Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Be a Leader. Lead from the back of the line.
One of the greatest assets you can have, is an ability to lead.
When I talk about being a leader, I am referring to a leader who possesses that ability to influence from any part of the line. Some one who has mastered the art (and leadership is nothing short of an art) of leadership learns to influence the direction of a project, or organisation from the middle and from the back, it shouldn't matter.
I spent the majority of my career working for Fortune 50 companies. As an employee or contractor for one of these businesses, unless you are a major stock holder, there is no such thing as leading from the front of the line. Even the management and leadership have very little ability to truly lead. The ones who succeed are the ones who learn how to influence the right people to help them change the direction of the flow of money.
I am going to drastically switch directions of this blog, my goal is to show you how to be a leader, to help you become a leader, to work with you one on one with your challenges as a leader. This is an important part of lifestyle design, one of the most important parts of lifestyle design, learning to march to the beat of a different drummer, and using that to influence those around you to think the way you want them to think. (continue reading &aquo;)
When I talk about being a leader, I am referring to a leader who possesses that ability to influence from any part of the line. Some one who has mastered the art (and leadership is nothing short of an art) of leadership learns to influence the direction of a project, or organisation from the middle and from the back, it shouldn't matter.
I spent the majority of my career working for Fortune 50 companies. As an employee or contractor for one of these businesses, unless you are a major stock holder, there is no such thing as leading from the front of the line. Even the management and leadership have very little ability to truly lead. The ones who succeed are the ones who learn how to influence the right people to help them change the direction of the flow of money.
I am going to drastically switch directions of this blog, my goal is to show you how to be a leader, to help you become a leader, to work with you one on one with your challenges as a leader. This is an important part of lifestyle design, one of the most important parts of lifestyle design, learning to march to the beat of a different drummer, and using that to influence those around you to think the way you want them to think. (continue reading &aquo;)
Friday, August 8, 2008
Be Decisive...
I can't tell you how much it annoys me when people can't be decisive. I think it probably rubs us all the wrong way.
Be the decisive one, if people don't like your idea, force them to give you a better idea. When you challenge people, they respect you more, you can do this with out being seen as being pushy, or over dominating. For example:
This particular conversation is a minimal example of how indecisiveness can be dangerous, this is how that conversation should have gone. Molly will be the decisive alpha in the conversation.
Again, a simplistic example. However, being indecisive in business situations can be detrimental to a business. In a lot of cases executives and business owners get stuck in "over analyzing" a situation. Time to market can be extremely important. When I launch a product, I launch that product with all of the advertising options I can, however, I test each advertising option against the other (split testing, and A/B testing). After as little as 24 hours I can begin to see what is working and what isn't working, normally I begin to take out what isn't working in as little as 48 hours (sometimes a little sooner). As I take things out (ad placements, keywords, ad wording) I add new stuff in to test.
The key is I was decisive about launching my product, I did allow a bunch of analytics tell me how I should launch my product. I allowed live analytics coming in to show me in real time what does and does not work. It will change from product to product, and from medium to medium.
When I was working for a Top 50 IT firm, I saw management indecisiveness cost them lots of money. Don't let this happen to you, be the decisive one, people will respect you more, and you will make more money by doing so, you can't learn, if you don't make mistakes.
To quote Carrie Wilkerson from The Barefoot Executive - Are you making excuses or being motivated by REASONS? (continue reading &aquo;)
Be the decisive one, if people don't like your idea, force them to give you a better idea. When you challenge people, they respect you more, you can do this with out being seen as being pushy, or over dominating. For example:
John and Molly are trying to decide where to eat, Molly asks John what he wants for dinner and he says it doesn't matter to him that it was up to her, Molly can't make up her mind either. Both are stuck in a cyclical conversation of indecisiveness until they both decide not to go out to eat and starve to death.
This particular conversation is a minimal example of how indecisiveness can be dangerous, this is how that conversation should have gone. Molly will be the decisive alpha in the conversation.
John and Molly are trying to decide where to eat. Molly asks John what he feels like for dinner, and he replies that it does not matter to him (this is a lie). Molly suggests that she would like to go to a japanese steak house and get sushi.
Again, a simplistic example. However, being indecisive in business situations can be detrimental to a business. In a lot of cases executives and business owners get stuck in "over analyzing" a situation. Time to market can be extremely important. When I launch a product, I launch that product with all of the advertising options I can, however, I test each advertising option against the other (split testing, and A/B testing). After as little as 24 hours I can begin to see what is working and what isn't working, normally I begin to take out what isn't working in as little as 48 hours (sometimes a little sooner). As I take things out (ad placements, keywords, ad wording) I add new stuff in to test.
The key is I was decisive about launching my product, I did allow a bunch of analytics tell me how I should launch my product. I allowed live analytics coming in to show me in real time what does and does not work. It will change from product to product, and from medium to medium.
When I was working for a Top 50 IT firm, I saw management indecisiveness cost them lots of money. Don't let this happen to you, be the decisive one, people will respect you more, and you will make more money by doing so, you can't learn, if you don't make mistakes.
To quote Carrie Wilkerson from The Barefoot Executive - Are you making excuses or being motivated by REASONS? (continue reading &aquo;)
My next big adventure...
In January I am planning on taking my family to Vail in Colorado for the entire month. During this month I will be teaching my boys to skii, and just spending quality time with my family. My work during this time will be limited to 4 hours a week. How can I achieve this?
I realized a long time ago that finding a process for everything was the easiest way to keep myself from every having to do it. For every new project I put together, once I have I realized how that project produces an income stream for me, I break that project into pieces. Each piece has a dependency on another part of the process in order to create the overall system that produces that particular income stream for me. Once a piece of the process is completed, it is passed on to the next outsourced resource to complete their piece, this allows me to break my business down into multiple small pieces handled by different people. By doing this, I keep control of my intellectual property, and also minimize mistakes, because each outsourced resource is specially trained in order to complete one small piece of the overall puzzle that makes up my income.
There is a process to everything you do, soon we will discuss how to break each piece down into systems, and how to identify, train and utilize outsourced resources to complete your tasks, making you money, while YOU ski in Vail for a month.
(continue reading &aquo;)
I realized a long time ago that finding a process for everything was the easiest way to keep myself from every having to do it. For every new project I put together, once I have I realized how that project produces an income stream for me, I break that project into pieces. Each piece has a dependency on another part of the process in order to create the overall system that produces that particular income stream for me. Once a piece of the process is completed, it is passed on to the next outsourced resource to complete their piece, this allows me to break my business down into multiple small pieces handled by different people. By doing this, I keep control of my intellectual property, and also minimize mistakes, because each outsourced resource is specially trained in order to complete one small piece of the overall puzzle that makes up my income.
There is a process to everything you do, soon we will discuss how to break each piece down into systems, and how to identify, train and utilize outsourced resources to complete your tasks, making you money, while YOU ski in Vail for a month.
(continue reading &aquo;)
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Centralized Social Networking... FINALLY
I just got an account with ping.fm, they are in beta test right now, sign up for my newsletter and I might share with you the beta code if they let me!
ping.fm is a MUST for social networking, it allows you to update all of your social networks (i.e. twitter, myspace, facebook) from one central place. There are plugins for ping.fm for both Wordpress and Drupal and both seem to work very well.
I have to give a big kudos to Sean over at ping.fm for this application, it is truly one of the greatest new applications I have used, and certainly makes my life MUCH easier! (continue reading &aquo;)
ping.fm is a MUST for social networking, it allows you to update all of your social networks (i.e. twitter, myspace, facebook) from one central place. There are plugins for ping.fm for both Wordpress and Drupal and both seem to work very well.
I have to give a big kudos to Sean over at ping.fm for this application, it is truly one of the greatest new applications I have used, and certainly makes my life MUCH easier! (continue reading &aquo;)
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