Start in the Middle 3: Alligators and Anarchists

March 15, 2006 by Liz

Problems and Opportunities

Starve the problems. Feed the opportunities.

—Peter F. Drucker, regarded as the founding father of the study of management

Problems and opportunities are two sides of the same coin.
Your brand is the solution to the problem of how the world sees you and your business.

Alligators and Anarchists

Problems and opportunities can make anyone feel surrounded by alligators and anarchists. Too many obstacles isn’t that different from too many positive choices–both have to be tamed and sorted and decided upon based on their value and viability.

Problems and opportunities are places where the beginning is not the most prudent place to start if you want to make a difference and a decision happen quickly.

Start in the Middle

One way to make problems and opportunities more manageable is to divide and conquer–by starting in the middle. Whether it’s the deal of a lifetime you’re deciding on or you’re trying to unravel a poorly handled relationship, find a way to place the situation in front of you and take a long look at it.

Look for the core of the matter. Often there is one idea, event, or assumption upon which all parts hinge. If you can identify that, you know what you’re working with. In a problem solving situation, that’s what you want to fix. For a brand or an opportunity, the core idea is the goal you’re seeking. If you find you’re not seeing it, try tearing away everything you feel is unimportant or unnecessary.
If you can’t find the core, find a hot spot–a compelling detail, an assumption, or an idea to focus on. Make that your focus. Obsess on it. Describe that hot spot in painful detail–especially its impact on the problem, brand, or opportunity. How does changing that hot spot affect the possible outcomes? Repeat the process several times to get a feeling for your problem, your brand, or your opportunity from the inside out.
Then do the opposite–put the problem, your brand, or the opportunity in the middle and look at it from several viewpoints. Imagine you are a musician, a mathematician, a construction worker, a writer, an architect, a dancer, a psychiatrist, your customers, your parents, and your kids. How would each role see the matter differently? How does each new view that change the options of where you might take the possible outcomes?

At this point, STOP.

Give your mind time to rest. Any brain would need a chance to take in and sort all of the information you have just gathered. While it’s doing that, do something totally unrelated.

If you’re worried that you need to keep fixing the problem. molding your brand, or moving on the opportunity, take heart that you’re not losing time. You’re actually stopping yourself from wasting it. To ease that feeling, make an appointment with yourself to come back to the discussion–at least two hours later. Your brain will show up prepared for the meeting, You’ll get more done after this break. I promise.

When your thoughts have gelled, use the Content Development Tool to organize your ideas and the support for each one in a fashion that you can look at and share with confidence. Now all that is left to do is decide which option is the best for you–or to repeat the process if you want to take the idea a level deeper

Divide and conquer from the middle. That’s the reason my older brother–the middle child–always saw so many options and won so many arguments. Hmmm. Maybe he’s the one who taught me this problem-solving skill.

Please don’t tell him. He takes credit for more than half of what I am already.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Brand YOU–Capitalize on Your Strengths

March 14, 2006 by Liz

Know Your Product

Your personal brand communicates your unique value in ways that others understand who you are. Developing a personal brand is a process that takes time and requires investment. Your brand develops as you develop self-awareness. You have to know your product to communicate its values–in this case. your personal strengths.

Identify Your Strengths

By the time we reach adulthood, most of us have a sense of our strengths and of our weaknesses. It’s hard to get through school and get a job without having some idea of what they might be.

But few of us actually take time to determine our most outstanding assets – our highest proficiencies, our core competencies. We often discount the things we’re best at because they come to us naturally. Thinking that everyone can what we can, we tend to undervalue our natural talents. Take a moment to ask yourself questions such as these to find your strengths.

What am I asked to teach others?
What responsibilities are delegated to me?
What kinds of meetings and tasks am I asked to lead?
What special skills do I have that others rely on?
What parts of my job would be hardest to fill?
What traits make me a valuable member of the team?
What are the things that only I can do?

Remember don’t overlook your great personality or that talent you have at organizing a project map in 30 seconds flat. Just because it’s a personal talent, doesn’t mean it has no value. The people that you work with rely on it–so count it as a strength. Not everyone can do what you can.

Capitalize on Your Strengths

To build the strongest brand, once you know your strengths, capitalize on them to make them stronger. Play to your strengths in what you do. Determine how each strength meets a specific need of the job market. Marketers call this naming features and benefits. People call this naming problems and solutions. The market has a problem or a need. I have the strength or skill set that meets that need. I’m the person for the job.

A written version of one of my skill feature and benefit statements might look something like this.

I have core competencies in teaching others to be detail-oriented champions of accuracy. That means that any work under the care of those I teach is assured to be error-free, saving the company the time, money, and embarrassment mistakes can cause.

Do yourself the favor of writing down your skills and strengths and naming the market need they meet. The act of writing out theses feature and benefit statements to define your personal brand or the brand of your business causes you to put your value into words–to internalize it, to make it your own.

Internalizing your strengths and how they meet needs in the workplace puts you in the best position to talk about your strengths when the opportunity arises naturally within the workplace.

Being about to talk freely and naturally about how your strengths meet the needs of others is a strength in and of itself–don’t forget to write that one down once you conquer it.

When you can do that, you will be fully capitalizing on your strengths. You’ll no longer need to verbalize your brand. You will have started living it.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Start in the Middle 2: Middle Idea Bank

March 14, 2006 by Liz

Some word associations to jog new ideas . . .

Try connecting one of these terms to something it wouldn’t usually be connected with.

Phrases that Use the Word Middle

Middle Man . . . Middle Atlantic . . . Magic Middle . . . Middle Ground . . . Middle School . . . Middle English . . . Malcolm in the Middle . . . Middle-Earth . . . Middle East . . . Middle Pillar . . . Middle Temple . . . Middle West . . . The Mighty Middle . . . In the Middle . . . Stuck in the Middle . . . Middle of Nowhere . . . Middle of the Road . . . Middle Years . . . The Middle Passage . . . The Middle Colonies . . . Middle Start . . . Middle Appalachians . . . Middle Age . . . Voices from the Middle . . . Middle America . . . Middle-age Spread . . . Middle Rhine Valley . . . Middle Class . . . Middle Manager . . . Middle Name . . . The Middle Ear . . . Middle C . . . Middle Jurassic

Synonyms for Middle

average . . . central . . . center . . . centre . . . equidistant . . . eye . . . halfway . . . heart . . . hub . . . in-between . . . inner . . . intermediate . . . intervening . . . junior high . . . mediate . . . medium . . . mid . . . midriff . . . midsection . . . midstream . . . midway . . . on the fence . . . uncertain

If you think of more, please add them in the comments . . .

Ideas and enthusiasm are contagious!

Thanks!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Start in the Middle 1: Write a Three-Course Meal
Finding Ideas Outside the Box
DonÃ¢â¬â¢t Hunt IDEAS Ã¢â¬â Be an Idea Magnet
Got the Idea. Now What Do I Do with It?

Start in the Middle 1: Write a Three-Course Meal

March 14, 2006 by Liz

Tape Recordings in Our Heads

Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.
When you read you begin with ABC, When you sing you begin with do-re-me.

–the character, Maria, sung by Julie Andrews in
The Sound of Music by Rodgers and Hammerstein

Put a sock in it, Julie.

Turn off all of the tape recordings in your head that tell you what you’re supposed to do. They just get in the way. Unique problems require unique solutions.

Beginnings Are Often Irrelevant

Starting at the beginning is a fine thing–if you’re telling a story, teaching a lesson, or giving a presentation. In those cases, feel free to sing right along with Julie Andrews. If that’s not what you’re doing, turn off the tape recorder in your head that says, “Start from the beginning.”

Some things don’t have a beginning or if they do, the beginning is irrelevant. Who cares about how the fire began if you need to get out of the building NOW? You can worry about how it started later. When you’re strategizing a business plan for the future, how your grandfather built the first widget is probably irrelevant, even if it is how the company began.

When you’re creating something new, problem solving, or envisioning what could be, information is nebulous and coming from many directions. The challenge is to order it and give form–not to find the beginning.

Write a Three-Course Meal

If you think of an article as a fine meal, the middle is the main course. That’s where the fine dining is. It’s the centerpiece. The entrée takes the longest time and the most care. The executive chef is the one who plans it and prepares it. Put your best effort there–where it counts.

Use the FIOTB–Content Development Tool to gather thoughts that will make the middle outstanding and delicious to read. Once you’ve got the entrée underway, you can decide on the appetizer and the dessert. Maybe the beginning will be a question that you’ll answer at the end or maybe it will be a story that you’ll reflect on, the middle–the entrée–of your three-course article will help you decide what form the beginning and the end should take.

Great Writing Strategy–Great Brand Promotion

There’s added value in presenting your information as a three-course article. Starting in the middle establishes an important foundation and allows you to concentrate on presenting the information that’s key to your story, your brand, and your business.

Course 1: Give readers a taste of your topic. This gives you a chance to capture their attention and focus their minds on your ideas. You can draw them in and prepare them for what you are about to say. By starting in the middle you already know what that is. So writing this part is much easier.
Course 2: Serve up your ideas with facts and details to support them. By starting in the middle, you can spend your time polishing the finer points and placing your brand in the best light for readers to discover its value on their own.
Course 3: Leave your audience satisfied with tidbits of why your ideas are important to them or give them reason to reflect back on what you said. Show that you fulfilled your promise. Let your audience savor the fact that your article was a service to them, and they’ll understand why coming back to see you is a good idea.

You’ve promoted your brand, your business, and your blog by writing an article from the inside out. Not bad for an hour’s work.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

I started in the middle with Writing 🙂
More Start in the Middle Ideas:
Branding and Problem Solving and a Start in the Middle Idea Bank are on their way.

If you have a situation, roadblock, or a problem you’d like to tackle with an Outside of the Box solution, please leave a note in the comments, or E-mail me at lizsun2@gmail.com. I’ll keep your confidence and reply as best I can. With your permission, I might tackle your problem in an upcoming article–other folks might be looking for a new approach to the same kind of difficulty.

Building a Personal Brand–YOU

March 13, 2006 by Liz

What Makes You Unique?

Mark Twain used to say that everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it. People do a lot of talking about things like branding too, but I’m not sure that many know what to do about that either. A brand can seem as nebulous as the weather . . . how do you get your head around what a personal brand is?

I can just about hear my uncle Everett saying, “Personal brand, what are you talking about? I’m not a pair of shoes, and I don’t care what you say, I’m not for sale at any price.”

Ironically, that remark is a branding statement if I’ve ever heard one.

What a Personal Brand Is

Uncle Everett underscores the idea of a personal brand well and articulately – he communicates who he is in a way that others believe in it.

Your brand is you and all you are and ever will be. It’s your uniqueness, your skills and abilities, your image, your traits, and your potential. Your brand is how you as a person will fill a need in a way that no other person can.

Everything about you contributes to your personal brand – everything you say or don’t say, what you wear, your tone of voice, the look of your space, the look on your face, the way you shake hands. The quality of your work is an immense part of your brand, but not, by any means, all of it. Even there it matters whether it’s on time, done with friendliness, with teamwork, with innovation and flexibility.

Forging a Personal Brand

From Uncle Everett’s bald head to his baggy pants, his love for the Chicago Cubs and his fierce devotion to his family were all easy to see.

To forge a strong personal brand takes self-awareness. Think deeply so that you can do these things well.

Identify your strengths and your weaknesses.
Capitalize on your strengths.
Find valid ways to make your weaknesses irrelevant.
Determine how you uniquely fit a job market need.
Describe and define that unique fit as your personal brand.
Determine how your image can communicate your brand.
Complete the “big idea” by checking all that you do supports your personal brand.

Sounds like a lot, but the closer you get to refining it to the smallest detail, the more credible your brand will be. Why? Because you will be living it. A personal brand is what you ARE, not how you act.

Everett knew that being who you are is a bond with the community. It the basis on which all relationships are forged. Being any less and you’re only a bad facsimile of what you could be. Your personal brand can be the strongest advantage you bring to your business life.

Be brand YOU and you’re the only one. No one can compete with that.

The best way to promote your business is by living your brand.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

FIOTB–Tool 1: Content Development Tool

March 13, 2006 by Liz

Because thinking outside of the box is unstructured, it can can lead to “swiss-cheese solutions”–answers that have holes in them–things that we just didn’t think of in our unstructured thinking. So I find that using structured tools relieves the stress of checking to make certain that all bases have been covered.

Content Development Tool

Ironically using boxes makes it easier to think outside the box. I use this content development tool to make sure that I have considered a topic from every direction before I start getting it ready for any audience. This tool works equally as well for planning an interview, a brand, an article, a small meeting, or a major presentation.

Purpose/Getting Attention: What does my audience want to know?

What are my main points and ideas?

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What facts and details support them?

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Presentation/Keeping Interest: How is it that I will show and tell them?

How will it look?

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How will I say it with simple elegance?

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Brand YOU/Reader Satisfaction: Why will they be glad they listened?

Analysis, predictions, interpretations

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What value-added will leave my audience feeling satisfied?

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Whether you’re inside or outside of the box, you need to know the what, how, and why of the information you’re offering any audience about any topic. That’s why I’m sharing this tool before we begin talking about getting ideas and solving problems.

I use it all of the time. It’s here now, if you need it.

–ME “Liz” Strauss