Successful Blog

The Mic Is On: Joe Hauckes Wants to Know Your Business

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It’s Like Open Mic Only Different

The Mic Is On

Here’s how it works.

It’s like any rambling conversation. Don’t try to read it all. Jump in whenever you get here. Just go to the end and start talking. EVERYONE is WELCOME.
The rules are simple — be nice.

There are always first timers and new things to talk about. It’s sort of half “Cheers” part “Friends” and part video game. You don’t know how much fun it is until you try it.

With Guest Host Joe Hauckes
an Original Open Commenter


Joe Knows Biz, But His Alien Is Curious

How Are You Making Things Happen Online?

What’s this? A golden opportunity to promote your business, to network, and to learn a few tricks of the trade. Share successes. Swap strategies and stories.

Tell us how you make things work online. Joe will be coming with the questions (and a few answers) and hoping that you’ll be bringing your best ideas and business link.

  • What works for you?
  • What have you seen other folks do that you could never get to work?
  • Who do you think has it down?
  • What do they do that you wish you could do?

Join us tonight and bring links your business to add to the discussion.

The rules are simple — be nice.

Do be nice. 🙂

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related article
What is Tuesday Open Comment Night?

Hidden Assumptions and Business Likeability

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Twitter Conversations and Reality

One strength of Twitter is the speed, reach, and ease of connection that is social business. In a few tweets and direct messages, we can gather a team and make a project happen.

The Likeability Factor as Tim Sanders defined it — friendliness, relevance, empathy, and authenticity — is a critical component to online social business. We make business relationships and referrals from our “friends” list on Twitter.

Social business connections happen so quickly and easily. It’s not hard to develop a false sense of a person’s abilities. Extended online business conversations that explore theory, philosophy, and expertise can overshadow the reality that we’ve never actually seen or worked with a person.

Hidden Assumptions and Business Likeability

As a young manager making my first hire in the offline world, I was swayed by whether I liked the candidates sitting across from me.

But when folks can’t or don’t do the job, they become problematic no matter how likeable they are in a more social context.

Tim Sanders suggested likeability was necessary, not a replacement for, traditional skills sets. It’s easy to get caught in hidden assumptions about these equally important business “abilities.”

  • CAPABILITY – Does this person actually have the skill set that job requires? Conversation is not the same as the ability to actually do something well.
  • “RESPONSE ABILITY” – Does she respond quickly, thoughtfully, with a focus and a solution that will last longer than 140 characters?
  • BELIEVABILITY – Does he tell the truth, even when it’s not easy? Have we actually experienced that?
  • ADAPTABILITY – Will the person understand when change happens without responding like a frustrated 4-year-old?
  • ACCOUNTABILITY – Does she own what she does, fix what she breaks, and strive for quality?

BUSINESS LIKEABILITY – competent, trustworthy, and a pleasure to work with.

No time before has any culture had the power to build deep, strategic networks so efficiently. The connections have incredible potential to keep our businesses growing with minimal overhead and maximum accomplishment. No time before has business been so global and fluid. We’re learning to navigate a new reality.

We have to keep remembering to ask questions.

Do online conversations to lead to hidden assumptions more often than the offline equivalent?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Open Mic 7pm Chicago Time: Joe Hauckes Wants to Know Your Business

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Join Us Tonight

JOIN US TONIGHT AT 7PM

With Guest Host Joe Hauckes
an Original Open Commenter


Joe Knows Biz, But His Alien Is Curious

How Are You Making Things Happen Online?

What’s this? A golden opportunity to promote your business, to network, and to learn a few tricks of the trade. Share successes. Swap strategies and stories.

Tell us how you make things work online. Joe will be coming with the questions (and a few answers) and hoping that you’ll be bringing your best ideas and business link.

Join us tonight and bring links your business to add to the discussion.

The rules are simple — be nice.

Do be nice. 🙂

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related article
What is Tuesday Open Comment Night?

Bring Wine to the Picnic

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Another brilliant observation from Chris Brogan:

Conn Fishburn from Yahoo gave me a great analogy for thinking about social media marketing when we spoke at IBM’s Research Headquarters in New York last year. He said, “Bring wine to the picnic.” In this case, Conn was talking about the idea that if you show up and try to market, people will be frustrated and will shut you out. Instead, if you bring something of value to people, they’ll be more likely to accept you…
renoir-luncheon-of-the-boating-party

Bring Wine to the Picnic

At this picnic called social media, what people seem to want the most is information they can use. The information might be entertaining, might help them with their job, might do something to give them a sense of value. Whatever the case, in the social space, people consider the sharing of information to be one form of ready relationship currency. Let’s talk about others.

10 Ways to Build Relationships Before You Ask for Anything

1. Comment on and reply to other people’s observations, posts, and ideas. (Sometimes, just retweeting someone’s status message in Twitter is a gesture that matters to people.)
2. Share good information freely, such as pointing to great blog posts or articles.
3. Make virtual introductions when you see obvious like-minded people who could do to know each other.
4. Create useful media like blog posts or ebooks or videos that help people.
5. Find mutual interest points and talk about them. (Bonus points to you if they’re off-topic from your business needs, like talking about the Red Sox or Barbecue.)

Read more –>

Panning for Gold: How Do You Find Relevant and Valuable Information?

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Are Off Course 98% of the Time?

relationships button

Did you know that an airplane flying from New York to LA is off course 98% of the time?

Just as a driver is always moving the steering wheel to keep the car pointed in the right direction, the pilot is constantly adjusting based on the information he’s taking in — from the instruments, from the crew, from air traffic control, from every source he recognizes as relevant and valuable.

Wise individuals and great companies do the same thing. We get to our goals by constantly adjusting. Yet, for some reason, we sometimes fool ourselves into thinking that we or the organizations we work with have control over the forces outside and around us. It’s just not so.

We can manage what’s within our power to manage. But more importantly, we can adjust, innovate, and grow if we if we find the relevant and valuable information about the rest.

How Do You Find Relevant and Valuable Information?

Individuals and organizations that are growing are curious and information hungry. We are personally involved in work and business, but we don’t take information personally. We work through an information gathering process again and again in a spiraling, overlapping, scaffolded fashion. We use the latest listening tools, but even more we use our ears, eyes, hearts, and minds to decipher what is relevant and valuable to their goals.

  • Listen actively. It’s so powerful to set aside filters that would have us hear only what supports our current world view. Looking for other perspectives, other voices, different, radical, outrageous ideas offers a diverse pool from which to choose and challenges our assumptions.
  • Test what you hear. We ask folks who are talking about what they’re saying to confirm that the message we received is clear. Then we ask other folks if that message makes sense in their lives too.
  • Adjust and adapt to the new information. We steer. Steering isn’t all controlling. It’s altering our world view to include what we have just learned.
  • Share. We make sure that the right folks know. We tell other people. Organizations tell customers, employees, shareholders, prospects, and key stakeholders.

Sounds a little like panning for gold — with each pan we use a finer sifter. With each pan we get closer to what we want to know.

While you’re listening, consider and reconsider what you’re listen for.
How do you find relevant and valuable information?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

The Building Blocks of Successful Interaction

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I just wanted to share this with you:

Charlie Grantham and Jim Ware, writing at The Future of Work, share some thought on the building blocks of interpersonal interaction:

In our experience effective communication is made up of three basic qualities: trust, connectedness; and relatedness.

Trust is the most basic quality.

Trust is an emotional thing. It comes when we share values with others and we can therefore expect them to behave in predictable ways. We trust people when we believe they will act in our best interests even though we aren’t there. And without trust true interaction and communication just isn’t possible. Trusting relationships are not based on power, or on status or one-up-manship.

Connectedness and Relatedness

Connectedness is a necessary but not sufficient condition of interaction. Simply put, it means there is a common basis for communication. Both parties are concerned about, interested in, or attracted to a similar issue, which then provides a basis for communicating. However, they must also relate to that issue. That is, they share a common belief, or a value around that issue. Note the difference. Take politics for example (or not take it, whatever). You can be connected with someone because you are both interested in the outcome of an election—but at the same time not be emotionally related (or even opposed to each other) because you have different philosophical positions. You can take that to the bank. If you are connected with someone, but not related, your communication isn’t going to go very far! Test that perspective with Uncle Barney.