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February 29, 2008

Supermarket Sweep

How is it that an entire industry could take something that people inherently love and turn it into something they barely tolerate?

That's what's been going on in the grocery industry for the past 50 years. People love to shop and yet don't love to shop for groceries.

What's to love? Most of the stores are messy, the help is surly and the selection is at once lacking, overwhelming and worst of all, predictable.

Looking in from the outside, grocery appears to be the craziest business on earth. Well, with the possible exception of the airline business … or maybe the magazine business.

Shoppers would love nothing more than to love to shop for groceries. And the thing is, it would not be all that difficult to make grocery stores more lovable. Better lighting. Faster checkouts. Clerks who smile.

It's not as though grocers would have to blow themselves up or try to replicate Stew Leonard's, Trader Joe's or Wegman's (although that would be nice).

In fact, their model could be as simple as that of Amelia's Grocery Outlet. Amelia's is a so-called "salvage grocer" that trades in goods that are either damaged, discontinued or past their sell-by dates.

Don't laugh -- Amelia's same-store sales were up 12 percent last year, about twice the rate of Kroger. The reason isn't just the low prices. What shoppers say they love about Amelia's is that you just never know what you're going to find there. When you get down to it, isn't that what we love most about shopping?

So, surprise us. Pleasantly. Show us you understand who we are, what we want and what we need. We could learn to love grocery shopping yet.

Posted by Tim Manners at 11:39 AM

February 15, 2008

The 29% Who Are Onto Something Big

The Economist magazine recently released a report entitled “Doing Good - - Business and the Sustainability Challenge.” They analyzed responses about corporate social responsibility - - put more succinctly, sustainability - - from 1200 execs and concluded that the picture is grim.

The opening of this interesting report states...”Being a good corporate citizen has never been so challenging. Companies have long been under public scrutiny for practices ranging from recruitment to workplace safety, from attitudes to overseas investment to environmental pollution. The emergence of climate change as a mainstream political issue, however, has served to drive home the breadth of ethical issues with which firms must now grapple. The business—and societal—implications of how companies address these are so far reaching that a new area of management practice has come into being to manage them, known by many as “corporate sustainability”.

Continue reading "The 29% Who Are Onto Something Big"

Posted by Terry Tamminen at 12:58 PM

February 14, 2008

Leadership: When My Fingers Do The Talking

I've noticed a funny phenomenon when I type: My fingers sometimes type out words that are spelled similarly or may even be derived from the word I intended, but are not. I notice other people also do this. It seems to happen automatically, such as when I want to type the word real and end up with really. Or just now, when I typed the word "type" in the last sentence, my fingers automatically put in the word "of" to follow. I had to go back and delete it. I don't know if it happens for some reason like I've got a million things going on in my head and I just automatically type the words and phrases that are most common, regardless of whether I intend them or not.

I have to be very careful about this because I've found I can get into some trouble. For example, I've typed the following sentences in emails:

Here's what we accomplished at the eternal meeting. (I meant external.)
That depends on his pubic speaking skills. (I meant public.)
In that case, Barack Obama would bean Hillary Clinton. (I meant beat -- hmmm, maybe not)
She has a bit part in the presentation. (I meant big.)

And my favorite,

This technique will help to jog your member. (I meant memory -- ahem.)

Then, of course, there are the many, many words for which my fingers just seem to want to transpose or rearrange letters:

from becomes form
new becomes knew
favorite becomes favority (for some strange reason)
community becomes communicty

not to mention the numerous grammatical errors, especially:

your instead of you're
to instead of too

Sometimes I feel like I'm in third grade.

Does anyone know what this phenomenon is called? Has it happened to you? If so, please share some examples.

Ruth Sherman • Ruth Sherman Associates LLC • High Stakes Communications • Greenwich, CT • www.ruthsherman.com

Posted by Ruth Sherman at 10:16 AM

February 13, 2008

Work/Life: Text Messaging--No Country For Old Men

It isn’t anything new for kids to subvert whatever new technology is out there, and here they are doing it again. According to a recent report, a whole new language is springing up around “predictive text.” This is the function on cell phones which assigns the most probable word you might be trying to text from a single keypad entry. And now, whatever word shows up as the most probable, whether it was the one they wanted or not, is becoming an in-joke way to communicate among kids.

For example, as the linked article states, when something is “cool” now, it is “book,” since “book” is the word that comes up when you try to enter “cool” into predictive text. Similarly, “barmaid” reads as “carnage” and “mom” becomes “nun.” I realized it was kind of like running Spell Check and getting those weird suggestions for substitutions. And then I realized this could lead to some revolutionary inter-office memos that could definitely lighten things up and maybe even inject a little work/life humor balance into a busy day.

With that in mind, I typed out a fake memo with every other word or so intentionally misspelled so that I could then replace it with one of the words Spell Check came up with. This was the actual result:

Dear Heavenly Ones,

It has clump to my attentions that coverall employees are hooking the keys to the monks and women’s bathrooms and not rectifying them. Please take a memento to look abut you before you love the felicity and make sore you doesn’t left the key beyond or have leafed it in your picket and forget tin all about it. Also, third quainter profiteroles are down and we nerd to adders this at the Moonfish mourning meeting, pimply at 9 a.m.

Think you,

Tom

Weirdly enough, my daughter understood this completely. I say the sooner we introduce unedited predictive text-messaging into the business world, the less seriously we will take ourselves. If the above experimental memo is any indication, built-in word-analyzing software has the potential to really shake up the workplace. Why not try one of your own?

Posted by Tom Stern at 7:06 AM

February 11, 2008

Customer Centric Organizations – Hype or Innovation?

Many companies talk about being customer focused and selling on value, but where’s the evidence? Too often customer value is expressed, as in value propositions, but lost in execution they become value cliches that don’t set us apart, don't connect us to the customer and don't compel the customer to act. Today, and for the foreseeable future, the driving force of customer relevancy is value, and many companies will see themselves drawing the short end of the stick if they don’t figure out that what is actually required of a company to be truly customer centric is creating value and delivering on the value promise.

Take proposals, for example. I was just with a new client in Europe. This innovative and technically superior corporation had a challenge on their hands. They were driving a value strategy and customer centric messaging throughout their organization but not seeing bottom line results. When we were given sales and marketing collateral such as proposals, white papers, case studies, and a website to review, and conducted multiple interviews, the question we were asking ourselves was, “Where is their customer in this picture?” All this stuff was about the seller…their great achievements and super powerful products and services. We found that 90-plus percent of the content was about them and their solutions. There was a clear disconnect between the customer centric initiative and the organization’s ability to execute a great idea. We see this scenario repeat itself over and over again.

Where's the innovation? We tend to articualte customer-centric and value-added in generic and ultimately meaningless terms. As a self-check, compare your collateral, your proposals, your web sites with two of your best competitors. Shuffle them up and re-assign them. Is there a difference?

Ask yourself, in a customer centric organization, what percentage of the proposal should be about the solution, the solution provider and the future value benefits, and what percentage should be about the potential customer of that solution, their business, objectives, obstacles they face, and the critical issues that need to be resolved?

How does this play out in your company?

The bottom line is: innovation is driven by creating value and if you’ve placed the value strategy in play, why aren’t customers responding? Simply said, if you cannot create and clarify value and connect it to your customer’s world, they will not take action, they will not buy, and your customer centric organization is just smoke and mirrors.

Posted by Jeff Thull at 9:31 PM

February 9, 2008

Technology: Sharing Breakfast

Yesterday was a fantastic day. :D

I got to meet Kfir Pravda, who was here for a few hours in NYC Friday morning awaiting his connecting flight to Israel. I was familiar with Kfir from blogging as well as our involvement with the Yahoo Videoblogging Group.

We've had interesting discussions about the direction of online video and television, but I never figured I'd meet him in person, since I had no plans to travel to Israel.

Continue reading "Technology: Sharing Breakfast"

Posted by Bill Cammack at 5:05 PM | 1 Comment

February 8, 2008

“Dear Lee”

It’s been almost two years since Exxon CEO Lee Raymond was paid about $400 million upon retiring. I’ve been wondering how he’s been spending his “golden” years and thought I’d drop him a line...

Dear Lee,

Boy did you jump ship at the right time! The legal noose is tightening around the fossil fuel industry as the evidence of damages to planet earth from global warming stack up higher than an Oklahoma gusher. California sued automakers to recover costs to the state from greenhouse gases and other air pollution (much like tobacco companies that paid billions for health care costs because of their toxic air pollution). Those cars burn the products you sold for so long, so I’m guessing your old pals are next.

Continue reading "“Dear Lee”"

Posted by Terry Tamminen at 12:56 PM | 1 Comment

February 6, 2008

Innovation: If You Lose Your Cool, You Won’t Get it Back

Building a business around being cool is really hard. Keeping it there is even harder. But the toughest of all is getting your cool edge back if you ever lose it. The good news for innovators is that refocusing on being credible can be just as profitable as being cool, without as much inherent risk.

Apple is a great example of a company that has been coming out with cool products ever since Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started making and selling circuit boards and computers in the late 1970s. Apple’s latest computers and iGoodies are widely perceived as must-have products with people routinely lining up to buy them as they are launched. At $1800, the MacBook Air launched last month is the latest on Apple’s hit parade.

So what will happen if Apple loses its edge? Not a problem if it takes the same approach that Kodak did years ago when its traditional business of photographic films and papers turned to ashes. Kodak is a big company with a long history of introducing cool products that date all the way back to about 1900 when it introduced the very popular “brownie” camera. Kodak saw big problems coming when digital camera sales started going through the roof. Although the company was in the digital camera game from early on, it knew it would face very tough competition from Japanese consumer electronics giants. Kodak simply wasn’t going to remain cool as the competition heated up.

Kodak was able to refocus on B2B offerings using the tremendous credibility it had established over the previous century. The company’s investor information page claims “Kodak is the world’s foremost imaging innovator. With sales of $10.7 billion in 2006, the company is committed to a digitally oriented growth strategy focused on helping people better use meaningful images and information in their life and work. Consumers use Kodak’s system of digital and traditional products and services to take, print and share their pictures anytime, anywhere; Businesses effectively communicate with customers worldwide using Kodak solutions for prepress, conventional and digital printing and document imaging; and Creative Professionals rely on Kodak technology to uniquely tell their story through moving or still images.” These are not consumer product offerings that will have people lining up in droves. Apple brags about its iPhone and having sold over 110 million iPods and over three billion songs from its iTunes online store but it has no major current B2B offerings.

A great advantage of a company that has leveraged and built up credibility to shift from leading edge consumer product offerings towards B2B offerings, is that the business becomes more predictable. This also applies to its R&D returns. Watch and see if Apple remains cool and if it shifts toward increasing its B2B offerings over the next few years. That would decrease the likelihood of the company falling flat on its face if it loses its cool.

Atomica Creative > Strategic Product Marketing • Vancouver, Canada • tnakagawa@atomicacreative.com

Posted by Tatsuya Nakagawa and Peter Roosen at 8:48 AM

Leadership: Good Bob, Bad Bob

The General has left the hardwood.

Robert Montgomery Knight, nicknamed the General not only for his stint as coach at Army, but also for the discipline and control he exacted at Indiana and Texas Tech, has abruptly resigned. Saying he was tired after 42 years of coaching, Bobby Knight is handing the reins of this team to his designated successor and son, Pat Knight.

Let the dissection of his career begin. For some Bob Knight represented everything good and wholesome about intercollegiate athletics. His teams played as a unit. His kids graduated, most often within four years. He played by the rules. And he won -- 902 games, more than any other Division I coach. At Indiana, the Hoosiers won three national championships and he also coached the U.S. Olympic team to a gold medal. By any standard, Knight was, and is, a true champion, in the purest and most authentic sense.

But then there is the other side of Bob Knight. Mercurial, irrational, heated, arrogant and down right mean spirited. Bob Knight once threw a chair across the court during a game in Puerto Rico. He repeated bumped heads and thumped his players’ heads and chests with his hands. He was caught on videotape grabbing the neck (and possibly choking) one of his own players at practices. He insulted deans and university presidents and threw tantrums in his office as well as in press conferences.

Continue reading "Leadership: Good Bob, Bad Bob"

Posted by John Baldoni at 7:00 AM | 1 Comment

February 5, 2008

Growing Up In a Cotton Wool World

Do we need a commonsense revolution in education and elsewhere in society? I think we do and it needs to start now.

Continue reading "Growing Up In a Cotton Wool World"

Posted by Richard Watson at 6:05 PM

The Leading Edge - Presidential Candidates Leave Your Dissonance at the Door

After rereading my previous blog, Obama, Clinton '08, I realized that what I was responding to in my switch to Obama in the number one position and Clinton in the number two position was the dissonance I was experiencing with regard to Hillary.

Dissonance occurs when what you see and hear doesn't match what you feel and when that happens you step back and "buy out" vs. stepping forward and "buying in." Another way of saying it is: Dissonance = What are you going to do for me?/What are you going to do to me?

The dissonance that gets triggered in me with Hillary Clinton is that there are many things she is qualified to do for us, but it is nearly canceled out by the worry of what she will do to us, when she is unhappy with something. I plead no contest to that being a double standard that many strong women face, namely if a man is adamant, he is aggressive; if a woman is adamant she's a b**ch. There is another factor which adds to my dissonance. That's the Bill factor. He is as much a liability as an asset and if Hillary became president, I honestly don't know how much I would want him guiding her vs. her knowing her own mind and merely considering his input along with other advisors.

I know that in the corporate world there are many highly competent, but "people skill challenged" individuals that initially offend people, but once they get the job done and it helps everyone, their personality gets re-written (think Neutron Jack becoming Jack Welch, the best CEO of the last century).

Since "Super Tuesday" is yet to be decided, I will still go with Obama as President for the simple reason that if the world needs to see the US through different eyes, the world needs to believe that we have a president who is capable of looking at it through different eyes.

Something else that is not Hillary's fault is that she represents the not so endearing part of "baby boomers" who are trying to desperately hold onto power rather than accepting that it is no longer their turn. I think the world would do well to have all the "baby boomers" pass the baton to the next generation(s) and give them their shot, graciously but not aggressively offering input whenever it is sought.

I don't know how capable "baby boomers" are of letting go of the command and control that they have had for so long. I know that being a baby boomer, I struggle with that.

Posted by Mark Goulston at 2:05 PM

Careers: Without Questions

How much time do you spend coming up with questions that you want to ask the interviewer? Is it something you put a lot of effort into or do you typically ask basic questions like “What’s a typically day like?” or “Do you have a formal mentoring program?” Time after time, recruiters tell me the questions people ask (or sometimes don’t ask) during the interview can be the difference between them and other candidates.

When coming up with your questions, there are two things to keep in mind—audience and quality. Audience is important because you’re typically going to want to gear your questions to the position of the person you’re interviewing with. For example, when speaking with someone in human resources, a lot of your questions will likely be around training and the hiring process. In that case, it’s okay to ask about the mentoring program. If you’re speaking with someone in a senior-level position, most of your questions will be about big picture, strategic initiatives. Meaning, you wouldn’t want to ask a vice president of the company about the number of vacation days you’d get.

Equally as important as your audience is the quality of your questions. Interviewers want to know that you’ve done your homework. Take what you learned from your research on the company and industry, and incorporate that information into your questions. For example, if you are interviewing with a company in the energy sector, you might ask how they’re positioning themselves in the marketplace to end users given the high price of gasoline. Or, if you are speaking with someone in the pharmaceutical industry, you might ask how they continue to grow and innovate given existing and future Medicare and Medicaid regulations.

Of course, you can also use the Q&A portion of the interview as a chance to incorporate things you might have forgotten to mention earlier. It can happen to the best of us: even when we’re over-prepared and on our game, there are always a few things we fail to highlight. Look for opportunities to wrap them into your conversation.

Don’t let the questions you ask hurt your chances of getting an offer. Spend time coming up with ones that show the interviewer that you’ve done your homework and that you understand the business and industry they’re in. And, the same holds true when you’re evaluating interviewees. Although only a small portion of the overall interview process, the quality of the questions they ask can speak volumes.

And don’t waste time asking about a typical day because there’s no such thing.

Shawn Graham is an Associate Director with the MBA Career Management Center at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School and author of Courting Your Career: Match Yourself with the Perfect Job (courtingyourcareer.wordpress.com).

Posted by Shawn Graham at 9:18 AM

Work/Life: My Super Tuesday Campaign Promises

CEO Dad’s Tuesday Tirade….

My daughter’s elementary school is holding a mock primary today. I guess it’s important to introduce children to the importance of choosing the most qualified candidate who was capable of raising half a billion dollars in campaign funds. As she left this morning, she very sweetly told both my wife and myself, “If you guys were running, I would totally vote for you.”

Once I got over my gush of sentimentality (and the reflexive competitiveness that reared its head when I thought about the adrenaline rush of hypothetically competing in a primary with my own wife), I realized that no one out there is campaigning on a work/life ticket. So, allow me to be the first.

If elected, I pledge the following:

--To impose a 12% work/life tax on anybody who stays in the office past 7:01 p.m.

--Conversely, a generous tax refund shall be given to any person who can show proof of having spent 24 hours doing absolutely nothing.

--To work to eradicate, and possibly make criminal, the use of Bluetooth devices in public places.

--All in-car DVD players will be dismantled and replaced with a screen that reads, “let’s talk.”

--Whatever date on which “Celebrity Apprentice” is finally cancelled shall be declared a national holiday.

--The word “money” shall be replaced with the word “mange.” (After saying phrases such as “can I borrow some mange?” and “I only work to get more mange,” priorities will shift by osmosis.)

--Finally, I pledge to stem the tide of rampant and unprecedented growth in the Starbucks sector. Ready access to exotic caffeine-laden beverages is destroying our every attempt to remain non-wired.

--Oh, and I promise to do something about Blackberries. Not sure what yet, but my people will get on it.

I’m Tom Stern, and I approved this message. What would your campaign promises be?

Posted by Tom Stern at 7:22 AM

February 4, 2008

The 5 Secrets

John Izzo and I are both members of an organization called The Learning Network. Among other things, the members support each other in various ways related to aligning work and life priorities; some might call it finding work/life balance, being “on purpose”, and just plain being happy. From my consulting work, I know these are topics that many executives and deeply concerned about.

So I was pretty jazzed when John sent me a copy of his newest book, The Five Secrets You Must Discover before You Die. The book is based on 235 interviews conducted with people aged 60-106 asking them to reflect back on their lives. He said that the purpose of the book was both to uncover the true secrets to happiness and meaning but also to kindle a conversation about eldership and to encourage people to seek the wisdom of the elders.

Each person interviewed was identified by friends and acquaintances as a person who they knew had found happiness and meaning in life. It turned out to include a very wide range of people from town barbers to aboriginal chiefs and CEOs.

So what are the Secrets?
1. Be true to yourself
2. Leave no regrets
3. Become love
4. Live the moment
5. Give more than you take

Needless to say there is a lot more to learn about each of these from the wise people John interviewed so I highly recommend you dig in -- for more information on the book, go to www.theizzogroup.com

Also, Dr. John Izzo and The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die were reviewed along side the movie The Bucket List staring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson by ListenUp TV, and if you’d like to see a video clip, go to Beyond the Bucket List: http://www.listenuptv.com/programs/080127bucket.shtml

Jim Bolt * Jbolt@executivedevelopment.com * www.executivedevelopment.com

Posted by Jim Bolt at 6:57 PM

Is the Opportunity Real?

We’ve all been in that sales situation where you think you have it wrapped up and at the last minute it stalls. They stop returning your calls and emails, all correspondences are very short and to the point, the RFP is hanging out there, it seems like your prospect has simply fallen off the face of the earth.

So what happened? Were they not an ideal client or part of your target audience? Was there secretly a competitor with an inside track or existing relationship (hint: there usually is, but that’s a different ezine topic)? Were they simply shopping to see what’s available in the marketplace?

It could’ve been any of those, and more, so today I want to introduce a framework to help you evaluate each opportunity - before you commit to chasing it. I can’t claim this model as my own, though I’ve adopted it in my daily client interactions.

When I got serious about understanding consultative sales, multiple colleagues recommended I pick up Mahan Khalsa’s book, “Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play.” And I recommend you read it as well. The short version of the story is that Mahan is responsible for sales performance at FranklinCovey, the Seven Habits folks, and this book shed more light on how modern sales work than anything I’ve read. When I read a recent ezine from Mahan, I knew I needed to share some of his wisdom with a little bit of “Nick Rice practicality” thrown in for good measure.

When you are presented with an opportunity for a new project or new business, you need to uncover as much as possible to gauge how successful you will be with this project. If you try to fix every problem that presents itself, you will never be seen as a specialist, and as such, you will never command high fees. Generalists stay busy with small projects, but when the client wakes up and decides to fix the big problem, who are they going to call?

So, how do you uncover such details? At a high level, you have to ensure that three things are present before you can properly evaluate an opportunity. Here is the Opportunity Framework:

Opportunity Framework

First off, you have to know that there truly is a problem to solve or a result to achieve. You cannot help someone that doesn’t admit or realize that something needs to change. It doesn’t matter if you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there’s an issue; if you cannot get your prospect to see it and admit it, you’re wasting your time. On the flip side of this, it has to be a problem worth fixing or a result worth achieving. Organizations live in a constant state of brokenness - and that’s okay as long as they are still profitably functional. Some problems are worth fixing, some are not. Realize that as soon as possible and move on.

The second item to uncover is the prospect’s ability to make and act upon a decision. There’s nothing worse than someone who cannot make a decision and move on it. If you’re running into this, chances are you’re not talking to the real decision maker or you’re not helping them paint a picture of what life could be like after fixing the situation. If you work with large organizations, know that junior level managers and staff love to keep consultants and sales people busy. They like the power trip. And it makes them look productive to their bosses. You need assurance that the person you’re working with can say yes to your proposed solution before you invest a lot of time and energy.

The third leg of this stool is ensuring that appropriate resources are available to address the issue. Resources can take the shape of budget dollars, staff availability, executive oversight, equipment - anything required to make the solution a reality. If there’s not enough budget or internal staff resources, the project will never get off the ground. If you cannot get commitment from a certain executive for support, you’re on thin ice. How can you be successful without appropriate resources?

If any one of these three items is left unknown, you put the project and your success at risk. Chances are you’re going to waste a lot of time when this initiative stalls at some point in the future.

We’ve all seen good opportunities with no budget. We’ve all seen executives than cannot make a decision. We’ve all walked into a client’s office and almost tripped over the problems in the organization. If you are someone that wants to be recognized as an expert in their field; someone that wants to truly provide the best solution to the client’s problem; you owe it to yourself to slow down enough to uncover all three parts of an opportunity. And don’t be afraid to walk away if the opportunity isn’t ideal. You should only work in an environment where you are set up to succeed. If the project isn’t right, it isn’t right and now it’s time to move on.

You cannot expect the client to simply lay all of this out on the table for you. You have to dig. You have to ask the right questions to bring these issues to the forefront - and in doing so you will separate yourself from 98% of the other sales people out there. Too many people simply jump at what’s presented in an RFP or what’s said a meetings as gospel without digging any deeper. Clients want and expect you to ask tough questions. They want to know that you fully understand their issue inside and out before presenting a solution.

When you approach each opportunity as a chance to find the perfect solution for your client - whether it involves you or not - you’re doing the right thing. And Carma has a way of rewarding those that do the right thing. In order to understand the problem and propose the perfect solution, you need to know all three parts of an opportunity.

---

Nick Rice

I work with successful professional service firms that struggle to attract new clients and want to take their business to the next level. Download my free report, "7 Principles of Attracting More Clients" at http://www.nick-rice.com

Posted by Nick Rice at 2:44 PM | 1 Comment

Create, Rip, Mix and Burn: A New Model For Corporate Learning

The phrase "create, rip, mix and burn," popularized by Apple, summarizes how fans are personalizing and sharing their music experience. They are empowered with the ability to "create new music," "rip or copy music," "mix" this music to generate new musical creations and lastly "burn" this into a final new product to enjoy.

Richard Baraniuk is a professor at Rice University and founder of Connexions, a free, open-source, global clearinghouse of course materials. He has translated this concept of "create, rip, mix and burn" to textbooks and given people in almost 200 countries around the world the ability to create and share new textbooks on everything from engineering to ornithology to music, while adapting the content as they see fit. The potential is enormous. Catherine Schmidt-Jones, a mom in Illinois with a degree in music, creates music curriculum for children using the Connexions process which has been downloaded over 600,000 times from her site, many by traditional K-12 teachers.

Now fast forward - think about how this can be used in corporate learning. Rather than spending millions of dollars on designing expensive customized learning programs, everyone in the organization can be empowered to create new content using a Web 2.0 toolkit of blogs, wiki’s and RSS feeds. The advantages can be enormous including:

• Faster response time to changing, new knowledge
• Customizable to local needs that require a different presentation of material
• Lower cost
• Wider base of contributors and potentially richer content
• Faster translation to languages by members of the community

"Create, Rip, Mix and Burn" will continue to emerge as the new model for corporate learning in your organization.

Corporate Learning Consultant• New York City, NY • New Learning Playbook

Posted by Jeanne Meister at 10:34 AM | 1 Comment

February 2, 2008

The Leading Edge - Obama, Clinton '08

Obama, Clinton ‘08
with Bill as Secretary of State

Since I am not running for office, I respectfully exercise my right to change my mind or as I prefer to view it, have my opinion evolve. In a prior blog, “Why I switched to Hillary Clinton?” for which she and I took a fair amount of heat, I suggested that a Clinton, Obama ’08 ticket would be the way to go.

I’ve had a change of mind, because I’ve had a change of heart. Being an expert on emotional intelligence (so for those obsessive compulsive personalities who only focus on substance vs. style, please have at me), I’ve come up with something that makes more sense emotionally to me and I think will to others.

Essentially, Hillary Clinton does not “feel” like a CEO or someone that a lot of people would like to listen to for 4-8 years. It’s not her fault that she comes across too much like a primed-to-scold mother with her hands on her hips about to sternly say: “So why did you do that?” In fact I've heard that in a private relaxed setting and one on one she is quite warm and authentic (dare I say Al Gore who had the same reputation). However in public upon which the stage a President spends more of their time and where they are judged, she comes off more opinionated and insistent which too easily triggers a defensiveness or feeling that you’ve done something wrong even when you didn't. It’s like driving past a policeman in a car and feeling like you’ve broken the law when you haven’t.

It’s not just a female thing either. In the minds of most people, Carly Fiorina and Martha Stewart have similar “primed to be strident” public personalities, Meg Whitman does not.

Barack Obama on the other hand comes off as having strong opinions and being passionate which is easier to listen to. Bill Clinton had that quality (which is being eroded into as we sadly see a “darker” side of his personality showing through too frequently).

In my prior blog I thought Clinton as President, Obama as V.P. was the way to go. Currently, I have reversed that. The reason being that Obama feels more expansive and visionary and will be viewed more like an exuberant CEO and someone who will play better on the world stage both to other countries and to youth around the world (think Tony Blair and now Nicolas Sarkozy in France and Bill Clinton '92), Hillary Clinton feels more "baby boomer refusing to go gently into that good night," more focused on the details and pedantic the way you’d expect a COO to be. On the world stage, people would rather listen to a CEO than a COO.

If the best interests of this country could take precedence over ego and politics (which cynics and realists will say is not a “big” if, but an “impossible” if) Obama as President, Clinton as Vice President with Bill as Secretary of State and the “global market” facing presence to the world that continue to find him charming and inspiring would get my vote.

Posted by Mark Goulston at 5:03 PM | 2 Comments

A Different Approach to Planning

Can you name four magnificent events in your life which came about because of perfect planning? Sure, there was the vacation in '99. Then the move from… oh, scratch that. Even if I count a house we built, which was well-planned but not as-planned, I can't name four. Neither can anyone else I've asked.

Yet on Groundhog Day, when more than 70% of all New Year resolutions have been deep-sixed, it's easy to view the eleven months ahead as an empty field for making plans: carefully orchestrated, meticulously organized, stressed over and un-shadowed plans.

In the glow of possibility we seem to forget the 80/20 rule, the path of least resistance, the law of attraction, synchronicity and serendipity as the more accurate patterns for how (and why) change happens in real life.

I don't propose you stop planning all together. Buckminster Fuller said, "All physical movement is a series of course corrections." After you craft plans, persistently revisit and tenderly modify them whenever they lose step with the music. Be less gentle when subsequent activities acquire a life of their own. Above all, spend your time adjusting and equilibrating rather than entrenching yourself in plans created so far.

Take for instance a mid-size company influenced by a big consulting firm to develop a strategic plan. Objectives were agreed upon, analytic staff members were selected to lead the development, customers were polled, constituents and suppliers were surveyed and the board agreed this was to be the organization's new work. Task groups were formed and emails started flying.

Within only a few months, however, many who joined the development team because of an unwavering belief in planning ("If you don't know where you're going, every path leads there" and so on) became disillusioned and their energy began to flow elsewhere. Meanwhile, the development team grew frustrated and felt abandoned, becoming increasingly controlling rather than easing up.

When I was brought in to figure out how to get the strategy back on course, I interviewed the relevant and affected parties, learning that nonstop requests to ask if everyone was on track had become distracting and destructive, creating an environment inhospitable to how passionate people innovate and create something full of life.

We replaced check-in emails and conference calls with mid-course gatherings, both in person and online, where participants across task groups joined in to talk about new discoveries as well as how new information could help everyone work toward a better future.

In parallel, senior management met to revisit any objectives that needed rejiggering, actually altering their organization's targets to take into account new market factors, unexpected plays from competitors, changes in the economy and newfound intel from their teams.

Everyone in the organization became less focused on the course itself (recognizing the course itself didn't matter) and instead examined how where they were at any time could get them to their destination. One department head said this approach reminded her of how walking through the old town of an ancient city proves far more valuable than zooming along a modern road. You get to the same destination, but from only one do you actually learn something en route.

Even the organization's efficiency experts spoke of their delight when changed happened faster than anyone expected because people were now looking up and around rather than down at their desks figuring out how to cajole their work into someone else's form.

Almost a year after the new strategic plan was adopted and now guides much of their work (and as you might expect, gets regular tweaks), I hear from employees who tell me they've adopted a similar process in their personal lives: moving off course to be on target.

Rather than make your trek into spring fretting about the path you've already meandered off of, reassess where you are. Reflect on where you have journeyed. Then ask yourself if your target needs to be moved a little or maybe even completely changed, and then reset your trajectory accordingly. The sun will come up.

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Marcia Conner > www.marciaconner.com

Posted by Marcia L. Conner at 4:35 PM | 1 Comment

Technology: How Social is "Social" Media?

Jonny Goldstein interviewed me back in August 2007 on his show Jonny's Par-Tay [link]. Looking at the countdown timer to the end of the show, around -18:00 he asks me "So... Did you feel a little lonely before you got into all the social media stuff?" to which my response was that I'm actually LESS social NOW than I was before...

Continue reading "Technology: How Social is "Social" Media?"

Posted by Bill Cammack at 7:39 AM | 8 Comments

Xobni- Taming My Inbox

A few weeks ago I ran into a Beta for a product called Xobni Insite. (Xobni is Inbox spelled backwards). Xobni is another in a long line of email taming tools (NeoPro, TrogBar, Jello.Dashboard, Orgoo, etc). The big difference is this one really works.

Unlike a lot of the “inbox tamers” this one does not try to change the way I work. Instead it augments it. That was the key for me. I ran the Xobni installed, it installs a simple sidebar and starts to catalog all my emails. I have about 6 sets of Personal Folders and Xobni found them all. Once all the emails were cataloged (it only took a few minutes) I was ready to go.

I clicked on my first email in my inbox and here’s what I got

Email analytics

Each sender was ranked by the total amount of emails I sent them and that I received from them

I got a break down of the average time when emails were received by me from that sender. I quickly realized I have too many friends sending me emails at 1:30 am.

Availability Matrix

I love this feature. I have a lot of people who do not have access to my exchange server. With the click of a button, it will send that user a list of my availability times for the next 7 days.

Instant Search

Xobni's instant search allows me to search for someone with my emails.. For example I type in Daniel, I get a Wiki search, all people with Daniel as their name or part of their name and every email with the name Daniel mentioned in the body and/or title.

Quick attachment discovery.

Every attachment, no matter what folder, exchanged with this user is now accessible from the panel.

Threaded conversations

All my conversations with that user in one place. Click a thread and I see the conversation in full without leaving my inbox. I can directly reply or forward from the Xobni bar. It brings my favorite aspect of Gmail to Outlook (finally!)

Phone Numbers

Automatically extracts a contact's phone number from their signature. And supports dialing via Skype directly.

People Connected

This area shows me every person connected via email to that user. What is nice is address I have sent “one-off’s” to are listed here as they were part of communications with that user at some point.

Access to Appointments, Tasks, To-Do’s and Follow-up

All right from the Xobni bar.

The bottom line is the constant toggling between Outlook calendar, inbox, personal folders, and the to-do list is a pain and time consuming. Xobni removes all that. It lets you look for everything from within the sidebar, and correspond with people from it — all without leaving the email you were originally working on.

See it in action for yourself via their You Tube video here or at their site at www.xobni.com. Again, Xobni is still in beta but it’s one to watch and grab when the beta is up. If you do get in, Xobni offers some free invites for your friends. I still have one or two so if you’re interested, email me and I will shoot the first respondents one. Sorry Windows users only. There is no Mac version at this time.

Stephen is Sr. Partner and Network Architect with Odyssey Consulting Group and a Microsoft MVP in Connected Systems.

Posted by Stephen L Rose at 12:45 AM | 3 Comments

February 1, 2008

Work/Life: Recession and Work+Life Fit

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been repeatedly asked: “What do you think will happen to work+life fit and flexibility if the economy experiences a recession?”

I think two things will happen. Unfortunately, too many leaders and organizations will default to a shortsighted fall back position, “Forget flexibility. People are just lucky to have jobs.” But the smart leaders and organizations won’t. They will continue to move forward integrating flexibility into the way they do business because they understand that there is no turning back. To use a recession as an excuse to stop developing news ways of flexibly managing work and life will only put them further behind in terms of growth potential when a recession ends.

Continue reading "Work/Life: Recession and Work+Life Fit"

Posted by Cali Williams Yost at 1:03 PM | 1 Comment

Game Changers - Part Two

Last week I mentioned that a perfect storm is about to change the game on our energy future and, therefore, our environment and economy (the elements in this case being climate change; fossil fuel shortages; and epic world-wide competition for energy). I listed three technologies that will allow us to weather this storm, game-changers, and promised two more this week.

Continue reading "Game Changers - Part Two"

Posted by Terry Tamminen at 11:51 AM | 1 Comment

Work/Life: All Play and No Work...I Can Dream, Can't I?

Let the other bloggers concern themselves with the latest narrowing of the field in the presidential election; let a different set of online pundits make their Super Bowl predictions…I am moved to discuss a rather inspiring story I found online, only a click or two away from the headlines. Apparently there is a new trend in Europe in which outdoor playgrounds for the elderly are being built side-by-side with playgrounds for pre-schoolers.

The “Older People’s Play Area,” as the one at a park in Britain is called, was inspired by a similar facility in Germany, and the equipment is designed to keep the aging body toned up. I just love that image, of senior citizens, in the later years of life, romping around on play structures, right next to the representatives of the beginning years; one group is exploring their inner child, the other group indulging their outer one. It’s a great reminder of the importance of mindless play in keeping balanced at any age.

And it begs the question: so where’s the playground for the in-betweens? Those of us who are no longer children, but not yet retired or in our golden years? We’ve been relegated to the gym, but that’s just another scheduled block of work time, really (that’s why they call it a “work” out). Plus, everyone’s so serious at the gym; we grimly stare ahead as we run on the treadmill or ride the exercise bike with our Ipod headphones stuck in our ears. Even the more energetic spin or aerobics classes are overwrought in their energetic vibe: feeling the burn is yet another accomplishment in our achievement-oriented lives.

So get me to the playground, please. I want to come out of a department-wide meeting and go running for the swing set and the slide. After all, it’s hard to take dismal first-quarter projections too seriously when you’re diving into a sandbox and look like a total dork. Having trouble communicating with a difficult co-worker? How about a monkey bars challenge?

Let’s complete the triad begun by these new parks with a kids’ playground and a senior citizens’ playground on either side. Put the 28-64 demographic right in the middle. And someday people will be able to drive by and see a whole bunch of goofballs from every age group making complete idiots of themselves, all at the same time. Just try and stay unbalanced after a few weeks of that!

Posted by Tom Stern at 8:19 AM