January 20, 2012

Focus Your Attention When It Is Go-Time

It's 5:32 AM and this is the last thing I'm doing before I'm on Go-Time-Lockdown. 

Today I have a speaking engagement for UMEC in Phoenix.  It's a return engagement for a group of great people that support my work and practice what I preach as leaders.  There is nothing more important today than this talk - and the takeaway value it should deliver to the audience. 

In our culture, we have one area of over-confidence that holds us back: The Myopia Of Can-Juggle.  We think we can do several things at once well.  But the reality is that we can't.  If I get sucked into Tweeting, checking FB, working on Net Minds, selling the next gig or just grazing on my Inbox, there's a chance when it's Go-Time later today, I'll only be half strength.  It's called dillution. 

Every one of you have Go-Times in your life.  Presentations, project meeting, creative sessions, coding assignments on deadline, etc.  They are challenging, high-stakes and require you to be 100% on.  So why do you try and juggle the Big-Thing with all the Little-Things?  You may say, "I have a primary focus and secondary ones to keep things interesting."  

That sounds good in principle, but in reality, you'll spend too much time buffering on the not-so-important stuff that doesn't stress you out than the preparation you must execute to tackle today's big challenge.  I've done this before, and paid the price later on stage.  No more.  

Today, my tweets are pre-programmed and you won't see me on FB.  I'm not answering my iPhone because it will be on silent, squirreled away in my bag.  I've delegated everything, including decision-making, to my manager and the founding team at my company.  I'll review all my notes from this and my previous talk at UMEC.  I'll rehearse (mentally and then in a green room) my remarks, especially the one-of-a-kind ones I've created for them.  I'll re-read a little from a book I bought for UMEC to read later, a highly relevant book on the future of their business by Dan Pink (A Whole New Mind).

My next non-gig thought patterns will start when I'm in the taxi on the way to the airport.  And the world will go on without me.  Dr. Stephen Covey Sr. once said that if you don't do the work, all of the hard work, you'll know it deep inside at the moment of truth - and it will be a drag on you.  When I hit the stage this afternoon, I'll be light as a feather, with my whole mind centered on what's important.  Please try this approach for your next Go-Time and report the results in comments!

January 10, 2012

Sitting Is The New Smoking

The above image is taken from a great infographic on Techcrunch. 

It's message is simple: The more you sit, the worse you'll feel.  Recent studies suggest that of all of our bad contemporary habits, sitting all day is a killer.  With the rise of the information age, more of us earn a living sitting down, working on computers.  Our parents were more likely to sit less than a quarter as much as us and their parents more even less sedentary.  

So why isn't this post titled, "Cube Farms Are The New Coal Mines" ??? 

Because sitting all day is your choice, not your fate.  You can beat this disease risk by tweaking the way you work.  It's my 2012 resolution to sit at least fifty percent less than I did last year.  That's just as good as kicking my weekly french fries or losing ten pounds!  Here are several ways you can sit less and live longer: 

1.  Stand Up While Working On Computers.  There are several great standing desks, including hydrolic ones where you can sit (during meetings with others) or stand.  My old boss at Yahoo, Anil, had his desk permanently setup where he stood while he worked.  He had a tall stool for those times he needed to take a load off.  He also had a foot rest, as this is the proper way to work on computers while standing.  If you can't do any of this, yet work on a laptop, occassionally pull it out of your docking station or off your desk and work on a bar counter or some other standing friendly surface.  

2. Talk Daily Walking Breaks.  Walking is great exercise, and according to many doctors, a great prescription for too much sitting.  Each day I carve out 20-30 minutes for 'walk-time' either outside or on a treadmill at my gym.  When walking outside, I frequently conduct my daily (no-paperwork or web access required) phone calls.  It's made a huge difference both in terms of my health and my mood state when I was finished. 

3. Convert Work Into Walking.  Conduct phone calls or meetings standing up and/or walking around.  (You'll have shorter ones as a result!) Take the stairs at work instead of the elevator.  Get up out of your chair to ask a quick question of a colleague, instead of sending an email 200 feet.  

Change your habits, and beyond health, you'll be better at work.  To be creative and confident, the formula for excellence, you need to feel good.  Sitting all day drains your energy, creates distracting physical pain and reduces your endurance.  And it's your choice.  You quit smoking, and don't miss the smoking breaks - you won't miss sitting either!

January 04, 2012

Best Business Books Of 2011

Here's a six pack of 2011 releases that represent the year's best business books:

December 21, 2011

My 6 Favorite Albums Of 2011

After buying over 100 albums this year (mostly in CD format), I'm ready to reveal my top listens from 2011.  To qualify, the entire album must be good, not just a few songs.  I still love to listen to an album from beginning to end, instead of just grazing on singles via a playlist.  It's hard to find albums that shine from cut 1 to cut 10 or beyond - and that's why these 6 are so special: 

1.  Yuck (self-titled debut) - If you liked early Smashing Pumpkins or Dinosaur Jr., you'll love this group of youngsters from the UK.  Their songwriting is matched by a very special guitarist with one-of-a-kind tones. 

2. The Givers: In Light - The Lafayette Louisiana guy/girl group has a fresh new hippie meets indie sound.  For fans of Vampire Weekend or Peter, Paul and Bjourn. 

3. Decemberists: The King Is Dead - This album sparkles, mainly because of the addition of REM's Peter Buck on guitars.  Each song has a country-rock influence, which combined with the Decemberist sound makes for a truly remarkable album that you'll still enjoy five years from now. 

4. Black Keys: El Camino - They pick up right where they left off with Brothers, except this time they've got some friends playing and singing with them.  Just got this one in, but in less than a week, it's on heavy rotation in my car.  

5. Foster The People: Torches - This is the breakout album of the year, containing three singles and several big deals for TV shows, commercials and movies.  Foster really captures the gestalt of the times with this record and Pumped Up Kicks is the song of the year - bringing back song-construction wonders I've been missing since MGMT's first album. 

6. Fruit Bats: Tripper - Much like Decemberists, Fruit Bats are really figuring out how to integrate a country-rock feel into indie and make it shine (brighter than Wilco).  There's also a timeless quality to these songs, like merging Supertramp with the Allman Brothers. 

Here are some discoveries from 2011 worth checking out: 

1. Planningtorock - combines NIN with Florence and the Machines for eerie but awesome songs. 

2. Peaking Lights - Dub, meets guy-girl vocal for dancy yet chilled out grooves. 

3. Hypnotic Brass Ensemble - These guys funk it up, Touch The Sky will make you get up and dance.

Chime in here in the comments - what are your favorite albums or discoveries from 2011? 

December 14, 2011

The Four Corners Of Great Leadership

Since reading Primal Leadership, I've been a fan of this topic and a student of the discipline. 

Later, as Yahoo's Leadership Coach, I studied the areas of excellence in leaders both inside the company, and throughout our customer and partner base.  Some, like Howard Stringer of Sony, had very clear skill sets, such as people skills.  Others, like Scott McNeely, had implicit skills, like deal-making.  After my first book came out, I was invited to speak at leadership events, which gave me valuable feedback over time.  Here are four areas of leadership excellence that all great leaders continually develop.  

1.  VISION - As Stephen Covey Sr. said, "Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success: leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall." In other words, she sees where the organization needs to go, and can enunciate it clearly to her followers.  Think of this as the strategy piece of the puzzle.  Great leaders do not guess in this regard, they must constantly research and observe business context closely - otherwise, their vision is blurry or incorrect.  This is why Readers Are Leaders.  They constantly plumb books, studies and trend data to sharpen their vision and spot strategic opportunities to pounce on.  When business misfires, they rethink their vision and are willing to shift or pivot.

2. COMMITMENT - You aren't a leader if you don't step up!  As Farmers Insurance executive Bryan Murphy told me, "leadership is dangerous."  Why?  Because when you step up and say, "this way!", you are assuming accountability for the outcome.  Get your vision wrong, and you may lose your job. But it's a bet you must make, because with commitement comes respect and a new power - the ability to mobilize people and align them with a plan.  Commitment is an ongoing process, though.  You can lose it or let it wither due to adversity.  Great leaders constantly check in on their level of commitment and refresh their motivations, especially during tough times.

3. INFLUENCE - The Chinese proverb applys: He who has no followers is merely taking a walk! Despite your vision and commitment, if you can't motivate and/or inspire others, you can't lead effectly.  Influence stems mostly from our communications skills, both in terms of what we say and how closely we listen to others.  Great leaders use story devices to unite their teams, speak in clear terms and exude authenticity.  They take every communications opportunity very seriously, and prepare relentlessly to move their audiences to action. READ: Leadership Is Dead: How Influence Is Reviving It for more here.

4. PURPOSE - This is likely the most important corner of leadership excellence.  Great leaders are focused on the WHY behind the WHAT.  Their strategy has a purpose bigger than traditional business goals: Making money, growing, accumulating resources.  Leaders don't get the means and the ends mixed up.  In True North:Discover Your Authentic Leadership, Medtronic founder Bill George talks about our compass, which is the ultimate guide for the leader.  To him, integrity and service are the true north we point our enterprise towards. In Good To Great, Jim Collins reminds leaders that their purpose needs to be worthy - something bigger than just P&L management.  This is an ongoing challenge for leaders, as they need to ask themselves, "how do we make this world a better place?" and then using purpose (think service, not self) as the ultimate device to give their followers focus and hope. 

December 07, 2011

Do you really want to bet your business on Facebook?

Today's article (Facebook: Zynga's #1 Frenemie) prompted this blog post. 

While Zynga stands as a multi-billion dollar example of the dangers of platform squatting, many of you might be doing in a smaller but still deadly way.  Examples: you don't have a website anymore, you build a big Facebook Page following instead.  You don't build a web property to sell your products (see this a lot now in books), you rely on Facebook instead - thinking, "everyone is here, why not build it into their stream?  You base your real estate, insurance or home repair sales on your Page, leaving your older properties abandoned to wither.

Startups from Color to Spotify bet-the-farm on a long and cozy relationship with Facebook - who could turn all of them off with the flip of a switch.  Retailers, small business owners and even public figures are all provisioning the Facebook closed platform (emphasis on closed) to reduce costs and presumably fish where the fish are hooked.  

But here's the rub: Facebook will eventually have to eat their babies to grow into their valuation. Still private, Zuckerberg gets to report vanity numbers only, playing with Eric Ries calls "success theatre" with it's investors and employees.  Time spent, number of active users, etc., all dominate the Facebook story.  That will change quickly when they go public and New York analysts descend on them to question their revenue-valuation multiple.  If the social-bubble breaks (and it's being poked right now in the cases of LinkedIn and Groupon), who knows what Facebook's leadership team will resort to?

Look at Google, seven years post-IPO. Steve Jobs can testify: You can't trust a company that's on fire to triple their top line quickly.  Thus andriod.  Now, Google+ is tied to employee compensation and the sacred search algorithm, protected for users, is now biased to reward websites that include +, Places or Circles. Anyone in the valley will warn to avoid getting close to them early, because big and hungry companies "may accidently kill you." 

Back to Facebook.  If you are using a Page to market your products or services, it's pretty clunky to say the least.  You can't conduct giveaways or polls, lest they shut down your account (which is based on your personal account, which also goes away).  The apps they require you to use require too many steps and in our privacy-centric world, result in less conversion.  So now, you lose all the web-innovations that power super sites like Zappos, Amazon, etc.  

At Yahoo, I've seen this first hand.  When I joined, we had dozens of dotcom partners in areas where eventually we decided to 'get into their space' to justify our lofty valuation.  We were, by 2004, competitors with everyone who made money.  Facebook will be the same.  

I understand the business logic of being in the app business, making your ultimate bet on Apple. As a mature company, they aren't likely to flip a swtich and get into the app development game, killing all the Fred-In-the-Sheds to make a few more bucks.  But, Facebook is likely doing skunkworkss right now to build their own social games, daily deals redux, publicity services, banking and loan services, mobile devices and for all we now VOIP telco services.  If you currently make money via them, exclusively, you want want to diversify your business web outreach.  What if they turn on a pay-for service for Page owners who want to have ANY links to purchase or generate leads?  

Consider what happens when you rely on Google, yet somehow are in their business development plans.  When they tweak their search formulas, big changes happen to your business. What if they tweak search to devalue links to Facebook pages, like they've toyed with in the case of Wikipedia and Flickr? Ask LA startup Mahalo, where they had to layoff employees after a regular Google update.  First they were a human-search company, then after the Google thrashing of their business, they settled into a video-help resrouce.  They didn't have an option.  Keep your options open begins to make sense again - instead of cozying up exclusively with a cub company that's got paws bigger than Alaska. 

December 01, 2011

Treat a shark bite, not a paper cut

If you sell a solution, make sure the problem is acute.  Otherwise, you'll never close the deal.

This is a takeaway I got from reading Nail It Then Scale It.  In the book, written for startup founders, Nathan Furr reveals a startling statistic: 90% of startups that fail, fail because they built something no one wants bad enough to buy.  

Apply this to any solution business, whether you are a sales pro a consultant or the CEO.  Do you solve a problem worthy of investing precious dollars into?  Furr puts it this way: Make sure you are treating a shark bite of a business problem.  In this view, as a solutions provider, you think of yourself as the doctor - treating a patient. For many of the solutions I've recently seen from iPhone apps to B2B offerings - the problem is only a paper cut. The prospect admits there is some waste or lost opportunity, but in the end, they are still doing fine.  While your solution is relevant, it lacks true urgency. 

I've discovered this running Deeper Media's training product launches. One of them, The Dirty Dozen Rules Of Email Etiquette, has had breakthrough sales success - reaching over 40,000 customer/users in five years. Another one, Greening Up Your Business, has had tepid results, even though I supported it with a book (Saving The World At Work).  Why? Shark bite versus paper cut.  

My email training clients had a REAL problem on their hands when they found me (I've never had to cold call this).  Email use was out of control, relationships were breaking down and business was grinding to a halt.  For my Green Business prospects, my training solution was a 'nice to have', but they didn't think the business would be negatively impacted without it.  

In Nail It Then Scale It, Furr offers a great acid test for a Shark Bite Solution: Cold call a group of people, explaining what problem your service solves in a succinct manner.  If less than 50% call you back, it's not a big problem.  In his experience, the real Shark Bite Solutions had a stunning level of cold call backs - because the problem was big enough for prospects to pick up the phone and invest time with a stranger. 

In this economy, it's important for us to sell solutions not products or services.  To do that, we have to be brutally honest with ourself to make sure our solution is significant or we are identifying and quantifying a real problem worth solving right now (and not when things get better and luxuries are affordable.) 

November 29, 2011

Reduce your word count and win the deal

Here's a rule of thumb for sales: The less the prospects talks, the less they buy. 

This might run counter to conventional sales-pro wisdom, but in my experience this is true.  In my 2nd book (The Likeability Factor) I quote findings from a 2004 study at Yale that concluded that the highly-likeable sales person (with strong listening skills) outperforms...why?  The prospect gives her better information to craft the perfect proposal.  If you've ever lost a sale when you had the best product at the right price, know you know why: The other side had better insights into the prospect's problem than you did.

When I was Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo!, many of our pitches were for millions of dollars.  Since these were such big deals, our prospects were fine with us recording and transcribing our meetings, so there would be no misunderstandings later and all of the promises made in-meeting would be kept. 

Along the way, I discovered the importance of reducing our word count.  When I had the recordings transcribed into Word, I had one of my researchers split the conversations into word counts - measuring what we said versus what the prospects said.  A pattern emerged: When the prospect talked more than a third of the meeting, they were significantly more likely to buy, escalate their interest to a senior level or agree to the next meeting to move forward.  When they talked less than twenty percent, they were significantly less likely to buy or, for that matter, take another high level meeting with us.  

Since then, I've conducted this experiment with multiple companies and the results are pretty much in line.  Based on all of this experience, here's what I recommend for you and your team's word count for successful sales meetings (be it selling a product or creating a strategic partnership):  First meeting: Client = 33% or more of word count.  2nd meeting on: Client = 50% or more of word count. Here are a few tips on how to pull this off: 

1.  Prepare thoughtful questions before a meeting.  Prospects don't come to meetings armed with content for conversation, you do.  So, do resarch on their problems, challenges and business priorities, and put together a Q/A list for the meeting.  Think through the process, creating follow up questions based on anticipated answers. For geeks, think of this as a 'conversation wireframe'. 

2. Begin the meeting with the questions and save the Power Point presentation for the end (or as a leave behind or follow up).  This forces the meeting into dialogue and immediately improves your word count ratio. 

3. Test yourself often! Get permission to record and transcribe the meeting, offering to send to them as a follow up.  (This is a good practice if you want to ensure follow up!).  You can use SpeakWrite to inexpensively transcribe any audio files you create (on your smart phone or via a pocket recorder.)  You'll get back a transcript that clearly identifies your content vs theirs.  Copy all of yours to a new document and you'll have your word count.  Do the same for the prospect.  This will allow you to clearly measure how you are doing - and when you measure, you will improve! 

For more: Talk Less, Say More: 3 Habits To Influence Others & Make Things Happen by Connie Dieken 

November 23, 2011

ThanksGiving Prescription: Exercise Your Gratitude Muscle

Think of Thanksgiving as a platform to express, feel and share gratitude. 

It's easy, with all this Black Thursday Night and Black Friday talk, to think of Thanksgiving as a commercially made up holiday.  But it's not.  It's certainly at risk of being hijacked by the money changers, but still, it was created to observe a moment in spirit.  A moment of abundance, community and fulfillment. 

Many of you are up to your ears in last minute work or travel plans.  But don't let that distract from the opportunity at hand: Give thanks.  In Today We Are Rich, I talk about how my grandmother Billye always reminded me that gratitude is a muscle, not a feeling.  "If it was a feeling," she'd say, "you'd feel it all the time!" 

So, the key to staying gracious (gratitude is a compound word: Gracious+Attitude), is to flex your mental ability to sense bounty, attribute it correctly and express your feelings accordingly.  There's no time like Thanksgiving to do that, without raising any suspicions amongst the cynics.  Here's what I recommend for tomorrow, before the Turkey and football: 

1 - Itemize your support system: Spiritual, Family, Friends, Work and Community.  Think of their intentions towards you, how much they love you or are aligned with your goals.  Always start gratitude exercises out focused on the sources of abundance (people, God, etc.) and not the symptoms of abundance (wealth, stuff, luxuries).  

2 - Review how much your supporters have done for you over the last year.  Don't forget to include the smallest gestures, often, they are the ones that make the biggest difference to us.  Think of how far you've come in the last year, and how you couldn't do it by yourself. 

3 - Invest a sitcom's worth of time writing a note or making a phone call to one-loving-soul to share your feelings and express your gratitude.  There's an old saying that's appropriate here: Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a gift, but never giving it."  You'll find that this part of the exercise leads to a real feeling of abundance on your part - far more effective than merely counting your blessings. 

4 - Now, as a leader, help others in your life do this too.  Be public about your exercise and encourage others to join you. Don't let the Thanksgiving Grump have his way, push him to admit that he's not alone in life, and that others are there for him.  This is the season to realize that we have so much to be thankful for, and there are so many forces in the world that want to take that feeling away from us - because scarcity is the ultimate motivator of men to act. 

Express your gratitude in comments, and experience the joy of expressed-thanks.  Thanks to Sue Jenks for the graphic above, which I found this AM on my Top Stories feed on Facebook. 

November 17, 2011

The Four Criteria Entrepreneurs Should Use To Spend Their Time

For entrepreneurs of all types, your time is by far your most valuable asset. 

Are you investing it wisely?  After all, in this competitive and disruptive environment, you can't be late when the barn door opens.  Every day you waste working on the wrong stuff, gives your competitor a day to gain or you or extend his lead.  So how do we best manage time at a strategic level?  Enter Jason Nazar, CEO of docstoc and a (very good) speaker at this week's Startup Conference in Los Angeles. 

His talk (How To Make The Right Business Decisions) revealed a grid (see above) that will help you manage your time effectively.  Too often we have a mega-TODO list that gobbles up our time, and we feel some sense of accomplishment ticking items off the list. That may be OK for some, but if you are entrepreneur, this approach will bury you! 

Here's his formula: Focus on things that have a big upside (money, market share, etc.), you have a way higher than 50% chance of succeeding in this task, it won't gobble up too much time and most of all - it's strategic to the business you are running.  Think for a second about this formula, and how much of your TODO list doesn't qualify for your attention.  He explained that at docstoc, they don't put resources into a product that will increase traffic by a few percent.  It needs to have a 25-50% potential to get his attention.  At Google, this is called the "hundred million dollar idea" filter. 

Too often, we work on low-upside projects that are easy or sometimes we get buried in low upside projects that are hard to finish - and by wasting the extra effort we miss the golden opportunites.  The other thing he warns, is the high success - not strategic trap: Where you achieve a quick victory, but in the end, it has nothing to do with your business strategy.  Sure, it's a win, but for who? 

Try this next week, and be ruthless!  If you adopt the A quadrant right now - Put no efforts on a project that doesn't move the needle significantly, you'll likely ignore over half of what you toiled on this week.  

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