sizemore from SeOverflow likes to do a quick round up at the end of a meeting:

“A meeting strategy I often use is to sum up deliverables at the end. I don’t speak out everyone else’s list, but I always reiterate what it is that I am taking away as a responsibility. I have found that other people in the meeting generally follow-suit and before long it becomes the norm. Something is wrong if you regularly have meetings from which nobody leaves with a clearly defined to-do list.”

Are your meetings too long?

Try counting down the remaining time with a stopwatch – that’s what they do at Google. Or if you need to send a more powerful message check out C.O.M.A.. This app calculates how much your meeting is costing your company – ouch! Alternatively you might try initiating stand up meetings instead. Yep, that’s right, no more sitting comfortably around a table. With everyone standing the length of meetings drops drastically as no one wants to stand around for long.

Do you waste time traveling to meetings?

Sure meeting face-to-face is great and you’d never want to do away with meeting in person entirely, but do you really need to spend quite so much time on the road? Think about how much more you could get done if you weren’t spending time traveling to and from meetings.

Make use of tools like Google Hangouts or Skype video chat to get that face-to-face meeting vibe without the traveling.

Got some tips of your own to keep meetings productive? I’d love to hear about them via the comments!

—-

Author’s Bio:Adria Saracino is a marketer and blogger. When not consulting on business strategy, you can find her juggling fitness, graphic design, and writing about style on her personal fashion blog, The Emerald Closet. Follow her on twitter @adriasaracino to stay in touch.

Thank you for adding to the conversation!

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

2 Things You Can Learn from Like-Minded People in Business and Life

by

Taking Advantage of Opportunity

cooltext443809558_authenticity

Everywhere we stand is replete with opportunity. Every situation we engage in offers a chance to learn more about ourselves and the world in which we work. Every conversation, every observation can bring us a chance for improving.

Great learners pay attention to the usual situations not just the rare ones. We watch what makes our ordinary world work as well as the extraordinary. We see what attracts people to us, what the like-minded and the like-hearted people find of value in us. We also can learn a few things about what might work against us.

Two Things You Can Learn from Spending Time with Like-Minded People

Like-minded friends in a line
BigStock: Friends in Line

One thing about social networking is the self-sorting way that it brings us to be in groups of like-minded and like-hearted people — people all looking and thinking in the same direction. Some folks call it the “fish bowl.” People often discuss the downside of staying in a group that shares the same disposition and thinking, the same biases and similar expertise. Among other things, if we’re not careful it can become safe and comfortable. Being in a group of like-minded people can narrow our vision and curb our opportunities to learn about the world and ourselves. Yet it can provide its own insights if we look.

It’s hard to get more like-minded than someone who shares your DNA.
I’ve been thinking about what I’ve learned by spending time with my son.
I’ve learned at least two things.

  1. What people value in you. When my son was about 16, I considered a particularly positive interaction we had. It got me to thinking. My thoughts went to the reasons I liked him as a person — his intelligence, his quick wit, his positive, sweet way of considering other people. I had the thought It’s easy to see why people like him. Then I realized that we had those traits in common, that those traits we value are ones he valued too. It was then I knew that I could learn a lot about what people value in me and what I value by looking at what I value in like-minded people I attract.
  2. How people invest in you. Now my son is about 26. And recently we had a significant block of time to work together on a project. I saw how tenacious he can be about solving a problem, how other people’s answers don’t work for him, and how much I reinvested in each conversation in an effort help reach a conclusion. It got me to thinking. My thoughts went to the reasons that I find him intense — his singular focus, his search for rightness and truth, his unwillingness to wear a suit of clothes that doesn’t fit. I had the thought It’s easy to see why people might find him exhausting. Then I realized that we had those traits in common too, that those traits we might find exhausting are ones he might find exhausting too.

If you want to know who you are look at your friends — those like-minded, like-hearted people you spend your time with. See what you value in them. See what you invest to help them. Pay attention this week to the people you choose to work with. You’ll learn a lot about you.

Be irresistible.

—

Thanks to Week 346 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

Productivity – The Best Way to End a Friday Checklist

by

Great Weekends Start with Productivity

cooltext443809602_strategy

Friday! Finally!
On a short week, it can seem to take even longer to get here and we can end up with a Friday that seems jammed packed with things we’re still trying to get done. And before we know it the weekend will again be upon us …

Don’t let it sneak up on you!

Rather than fall into this weekend still working, start a new productivity habit.
Set a plan that will end your Friday neatly, get your Monday optimized for productivity in the very best way so that your weekend can be your own.

It may take some practice to get it down perfectly, but if you get the habit of this checklist, you’ll find that you start your weekends and your Mondays more sweetly.

Productivity – The Best Way to End a Friday Checklist

    1. End your “real work” a half-hour early on Friday. Most folks don’t want to interact with you late on Friday anyway. If you need that half-hour to finish your work, start next week by planning to finish a half-hour earlier.

    2. Use that half-hour to organize everything on your desk. Put things away. Lay out things that still need attending to. Mark what needs to be done. Make a to-do list, if that’s your way.

    3. Make a plan for next week–at the least, decide what you will tackle first on Monday and what your three most important goals will be.

    4. Do an office check. Are the things you use most closest to where you use them? If not, move them, so that they will be. Are the files you access most on your computer only one click away? If not, move them so that they will be.

    5. Order the Monday tasks by putting what you can get done fastest first. Do this for two reasons. It will start your week with a quick sense of accomplishment, and you’ll be able to pass on what you finished–that means that when you move on to task two, someone else can be starting on what was your task one.

Then consider the week closed, leave the office at work, give your brain a break, and have a weekend. What a great way to promote yourself and your brand to anyone who walks by on their way home for the weekend. It says a lot for your personal brand — almost everyone wishes their office looked like it could be in a magazine . . . Even if the only one it says it to is you — that’s plenty.

Whether you work in a building away from home or in your bedroom, a productivity boost will find you on Monday walking back into a space that’s ready to work in.

The idea is to end work on Friday so that if you open your on the weekend you might actually be refueling — talking to friends or watching a movie — rather than cleaning up details left over from the week you just left. Having a headstart on Monday can free the mind space to enjoy Saturday and Sunday.

How do you amp your productivity to mark the end of a Friday?

Be irresistible.
— ME “Liz” Strauss