Nov 7, 2014 | Governance, Leadership
Reflecting on the behaviours of the best people I have seen in leadership positions over my 35 years of playing in this area to a friend a while ago, it seemed to come down to a small number of discrete behavioural characteristics. I know there are libraries full of books on leadership, but this is the list that evolved during that conversation. Luckily, my friend was jotting a few notes for a workshop he was running the following week, and subsequently sent me the jottings.
Those characteristics were:
- They always take responsibility for their own actions, and those of the people who relay on them for direction. No finger pointing, excuses, and wasted energy playing “the game” ,
- The flip side, of the first is that they give credit where it is due, never taking the credit for themselves, even in situations where most would say that their leadership and decisions were the deciding factor .
- They do not let the status quo, sacred cows and the fear of change stop them. In fact these things offer opportunities to improve, and benefit by being first, different, and recognisable.
- People are not pushed into the background by technology. People run the technology, design it, implement, and use it, but so often the technology comes to be the king. Great leaders would never allow themselves to be distracted by a phone call when talking to someone who was relying on them, respect given is returned in spades.
- They are not imitators, they look for different paths, and follow them with passion. It may lead to a few more missteps, but it also opens the opportunity of seeing the emerging opportunities first. Being the same for the sake of some concern about being seen as different is of no importance to them.
- They know they are not always right, so are willing to be pulled up, corrected, and accept good council. You would never hear one say “I told you so”.
- They are collegiate, happily working with others, contributing their time and expertise in the way that best benefits the objectives being sought.
Finding ways to build these into your natural response mechanisms can only help you become a better leader, and coaching those with whom you work to be better themselves is in itself, the essence of leadership.
Oct 6, 2014 | Communication, Governance, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Seeking a simple metaphor to explain how SEO fits into a digital strategy to a “digitally challenged” client running a successful small business, I struck upon the map of the London Underground.
If you look at the map, there are stations on single lines, stations with several lines running through, and stations with multiple intersections, some to other networks outside the underground, busses and British rail.
At any time, there are people in various stages of a journey. Some are waiting on a platform, some travelling towards the underground entry and exit points, and some on a train going to some predetermined end point of their journey.
Imagine now that every person had a descriptive tag attached, which was stored waiting for a request about that person, that could be read, and communicated to anyone asking.
SEO calls this process of asking for a location and description as “Crawling” and “Indexing”.
Each piece of information, if it has been appropriately tagged, or described by the person putting it onto a site, is “indexed” by the search engines, and when someone types a search request into a box, the engine crawls through the indexed material and returns a link to the location and description of the item to the searcher.
Back too the metaphor.
Each person with the tag on the underground, can be found, and returns the requested information to the enquirer. Location, what they are wearing, who they are, what they look like, with links to others who may be with them, and where they are going.
There are just two dimensions to having an effective SEO strategy.
- Get the technical stuff right, and this can be really complicated, and to the novice, even many professionals, is challenging. Find someone you trust to get it done for you.
- Have a strategy and action plan, without which you will be lost irrespective of the quality of the SEO.
Back to the underground metaphor. You never (perhaps rarely, a late night can make a difference) climb onto an underground train without knowing where you are going, and what the best route is under the circumstances that prevail.
Why should it be any different for an SEO strategy?
Sep 22, 2014 | Branding, Governance, Marketing, Social Media
Your facebook, linkedin accounts, and all the other social media platforms with which you interact are not home, they are places you visit, and perhaps rent a space to leave something behind for storage and easier access and use. They can be taken away, moved, or you can be banned, excluded, or diminished without being able to do anything about it.
Just like renting a house, you have some rights, but ultimately, you do not own it, and the ones who do hold all the cards. When you own the house you live in, you can do pretty much anything you like. You own it, and it cannot be taken away.
When you think about your digital life with this simple thought in mind, it should change the way you behave.
You know the old story, rental cars go really fast in reverse, they can be abused by those renting them, simply because they do not own them, and are not responsible for the damage done beyond the superficial. That is also true for rented space on the digital platforms others own. Your content, presence and connections can be misused, abused and lent to others without your knowledge or consent. Just ask the B class celebs who recently have had their nude pictures shared from the Apple servers.
Should, have kept their nude antics at home.
Anything you want to own that is held on a public platform, your mailing lists and personal photos for example, must be assumed to be at some point, compromised. If you do not want the risk of it being on the front page of the paper one day, keep it at private, at home.
At the very least, back them up onto something you own, leaving it where it is on a rented or worse, free platform, anything can happen.
For business, it comes back to the notion of owned, earned and paid media. Each has its place, and can be complementary as well as synergistic, but make sure you get the mix right, and that you understand the implications.
As a result of the increasingly powerful grip the social platforms have on the reach you can generate organically, driven by their business model. It is therefore ESSENTIAL that you have your own digital real estatre.In other words, a website hosted on your URL, which actd as yur home base. .
Sep 10, 2014 | Change, Governance, Management, Sales, Strategy
Courtesy Hugh McLeod
http://gapingvoid.com/2014/02/26/how-to-be-successful/
In life, and all its aspects, business, social , relationships, there are no shortcuts, just easier and simpler ways of doing things. It is just that it takes time and effort to find the easier, more productive, and value additional way.
The rules for success are the same in every context.
- Understand the selling process. Business, pleasure, social, you are always selling, a point of view, activity, feeling, yourself. Always selling!.
- See through the eyes of the other person. Again, customer, partner, casual acquaintance, it does not matter, it simply is better to see yourself as others see you, rather than just as you see yourself.
- Have a deeper understanding of whatever it is you are talking about than those to whom you are talking. If listeners are to get any value from listening, they need to think that there may be something of value for them, and that you know something they don’t, otherwise, why would they spend their valuable time on listening. Another of my old dads pearls of wisdom: “If you can’t say anything useful or sensible, keep your trap shut.”
- Seek ways to simplify. Our world is increasing complicated, finding ways to simplify even small bits of it are enormously valuable. Finding a way to reduce the friction to get a better, more valuable to someone outcome is the competitive advantage of the 21st century. Most things are done the way they are done because that is the way they have always been done. Not a good idea for the future.
- Start anything you do with the end in mind. This enables you to manage by compass, rather than by a map, which enables flexibility, agility, and room for the unexpected, serendipitous, and wonderful to emerge.
- Be nice. Nobody likes being around jerks, so be nice.
Sounds easy, but in fact it is very hard, that is why so few people are able to find the success they would like, and in many cases, deserve.
Call me for a confidential discussion about how to best leverage your opportunities.
Sep 4, 2014 | Governance, Innovation, Leadership, Small business, Strategy
The post on the 2 tools SME’s need in early August led to a comment that, whilst the headlines of focus and discipline made sense, the challenge is in implementation.
Fair comment.
So, how do you build the needed focus and discipline in the face of increasing complexity and competition?
Over 40 years of doing this stuff with SME;s, there have been 6 common factors that lead to successful implementation that have emerged.
- Ownership leads to commitment. In an increasingly complicated world, the hierarchical organisations that worked for us to date now fail, they are too rigid and process driven to be responsive to the chaotic input from a connected world. Leveraging what Clay Shirky calls “Cognitive surplus” becomes the competitive challenge to be won.
- Prioritisation and planning. There is a fine line between prioritising and planning a set of activities, and procrastination and doing the easy stuff that does not really matter. Two rules of thumb: 1. if it is easy, it probably does not matter, and 2. An extra minute spend planning will save an hour later on in the project.
- Accountability. It is one thing to “make” someone accountable in a top down organisation, it is easy for some boss to just say “you are accountable” but that does not make it so. It is really only when the person takes on the accountability as their own that the motivation kicks in, that they really care beyond the protection of an income or position.
- Outcome measurement. Do not measure the activities, just the outcomes. It is good to have the activities visible, so you can see what is being done, but only the outcomes really matter, activities do not contribute to success in any way other than they are just the means to the end, so measure for the end.
- Failure tolerance. The “scientific method” applies to management as well as science, it spawns a fact based decision making culture, rather than one based on ego, status and hubris.The story of the most successful inventor in history, Thomas Edison, on failing for the 999th time to create light from a bulb saying: “Now I know 999 things that do not work” is a lesson for us all. The 1,000th experiment was successful, and the world was changed.
- Persistence. Never giving up is crucial, with the proviso that you learn from your mistakes, and apply the learning.
These 6 are a great start, to which I would add “Sweat”. My dad used to reckon nothing worthwhile was achieved without some of it being shed, and I think he was right.
Sep 2, 2014 | Branding, Communication, Customers, Governance, retail
Last night Media Watch on the ABC did a piece on the “news report” done on one of the 6.30 current affairs programs on a commercial station. The “report” was a 15 minute advertising free expose on the sourcing of the fresh produce the retailer sells.
It was a prime example of so called “Native advertising”.
Native advertising is just a term dreamt up by marketers, aided and abetted by commercially desperate media owners to make excuses for polluting the so-called news with favorable commentary. In this case, the channel concerned had a share of the retailers very substantial advertising dollars way in excess of their audience market share, and the “report” was nothing less than a glowing tribute to the quality and freshness of the produce.
Smells like advertising to me.
The “news” already seems to have been so polluted by the populist lowest common denominator “cat up a tree” stories that seem to dominate alongside sensationalist claims about today’s brand of extremist, that why would a puff piece on how fresh a retailers produce is make a difference?
Simple answer, because it is nonsense.
The retailer concerned does do a good job, works hard to deliver produce as fresh as they can given the constraints of their mass market model, competitive pressures and profitability objectives, but to put as much lipstick on the pig as the report did is really going too far.
You can watch Media Watch’s (the segment starts at 8.45) commentary for a while on the ABC’s iView, but if you are still confused about the line between advertising and journalism, and the chance of our institutions and enterprises being held accountable by the media, have a look at this satirical video by John Oliver that presses the point.
We are pretty savvy consumers of media these days, question is, are we savvy enough?
