Being of Service

Starting next Wednesday I am going to be engaged in an intensive course on being of service...........

My wife is having foot surgery and will be unable to put any weight on her foot for 6 to 9 weeks!!!

I wouldn't say I am lazy, although she might, but she has spoiled me rotten, cooking really healthy meals, grocery shopping, keeping the house clean, etc. etc. ( I do grill, like most men, we that's helping).

We also have a recent addition to the family, Sadie, a beagle shih tzu mix that is without question, the cutest puppy on the planet. Our vet says Sadie could rule the world!! She does however have more energy than I do and she and my 6 year old schnauzer don't always see eye to eye. Sadie being still very puppy like things she's the center of the universe.

So starting next Wednesday I am going to be in an intensive course on being of service to my wife, pur puppy, etc. etc.

Wish me luck........well patience........

I will keep you posted on how the course is going and what new insights I have gained.

Popping my Cherry, so to speak..........

OK Everyone,

Lalita invited me to contribute to the totalteam blog and I accepted. I thought, "Yeah, it's about time to put my toe in the water of the blogosphere".

My wife keeps asking me, "what's the big deal about blogs?" "Why do people do it?" "What's the point?"

All good questions. I have been reading a number of blogs for a brief time and have found myself learning from people that I had not even known before.

So for me, sharing what we know, expressing what we think hopefully forwards the ball in the game of life. Sorry for the sports analogy, I am NOT a sports fan, but I figure everyone seems to get sports analogies.

OK, here I go!

I have been around the block once or twice and not necessarily the same block. I started out my engineering education as a Biomedical Engineering major, worked as a lab assistant to earn my work/study grant money and learned welding and machining as part of the job.

Junior year of college I come to find out that in 1976 no one wants to hire biomedical engineers, no less understand what they did. So I changed majors to another obscure major, Fluid and thermal sciences, a subset of Aerospace engineering. Why fluid and thermal science? It was the one major at Case Institute of Technology that accepted my biomedical engineering courses and would let me graduate with only 1 extra semester, instead of 2 or more.

I was hired by the infamous General Electric in what was then called Installation and Service Engineering as a Field Service Engineer. I was hired to maintain, overhaul and construct large scale commercial power plant equipment like steam turbines, gas turbines, and all the related knick knacks associated with them in power plants. Sort of related to my degree but not really.

I loved the work. Who wouldn't love erecting machinery components that weigh hundreds of tons! Running crews of tradesmen as large as 150, managing projects as much has $50 million dollars almost right out of college???

I did hate living in motels, however, and oh yea, working 7 days a week 12 to 14 hours a day for months on end. I used to average over 3000 hours a year worked. A bit much for even a youngster.

Seven years on the calendar, and what felt like 20 years of my life later, I left GE and field service. My local management would never let me take an office job, or transfer to an office job in another region, "because you are too valuable to us in the field running projects", they would say. So I had to quit once my health started suffering. I had three hospitalizations my last year with GE field service. It apparently wasn't a powerful enough indicator to them that I needed to get off the road.

So I left. I went from huge noisy, dirty powerplants, with a bunch of roughneck tradesmen to, of all places, Avon Products plant in Cincinnati! At the time there were 1300 employees at the plant. 300 of them were men!!! Let's do the math...............1000 women, 300 men?!?
Hmmmmmmm, a big change for me. Plus suits and ties were required and I was no longer going to be paid for over 1000 hours of overtime a year. BIG CHANGES EVERYWHERE.

There are some stories there, but we can get into them some other time. Let's just say that after two years I moved on. The next job lasted a little over a year, and the next one about a year and then I ended up at Cincinnati Milacron as a Senior Project Manager. Great job, impressive talent, incredible products, terrible management. That lasted almost 2 years, and then hard to believe it, I ended up back with the General!

I ended up at GE Aircraft Engines as a Staff Engineer in their develop test group. I got to work with really big noisy machinery again, roughneck tradesmen again, and working for Thomas Edison again. (GE was originally the Edison General Electric Company).

I lasted in that environment about 9 years and again, in typical GE fashion, I was not allowed to move to other positions or up, "because you are too valuable to us in your current role". Hmmmmm, that sounded awfully familiar. After much gnashing of teeth and meetings with HR I was finally released and transferred over the the Facilities Engineering group at the same 6.5 million sf facility in charge of all the mechanical plant systems, HVAC, steam, chilled water, etc.

As I had a bunch of experience in this field it was technically pretty comfortable, but with cost cutting and dozens of layers of management I was suffocating. They finally gave me a break!

They laid me off in 2002. That's how I ended up at the University of Cincinnati. They were building a new power plant, they didn't have anyone who knew how to build one, I did and the rest, as they say is history.

Along with the job stories above there was a marriage, 3 children, a divorce, a remarriage, a step son, being trained to lead programs by Landmark Education, teaching at the UC College of Applied Science since 1988 and a few other items, like winning a grand prize at the Sculpture Center in Cleveland and going from a tool box in my garage to a 5400 sf studio where I have completed large scale architectural sculpture, wrought iron railings, synagogue and church commissions, and have spent many an hour covered in grinding dust and breathing welding fumes, but I would replace them for the world! Check it out: http://www.raymillerstudio.com/

I guess that's droning on enough for now.......more later. I bet Lalita will be shaking her head over inviting me to contribute.

Strike a Match (between your brand and your ideal customer)

Scott and I were talking about customer demographics--how to better "dial into" the kind of customer we want. I'd remembered this article from an old FastCompany magazine and shared it with him (and now you, because it had such staying power). It profiled those who frequent the sophisticated brand, Anthropoligie, a brand I've been interesting in for quite some time.

Here's an excerpt:

"Ask anyone at Anthropologie who that customer is, and they can rattle off a demographic profile: 30 to 45 years old, college or post-graduate education, married with kids or in a committed relationship, professional or ex-professional, annual household income of $150,000 to $200,000. But those dry matters of fact don't suffice to flesh out the living, breathing woman most Anthropologists call "our friend." Senk, 46, says, "I like to describe her in psychographic terms. She's well-read and well-traveled. She is very aware -- she gets our references, whether it's to a town in Europe or to a book or a movie. She's urban minded. She's into cooking, gardening, and wine. She has a natural curiosity about the world. She's relatively fit."

"While most retailers today are obsessed with the highly lucrative and populous "tween" (preteen and young teen) and boomer markets, Anthropologie has cultivated an understanding of and connection to the ultimate tweener: the thirtysomething sophisticate, once known as a Gen-Xer, who has carried her mildly rebellious, against-the-grain independence into a serious career and family life. She's defined less by static qualities and more by a set of dynamic tensions. If the tween anthem is Britney Spears's "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman," the Anthropologie customer's plaint is more Alanis Morissette: "I've got one hand in my pocket, and the other one is giving the peace sign." Translation: "I can't pick up my children or sit through a meeting in low-rise jeans, but I'm not nearly ready for an elastic waistband."

"The Anthropologie customer is affluent but not materialistic. She's focused on building a nest but hankers for exotic travel. (She can picture herself roughing it with a backpack and Eurail pass -- as long as there is a massage and room service at end of the trek.) She'd like to be a domestic goddess but has no problem cutting corners (she prefers the luscious excess of British cooking sensation Nigella Lawson to the measured perfection of Martha Stewart). She's in tune with trends, but she's a confident individualist when it comes to style. She lives in the suburbs but would never consider herself a suburbanite. (This is where Senk's kinship to his customer is most apparent. He had lived in cities all over the world -- London, San Francisco, New York, and Philadelphia -- before settling in an elegant turn-of-the-century house in the Philadelphia garden suburb of Chestnut Hill with his partner, Anthropologie antiques buyer Keith Johnson. Says Senk: "We're city people -- we'd never dreamed of moving to the suburbs. But Chestnut Hill is sophisticated. It's like
a suburb in the city.")

"The Anthropologie woman is not so much conflicted as she is resistant to categorization. Her identity is a tangle of connections to activities, places, interests, values, and aspirations. She's not married with two kids: She's a yoga-practicing filmmaker with an organic garden, a collection of antique musical instruments, and an abiding interest in Chinese culture (plus a husband and two kids). It's no coincidence that Julia Roberts is the celebrity avatar of Anthropologie. Not only is she a frequent shopper (along with many of Hollywood's strongest-minded women, including Susan Sarandon, Sharon Stone, and Madonna), but her bohemian-chic wardrobe in The Mexican was Anthropologie sourced."

Though I'd worked out all of the "dry matters of fact," I didn't' have a clear--no--Technicolor picture of my "living" customer and couldn't tell the story of this key contributor to my brand story like a page from my favorite novel. Yipes. Look for more as I put more flesh on their bones.

You Don't Know Jack!

Big drinker that I am (Garland cuts me of the java, because he thinks it goes to my noggin), I read an article about international focus group strategy used by the Jack Daniels distillery to expand its brand and it left me a little troubled.

It assumes that the German, Australian, Japanese and British people studied are one monolithic "culture." Even Britain, made up of several distinct indigenous people (Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish, and peoples from the outlying islands) with a host of immigrants (one in five children born in Britain are born to foreign-born mothers. Even in the IPS school system here in Indy, there are over 130 languages spoken in the children's homes (not just English and Spanish!).

Exactly what "culture" were they talking about in this article?

As I travel (5 countries on 5 continents so far), I'm struck by how difficult it is to categorize the people I found. How, exactly could a focus group leader do it?

Of critical importance would be a keen understanding of their home cultures as well as of those of the brand's home country. The article talked about studying their body language and facial movements. I did my graduate work in psychology the first time through and I can tell you that no psychological scientist worth a sprinkle of table salt would assert that they could "read" faces and body language effectively, particularly from those of other cultures and ethnicities.

I remember a college psych class I took. Subjects were to look at pictures of faces and guess what emotion it represented. They did fairly well "reading" the faces of members of their own racial/ethnic/gender group, but didn't fare so well when the face looked different than the ones usually at their kitchen table.

Having a translator who could handle the language is one thing: Having one with a keen understanding of a variety of cultures and of marketing is quite another.

My Darling OQO Has a Wart!

Weekend before last, I got to hang with my extended family: Garland; his cousins, who I just met; my friend Gigi (Garland's first wife), her gentleman friend; Addai (Garland's oldest) and his wife, Egem. We'd gotten together in Chicago the night before to see stepdaughter Shani's Broadway debut in The Color Purple.

She was amazing.

Anyway, before I start waxing braggadocios about that girl, let me get back to the piece that's critically important: Addai's OQO US Model 02 (and yes, I've got issues!). As it turns out, Egem, his wife of less than a year, had ordered one for him and he wanted to show it to me. As I held it in my hands and looked at it with shining eyes, he explained how he had it set up to "talk" to his desktop computer at his SOHO...How it was easier to carry and that it was a dream to use...How he'd upgraded the hardware to better serve his needs.



I could hear angels singing. That is, until I tried using the mouse. It was waaay over on the right hand side. No matter what I did, I couldn't easily get my left thumb over there. Forget using my right thumb. I just didn't have the fine motor control (you try using your other hand to mouse over to something before you scratch your noggin and mutter at your screen). Other than the fact that they'd set up the form factor for a right-handed populace, it was perfection itself.

Of, of course, I wrote to the people who'd created the object of my lustful tech affection. Here's what I wrote (with shaking fingers) to the good people at OQO:

I was so excited I was almost giddy when a family member showed me his OQO model 2. I'd been following the OQO's for months and was convinced that I would replace my company laptop with one when it came time.

You can't imagine my surprise and disappointment when I learned that the mouse was on the right hand side. I am one of the estimated 8.4 million left-handers on planet Earth (14% in the general population...more when you consider Asian populations or creative professionals which tend to have higher instances of left-handedness than in the general population). Using the trackball mouse was torture. Try switching the mouse buttons on your computer and then putting your mouse on the left. It will take about 30 seconds to see what I mean and, more than likely, you'll use your right hand to use the mouse on the left side. This is what I ended up doing: putting the machine down and using my left hand to use the mouse button. Frustrating and unnecessary.

Nick Merz, your VP of Design should have known better than to design a product that so obviously excludes roughly 14% of the possible market share for this subnotebook market. Please centrally locate the mouseball on the keyboard. I will purchase one immediately.

Period.

Now, I don't expect to hear from these good people beyond the automated response and I don't think for a moment that they'll change the button placement after hearing from little ole me. But I can hope.

What's interesting is how we approach offerings like this. They don't come out and say that this product is for right-handed people only. They don't even offer an easy workaround (not even for more money). This kind of thing leaves me wondering: What are we thinking with respect to who our customers are. I don't reckon that OQO decided to make a product that's hard for leftys to use. I think it didn't cross their radar. Also, looking at the people who were doing the product reviews, I noted that they were all right-handed men.

What's this all mean? Heck if I know. I just want one.

It's Been Rough...

I've been quiet for a while.

Here's the scoop. Everybody's finally fine. Garland just finished his three month treadmill test and his cardiologist is very pleased. He had a little angina (still has some blockages), but his doc said that everything is moving the right direction. Dad came out the other side of his septic pneumonia (a deadly form) looking better and feeling better than he had in years (only Dad could take a running slide toward the Abyss and come out healthier). He's continuing his rehab at a local gym and is strong and quite...well, alive! He went back to visit the rehab center where he stayed for two months. They simply didn't recognize him. He's gorgeous!

In the midst of all this, I found a mole that was getting very large and a very...weird (its own technicolor mole show). When I pointed this out to my doctor, he immediately produced a set of scalpels and started hacking it off (with clear margins to make sure he got it all). Then, off it went for biopsy.

Um, yay....*

Listening to him worry aloud whether it was a nasty skin cancer (I'm Black, people! Mighty melanin protect me!), I just didn't think I could deal with anything else this year--I'd already weathered the one-two punch of Dad's major illness and Garland's heart treatment. Then Dr. Park, still suturing up my leg, said "If it's nothing, you'll know. If it's something not so good, you'll deal with it. That's what you do."

It was that statement that left me with tears in my eyes. No matter now much got heaped on, how the illnesses of these important men in my life left me with a business with no actual business and work I'd never thought I'd need to do, I was there: battling for their health and wellness for over a quarteryear with all the love and hope I had when others had given up.

I'm rebuilding my business. I'll be straight with all of you. And it's not the most fun I've ever had, but like Dr. Park indicated about my dealing with the possibility of cancer, I'll get through it.

Like he said: That's what I do.

I'm carefully considering what (and who) I want to let back in and where I've been tolerating business deals that made money but no sense. I'm making sure that I re-invigorate my business with only the elements that give me a chance to use my SuperPowers (more on that later) and see others use their mutant powers for the forces of good.

I recently saw the Broadway production of The Color Purple. My stepdaughter is in it. She lives by her passion for music and dance and doesn't let anything else get in the way of that passion--not even her own "sensible" voice that says "make sure you have a fallback plan."

I adore that about her.

I've also stopped bullshitting about my well-being. No more pretending that I'm ever too busy to eat or work out or get a good (read: complete) night's sleep. Dad said I had to: "We can't take care of you as good as you take care of us!" Sweet man!

You'll be hearing more from me as I pick up my pace. Some of it will really shame me to admit (like that I top the scales at over 180 pounds). Other stuff will be easier (I've booked lots of speaking engagements, added two new clients and my podcast is expanding). I'll want to convince you that I'm really talented and that this was just an unavoidable circumstance I had to deal with (when you hear that, know that I'm just scared or tired or worried). I want to see how my sharing with you, openly and generiously about the truth of where I'm at, can add value to your business day. And then some days I won't want to talk with you at all.

See what you can get for yourself.

Now, I'm going to have at it!

Cheers!

LNB #047: Just Say "No?!" (pt. 3) It's What You Say "Yes" To...

Just say "no?" Seems like this has energized many of you (ticking off some) and gotten you into action.

Being one who thinks when it gets tough one should dig deeper (as opposed to scarpering away), we're going to look some more at this ugly topic.

We've discussed the bloated lifestyle that has us say "yes" to everything without limitation...and then giving up sleep, family life and sanity to try to make it all work. We've talked about the fact that our actions (including what we say) is given by our belief systems: If you're worried about your image and want to look good, you may find yourself a slave to it, saying "yes" to things that will raise you in the esteem of others, while your find yourself filled with resentment (or copping out, running late or other tactics to make the pain go away).

Here, we're looking at what we say "yes" to. We discussed that by not knowing the answers to several key questions about our business (business unit or department), we wind up at a loss about what we should be saying "yes" and "no" to in the first place. Mentioned also was the point that we're not having a happy relationship with many of the "source documents" for our businesses (like our business and action plans or our budgets). We create them once (if we do at all) and then operate like they don't exist.

Resources
Simplify Your Work Like: Ways to Change the Way You Work So You Have More Time to Live...some of these suggestions are stunningly simple and effective

The One-Page Proposal: How to Get Your Business Pitch onto One Persuasive Page. After completing your plan, you'll know what you should be saying both "yes" and "no" to.

TotalTeamSolutions.com: Contact me for help with your plan. I'm a licensed One Page Plan consultant and can help you as the owner or leader of a management team get--and keep--your act together.

Listen Now: 17:16

TEDGlobal talks premiere online

I got this from the TEDTalks people. Worth a read (and a looksie).

Dear TEDizens,

I'm pleased to tell you that today we're premiering the first online talks from this summer's extraordinary TEDGlobal: "Africa: The Next Chapter." The talks from the conference have been buzzed about around the blogosphere, and we're thrilled now to offer them as they happened.

Whether or not you were with us in Arusha, you will want to check these out ... and then join the exhilarating conversation taking place about Africa's brighter future.

Four talks to kick things off:

Euvin Nadoo set the scene on day one, describing a continent poised to light up.

George Ayittey roused the audience, alternating from lacerating criticism of Africa's "hippo generation" to an inspiring appeal for the "cheetah generation" to rise.

Ngozi Okono-Iweala, the final speaker, provided a tour-de-force, telling powerful personal stories and showing how the different pieces of the aid vs trade argument, which had animated the conference all week, could be reconciled.

And 19-year-old William Kamkwamba won a standing ovation for his shy 3-minute interview, revealing how as a 14-year-old he had solved his parents' energy needs in a village with no electricity.

Over the coming months we'll continue to release ever more of these talks. These represent just the tip of the iceberg...

All best,

Chris Anderson, TED Curator
Emeka Okafor, Conference Director,
TEDGlobal

Poorer Paris!

This one snuck up on me. Paris Hilton's grandfather, Barron, and partiarch of the Hilton clan has said "Enough" after Paris does her time in jail. His concern? Paris has finally done enough to sully the Hilton name. I wonder what he was thinking though all of her other antics (sex tape, tardy appearances, no undie-plundies)...

This will serve as a $60 million spanking.

Now, what I'm interested in is the business application at work here. Paris, a businesswoman and owner of the Paris Hilton brand has failed in going up against Barron Hilton, the keeper of the Hilton brand (that is until Blackstone takes it over in an upcoming buyout).

Click here to read the full article on the website

There's a Killer Weed in Lake Caddo!

Um, this really does have something to do with business.

Really!

I was sitting at Rick's Cafe Boatyard, having a leisurely lunch with one of my clients a dear friend. We were catching up on her business doings. She described her partnerrship: they were still ineffective in problem-solving and it wasn't going much of anywhere. One, for example, would point out a problem and then blame one of the other partners for it (ignoring his own performance). Another, knowing that reducing errors is a chief way to increase the bottom line in the business, just hasn't taken action to create the needed systems (for a couple of years).

Just when I thought it was going to get depressing enough that I was going to have to start drinking (and I'm not an imbiber), she said: "There's a killer weed in Lake Cadd0."

Brilliant!

I'd actually seen the news report she was referring to and knew that the sun hadn't completely baked her noggin. See, at the border between Texas and Louisiana, there's a lake that's gotten choked with what the U.S. Geological Survey calls the world's most noxious weed. Reports explain that it is "under siege by a fast-spreading, Velcro-like aquatic fern, Salvinia molesta, also known as Giant Salvinia." The South American weed, which can double in size in just two days, covers everything in the lake and everything under the weed dies.

Evil plants. Kind of like the Triffids. I digress.


Here's the thing: Texans have leaped into action (or as nearly as they can given the heat), spraying and hacking at the villainous vine, but to little avail. Even singer Don Henley, who has a small home on a nearby waterway, has taken action to protect the landscape on the Texas side of the waters. The Louisianans? Not so. Now the Texans are putting up nets to keep the green invader on the Louisiana side of the fence.

In reminding me about this recent story, she was telling me that she had exactly the same kind of ineffective action taking place: varying levels of awareness, blame, finger-pointing, ineffective action, taking sides.

This is why I really like this woman.

We were quiet for a while, watching the boats on the reservoir. Wanting to open up another subject, I asked her what she thought about the property tax situation in the city. Her response: "There's a killer weed in Lake Caddo."

And she quietly took another sip of her iced tea and watched the ducks fly out over the water

100 tips to improve your life

Recently, I have began reading a number of self-improvement websites or as some people call it, life hacking. In my effort to unleash Me 2.0 these blogs and sites are priceless. I have gotten many insights into being more productive, being a better Dad, how to beat bad habits and implement new good ones, and a number of other stuff I find interesting. Today, my rss reader was graced with a sweet collection of links that I just had to share. Entitled: 100 Tips to Improve Your Life

Enjoy!

Why your business needs a blog….NOW!

Want to get from under the web radar? You’d like to expand the exposure of your website on the cheap, well you need a blog. Here’s why.

Every website needs a dynamic area and a static area.

This set-up creates a symbiotic relationship between the two. It’s kinda like having the institutional and the commercial areas of a city. The city hall and the downtown. Every city needs both and each zone needs the other. Together they add up to more than the sum of the parts. The Static being the brochure section, the mayor’s house, city hall. This area establishes who you are and what you do and your services etc. The other area is your happening, dynamic district. It’s SOHO, The Market, The Mall, Starbucks, Where the artists come and chat over coffee and crumpets , where connections are made and bonds are forged. Ideas are continuously disseminated. This would be your blog.

Once you have this set up, the blog does a number of things;
1. It rises your sites rank in Google hence people find you easier. This happens because Google targets key words as it relates to a certain topic, say “healthy living in Denver”. The more key words you have related to this topic of interest the higher you will rise over time in rankings. It’s that simple. It really isn’t rocket science all this SEO stuff just boils down to 2 words, keyword density. Density equals Mass over Volume. Have as much of the text mass of your site filled with a high volume of keywords. That’s how you become a heavy player.

2. It gives people a reason to continuously come to the site therefore keeping your brand… top of mind. Top of mind is prime mental real estate, as opposed to the back burner, which is equivalent to way way way beyond the wrong side of the tracks. You want to have people’s thoughts on auto-pilot to your brand/site/product when they think of a certain area of interest. All the big brands do this, they stay top of mind. The cheapest way to do this is with a web log that is refreshed frequently with relevant information.

3. You establish yourself as the ultimate font of information regarding your specific are of interest. Posting regular, recent and relevant info is the hardest part of maintaining a blog, but it is the most rewarding. This is what delivers the hits. Trust me.

The reason weblogs and the like have become so popular, is that they give your potential client a reason to trust you hence a reason to have you and keep you as a service provider. The blog has played a key role in personalizing the web. It is probably the most critical component for any small to medium size business to have as they seek to grow.

So go ahead, get going, start growing.

LNB #046: Just Say "No" (pt. 2) Beliefs

Face it. We suck at "yes" and "no" to the extent that we're doing work that isn't meaningful, takes up lots or time (or keeps us from the social lives we though our buisnsses woulc give us access to), we don't go on vacations and when we do, we can't unplug.

Some of you have asked me:

• OK, Amos, how do I say "no"?
• When do I drop the n-bomb?
• How do I deal with the consequences?
• I've rolled over so many times, if I said "no" it would speed up global
  warming
• How do I deal with pressure...potential loss of business....loss of
  image?

We're going to cover most of these questions in this podcast series.

Problemmatic, is the fact our business training (particularly sales) is teaching us not to take "no" for an answer and "getting to a yes" even if that means pressure, manupulation or down-right lying. Any wonder that our college campuses will see a spike in date rape cases in August as students return to school. Women with a weak "no" and men who misinterpret a weak "no" as a "maybe."

Truth is, there's a connection between what we believe and what we say and do.

Materials to Consider
Simplify Your Work Like: Ways to Change the Way You Work So You Have More Time to Live...some of these suggestions are stunningly simple and effective

The Millionaire Next Door...what it takes to get your wealth may not be what you think

Chicken Run, an epic motion picture, chronicles the shift in belief of a group of chickens who don't believe they can fly themselves to freedom. Very funny.

Listen Now: 16:46

New Head of Life Sciences Initiative Not from the Life Sciences Discipline. Does It Matter?

In a post on Taking Down Words, they ask the question: "Does anyone else think it's weird that the guy who's going to be leading Indiana's life sciences outreach on behalf of the State has absolutely no life sciences experience?"

"David A. Boncosky, a Central Indiana real estate development manger and marketing executive, has been named director of Indiana Economic Development Corporation's life sciences initiative.

"The IEDC said his position takes effect Aug. 6 and that as director, the Indianapolis native will lead the IEDC's efforts to attract and retain high-tech, high-paying jobs in the state.

"'David is an experienced sales and marketing professional that has demonstrated a passion and ability for successfully negotiating deals,' said Nathan Feltman, Secretary of Commerce and chief executive officer of the IEDC. 'He will play a vital role in further developing our life sciences economy.'"

Business acumen is great; however, subject matter expertise (or at least solid working knowledge) can't be underrated. Still, we're in the midst of a trend in putting CFO's in the top spot when playing executive "musical chairs." Take Thomson for example, a technology company that is run by their former CFO (note: not a techie).

Does this matter? I think so. Universities have, essentially two execute track: the university president and the provost, who is essentially the president of academics (the university's core business). Hospitals, too, have a medical director, responsible for medicine and treatment (again, their core business) and an president.

How to Choose a Domain Name for a Small Business » Small Business Trends

So you are ready to take the plunge, you want your website and you want it now. Be careful though about how you chose your domain name. It's gonna take a bit more than a GoDaddy account to get you the right piece of the wild, wild web.

How to Choose a Domain Name for a Small Business » Small Business Trends

CNN Weighs in on the Presidential Debates with YouTube

Although it was a little like Presidential Debate meets American Idol, the first CNN YouTube debate wasn't as dreadful as I'd feared. In case you've been living under a stone, the questions came from the electorate (they were very direct) and the answers came from the candidates (they weren't quite as consistently direct) and was moderated by preternaturally pretty Anderson Cooper (he's kind of vampire prince handsome). At the end, we--the plucky viewers--are supposed to write in with our votes for the "winner" at CNN.com.

Do you think this debate will change the face of the presidential election? Further, what impact do you think this new format (clearly a winner in its own right) will impact business communications? How?

LNB #045: Just Say "No?!" (part 1)

Let's face it: We're tapped out. We work longer than ever with less return. We spend more to get the lifestyle and wind up working longer and harder (notice I didn't say "more effectively").

How do we get off the treadmill?

A History Lesson
In the 1940's and 50's, the post-war business climate was booming (as was the population). By the 70's anti-discrimination laws were gaining ground, opening the workforce to women and men of color and white women. At the same time, the economy contracted and prices climbed. Then the 80's and 90's heralded the unthinkable: reductions in force among salaried workers. Now, people are becoming too afraid not to work late. Late in the 90's and into this century, we've seen an explosion in technology, which should have made our lives easier and our businesses more productive. However, that just hasn't been the case.

People just can't shut down.

As businesses start up, we bring all of this (and other) baggage onto the mix. As our businesses grow, so go the bad habits.

Resources

• Simplify Your Work Like: Ways to Change the Way You Work So You Have More Time to Live...some of these suggestions are stunningly simple and effective
• The Millionaire Next Door...what it takes to get your wealth may not be what you think
• Living the Simple Life: A Guide to Scaling Down and Enjoying More
• Simplify Your Life: 100 Ways to Slow Down and Enjoy the Things that Really Matter

Listen Now: 24:05

Antioch College Goes Down for the Count

I've been to Antioch (teaching a personal development workshop there that the students took to an alarmingly unworkable extreme--mostly because they didn't have any personal issues...it was everybody else that needed "fixing"). Well-meaning people one and all, their personal ideologies tended to reduce social and criminal misbehavior to external forces (the racist, sexist system), blame others for the failures of minority men and women and white women, and villainize white men (note: white women got a pass), corporations and the government. Listening to them talk about the "plight of the American Black," I couldn't help but feel that we were so doomed that without "special consideration" (and a heaping dose of pity), we didn't stand a chance. We, they explained, were to be excused for everything.

Before my time at Yellow Springs, I thought I was liberal. On the drive back home, I realized that I sho nuff wasn't.

No matter what our personal or political ideology, we need to be certain that the real world models of our ideologies will work. Having long been called the purveyors of spendthrift social experimentation, we would be well-served to carefully examine what went right and wrong at Antioch and not make those mistakes again.

A piece of George Will's Antioch Obit

Farewell, Antioch
By George Will
Sunday, July 15, 2007

WASHINGTON -- During the campus convulsions of the late 1960s, when rebellion against any authority was considered obedience to every virtue, the film "To Die in Madrid," a documentary about the Spanish Civil War, was shown at a small liberal arts college famous for, and vain about, its dedication to all things progressive. When the film's narrator intoned, "The rebels advanced on Madrid," the students, who adored rebels and were innocent of information, cheered. Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, had been so busy turning undergraduates into vessels of liberalism and apostles of social improvement that it had not found time for the tiresome task of teaching them tedious facts, such as that the rebels in Spain were Franco's fascists.

That illustrates why it is heartening that Antioch will close after the 2007-08 academic year. Its board of trustees says the decision is to "suspend operations" and it talks dottily about reviving the institution in 2012. There is, however, a minuscule market for what Antioch sells for a tuition, room and board of $35,221 -- repressive liberalism unleavened by learning.

Read the rest of the article...

Now, so you don't think I'm just talking about a liberal arts college that went terribly wrong, think a moment about your own business model. Does it address the needs of your customers in a workable way? Can you sustain your business this way? Wrongheaded is wrongheaded. And just like Antioch, I've seen numerous businesses with either no fleshed out business model or one that's unsustainable.

MSNBC.com Article: Survey: Some would use IM to fire people

I know of weenie bosses, but this one takes the cake. A survey found that upwards of 14% of bosses would instant message to fire people, specifically using an emoticon to do the deed.

Kind of a "You're fired. Have a nice day" thing.

Beijing Bans Billboards

I was just talking with some colleagues about the driving forces that impinge on marketing decisions. This article highlights one of those forces: government regulation. Marketing, I gather, is a heady business in China, with little of the organized licensing we have here. In a move to clean up the city's sky scape (of a certainty, in advance of the Olympics), the government has moved to remove billboards (both legal and unlicensed): all of them.

Read the Jason Leow article

Sure, Your iPhone's Nice, but Will It Blend?

OK, so stop already! Your iPhone can change the course of asteroids, stop global warming (or cooling or whatever). It can heal the sick and raise the dead while playing your fave tunes.

But will it blend?



Thanks for sending this, David. I laughed so hard I lost my latte!

Whole Foods, Wholly Effed-Up

John P. Mackey, the co-founder of Whole Foods Market, has been my hero. He's a vegan (and doesn't look like a prison camp survivor). He's instituted open book management, a style of management in which leaders give employees all relevant financial information and the training they need to understand it. They're also give their employees responsibility for the numbers they contribute to as well as a stake in how the company performs. At Whole Foods, they took this so far that every one of their 6,500+ employees were considered insiders by the SEC.

Sounds good so far.

Mackay, acknowledging that his company wasn't performing quite up to snuff, even paid himself only a buck in direct compensation. Very different.

But he had this little "hobby" that was a tad problematic. Seems, in his spare time, he was chiming in on Yahoo Finance’s bulletin board under the nom de plume of Rahodeb, a variant of his wife's name (ever the loving hubby). In his posts, over 1,000 which spanned over seven-years, he championed his company’s stock and, for spice, poked at competitor, Wild Oats Markets with his pixel stick (sometimes poking at Whole Foods as well). Not long fooled, other posters on the site would comment to his posts -- "John, er I mean Rahodeb..." Choice.

Problem was: Whole Foods found itself in the process of attempting to purchase said Wild Oats. Oh, and the F.T.C. found out...and the Wall Street Journal...and us.

Ew, mercy!

LNB #044: Where is a Mirror a Doorway?

Only in our fevered imaginations.

While on vacation, I observed my expensive (but not very bright) purebred cat checking out her temporary new digs. She touched everything in the hotel room and got poleaxed at the full-length mirror. Believing it to be a doorway to a magical new world, she began frantically digging for gold on the face of the mirror. Every few minutes all through the evening, she'd stop and gaze longingly at that mirror, expecting it to become something else.

Don't giggle at my simple beast: we do this all the time.

Expecting that mirror to really be a doorway, we...

• Try to retain problem employees (when we know they'll never work out),
• Pretend that our horrible jobs will be wonderful tomorrow (with exactly the same boss and business culture as before),
• Expect that a flawed business partnership will turn itself around (when we know that a little more pressure should set off even more pyrotechnics),
• and much more.

Why do we keep doing this to ourselves? Several reasons. We find it hard to tell the "stank nekkid truth" to ourselves and others, instead pretending that we can put lipstick on that pig and pretend it's Nicole Kidman. In other cases, we're too into it to be able to judge whether we've gone beyond what a reasonable person would take (or do). Getting another head involved can provide the perspective you need to see things more clearly. Finally, we get so invested in forcing and outcome and making it work that we lose track of the end-game--what we're really up to.

Now, where are you treating a mirror like a doorway to that glorious new (but entirely fictional) dimension in your business dealings?

Listen Now: 14:52

"It's Not the Book that's Finished..." Beverly Sills

One of the most miraculous people I've ever had the privilege to see in my early life was Beverly Sills, an opera star, who passed into Glory earlier this week. She was just as comfortable on stage at the Met as in a comedy skit with Carol Burnett.

Her life is a testament to doing what you love with grace and passion.

In an age of divas, she simply wasn't one. Look at her sing with her hands gracefully resting on her dear friend's shoulders while he played. I remember watching her every time she hit the airwaves (quite a departure from the funk and punk scene I so loved). I could never get out of my head how joyful she looked.

In her last concert she said "It's not the book that's finished: there's just a new chapter." I'm sure her new chapter is filled with the music of the spheres.

My surest wish is that I approach my business and my life with half the love and passion she lived her life with.

Sing sweetly into that good night, dear lady.

LNB #043: Who Are You REALLY Listening To? Customers, Maybe?

"We're committed to excellent customer service."

Interesting idea. However, I'm not sure that we really are. Most of the time, I assert, we're too busy listening to the little voices inside our heads. I mean the voices that are constantly filtering our experiences--judging and assessing, telling us that we agree/don't agree/like it/don't like it/seen it before/trust you/don't trust you and on and on and on. With our little voices giving us the blow by blow from Radio Free Saigon, it gets a little tough to hear much of anything else.

So, are we really listening to our customers, vendors, suppliers, employees and business partners? Probably not.

Setting up listening posts, routine ways to listen to our customers, can be a daunting undertaking. We face loss of management control, changing the fundamentals of the business, reliability of information and scalability. We tend to contact people only when there's a problem we're trying to solve--not to learn about how to improve services that are already great.

Request for Help
If you have a contact at MTV, send me an email. I have a business associate who's trying to make a contact there.

Resources
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't
Surveymonkey.com
Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home
Lessons in Listening to Customers (has the overview of the Vodaphone survey)

Listen Now: 25:47

The iPhone Launches and Now There's Global Peace

Is it me? Or does it seem to anyone else that the launch of the iPhone is being heralded with lots of iHype? New industries are springing up as people are trying to figure out how to get out of their current cellphone planes to switch to a plan that utilizes the iPhone features.

Now, many of you know that I love hand-held tech and should have already been standing in line for this one. I just don't think we're a love match.

Here are a few things that concern me:

• You can only use it on AT&T service (which 2/3 of users don't have)
• It doesn't have a removable battery, so you can't keep an extra battery charged and on-deck (saved my bacon on numerous occasions). If it goes bad, you have to send it in for replacement--just like the first generation iPods.
• The face of the iPhone is vulnerable to damage. I have a clamshell designed, Kyocera 7135 smartphone. After years of use, there is not a single mark on the screen. Point of fact, when I took it in to my local Wireless Toyz store (I go there to breath in all that tech air), the owner snapped a picture of it "I've never seen something so old that was in such great condition!" Get ready to purchase a case to fix this design flaw.
• It's a multimedia device that lets you do some work-related stuff (email, calendaring, etc.). Just don't count on being able to do those bread-and-butter things easily. There's still no verdict on whether or how well it will interface with corporate servers (like the Blackberry).
• There's no mechanica keyboard and no stylus. You tap an onscreen keyboard and programmatically, the iPhone guesses what you're trying to write. Neat. However, mechanical keyboards have proven to be difficult for women with fingernails and men with fleshy fingers to use.
• Credit Suisse, in their analysis of the market, think that women will be the surprise buyers, purchasing the device like it was a new Prada bag. They're banking on female vanity. Um, good?

I wonder what everyone else is thinking.

The Case of the Wandering Pants

Where do I start with this one? Picture this: Man's down on his luck. Man gets new gig. Man needs pants let out so his suits will fit. Man brings suits (with pants) to cleaners. Cleaners can't immediately find one pair of pants. Cleaners finds pants later. May says "pants they may be, but mine they aren't." Man sues cleaners...for $65 million.

The man was administrative law judge, Roy Pearson, who insisted that he'd been lied to. Seems that Custom Cleaners had a "satisfaction guaranteed" sign up in their shop--a sign that, according to Pearson, was the height of effrontery. His calculations of damages included the hiring of a private car to drive him weekly to another dry cleaners for the next 10 years.

Curiously this was all over the international news (read Greta Van Susteren's interview and in-depth discussion of Judge Roy's pants with the Chungs' defense attorney--if you can stand it).

The courtroom scene had drama and pathos. Judge Roy cried over his pants...and so did Mrs. Chung, co-owner of the shop. It had international news and a courtroom filled with more reporters than family, or anyone else. The judge in the case sided with the Chungs, giving Judge Roy nothing. In fact, he may be paying the court expenses of the Chungs to boot and faces disbarment.

All in all, a very sad case: I think Judge Roy has other issues I hope he gets help for.

In the Washington Post article, Karen Harned, executive director of the National Federal of Independent Business Legal Foundation is quoted as saying "Small-business owners like the Chungs live in fear every day that they will be the next victim of a frivolous lawsuit and could possibly lose their business."

In an age of law suits filed because spilled coffee is actually hot, it is something for those of us in business to be worried about.

...And My Inner Nerd Quivered with Delight

Scientists, inventors and researchers. Oh, my! Just my kind of place. For about sixty bucks plus my travel expenses, I can roll in tech at Wired Magazine Nextfest until my head caves in.

I wanna go. Maybe, if I take vitamins and meditate and don't drink anything with caffeine, I won't roll around on the floor moaning at all the tech toys.

I doubt it.

TED Talks with Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala: How to help Africa? Do business there.

Years ago, I heard a talk from African business and civic leaders with one challenge: We want trade. Not just aid. Ngozi's talk is a very fine one and she actually refers to that talk (Africa: Open for Business).

Now, what am I going to do?

LNB #042: Virtual Offices/Real Power

We're not in business the same way we were in the PE (pre-email) days before 1987. Small businesses are proliferating in a curious way. Non-micro enterprise businesses with between 11 and 499 staffers have declined from 12% in 1997 to 9%. Micro enterprise business, however, has grown by 95%, with 76% of that growth coming from firms with no employees at all. Over half of those new businesses are being operated out of people's homes, lofts and garages.

Yup. The business horizon has changed! Along with that, people are challenging their thinking behind choices for administrative and office services. Intelligent Office locales like the one here in Indy, are helping firms get all of the flexibility and prestige of the bigger, bricks-and-mortar dogs while staying lean like their other flourishing clicks-and-mortar brethren.

People who use Intelligent Office, tend to be forward-thinking firms who consider:

• Ways to get more out of their scheduling system (even if they're firms of one)
• The real need for office space (either permanently or on an ad hoc basis)
• How to get the most out of their current administrative staff, if they have one.
• How they'll supplement their administrative staff for less complex tasks (like mailing and booking appointments)

The IO staff route calls, book appointments, handle mail, create mailings while at the same time offering modest rates for premium office space for hourly, daily, weekly and monthly lease.

Part of the challenge in using a service like IO is shifting one's thinking from the traditional to the innovative. For me, that meant the 4 months it took for me to realize that I could set up my cellphone to ring over automatically to my staff at IO if I wasn't answering.

They've bailed me out in crises (mother's death, father's grave illness and husband's emergency hospitalization) allowing me to keep my business rolling rather than being forced to close up shop.

Love the book, Working from Home, by Paul and Sarah Edwards. It's a must for people who run SOHO's (small offices/home offices). Here's an interesting article on virtual office service uses you might also enjoy.

When you find Chris from Intelligent Office, be sure to congratulate him on becoming a new papa.

Listen Now: 40:22

Stephen Colbert Interviews Expert on Email. Choice!

Stephen Colbert interviews Will Schwalbe on his new book, Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home. If Will can hold his own with Colbert, I'll bet his book is a winner. I'll let you know more after I give it a read.

My Keyboard is Covered in WHAT?!

The computer keyboard on my black HP laptop looks pristine every time I type there (and you know how I feel that this laptop is charmed by angels). So, when I heard the NPR report on grimy keyboards, I walked quietly over to a computer with a less heavenly pedigree...my company's file server, steaming cuppa tea in hand, and gave that off-white keyboard a look.

It was disgusting. There was some kind of junk on the most used keys and the color...well, wasn't exactly factory fresh (to describe it, I'd say a brownish-gray crayon had melted on it). I've washed it but have resigned myself. over the years, to the junk as a cost of doing business.

Hospitals and other health care centers, routinely scrub down their keyboards for more than aesthetic reasons: "The average keyboard harbors 400 times more bacteria than the average toilet seat" -- germs that can lie in wait for the unsuspecting typist for an entire day.

So, what have people done to ease the microbial burden on their keyboards? Of course, put them in the dishwasher! The keyboard comes out spotless...yay! But after it's scrubbing, it doesn't work...boo!

Enter in the Seal Shield company, whose keyboards are dishwasher safe (I kid you not). Now, rather than worrying that the hospital staff will be passing along colds, flu's and other contagions, they can be easily scrubbed every day.

For those of us who share keyboards, this is something to consider. Unless, of course, you like looking at that yearly accumulation of the sweat, tears and Diet Coke from projects gone by.

More Raving

I got a call from a dear friend. He's started a consulting firm after having been a senior internal training and management consultant for a multi-national firm and an attorney in private practice before that. He's a good guy and a talented one, to boot (always wanted to work that phrase into a conversation).

He was explaining that he hated what's commonly practiced as sales and networking--that these processes leave little room for generosity or authentic communication.

I'm with him. I hate this aspect of sales and I don't like spending too much time with people who are the comsummate salespeople. You know who you are and you know that people run from you at parties and family gatherings, so don't give me any of your lip.

Plato, the Ring and Spam

For this one, I'm going to mess with your noodle a bit. Hang on.

I had two calls today from an auto-dial telemarketer needing to speak with me immediately about my credit card accounts. They were offering a lower interest rate (an astonishing 6% and change) and I needed to dial 9 to talk with an operator. My offer was set to expire soon and this would be my only chance.

They called twice.

The second time, I did ring through. A cheerful voice asked me if I was on hold to reduce my credit card interest rate. "No," I replied "I just want to get taken off your list." Her response? A sing-song "That'll never happen!" Then she hung up.

I had no way to contact them again (number was blocked). To let you know what I did, I called the state's Attorney General's office and lodged a consumer fraud complaint and a complaint for violation of the Do Not Call list.

Here's the baking-the-noodle bit: Plato predicted this call.

In book 2 of The Republic, Plato told the story of Gyges of Lydia, a trusted shepherd for King Candaules. One day, there was an earthquake and a cave opened up. Gyges entered it and found a mummified king on a throne wearing a gold ring that rendered Gyges invisible when worn (ever wonder where JRR got the inspiration for a magic Ring that made you invisible while corrupting your soul?). He pocketed the ring and arranged to be one of the people who gave a report to the king on his flocks (kind of a sheep damage report). There, under the cloak of invisibility, he killed the king, took his wife for his own and staged a coup d'etat, crowning himself monarch.

Now fast-forward a couple of thousand years to my call. It's clear that, if I had a way to trace her call (no data on my called id) she wouldn't have behaved that way (OK, I'm assuming here). It's also clear that they're likely to call again.

Plato wondered whether our character was a social fiction caused by the fact that we are seen.

Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men. Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would both come at last to the same point. And this we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for wherever any one thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust. For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right. If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another's, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another's faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice.

Huh! Are we righteous in our business and personal dealings because we can get caught? Would we do the right thing even if no one knew? Would we be idiots if we did?

These questions have had me reflect on my business dealings and I've found some troubling things. One of the most troubling was the case of a manager who'd left his desk keys and computer passwords to his most trusted employee and then gone on vacation. I got the call from my husband, who was an IT manager, asking me "what do I do here?" Seems the employees opened the desk drawer and found folders full of child pornography. As an HR rep, I took care of the standard stuff: he needs to be let go, locked out of the system, etc....and when we meet with him, we need to support him in getting help.

He was one of the warmest, friendliest people I'd ever met and one of my favorite people at that company.

And he'd been corrupted by the Ring.

We speed when we think we can't get caught, buying detectors to help us stay invisible (I, too, have found myself surprised by how fast my car will go), we pause at stop signs (my Dad calls them optional stops late at night) and the list goes on. Spammers try to get in "under our radar," scamming us out of our information, at times moving their operations off-shore to countries that are unconcerned with this type of crime....and the cost of doing business (for the consumer and the business operator) continues to climb. Earlier this month, Robert Alan Soloway, 27, was found guilty of sending billions of illegal emails daily. He could face over 60 years in the pokey. And he's only one of many spammers who may, unfortunately, never come to justice. His tsunami of spam costs companies billions in lost productivity as well as lost intellectual property (customer information and other company secrets). Oh, and the impact on workplace relationships is becoming more strained as employers are trying to protect themselves from the actions their staffers may take under cover of darkness.

My thinking is that this culture of invisibility is increasing the operating costs of business. In the example of the suspiciously low credit card interest rate (a 6% interest rate offer is like an offer of dollar gas), I can't see this as anything other than fraud. Get you to cough up your particulars and then use them for nefarious means.

Here's my question: in our business dealings, where are we operating under the cloak of invisibility? Where are we thinking that just because we can't be seen that we're free and clear? Does it matter?

(Side Note: Thanks to my college philosophy professor from so long ago, Martin Curd, for introducing me to this story. Goes to show you how applicable the things we learn can be when we think!)

Does Paris want a piece of the View

Rosie leaves, Paris is in the slammer and then this happens. After reading this article, my spidey yorky sense started tingling, and it hit me. The View got addicted to the sweet nectar of day-time ratings during the Rosie episode. My precognition is firing on all cylinders on this one. Tata Simple Life, watch Paris transform her brand from blondy to brains in 45 days flat and see why the term bad publicity does not exist in the world of branding. It's just how you manage it.

And the Pope Says "Thou Shalt Drive..."

This is summer. Summer tends to give us more time behind the wheel...time behind the wheel on the road with the sweaty, unwashed masses (but not us, of course). Those of us who travel for a living, either between cities or between appointments, can attest to the fact that people are getting a little more (choosing words carefully here) aggressive.


I saw one man get flipped off and almost ran off the road laughing. The chick with the finger was sporting one of the spanking new "In God We Trust" license plates on her rage-mobile (still laughing just thinking about it).


So, now Il Papa (the Pope, for those of you who don't know the two words of Italian I know) has waded into the fray with a 36 page document put together by a blue-ribbon papal panel. In it, they say things like:

• Make the sign of the Cross before you travel and pray while on the road (not bad advise if you drive in Boston, LA or Atlanta!)


• Thou shalt not drink and drive


• Thou shalt not make rude gestures behind the steering wheel

The document goes on to remind us that driving can bring out our most "primitive" nature and we can get caught up in our vehicles as vanity-stroking, status-announcing ego machines.

Still, we get ourselves wound up tight before we even get to our important meeting--so much so, that it steals our calm and focus. Me? I know that late afternoon drives on the north/northeast side of town may be somewhat, um, troubling, and plan accordingly. It's so much easier not to be an ass (let someone in it you can see an exit coming up and they're trying to get over) if we leave early.

Watch the BBC report. Something to consider!

Moving to a 20 Hour Work Week? Really!

I was reading this Workforce Magazine online Quick Take on the purported demise of the 40 hour workweek and it got me thinking. As a long-time business owner, I often work more than 40 hours a week to get all of the customer, administration, marketing, service development and other tasks taken care of.

Now, before the "work-life balance" wonks get themselves into a lather, it's about choice and what works rather than rigidly adhering to a system that doesn't. I do my best, creative thinking late at night and love to crash (side-by-side, laptops at the ready) with Garland in front of the TV to watch The Daily Show and the Colbert Report (and yes, we have actually IM'ed each other during the show--so we don't talk over Jon or Stephen...and stop snickering...you've got your own brand of weirdness, I'll wager).

I remember my HR days when we adopted a new performance management criterion. Work-life balance was a new criterion and no one (and I do mean no one) knew what it meant. Managers were a little timid about staying late (they did anyway) and professionals were concerned that if their balance was off (according to whom?) they might not be eligible for promotion.

Like I said: it's about what works.

Research agency Gartner Inc. cites the proliferation of digital communication and collaboration tools in the rise of "digital free agency" and say that by 2015, traditional work schedules will have gone the way of the albatross. Retirees, working parents, workers with aging parents and GenXers are increasingly unwilling to work a rigid workweek that requires them to build personal priorities around work.

Work has to work for the worker.

The Future of Coaching? What Future!

Oh, Lordy! I've been chatting with Jonn, a friend and fellow consulting professional, on the future of the coaching profession. He was wanting to know where I thought this industry was going to go.

Truth is: I'm not a real fan of the coaching industry, as it currently sits. There is little agreement on the skills and training that makes up a coach; the skill set is interdisciplinary and still the accrediting bodies want you to take coach-specific training (huh?), so people take whatever courses are available just to get or keep their accreditation and not to build their skills; and the name "coach" cannot be branded (like "realtor"), so anyone can refer to themselves by that moniker. The coach training organizations are making their money teaching skills, but tend to have little to offer in terms of setting up your firm, so the failure rate hovers at upwards of 96% in the first year!

I used to teach principles of coaching at NYU and coach skills training for another international company. The students were an interesting lot, some seeking to learn about themselves, some looking to make a career change and others, well, they could have told me a hundred times and I still don't get what they were in there for. True to my earlier statement, years later, they weren't making any money or any difference for the people they wanted to impact.

A few years ago, I saw this episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit--a brilliant riff on the coaching industry. How did I laugh? Like a goon!

Penn and Teller's Bullshit Episode on Life Coaching (part 1 of 3)



Penn and Teller's Bullshit Episode on Life Coaching (part 2 of 3)



Penn and Teller's Bullshit Episode on Life Coaching (part 3 of 3)

Everybody falls...

As I studied this graphic, the most obvious trend to me is that ALL of their numbers fall. Also, none of these presidents, not a single one has ever gotten back to their starting number.

Why….

I’ll tell you why, you already know. Candidates spend ginormous amounts of lucre to build a brand and deliver a face that people would love to vote for. After some time in office, the real grimy reality begins to show through the shiny fake patina of glossy showmanship.

Sometimes this is how brands go through life. We vote with our pockets and they fade from the shelves and from our “top of mind”. It’s like we say back home in Jamaica;

“Fi si yuh an’ fi live wid yuh, a two diffrent sin’ting”
(to see you and live with you are two different things)

Will there ever be a president that can endure the grueling time in the White House. Can a brand survive a bad review or customers leaving your service. Sure it can, Just pray you take less than 4 years to fix it.

Indiana Advisory Group's Women's Leadership Series: Collaborate and Win!

First, thanks to Mike McGlothlin for the kind invitation to be with you and to you for your warm welcome. I appreciate your attention and your interest in the subject matter. We had a great conversation and, in the interests of keeping that conversation, going, I offer this online space for you to continue challenging and sharing with each other.

Keep collaborating!

I'm providing this blog entry as a reference point for your questions and comments--particularly on how you're attempting to apply what you've learned. Further, if you find additional resources you'd like to share, you may do so here.

Also, if you find others who would like to hear elements of my talk, please let me know. I'd be happy to meet with other groups.

Cheers,
Lalita

LNB #041: Sales vs. Referral Mindsets

OK. You’ve started lining up your raving fans—people who know, like, understand and trust you. You’ve begun meeting with them, but are concerned that your relationships are starting to feel the chill. Consider these two broad mindsets when meeting with your raving fans and the prospects they bring you.

Sales Mindset (Referral Mindset concepts in parentheses):

• People who may need to be "sold to" (Raving fans find people who are ready to be buy. Need established by your raving fans who can ask more and better questions than you can based on their relationship)
• Convinced of your competency (Prospects found by your raving fans are predisposed to be believe in you by their business/personal associate. They already trust Jane and come to you believing that you'll be trustworthy as well)
• The sales rep is responsible for moving the prospect through the sales prospect (Your raving fan moves the prospect through the sales funnel)
• Lower level of repeat business (Raving fans generate more business with more of a likelihood to continue and expand. They are much more comfortable with the sales process and feel more confident in doing business with you).
• Longer sales cycles (The work of your raving fans produces sales more quickly).
• Demonstrations are a must (Your raving fans have already demonstrated your competence, referring prospects—people they know—to your website or your sales literature. They need little more convincing. Instead, be sure that you’ve asked them for their understanding of your product or service and see if they need any more information—it my not be the information you think).
• Now that you’ve lined out these two broad ways of thinking, consider this: both are necessary for prospecting using your raving fans. No matter how hot the prospect they bring you, you will still need to be skilled in the nuances of closing the sale. The fish can still jump off the hook.

The challenge is keeping your referral network, well, working! One of the chief ways you can cabbage-up your network is by selling to them. Given the amount of information you’ll be giving them so they can better support you, they’ll know if they need to have a conversation with you about a paid client arrangement. Trust me on this one: Don’t push.

Another challenge is in the lack of reciprocity that can occur between business associates. The feeling can be “if she wants me to help her, she’d better ask.” Interesting sentiment, however, she’ll be more likely to tag you as the stingy-gus you are and never help you again. Instead, ask her “Where are you challenged? And how can I help you win here?” Spend real time focused on her business and be willing to champion her business.

Pay it forward, my friend.

References:
Endless Referrals, Third Edition, Bob Burg
Get More Referrals Now!, Bill Cates
76 Ways to Build a Straight Referral Business, ASAP!, Lorna Riley

Listen Now: 27:58 minutes