Zane Safrit

4 Business Books to Keep Close-at-Hand

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. - Sun Tzu.

Well, Sun...I'd say:

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer...and your best books closest.

There are many great books for businesses. I read most, if not all, of a new business book each week.

There are 4 books I keep close-at-hand. Some I have kept close at hand for 6+ years.

If you're a small business owner, leader (...if you work in a small business... you are all of those...you have no choice, really...) keep these books closest at hand.

STRATEGY

Being Strategic: Plan for Success, Outthink Your Competitors, Stay Ahead of Change. Erika Andersen, its author, is one of those rare authors who offer a clear vision of possibilities and a means for everyone to map their way there. That vision of possibilities is OUR possibilities. Her mission in life is to help people have the life they want and figure out a plan about how to achieve it. She accomplished that with this book. Her book and its methodical, daily, approach to Being Strategic can be used for having the career we want, the business we want, even finding the love of your life.

I met Erika 18 months ago. I read her book then. I have kept it close at hand since then.

She was a guest recently on my radio show. You can listen here.

EXECUTION

Six Disciplines of Excellence: Building Small Businesses that Learn, Lead and Last. Gary Harpst is the author. He, too, offers the tools for small business to articulate their shared purpose and the means to reach that shared purpose together. Gary has laid out a plan of strategic execution with six disciplines where businesses create a culture of learners and leaders. This is employee engagement taken to a higher level. This culture of learning and leading sustains their ability to find new solutions as their growth brings greater challenges.

I read this book 3-4 years ago when I was CEO of a small company. I have kept it close at hand since then.

He was a guest recently on my radio show. You can listen here.

TALENT

The Smart Interviewer: Tools and Techniques for Hiring the Best. Brad Smart is the author. This book presents the CIDS interview for hiring new employees. CIDS stands for Chronological In-Depth Survey.

I used CIDS 4 times. 3 times I found a great, A-Player, person who was welcomed with open arms and made tremendous contributions. The other time I was able to avoid making a disastrous hiring decision.

 

That kind of success is rare with any resource. But from a $13.00 book....? Figure the ROI on that! Just the savings from avoiding that one hiring mistake brings an astronomical ROI percentage.

Brad was a guest on my radio show. You can listen here.

MARKETING & SALES

Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force, by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba. This is the end-goal isn’t it? Create customer evangelists who volunteer to generate referrals, sell your products and put their reputation at risk in the process.

The conversion rates are higher as are cross-sells, repeat purchases, upsells and customer loyalty.

Lower metrics are seen as result in marketing and advertising expenses, customer churn, employee churn.

All this translates to...higher profits, higher cash-flows.

This book and its authors continue to play a huge role in bringing companies back in touch with us, their customers. Maybe, that’s why their website is Church of the Customer. Maybe, that’s why they have 100,000 people who subscribe to their blog?

I could and have in the past testify for them. When all marketing tools and resources generated zero results as industry in which my company then raced to commodity-hell...Ben and Jackie appeared with some timely support. And truth. Again and again.

I read their book back in....2003. It’s stayed close by since. Now, I’m their customer evangelist and not as often as I should.

Jackie was a guest on the show last summer. You can listen here.

4 Steps to Better Blog Titles Engaging More Readers

1. Spend 40% of your time picking the right titles

2. 10 words or less so Google doesn't truncate

3. Always include the key words your customers use to search for your products and services

4. Make it catchy like the headlines of a newspaper or CNN.com

These aren't my insights. But, I'm sharing them.

They're the insights shared by Brian Halligan, CEO of Hubspot and author of Inbound Marketing in his presentation at the Fortune Sales and Marketing Event hosted by Verne Harnish, the Growth Guy and CEO of Gazelles. (Verne's one of the smartest, most helpful people for businesses of all sizes.) You can read more tips and insights Verne shared from some of the speakers at this post: Biggest Sales Mistake; 40% No Decisions; 5 Rules for Readability; Easy Videos.

4 Variables That Determine a Successful Profit Formula

Mark W. Johnson is Chairman of Innosight, a strategic innovation consulting and investing company with offices in Massachusetts, Singapore, and India. He's also the author of an excellent book: Seizing the White Space:Business Model Innovation for Growth and Renewal.

He shared an hour of his time, wisdom, insight, resources on business model innovation as a recent guest on my radio show. You can listen here.

I asked him:

What are the 4 variables that determine a successful profit formula?

And he answered:

1. Revenue model
2. Cost structure
3. Margins
4. Resource velocity

This is not meant to be financial 101. I have pointed them out because I think they need to be thought about first and foremost.

A revenue model is how much money can be made in sales.

Cost structure is both direct and overhead costs.

Then I talk about margins and resource velocity meaning the speed by which inventory and assets and utilization happens to cover the cost structure.

The simplest example of these four variables is the retail industry. There was a business model innovation with the discounts stores. Traditional department stores marked up their inventory 40% and then they turned the inventory 3 times over the course of the year which equals 120% return.

Discount retailers changed the game. All they did was decided not to mark up their inventory as much. They turned their inventory faster through their system.

Thanks, Mark.

The questions for businesses today becomes:

• what's your example of these 4 variables?

• which one can you alter to seize the white space, create a new business model, and do to your industry what discount retailers did to the retail industry?

Who controls your social media policy?

The CIO Jury offers an interesting post: Should the CIO be in charge?

As the use of social media - including Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook - grows, organisations are becoming increasingly aware of the potential risks posed by the use of such sites.

With companies' reputations and corporate secrets potentially put at risk by thoughtless tweets or other postings by employees, businesses are putting in place policies setting out recommendations for how staff use social media...

Therein lies the rub, as they say. Top-down, command and control, structures are being upended by...bottoms-up, collaborations and conversations, made possible in real-time with resources (technological and people) outside the control of the corporation. Neither one rubs the other the right way.

For many organizations becoming increasingly aware of the potential risks there are three surprises:

Surprise 1:

Employees, partners, stakeholders, vendors, shareholders, executives (yes...executives can be thoughtless, too) are talking about ‘their’ company, and have been talking about their company, in their own words, unscripted, spontaneous.

Surprise 2:

Their conversations are not always the glowing conversations heard in the corporate hallways. Sometimes they are.

Surprise 3:

You cannot run. You cannot even hide.

For many companies, then the only option is to forbid the use of all social media or in polite company...create policies setting out recommendations for how staff should use social media.

Shoot the messsenger. Fire the employee if they fail to comply with ...recommended use of social media.

The media is the message. And if we control, er recommend how the media is to be use, then we control the message. Problem solved.

Not really.

1. You’re too late. Forbidding or recommending the proper use of social media is like shutting the barn after the cows are out...the chickens, roosters, pigs, combines, trucks, tools, winter feed, hay...everything. (I live in a rural community; I use rural analogies.)

Stakeholders have been talking about their experiences with their work since 3 people were on this earth and two of them worked together.

The majority* are using social media with no need for your permission. That includes gossip in the workplace, talk at home with friends-family-colleagues, email (personal or work), telephone, letters, chat, IM...

What you should really be worrying about are those in your organization:

• not talking about how they spend the majority of their waking hours.

• not using social media.

2. Their conversations are a mirror for you and a megaphone to the world. What's shared, what's rubbing companies the wrong way, is:

3. You create the message they share. You give them the story, every day in every way, they share with their friends and the world. Sure, they bear responsibility for what they say. But you insist on total control of what they do, how they do and when they do.

Turn this upside down:

Create a story together worth sharing. Trashing a workday on twitter, facebook, youtube...boring. It’s passe’. Been there, seen that.

Why not instead create a story together worth sharing? Why not engage and inspire all stakeholders to create an inspiring story from their collaboration? A. you get a better ROI for your investment; B. that story has legs. that story is different. That story is a purple cow.

Give content to share. The authors David Meerman Scott and Seth Godin are huge advocates for giving away their content. As a result, their book sales are huge.

Correct. David and Seth are excellent authors who include their readers n their story and as a result have a huge audience of fans who volunteer with their tweets and blog posts to promote the works of David and Seth. No policy required.

Correct. You are not a book producer. However, you do create stories. Create ones worth sharing, include some content to add with their stories and...who knows? Maybe you won't need a policy and you have a huge audience of fans, aka, customers.

Encourage them to talk to strangers. We’re adults now. As children we’re taught to not talk to strangers. But in a global marketplace, strangers are where the ideas and resources are to grow their brand. Encourage them to talk to strangers.

When you create a story together worth sharing you also created a brand worth owning. Ownership encourages proper decisions, inspires great conversation, brings more discretionary effort, generates a better ROI. At the very least you won't need wardens to keep the employees in line.

One Step to Boost Your Company's Valuation by 35%

That one step is building a business the delivers predictable results. Recent research showed there were 4 factors used to measure the value of a business. These were:

• Investing in R&D, investing in their future;
• Growth Trends;
• Return on Equity.
• Predictability: How predictable were the results for that business.

You ask What's your source?

Gary Harpst , author of Six Disciplines for Excellence and Six Disciplines Execution Revolution, and founder of Six Disciplines consulting.

During a recent interview with me I asked him:

What’s in it for business? Why should they care about improving their execution, generating more consistent execution? You have to think that if businesses understood then more business wold join your execution revolution.

Gary answered:

Research found 4 factors that determine a business value. Investing in R& D, The growth trend, ROE, but the 4th one was more of an influence than all the others put together. And it was how predictable has this business been.

The business that’s predictable will be valued 35% more valuable, all things being equal, than an identical business who’s performance is not predictable.

Gary Harpst and his team at Six Disciplines offers a proven, methodical, program that can create a culture of learning within your business. That cultute of learning allows you to solve the next problem, always bigger, that comes with your success. Being able to constantly and consistently solve those next bigger challenges is how you generate predictable results.

Disclaimer: This may sound like a paid endorsement. It’s not. The Six Disciplines approach works. And we need more things that work.

You can find out more about Gary Harpst and his Six Disciplines team at these sites:

* Gary Harpst website

* Six Disciplines corporate website

* Six Disciplines blog

You can listen to our conversation here.

You can read highlights from our conversation here.

Highlights from My Conversation with Erika Andersen, author of Being Strategic

Erika Andersen, founder of Proteus International and author of Being Strategic: Plan for Success, Outthink Your Competitors, Stay Ahead of Change shared an hour of her time last week. During that hour she shared her valuable tips for helping us have the lives we want. ( That's her personal mission) 

And as I prepared this transcript and connected what she does with consulting business for so many, and how she helps so many more develop the daily habit of being strategic, realize it's a skill that's learnable, I realize she is one of the rare people whose personal and professional lives are aligned with their personal mission in life.

That's why her book and her appearance on this show always is a delight.

Erika thanks so much for squeezing an hour in for our show. I don’t encourage stalking but where are you, what projects are you working on now?

I’m in NYC and about to fly to Detroit to tape a national PBS pledge special.

Now. Obviously, your audience is growing. You just announced a PBS show airing nationally in August that goes into more detail about the Being Strategic process and skills. Can you tell us how this all came about?

I'm indebted to my wonderful editor at St. Martin’s Press. He connected me with a PBS producer. She immediately got how useful this process would be for their show and their lives. GE agreed to underwrite it as part of their eco-imagination series.

We’ll be talking about how to use it to create a career, a life, you want to live.

My mission in life is to help people become what they want to become and figure out a plan about how to achieve it.

PBS will own the right to the show for 3 years. My hope is that hundreds of thousands of people will have access to it.

Listeners should call their local PBS and say they want to see this show.

Do you have a sense of what areas of the lives of your readers and clients your process for Being Strategic is used most often?

That’s a tough one for me to answer as I see it being so universal. One of its challenges is the word "strategic". That’s used with so many definitions around for it.

I have a Google alert for the phrase "Being Strategic". And there are so many uses for it. It’s almost humorous. Sometimes people even mean it to say they’re agreeing with me. The definition I offer in the book is:

Being strategic means consistently making those core directional choices that will best move you towards your hoped for future.

It is a deceptively simple sentence. First it implies you know what your reasonable aspiration is. And it implies you know where you’re starting from because you can’t really make the core choices to move you towards your hoped-for future unless you know where you’re starting from. And then there’s the word consistently. How can you make those core choices consistently.

It is simple, accurate. It implies a capability to be built. To become capable of consistently making those core directional choices towards your hoped-for future...

That’s what I try to do is help people understand that there are a set of skills that people can learn and practice for using this as a powerful tool in your life. I personally think this is the most important skill for creating the life you want to have for yourself.

It’s not magical. It is learnable. When people talk about being strategic they talk about it like it’s inborn. You’re short, there’s nothing you can do about it. You’re done.

But this is a set of mindskills you can learn and practice.

Let’s talk about your book, Being Strategic: Plan for Success, Out-think Your Competitors; Stay Ahead of Change. Fabulous book. Clear, helpful, everyone who wants to reach a goal should have it. Let’s go way back to when you first thought about this book. When was that?

That was about 2007.

I really try to as my fiance’ says "eat my own dog food". I try to approach my career from a strategic point of view. I put down a list of 10 books I’d like to write. The first one I did write: Growing Great Employees. I couldn’t find a good, boy-scout manual type of book. I found theoretical books or books with pieces. But I wanted a soup to nuts handbook for growing great employees.

I remember reading this story of two guys who wanted to put a computer on everybody’s desk. And these two guys started talking about computers in a whole different way. They talked about computers as tools everyone could have and use.

Those guys were Jobs and Wozniak.

These guys had a reasonable aspiration and went about making consistent core directional choices to reach it.

And this was the 2nd book on my list.

What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future as you published this book?

One of the reasons it’s been such a joy to publish it is that it’s so closely aligned with my personal mission which is to help people become what they want to become.

My editor said let’s use the process you describe in your book to market the book. We went through the process. We defined the challenge, our reality, where we were, our hoped-for future...create me as an authority in this realm.

It seems like we’re moving towards it.

Why was this reasonable aspiration important for you?

Because it is aligned with my personal mission. I really feel more strongly than I can say about wanting to help people become what they want to become. My purpose in life is to let people know first that their dreams are not unreasonable, that they can want more, be more, feel more. And then to give them to tools and skills and understandings to let them do that. And just to support them in their journey. I want to give them the lives they want to have.

Have you reached it? What signs point to progress? I know the PBS show is a sign. Does it feel like success?

The book is coming out in paperback and this makes it accessible for more people at a lower price point.

The PBS show will be able to offer it as a pledge premium.

I also notice it in our business. I notice clients, current and new, want to do vision and strategy in this way. They're thinking "We need to be practical. We need to be clear about our future and create a path to get there. "

People now seem to want to be more practical. We don’t want to run off the rails. We're saying:

Let’s make sure we are clear about the future we want to create for this business. Let’s be clear about the obstacles. And let’s create a path to that future.

Are you evolving a new reasonable aspiration to reflect your success and progress?

This may sound weird. But it’s more of the same. My goal is so simple: "I want to help as many people as I can."

Who was your intended audience for this book? I use the example of Bruce Springsteen who once said he directed his show towards someone sitting maybe 2/3 of the way back, he could see them or he pictured them in his mind. Where was your reader sitting and what did they look?

Well, I had a collection of readers. That’s exactly how I write. It’s an interesting group. Men and women, one who’s in her twenties, one my age. Mostly business people. Not all business people.

I wanted to touch them as full people. I wanted them to think "wow this could really help my marketing team or find the love of my life or a career I really want or a magnet school I’ve been thinking about."

Has this audience changed since the book came out?

We decided to market it as business book. That was our core audience we felt. I had a recognized reputation in this market. It’s the easiest to market to that audience.

But with the PBS I hope we can market it to a broader audience.

How did your reasonable aspiration connect with them, their needs?

We’ve gotten so much wonderful feedback. For a corporate group the feedback is that it’s illuminating and strengthening.

Recently a woman was referred to me from a longtime client. My client said Erika and her team were the single most important resource for us.

THAT makes my day.

Someone once said that "yeah, yeah, strategic planning... we’ve done that".

But after they went through the process they said it was so different. Usually they would put together a binder of possibilities with other processes that included the challenges that faced them and then set it aside as door stops.

"But, doing your process where we had to bring our whole hearts and our whole mind and the outcome was created by us and we had to commit to it at each stage was an entirely different experience."

Who remains your biggest potential audience? Which audience seems not ready to grasp what you’re saying. Mid-level managers or C-level executives? Big business or small, non-profits or for. Why?

It’s a great question. But it’s difficult to answer. We as Proteus are so small that I feel like we’re just barely scratching the surface. We have more work than we can do. We haven’t run into that problem. We’re trying to take advantage of the interest we do have.

Part 1 of your book is about Being Strategic Every Day. Why every day?

It’s the core of what’s unique about this book. I’m convince that being strategic is a habit of mind. It’s not a one-time event. They are clear about the most important things for them. And they start out clear about those choices, those core directional choices that will take them to their hoped-for future.

It is an everyday process in order to be successful. It’s liberating when you can make those choices. This will move me towards it. This will not move me towards it.

If you do it daily then you never get that far away.

Then I suggest that step repositioning. Every few months, you step back, pull the camera back, reposition the whole thing, update that current reality.

Then you re-confirm your hope. Is it the same? Has it expanded? You reconfirm that hope.

Sometimes with corporate groups they think some obstacle will be really big and it doesn’t manifest. Or the exact opposite happens.

So you just keep refreshing it. You keep it real for you. Being strategic is a habit; it’s not a one-time thing.

Being strategic starts with a pre-step. I’m a fan of baby steps because at 55 I’ve mastered them. What’s this pre-step and why is it important for getting started correctly on this journey.

What I noticed is that people often try to solve a problem before they know what it is.

[Great story of friends try to solve a problem before they know what their friend’s problem is.]

What I found over the years is that groups get into dueling solutions. They start arguing about solutions that have no relevance to the problem.

What is important is to frame up the challenge so that I can say yes this is the challenge I want to address.

One of my favorite sayings is that "Luck is the residue of design". It’s from Branch Rickey who was a baseball commissioner who did a lot of wonderful things.

Now, with that pre-step taken and Big Mo’ starting to grow...what are the next steps?

Well once you're clear on the challenges, the hill you want to climb, then you want to clarify what is your reality relative to this challenge.

There are 3 skills to doing this. The first one is becoming a "fair witness". I got this term from Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. The job of a " fair witness" is to report as neutrally and objectively what they observe.

We found the best people being strategic were the ones who could be a fair witness.

A great example of people NOT doing this is in American Idol. You see so many who literally cannot sing or carry a tune.

The 2nd skill is pulling back the camera to pull in more data.

The 3rd one is sorting for impact. The SWOT (strengths, weakness, opportunities, threats) analysis is a great way to sort for impact.

If you do that then you have a really good framework for where you’re beginning from to climb your mountain.

If you don’t know where you are starting from then it is impossible to know if your aspiration is reasonable or not?

Now after a few steps we ask ourselves What is the hope? Almost everyone else says ...Start with your dream. Stephen Covey says Begin with the end in mind. I read you as saying..wait a minute before we go there, let’s define where we are now. Why?

It’s the American Idol phenomenon. It’s sad. If you start with a dream that is not possible for you...I’m not an every kid deserves a trophy person. But I think you have to start exactly with what problem are you trying to solve.

Working with your clients in this process, how do you process their answers? Do you grade on a scale? Do you correct their answers with a big red pen? how do you help them bring the answers they need?

We include a section in the book that talks about the need to bring the people together to move this process forward. Usually, at a company, that’s the executive team.

Then we spend two days together using the process as guard rails. We are not the subject matter experts. THEY are the subject matter experts.

We have wonderful process that comes up with a 100% collaborative process that comes up with a road map of their creation. We create a system of accountability to hold them to that process.

We almost without exception come back 3-4 months later for 3/4 of a day for an update. This is a learning session, not a blame session. It’s much more important to come into that session to learn what has happened or not happened.

I know client work is always confidential. But still I’m going to ask: Can you profile for us a client who applied your approach to their work?

Well one of my very favorite clients, our longest time client. It’s Union Square Hospitality Group. 1992. Danny Meyer had one restaurant and it was rated most favorite restaurant, Zagat. He realized that one of the reasons Union Square was successful was he was there every day. And he couldn't do that with the 2nd restaurant he was opening.

We came together with him and his senior team. Part of that vision was called enlightened hospitality. That became the core of their culture.

It’s very exciting to watch their success. Danny has been very kind acknowledging our role in his success.

Let’s talk about the economy. It’s recovering. Which step in the process of Being Strategic every day...is the step the economy is stumbling over every day?

At the risk of sounding glib I’m not sure it’s possible to say there’s one step.

A big problem is that most companies don’t seem to have a process like this in place. There are 3 generalized options, instead:

• Wing it, fly by the seat of their pants

• Some companies have only financial goals

• Some are process bound. They can’t move forward in the way they need to.

Let’s talk about the 2nd one. They have goals for say profit margins or ebidtda. Awright. That’s a goal. Don’t know if you can reach it as you don’t know where you are. It’s not 3-dimensional.

Preparing for each guest seems more challenging each week. That’s a good thing, at least for me. The challenge comes from some common threads. One common thread is ...innovation. Or in our economy’s case, its apparent lack. What role can the process and skills of Being Strategic play in bringing more innovation to a company, our economy?

Well. If you are clear about all this stuff, my challenges, where I’m starting from...you can bake innovation into this process. Then you can create tactics that will make it easier to innovative in your company.

A lot of people existing companies where innovation is a rallying cry. One of the things you can use this for is create a road map where innovation can occur.

You have to create the right petri dish for innovation to grow.

Leaders are readers. Jim Rohn is quoted as saying that. You’re a leader. With all your spare time, what’s been your 3 favorite books?

I have to out myself because I do not ready very many business books. There are not a lot of business books I find wonderful.

Good to Great, by Jim Collins. Fabulous.

The Speed of Trust, by Stephen Covey, Jr.

But mostly I read fiction. I find it extremely helpful. I love good writing. Reading good writers sparks my thinking in a lot of ways.

I love to read mysteries, seeing if I can solve it ahead of the game. I recently read a series of mysteries that take place in early 20th century NY that has a woman detective. Rhys Bowen is the author.

Are you speaking at any public events in addition to the PBS show?

Next week I’m speaking at the Virginia Council of CEOs.

Anne, your assistant, is great. She is stellar. Anne, thank you!

Where can people find you on the web?

* Proteus International

* Being Strategic

* The Simplest Thing, Erika's blog

A Few Things the NYTimes Can Do to Engage and Stay Relevant

The NY Times has recently begun webcasting its daily editorial meeting. According to VSL, the Very Short List:

The videos show top members of the Times staff discussing the stories developing that day. It’s meant to be a super-modern gesture toward openness and transparency.

...it’s an intriguing step in the alternately heroic and goofy struggle by newspapers to stay relevant in the electronic era.

I love the NY Times. I loved it enough to buy its Times Select thing back in the day. The NY Times has among the best reporters and coverage of topics across the spectrum from weddings to politics, to fraud to humor, technology to sports, travel and trends, healthcare, lifestyles...Name it and they cover it. And cover it well. The Sunday Times was my favorite or second favorite companion to share a Sunday for years.

Still, over the years, it is awkward to watch the meetup between digital media and the NY Times.

So, rather than gnash my teeth and wail (less and less) I choose to instead praise the behavior I’d like to see or see more of, as Paul Sloane suggested, here’s 10 things the NYTimes Can Do to Engage and Stay Relevant

Twitter:

Live tweet the editorial board meetings. Seems obvious. Live tweeting of presentations is a common feature at conferences and forums now. Essentially, it looks like this meeting is a panel presentation for until now a limited audience. I’m mixed about it in person during the presentation.

But...imagine the audience potential, the word-of-mouth buzz, the engagement with readers current and new, if the NY Times set up a branded site to stream each editorial board meeting.

Ask us, your readers. Ask us what stories are being ignored? Ask us, your readers, what details are being overlooked?

Too broad and open ended? Ok, offer a list of 3 big stories that can’t be covered simultaneously. Ask us, your readers, which story is most important?

David Pogue us. David wrote The World According to Twitter. Why not take his approach with this book and apply it, offer it, to us your readers?

Live chat/Live tweets.

• Ask the readers a question each night on Twitter and moderate their responses live.
• Then compile the responses every 30 days.
• Write an ebook with the responses and give that book away for free.
• Create a page for each month and a site for the whole project.
• Track down some of the contributors and ask them to share via video what they were thinking, what happened, would they do it again?

Do the same with video. Limit the responses to 140 characters...

Include  # tags with your articles.

That allows us, your readers, to have our conversation about your article. That makes your article our conversation. That makes you part of our life, us part of yours. That's engagement.

Facebook:

And you are on Facebook....where? Maybe you are on Facebook. But searching for NY Times or NYTimes....fails to find you there.

Have a fan page for all of your sections.Think there’s some fans for your Travel or Magazine section? There are.

Reporter fan pages. Paul Krugman and Nicholas Kristof have fan pages. What about your other reporters and columnists?

Webcasts for Schools

This is your audience of future readers. This is your audience of future reporters. Engage with them to inspire their passion and connect with the NY Times, its product and its legacy.

• Share the editorial board meeting webcasts with student classes at high schools and journalism schools in college.

• Then share the result on YouTube and Facebook. That allows you to engage a wider audience (at minimal costs).

• Then do another school. And another.

• Create a website to share each of these webcasts and their community of fans. Use Facebook or Ning to host these pages. Use Twitter # tags to broaden the audience, grow the conversation. Integrate the Tweets onto the page for each school's webcast.

Webcasts with Reporters, Columnists

Sure, there would be the crazies on both ends of the spectrum. There’s a story in itself!

• Why are they there?
• Why are they in support of the article?
• Why are they upset at the article or op-ed?

Webcast a meeting between reporters and columnists and a journalism school or a high school class. The class interacts live, the webcast is streamed live and those watching the webcast can tweet questions, comments.

There’s another article and another story. Democracy and journalism in action. It ain’t pretty. But it’s pretty powerful.

Expand your intern program.

Nicholas Kristof ‘em. Nicholas Kristof has a wonderful internship program where he chooses one person to intern with him as he travels Africa. There are more reporters and stories where this added personal element could be developed.

A quick search on Google shows you have 3-4 internship programs.

• Where are the stories of the interns?

• How valuable was that experience for them?

• Think their stories might be inspiring for their peers, for aspiring reporters, for their communities? They are.

• Think it might bring more readers? It will.

Ask.

• Ask your readers. We know what we’d like you to do.

• Make the question open-ended. Leave room for people to comment in their words.

• Share their feedback. You already share comments.

• Then compile and organize the results into categories. Let the readers vote on them.

• Then pick a reader to lead that project and share their story with us, your readers, as the project unfolds.

This is just me.

And there are...thousands like me who are your readers. (No, seriously. Scary as that may be..it's true.) And this is a quick riff on some ideas.

Maybe, that's the point. We love your paper. We all have at least one idea that you could use. All you have to do is:

1. Ask.

2. Listen.

3. Recognize.

And, presto! You're engaged!

Disclaimer: Of course, there is a tremendous amount of work in these three steps or with any one of these projects. But you have a willing army of readers willing to help. That's a story in itself.

Wow ‘em with hangars

Cabela’s delivered a Wow to my wife recently.

She opened their packaging and found the pants she’d ordered were already on hangars. What did she say?

Wow. They’re on hangars.

Great first impression. First impressions remain important. She said Wow. They’re on hangars before she even looked at the pants.

How much did those hangars and this first WOW impression cost? A nickel? A dime?

What’s the ROI of this WOW moment?

1. Word-of-mouth. Wow’s said by hundreds, thousands, of their customers. X percent will mention that to their friends and family. In my wife’s case, the pants didn’t fit. (They looked great, she looked great. Whatever. Don’t get me going. ) She’s returning them. This time she'll say I love how they hang their pants on hangars.

2. Customer Loyalty. I guarantee if these pants had not arrived packaged and hung with care that she would A. return them for another pair; B. shop again. Instead, she would have returned them for a refund. Trust me, she would get a refund, not a credit.

3. More word-of-mouth. I’m telling you this story.

Competition in women’s apparel has to be tough. The pants my wife bought could have been bought anywhere. And she ended up returning them.

But she’ll send them back and try another pair. And she'll remember this pleasant experience the next time she considers Cabela's.

Is it JUST the hangar? Not by itself, no. A hangar can’t hide bad clothing, poor delivery, missing service.

But, it does make their customer smile a little bit as they first admire that the pants came on a hangar. First impressions remain important.

And that’s what you want. You want some thing, some way, to make your product shine a little bit more in your crowded market, make the customer smile a little bit more and say...wow, look what they did! to everyone around them. 

And a hangar only costs...a nickel.

Generating word-of-mouth isn’t about great big campaigns. It’s the little things that add up to a ‘wow’. We can’t keep our mouths shut when we’re wowed.

* Disclaimer: I said Wow. They’re on hangars, too!

Our School Boards, Company Administrators and Social Media Policies

Schools have been finding social media policies are as challenging to create as they are for companies. Reading one well-written, well-intentioned, school board’s efforts (pdf) to craft a social media policy for students and personnel drove this point home.

Both groups face a common challenge. That challenge is the growing gap in experiences and expectations from social media's rise.

Now we have real-time connections with anyone anywhere. We can connect and collaborate, critique and create, and discover options. Some of these options reflect poorly on the message they have been fed to date. But, that's the price of entry, learning, engaging, collaborating and creating.

Pandora’s box seems an apt metaphor.

Now in all fairness this is a well written, well-prepared, policy coordinated with a well-organized plan. The intent was excellent. And, I recognize there is always more than meets the eye or the local news with a school board meeting or its policy document.

The language and perspective in this agenda is often found in companies struggling to create a social media policy.

Here’s my thoughts as I read the text of this policy, a policy I've seen in place at many other companies.

AUDIENCE: The policy is addressed to only the members of the Board.

Questions:

• School: When will the teachers and students and parents hear of this policy governing their behavior?

• Company: As a company would you address your social media policy to only your Board of Directors or your Executive Committee?

Solutions:

• School: What if... a community page using Facebook or Ning was created for all the stakeholders in this conversation? That would include, should include all of the decision-makers. Those unfamiliar with social media's features and environments would have first-hand experience. A valuable teaching environment would be possible building bridges between students (now, teachers of social media) and administrators (now, students).

• Company: What if...your company or the school board included a requirement that all decision-makers must create a profile page and participate? Mandatory social media participation is an interesting concept. But why allow decisions made by those unfamiliar with the topic at hand?

PURPOSE: The following policy is promulgated to protect the students and personnel.

We believe...the proposal strikes a fair balance between the use...and privacy rights of parents and students.

Questions:

• Have students and personnel asked for protection?

• Were parents and students included in your discussion of their privacy rights?

Imagine that sentence included in a company's social media policy.

The following policy is promulgated to protect the employees and management.

We believe...the proposal strikes a fair balance between the use...and privacy rights of employees and management.

Questions:

• Have your employees asked to be protected from their use of social media?

• Were your employees included in your discussion of how you created your proposal to protect them, their careers and their company?

Skepticism is natural when volunteers appear to protect us from ourselves and our friends. Suspicion is also natural. And so is a tendency to immediately reject a proposal created without our participation.

The audience for a social media policy must be inclusive.

Solution:

For School and Company: What if...your proposal answered three questions from everyone targeted by your proposal. Those questions are:

• What’s in it for us?
• Why should we care?
• Why should we believe?

Effective answers for those questions begin the process of engagement. They see your answers come from your genuine care for their needs. The next step, taken very quickly, would be to include their feedback, suggestions, criticisms in the next revision.

PERMISSION/TRUST

Educators shall only allow students whose parent or guardian has given written permission to post on school related sites.

School administrators shall be granted access...

There could be more to this section. But this is how it could be translated:

• Educators are volunteered without their permission to be the enforcers.

• Students are not trusted by administration. They need double optin permissions: one from parents, one from educators.

• Educators are not trusted by the administration.

• Only administrators, the authors of this policy, are trustworthy.

Adjust this text for a corporate policy:

Managers shall only allow employees whose team leader has given written permission to post on company-related sites.

HR, Legal and Executives shall be granted access...

This is how it could be translated:

• Managers are volunteered to be the bad guys and Team Leaders are volunteered to be parents for the employees on their team.

• Employees are not trusted by the company: Executives, HR and Legal. Employees need double optin vouchers: One by Team Leaders (defacto parents) and Managers.

• Only Executives, HR and Legal personnel, authors of this policy, are trustworthy.

• No one’s permission is needed by either groups of administrators: school or corporate.

Questions:

Schools: Have you given your students permission to post on sites or discuss in person...anything? Have students asked, much less needed, your permission to do so? Have they learned communication and decision-making skills?

Company: Do your employees need your permission to join any social media site? Have you given them, as part of their work, the permission to ‘post’ with each other, with customers and vendors and partners. Right. It's part of their job. Why would their communication skills and decision-making now be in question?

Students and employees already are their own administrators and participants on social media site. Their conversations, their posts, are already happening? Did you know that?

Google the name of your school, principal or athletic coaches. Google the name of your company or executives.

Students and employees granted themselves trust and permission. And those qualities are shared and developed in their own community of peers. Your trust and permission is not needed.

Your policy, good or bad, will have little impact on these conversations. They will continue to take place with or without you.

If you join the conversations then education and engagement will happen. If you choose not to, then education and engagement will continue without you.

SOLUTIONS:

Schools: What-if you recognized that students have already earned your trust? What if you trusted that all your education on writing, reading, communicating and behavior had been learned? Could that be the issue?

Company: What-if you offered your employees the same trust with social media that you offer them in their daily conversations with their peers and other company stakeholders? Or would you be embarrassed if the general public saw the conversations your employees have with each other or other stakeholders including customers, vendors or partners? Would that be the issue?

My sense is both groups will learn that those we lead live up to or down to our expectations. Yes, disappointments will happen. But consider all the talent, ideas, conversations, collaborations, inspirations and education and engagement that is possible.

Use.

School administrators are authorized to grant permission for the educational use of social networking tools.

This is clear. But it read as it is your permission, your topic, your content, your purpose.

Questions:

• Where is the social networking?

• Without it where is the educational use?

• Without it why is a policy needed?

Learning requires engagement, right? If you are not part of their conversations and they are not trusted to be part of yours, then where is the engagement? And where is the education?

Consider this language in a corporate policy:

Company administrators are authorized to grant permission for the corporate use of social networking tools.

Same point, again: your permission, your topic, your content, your purpose.

Question:

• Why would anyone use these tools if these tools can only used as you define their use?

Building a brand requires engagement by all its stakeholders. If you are not part of their conversations and they are not trusted to be part of yours, then where is the engagement? Where is the brand being built?

Personal Social Networking

Nothing in this policy shall prohibit personal or private social networking by employees acting outside of the scope of their employment and with personally owned equipment.

Good.

Employees who maintain personal social networking sites shall not allow students to access personal sites, excepting members of immediate family.

Question for School:

• You do realize employees spend their whole day with other employees and students...? You trust them to be together all day, 5 days a week or more. They spend more waking hours together than they do with their family...at your insistence.

• What if their paths cross outside class? Should they avert their eyes?

Consider this language adapted for corporate policy:

Employees who maintain personal social networking sites shall not allow fellow employees or personnel from vendors, partners, customers and management to access personal sites, excepting members of immediate family.

Question: Same as above.

Yes, we all should spend more time with family. And we would, also.

But friends are important too. So are role models and mentors, resources and tools. Challenges and solutions any more do not happen during regular hours under someone’s supervision.

Yes, I understand about inappropriate interactions. On the other hand, that happened before social media.

This post turned into an interesting labor of love.

The takeaways from this labor seem to be recommendations for a few simple steps:

1.  Invite everyone. Invite everyone to this policy party who will be effected by the policy...

2. Ask some questions. Start the conversation. Start it correctly with some questions. Remember your policy is about being social. Be social. Ask some questions.  

3. Listen to everyone and everything they say. Listen to all their comments, questions, fears, experiences, problems, suggestions, ideas, tools, solutions...dreams and visions.

4. Learn constantly.   Being social is about learning and engaging. And social media is the media that lets us find new people to connect with and learn from, and deepen that experience with those we already know. The first three steps if you you repeat them repeatedly creates a process of constant learning and engagement. That's social. That's a living policy. 

Remember: You’re real business is creating memories

This IS a great quote!

If you want more referrals, if you want more word-of-mouth, create better memories for your customers AND your employees. Those memories are what inspires your customers AND employees to refer their company. Those memories form the stories they share. Those stories become your brand's message. In creating stories to share their memories, your customers and employees become your loyal and volunteer salesforce, PR agency and recruiters.

Remember: Your real business is creating memories.

JasonSpector and MyAgenda...thank you for sharing the quote and inspiring this quick post.

I love Twitter. All its noise and chaos is worth it when you find gems like this and them.

Tomorrow's Guest: Erika Andersen, author of Being Strategic

Erika Andersen, founder of Proteus International and author of Being Strategic: Plan for Success, Outthink Your Competitors, Stay Ahead of Change, is our guest tomorrow. The show starts at 9:30 AM, Central.

As founder of Proteus International, Erika Andersen has built a reputation for promoting learning and change in ways uniquely tailored to her clients' challenges, goals, and culture. She does that by focusing on thoroughly understanding each organization and on collaborating with her clients in ways that are engaging, direct, and "learner-friendly." Erika uses metaphor and models to help people learn about themselves and their organizations, and then to decide how to move toward the future they envision.

She has served as consultant and advisor to the CEOs and top executives of a number of corporations, including MTV Networks, Hewitt Associates, Turner Broadcasting, MillerCoors, NBC Universal, Union Square Hospitality Group, CBS, Madison Square Garden, and Comcast Corporation.

Her book, Being Strategic, is one of my favorite books. It's one of the three books I keep handy. Why? In an ever-changing environment it is important that I assess opportunities while Being Strategic.

And her book offers powerful, clear, actionable steps to insure I am Being Strategic in my plans for big projects or small. In fact, I ask each guest on this show to take a step recommended by Erika in her book. That step is to identify the 'reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future' for a project, a business, a life-change they offer to help their audience and the audience for this show. Their answers are always inspiring, just like her book.

We’ll talk about her ‘reasonable aspirations’ for writing this book, what signs tell her she’s making progress (and she’s making great progress and that helps us all) and how her approach both in her book and her consulting can help all of us reach our goals.

You have two listening options:

LIVE

1. Call in during the live portion from 9:30 AM, Central to 10:30 AM, Central. 646-915-9212, here in the US.

2. Listen in streaming mode during the show or later.

ARCHIVE

1) Listen in streaming mode.

6 Ways to Keep Fear Out of Your Business

Set the tone.

You...set the tone. You, as the leader, set the tone. Every word, every email, every silence, every smile...creates the environment for those in your organization. It's true for everyone, too. But, as a leader your impact is much greater.

And, on those days when we find ourselves merely mortal and unable to set the proper tone...and it happens...take a moment. A mental health hour, a walk, an extra cup of coffee, one less cup of coffee...a call to a friend, a partner, an advisor...can often help.

Be sure to reach out. It adds meaning to others. Everyone has at times depended on this same network of trusted supporters.

Humor

Laughter is our great advantage as a species. The ability to laugh is the ability to keep perspective. It is the tool that often lets us persevere in desperate situations.

Laughter and humor can keep the spirits high, the ideas flowing, the cooperation growing.

And, at the same time, these are serious times. George Carlin, Larry the Cable Guy or Wanda Sykes...at every meeting will be unproductive.

Share the goods.

Share the story, the full story, of your company with everyone in the company. The full story includes opportunities, challenges, setbacks, failures and reminders. Discretion is important here.

Reminders are important in times of challenge and stress. Companies fail completely when their memory is lost; they forget their purpose, who they are, what they stood for, why they matter. Once they forget...whose job is it to remember? Certainly not the customers or the vendors and partners.

And, fear begins to arise in the gaps where memory is lost. Uncertainty is the breeding ground for...fear.

Challenges, setbacks and failures are where the opportunities reside. It’s also where your stars will shine.

As a leader, it’s where your star shines. You see clearer and more concretely the path that's needed through these uncertain times.

Listen, listen, listen.

Ok, sure you may not be afraid. You may be excited about the opportunities made possible with your competitors’ demise.

But, that’s you.

Not everyone will see the glass half full.

Sharing your excitement is at best meaningless, and at worst destructive, until you hear, recognize and acknowledge the fears of others.

Listening makes it possible to share the vision in ways that are meaningful to your audience with examples and data that serve to connect and inspire.

Connect, connect, connect.

In a time of greater uncertainty, like...today...it’s even more imperative you connect what people do with what goals are accomplished. Everyone needs to understand what they contribute.

Sure, the sales guy closed a big deal. But, could he have done it without the IT guy keeping the network up and running and the sales guy’s desktop running?

Sure, customers are happy but would they be happy without finance and billing delivering accurate invoices, handling payments precisely and reporting exact statements on time?

If you connect, connect, connect, you make meaning, meaning, meaning for those who deliver your brand’s meaning to others: customers.

Document, document, document.

This will be a time of great ideas, solutions, and cooperation. Heroes will be born. Stars will shine. These will become part of the corporate memory you will share in the future.

It’s also a time when uncertainty, fear, reluctance to change, territorial battles, infighting, silo-mentalities, stubbornness, refusal to change...

Both need to be documented, openly and transparently: The former to celebrate and recognize; the latter to remove quickly with knowledge, data, discussion, support, coaching and removal in response as appropriate.

6 ways to keep fear out of your business.

Note: I first published this one year ago. It still seems to ring true and it seems many of us still need to hear it. So here it is, one more time.

* istock photo: sdominick

What are you reading, Michael Stallard?

Michael Lee Stallard, co-founder and partner of Epluribus Partners and the author of Fired Up or Burned Out: How to re-ignite your teams passion, creativity and productivity joined the show last week. You can listen in streaming on-demand mode here.

I always ask guests about their current reading list. I asked Michael:

Jim Rohn said that Leaders are Readers. What are you reading? What’s your three favorite books this year?

Michael answered:

Wow. It’s hard to narrow it down to 3.

• A biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Wikipedia

Amazon

• It's Not About the Coffee, by Howard Behar

• Lincoln’s Melancholy, by Joshua Wolf Shenk.

Another great set of three books to add to your reading list.

Why do I publish these reading lists? One of the best ways to align ourselves with leaders and their thinking is to read what they are reading.

I found it interesting and inspiring that on Michael's list was just one business book. The other two were biographies of fascinating, complex, individuals who faced daunting challenges in their personal lives as they tried to address national, even global, challenges in the world around them. Kinda like what individuals in organization face today.

How to lose employee engagement in 10 ways

Today* is Kate Hudson’s birthday. To celebrate her birthday and her role in How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days, I created this list of 10 ways to lose employee engagement.

1. It’s all about you. Remind them every day in every way.

2. No training. Who needs training? Training costs money and time. Whose training and time? Yours. Besides, they said they were a self-starter in their interview. Let them start learning their job and how to do it.

3. Never listen. They should be listening to you.

4. No more ideas. Yours are more than enough.

5. Accountability is a one-way street. You’re the traffic cop, too.

6. Never recognize their accomplishments. It’s their job. Recognition’s in their paycheck.

7. Criticize, criticize, criticize. You’re bringing attention to what deserves attention: their faults.

8. Who’s that guy? Hire people at random. Don’t tell anyone why. Force them to embrace the chaos.

9. Play favorites. Favorites breed dissension within the ranks. That makes it much easier to control. Plus, see the first point.

10. Keep agendas hidden. Saves time.

Kate's character in that movie found true love after trying to get rid of him for 10 days.; That's a movie. You won't create engagement by taking these steps.

However, you can turn this list inside out. Do the exact opposite.; And your results will be the exact opposite: engagement.

1. It’s all about them. Remind them every day in every way. They build the brand every day in every way. Without them...you have and are nothing. Well, maybe not nothing. But you’re a lot less.

2. Train, train and train some more. Re-train, too. It's an investment. See above. Their success, their development, their skills, their strengths...are how you measure your success. You and your become the collective definition.

3. Listen, listen, listen. You should always be listening to them. They know.

4. More ideas. You always need more ideas to cut costs, develop new products, conceive a new revenue model, hire better, train better...

5. Accountability is a two-way street. You’re all passengers; you’re all cops.

6. Always recognize their achievements. Find more ways to recognize their achievements. Find more time to, as well. Find more people to hear of their achievements.

7. Praise, praise, praise. Praise is the reward that encourages that same behavior. Paul Sloane of Innovation Tools wrote: Praise the behavior you want to see.

8. Engage everyone in the hiring process. Here’s a plan to create a colloborative hiring process.

9. Level the playing field for everyone. Seems obviously fair. But, maybe you live be the adage that life isn't fair. Ok. Then consider the savings in employee turnover and hiring costs as well as greater production when artificially conceived obstacles are missing.

10. Open, transparent, agendas shared openly and transparently. Saves time. Saves money. Keeps everyone involved in their solutions.

What's in it for you? Why should you care?

10% or 90%.

Michael Lee Stallard, author of Fired Up or Burned Out, shared the results of a recent study of the Corporate Executive Board. Only 10% of employees are engaged emotionally and intellectually with their work. ;;

These steps may not flip that ratio on its head. But it can change that 10% to...20%. Imagine the results. If you achieve x now with 10% of everyone's engagement...imagine what would happen if twice as many people were fully engaged, emotionally and intellectually in their work?

It’s Monday. Start imagining.

* I didn't know it was Kate's birthday. I'm not a fan. But as I wrote this post, the movie's title came to mind and...

Highlights from my conversation with Gary Harpst, author of Execution Revolution

Gary Harpst, successful entrepreneur, author and founder of Six Disciplines consulting firm joined our show recently.

You can listen to our conversation here.

Gary Harpst and his books and consulting practice at Six Disciplines offer proven solutions to one of the greatest challenges for any business. That challenge is execution.

In 2004, Gary published Six Disciplines for Excellence: Building Small Business That Learn, Lead and Last, which became an award-winning handbook for continual business performance improvement.

He published a 2nd book, Six Disciplines Execution Revolution, in 2008.

I have read both of his books. They are outstanding. They are perfect for small to medium sized businesses looking for the tools and the methodologies and the plan to use them together to create a disciplined, engaged, consistent execution of their strategy.

Gary, how are you? What are you doing?

These times are challenging. We're focused on how do we build great teams of people who can continue sustain their vision and growth all the while the world around 'em is changing.

Lets talk about your book. Six Discipline’s Execution Revolution: Solving the one problem that makes solving all other problems easier.

I don’t see you as a firebrand renegade. Maybe that makes you more dangerous. But in your book you’re inciting a revolution. Why does business need a revolution in how it tackles execution.

Well, I think revolution may be an overused term. The reason I think of this is a revolution is I see it as a sea change of how businesses should run their business.

I cited the story of India and how when we were laying land lines for phones, lines for cable TV and paving roads India didn’t have that ability to do that. And now all of a sudden India has skipped over all that and now has jumped to the latest technology. They’re the most advanced wireless country in the world. Every once in awhile being later in the cycle gives you great advantage.The revolution opportunity for small business is to take many of the techniques big business has been perfecting for 50 years and see small businesses do what India did and go from last to first.

Next week’s guest is Erika Andersen. She coined the phrase reasonable aspiration or hoped for future. What was your reasonable aspiration 2-3 years ago for writing Six Disciplines Execution Revolution?

The idea goes back farther than 2 or 3 years when the book was crafted.

We sold a business, Solomon Software, and I was speaking at business conference. And the whole topic was how to build better practices. And I asked someone how they liked what was being said here. And, one gentleman said all that was being said was great. But 2-3 years from now he won’t be doing any of this.

The thing that went around in my mind seems like there’s this pattern we get some good input, we recognize it's good input, but we don’t stick to it, we don’t follow through on it. That became the nucleus for 6 Disciplines corporation and researching why organizations don’t follow through on what they know is important.

The first was written as a quick read because CEO’s won't read big, thick books, and the purpose was to penetrate the mind of a CEO to make them aware of what was emerging in business because if they don’t they’re going to get run over by these changes.

For whom did you write Execution Revolution? Describe the reader in your mind as you wrote this book three years ago.

We did quite a lot of research, some focus group work, and ultimately some quantitative research. We ranked organizations based on their performance relative to their competitors and we saw the top performers in every industry were the early adoptors of something like this.

By something like this we mean the businesses who are preparing for tomorrow and not just putting out today’s fires.

The organizations most successful today are the ones with the bandwidth at the top to be thinking farther ahead. If you’re attention is on putting out fires you can’t look to long-term fitness. We use the analogy of it’s a poor time to go on an exercise program when you’re having a heart attack in the emergency room.

We believe this will become a mainstream concept. But we have to validate it first with CEOs who get it. They see the value of making short-term investments that will produce long term results.

Are you finding CEOs who get it?

Yes! We do have to sort through. But we are finding them and they are excellent partners.

We have to find the right CEO. But the very next question after they see the vision for what should be changed is how to get the rest of their team to see this vision. The biggest concern is that they don't come in with a new program that won't last.

Every CEO I know, including me, has gone on to events, conferences, hired consultants and a year later are not doing anything about it.

If we bring it in here, it has got to work.

As a leader your integrity is on the line with a new initiative especially if you’ve done it 3-4 times before.

There’s been a bit of turmoil in the 2 years since you published that book. In 2008 we were beginning to crest on that bubble. Has your audience since then changed much?

We’ve seen different things go on since then. In different parts of the country there is different types of turmoil. In Florida we saw turmoil start in the residential real estate markets and then spread into the commercial markets and then into the whole economy.

They go through the cycle of wondering if this will effect them. And then they see it is effecting them and they wonder if they'll survive. Then they see they can survive so now they ask: Ok, now how do I thrive?

It’s an interesting thing to see as diff industries are having different experiences.

You write that all revolutions are based on a core set of ideas. What are the three core premises for your book?

The first one is the most significant. If you talk to most business leaders and ask what their biggest problem is they will give you an answer that’s not their biggest problem. As President of Solomon Software I saw we worked with 60,000 organizations around the globe. Our channel of distribution was 1000 partners that were small and midsized organizations. I’ve been immersed in this market for 30 years.

As CEOs we all fall into the habit of seeing the problem ahead of as the most important. The real problem is that we will always have new problems. And a different one after that, and a different one after that. The real problem is not the problem in front of us but it's building an organization that recognize there’s going to be a another problem and another problem after that and how do we build an organization that is increasing in its capacity to solve the future problems.

This first point is the biggest aha that needs to get through to CEOs. If you are growing your business and executing well your problems will get bigger. Because execution drives growth and growth creates bigger problems. And until you learn to manage with the idea that you will have bigger problems next year you will never build an organization that’s predictable.

The first premise of this book is we don't understand what our biggest challenge is.

The 2nd one is that there is one problem if you solved makes solving all the others easier. I stole this from Holman Jenkins a WSJ writer. That’s what execution revolution is all about. It’s about organizations coming to grips with the idea they have 2 products. You're building two things: A machine to build your widgets and the widgets, themselves. Solving the one problem that makes solving all other easier is focusing on crafting strategy and executing it .

The 3rd premise is that every once in awhile we reach a market where technology and expertise can be assembled in a new approach. Ford didn’t invent the industrial age. It had been around for 100 years when he created his first car. So you had a whole series of Technologies emerging for a 100 years and all of a sudden Henry Ford comes along with the idea to put a combustible engine on a frame and add rubber tires... he figured out how to integrate all these pieces into making cars.

100 years in the making but it was sprung upon America quickly.

What’s the analogy with business execution? We've been working on things for the past 30 years. Our country was working with Baldridge and Deming was working in Japan from the '50's, Baldridge service awards, PC, internet, better hardware, technologies, executive coaching can have value...the 3rd premise is we can put all these pieces together in ways they have never been assembled and for a fraction of the cost...transform organizations.

And those leader who recognizes this early. If you don't learn to transform your organization you won't exist as an organization.

There’s one area I didn’t mention. Businesses throw technology at problems. All the other things have to be wrapped around the technology. Tech is an ingredient in the solution; it’s not a solution.

What are the conditions now that are so different than in 2008. What are the conditions now that make your book and your solutions so more ideal now?

There’s kinda 2 or 3 categories of business and I'll focus on the last two.

1. Those in trouble and trying to manage their way out of it.

2. Those whose bleeding has stopped and they are trying now to resume growth.

In the first case, organizations don’t know how to re-size themselves or cut costs. Many times you are trying to stop the hemorrhaging of cash. That usually is about cutting people. What we find is a much better way to reorganize is to ask yourself what do you need to be good at. Then ask yourself how you spend your time, how people are spending their time, in the organization. Then you identify the time that’s being mis-allocated.

What it results in is doing undue damage to the organization as opposed to really identifying the most important activity you should be doing.

We strongly encourage:

• Identify the core business.
  

• Re-source your assets accordingly.

• Form a team built on growing the business, 100% of their time.

Divide the group in 2. Sustaining and Growing. Both focused 100%. You have much clearer responsibility.

Whether you’re in good times or bad you have to answer certain questions, over and over, otherwise you lose focus. You can divide the 6 disciplines into two categories.

• Getting everyone on the same page.

• Then going there.

• Getting everyone on the same page is very difficult in crisis. Our process works very well in that crisis mode as it gets everyone on the same page and gets focus.

Those who are thriving and growing... and there are segments doing that, then the 6 Disciplines help them anticipate the next set of problems and prepare for it. In any case you have better execution.

What motivates the human heart is knowing what I’m doing is important. The group that is running the business gets more purpose out of what they are doing as they’re creating the capital and the opportunity for the other group to focus on the future.

29:44

We focus a lot on human nature. Motivation comes from purpose. This transforming a business is all about communicating vision for what each person’s role on a team is...

What’s in it for business? Why should they care about improving their execution? If more businesses understand what’s in it for them, then they’d join the revolution.

You can answer this on multiple levels.

• For the CEO It’s a whole lot more fun to run a business that works.
  

• For a business, a business that is predictable is worth tremendously more than a business that is not predictable.
  

Research found 4 factors that predict almost 90% of what someone will pay. The first three were what you'd expect:

• Investing in R& D for the future,
  
• Growth trend,
  
• Return on equity and how the management team has deployed capital,
  

But the 4th one was more of an influence than all the others put together. And it was:

• how predictable has this business been.

The business that’s predictable will be valued 35% more valuable, all things being equal, than an identical business who’s performance is not predictable.

3% of businesses in the US are in a balanced mode where profitability and growth are strong. It was a study published by the Small Business Administration. This 3% took on average 17 years to reach this high performance stage. But, once they reached this high performance stage, 3 out of 4 of these high performance companies fell out after about 4 years.

My own experience says I could have kept businesses I’d run in the past in the High performance mode if I knew what I know now.

We can strengthen our economy if we can get these 3% to 4%. Then we can grow our economy.

It’s one bright spot for America. We see rapid growth in China and India. But America’s well-positioned to execute this business revolution as we’ve been longer and farther down this road in the Information Age and so more of these pieces are at critical mass in the US. We’re at a better position than any other economy in this world to make this transformation. We're in a better position to use these pieces to make this transformation and move that 3% to 4%.

What are these 4 quadrants of business excellence?

Upper left corner is the growth corner. I’ll jump to to the lower right corner. You cease to grow and you want to focus on profits. It's not a growth focus, it's an execution focus. The firefighting quadrant is the one where you have weak growth and weak execution. You’re in react mode. Quadrant two, the balanced quadrant is where that high performance company has strong growth and strong profit.

All businesses go through these. If we put in place those 6 disciplines we can do a better job and stay in Quadrant two.

Let’s talk about the quadrant with Strong Execution/Weak Strategy. You describe this as Sales slow down, profits decline and the company focuses on efficiencies and cost savings. That’s a mature company in a mature market. Their cash-cow is tipping over and they’re trying to prop it up.

What’s wrong with focusing on efficiencies and cost savings? That’s the only opportunities left in their market.

One time as a young CEO at Solomon, we won a PC magazine award and in 90 days our business grew 250%. Overnight I had all the growth I could handle. And now I had to drop down to execution: phone lines, training, hiring. We spent a couple of years building the infrastructure to handle this growth. And once we did we found we no longer were growing.

My point is that there’s nothing wrong with milking the cash cow if you can think of your business in 2 parts. You have to think about your business as a portfolio. Here’s the part that's in execution mode. Here's the part in the growth mode. And if you don't do the milking the cow mode you won't be able to do the growth mode.

There’s a lot of infrastructure and careers with perks, privilege, pay and power tied to the existing infrastructure. How does a business leader address those entrenched incentives in order to create a new, strong strategy?

One of the things we noticed about the top quartile companies was the strength of their leadership. People go where their leaders are walking, not where they are talking.

It takes real leadership to get people in the room and involve them in being honest with the choices they have. Whether you involve people, tell them the facts or cover them up and try to hide things.

Our processes help build in to the organization the openness and candor that helps make these decisions and build trust.

With that kind of honesty you can change an organization. Without that trust you can’t change.

Our process develops leadership on 4 levels:

• Executives
• Team Leaders
• Departments and how to interact, build best practices, hiring and firing.
• Individuals and to manage their own career.

If you think about why an organization doesn’t execute well over time...this execution paradox...if you execute today you’ll have bigger problems tomorrow. One of the reasons is an organization outgrows their leadership skills. But if you put in place a wholistic program in place where you hold each person accountable for their leadership and growth.

Which people have demonstrated their ability to lead themselves. Those are the ones ready to lead others.

This becomes a huge factor that you have this leadership factor going on all the time thorough the organization.

You gotta be preparing those leaders today.

Our guest a few weeks ago was Michael Johnson, from Innosight. he wrote a great book titled Seizing the White Space He had consulted with Singapore on their policies to encourage innovation. By coincidence they take our lunch money when it comes to being innovative, generating jobs, having a strong economy. Do we need a national policy on strategy development or business execution?

I’m not a big believer in top down leadership on things like that. I’m more of a "Prove it in the front line and the ideas will catch fire. "

Skip and I love social media. We might share this irony. That’s as more ‘conversation’ takes place with these tools there’s the greater illusion that communication has taken place. I’m paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw quote in your book.

Is social media building a Tower of Babel?

I think it remains to be seen. I think what is doing is allowing like-minded people to associate and develop synergy.

I’m a student of the Bible. There’s something very interesting in the story of The Tow. There’s a hidden agenda. If I hadn’t scrambled their language there is nothing they couldn’t do. To do that you have to be able to communicate and get on the same page.

I don’t think we’re building a Tower of Bable. It may look like it. I think it will mature and settle into the pools of communication that brings value.

Social media democratizes organizations. You can see it with the elections in Tehran.

You spend a chapter talking about community and community learning. Why’s that so important?

There’s this principle of compounding going on. You get like minded people together.

Weight Watchers has 4 steps to their success. Those that take all 4 steps are wildly more successful than those who take 2 or 3 of the steps. A huge part of their business has to do with the sharing of information.

Looking to the horizon, what’s the biggest trend in business execution you see coming?

There’s more and more discussion about execution. To get this into the mainstream that execution is our biggest challenge. They have to have a formal program to address execution consciously.

Jim Rohn is quoted as having said Leaders are readers. You’re a leader. What are you reading?

I really like books that help me understand the human side of business.

• The 5th Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization by Peter Senge. He talks about the human condition and how you build learning organizations.

• The Strategy Focused Organization, Kaplan & Norton

Thanks, Gary!

Find Gary Harpst on the web:

* Gary Harpst website

* Six Disciplines corporate website

* Six Disciplines blog

What are you reading, Mark Johnson?

Leaders are readers. - Jim Rohn

Mark W. Johnson is Chairman of Innosight, a strategic innovation consulting and investing company with offices in Massachusetts, Singapore, and India. He's also the author of an excellent book: Seizing the White Space:Business Model Innovation for Growth and Renewal.

He shared an hour of his time, wisdom, insight, resources on business model innovation as a recent guest on my radio show. You can listen here.

I asked him:

I know you have a busy schedule. What have been the best 3 books you’ve read this year?

He answered with three outstanding additions to my reading list:

• The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr

• The Design of Business by Roger Martin

• The Lords of Strategy by Walter Keichel

You can read highlights from our conversation here.

Thanks, again, Mark.

And now, my question for you:

What are YOU reading?

Leaders are readers, Jim Rohn. If you want to lead, you got to read.

5 decisions that drive extreme customer loyalty, anytime

Customer loyalty. Every business wants it. Few businesses know, much less make, the decisions to build customer loyalty in any economy.

Jeanne Bliss knows what decisions are needed to drive customer loyalty. She's the author of I Love You More than My Dog: 5 Decisions that Drive Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad. (Great book!)

She was a recent guest on my radio show. During the show, I asked her:

What are the 5 decisions that drive extreme customer loyalty?

Here's her answer:

1. Decide to Believe. Believe in your customers and your employees.

2. Decide with Clarity of Purpose. What is your company's purpose? Does it live consistently across your company.

3. Decide to Be Real. Do you connect your personal self with your business self?

4. Decide to Be There. Are your there for your customers and employees on their terms?

5. Decide to Say "Sorry". Apologizing well is an important peace process between companies and their customers.

Note the word shared in all 5. Decide. Customer loyalty is a decision.

These are the 5 decisions you make every day, in every way, with everyone your brand touches. Make these decisions and you make customer loyalty. Avoid these decisions and you avoid customer loyalty.

This ain't rocket science.

But it is more challenging. Otherwise, why are so few companies able to create loyal customers (or employees, for that matter)?

Maybe more companies will be able to drive customer loyalty with Jeanne's books, her blog customer experience snacks, her speaking, her consulting. Then they can decide if being a rocket-scientist is really that difficult.

You can listen to the rest of our conversation here.

You can read the highlights of our conversation here.

Most effective way to generate and sustain word-of-mouth?

What’s the most effective way to generate and sustain word-of-mouth advertising for your business?

Provide immediate, consistent, relief for your customer’s pain.

Think about the last time you were in serious pain. That experience was ...very painful. It left an impression on you. Pain does that.

And then you felt relief.

What did you do? You told people. You told a lot of people. You were almost giddy, right? You continued to tell them a week later or a year later.

But it only became a story you wanted to share and your people wanted to hear when you discovered a pain-relief solution. Then the story was meaningful to their lives. And your status rose, a bit, with your helpful solution.

We're all busy. That includes your customers. We're busy looking for immediate solutions to nagging challenges, annoyances, fears, setbacks, roadblocks...survival. We can't begin to bring meaning to our lives, pursue our passions, live our dreams...until we find immediate relief for these.

Delivering an immediate solution, immediate relief, inserts your business into their lives in a meaningful way. Make meaning makes word-of-mouth. We share what's meaningful to us. Relieving pain and removing obstacles is meaningful.

Making meaning, sustaining word-of-mouth advertising, is about neither bells nor whistles, colors or fonts, cartoons or videos, forward-to-a-friend options or even social media. These are gimmicks.

Gimmicks have nothing to do with meaning in our lives or relieving pain. Gimmicks are meaningful to those who make money selling them. See. That’s the point.

These gimmicks can only help spread stories. Your business can create one of two stories:

Story 1. That’s your customer’s pain that remains unrelieved or made worse by your company.

Story 2. That’s your customer’s pain that found immediate relief when that customer found your company's solution. 

Provide immediate relief, consistent, relief for your customer’s pain...and it’s only natural their story will be told. Over and over their story will be told.

You will have a role in that story. But, it’s a bit role. You’re not the star. The customer is the star in their own stories. Immediate relief to their pain brings them immediately back to the starring role in their own story. All of us like that, being the star in our own stories.

You want word-of-mouth? Here's 3 steps:

1. Find the most pressing pain for which your customers need immediate relief.

2. Provide for its immediate relief.

3. Repeat. Repeat for them. Repeat for their friends. Repeat for their friends friends.

Keep doing it and they’ll keep sharing with their friends that one scene in their story where you steal that one scene.

Then you'll have a story where you are the star. And that story is how you came to be known as a source of immediate relief for your customer's pain, and their friend's pain...and their friend's friend...and their cousin Eddie, too. Your customers will share their story, now your story, with everyone.

Sustainability: The Role of Employees

Dell's commitment to environmental sustainability comes from an understanding that, more and more, consumers and employees are looking for a company whose values match their own.

A PR spin-meister could have written this as part of a corporate mission statement or investor's booklet. Pictures of meadows and a wind turbine or two and maybe a solar panel would surround this quote.

This sentence was not part of a glossy PR booklet. It was part of a blog post title Sustaining Employee Momentum – Dell’s Green Initiative : Evolved Employer published by The Evolved Employer.

And as I read this piece I noticed this:

One of the reasons Dell’s initiative is notable is that the company has backed up its aspiration with numbers, plans, and achievements.

Really? Numbers? Like what?

36% - Last year more than 36 percent of Dell’s global employees participated in September’s Global Community Involvement month. The company needs the participation of its workforce in order to achieve its green goals – and this commitment is gained in two ways – employee engagement in other areas and direct green action by the company – walking the talk.

(See that word? Need. It's important if you're a company looking to engage employees. A first step is to acknowledge you need everyone's engagement. Everyone needs your engagement, too.)

85% - 85% of Dell's employees participated in their Tell Dell survey. 85% of Dell's employees know their opinions count. 85% of Dell's employees engage with their company in sharing ideas, solutions, needs and yes, complaints.

Compare this to what Michael Stallard, author of Fired Up or Burned Out, shared during his time as a guest on my radio show. Michael said:

Corporate Executive Board came out with a report that says 90% of employees are not engaged or not aligned with the corporate goals. 1 in 10...are engaged or aligned.

The average company sees 10% of their employees engaged. Dell sees 85% of their employees engaged.

And the results include these numbers and more. And these numbers are nice. They're great, really.

But, these numbers are a bit soft. Doncha' think? For companies not ready to embrace the power of engaged employees knowing that 36% of your employees were involved in their community or 85% dropped a note in the suggestion box...may not be enough. They may translate involved in their community to say picked up trash on a Saturday morning...and 85% of their employees are complainers.

Skeptics. You have to listen. You have to respect. You have to engage skeptics with answers in their language that address their concerns.

They may be thinking:

Show me the money. Show me the money that comes from all of this engagement...

Ok. How about this number?

50% - Dell's stock price is up a bit more than 50% since April, 2009. Morningstar quotes.

That is accomplished in a recession in an industry best described as commoditized by a company who many have said owns a business model long outdated.

Not bad.

That's the results from a very sustainable business model. I know the term sustainability in the title of this is all about going green, sustainable energy, etc.

However, those initiatives are not sustainable without a sustainable business model. And Dell's approach accomplishes both.

Radio Guest Gary Harpst, author of Execution Revolution

Gary Harpst, author of Six Disciplines Execution Revolution, joins the show tomorrow at 9:30 AM, Central. You can listen here in streaming on-demand.

A little bit about Gary...that's a standard introduction for guests on a show. I know I only have the space to offer a little bit about Gary. I have never tested the limits of Typepad for a single post. However, I am sure I could exceed them in raving about Gary Harpst, his Six Disciplines approach and his colleague Skip Reardon, his Digital Marketing Director.

He has:

• 30 years experience as CEO;

• founded 3 companies;

• one of those companies grew to 400 employees and $60 million revenues;

• been recognized as one of the nation's top thought-leaders by Leadership Excellence magazine. 

A little bit about his most recent book: Six Disciplines Execution Revolution. Quoting from his website:

Amazon customers ranked it in the Top 10 of all Business Books for 2008, and 800-CEO-READ ranked it in the Top 25 Best-Sellers for 2008. It was also named a finalist in the Entrepreneurship & Small Business category of the National “Best Book” 2008 Award by USABookNews.com, and it received the Bronze in the Entrepreneurship category of the 2009 Axiom Business Book Awards, designed to honor the year’s best business books and their authors and publishers.

Execution remains one of the biggest challenges for any business. Here comes a solution. I'm not going to say it is THE solution. But it is a solution that is methodical, provable, and replicable with any organization.

A little bit more about Gary.

Integrity. Gary openly discusses both his successes and some of his mistakes. Gary shares what he's learned from those mistakes. And how that makes his wisdom and advice so much more valuable.

Integrity 2. One thing I admire deeply about Gary is his commitment to his religion. He brings his religion with him all day, not as a lecturer or proselytizer, but more as a seeker, living his faith and sharing his journey with his faith.  Gary writes a blog titled Biblical Principles Blog. He describes its purpose like this:

I'll be sharing what I've learned, and continue to learn in applying biblical principles toward building a better business. After 35 years on this journey, it's great to know the best is still ahead.

I admire anyone who walks this path with such integrity, humility and sincerity.

Now, a little bit about Skip Reardon. Skip introduced me to Gary. Skip runs the main blog at Six Disciplines and also Tweets under the handle sreardon. Both of those are well-done, very effective and always serve as examples for what businesses can do with social media. And as you'd expect, Skip's integrity with his family, his work, inspires trust and loyalty and friendship. Skip and I have found we share a common love of music, particularly R&B and rock n' roll.

Trust builds loyalty. Loyalty brings word-of-mouth and another great guest for listeners to learn from.

Come on over at 9:30 AM, Central, Wednesday. Let's hear how you can incite an execution revolution in your company that's safe, proven, productive using Gary's advice and plan.

Listening options include:

* LIVE, during the show's hour 9:30 AM to 10:30 AM, Central:

1) Streaming on-demand

2) Guest call-in: 646-915-9212.

* Archived

1) Streaming on-demand