Holiday plans
Just a short note to wish you and yours a happy and safe Thanksgiving holiday.
I will be enoying a couple days off and time with friends and family. I will not be publishing a Weekend Reader this Friday - I’m giving myself a complete break from work and personal obligations and look forward to recharging some batteries.
In the meantime, here’s two articles I found very appropriate for the holiday:
- Embracing positive psychology to teach our kids to be happy
- Highlights from the research project on Gratitude and Thanksgiving
Have a great holiday and do take some time to give thanks for all that is good in your life.
Related posts
Turning Buzzwords into Reality
As I reported on previously, last week I had the opportunity to moderate a panel entitled “Using Web 2.0 to Drive Top-Line Growth.” The panel did a great job, with several important themes coming out of the panel discussion and the networking afterwards.
We distribute feedback forms at every meeting and while the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, there were a couple obvious detractors. One comment in particular, caught my eye:
This Web 2.0 stuff is just too touchy-feely for me. It reminds me a lot of all the hype around the Internet pre-2000 and we all know what happened there…
Great comment, and one that was the genesis of this post. In truth, I had been thinking something along these lines for a while now. Not that Web 2.0 is a boom headed for a bust, but rather what is the fuss really all about? Skipping ahead to the answer (or at least my answer), it’s a forest for the trees paradox: too many people focus on the trees not the forest. It’s not about the tools, it’s about what they can do. And I contend that if you can get past the “touch-feely” nature of the tools, all Web 2.0 is doing is bringing back the good ‘ole days of doing business.
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DCO Weekend Reader - 11/21/08
The web is a vast repository of opinions, commentary and occasionally, wisdom. Here’s a selection of the best articles I read over the past week.
If you would like to recommend an article, blog or book, please leave a comment with your suggestion. Weekend Reader is a regular feature here at DCO, and you can read past Weekend Readers here.
Another solid week with lots of good stuff for you to read. The news about Mark Cuban and Jerry Yang was especially interesting to me and will be even more interesting to see how both play out. Mark’s situation as there is always more to the story that meets the eye and it will be interesting to see how Mark is treated in the context of Martha Stewart’s trial. In Jerry Yang’s case, very few entrepreneurs go on to actually run their companies. Jerry just took on the CEO role about a year ago and he’s already in trouble. I’ll be watching to see if he can recover.
A lot of information again this week on the topic of your career, protecting it against the recession, and making yourself more visible/valuable. I hope these posts continue to be interesting for you. My assumption is with everything going on and the continuing economic troubles we are all taking a hard look at our options and keeping those paychecks coming in the mail.
Less than a week until Turkey Day. Have a great weekend.
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Web 2.0 meets Web 1.0
I moderated a fantastic panel last night for the local SIM Chapter I’m a member of. As a Board member in charge of Programming, I’m always very nervous come meeting night. After four years of scheduling presenters, the one lesson I’ve learned is no amount of planning is sufficient to even guess how the program will be received. Having a panel presentation also adds to the degree of difficulty. Given some past bad experiences with moderators, I decided to moderate the panel myself.
I’m happy to say the panel was a tremendous success. The topic was “Using Web 2.0 to Drive Top-line Growth.” I leveraged my personal network for some great recommendations of panelists and ended up with Laura Bennett, President and Co-Founder of Embrace Pet Insurance; Kristy van Auken, SVP of Marketing and Communications for Akron Canton Airport; and David Toth, President and Co-Founder of Worksmart eMarketing, a consulting firm helping their clients understand and leverage social media and Web 2.0 mindsets.
For anyone looking for tips on putting together a successful panel, one of the keys to success last night was balance. Sure, all our presenters were knowledgeable about the subject matter. But what I heard after the event from our members was that there was great balance between the presenters. From strategy to metrics to specific campaigns, there was a minimum of overlap between the speakers. Everyone brought a different perspective which added greatly to the panel.
Leveraging Web 2.0 to drive growth is a hot topic these days. What was interesting about last night was the audience questions as an indicator of where certain industries are and what is holding them up from embracing these new channels to market. With our panel representing Web 2.0, a large portion of the audience was still Web 1.0 focused. Our group has a diverse mix of companies, but generally they reflect our regional economy fairly well: B2B manufacturing and financial primarily, with some education and service companies. While education and services have tended to embrace these new tools, manufacturing and finance still have lots of questions.
The discussions, and questions, were wide-ranging. A few main points rose to the top that I thought you might be interested in.
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IBD’s 10 Secrets to Success
Attending a luncheon presentation at a private club downtown last week, I arrived a bit early. That happens often to me. What can I say - I was raised in the country; it took at least 30 minutes to get anywhere, usually more like an hour. So, especially for meetings very close to me, I’m typically a bit early. I suppose I could have worse habits.
The club had copies of Investor’s Business Daily laying out and I started flipping through one. In their Leaders & Success section, they had a sidebar article on their 10 Secrets to Success. In addition to discussion entrepreneurial qualities on this blog, I had also planned on examining Leadership traits, so this little article was perfect timing.
Drawing upon “years analyzing leaders and successful people in all walks of life,” here are their 10 Secrets to Success:
- How you think is everything. Always be positive. Think success, not failure. Beware of a negative environment.
- Decide upon your true dreams and goals. Write down your specific goals and develop a plan to reach them.
- Take action. Goals are nothing without action. Don’t be afraid to get started. Just do it.
- Never stop learning. Go back to school or read books. Get training and acquire skills.
- Be persistent and work hard. Success is a marathon, not a sprint. Never give up.
- Learn to analyze details. Get all the facts, all the input. Learn from your mistakes.
- Focus your time and money. Don’t let other people or things distract you.
- Don’t be afraid to innovate; be different. Following the herd is a sure way to mediocrity.
- Deal and communicate with people effectively. No person is an island. Learn to understand and motivate others.
- Be honest and dependable; take responsibility. Otherwise, #1-9 don’t matter.
I think this is a great place to start a discussion of Leadership qualities and some great advice there to think about and compare to your current approach to life and business.
How are you doing?
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Content comment for 11/14/08 Weekend Reader
The very first bullet in the Weekend Reader under Personal Excellence & Leadership mentioned a psychological examination of trust. If you were interested in the findings, but didn’t see any links, then you were probably reading either within an RSS reader or via E-mail. I used an embedded audio widget so you could play the segment right from the reader, and it turned out not to be visible in either RSS or E-Mail.
Just click DCO Weekend Reader to come directly to the post on my website and you’ll be able to play the segment.
Sorry about that - most widgets at least give at least a visible small link. I’ll know better next time.
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DCO Weekend Reader - 11/14/08
The web is a vast repository of opinions, commentary and occasionally, wisdom. Here’s a selection of the best articles I read over the past week.
If you would like to recommend an article, blog or book, please leave a comment with your suggestion. Weekend Reader is a regular feature here at DCO, and you can read past Weekend Readers here.
Wow - jam-packed Weekend Reader this week. We’ve got radio, we’ve got video, the only thing we’re missing is puppies. I’m not even sure where to start to recommend a “must read” for the week.
For Leaders I think your must read is the post on Leadership being a choice. At the same time inspirational yet re-affirming, a good levelset for making sure you’ve made the right choice and what happens if you don’t. I also like the post on C-Level resumes. Good advice for how it needs to be different from earlier in your career, especially if you want to switch industries. Entrepeneurs? If your concept is software-based, check out Microsoft’s BizSpark program to save that precious cash.
Feel free to peruse the rest, I hope you find some value. As always - have a great weekend!
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Entrepreneurial Qualities Survey followup 1 of 3
As promised, I’ve given some thought to the results generated by the Entrepreneurial Qualities survey I recently ran. I’m going to break my thoughts into four separate posts:
- Thoughts on the qualities voted “necessary”
- Thoughts on the qualities voted “supporting”
- Comments recap
- Where to from here on the topic
The first post is the easy one - a recap on the qualities voted as necessary and my thoughts. If you remember, I defined a quality voted as necessary as one capturing a solid 80% of the total vote. This resulted in the following 11 qualities:
- Commitment
- Communication
- Competence
- Courage
- Focus
- Hard working
- Initiative
- Passion
- Positive attitude
- Responsibility
- Vision
Small surprises
Out of this list, nothing really took me as “out of left field”, although there were a couple that I must admit I was mildly surprised to see voted as necessary; in particular, Communication and Positive Attitude.
On Communication, I’m not surprised to see it identified as a necessary quality, it absolutely is. I guess I was more surprised to see it voted as one. Given the somewhat obvious nature of some of the other qualities it was nice to see this one identified as well. Plus, entrepreneurs don’t always recognize the value of good communications skills.
Positive Attitude was a bit more of a surprise, and another pleasant one. Given all the challenges, demands and setbacks you endure as an entrepreneur, a positive attitude is an important attribute of success. To see it voted as a necessary quality was a bit surprising and an interesting result. Personally, I’m torn as to whether it’s absolutely a necessary quality, but if I look back at how I described necessary qualities (that possessing a preponderance of them could be viewed as greatly increasing your chance of success), then I’m inclined to agree with the survey. Plus, a positive attitude just creates so much good business karma that it truly is indispensable.
Anything missing?
There were a couple of qualities that got voted as supporting that I tend to think of as necessary. Primary among them is Coachability. This is the quality that entrepeneurial support folks like me (and investors by the way) look for to guage how positively the entrepreneur responds to constructive criticism and alternate business models. We’re not looking to see if the entrepreneur will automatically change just because someone challenges them, but rather how positively they respond.
Also, I thought Faith would end up as a necessary quality, kind of like Positive Attitude. I wonder if people thought I meant Faith as in religious faith? What I really meant is just that unshakeable attitude that most serious entrepreneurs I meet have that whatever happens they just know things will work out okay.
The supporting quality that came the closest to being voted as necessary, without getting there, was Discipline. This one makes more sense to me. We see all kinds of undisciplined entrepreneurs, but as long as they have a balance to that nature, be it through Focus, a disciplined partner, or maybe actually being disciplined but just hiding it well by being disorganized, there are many ways to overcome a lack of discipline.
So all in all, I don’t think there were any huge errors of omission for necessary qualities. The only one I may override is Coachability.
Next up - a review of the qualities voted as “supporting”.
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The point of that last post
Most of my posts get written at night and then are scheduled to go live the following morning. So it went with my last post on using social networks to build relationships in response to the economic downturn. I had just finished the post and was getting ready to call it a night. I’m not a Blackberry addict, but I do usually check my messages one last time before going to bed both as preparation for the following day and just in case there is something I need to reply to.
One of the messages I had was a fairly ordinary E-mail invite to a webinar. What caught my eye was that while it was E-mailed directly to me, the greeting was “Dear Craig”. I’m going to avoid naming the company, but even more ironic was the subject of the webinar: “How to create a winning collaboration strategy.” Yet even more ironic was this short comment stating the core value-add of the webinar:
Learn how to get dramatic business results from collaboration with a people-centered strategy.
Umm, your “people-centered strategy” apparently doesn’t know that my name is Dave, not Craig.
It gets better.
Checking my E-Mail in the morning, I saw a follow-up message from the same sender. Taking a quick glance, I saw it started off with “I am re-sending the email below because many people alerted me…” Great - they corrected the problem. Arriving at work I read the rest of the E-Mail which said the problem was that many people reported that the E-mail was corrupted and unreadable, not that their names were wrong. This update E-mail was still addressed to Craig.
So what’s my point?
My point is not to write a negative post; it’ not really even to have a quick chuckle at the irony of the situation. And it’s not a cautionary tale about making sure to double-, even triple-check mailers for accuracy before they go out.
My point is that today’s social tools can cut both ways. Sure, you can get “dramatic business results from collaboration…” You can also shoot yourself in the foot pretty easily too. I still think a lot of companies are straddling the fence when it comes to new marketing strategies, and mixing “target marketing” tactics with “social networking” themes. Nothing wrong with that, we all move forward in our own way and at our own pace.
What I don’t get the sense companies are doing though is realizing the game has changed and the stakes, in some sense, are higher. At least expectations are higher. I’m not knocking this company for making a mistake - we’ve all made mistakes throughout our career. But when their E-mail goes on to say:
If you’re not familiar with Company X, we deliver enterprise social networking combined with collaboration. Businesses use Company X to reduce by 1/3 the time their staff spends every day searching for information and people, and to speed up cycle times in virtually all functions across the organization.
and you got my name wrong on the E-Mail, you’ve got instant credibility issues.
So don’t read this post and think I’m saying you can never make a mistake. The point I’m trying to make is that if you’re trying to play in the social networking / collaboration space, then just as the opportunity is higher, I think the expectations for authentic messages and relationships is also higher. One “whoops” can detract from a whole lot of good work.
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Dots: Connected - Thanks Chris
I’ve always felt I’m a good “connect the dots” kind of person, whether those dots are people, concepts, initiatives, strategies, etc. In a sense a big part of my job now is helping entrepreneurs connect dots: their business concept to markets, their markets to market pain, market pain to opportunity and opportunity to investment.
I’ve written before about some Social Networking basics. In this post on leveraging social networks, I talk a bit at the end about the power of social networks, that “viral” nature that you hear so much about and how a well run campaign has the power to add exponential, potentially explosive results to your company.
File that away as Dot A.
Obviously, it doesn’t a blog post to know that we are in the midst of a huge economic crisis. We can debate the roots of the crisis ad nauseum, but the results are that companies are going out of business, people are getting laid off, and sales are down. Pretty much across the board.
File that away as Dot B.
Now it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to connect Dot A (potentially explosive lead-generating technology) to Dot B (we really need some new business). Maybe you’ve tried some new media campaigns in you company, maybe you’re just considering it. But I think (I would like to think, at least) that most smart companies are thinking through how to take advantage of these new channels.
There are different levels of genius when it comes to connecting dots, and the Chris I refer to in the title is Chris Brogan, blogger and consultant specializing in helping companies use social networks to build relationships and add value. Chris’ takes the connection between our two dots above to a whole ‘nother level in his post Target Marketing. It is a quick read and if you have any involvement in your company’s value chain involved in retaining customers I highly suggest it to you.
Chris does a fantastic job of not only painting a bleak picture for us of why our current attraction and retention methods aren’t working, but more importantly I think helping us see through the fog of hype and point out a concrete way social networking and new media strategies can help us through these difficult times. My paraphrase of Chris’ argument would go something like this:
- The Internet (and following it’s lead most print and TV news outlets) have turned us into “snackers”. We don’t read anymore, we skim.
- Even if we take the time to read some things, we don’t care. The overload of spam, mailers, E-Mail newsletters, website banners, etc. etc. has numbed us to traditional “target marketing”.
- Chris solution? Not as you might imagine. Sure he thinks the answer lies in Social Networking, but the solution to your dilemma is to Build. Relationships. Now.
The message is to cut back on the traditional approach (target marketing). It isn’t working. Save the money and redeploy some of it on well crafted social networking campaigns designed to build relationships.
Normally, I’m naturally suspicious of people touting solutions that just happen to match their soapbox. This is one case where I think the message is spot on. Something to think about.
BTW - if you have the time to read the comments on Chris’ post, there are some good ones in there. In particular, I liked a couple comments comparing social networking’s focus on building authentic relationships with good customer service of “days gone past”. I’ve been remarking to many business associates of late that I think the dearth of quality customer service is a huge market opportunity for companies that can take advantage of it.
There’s another great comment about 2/3 of the way down that reminds us of a great tool we all used to use every day to build relationships. You almost certainly have one on your desk. It’s probably square, made out of plastic, and has twelve keys on it with letters and numbers. It’s your phone and nothing beats an old-fashioned, voice to voice phone call for reinvigorating a relationship.
