Successful Blog

Do You Sleep in the Freeze or Invest in the Spring?

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about seasons of life and work.

When the sailors went home last fall, some cleaned up their boats and go involved in other things. Some might have figured they were done and sold their boats off. I suppose some “hibernate” — put their in storage because the season for sailing is over. They sleep in the freeze.

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The sailors who love sailing know just saw it as part of the yearly progress of the sailing “routine.” Winter is a luxury of time to fix what was wearing, mend what was tearing, and replace the broken things. They assess, check, invest, and work toward the days that bring back the summer breeze. They invest in the spring.

It’s a fact that that eventually the ice melts, the harbor always comes back in spring.

But you has to work on your boat, study the climate, and live your goals to set sail even better than before the water froze..

Most work that we love seems to have some cycle with a winter and a spring. A downtime offers an opportunity to get us running sleeker, faster, and in a more stable fashion again.

Most who do well when spring returns have been working all winter on a plan. We use the time have to build our skills, restring our offers and invest in our networks so that when up time and sunshine return we are sailing again. It’s even more than productivity and good business, it’s being invested in ourselves, our lives, each other and our dreams.

What are you doing to invest in the spring?

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Do You Interview People Who Offer You Work?

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You’re Asking Questions Too — Right?

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We often walk into potential work conversations thinking the person offering work needs convincing that we can do the job. But wait a minute. Not every job, not every contract is a great fit. Work situations are mutually beneficial. That’s why there’s compensation involved.

What about making sure the fit goes both ways?

In a 2008 Harris Interactive Survey, respondents were asked to describe their affection for their current position based on the following responses: I like my job so much I’d marry it; I like my job enough, I’d date it seriously; It’s ok, I’d date it casually; I don’t like it, it won’t last long; or I hate it, I want to break up with it immediately. Key findings show that employees lack deep affection for their current position:

  • Only 9% of all survey respondents said they love their job so much they would marry it.
  • Conversely, 14% of respondents either hate their job so much they want to break up or they don’t like it and it won’t last for long.

A 2009 Harris Interactive Survey on job satisfaction might make us think even harder about needing a little convincing ourselves. A few questions of our own could save us from being among …

  • 36 percent of workers [who] said they believed top managers acted with honesty and integrity
  • 29 percent [who] believe management cares about advancing employee skills
  • one-third of all workers [who] feel they have reached a dead end at their jobs

If we know value our investment going in, we’re more likely to be among the lucky…

  • 20 percent [who] feel very passionate about their jobs
  • less than 15 percent [who] feel strongly energized by their work
  • 31 percent (strongly or moderately) [who] believe that their employer inspires the best in them.

Clients can also make or break how we satisfied we are with our work. Joseph Carrabis describes the main bad client behaviors include

  • dangerous or risky business decisions.
  • disregard of your suggestions in favor of their own research or opinion.
  • Unmanageable and / or inappropriate behavior.
  • refusal to make decisions while demanding that you make them.
  • Lack of respectful communication, preparation, participation

And don’t forget the clients who stretch, break, or fail to keep contracts.

Building a strong professional personal identity is a safe guard as well as a concrete career strategy. We can steer clear of obvious bad fits and check more deeply those that interest us.

Become self-aware. Gaining an objective understanding of your abilities, preferences values and interests is a fundamental step in determining the best career fit. Career Vision suggestions for increasing job satisfaction

Whether we’re looking for a company or client work, honesty is the best policy.

It is best to be honest about who you are and what you want from a job. Honesty will also create a better match between you and your new employer. What’s the sense of faking it through a series of job interviews, just to take a job you don’t like or that doesn’t suit you? You’ll just end up repeating the entire process as you look for yet another job! Careerbuilder.com

A great working relationship matches a person’s skills, potential, goals, and personality with the needs, potential, goals, and culture of the business. A great working relationship – career or contract — starts with three questions. The boss or client wants to know …

  • Can this person do the job or project?
  • Will this person do the job above expectation?
  • How will this person fit with the team or culture?

We should want to know three things too …

  • Can this person and this company support a position or project like this one?
  • Will this person see, lead and manage my work in ways that allow me to excel?
  • Is this a company culture that is a good match for me or my business?

The first pair of questions is objective — about ability, experience, and resources to execute the job? The other pairs of questions are subjective — about attitude, passion, personality and values. It’s tempting to reach for a “right” answer. The right answer is being convinced that the value exchange goes both ways.

When we know our unique value, conversation about aligning goals and values becomes natural and fluent. We trust people to understand us, because we know what we’re saying is true. Discussing competence, resources, and needs becomes an honest test of the strength of the potential relationship.

How do you interview people who offer you work?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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THE Book on How to Reframe Your Business Strategy

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Blue Ocean Strategy

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Some business books you read once and set aside or pass on. Some stay with you like a friend because from the first word you read, they made sense … almost as if you knew what they were going to say before they said it.

Great business books offer a read that

  • is seamlessly easy to follow
  • have no extraneous information to slow things down
  • add real “hit your forehead” meaning and back it up
  • and do all that in a way that satisfies and makes you want to pass on what you learned.

and the authors follow their own advice in the way they build their book.

Blue Ocean Strategy meets those criteria brilliantly.

The Blue Ocean Strategy Four Actions Framework explains how to purposefully reframe the way customers value what a business does. If you don’t know it, you’re really losing out on a key strategy to move your business into a category of one. The book explains how to …

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  • Eliminate unneeded features the industry takes for granted. Translation: what the customer doesn’t see, need, or want.
  • Reduce features and factors that are over-valued by the industry. Translation: what gets in the way of ideal customers wanting more.
  • Raise the value of what you keep above the industry standards
  • Create new features and combinations the industry hasn’t got which appeal directly to the ideal customers head and heart.

Blue Ocean Strategy is THE handbook on how to develop a unique, visible and compelling value proposition for yourself, your product or service, or your brand.

From the Amazon Review of Blue Ocean Strategy

Using dozens of examples-from Southwest Airlines and the Cirque du Soleil to Curves and Starbucks-they present the tools and frameworks they’ve developed specifically for the task of analyzing blue oceans. They urge companies to “value innovation” that focuses on “utility, price, and cost positions,” to “create and capture new demand” and to “focus on the big picture, not the numbers.” And while their heavyweight analytical tools may be of real use only to serious strategy planners, their overall vision will inspire entrepreneurs of all stripes, and most of their ideas are presented in a direct, jargon-free manner. Theirs is not the typical business management book’s vague call to action; it is a precise, actionable plan for changing the way companies do business with one resounding piece of advice: swim for open waters.

It’s going to be by my desk for a long time. Is it by yours?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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Are You Mission Critical?

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A Position of Power or a Call to Service?

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I know a man who describes his ideal job in a simple nine words.

Whatever I do, I want to be mission critical.

When he first said that, I thought he was describing a position of power and adrenalin. Now I see it more as call to service and collaboration.

Are You Mission Critical?

The difference between a truly strategic mission and a shaky vision is the practical and human understanding that we can’t go it alone. Strategy only works when it serves the people who help us grow.

The people we serve have their own missions.

  • Some missions are about physiology and survival — breathing, food, clothing, shelter. and sex.
  • Some missions are about security and safety — personal and financial security, health and safety, feelings of wellbeing and protection.
  • Some missions are social — sense of family, close friends, support networks, a sense of intimacy.
  • Some missions are about personal identity — visibility, attention, fame, respect, self-esteem, personal integrity.
  • Some missions are philosophical — personal growth, saving the world, promoting a cause, being part of something bigger.
  • Some missions are worth dying for.

Great service wraps our mission around the mission of the people we serve.

What people do or how they do it is less important than the mission that drives them. If we understand their mission, we can be the catalyst that gets them to realize that goal. That is the definition of mission critical.

How do you wrap your mission around the mission of the people you serve?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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SOB Business Cafe 01-15-10

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking — articles, books, podcasts, and videos about business online written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Remarkable Communicaton
The problem with putting so much you into your business is that there’s a finite amount of you.

in over your head
I don’t know about you, but I was pretty stupid when I was younger. I really believed that I should only do what I feel like at the moment, not what I really cared about in general. I wasted several years of my life as a result of it– sucks right?

Altitude Branding
When you think of social media roles, chances are you think of a community manager or the oh-so-generic “social media manager”, which is usually some function of the marketing department managing strictly social media programs. But there are loads of other potential roles that can integrate or represent social media alongside other business areas.

Diva Marketing
Candy button As I began building the deck (I often like to mix slides with conversation. People learn differently and PowerPoint offers a visual media.) candy dots ran through my mind. I thought it would be fun to include an image of candy dots to help illustrate the strategy trail.

Jonathan Fields, Awake at the Wheel
The questions lobbed across the table…

What impact do you want to have? And, on whom?

I sat, for a moment, like a dear in headlights.

Seth’s Blog
The first stand is run by two kids. They use Countrytime lemonade, paper cups and a bridge table. It’s a decent lemonade stand, one in the long tradition of standard lemonade stands.

Related ala carte selections include

Ian M Rountree
Stabbed myself with a screwdriver at work the other day. Hurt like hell. It’s better now – well, getting better anyway, that’s what a week of antibiotic cream is for. …

Yes. It stung. Yes. My hand is totally useless for now. Why do I say this taught me a few lessons?

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like. No tips required. Comments appreciated.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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CES: When Business Networks Rely on Business Broadband

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A Guest Post by Jake Green

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I just got back from a trip to the enormous and spectacular International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. As the world’s largest trade show for anything tech, CES brings together businesses of all kinds – from software engineers and industrial designers to auto industry executives and media personalities. I actually saw Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, standing in the same room with the flamboyant pop icon Lady Gaga.

Las Vegas T1: At CES, The Internet Is King

In this kind of setting, networking is vital; you never know where you’ll make an important connection. The theme of connectivity was present even in the technology itself, as new and unusual products and technologies emerged, all aiming to promote a connected lifestyle. Throughout the show, the biggest technology trend I saw was the move toward 3D TV, which I have to say I find a bit creepy. But the second biggest trend was that of Internet connectivity in more and more unexpected places. This year, both your new Panasonic TV and your new Ford sedan will be connected to the Internet.

In the business world, as in the entertainment world, the Internet is everywhere. To me, the need for fast and reliable Internet connectivity has never been more apparent or more pronounced than it was at CES 2010. Even the lightening fast T1 connection at the Las Vegas Convention Center, over which information flowed effortlessly before the show began, struggled to keep up with the demand as more than a hundred thousand attendees tested the next generation of connected gadgets. One small software company tried to demo a new security application for business broadband users, but had to postpone because of problems with their satellite Internet service. How important it is for a business to establish fast, dependable Internet services from the right provider.

Leaving the show, I reflected on the diverse uses of the Internet, as I had seen them in action at CES. One company demonstrated an affordable way for small businesses to use MPLS VPN connections for faster and safer credit card transactions; another used the Internet to beam 3-dimensional images of a shark to a television set across the room. But when it comes down to it, the Internet, like any network, is about making connections.

I suppose the world of consumer electronics is no different from the world of business in general: the more connections you make, the better off you’ll be.

How much does your business network work rely on a reliable Internet network?

Jake Green is a freelance writer for Wpromote, Inc. , the #1 search marketing firm in the US as ranked by Inc. 500. He writes about PPC Management and how to grow online small business. Wpromote is also at http://www.twitter.com/Wpromote.

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Thanks Jake!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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