As this fiscal year rolls to a close, business people will invariably begin tallying their professional wins and losses of 2017. Corporate execs at every level will crunch numbers and calculate bottom lines. Managers will look at what they did well and what they did poorly. In taking stock, they will invariably start preparing for the year ahead. Goals will be set. Business, marketing and sales plans will be drafted. Resolutions will be made. That’s all fine.
But what if, instead of making big plans of how to improve and succeed in 2018, the plan was to fail… and not just fail, but fail big?! What if the goal for the next 12 months was to shoot for an epic failure? What would that plan look like? Would it start by setting unrealistic expectations and fantasizing impossible dreams? Would it include crafting major plans to expand, overhauling existing systems that work, aggressively hiring and training staff, and establishing sales quotas that would make even that most optimistic, can-do leaders balk? Would it involve enthusiastically renovating office or factory space and investing heavily in the latest “unproven” technologies like AI? Would it culminate with a miscalculation so big that it would rival those of Enron, Swiss Air or Borders? Who (in their right mind) would deliberately plan to fail… and fail big? Sounds insane? Perhaps. Or perhaps it’s crazy like a fox. Continue reading →

When LinkedIn launched, it was a social media site that encouraged people in the work world to connect with other known professionals for networking and career development. People were categorized as either (1st) which were direct connections, (2nd) which is someone who knows someone you know or (3rd) someone who knows someone that knows someone you know. They tracked up to three degrees of separation between people. In the early days of LI, someone with over 500 connections was considered to be a mover-and-shaker. The site discouraged linking to people outside those known at work, school or social circles. In turn, people were hesitant to link with people they didn’t know for fear that the site would be abused by salespeople and scammers.
Now, 15 years later, LinkedIn has evolved, describing itself as “a business- and employment-oriented social networking service that operates via websites and mobile apps.” The LI website says that “LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with more than 530 million users in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide.” Their mission “is to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.” Besides having direct connections, particularly “popular” people also have thousands to hundreds of thousands of “Followers” who simply want to read (articles and posts) what that person has to say. (For those unfamiliar with LI, a Follower isn’t necessarily a connection, but all of a person’s connections are Followers.
Some may wonder why anyone wants to “Follow” a person on LinkedIn that they don’t know and will probably never meet, and who might not even be in the same country and is likely to not even be in the same industry or field. Think of an Airline and Hospitality manager in Mumbai, India “following” a Chief Technology Officer at the Daily Mail in London. On the surface, they have little in common and are highly unlikely to ever interact. (These real contacts are, in fact, connected.) So what does an Influencer do that is deserving of so many Followers worldwide? Welcome to the new LinkedIn. It is a social media site where people not only connect with people they know, but actually seek to connect with people they want to know and people who offer information and insights of value. It serves as a public forum for professional voices. Some become so active that they are invited to be “Influencers.” Many of these Influencers are Recruiters and HR professionals, who are in the business of finding and knowing top talent. But many others are “gurus” in their own field such as leadership, management, marketing, technology, or sales. They not only offer advice and insights, but they also help those in their network in a variety of intangible and tangible ways. And even those who aren’t Influencers are helping contacts they hardly know, even when there is absolutely nothing in it for them. That’s because the focus of the new LI is not “what can you do for me?” but “what can we do for each other.” Continue reading →

Companies today compete furiously for market share. We see brick-and-mortar retailers fighting for every sale and struggling to survive. The Street announced that “Ailing department store operator Sears Holdings Inc. will shut down 63 more Sears and Kmart stores, the latest step as it hobbles to a likely bankruptcy.” [1] Restaurants are slogging it out with special offers, gimmicks and unique approaches that will attain and retain patrons. The New York Times recently reported that “There are now more than 620,000 eating and drinking places in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the number of restaurants is growing at about twice the rate of the population.” [2] Competition is tough, and marketing research shows that businesses in most industries are spending increasingly larger budgets to reach potential customers and woo existing customers. Clutch, a Washington, D.C.-based ratings and review firm, conducted a 2017 Small Business Digital Marketing Survey of 350 small business owners and managers (500 employees or less) in which 49% of entrepreneurs said they plan to spend more on digital marketing to boost sales and brand recognition this year over last year and 36% said they aim to boost their marketing budget by 11% to 30%. They are doing it all. PPC campaigns. Social media ads. Retargeting efforts. Network commercials. Seminars. Webinars. Video infomercials. Presentations. Mobile automated notifications. Text ads. The efforts are increasingly sophisticated and expensive. You name it. Businesses are doing it. Creating it…. deploying it…. and measuring the effectiveness of it. That’s a lot of time and money spent to cut through the noise and grab the audience’s attention with the hopes of driving sales and increasing repeat business.
The need to reach ever-larger audiences and cut through the ever-growing din of marketing noise is prompting companies to further automate sales and marketing efforts. Personalized eblasts are sent in bulk. Robo text messages pop up when a customer is near a store or eatery. Retargeting ads appear on websites that are completely unrelated to the site visited. Mass promotions are designed to have a “just for you” look. Websites welcome visitors back by name. And yet, despite or perhaps because of all those faux-personal, automated actions, many companies are finding that it is actually the one-on-one efforts and little niceties are having the biggest impact on capturing and keeping clients. Genuine, personal interaction and one-on-one service wows clients… and it doesn’t have to be costly or complicated. It’s often the modest gestures and pint-sized details that have the biggest impact. Continue reading →

Auyush Jain of Microsoft once said that “A single 10-minute presentation has the power to convert an idea into reality.” That is perhaps why most companies that sell a product or service (something that is not a commodity) will use a “presentation” to explain their product or service to prospective customers. This is especially true for high ticket items, complex services and B2B sales. A typical presentation explains the product/service benefits and features as well as the company’s story and expertise. In the “old days”, before computers and software applications, salespeople would work with marketing to create the presentation on either boards or in a flip book or binder. In 1990, Microsoft revolutionized presentations with the launch of Powerpoint (which was invented in 1987 under a different name by a different company). Suddenly, anyone with basic technical skills could use software found on most desktops to create a digital presentation. Slides replaced boards and sheets. A presentation could be emailed to anyone, anywhere, at a moment’s notice. The use of presentations grew. They were no longer just used for sales pitches. Today, presentations are used for operational training, educational seminars, HR onboarding, and more.
Technology has evolved in leaps and bounds since Powerpoint launched and, yet, many people still use Powerpoint. On the 30th anniversary of this ubiquitous presentation software, business people everywhere still use the program even though it hasn’t changed much and functions in much the same way it did decades ago. Imagine if 30 years after automobiles became ubiquitous they still looked like Ford’s Model T. Absurd. So why is Powerpoint still so widely used? The reasons are varied. First, the software still comes with most computers, so why spend money to buy other software when Powerpoint can get the basic job done. Also, some people just don’t like change and see no need to find a new presentation tool when the current tool is still perfectly adequate to get the job done. Still others just don’t want to take the time to learn new software. And a Powerpoint presentation is familiar to most anyone who receives it, making it easy to open and view However, given the multitude of presentation programs on the market today, it is time to consider other options for creating and sharing great presentations today. Continue reading →

Recently, CBS fired a legal executive in their organization over comments she posted on Facebook after the tragic incident in Las Vegas. The executive, who is an attorney and was Vice President and Senior Counsel in Strategic Transactions at CBS, posted her comment just hours after the tragedy. Without reposting what she said or opening the can of political worms related to her comment, suffice it to say that what she wrote was deemed by many to be emotionally-charged, callous and politically-volatile, and – of course — it quickly spread on social media and through online news outlets. Shortly thereafter, the executive was fired from her job. She had been employed by CBS for about a year. A CBS spokesperson said that “Her views as expressed on social media are deeply unacceptable to all of us at CBS.”
This begs the question, can the things that employees say or do in their private lives affect their employment? Given the First Amendment protection of freedom of speech, can an employer terminate an employee for a comment made on his/her own time on his/her own personal social media page? Is there a separation between personal and professional? The answer to all of these questions is basically yes. Yes, the CBS executive’s comment on social media is protected by the First Amendment and she cannot be arrested or punished by the government for her comment. And, yes, there is a line that separates personal from professional, but thanks to social media, that line is more blurry. Her freedom to speak her mind does not protect her from being fired from her job for violating professional standards of conduct, especially if she had an employment contract and was upheld to certain professional standards as an attorney. For those that bristle that this is just “political correctness,” it’s not. This is about being “professionally correct,” not “politically correct.” Thanks to social media, professional correctness is the new PC. So what exactly are the rules for being professionally correct and are those rules hard and fast regardless of a person’s position and employer? Are the professional standards of conduct the same for everyone? Continue reading →

Most people are familiar with the late Stephen Covey’s famous book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. First published in 1988, the business / self-help book offered an approach to being more effective in achieving goals by aligning oneself to what Covey referenced as the “true north” principles. He saw those seven principles as universal and timeless. Later he added an eighth principle. By far his best-known book, Covey’s Seven Habits have sold more than 25 million copies in 40 languages worldwide. The audio version became the first non-fiction audio-book in U.S. publishing history to sell more than one million copies and has now sold over 1 ½ million audio copies to date. More recently, Covey’s son wrote and published a simplified version of the book titled The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens. The Seven Habits philosophy lives on with Millennials and iGens.
So why was this book so successful? Because Covey’s approach helped people shift their focus to habits that improved their personal and professional lives by making them more “effective”. At its core, Covey believed that people were meant to evolve from dependence to independence and, ultimately, to interdependence. And for a person to remain truly effective, he had to invest in balanced self-renewal. Covey called it “sharpening the saw.” He said that to be effective, one needed to preserve and enhance his or her greatest asset: the self. So, as we approach the 30th anniversary of this philosophy, what does saw sharpening look like today? And what happens when we sharpen the saw? Continue reading →

Forget heights, planes and confined spaces. Snakes, spiders and frogs move over. Most people’s biggest fear is talking in public. Standing up and speaking in front of a group of strangers is downright paralyzing to a great many people. Giving a speech. Teaching a class. Addressing a group at a social gathering. For many, these are all scenarios that cause some people to complete freeze. Perhaps that is why those who are particularly good at it can make a living doing it. Gifted motivational speakers such as Tony Robbins, Les Brown, Zig Ziglar, Dr. Wayne Dyer and Jim Rohn earn seven figure salaries annually and their primary job is to speak in public.

Speaking to dignitaries and groups is an essential skill for certain professions, such as teachers, trial lawyers, news reporters, politicians and PR spokespeople. But speaking to groups is actually an increasingly important skill for people in most any profession. Web conferencing, social media groups and other technologies have made speaking to groups more commonplace and the ability to be able to speak to groups – large and small — more necessary. Yet, the fear of public speaking plagues many today. Even incredibly talented media icons were once intimidated to speak to famous and powerful people as well as to groups. For example, Barbara Walters was once a shy, introverted person. But she overcame her natural shyness and went on to become arguably one of the world greatest media reporters ever, having interviewed hundreds of business tycoons, royalty, political leaders, celebrities and religious leaders around the world. If she can do it, anyone can. Here are some tips. Continue reading →

Attention workaholics, movers and shakers, corporate climbers and rising stars! Want to increase your productivity? Have a desire to get your creative juices really flowing? Hustling to shift your career into hyper-drive? If you answered yes to any or all three of these questions, then there is one simple thing you can do that will help with all. Stop working and go on vacation. As counter-intuitive as that may sound, a vacation is the best way to increase output, inspire the imagination into high gear and achieve even greater career success. If this sounds like millennial HR hype, it’s not. Vacations are essential for long-term success.

Yet, even as the summer winds down and kids head back to school, many employees have not yet taken any vacation time this year. And, those who have taken vacation time still have more vacation time available that they haven’t used and won’t use. Some think this is a good thing and even take pride in going years without a real vacation. (Long weekends don’t count.) While many Americans take pride in their workaholic ways, this is not a uniquely American phenomenon. Nor is it a by-product of the Great Recession… the lingering fear that jobs might disappear tomorrow. But regardless of the reason, forgoing vacations is not a good thing. Companies that want to increase their output should track employee vacation time consumption and consider requiring all employees to use ALL of their vacation time annually. And professionals who want to up their game need to seriously invest in “down time”. Here’s why.
Continue reading →