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How to Be an Opportunity Magnet

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Do You Really Think You’ll Have More Time Later?

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Where we’re working at home or working in an office, at this time of year, time is hard to find, hard to manage, and basically not there. What’s new about that?

Stop! Think for a moment. When do you remember having too much time on your hands?

Do it now!

Bet it’s been a while since you didn’t have plenty to do even if it was things you didn’t want to do. I’m guessing that finding time to do everything that you could, should, or might be doing to move ahead right now is one of the biggest problems you’ve ever had.

How to Be an Opportunity Magnet

Strategy is a realistic plan for taking advantage of how opportunity fits our unique situation and skills. Yet, opportunity can pass us by and keep on moving, if we don’t have time for it.

To be ready for the opportunities coming our way, we have to create space and time to handle them. Here’s a few ways to be ready when it does. Become an opportunity magnet.

  • Tell people where want to be giong. The more people you tell, the more people who can be passing along opportunities.
  • Know your focus. Not all opportunities are equal. Look for those that match your focus.
  • Know what you need to move you forward. Some opportunities will be in your line of focus, but they’ll be just more of what you’re doing. Look for chances to meet new people, gain new skills, and expand your expertise and experiences.
  • Stop again to ask questions. See every person as a chance for learning. They know about shorter ways to get to where you’re going. That makes them opportunities too.
  • Don’t do everything yourself. Enlist your network and friends to help you with those things you’re not so good at. Let them help you build what you’re building. They’ll know better how to refer you and how to help you find the opportunities you need.

One single NYTimes has more information than an average 18th century person learned in a lifetime. We’re not going to get away from the constant noise and time burden. But we can create a space where opportunity can squeeze and flourish … if we know how to recognize the right opportunities and develop the habits that will attract them.

What do you do to attract more opportunities to your life?

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

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Boring Work? Or Your Missed Opportunity?

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Doing the Impossible Wasn’t as Valuable as Doing One Thing

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I worked my way into publishing through the back door. First I freelanced for magazines. Then I worked for a developer who built projects for corporations. Then finally one of the publishers hired me. My first title as a really publishing company employee was Executive Editor. I was delighted and excited to be taking on this new huge responsibility.

This happened long before personal branding. Tom Peters had not yet coined the phrase or the idea of Brand You. But if that had been vogue while this was happening, my personal brand for that stage of my career was clear. I even had named my self definition as …

I wanted to be the one person known through the industry who consistently did the impossible.

I liked the charge of solving high-risk problems. I liked the adrenalin rush of winning in a high stakes game when everything seemed unlikely. That’s what challenged my intelligence and my creativity to higher level problem solving.

When I got to my new job, my desk was too empty. My job description and job role said I had to stay in the realm of possibility. The situation was so not me. Impossible situations weren’t happening, because I had more time than I needed for everything. And other people’s impossible situations were hands off to me.

It was boring.

When the situation gets boring, I do drastic things. I started thinking about what it is what we were doing. and a question struck me …

What if I used all of the time I had to do something of a drastically, emphatically, elegantly higher quality?

What if I changed my self-definition to

I want to be the one person known through the industry who consistently delivers the highest quality on schedule on budget.

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Doing the impossible consistently didn’t seem as noble or valuable as doing the best quality work in the industry. That simple change in perspective pushed me back into learning.

Suddenly my desk didn’t seem so boring or so empty.

I became a better publisher, manager, product maker and even a better person because I learned the value of a new way of thinking. Any work can offer an opportunity.

Next time you think what’s in front of you is boring, look for the opportunity you could be missing. It could be a doorway to a new way of thinking.

How might a new view of what you’re doing change what you’re learning to get you where you want to go faster?

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

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Does Curiosity Kill the Brand?

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Watch a small child learning about the world. See a bundle of questions.
Watch a great listener, and you’ll see the same thing.

Children learn how to tell a shoe from a sandal from a sneaker by asking questions and constructing new models.

A great listener is curious about the person who is talking, curious about the information, curious about how the ideas fit together, and why they are of interest to the speaker.

So is a great brand.

Curiosity is easy. It’s sexy and attractive.
Curiosity is key to constructing meaning.
We move from the known to the unknown most easily by asking questions; listening to answers; and adjusting the model of what we already know.

Imagine doing the same thing to get closer to how your customers think. Curiosity that challenges our models has real value to understanding what we know and what we only believe. It also establishes relationships that opens communication so that we keep learning more nuances and details that take relationships deeper and fill in meaning.

Just a few curious questions can

  • form a bond between speaker and listener.
  • give conversation focus.
  • demonstrate value and respect people we serve.
  • telegraph self-confidence, integrity, and trust.

Genuine curiosity draws people into a conversation.
AND curiosity is contagious. If your brand is curious about people, they’ll become curious about you.

Curiosity might have killed the cat, but curiosity builds brands.

Where does curiosity fit in your strategic plan?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Do you need more data?

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by Patty Azzarello

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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!

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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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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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7 Steps to a Vision that Grabs a Community by Its Soul

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(Updated in 2020)

10-POINT PLAN: 1.2 Articulate the Vision

CommunityPhoto by John Schnobrich on Unsplash

Why Have a Vision?

Last week, I wrote Why You Absolutely Must Share Your Vision Early and Often. Now, it’s about the how-to.

Imagine three corporations that build and sell computers for small business and entrepreneurs. Each corporation defines its business in a different way.

Brand A says: Our company is in the business of making products for consumers who need them. We do the work they can’t do and offer it at a fair price.

Brand B says: We’ve are the leader in quality, creative solutions to the complex technology problems that entrepreneurs and small business owners face today. We make it our business to know their problems and to find a way to solve them. We deliver on our promises and we’re committed to staying the best in the industry.

Brand C says: We are a network of deep and strategic partnerships with employees, vendors, partners, and small businesses leaders who work together to build products and work environments that inspire and generate creativity, competence, performance, and trust and to create jobs and solutions that build the economy now and for future generations.

Brand C is the description that connects the company to every person on the planet.

How Does Vision Attract Community?

The vision is more than the mission. It’s the destination drawn clearly so that every member of the new community can see it, understand it, speak about it with passion, and believe that it will happen. The vision is not a product devised and made by a crowd or a committee. It’s a leadership decision — the original strategy expanded with thought and design to elevate it to a higher calling.

The vision is the cause that attracts and unites the people of the community. It why they invest tireless hours and best efforts — because they are building …

  • something that makes an important difference;
  • something that no other company is building;
  • something that needs every individual’s unique contribution
  • something that no one individual could build alone.

The vision isn’t a dream. It’s a work in progress … a group aspiration in the true sense of it’s definition, breathing toward. The vision gives the community a why for why they are investing the time of their lives each day into this work. The vision is more than economic, more than profession, it is a commitment to accomplish something meaningful in the world.

7 Steps to Communicating a Vision that Grabs Folks by the Soul

If you’re looking to build a thriving business, start with a long-term, loyal internal community of employees. They will build and protect a healthy innovative culture, promote the values of the business, stay with the company, develop expertise with coworkers, and live to serve customers. What better way to build a brand than to agree upon the values that you stand for and create an environment that nurtures brand ambassadors?

It takes the right vision to attract the right people to that kind of community culture. When we meet the best people, we have to tell them about that vision, or how will they see it? Here are 7 steps to articulating a clear vision.

    1. Think contribution. Think partnerships. Re-imagine your team or your business at this highest, most useful place in the world — financially, professionally, and philosophically. Talk through what you see with people you trust until you have a image, a vision, of what that business offers to employees, partners, vendors, and customers.
      We’re inviting the highest quality people who have a stake in teaching and learning technology to join together in building products, services, and opportunities that show other people how business can work better for customers.
    2. Think ideal membership. Make the vision irresistible: smart, feelingful, and life-changing on a world-scale.
      We’re only interested in the best minds, best designs, and the best problem solvers with the highest values. We’re going to align our goals and build stable, successful, ethical business models that freely give support to fledgling business in depressed areas to create an economy that helps us all grow.
    3. Think contributions and returns. Find the words to describe it simply in ways that others can see the value of what you’re going for.
      We’re building the business that listens, learns, contributes, and invests in the people who help it thrive — it will be the business that people want to work with and for — the sort where every person makes a difference.
    4. Think recruitment. Be able to speak to the benefits of being a part.
      One benefit is that under-achievers and those who will sacrifice anything to raise the bottom line won’t want to work here.
    5. Think champions and heroes. Invite the people who see the vision to be involved in highly visible ways. Talk about what they’re doing encourage them to talk too.

The communications team has started a newletter for partners and vendors working with inner city high school enterpreneurs. Let us know if you want to volunteer.

  1. Think honest communication. Talk publicly to everyone in as many ways as you can — live your message.
    I’ll be listening to the folks who have experience where I don’t. I’ll be looking to learn from you how to do this better. That includes everyone I know.
  2. Think evangelism and growth. Invite people to pass on the vision and the invitation.
    Who else belongs here? Tell us.

It’s not the how or what of work that builds community. It’s the why. The underlying vision that unites us toward building something that we can’t build alone. A community needs leadership to set and invest that vision and so that they can feel smart, safe, and powerful in investing too.

Once the community sees the vision and realizes that leadership commitment. People who share those values will pick up the message, the tools, and the passion to contribute to the cause. The culture will grow from their actions.

Humans are wired to be deeply inspired by causes greater than ourselves. To inspire a community to invest its soul, we have to show them why we’re willing to invest our own.

Have you really communicated your vision? Are there ways you might make it clearer to the people who can help it thrive?

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

–ME “Liz” Strauss