Month: June 2010

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Guest Blog Posting – Find Your Match

King Chess Piece

Meet the “Idea Lady”

I invite you to meet a creative and energetic woman who helps the blogging community prosper in a unique way. Her name is Cathy Stucker, the “Idea Lady”!

Among her many innovative online entrepreneurial programs (see her site for details), Cathy brilliantly conceived of a much-needed online community – a sort of “match-making” service for bloggers. We all know how valuable guest blog posting can be, with links to your online properties, enhanced credibility as a subject matter expert (SME), and great PR all around. Cathy has taken all that to new heights!

A New Marketing Tool Emerges

A little more than a year ago, Cathy realized that the internet did not offer a platform for bloggers to find, or offer their services for, guest blogging. So she made it happen. I’ve personally subscribed to her BloggerLinkup newsletter, and enjoy scanning it for opportunities (wishing for 40 hours in each day in order to do more writing). Take a look, if you need a guest blogger, or you’d like to offer your services as a guest blogger.

Cathy uses the service herself, and sites one particularly notable experience. A certain post, written by a guest blogger for Cathy’s blog, included a couple of affiliate links. One of the links was Cathy’s affiliate program, and the other was her guest’s affiliate program. Not only did they both make money from the affiliate links in that post, but Blogger Linkup received a coveted link from The Huffington Post. Also known as “HuffPo” or “HuffPost”, The Huffington Post is ranked the most powerful blog in the world by The Observer. What a coup, Cathy!

FREE Social Media Marketing Tool

Cathy also asked me to make sure you know that everything – EVERYTHING – about BloggerLinkup is FREE:

  • FREE newsletter subscription
  • FREE offers to guest post
  • FREE requests for guest posters
  • No charging allowed for any services

Thanks, Cathy, for all your fun and helpful advice. I especially loved your webinar last night (also FREE, I might add!)

Have you found a new or unique online marketing tool lately?

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

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ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman: With offices in Nashville Tennessee, but working virtually with international clients, Lisa M. Chapman serves her clients as a business and marketing coach, business planning consultant and social media consultant. As a Founder of iBrand Masters, a social media consulting firm, Lisa Chapman helps clients to establish and enhance their online brand, attract their target market, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa @ LisaChapman.com

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Going Off the Record Can = Off You Go

Young lady on a blue suit been interviewed

 

A cardinal rule in media interviews is never go off the record (and conversely, watch out for what you do say on it!). It can be dangerous for you and the reporter if you do. And you don’t have to look far in today’s news to see where setting such boundaries with journalists is a good idea. Because when they aren’t set, Generals can be forced to tender their resignations and the life of that one news story just turned into a cat with eight lives more to go.

Going off the record serves no real purpose — even though most journalists will respect it (my favorite time this happened, the reporter simply put down her pen — she wasn’t using a tape recorder — and the client told their little aside. And it didn’t really add to the telling of the main story). But some journalists won’t respect it, simply because they get lazy or careless about note taking, or forget what you said wasn’t for publication. In the rare case, an off-the-record comment can contain information that blatantly contradicts a case that you might be trying to make. Granted, this happens more in hard news stories, but even in the business world, a lot of inside information or a slip of the tongue can move things in another direction, the direction you didn’t want go.

If clients have clear messages or talking points beforehand, and even do a mock interview just to get comfortable with the process, you won’t have this problem most likely. If you are unclear of what you need to say in a particular discussion during an interview or in answering a question that seems potentially loaded, it’s okay to say, “This isn’t for attribution, but let me give some background here.” The difference between saying that and going off the record is significant. Your PR person will and can often speak for you in this framework, usually before or after the media is done talking to you and the media source needs some follow-up information or clarification.

Most clients however do not want their PR peeps speaking for them on the record. Still, others will designate them to be the spokesperson for the company, or a division, or in the case of serious family or personal matter, they will strongly need someone to handle the talking. Make sure you establish this responsibility early in your working relationship.

Looking at the public relations issues related to General McChrystal’s interview in Rolling Stone magazine makes for a pretty great case study in how not to conduct an interview — and to know when not to go on the record, let alone off it. It’s simply amazing Michael Hastings, the reporter, had as much access as he did (the military aid/flack who set this up has also filed his quitin’ papers, it turns out). As noted in the Huffington Post online today, McChrystal’s sentiments about President Obama and the perceived failure of the president’s Afghanistan war strategy were a serious negative the military media handlers should have protected against — providing they acknowledge that they are serving their Commander-in-Chief, the president elect. The Huffington Post reports:

Michael Hastings, who wrote the profile of General Stanley McChrystal for Rolling Stone, said today that he wasn’t quite sure why the general gave him the near-total access that led to the publication of explosive comments that brought about McChrystal’s resignation.

Speaking on the phone from Afghanistan to ABC’s Diane Sawyer, Hastings said he think the decision speaks to McChrsytal’s often reckless behavior:

“It was a sort of natural kind of recklessness that General McChrystal had, which has been with him through his entire career, as I understand it. And inviting me in, was a obviously a risk, as it always is when you invite a journalist in.”

DUH!

Now the military has lost a dedicated life-long general and the White House has lost another round in defense of the escalation of the conflict in, what is it they call this forlorn place with trillions of dollars in minerals and poppies, the graveyard of nations?

Reckless or candid, the McChystal comments/debacle underscore how wrong things can quickly go. The PR lessons are many and at some point, we’ll return to them again when the friendly fire has cleared and it’s safe to armchair analyze the fallout.

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For more resources, see the Library topic Public and Media Relations.

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Business Planning Doesn’t End With Your Plan: Part 1 of 2

Bunch of stickers pinned to a brown surface

Rolfe Larson is on vacation. This blog was written by guest writer Jan Cohen.

When you start a new business, whether for profit venture or social enterprise within a nonprofit, you’ve spent a lot of time and effort on the business planning process. And now you are ready to “execute”. The start-up period always has surprises. This two part series shares five lessons learned from working with many business ventures.

1. Your market research, no matter how diligent and thorough, could be wrong. Without thorough knowledge of the actual business you may have interpreted facts or data incorrectly.

  • It is commonly interpreted that “Waiting Lists = Demand”. But in some businesses, there is a reason for these waiting lists that doesn’t translate into business for you. One example: the competition has a “known” provider or product that people want and substituting you is not of interest to them.
  • What looks like huge demand could be a temporary surge or interest due to some event or environmental or other factor, rather than a sustained level of demand for the product or service.

2. The economy changes and customer ability and interest and ability to purchase can change dramatically.

  • When the economy changes as it did two years ago, people may have less need or ability to utilize daycare and other activities for children or pets, restaurants/catering or other services and products. The continued high unemployment rate that is affecting people’s spending dollars now was not forecast two years ago.
  • If some of your target markets are public agencies, their budgets are also related to the economy. For example, school districts in California had ample budgets to purchase many products services two years ago that they are not purchasing now.

Next blog: Marketing Lessons Learned

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For more resources, see our Library topic Business Planning.

Jan Cohen has been a consultant and social enterprise practitioner working with nonprofit organizations for more than 25 years, focusing on earned income strategies and business venture development, start up, and management. More information at LinkedIn or email.

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Can stickers motivate your employees?

Sticker-notes-on-a-wall

My teenage daughter entered the working world about a year ago. While working in a national fast food chain wasn’t her first choice of occupation, she gladly accepted the position because she saw the opportunities and freedom that could come from having her “own money.” She also became aware during her job search that the positions in which she was really interested required her to be older (she is still a minor) or have some sort of previous experience. So not only would her year at the food chain bring the money she needed to pay her car insurance, it would also give her the experience she needed to move into another position. In her eyes, this isn’t the job she plans to have for five years. In fact, she will most likely leave as soon as she can find a job hosting or waiting tables in a restaurant with a bar so she can eventually move into a bartending position. Her ultimate plan is to follow this path until she graduates from college and moves on the better opportunities.
Now despite the fact that working at the fast food restaurant isn’t her long-term goal, she has proved to be an efficient and dedicated employee (for the most part). She discovered that she enjoys working with customers very much and that she can handle very busy stressful situations quite well. Recently this ability earned her some recognition during one of her shifts. Our conversation that day went something like this.

ME: “How was work today?”

HER: “Good.” (typical teenager response)

ME: “Good. So, did you work in the drive-thru or the front counter?” (example of my mad digging skills which are required to find out anything about your teenager)

HER: (sarcastically) “The drive-thru, of course. Oh and because I was able to meet the time goal while working it by myself, I got a ___________ (insert positive recognition sticker or something) so at the end of week, I might be able to win employee of the week and get a fun prize like a sticker or piece of gum.”

ME: “Well, I think that is cool.”

HER: (rolling eyes) “I’m seventeen; I don’t care about a sticker or piece of gum.”

So while she doesn’t care about a sticker or piece of gum at seventeen, she does care about her work environment and how the job fits in to her future goals. She does appreciate that her efforts were noticed. However, she sees rewards a little differently. She still works there because the company works around her schedule with school, social events, and the custody arrangement her father and I share. She also still works there because the job isn’t difficult for her and she enjoys working with people.

Motivation issues can’t be fixed with stickers and charts. It’s a cultural thing. Look for future posts on the subject of motivation in the coming weeks.

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For more resources, See the Human Resources library.

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And also, please send questions and comments.

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GRANT SEEKING BY THE BOOK (PART 1 OF 2)

I have been a grants professional since 1974 — that’s a long time. I have worked in agencies that range from the largest single local public agency in the country to a tiny seminary … and everything in between.

During that time I’ve taught countless grant seekers in graduate and continuing education courses, and in professional workshops. In those early days of teaching, I structured my courses around the three basic principles of seeking grant funding — program design, funder research and proposal writing.

The process started with a well-structured, compelling program or mission statement for organizations seeking targeted core support. Then the grant seeker needed to conduct a comprehensive search of grant makers and their priorities.

Today that’s all done electronically, but in years past it required endless hours search through printed directories. That research yielded a list of potential funders that then had to be filtered further — for a variety of factors that “qualified” them appropriate prospects to be sent an application.

Those factors included geography, applicant eligibility, funding range and program compatibility. The final list included only those funders whose priorities matched those of the applicant. Next, the applicant wrote proposals that were consistent with the funder’s guidelines, submitted those applications, and then waited.

That was, and still is the standard curriculum for courses on grantsmanship, whether one-day workshops or semester long seminars.

This structured, sequential approach is, in fact, the process that grant seekers must follow, but it is a process that hardly guarantees success.

Eventually I came to recognize that we well-meaning professionals were doing a disservice to grant seekers by presenting this cookbook approach as the road to getting funded. As I wrote in an earlier blog, grants represent the greatest effort for the least return of any fundraising strategy. Only 5% to 10% of grant application are funded in any cycle.

Want to increase your odds ?? Watch for Part 2 … next Tuesday, June 29 !!

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Have a question about starting or expanding your grants program? Email me at Andrew@GrantServices.com..

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Travel lightly

Brown leather traveling bag and a passport

This past week my sister-in-law died. Nothing like a death to put things into perspective. I reminded my in-laws as they were worried about details of the funeral, ‘don’t sweat the small stuff’. After seeing their sister die, it was an easy message to get across. After that ordeal the type of flowers or coffin decoration really wasn’t that important. Does it take a death to put the small things into perspective?

What are you worried about these days that really in the end don’t matter that much? Are there things at work that generally annoy you but if you took a 10,000 foot view isn’t really that important? Would you worry about those things if you were lying on your death bed?

I heard an expression once about holding on to kindness and letting go of grudges. If you have grudges, annoyances, harsh judgements or built up resentment about people at your work- let them go. If you are still carrying memories about people who have done you wrong or made foolish decisions, travel lightly. Do you really want to be carrying that extra burden around with you every day? What could you do more of if you channeled your strength and extra energy towards acts of kindness? Let go of these small burdens and move in more peaceful ways. Walk lightly and carry only those things that serve you well.

Here’s a tip to figure out what you can release – for each resentment, negative judgement, complaint or grudge- ask yourself – how is it serving me? Do you want to stay in victim ‘ain’t it awful’ mindset or bring peace to your work and yourself? The choice is yours. Every day you wake up and go to work, you choose your attitude. What do you want to carry with you to work tomorrow morning?

I love this Buddhist story of the monks crossing the river. Two monks arrived at a river that was quickly rising. A young woman held on to a basket of clothing she was washing. She looked worried about getting to the other side with her wash. The older monk asked the woman if she needed help. When she replied yes, he quickly handed the clothing to the younger monk, picked the woman up as he stepped carefully across the rocks through the rushing water. He set the woman down on the other side and kept walking. The younger monk quickly followed with the clothes and left them with the woman without speaking or looking at her.

The two monks walked for over an hour in silence. The younger monk pondered repeatedly in his mind how the older monk talked to the woman. Didn’t that go against their vows of silence? What about his physical contact with women? The young monk couldn’t get the image out of his head as they walked, replaying the scene dozens of times in his head. Finally after nearly two hours of this constant stream of thoughts crashing through his mind, he stopped and asked the older monk – ‘master why did you pick up that woman?’

The older monk nodded in silence and replied. ‘I assisted the woman across the dangerous waters. Then I set her down. You have been carrying her ever since’.

As the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us – Peace is Every Step.

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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.

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Strategic Thinking and the Law of Nemesis

4 chess piece on a chessboard

The Law of Nemesis is a useful concept for leaders, strategists and strategic planners. In a nutshell, the law states that if things are going well in your enterprises, you must be aware that Nemesis is lurking, since no successful effort goes unnoticed by competitors. Mark Rhodes of Strategy by Design explains the concept in this short clip of his teaching.

The Law of Nemesis

Does it ever seem to you that just as prospects for your business begin to look brightest, someone will rise out of nowhere to pick off a valued client, or to introduce a product line that matches or trumps your own? This dynamic is sometimes referred to as the Law of Nemesis: “Find a good thing and count on this: a nemesis will want to snatch it from you. Nothing good is yours forever because others will always want a piece of it.”

Nemesis was the Greek goddess who meted out divine retribution for wrongdoing… especially hubris. If Nemesis believed that some mere mortal was having all the luck – or getting too much credit for things – she would find a way to smite the individual by sending bad luck and ill fortune in the direction of the offending person. The Romans, too, believed that fate will eventually punish those who have gained unmerited advantage.

Nemesis, the Greek goddess who meted out divine retribution for wrongdoing
Nemesis, the Greek goddess who meted out divine retribution for wrongdoing

All of us, of course, have the notion from time to time that the luck always seems to fall the other way. But whether these were matters of divine retribution or not, strategists know that one thing is certain: Every positive situation in life and business bears the seeds of its own reversal.

Count on this: Competitive advantages will always erode. Find a good corner for a gas station, draw some interest, and someone will open up another station across the street. Work to craft a new offering of professional services, and copy cats come out of nowhere. Design a nice blog or website, and find an exact duplicate a week later. Without question, competitors learn how to imitate sources of competitive advantage.

To stave off the Nemesis, you must find sustainable advantages. The strategist must slow the erosion of advantages, and continually seek new high ground representing future competitive advantage. Moreover, the strategist must erect “barriers to entry” to protect present advantages.

Strategic planning must include plans for defending ground, for minimizing the work of Nemesis. Companies can:

Continue to set up and defend barriers to entry in order to slow the entrance of new competitors and to stay a step ahead on the innovation curve. This can mean locking in intellectual capital and proprietary procedures. It can mean staying very close to existing customers and locking in relationships by establishing mutual trust and dependencies. It can mean making capital investments in improvements that competitors cannot match.

Another way to stave off Nemesis is through competitive intelligence gathering, so that you, as strategist, are aware of what the competition is up to and how competitors will likely react to your own initiatives. Because so much information about competitors is now available over the internet and through public domain sources, many companies are empowering their entire work force in seeking information helpful in adapting to changes across the competitive landscape.

A simple way of thinking about this is that strategic decision-making is about putting your army onto the battlefield, your company into competitive space, armed with strategic advantage – a head start of sorts. Strategic advantage is essential. Some say, as a matter of fact, “if you don’t have advantage, don’t compete.” Then, once you are in the game and have advantages in place, be aware the Nemesis is watching and that competitive advantages always erode. Add the Law of Nemesis to your arsenal of thought as a strategic thinker, and enjoy success over the long term.

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Mark Rhodes is a highly experienced organizational strategy and design consultant with Strategy By Design. You can reach him via email at markrho@mindspring.com.

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“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. – Bill Clinton

Language and misunderstanding have a way of taking on a life of their own and can undermine the success and progress of a project quickly.

I was recently engaged for some project troubleshooting and review for a multi-national client doing a major global system upgrade while also undertaking a merger. I uncovered many issues which highlighted the criticality of precision communication when dealing with diverse project teams.

Frequently a single workflow or deliverable can involve several teams across multiple time zones as well as off-shore development teams on different continents. There are cultural and language issues as well as the general time coordination issues not to mention semantics.

In this day and age of multiple time zones, languages, cultural differences and different management styles, it is imperative that the foundation for communication be established very early. It is critical to establish a common general foundation for communication. Some of the tools I’ve used to assist have been:

  • Definition of a common ‘Project/Program Glossary of Terms’
  • Precision of timing measures such as using specific times and not terms such as Close of business (COB), “First thing in the Morning” or “later today” as those can be vague and open to interpretation relative to one’s time zone.
  • Clarity around expectations when terms such as Initial Draft, Production Ready, Ready to Discuss & Brief Presentation are used.

What are some other kinds of terms that readers might put into this category?

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For more resources, see the Library topic Project Management.

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Survival without social media and website has a new look

Man in White Long Sleeves and Black Pants Sitting on Sofa While Holding a Book

I’m back after a one-week at-home vacation that included no computer use for business purposes and no social media participation. A very relaxing change of pace! But, alas, time and mortgage payments wait for no man, so I reluctantly return to the land of the working stiff.

I’d like to invite readers to check out (and comment on) the newly redesigned Bernstein Crisis Management website. It has the same content and even the same sections, for the most part, but a fresher “look” and it has been SEO optimized from the get-go, versus continuously updated to SEO standards over the 10 years of its prior existence. Kudos to Tao Consultants for the design, with thanks to my Creative Director (and wife) Celeste Mendelsohn and webmaster Oliver del Signore for consulting on the site changes.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc. , an international crisis management consultancy, and author of Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training.]

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Coaching Leaders: A Systems Approach

Smiling man holding a silver tablet

Guest Submission by Steven Ober, EdD

Leaders live and work in complex systems. In fact, we all do. These systems include our organizations, our teams, our families, our communities, and our larger society.

In today’s world, it is incumbent on those of us who coach leaders to deepen and broaden our ability to coach from a systemic perspective—to understand our client leader as an individual human system working and living in larger systems. How a leader proceeds in those systems, and how those systems operate, can have a huge impact on her ability to achieve her goals.

This article presents an overview of Coaching from a systems perspective:

  • Definition What is a “system”?
  • Why coaching from a systems perspective is critical in today’s world.
  • What systemic coaching includes.
  • How you can, on a practical level, coach systemically.
  • Learning Opportunities that can help you broaden and deepen your systemic capability.

Definition

A system is a whole made up of interdependent, interacting parts. Changes in one of the parts create changes in one or more of the others. All of the parts are interconnected. Examples of systems include: You as a human being, your coaching client as a human system, the system that consists of you and your client interacting, the client’s organization and marketplace, and/or all of the above taken together.

Why is it important to coach from a systemic perspective?

There are two fundamental reasons that a systemic approach is critical to effective leadership coaching:

  1. We are, in fact, systems living in larger systems. As human beings we know we are part of a whole natural system. We are all interconnected. A systems perspective gives us access to the fullness of this interconnection. Systems thinking is a powerful way to understand ourselves, one another, and our world.
  2. The systems in which our clients live and work have a significant impact on their ability to achieve desired results. To serve them best, we need to help client leaders see how the forces in their internal and external systems influence their ability to create what they want and what they can do in their system to increase their success rate. If, as coaches, we do not take into account these broader and deeper systemic forces, we are ignoring huge areas of their lives, areas with forces that can greatly impede, or powerfully support their work as leaders.

What does coaching from a systems perspective include?

Coaching most broadly and deeply (coaching systemically) means being aware of three worlds and how they interplay to produce outcomes:

  1. The Face-to Face-World—our interactions with our client, and their face-to-face interactions with other key people.
  2. The Larger External World, for example our client’s organization, their business, their customers, and their marketplace.
  3. The Deeper Internal World: How/what our client leaders think and feel, their mental models/underlying assumptions, their deeper beliefs, and in some cases, their deep story.

Systemic coaching is about helping our clients “see” the key variables from these three worlds, how they interact, how they help or get in the way, and what our client leader can do to change the system in favor of their leadership vision and desired results.

A leadership coach also needs to have a deep understanding of his own internal and external worlds and how they play out in coaching relationships.

How, on a practical, can you coach from a systems perspective?

  1. Approach each phase your coaching work with the client’s (and your own) systems in mind. In each phase—entry, contracting, data collection, goal setting, action planning, and supporting implementation–ask, and help the client ask, “What are the key systemic variables we need to be paying attention to here?” For example, coaching from a systems perspective means having an understanding of the system around your client and how it may impact her. If you don’t have that information, you probably need to structure your assessment so that you gather some of it.
  2. Use your client’s goal as your entry point. Focus your systemic thinking on helping your client achieve her coaching goal rather on than on a broad analysis of the entire system. Focus on her goal and how her internal, external, and face- to-face systems influence her ability to achieve it. Help your client set his goals, create his action plans, and implement those plans in ways that take into account key systemic forces at play.
  3. Learn and use systemic tools in your coaching. There are many good tools out there that help us work with systems—for example, influence diagrams, causal loops, systems archetypes, the Butterfly model of Complex Human Systems, Jay Forrester’s systems dynamics out of MIT, and David Kantor’s Structural Dynamics.
  4. Help your client leader look for leverage. Nobody can take on everything. Work to identify the key systemic forces he can focus on to have the most impact.
  5. Always learn. Integrate and synthesize your systemic understanding and approaches through practice, practice, practice, combined with reflection, reflection, reflection.

Learning opportunity

Consider enrolling in an exciting new program, Coaching from a Systems Perspective. How do we increase our capacity for seeing and understanding systemic connections? How can we become more effective in dealing with the complexities of the systems in which we, and our clients, live and work? This three-day course, designed for practicing coaches, offers a basic grounding in modern systems theory and provides specific tools for seeing and understanding systems. We practice these during the program through a sequence of mutual coaching sessions. Participants consistently report that the program experience has taken their coaching work to a new and deeper level.

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Coaching from a Systems Perspective was developed by a group of senior coaches from the Coaching Community of Practice, Society for Organizational Learning. We call ourselves Systems Perspectives, LLC. You will find an overview of the program, dates, locations, and a contact person for each offering on our website: http://SystemsPerspectivesLLC.com. Upon completion of the program, 29 ICF CCEUs are available.

If you want to talk more about systemic coaching, how it can enhance your practice, and you can use it to help client leaders, feel free to contact me:

Steven P. Ober EdD
Office: 508.882.1025 Mobile: 978.590.4219
Steve@ChrysalisCoaching.org