From a distance it looked like someone had built a bed or a shelter.
On closer inspection it proved to be a complex structure.
Or more beach art?
This was taken at Fingal Head Beach looking out towards Cook Island
What do you see?
Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,
I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.
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.
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
about my life, my likes, my aspirations.
I so like to travel. Itâs more than the green grass feeling. Itâs the somethingâs there I need to see before I die feeling. Can I possibly live a full life in one place? Can I have life, a full life moving all over the place like I do?
I need more life, more lifes, more lifetimes, more life times, more time, more times.
I want a chance to be Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa, Betty Crocker and Tom Peters. I want to be Donald Trump and Princess Diana. I want go live in a cabin off the land. I want to live by the beach and sleep on the sand. I want to live with every one of my friends. I want to live in another country in a tiny village and ride a bike everywhere I go. I want to be a gardener, a gymnast, a piano player, a mathematician, a poet. I want to direct music videos.
I want to sleep in a king-sized bed with a seatbelt on an airplane.
I want to live in the highest, highrise in the biggest, busiest city. I want to be a recluse and reflect on deep, long thought with lovely music playing while I drink hot chocolate and write. I want to have a personal shopper, a driver, and a minder. I want to follow my own path and walk off into the sunset and never have to worry about good byes.
I want to be simple and complex. I want to be open and mysterious. I want to be a grownup and a child.
Iâm just like everyone else I guess.
This is an important topic for all of us, whether you are an employee in a company or have your own business.
The bottom line here is that you canât wait to be told what adds value, and you canât count on doing your work the same way to add enough value over time.
You need to figure this out.
You need to educate yourself about what the business values, and then tune your work specifically to deliver more value.
Your job description is valid for a moment in time — the moment when you start. As soon as you start doing the job, what the job needs to be evolves as the business grows and as the world changes.
If you do your job as written for too long a period of time, you will become out of date. You will begin to lose relevance to the business. You will not be adding enough value.
Yes, you need to do your job, but you also to think about how to improve the way your job is done. Donât give this extra work of figuring out how your job needs to evolve to your to your boss. Sort it out on your own and make a recommendation. (Thatâs what high performers do).
What adds value?
I have collected some questions that will help you figure out how to tune your job over time to make sure you are adding enough value to the business
Note: Stop producing work no one cares about.
Check! I know so many organizations that are over-busy producing reports, analysis, or sales and marketing that no one uses. Donât burn up your time on things that no one cares about. DO actively learn what they find most useful, and tune what you produce to be more valuable.
Note: If you canât connect your work to a business outcome, you are in danger of not being relevant.
If you are not relevant you are not adding enough value. You need to stay educated on the most important outcomes the business is driving and stay connected with them.
Note: Own improving the outcomes your work causes, not just delivering the work.
Always be finding ways to take cost out. If you produce 50 reports, maybe 20 better reports would do? (Everyone will like 20 reports better than 50!)
If you do things manually or in a chaotic reactive mode, how many people are impacted by this? How can you create a process to streamline the work, make it less complicated, and require fewer touch points, questions, or follow-ups?
Note: If you are not evolving your job, you will no longer be qualified when the game changes.
Or you will be doing the wrong job, and your job will get eliminated. Be the one to recommend changing your job to meet the evolving business needs.
Note: When companies get bigger all the jobs change.
You canât keep using the same way of working. It doesnât scale. You can be the one to build a new process that will scale, or you can be the one who gets pushed aside by someone with experience at a bigger company.
Note: If you are not helping others, you are not adding enough value.
The other upside is that helping others can put a meaning into an otherwise unfulfilling job. If you are feeling unsatisfied about being in a corporate role that doesnât make enough difference in the world, help someone. When you help someone else, you change the world for that person.
I see a lot of people thinking that answering these questions is not part of their job.
You need to decide what needs to get done to drive the future goals and continue to add the most business value.
What have you don’t to add more value in your business? How did you change the way you worked to produce a bigger impact? Please leave your ideas in the comment box below.
—–
Patty Azzarello is an executive, author, speaker and CEO-advisor. She works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. Patty 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. Also, check out her new book Rise…
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You love to travel and want to put pen to words, be it before summer ends or down the road.
If youâve thought of creating a travel blog, it is probably easier than making your travel plans, packing up the suitcase, and making sure you have a good time.
In order to craft a good travel blog to draw in readership on a regular basis, have a few basics in place.
Content, Content, Content
First, review different travel portals online to see how others do it, what to avoid, and what niche you may be able to fill that readers could be missing.
Whether your travels take you not too far from home or halfway around the world, the goal of any quality travel blog is to make readers feel like theyâre along for the ride with you.
In order to have your blog followed regularly, the first and most important aspect is providing regular content.
While youâre probably not going to be able to afford to travel every month (unless you do it for a profession), a blog that is sparingly updated stands much less of a chance of gaining a regular following.
The next and most obvious factor is having a clean looking blog that is grammatically correct, flows nicely, has attractive pictures, and makes the reader feel like theyâre part of the journey.
While your writing tone should be informative and to the point, donât make it out to be an instruction manual. We travel for the simple purpose of getting away and enjoying new experiences or rekindling old memories, so keep the tone of the blog enjoyable.
It sounds rather obvious, but it is important to maintain a travel journal during your journeys so that you can look back and pinpoint items to a rather exact science. Hopefully your travels involve lots of fun activities, so recording them for posterity will make it easier when you begin to blog.
Adventures in Life
When traveling down the blogging road, be sure to engage your readers in your adventures. If your readers comment or ask questions about your journeys on the blog, be sure to respond in kind.
Another plus to writing a travel blog is that it can lead to new friendships with others who also like to set sail on new adventures. In some instances, you might actually find new travel partners to share journeys with. Sharing blogging information is also a plus, as travel bloggers can promote each otherâs sites, therefore leading to more readers.
While travel bloggers should not expect to make a fortune or even any money early on with their sites, there is potential to profit from oneâs journeys.
Assuming that your travel expenses are not going to come easily, making some money off of a travel blog can help assist in covering some of those costs.
In closing, a travel blog should be done in order to convey your travels to others and share the good times that traveling can bring.
Update the blog regularly, engage in conversation with readers, and make the experience one that is fun and doesnât seem like a job.
If you follow those basic rules, your travels and writing about them will be a vacation.
Photo credit: freetraveltime.com
Dave Thomas is an expert writer on items like call center services and is based in San Diego, California. He writes extensively for an online resource that provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs at Resource Nation.
We’re in a meeting. A problem gets set on the table. We start to brainstorm solutions. Ideas are forming. You find one that seems to have potential. It looks to be simple, timely, and meaningful. Just as you’re sketching it out, someone who’s been listening jumps in before your thought’s even finished to say, “Let me play Devil’s Advocate … ”
Once upon a time — in the 16th Century — the role of Devil’s Advocate was an appointment with a specific purpose to test the argument of elevating a person’s life to sainthood.
Today, we flattened the idea, stretched the usage, and made it all but frivolous. As Tim Sanders so aptly describes …
Today, we’ve taken this to the extreme. When someone at work has a new idea about a product or a process, we take on the role of devil’s advocate before they’ve even expressed half the idea. We treat them like idiots, posing objections to them in a tone of voice that suggests, “have you even considered the obvious?” We do the same thing at home. Our kid has an idea for a business and we go into skeptic mode, shooting down her enthusiasm before the food hits the table. In every situation, we don’t improve the way the ideator thinks. Research suggests that only authentic dissent (You truly think it’s a bad idea) can provoke a better idea. When you argue for the sake of argument, you merely bolster the ideator’s conviction as well as her feelings that she’s all alone on this one.
I’m convinced that the Devil’s Advocate takes more value than he or she adds.
When you pose your next idea, would you rather have a Guardian Angel or a Devil’s Advocate?
That might seem a clever turn of a phrase, but it’s more than that. The difference is striking. One works to win an argument. The works to contribute. Take a look at the two.
The position of Devil’s Advocate is inherently negative. The role is to find holes in the proposed idea. Arguing for the sake of arguing easily can degrade into arguing for inconsequential details or arguing to show how clever the person presenting the argument can be.
The Devil’s Advocate breaks ideas. No value is added.
The position of Guardian Angel is inherently positive. The role is to find and fill holes in the proposed idea. Arguing for the possibility of what might work, while checking for risk, leads to dialogue that builds and molds ideas into useful realities.
The Guardian Angel strengthens ideas by adding value to them.
A Devil’s Advocate wants to save the business from harm. He or she deconstructs to identify anything that might go wrong. The quest is to stop a problem before something is lost.
A Guardian Angel wants to meet and exceed the dreams of the business and the customers. He or she deconstructs to find and fix the anything that might go wrong. It’s a quest to invent a new solution so that new ground can be won.
The Guardian Angel adds value. A Devil’s Advocate tries to ensure none is lost.
Which would you rather have on your team?
Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!