Sasmuk

10 Traits All Entrepreneurs Should Have

2012-11-17T21:14:13Z

1. You Take The Initiative A lot of people will complain about a number of things and ask questions like, “When would someone deal with this problem?” You discover that you don’t fancy such questions but would rather ask questions like: “What can I do now to start changing things for the better? They create solutions to problems they encounter. They don’t wait for anyone to do it for them. 2. You Believe Your Vision Will Come Alive Are you an incurable optimist who believes that his/her visions will be actualized no matter how high the odds are stacked against you? Do you walk around with the confidence of someone who knows that it’s just a matter of time before it finally clicks? Well then, this is a strong signal that you are cut out to be an entrepreneur. 3. You Don’t Just Work For The Money Do you find yourself working longer than you are actually paid to do? Do you take special pride in always giving the best even when the employer doesn’t give a worthy remuneration? Are you willing to work for free if it means it would give you the opportunity to acquire an important skill or get connected to someone you’d like to network with? If you answered “Yes” to all these questions then you are unlike most people. You have a strong trait of entrepreneurs. The truth is that many people will NOT do more than they are paid to do. Many folks will NOT work unless they are guaranteed financial reward. 4. You Know How To Sell Your Visions To Others Entrepreneurs know how to articulate their visions in such a way that they are able to strongly convince others that their dreams are actually possible. Have you found yourself easily selling your goals to others and getting them committed to them? If you have this gift then you have one special ability that sets entrepreneurs apart. 5. You Are NOT Afraid To Leave Security For Something You Believe Would you happily leave your well-paying job because you have an idea that you believe will make a big difference in a few years’ time? Do you wonder why [...]

Why It’s Important To Build Honesty Into Your Brand

2012-11-01T03:47:50Z

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” yelled the Wizard of Oz in a fit of hysteria, as the secret of his human-ness was unveiled. This quote, of course, is from the 1939 classic fantasy film The Wizard of Oz. And in this specific scene, Dorothy and her gang have broken into the Wizard’s chamber, where little dog Toto opens a green satin curtain to expose the ultimate sham–an ordinary man operating a panel of wheels and levers while speaking into a microphone. There is no great and powerful wizard. This line would become one of the most ironic lines of the 20th century, largely because, as a culture, we did not successfully interpret its implication. It was a warning sign to look beyond flashiness and fancy lighting. But we failed to listen. The biggest misconception is that brand perfection is necessary before honesty is a valid brand strategy. Over the course of the following decades, we would permit ourselves to be duped into taking things at face value, especially when it came to the influence of big brands. In the ’60s, cigarette brands told us that smoking was stylish and healthy. We smoked like chimneys. In the ’80s, corporate America successfully situated fast-food restaurants, brand-name blue jeans and cheap technologies into our day-to-day lives. We bought into the whole thing. The standard approach for most companies was to focus on how they looked–all brand botox and no heart. Soul-destroying advertising became the standard, unrealistic images of what beauty should be were emblazoned across billboards, while being ingrained subtly through television. The biggest brands in the world emulated the wizard, successfully telling us not simply what to buy, but what type of lifestyles ought to be pursued. The wizardry worked like magic. We’re weaning ourselves off uninspired corporate messaging. We crave honest brands. But now it’s 2012, and the rules of marketing are changing because the world is changing. Blind consumerism driven by spoon-fed corporate advertising is on its way out. Consumers are starved for a new type of corporate engagement, a new form of capitalism. We are realizing that there is little correlation between owning “stuff” and being happy. We are eager [...]

Unblocking Women’s Paths to the Boardroom

2012-11-01T03:49:15Z

Earlier this month in Strasbourg, European Commission Vice President Viviane Reding proposed a new law that would enforce quotas of 40% for women’s representation on European corporate boards by 2020. Why did she do it? Because experience suggests that this is the most effective way of substantially increasing the representation of women in top leadership. Many companies have embraced gender diversity initiatives, women’s mentoring networks, and leadership development programs with great enthusiasm. But the continuing low level of representation of women in the highest levels of corporate leadership shows that these strategies for facilitating women’s entry into managerial career paths and supporting them once there are inadequate. Now that the EC quota initiative has been blocked, what other pathways to women’s advancement should we be focusing on? Organizational solutions must focus both on the development of high-potential women themselves and on systemic and sustainable change to the organization’s mindset and processes regarding gender diversity. A number of systemic issues block women’s path to the top, and any comprehensive gender diversity and inclusion initiative must take steps to recognize often invisible barriers to women’s advancement, to act on the system as a whole, and to promote ownership of solutions by men as well as women. First, we need to understand what holds women back. Research has found that a number of unintended selection and performance biases disadvantage women on their pathways to top leadership. The closed networks from which board members tend to be recruited make it less likely for qualified women candidates to be identified. Women in leadership face a higher burden of performing well due to their minority status. Aware of the importance of turning in flawless performance, women take fewer risks than men and are less likely to promote themselves, with the result that they appear to lack ambition. Wary of putting women in situations where sub-optimal performance could hurt not only their own career chances but those of other women, even well-meaning superiors are less likely to give them critical developmental assignments. Superiors also often decline to offer critical international assignments to women, assuming without verification that their family demands would make expatriation impossible. While the socio-emotional support from women’s mentoring networks [...]

6 Ways You Can Bring Your Social Media Back Under Your Control

2012-11-01T03:42:37Z

Managing your social media can be like making the most of your Halloween haul as a kid. Inhaling everything will not end well. You need to pick and choose what you really want and enjoy it in small, select bites. In our ever-connected world, social media is a full-on, constant coffee klatch. The party’s always there, whether you’re ready or not. Sign into Facebook and all your friends know you’re there…and they’re ready to chat. Log on to Gmail or Skype and the same thing happens. The next thing you know, you’re madly responding to multiple chats or watching cat-in-a-bag videos when you really need to get through your inbox. Entrepreneurs are busy enough running their business. How can you use social media and not be spooked by it all? Here are some tips to help manage the social media fire hose: Schedule social media time blocks. Most days I check in three times: scanning for world and industry news in the morning, catching up on colleague and client news in the afternoon, and socializing in the evening after dinner. For maximum productivity, set a timer or alarm to remind you to log off and get back to work. Separate computer and mobile social time. The convenience of checking in via mobile device can be a blessing. I love using my iPhone to check in on FourSquare or quickly post a photo to Facebook while on the go. That lets me focus on business when I’m at my desk. Using a mobile device also helps prevent me from just “wandering around” on social media. It keeps me focused on getting up-to-date. Be selective about notifications. You can determine what’s most important and then have that specific info pushed to you in whatever form you choose. For example, I receive a text when direct tweets come in, but not Facebook or LinkedIn updates. I also subscribe to alerts from CNN, which sends me periodic texts with major news from around the world. I love being the first to know what’s going on! Carefully review your notification settings so you’re alerted to only the most important information or from the most important people. Schedule posts for later. [...]

Why Operating Rules and Not Size Are Responsible for Innovation

2012-11-01T03:40:34Z

You can find plenty of people who disregard bigger enterprises, stating they are not the future. This argument is both old and wrong. Joseph Schumpeter, the noted economist, said — in 1909 — that small companies were more inventive than large ones. But then, in 1942, Schumpeter reversed himself and argued that big companies had more ability and incentive to invest in new products. Today, there’s a similar bias; people assume that small companies are creative and big firms are slow and bureaucratic. A look at any performance measure shows that innovation can come from either size, and that both arguments are oversimplifications. The key for every firm — regardless of size — is to figure out how to consistently create value in a demanding, ever-changing market. That is hard no matter what size you are, no matter what industry you’re in. If we’re to actually get better at innovation, we need to understand the operating conditions that lead to it and move past the bigotry and biases. To do so, let’s look at two distinguished firms side by side to see how innovation is entirely independent of size and more a function of different operating rules. IBM and HP are two amazing companies with long and meaningful histories. Both CEOs are notable in what they have done, and are doing to lead their companies and both companies rank highly on the Fortune 500 List. HP is #10 on the 2012 list, and IBM is number 19. At HP, CEO Meg Whitman has had the unfortunate situation of following a string of CEOs who’ve had short runs at the company and appear to have moved the company in the wrong direction. That said, her first decision when she returned was to “stay the course”; that involved keeping its PC-making personal systems group because that “product line allowed better supplier cost negotiation with Intel, Seagate and others.” The logic was “together we are stronger”. Another of Whitman’s first actions was a cost-cutting exercise to “fix” HP. She aimed for 29,000 employee cuts, which would bring the number of HP layoffs to 120,000 over the past decade. And earlier this month, she shared plans for revenues and [...]

Google’s VP of Search Products and User Experience, Marissa Mayer Shares Her 9 Principles of Innovation

2012-09-12T17:35:15Z

Google’s VP of search products and user experience shares the rules that gives the search company its innovative edge. 1. INNOVATION, NOT INSTANT PERFECTION. “There are two different types of programmers. Some like to code for months or even years, and hope they will have built the perfect product. That’s castle building. Companies work this way, too. Apple is great at it. If you get it right and you’ve built just the perfect thing, you get this worldwide ‘Wow!’ The problem is, if you get it wrong, you get a thud, a thud in which you’ve spent, like, five years and 100 people on something the market doesn’t want. Others prefer to have something working at the end of the day, something to refine and improve the next day. That’s what we do: our ‘launch early and often’ strategy. The hardest part about indoctrinating people into our culture is when engineers show me a prototype and I’m like, ‘Great, let’s go!’ They’ll say, ‘Oh, no, it’s not ready. It’s not up to Google standards. This doesn’t look like a Google product yet.’ They want to castle-build and do all these other features and make it all perfect. I tell them, ‘The Googly thing is to launch it early on Google Labs and then iterate, learning what the market wants–and making it great.’ The beauty of experimenting in this way is that you never get too far from what the market wants. The market pulls you back.” 2. IDEAS COME FROM EVERYWHERE “We have this great internal list where people post new ideas and everyone can go on and see them. It’s like a voting pool where you can say how good or bad you think an idea is. Those comments lead to new ideas.” 3. A LICENSE TO PURSUE YOUR DREAMS “Since around 2000, we let engineers spend 20% of their time working on whatever they want, and we trust that they’ll build interesting things. After September 11, one of our researchers, Krishna Bharat, would go to 10 or 15 news sites each day looking for information about the case. And he thought, Why don’t I write a program to do this? So Krishna, who’s [...]

What Successful People Do The First Hour Of Their Workday

2012-09-12T17:17:40Z

How much does the first hour of every day matter? As it turns out, a lot. It can be the hour you see everything clearly, get one real thing done, and focus on the human side of work rather than your task list. Remember when you used to have a period at the beginning of every day to think about your schedule, catch up with friends, maybe knock out a few tasks? It was called home room, and it went away after high school. But many successful people schedule themselves a kind of grown-up home room every day. You should too. The first hour of the workday goes a bit differently for Craig Newmark of Craigslist, David Karp of Tumblr, motivational speaker Tony Robbins, career writer (and Fast Company blogger) Brian Tracy, and others, and they’ll tell you it makes a big difference. Here are the first items on their daily to-do list. Don’t Check Your Email for the First Hour. Seriously. Stop That.Tumblr founder David Karp will “try hard” not to check his email until 9:30 or 10 a.m., according to an Inc. profile of him. “Reading e-mails at home never feels good or productive,” Karp said. “If something urgently needs my attention, someone will call or text me.” Not all of us can roll into the office whenever our Vespa happens to get us there, but most of us with jobs that don’t require constant on-call awareness can trade e-mail for organization and single-focus work. It’s an idea that serves as the title of Julie Morgenstern’s work management book Never Check Email In The Morning, and it’s a fine strategy for leaving the office with the feeling that, even on the most over-booked days, you got at least one real thing done. If you need to make sure the most important messages from select people come through instantly, AwayFind can monitor your inbox and get your attention when something notable arrives. Otherwise, it’s a gradual but rewarding process of training interruptors and coworkers not to expect instantaneous morning response to anything they send in your off-hours. Gain Awareness, Be GratefulOne smart, simple question on curated Q & A site Quora asked “How do [...]

How To Handle Working With People You Don't Like

2012-09-12T16:45:48Z

Jeff*, like me, is a writer, a speaker, and the head of a consulting company. As far as I can tell, he's professional, well respected, capable, honest, and has a popular following. Someone we both know has asked us to collaborate on a project and there's clearly a mutual benefit to our working together. It all sounds great except for one thing: I don't like Jeff. Something about him rubs me the wrong way. He seems too self-serving or egocentric or self-satisfied. I don't know what it is exactly, but I know I don't like him. I mentioned that to the person who wants us to work together. She told me, essentially, to get over it. "You don't have to like him," she said, "but you'd be smart to work with him." So how do you work with someone you don't like? I'm not simply talking about someone who frustrates you because they communicate poorly or can't run a meeting. Sure it's annoying to have your time wasted, especially when you believe you could do a better job. But that's different than disliking them. Just think about how you respond differently to someone you like who can't run a meeting (you want to help them) versus someone you don't like (you want to stop working with them, or, if the meeting is really long, kill them). The typical advice you hear about working with people you don't like is simply to depersonalize the relationship. Just transact whatever business you need to with them and move on. In other words: Grin and bear it. But I have found that almost impossible to do.The people we don't like drive us crazy and we waste a tremendous amount of time complaining about them, or stressing about a conversation we need to have with them. And that's not the worst of it. The deeper problem is that if you don't like someone, chances are they know it. Which will prompt them to not like you. And if you think working with someone you don't like is hard, try working with someone who doesn't like you. It's simple, really. The people you get along with will find ways to help [...]

Why Free Customers Are More Valuable than Captive Ones

2012-09-10T17:49:14Z

"Put down the customer. Step away from the marketplace." That's what Craig Burton once said to a clueless marketing officer at a meeting we both attended a few years back. It was one of the most right-on things I have ever heard uttered inside a company. It also comes to mind every time I hear unwanted surveillance of customers rationalized for marketing purposes, or how Big Data lets a company know a customer better than she knows herself. We hear lots of that jive lately, and it makes full sense only to business people talking to other business people. To most customers it's creepy, regardless of how many Chief Experience Officers get hired, or how many sales pieces lauding "the Chief Executive Customer" get distributed. What's rarely heard amidst all this talk about customer intelligence is the customer's own voice, expressing her own agency as an independent actor in the marketplace. Instead many companies continue to talk to themselves about "acquiring" "managing," "controlling" and "locking in" customers — and to create systems for that, described with marketing euphemisms that fool vendor and customer alike. One example is "loyalty" programs that are often nothing more than coercive gimmicks to provide discounts that aren't, or rewards that are barely worth the hassle — especially when they make customers carry around different cards for every store, each with its own way of "delivering" a relationship "experience." The problem with having as many different experiences as there are vendors is apparent only from the customer's side of the marketplace. And, as long as solutions to customer experience problems are sold only to vendors who use those solutions to increase "switching costs" and other annoyances, the frictions for both customers and vendors will only increase. The best way to fix the customer's experience problems is from her side of the marketplace: the demand side. And, in fact, many demand-side solutions are being developed and moving forward, mostly below the supply side's radar. The intelligence behind these solutions is the customers' own. I'm involved in that work, and I'm here to report on it. For the past six years I've led ProjectVRM at Harvard's Berkman Center, fostering development of tools and [...]

3 Public Speaking Secrets Used By Bill Clinton To Win Over An Audience

2012-09-10T17:30:18Z

President Bill Clinton took primetime stage at the Democratic National Convention last week and once again mesmerized, tantalized, and energized his audience. Watching his performance, it’s easy to forget this is the same guy who was almost booed off the stage at another Democratic Convention 24 years ago while introducing candidate Michael Dukasis. The relatively unknown Clinton of those days was scheduled to speak for 15 minutes, but droned on for over a half-hour. His biggest applause line came at 32 minutes, when he said, “and in conclusion…” But always the Comeback Kid, Clinton saw his failure and focused with laser intensity on polishing his speaking abilities. And most folks today, regardless of political leanings, recognize him as one of the best speakers of any generation. The basic speaking techniques Clinton embraces, front and center last night in Charlotte, when he impressively ad libbed about 15% of his speech, to great effect, can be used by you to boost your presentation skills. Here are three of his most powerful tools: 1. He knows when to stop and go. Clinton uses hard-stop pacing to add emphasis to lines like: “We’re going to keep President Obama on. the. job.” and “President Obama started with a much. worse. economy.” In those moments, he squeezes every word for maximum impact. And Clinton has no fear of dead air, using frequent pauses to garner attention and gain drama: "Listen to me now. [pause] No president, [pause] not me, [pause] not any of my predecessors, [pause] no one could have fully repaired all the damage…" 2. His gestures sync with his words. Clinton’s best visual aids are his hands. His arm movements are open and wide, relaying an image of accessibility and authenticity. To guide the audience’s emotion and attention, he often extends his hands with palms facing up or out: “Let me ask you something [palms up]…” or “Folks, this is serious [palms out]…” He’ll also overlap hands in front of chest to reinforce intimate statements such as, “This is personal to me…” As in earlier years, his index fingers serve as tireless pointers, but he uses less of the short, jabbing motion familiar in the past. He now lets [...]