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Choosing and Deciding: How Do You Sort a Path to Opportunity?

December 13, 2011 by Liz

Knowing the Right Path

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It’s the end of what’s been not the best year. The economy is still uncertain. History tells us that it’s times like these that great leaders and great business are born. Inside and outside of traditional business, people are finding their path to opportunity, showing up with their skills, and claiming their reward.

Survey the landscape and three groups stand out.

  • People who are following a path to opportunity set out by someone else.
  • People who are forging their own path to opportunity.
  • People who can’t seem to find a path to be on.

Which group describes what you’re doing?
What are the first two groups doing that the third group is not?

Choosing and Deciding: The Key to Sorting a Path to Opportunity

Every change, every cycle, every downturn and upturn in the economy offers opportunity. The question is how do you find the best opportunity for you, your business, and your team? No matter the economy, we see old and new companies succeeding — How did SAS in Cary, NC get to be #1 on CNN’s 100 Best Companies list? How does Zappos keep growing their happiness business? … and individuals who are doing the same thing. — How did Susan Gregg turn her closet into a $50 Million business? How did Michael Mothner turn a tough interview question into a $12-13 Million business?

How did those folks find success how did they figure out where they’re going and stay true to that?

Obviously every business and individual who’s enjoying success has sorted and found their unique path to opportunity.
Key to that success — leveraging opportunity — is understanding the difference between choosing and a deciding and know when do each. What kind of choosing and deciding sorts the world of possibilities so that we can get on to that same sort of success?

When the Possibilities Are Endless You Need to Choose

Naturally the first step is defining and describing our unique version of success. If the possibilities seem endless, then you need to start with choosing.

Choosing allows us to try alternatives. The origins of the word choose are in French and German words that literally mean to taste or to test. A choice is what happens when we survey a box of chocolates knowing that whichever we take now, we’ll return later to take another one. The choice is a selection that resembles a bungie cord – make a choice, enjoy it, and bounce back to make another version of that choice again. We can choose more than one, even if we’re choosing one at a time.

If you’re choosing, do this.

  • Start broad.
  • Look to your past successes. What common threads do you find in all of them?
  • Identify 5 -7 categories, skills, problems you’ve been solving, or topics to focus your quest.
  • Take time to experiment. Mix and match a few ideas that have worked for you in the past.
  • Try out the possibilities to see what fits.
  • Talk to people who know you about the results.
  • Use each test to narrow your options.

As you keep trying on the options, you’ll begin to see what fits your values and your skills (or that of your team/business). Use the choosing to focus in on a clear vision of where you want to go or what you want to do. Brainstorming, ideation, conceiving new products and new initiatives all start with choosing from the wealth of possibilities available to you.

When It’s Time to Move Forward, Decide

Open options work great when we’re testing and trying, but when it comes time to be building and buying too many options paralyze. Moving forward requires commitment to one option, one direction or it will be too easy to get pulled aside.

Deciding allows us to determine a path. Decide literally means to kill off all other options. Deciding is what happens when we face the junction of many roads, knowing that whichever we take we’re moving on a path that means undoing to go back to that juncture again. We can commit to only one decision, but that commitment determines our direction, sets our destination, and fuels our ability to stay on course.

If you’re deciding, do this. Ask and answer 3 questions.

  1. Can you see the destination? Every time you succeeded you could see the finish when you started — the college degree, the thriving business, the trip across country. Define and describe where you are going or you will never get there.
  2. Is your head in it? Have you the skills, the DNA, and the ability to learn what you need to know to do this? The perfect opportunity is at the crossroads of your skills and the challenges that you enjoy most. Boredom comes when things are too easy. Anxiety sets in when things are too hard. Failure is certain when we choose challenges we weren’t built to meet. I’m 6 ft tall, so despite my grace and my 14 years of dance training, I’m never going to be a ballerina. But in my own way, I’ve become an information choreographer.
  3. Is your heart in it? Will you love the going there enough to keep it fun even when it’s not? Your heart has to be the keeper of the vision, the holder of the commitment that you make to yourself and the decision. We call that integrity. Can you trust your heart to be bigger than the fear that is sure to show up?

Knowing when to choose and when to decide is critical to sorting a clear path to your true north. Choose to sort out your best options then decide on which path will be your own.

Do you use choosing and deciding to your best advantage?

Knowing where you’re going is irresistibly attractive.
Who would follow you if you don’t?

Be irresistible.

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

Filed Under: Strategy/Analysis, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, decision-making., LinkedIn, opportunity, Strategy/Analysis

Do you need more data?

November 18, 2010 by patty

by Patty Azzarello

cooltext466496263_leadership
do-you-need-more-data

Are you implementing your strategy
or studying it?

I was working with a management team on their strategy when we came to an interesting point in the day about their business needing a game-changing initiative.

The group brainstormed for awhile, and discussed several potential game changers.  We narrowed the list to three really cool ideas.

Then came the big question…

Which is THE one? Where will this team focus and invest to create a dramatic shift in their market?

At this point in the meeting the team decided that the next step would be to take these three ideas and study them for two weeks then come back with a recommendation of which one to pursue.

Why not decide right now?

The team had entered this meeting wanting to get aligned on their strategy and come out with clear actions to implement it.  Now they were going off for more study.

I asked the question – Why not pick now?  What will you learn in two weeks that you don’t know today?  What additional data exists that will give you more insight?

The team realized that in three weeks, they probably would not learn anything materially different than what they already knew.  That’s the thing about a being a game changer.  Leaders never have all the data.

The leaders leave a trail of data behind them.

So they decided.  They picked one.

Start moving forward

Instead of leaving the meeting with a bunch of tasks to study the choices, right there in the meeting we worked on the action plan to get a game changer started.  We evaluated the stakeholders and adversaries, cataloged resource requirements, and created the list of the first 5 questions to be answered and subsequent decisions to be made.  We put dates in place for the first draft of the business proposal.  We talked about the timeline and approach for getting employee buy-in. They were moving forward.

Think about how much time this team saved.

Without a decision, multiple people would have left the room with a task to study for three weeks. That would take a toll on their day job, AND not move the new strategy forward.  Instead they left with productive tasks to make real forward progress.

Why is it hard to decide?

When I work with groups that have plenty of data, I find two surprising reasons why they have trouble deciding.
It’s not so much that they are afraid they are making a bad choice, or afraid of the risk that comes with choice.  It’s one of two things:

1. The leader does not want to force it through
So the study is seen as an opportunity to get participation and buy in, so the leader is not seen as railroading the decision through the organization.

2. The team thinks the leader requires more information

So the study is seen as an opportunity for the team to satisfy the leader that their recommendation is valid because the choices have been fully studied and justified.

You are allowed to pick!

What is so interesting is that in many cases, the team actually doesn’t mind if the leader states his choice, and the leader does not actually require more data!  They just get locked in this default behavior to collect more data to satisfy a need that doesn’t exist.

Talk about it.  Make a decision. You are allowed.

There is time for market analysis and study, and there are times when either you know the answer, or there is no more useful data to be had.

When you think you have reached this point ask yourself these questions:

  • Why am I not deciding now?
  • What additional data is available that going to help me?
  • What will be materially different after more study?

By all means, if there is knowable data, go find it.  But if you’ve exhaused the knowable data, stop studying!  Start moving something forward and learn as you go.

Fail Quickly

If you fail, fail quickly. Then don’t try to save a bad idea by throwing more money at it.  Learn, then try something else if necessary.

The most successful companies are not the ones that do everything right, they are the ones that can fund their mistakes, and eventually come up with the winning play.

What blocks your team from making decisions and forward progress?  How have you broken through?
Leave your thoughts in the comment box!

—–
Patty Azzarello works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. She has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at Patty Azzarello’s Business Leadership Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello

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Filed Under: management, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, decision-making., LinkedIn, Patty Azzarello, Strategy/Analysis

Getting Unstuck: Clear Thoughts During Chaos

April 10, 2008 by Liz

Stop, Look, Listen

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Ever felt like your life is about weaving a fabric and events seem to keep unraveling what you just made? To me, that’s the definition of being overwhelmed. The chaos of too much to do in too little time can get us in a frenzy of reacting, rather than being in control.

What to do first is the decision we’re after. Sometimes we decide. Then we decide again.

Later hindsight tells what the decisions should have been. Why is hindsight better?

At times of chaos, we’re off balance. We get stuck in our heads. Our heads and our experience try to interrupt, but they’re more noise in the middle of too much. When the situation is over, hindsight brings all three together to look at what we did. Decisions are clearer when we calmly bring all of ourselves to them.

Getting Unstuck: Clear Thoughts During Chaos

One way to bring calm to chaos is simply getting out of where we’re stuck. I learned this from No Enemies Within, a book by Dawna Markova. (It’s unfortunately out of print. Still if you can find a copy I highly recommend it.)

  • Put the problem, issue, or overwhelming pile of work out of your mind.
  • Get in touch with where you are on the planet. Think about who you are, the geographic location you’re in, the people in your life.
  • If you can move to a place where you can see things not made by people, such as trees and sky, go there. This step is optional, but it adds immeasurably if you can make it happen.
  • Check in with all of your senses in a deliberate way. Take a few minutes to record mentally what each sense is picking up. Go through them one by one exhausting the possible options to fill in each blank.
    • Right now, I can see _____. (the window I’m looking out, the sky, the lake, the harbor, the empty docks, the lights, the trees, the water moving . . .)
    • At this moment, I feel _____. (my feet on the floor, my jeans on my legs, the softness of my sweater, the hair on my face . . . )
    • I can hear _____ . (the cars on the road below, I can hear the blower on the a/c, I can hear, the noise of the chair as I shift my weight . . . )
    • I can taste or almost taste _____. (the coffee I’m drinking, I can almost taste the lake air . . . )
    • I smell _____. (the flowers on the table, the coffee . . . )

    Be sure to consider and explore each of your senses until you’ve really gotten fully back into yourself.

Getting in touch with who we are, where we are, what we’re physically doing gets us back in balance. Stress lifts. Anxiety is relieved by perspective. Noise becomes information or fades away. We’re no longer stuck in one angular view. Empirical data centers us in the universe and in ourselves. We bring a sense of ourselves to sorting chaos . . . head, heart, and purpose focused together.

How do you still yourself so that you can move forward?

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

Filed Under: Inside-Out Thinking, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, decision-making., Still Thinking

The Key to Link Lists and 15 Focused Resource Link Lists

July 18, 2007 by Liz

About Mixing Love and Currency

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Noticing the purpose of a list — who it serves — establishes who values it and for how much. Lists of blogs can be useful or empty. When we build one, it helps to be sure we we know our intent. Andy Sernovitz passes on a great message in his book World of Mouth Marketing, and he also said it at SOBCon07.

Mixing love and money is usually a bad idea.

The Key to Link Lists

Think about link lists. The key to offering a link list that adds value, not just noise is in its intent and usefulness to readers.

An outstanding link list offers readers

  • links the blogger has researched and visited
  • clear anchor text in the links
  • a description of each link
  • a reason for recommending the links, as appropriate
  • a compelling reasons for readers to care

Link lists that serve readers attract relationships as well as backlinks.

A Word about Link Trains Link trains and other meme lists can offer a quick jump in statistics. However, they do this by making forced links — links that didn’t happen through the natural passing on of content. Though the intent may be generous, such meme-lists often get extended without review. They can become a list of blogs compiled to gain rank and without regard to the quality of the list.

Some lists are meant to gain backlinks, page rank or authority may garnering more traffic. Yet the traffic that comes finds a content empty list. So the traffic doesn’t stay. A blogger can start building more lists to continue getting traffic. It’s about traffic not readers. Content has gone away.

15 Focused Resource Link Lists

Resource lists are organized to offer relevant and focused resources to readers. These lists require work beyond coding to exist. Most of these lists are generated by research, formed from the opinion of bloggers, result from a test or algorithm, or are the product of a group project.

Here are 15 examples organized by type.

Group Projects

  • The Metaphor Project
    Fifty ways to explain blogging to someone who doesn’t know.
  • Top 5 Group Writing Project at problogger.
    Over 800 lists of the five best of something.
  • The Ultimate Guide to Productivity Group Writing Project
    Submissions from over 129 blogs on ways to be more productive.
  • Group Writing Project Results: 37 Souces of Inspiration
  • Smart Ways to Use LinkedIn from Linked Intelligence
    37 posts on Ways to Use this tool — the list is organizaed into categories.

Awards and Subject Lists

  • Blogger’s Choice Awards
    This list nominated by fans and voted on by more fans has over 20 categoies of blog, each with countless entries.
  • Aaron Wall’s List of SEO Blogs and Search Engine Blogs
    The extensive list compiled by the guy who wrote THE book on SEL
  • Answers.com List of Blogs for Educators and Blogs with Tools for Teaching
    This list is well organized and ready for a teacher to start using.
  • Ross Mayfield’s List of Venture Capital Blogs
    (He has selected specific posts that tell a story together.)
  • Recruiters Network Employment and Career Blog Directory
    Part of a portal, this list is still handy for those looking for more job sources.

Top 5, 10, 25, etc. Lists

  • 100 Blogs We Love by PCWorld
    Here are our favorite stops in the blogosphere, covering everything from high tech to low comedy and all manner of pursuits in between.
  • Webware 100 – Top 100 Web Applications
    These are the best Web applications there are. We know because you told us.
  • Top 10 Most Practical Blogs for Entrepreneurs
    Scott Allen’s service is “To help you filter that infoglut down to a more manageable level, here is my list of the ten most practical blogs for entrepreneurs.”
  • Top 10 CEO Blogs
    Mario Sundar describes his list, “if you want to get a feel for some big-time thinkers espouse their company’s strategy a bit, then maybe the following ten may be worth a ride. Here goes, my Top 10 CEO blogs . . .”
  • The Top 10 Sports Blogs According to Me
    With all due respect to Ballhype and with full awareness that I’m going with my gut over, you know, actual data, I think my top-10 list holds up, even if it is just a subjective-yet-educated list based on perceived traffic, quality and notoriety.

A list of resource links with ancedotal information makes it easier for readers to find the useful bit and move on. Offering resources that make life easier is a service worth offering. Finding ways to organize the list to help readers save time is a sign of respect and service they’ll notice.

Have you seen a remarkable link post? What sort of link posts do you appreciate? Which ones get you to click away as soon as you see them?

— ME “Liz” Strauss
Can you list the reasons to Work with Liz? Too many. It’s such a good idea.

Filed Under: Successful Blog, Tools Tagged With: bc, blog-promotion, decision-making., Strategic-Plans, Strategy/Analysis

All of the Information Available

July 5, 2007 by Liz

Knowing What We Can Know

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Strategy is setting a vision, making a path, knowing what we can know, and planning for the variables. To know what we know . . . That means having command of the information available.

For a while now, new bloggers, mostly those who are younger, have emailed or IMed to ask me the most basic questions. It’s usually obvious from their message that they haven’t done the any research to answer the question on their own. I used to answer and send them on their way again. I don’t anymore. Now I point them in the direction where they might look.

Are they wrong to ask? No.

It’s always good to ask someone who’s been there. Though you might argue when to do that.

But they’re wrong if they rely on me to do their homework. It hurts them for several reasons.

  • I don’t have all of the answers.
  • My information could be dated.
  • I’m wrong as often as I’m right.
  • They’re not investing in themselves.

I’m only one source in a world of the Internet. We often stop at the first answer to our questions. The first answer isn’t necessarily the best. It’s a great strategy to seek out all of the information available.

  • Do a search.
  • Ask someone who usually agrees, someone who usually disagrees, and someone who usually doesn’t have an opinion.
  • Ask an expert.

Having a strategy to find all of the information available at the beginning sets the foundation to build upon. Curiosity is a great teacher.

end of story.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you’d like Liz to help you find your strategy, click on the Work with Liz!!

Related
Strategy: 40 Outstanding Blog Links, Bookmark Carefully!
20 Blog Promotion Guides to Inform Your Strategy
Strategy: How to Get Maximum Benefit from Complex Link Lists

Filed Under: management, Strategy/Analysis, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, blog-promotion, decision-making., Strategic-Plans, Strategy/Analysis, time-managment

40 Outstanding Blog Links, Bookmark Carefully!

July 3, 2007 by Liz

Time Management and Research

Strategic Plans logo

What is blog reading and commenting to you? Is it entertainment, interaction, or research for your work? How much time do you spend on the average day reading and commenting on blogs. Think about that before you read further.

I’ll do it too.

Ready? Whatever our answers, we have defined blog reading and commenting to us and quantified how much time we invest in them. Now consider the time we have available in a day. What percent of that time is blog reading and commenting?

Does that leave enough

  • time for our family and friends?
  • time for our work?
  • time for ourselves and for giving away?

If people read as many feeds as they say, I’m guessing it does not. Time is a resource we cannot replace.

Ten Blogs on Blogging

Everyone seems to know Darren’s ProBlogger, our friend from SOBCon Lorelle.Wordpress.com, the “evil” John Chow.com and Successful-Blog here. These are ten others in (no particular order) that offer consistent and quality information about blogging as well.

  1. Bloggingbasics101.com
  2. chrisg.com
  3. BloggingPro
  4. Vaspersthegrate.Blogspot.com
  5. A List Apart
  6. Smartwealthyrich.com
  7. eMomsatHome.com
  8. Alister Cameron, Blogologist
  9. Daily Blog Tips
  10. Buildabetterblog.com

Top Ten Blogs for Writers

For the Top 10 Blogs for Writers Mike Stelzner asked his 20,000 newsletter readers to participate in the nominations. I’ve shortened his definitions of the quality that each blog represents.

  1. Brian Clark’s CopyBlogger: does an amazing job of helping writers improve
  2. Deborah Ng’s Freelance Writing Jobs: for freelance writers seeking new work
  3. Tom Chandler’s Copywriter Underground: regular doses of inspiration and writing tips
  4. Liz Strauss’s Successful-Blog: amazing insights into the craft of writing
  5. Angela Booth’s Writing Blog: something useful for all writers
  6. Kristen King’s InkThinker: improving the written word
  7. Anne Wayman’s The Golden Pencil: gold nuggets of information to freelance writers
  8. Carson Brackney’s Content Done Better: write better copy and make a living (now by Michi Beck)
  9. Dianna Huff’s B2B Marcom Writer Blog: marketing communications copywriting
  10. Allison Winn Scotch’s Ask Allison: For writers looking to break into the publishing world, be sure to check this one out.

Top Ten Blogs on Making Money

The Top Ten Blogs About Making Money in which Shane spends an entire blog post explaining how he came to choose his top ten.

  1. ProBlogger
  2. Shoemoney
  3. Self Made Minds
  4. Entrepreneur’s Journey by Yaro Starak
  5. John Chow.com
  6. Net Business Blog
  7. Bootmoney
  8. Andy Beard
  9. Dosh Dosh
  10. Mike’s Money Making Mission

Top Ten Web Analytics Blogs

This is the April 2007 update ranking from Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik. Be sure to read the post that details how the ranking is done.

  1. Occam’s Razor
  2. Web Metrics Guru
  3. Google Analytics Blog
  4. Web Analytics World
  5. Web Analytics Demystified-Eric T. Peterson’s Analytics Weblog
  6. Increasing your website’s conversion rate
  7. Unofficial Google Analytics Blog
  8. Lies, Damned Lies…
  9. WebAnalytics.be Blog
  10. Web Analysis, Behavioral Targeting and Advertising

I gathered this set with the intention of an offering that would cross blogging cultures. In that way, I’m hoping we all might explore, expnd our tastes, but leave room to let some go early on.

We choose from thousands of books to read and movies to see. Let’s do the same with the blogs that we read. I offer this set of 4 lists of 10 blogs with the hope that we’ll keep the those give us the best return on our investment.

How do you choose the blogs that serve your purpose?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you’d like Liz to help you find your strategy, click on the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar. Is Your Business Stuck? I’ve Found a Way to Help

Related
20 Blog Promotion Guides to Inform Your Strategy
Strategy: How to Get Maximum Benefit from Complex Link Lists
The 5-Point Strategy to a Powerful Network
Money Strategy, a Dead Horse, and Folks

Filed Under: Strategy/Analysis, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, blog-promotion, decision-making., Strategic-Plans, Strategy/Analysis, time-managment

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