Successful Blog

Extreme Hesitation and Extreme Strategy: Are You Willing to Own Your Life?

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I've been thinking . . .

about hesitation and strategy.

I was painfully shy as a child. If you’ve been there, then you know. Painfully shy is literally painful — it scrapes at your being. You know who you are are, but for some cloudy reason, a wall prevents you. You can’t let the world see you. All you are or all you can be stays tucked away .

It’s what today would be called Extreme Hesitation.

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Yet leaders outgrow those childhood fears and walls, don’t we?
Do we?

I was faced with a situation last winter. What was awful was that — even to me — the question looked so trivial, but it had to do with what I had named “visible authenticity.” They said wear this. I said “no.” They cared more than I did. But we had agreed that I would be dressing to reflect the essence of my personality. “This” wasn’t me.

I felt painfully shy once more … I recognized the conflict, but now I was grown enough to put words to the feeling.

I knew me better than they did. Authenticity was my choice, and choosing for me was my responsibility..

I learned about owning my life.
I think of it as Extreme Strategy.

Choose your own path, but always choose wisely.
Leaders don’t need to follow, nor do they choose the road that will draw the most followers.
They don’t say “yes,” when their hearts and their feet are telling them to say “no.”

Traveling other our path is what makes being shy truly painful.

Leaders don’t hesitate in moving forward.
People who are afraid do.
Leaders don’t look for approval.
They know.
They go where their head, their heart, and their purpose compels them to go.

And people follow.

Because deeply knowing where you’re going is irresistibly attractive.

Authenticity is the key to leadership strategy. Own what you know and find the opportunities. The rest is just learning. We’ve been doing that since we started school.

Are you willing own your life?

I make connections.

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Have You Got a Change Manager?

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The Value of an Outside Observer

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A while back, I was at lunch with a consultant from a top tier strategy firm, a specialist in change management. Her company works with international mega-corporations. They investigate communication disconnects, process model breakdowns, and unproductive beliefs, habits, and behaviors. Their studies are qualitative and quantitative. Their strategic reports are solid, multi-leveled, interdepartmental, focused and team-based. It’s fascinating to hear how it works.

At the core of the process is helping corporations and individuals see themselves so that they can change to accomplish their goals. No one knows the value of an outside observer better than a world class firm in the business of doing do so.

Yet as the conversation continued, I heard the fatal flaw. The top-tier consultancy was performing a “change management” project within their own firm. No outside professionals were invited to help.

“We can do it ourselves. It’s our business,” was what she said.

I thought, I suppose every one of their clients thinks the same thing.

…

Of course, we’d never make that sort of mistake.

Have you got a change manager?
I started working with mine right after that lunch.

I make connections.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Need a change?

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Is Your Strategy About Winning Opportunities?

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Strategy

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I’ve been having conversations about strategy and tactics lately. Projects are launching soon and I’m planning for SOBCon2010 — Strategy and Tactics are going to be a big part of the content. That’s sent me on some blissful research and some not so lovely mind searching — realizing I had some strategic work of my own to be doing.

As strategy became my main topic of conversation, I came to the following realizations:

  • We don’t learn or teach good decision making in schools.
  • Most folks make random decisions.
  • Most folks confuse tactics with strategy — basically thinking they’re the same thing.
  • Few folks think of strategy as opportunity mining.
  • Few folks have a strategy that fully leverages their unique position.

Tactics are interesting. The accomplishments they bring can be thrilling. But the bigger picture that a strategic mission lays out is powerful and amazing thinking.

Is Your Strategy About Finding Opportunities?

Strategy isn’t a plan, a decision, a goal, a destination.
It’s a tool for leveraging who you are, what you know, where you are, the environment, and how people think and respond to each other. Strategy is a system for improving your position.

  1. Have a Mission — set an ultimate philosophical, economical, and / or political purpose
  2. Assess Your Position — Look, listen, measure, test your current situation, climate, resources, opportunities
  3. Move Forward Tactically in Increments — Size, choose, and commit to campaigns that reflect obstacles, goals, and prizes
  4. Celebrate and Record Your Winnings — All progress is good.

Strategy is based on the idea that you have a unique place in the world. All opportunities flow from that position. — Gary Gagliardi

All strategy is discovering, choosing, taking advantage of, and winning opportunities.

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Strategic perspective can light unique and unexpected pathways.

Have you looked at your strategic mission lately?
Is your strategy about winning opportunities?
Are you leveraging your unique position?

I make connections.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Want to do some strategic thinking?

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How Will You Find Opportunities Today?

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Motivate Yourself to See Beyond the Situation?

We can be so task oriented that we miss the opportunity in the person that we’re meeting. Every person represents all of the people that person has ever met or might introduce us to.

That person might be an interviewer or a taxi driver or a server in a restaurant. When you say hello don’t just think about the person think about the opportunity.

If we make a connection with a person, even if that person has nothing that might align with our goals … he or she might represent a connection to someone or something who does.

People are the opportunities

How will you find opportunities today?

I dare you to claim a way in the comment box. 🙂

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

Why Hire the Blog When You Can Hire the the Brain Behind It?

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A Photograph or a Photographer?

This week, I sat with a client who sings with an elite choir. The quality of what they do is outstanding. They’re known for loving attention to every detail. When they sing Russian opera, they study the deep meaning of the words, not merely clear pronunciation. It comes through in every blissful sound they blend, share, and offer. Their musical director is exceptional. Their production staff is to die for. Their board is prestigious and powerful.

The music they make is heavenly.

But aside from an occasional sale to a friend in Japan and the many CDs sold go to friends and supporters. The choir is hardly known outside of their personal and professional network.

That’s why my client was meeting with me.

“I was thinking we should use the Internet. I thought maybe a piece of your blog or some others,” he said.

I said, “What do you want for the choir? What’s your goal?

He told me without hesitation. “We should have a grammy — more than one.”

“You could do that. You’ll reach my audience and they’ll love you. But I’d like to suggest something more and more lasting. Why not build an audience of your own?”

Hire the Brain Behind the Blog

Often first conversations with clients start with how to get their information on many influential blogs. That leads to discussions of buying, renting, or borrowing bloggers’ influence, determining the right audiences, and how much information on the Internet is misstated, misdirected, or outright ignored.

Boring products need to be “pushed” or “seeded” into the market.
Compelling valuable resources don’t.
One look at Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, or FriendFeed shows that we like to share great things with our friends. Susan Boyle’s YouTube video is an example of great content that didn’t need to be pushed or seeded. It felt good to share it. It made us feel part of something bigger than ourselves.

Using those thoughts and basic strategy — start with the reachable and move out with purpose and logic — we scoped out the existing and realistic possibilities. The plan my choir friend and I started looked something like this one.

Great word of mouth depends on three things:

  1. The product has to be outstanding — and the vision has to be clear.
  2. The way to share it has to easy, growing from the community’s natural connections.
  3. People need to feel proud that they were part of the process.

It sure seemed that my choir client had step 1 — an outstanding product and vision — covered. We moved on to the strategy for building out the community and letting them enjoy the process. We set out to make it easy, meaningful, and about the folks who would help. We were building a movement more than a strategy.

  • Start at Home.. Identify the offline network the choir already reaches. Determine best ways to leverage and expand it — keep the offline connections strong and growing. Keep the offline community engaged and participating in fun, meaningful ways.
  • Learn from, Listen to and Engage the Energy. Find and have dinner with the champions of the choir in the offline community who are already engaged in online social endeavors related to music, the choir, and possible connections for the choir.
  • Let the Leaders Lead. Join and enlist their armies and networks. Let those champions lead their own initiatives in the name of the choir.
  • Momentum Drives Building. Using what we know of our network and their skills, now is finally the time to put up build and release that YouTube video of the choir. They’ll already be part of the endeavor and their armies will know about it when it goes up. Sharing will be fun.
  • Celebrating and Sharing Are Natural. Our friends on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and the music sites we’re already on will be delighted to hear about it too.
  • Reporting Results. At the end, what we about on our blogs will have the power of our community as well as the single event.

And we’ll be well on our way to a network, a community that loves the choir, not one that was borrowed from a network of blogs.

You can hire the blog or you can hire the brain behind it.

It’s a matter of short-term or longer-term thinking.

Do you look at your blogger relationships as a chance to tap into new strategic ideas?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

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It's Not How Big the Tool … It's the Thought, Skill, Fluency, and Authenticity Behind It

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Show ‘Em What’s to Love

Are you caught up in the conversation about social media tools? It’s fun to talk about what they do. We could spend a lifetime inventing new toy and tools that measure and move conversations on the Internet. Unfortunately, that won’t make business more relational or more efficient.

As we reach further fragmentation in the communication business, influx points how critical it is for us to specialize, get to know the tools and to put them to proper use.

Ad agencies aren’t that well equipped to play in this space, given their fundamental skills are all about creating commercial messages, not bare bones, message free entertainment. In social media, it’s about having specific tools, data sets and people skilled in the media who can create responses and ideas with social applicability.

In the short term, this will force agencies to identify and work with third parties to engage in this practices, where strategically relevant.

The opportunity is here for new working relationships. We can make the transition easier if we:

  1. Think vertical — the business opportunities will be in relational niches.
  2. Start with a marketing plan, a problem or a goal that your vertical is working on.
  3. Choose and use the tools that will best meet the goal and solve the problem.
  4. Name and claim the skill sets that the tools you’ve identified require.
  5. Evaluate and analyze the contribution of each particular tool to further the solutions and meet the marketing goals.
  6. Propose what you know to the companies in the vertical you’ve chosen.

My point is that no big brand, no agency is going to be able to speak print, television, radio, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blog, and other social media with fluency. Few people are that social media “multi-lingual.” The opportunity to specialize is huge.

It’s not about the size or scope of our tools. It’s our thought, skill, and authenticity when we use ’em. It’s about showing them what’s to love about what we do.

The key problem before us is …
How do we help business become fluent in the social sphere while maintaining authenticity for us all?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

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