Search Results for: questions

Delegation Happens: Working with Friends Can Be Dangerous

June 17, 2009 by Liz

Ever End Up Doing Someone Else’s Work?

Susannah was an editor who worked me years go. She had a project that needed help and knew just the person she wanted to call … her friend Christie. Christie was an experienced editor on maternity leave.

A meeting was set. Christie came in to get the work. Susannah explained exactly what was entailed and when it was due.

When the due date arrived, the work never came. When the work came, it was less than what Susannah had described. Susannah ended up doing the work and paid her friend anyway.

Ever been there?

Some things to remember when you’re about to delegate work to a friend.

Prepare for a friend as you would for someone you’ve never met. One clear signal to your friend and yourself of the business nature of what you’re doing is to treat the conversation as a strictly “work” conversation.
Define the relationship as you would with a new client or a new employee. When we’re delegating to a friend, communication can complicate itself. Friendship filters can recast everything that’s said. State your expectations. Write out guidelines and share them.
Leave room for the possibility that you’ve misjudged your friend’s skill set. As you describe the task ask whether this sounds like something he or she wants to do and has the time to do well.
Explain everything as clearly and in detail. We tend to endow our friends with information they don’t have. Understanding is often assumed — we assume they know things because they’re our friends.
Take time to say what the work means to you and your situation. Let the friend know that you are depending on him or her for your success. State clearly why you’re delegating the work and what depends on part of the project that you’re handing over.
Talk about who will make corrections or revisions to things that get missed if the work is incomplete or incorrectly executed. If at all possible, have time in the schedule for sending it back to your friend for such revisions.
If your ability to communicate during this conversation seems difficult, call off the delegation. It’s better to find someone else than to move forward with what doesn’t seem to be a good communication already.

On the Internet, we meet and make friends easily, but sometimes we endow them with the “halo effect,” thinking their great personality is a sign of their great compentency.
Sometimes the only way to learn that we’ve gotten a wrong impression is by asking for help and finding out the person isn’t who we thought. Usually though, asking a few questions, and offering complete information can get us to a great working relationship.

We all have friends who are better than we are at so many things. Are you finding the right ones to help you when you need them?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
Buy the Insider’s Guide. Learn how to write so that the Internet talks back!

Delegation: How Do You Scale Up and Still Do Your Best Work?

June 15, 2009 by Liz

DELEGATION 1

No One Can Do This Like I Would

The single social media questions I hear most is:

How do I find time do it all?

I usually answer, “You can’t and I don’t think you’d want to, even if you could.”

We all can only do what’s humanly possible.
We all get the same 24 hours in the same day.

So what’s the best way to get things done in the time that we have?

How Do You Scale Up and Still Do Your Best Work?

Communication might be easier, even quicker through technology, but more people further apart take longer to communicate with. Take, for example, a simple request for information. One message might get to 20 friends, but not all of them will get and respond to that message at the same time in the same way. Not all of them will respond completely. Some will not respond at all. Some will misread or not read the directions and send information that doesn’t help.

Time is an unrenewable resource. We can’t make more. So how do we make the best use of the time that we have?

Analyze the work you do to find your high impact value and core compentencies. Why do people hire you? What do you do that makes the most difference? Isolate those tasks and skills. No one is expert at every step of the process. Decide which steps are where you add the highest value. Is it planning, service, execution, design, management, writing, administration? Choose no more than two.
Identify the skills and tasks that you do least efficiently — those that you like least, those that you don’t do well, those that anyone can do.
Change the way you work to offer those tasks to someone who does them better than you do.

That’s right, the way to offer more of our best work is to delegate. It’s easy to think that no one would do it like we would. And it’s probably true.

But different isn’t the same as wrong and sometimes different is better.

The trick is knowing what to delegate and knowing that we don’t have to delegate the WHOLE task. We can delegate chunks.

Start with the obvious stuff. Let fresh eyes read your work for errors. Ask another person to key in the changes. Those are tasks that are easily isolated and executed by someone who’s probably more proficient at them than we are. We can check the final before it goes out.

When we pass on the tasks that we don’t like, don’t do well, and don’t need to do, we can put the best of our time where it makes the most difference — doing what only we can do.

How so you offer more of your best work when you’re scaling up?

Part 2 tomorrow … Delegation 2: I Can’t Let Someone Else Do That!!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
Buy the Insider’s Guide. Learn how to write so that the Internet talks back!

What Is an Online Social Media Conversation?

June 10, 2009 by Liz

The LANGUAGE of SOCIAL MEDIA

Words have a deep effect on
how we interpret and interact with the world.
The words we use and how we define them
reveal our interests, concerns, and values.
This series explores the words of social media.

social media conversation

When two or more people talking communicate ideas, we call that a conversation. The dynamic of a conversation works most successfully when the people sharing their thoughts reach a balance of contributing and exchanging ideas. It’s been said that conversation, “dialogue,” is the highest form of learning because it allows immediate response and clarification as questions are answered and messages are sent and received. Great conversations connect people on point of knowledge, values, and feeling.

Wikipedia suggests that conversation takes four major forms:

The Majority of conversations can be divided into four categories according to their major subject content:

Conversations about subjective ideas, which often serve to extend understanding and awareness.

Conversations about objective facts, which may serve to consolidate a widely-held view.

Conversations about other people (usually absent), which may be either critical, competitive, or supportive. This includes gossip.

Conversations about oneself, which sometimes indicate attention-seeking behaviour.

In the real world, few conversations fall exclusively into one category. Nevertheless, the proportional distribution of any given conversation between the categories can offer useful psychological insights into the mind set of the participants.

In a fluid, flexible conversation no one is in constantly in control. Control passes as the conversation moves from speaker to speaker. Ideas and thoughts attach and change the direction of the conversational thread to take in a direction the the speaker wants to go.

In online social media experiences, conversation is often input via keyboard within the context of a blog comment box, a Twitterstream or a social networking site thread. Not all such social media inputs really qualify as conversations. Individual comments that stand alone are better defined as remarks than as conversations.

Here’s how some folks define their online social media conversation.

@hdbbstephen: “To start with it doesn’t work like this http://bit.ly/AlTEr”
@nanpalmero: “a two way conversation begun on some type social media platform”
@storyseeker: “A conversation with everyone but only the intelligent and good looking reply.”
@gerlaineTalk: “Social Media Conversation definition? Good question. Hmmmm…. A talk of interest and creation of buzz.”
@Thandelike “SM conversation: starts publicly,@lizstrauss, at any point new interlocutors feel free to join in, embellish, pursue with their own ppl.”
@Matthew_T_Grant : ” its a combo of eavesdropping, broadcasting, and direct address (narrow-casting) – public intimacy”
@bethbeck : “Social media: Some call it noise, chatter. 4 me: enlightening, informative, eye-opening, boundary-less. World @ my fingertips!”
@storyseeker: “A conversation with everyone but only the intelligent and good looking reply.”
@tomaplomb: “Listening to a stream of voices, inserting yours into that stream, and watching the ripples.”
@BranislavPeric “There is no such things as “social media conversation”. Conversations, using digital tools, are social media.”
@Matthew_T_Grant : ” its a combo of eavesdropping, broadcasting, and direct address (narrow-casting) – public intimacy”
@lindsaydavies: “Social media conversation is a bit like morse code, short & useful but you really need to be involved to understand it.”

How do you define online social media conversation?

For more information see:
Princeton WorNet
Wiktionary
Wikidpedia
Discussion on Conversation (powerpoint)
Etymology and definition of the term “conversation”

Got more to add? C’mon let’s talk.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Get your best voice in the conversation. Buy my eBook.

Setting Goals for Your Business Website

June 9, 2009 by SOBCon Authors

goal-posts This is the question you should be asking yourself every day:

How effective is your website at achieving the goals you have for your business?

If you do not know the answer, it may be because you have not set your goals properly. Do you know what the purpose of your site is? What are the benefits for you and your business?

.
Lets take a look at these questions, and potential answers.

Your website should position you as an expert in your field. Perception and reputation are everything to your potential customers and clients. Having a website that effectively conveys that expertise to your visitors improves your visiblity in the marketspace, your credibility as a business-person, and begins to build trust in your products/services.
Your website is a starting-point for the identity of your brand. It is a starting point because it is impossible to control all aspects of your brand identity anymore. Your customers have blogs, forums, and Twitter now – where they can and will discuss your product’s price and quality, your customer service interactions, even your advertising strategies.
Your website expands your marketspace beyond yesterday’s geographical boundaries. Depending on the products and services that you offer (shipping may be a consideration) you can now offer the services of your business to a global audience, not just the people within a few minutes’ drive.
Your website is a tool for expanding your list of potential clients. Due to the expanded nature of the marketspace and the rapidly growing number of people who do their research online before making a purchase. Having an e-mail capture/site registration application on your site can help you to build a list of self-selected potential customers.
Your website is a venue for providing value to your market before you ever make a sale. E-books, white papers, product reviews, service explanations – all of these marketing tools can be made available throught your site. For free, or for the price of an e-mail registration. When your visitors see your site (and your business) as value-added then doing business with you is an opportunity, not a risk.

Does your website do these things? If not, do you need help putting them in place? Let us know how we can help.

Got a Halo or Horns? First Minutes Last

May 27, 2009 by Liz

Showing Up for the First Test

When I was in college, I was struck with massive migraine on the day of an important class final. As I picked up my pen, the words on the page moved before my eyes as I tried to write. I brought this to the attention of the professor, who moved me into his office for the “lovely” experience.

I have to say I must have done dismally — at least not stellar — on that written exam. But I still Aced the class.

The most important test in that class was the first one, not the final. That was when the professor decided whether I was intelligent, whether I was a serious student, invested in learning. That first test left an indelible impression about who I am.

From that day forward, I always studied hardest for the first test in every class.

Halo or Horns

It’s called the “halo effect.” It’s a cognitive bias we all have toward what we decide from the start. Interviewers and clients, customers, … all of us … decide almost immediately from an initial trait or perception whether something is “good” or “bad.”
Research abounds on the topic … Wikipedia describes it well.

Physically attractive people are perceived to have an array of attractive qualities.

A bracelet in a Tiffany catalogue is perceived as more valuable than one in craft shop.

We make those assumptions in seconds on as little as a single trait generalized over an entire subject area. It makes sense in sorting the world on a global scale, but is error ridden in the specific instance.

The problem is that one we decide, we support our instant diagnosis by interpretting information in favor of our bias. We even work toward proving the premise. We’ll give the attractive person benefit for great qualities we’ve never seen or experienced. We’ll ask the “less impressive” interview candidate harder questions and be more critical of the answers. We’ll underscore the reasons that a craft jeweler can’t produce Tiffany quality.

If we love you, your faux pas was an accident. If we don’t, it was surely evil intent.

According to the research, even when we know that we’re biased by our first impressions and perceptions, we still can’t stop our halo effect response. It shows up in

brands we buy
candidates we hire
friends we defend
music we like
people we admire
politicians we elect
social media platforms we stay with
the insults we perceive or forgive
the causes we support

And Byron Kalies of training zone made a pointed out a fundamental flaw in this characteristic of human perception. .

It seems sensible and strikes a chord with us because we’ve all done it. We’ve all made an instant decision and found out it was true in the face of all the evidence. However, I wonder how often we’ve made an instant decision and found it to be wrong? I guess we don’t remember those occasions. There’s a phrase for this in psychological jargon – ‘bottom drawer evidence’. This concerns the mass of evidence gathered that doesn’t fit the theory and is conveniently hidden in the bottom drawer.

It takes serious energy and time to reverse thinking like that. Makes more sense to get the first minutes right. Invest, relate, and establish credibility that lasts.

Halo or horns. No person or product is all good or all bad. Yet the product lesson is clear. The “halo effect” makes fiercely loyal fans who evangelize and argue for the validity of their perceptions.

Got a good example of the halo effect in your life?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Search Results for: questions

Ever End Up Doing Someone Else’s Work?

No One Can Do This Like I Would

How Do You Scale Up and Still Do Your Best Work?

The LANGUAGE of SOCIAL MEDIA

social media conversation

Showing Up for the First Test

Halo or Horns

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

It’s Like Open Mic Only Different

With Guest Host Glenda Watson Hyatt

How POUR Is Your Blog?

The rules are simple — be nice.