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 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

Finding Ideas Outside the Box

March 13, 2006 by Liz

There Is No Box

There is no box. There never was one. We just got taught to think inside one. You see, it was a management issue. With so many kids to teach at once, it’s more productive to teach one way of thinking than to manage a room full of creativity. . . . So when we weren’t looking, many of us learned the fundamentals of problem-solving, how to color inside the lines, and a way of thinking about things that isn’t all that different from a mime inside a box.

Just like the box that the mime pushes and touches even though you can’t see it. The box that we think inside isn’t real. The way to get out is easy enough–just stop believing in the box.

Life Without the Box

Life without the box is so much easier. It’s as if you now can use all modes of transportation available rather than always having to walk. The resources of your brain are freed up. Even better, it’s a lot more fun, once you get used to it, because thinking outside of the proverbial box involves playing with ideas not just thinking.

DaVinci knew it. So did Einstein. Most inventors couldn’t find the inside of the box if they tried. All great thinkers–folks we call geniuses–know that there’s nothing new to be gathered by staying where everyone else is doing their thinking. So let’s get on with getting out of it.

What You’ll Find Outside the Box

Every day, I’ll offer a strategy and some ideas for approaching your business from a new direction. Each strategy will be flexible and realistic. I’ll show you how to apply it to writing, problem solving, or refining your brand.

To be useful, even thinking outside of the box needs structure, so I’ll be using a problem-solution format. Then within each solution I’ll offer three content subsets: Information, Presentation/Form, and YOU/Function. Those three subheads come directly from What Is Content that Keeps Readers?

So, if you’re ready, I am. Enough with this introduction, let’s let the games begin. Everyone can think like a genius. It only takes a little practice, and a firm commitment to throw away the darn box.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Great Find: Absolutely Del.icio.us Tool Collection

March 12, 2006 by Liz

Folksonomy and tag categories got your eyes crossed?
Has social bookmarking started controlling you rather than the other way around?

The Addiction

Hi. My name is Liz and I’m a social bookmarker.
At first I just did it on the weekends to keep track of a few sites and articles I liked. Then I started social bookmarking to get new ideas. Soon it became a daily habit–once, then twice, then many times a day. I got to recognize submitters names and tastes. I started submitting myself–things I saw that I liked.

Social bookmarking utilities were both a great boon and a great downfall to my productivity. I could go there to find a passel of spectacular ideas. But more and more I found myself lost in an enchanted forest, thinking I’d leave after the next look, or the next, or maybe the next. The disorganization of the folksonomy became an addiction–I kept thinking the next title I saw might be the fabulous prize I was looking for. It was intellectual gambling.

That’s when I knew I needed help, and I found it at Quick Online Tips.

The Prescription

Finally, someone has collected tools and tips from all over the Internet to help Social Bookmarking addicts.

Great Find: Absolutely Del.icio.us – Complete Tool Collection from Quick Online Tips
Type of article: List of posts on tools for using Del.icio.us
Permalink: http://pchere.blogspot.com/2005/02/absolutely-delicious-complete-tool.html
Audience: Anyone wants to make the most of social bookmarking
Content: This list offers well over 100 posts that discuss how to use del.icio.us to get the most out of it. You’ll find the Beelerspace Beginners Guide as well as the popular Slacker Manager post, the Several Habits of Wildly Successful del.icio.us users. Most of the hints and helps here will work with any social bookmarking utility you use.

Click the screenshot to begin a new life of tackling that taxonomy.

Absolutely Del.icio.us Tool Collection Screenshot

If you try this at home, don’t read the entire list at one sitting. Choose one or two to explore each morning. Then come back to tag my best work to share with your friends. 🙂

Benefits for the “Magic Middle Man”

Social bookmarking is a powerful tool for research, idea generation, and promoting your business. It’s a great way for those of us in the Magic Middle to exert our control as an audience. Learning how to use it efficiently and effectively can

boost personal productivity,
offer ideas to promote your brand and your business,
provide a venue to showcase your best work to a wide audience,
and has an immediate, if short-lived impact, that may gain a few new readers.

Of course, I exaggerated the downside of social bookmarking at the start of this article, but the temptation to spend too much time exploring is also very real. How do you keep social bookmarking from eating up your time? How do you use it to its best advantage?

–ME “Liz” Strauss