Ask a Las Vegas cab driver, 'What's the best show in town?'  He will probably reply with something like this, "Oh, Jay Leno!  My wife and I just went to see him. He gives a special show for taxi drivers at two in the morning.  Otherwise, we could never afford to go.  Kenny Rogers does the same thing when he's in town."
 
You wouldn't think that anyone as big in the entertainment field as Jay Leno and Kenny Rogers needs to give away their performances, but they do.  Both realize that some of the best word of mouth advertising they could have would be taxi drivers raving about their shows.
 
If you could do just one thing to help your customer and your business, what would that be?  The short answer is to give more of what you have away. 

Social networks based on the Law of Reciprocity (www.LawofReciprocity.com) is all about giving away something of value to others.

Over the years, an entire industry of consultants has arisen to help companies navigate the world of social networks, blogs and wikis.  the self-proclaimed experts range from legions of wannabes to industry superstars.  They produce best-selling books and dole out advice or lead workshops at companies for thousands of dollars a day.

The problem, according to a growing chorus of critics, is that many would-be guides are leading clients astray.  Consultants often use buzz as their dominant currency, and success is defined more often by numbers of Twitter followers, blog mentions or YouTube hits than by traditional measures, such as return on investment (ROI).

Critics complain that many of the new experts have adopted an orthodoxy that provides little flexibility for differing situations--or outcomes.  Their pronouncements follow a rigid gospel: Be transparent, engage with your customers, break down silos.  Yet, these strictures don't always make business sense.

While the marketing consultants focus on buzz and engagement, their in-house colleagues are trying to use social media to change how companies operate.  The goal of Enterprise 2.0, a descendant of the "knowledge management" movement in the '90s, is to reroute the information traveling through corporations, undermining rigid hierarchies.  Tools from Microsoft's SharePoint, IBM's Lotus Notes, and others enable vast networks to share documents and work together on projects.  A Forrester Research study shows that despite buzz around Enterprise 2.0, less than 15% of the knowledge workforce makes use of internal blogs, wikis, and other collaborative tools.  "Email is still dominant," says Ted Schadler, author of the report.

Many argue that a fixaton on hard numbers could lead companies to ignore the harder-to-quantify dividends of social media (like GM did from the 1970s to 2010 with the exception of Bob Lutz's efforts to communicate within and outside the corporation), such as building trust and commitment with stakeholders.

ROI is based upon working to gain trust and commitment through managing social relationships that continuously deliver value...like this example of social media use:

To boost your managers' or your own leadership skills, subscribe to Coached to Success in 2010.  Leadership development is self-development and now is the right time to build your leadership capability.  For the next four days (December 8-11, 2009), you and 1,499 other gift certificate purchasers are able to receive an 85% discount off the purchase price of an annual subscription to daily leadership insights at www.CoachedtoSuccess.com

Source: BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK, December 14, 2009

A new study suggests a decline in qualified managers is detectable in productivity figures.

Using "a bit of theory and a bit of data," Dartmouth economics professor James Feyrer looked anew at the drop in productivity growth from the 1970s to the mid-1990s--a time when U.S. output per hour grew roughly 1.5% a year, vs. 3% in the 1960s (and now).

One idea about the falloff is that it coincided with a flood of novice employees, as Baby Boomers went to work.  Believing this alone wouldn't explain it, Feyrer searched for a "spillover effect"--and found it in management.  Census data from the period showed a rise in workers classified as managers and a dip in managers' median age--from 43 in 1970 to 38 by 1980. 

Feyrer hypothesizes that the need for more managers, given the boomer influx, had businesses tapping some who weren't ready....just like today as boomer managers retire in mass and Gen Y enters the work world.  Managers' median age was back up by 2000 (to 42), he notes, along with productivity growth.  The "management effect," he says, accounts for about 20% of the observed slowdown.

Are you and your managers qualified to lead?

To boost your managers' or your own leadership skills, subscribe to Coached to Success in 2010.  Leadership development is self-development and now is the right time to build your leadership capability.  For the next four days (December 8-11, 2009), you and 1,499 other gift certificate purchasers are able to receive an 85% discount off the purchase price of an annual subscription to daily leadership insights at www.CoachedtoSuccess.com

Source: BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK, December 14, 2009

For more leadership tips visit the December Leadership Carnival today.

Jennifer B. Kahnweiler, author of "The Introverted Leader: Building on Your Quiet Strength," makes the case that the 40% of executives who describe themselves as introverts have the 'right stuff' to lead organizations in a go-go, extroverted business culture.

Here are five key characteristics that Ms. Kahnweiler lists for introverted leaders:

1.  They think first, talk later. Introverted leaders think before they speak. Even in casual conversations, they consider others' comments carefully, and they stop and reflect before responding.

2.  They focus on depth. Introverted leaders seek depth over breadth. They like to dig deep, delving into issues and ideas before moving on to new ones. They are drawn to meaningful conversations, not superficial chitchat, and they know how to ask great questions and really listen to the answers.

3.  They exude calm. Introverted leaders are low-key. In times of crisis, they project a reassuring, calm confidence and they speak softly and slowly regardless of the heat of the conversation or circumstances.

4.  They let their fingers do the talking. Introverted leaders usually prefer writing to talking. This comfort with the written word often helps them better articulate their positions and document their actions.

5.  They embrace solitude. Introverted leaders are energized by spending time alone. They suffer from people exhaustion and need to retreat to recharge their batteries frequently. These regular timeouts actually fuel their thinking, creativity and decision-making and, when the pressure is on, help them be responsive, not reactive.

Yet, over time, many introverts stagnate in large organizations.  They can work hard and deliver to expectations or beyond, but they rarely get their due.  Indeed, big companies are so tilted towards extroverts that introverts within them often experience a dynamic not unlike the one faced by many women and minorities.  They have to constantly overdeliver just to stay even.

If you want to take charge of your career, you would be wise to get some executive coaching and sound mentoring advice.  So get out there, mix, speak more often, and connect with both your team and others, deploying all the energy and personality you can muster.  Ultimately, any and all candor you can bring to your public transformation will hold you in good stead.

Conceding that Procter & Gamble Company's own corporate culture had been far too introverted, Chief Executive A.G. Lafley argued in the May 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review why a chief executive must remain focused on factors outside the company.

The CEO is the only one qualified for determining which customers, businesses and results are most important, setting realistic short and long term growth goals and keeping company standards relevant to the outside world.

Most people misunderstand the role of the corporate chief, Mr. Lafley says.  "Conventional wisdom suggests that the CEO is primarily a coach and a utility infielder, dropping in to solve problems where they crop up," he writes, referencing his close confidant, the deceased management guru Peter Drucker.  "In fact, however, the CEO has a very specific job that only he or she can do: Link the external world with the internal organization."

What is your take on an Introvert vs. Extrovert leader?  Please comment below to take this discussion to the next level.

For gadget lovers, several factors are converging to make ereading devices alluring this holiday season.  Forrester Research estimates 900,000 ereaders will sell in the U.S. in November and December.

More such devices are challenging Amazon's Kindle, notably the Nook from Barnes & Noble Inc.  Sony also recently launched three new versions of its Reader, which will be soldin dedicated ebook sections of Best Buy Co. stores.  Already these devices are beginning to sell out.

There's also more selection of books for the devices, with most popular publishers now selling ebooks.  Prices for ebook readers are dropping.  Amazon recently cut the price of the international Kindle to $259 from $279, while Sony sells a new entry-level model for $199.  A refurbished first-generation Kindle retails on Amazon for $219.  Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other bookstores are also discounting prices on best-selling ebook titles to $10 to lure more readers.

Most ebooks are yours at least for the life of your device, though some models let you borrow books for a short period of time from libraries or a friend.  Yet, it's unclear how--and what sort of device--most people will be comfortable reading ebooks.

Today, LibreDigital Inc., a  distributor of ebooks for publishers, says the overwhelming majority of ebook buyers are women who read ebooks on an ordinary computer screen, mostly between 4PM and 11PM.  A growing number of readers are also perusing books on cell-phones.

Most of the current crop of dedicated ereading devices try to replicate the traditional reading experience with a screen that's about the size of a paperback novel that displays black-and-white (or, rather, dark grey and light grey) text and graphics.

The Beginnings of a Format War

The ebook market is caught up in a format war, with different companies limiting their devices to certain kinds of ebooks, with the file types such as .azw and mobipocket on the Kindle and .epub and Adobe Digital Editions on Sony.  As a result, there's no guarantee an ebook bought from one online store will work on devices sold by a competitor.  Remember the eight-track tapes of the past?

Sony has tried to differentiate itself in ebooks by supporting an open industry standard called Epub and digital-rights-management software from Adobe.  Barnes & Noble recently said it will do the same.  But Amazon, which dominates the ereader market, has so far shown no signs of changing from its own proprietary format.  Amazon says it is working on making Kindle books play on more devices, including iPhones, BlackBerrys and PCs.

Next year, Apple Inc. is also expected to debut a tablet device that can be used for reading, watching movies, surfing the Web and other interactive tasks.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, December 2, 2009

The higher up you go in a corporation's hierarchy, the value of your technical skill declines while the value of your interpersonal skills increase.  The further an executive rises, the more he or she must deal with high-caliber people who know how to get what they want, are difficult, strong-willed and have a sharp appetite for power.

Here are three questions that executives should ask themselves to assess their own leadership potential:

1. How far do you want to go?

To reach higher office and to fulfill its obligations, you must continuously make choices that will affect other people's money and lives.

Too many executives set themselves up to fail because they don't realistically assess the role they are pursuing in comparison to their true capabilities.

2. What are you willing to invest?

Admitting to yourself what your limitations are can be difficult.  But if you want to lead, you face tough choices about how much effort you must put in and in which areas you need to grow.

While it has bad connotations for some people, the appetite for power is a necessary condition for reaching posts of high responsibility.  There will be pleasures that you must give up.  Certainly, there will be implications for your personal life--about finding a sustainable work/life balance for the long term.

3. How will you keep it up?

Over several decades, you need ways to keep yourself going when you are not being recognized and rewarded for your performance--and to deal with criticism, resistance, setbacks and people disliking you or what you are asking them to do.

Periodically, senior executives must create time-outs to review where they are investing their time and energy, to ensure that they remain capable of generating new behaviors to deal with new challenges.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, November 30, 2009 

FORTUNE has joined the human resources (HR) consulting firm Hewitt Associates and the HR services firm RBL Group to identify companies around the world that are best at attracting, developing and keeping business leaders.  It's no coincidence that they turn out to be many of the world's top performing companies.

Developmental assignments are among the most important tools that great companies like IBM (No.1) use to build leaders--and that average companies rarely use at all.  The importance of such assignments and how they're being adapted to pay off in today's global economy are two of the strongest messages emerging from the research behind Fortune's new ranking of the world's Top Companies for Leaders.

There's no better time than a historic recession to push people outside their comfort zone, yet reccessions are precisely when some companies cut back on this valuable tool.  Developmental assignments are an investment, so they incur costs before they pay a return.

The best companies tailor 'stretch' assignments to the future business environment, whcih is why "global" development has become the major theme among virtually all the companies in this ranking.  Many of them--including P&G (No. 2 on the list), GE (No.7), Colgate-Palmolive (No.12), and PepsiCo (No.20)--get most of their revenue from outside their home country.

"The next frontier in developmental assignments," says Hewitt principal Robert Gandossy, "is experiences that are more socially responsible."

Developing a broad program of stretch assignments isn't easy.  Many corporate cultures are so addicted to the short term that they couldn't bear putting dollars into a new category of investment that will pay off only later.  But perspective is key.  Most of FORTUNE's Top Companies for Leaders have been around a long time.  They all understand that leadership development is a long-term game.  "We can't afford not to do this," says (No.14) Deere's HR executive Richard McAnally.  "We're 172 years old.  We're not just looking at the next year, but at the next several decades."

Source: FORTUNE, December 7, 2009

By Guest Author Robert Prechter

The following article is an excerpt from Robert Prechter's Elliott Wave Theorist. For more information from Robert Prechter on bank safety, download his free report, Discover the Top 100 Safest U.S. Banks.

Perhaps the single greatest reason for the unbridled expansion of credit over the past 50 years is the existence of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, another government-sponsored enterprise created by Congress. The coming rush of bank failures is an outcome made inevitable the very day that Congress created the FDIC. The reason is that the creation of the FDIC allowed savers to believe that their deposits at banks are “insured” against loss.

But the FDIC is not really an insurance company. No enterprise, absent fraud, could possibly insure all the banking deposits in a nation. Nor does the FDIC do so, despite its claims. The FDIC is like AIG, the company that sold too many credit-default swaps. It contracted for more insurance than it could pay upon. Because depositors believe the sticker on the door of the bank, they have abdicated their responsibility to make sure that their banks’ officers handle their deposits prudently. This abdication allowed banks to lend with impunity for decades until they became saturated with unpayable debts.

Today, most banks are insolvent, and the FDIC is broke. This condition is deflationary for three reasons: (1) Banks are coming to realize that the FDIC cannot bail them out in a systemic crisis, so they have become highly conservative in their lending policies, as described above. (2) The main way that the FDIC gets its money is to dun marginally healthy banks for more “premiums” (meaning transfer payments) to bail out their disastrously run competitors. The more money the FDIC sucks out of marginally healthy banks, the less money those banks have on hand to lend, which is deflationary. (3) The banks that have to cough up all this money will become more impoverished at the margin, so banks that otherwise might have survived a credit crunch will be thrown even closer to the brink of failure. This is another deflationary risk.

A friend of mine whose family owns a bank told me that the FDIC recently raised its 6-month assessment from $17,000 to $600,000. In the FDIC’s latest announcement, it is considering requiring banks to pre-pay three years’ worth of “premiums,” i.e. triple the normal annual fee in a single year. It will be a miracle if the money lasts through 2010. When these funds are gone, the FDIC will have two more options: to issue its own bonds and pressure banks to buy them; and to tap its “credit line” of up to half a trillion dollars with the U.S. Treasury. It’s the same old solution: take on more new debt to back up failing old debt. More debt will not cure the debt crisis.

Meanwhile, the FDIC is contributing to the deflationary trend. It has “tightened rules on required capital levels,” which forces banks’ loan ratios to fall; and it has “extended its extra monitoring of new banks from the first three years of operation to seven years” (AJC, 11/19), meaning that banks will now have to wait four additional years before they can go crazy with loans.

For more information from Robert Prechter on bank safety, download his free report, Discover the Top 100 Safest U.S. Banks. You'll learn how to find a safe bank, the critical difference between lending and banking, tips on international banking, and more.

Robert Prechter, Chartered Market Technician, is the world's foremost expert on and proponent of the deflationary scenario. Prechter is the founder and CEO of Elliott Wave International, author of Wall Street best-sellers Conquer the Crash and Elliott Wave Principle and editor of The Elliott Wave Theorist monthly market letter since 1979.

The following behaviors characterize a good leader in a downturn:

1.   Honesty and credibility. Nobody can be certain about the business environment and its direction. The only viable options are intellectual honesty and humility. Your authority depends on your ability to facilitate understanding and solutions—not from omniscience.

2.   Ability to inspire. Many people are extremely anxious. The recession descended as suddenly as a tsunami, destroying hard-earned savings and putting jobs at risk. You and your team must inspire employees by toughening their resolve and developing realistically optimistic pictures of what can lie ahead.

3.   Real-time connection to reality.  Reality is a moving target. You have to keep updating your picture of it, continuously monitoring change with ground-level intelligence. The same applies to your team, whose members must put all concrete information on the table, however bad it may be.

4.   Realism tempered with optimism. Understand and accept a problem’s magnitude. Then, focus your people on a vision of what’s possible.

5.   Managing with intensity. Dig into the right details more frequently than before. Hands-on participation is essential.

6.   Boldness in building for the future. The need to conserve cash and survive may pressure you to shortchange the future. You must resist. It takes imagination and guts to place strategic bets with no guaranteed payoffs when there’s little money and great uncertainly; however, it’s critical to aim for long-term payoffs.

A record number of U.S. companies are beating earnings expectations but a big portion of their profits come from cost-cutting, disappointing investors who are hoping for boosts in revenue.  The worry is that without a meaningful upturn in U.S. sales, cost-cutting can only boost profits so long.

Barring acquisitions, your company will likely be smaller two years from now, according to Ram Charan.  In his new book, Ram Charan: Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty: Managing in a Downturn, the bestselling author identifies the key rules to follow if you want to get the right things done in difficult times.  

As bitter and painful as it may be, survival depends on cutting costs and raising cash. This is the time to narrow your focus and concentrate on your business’ core: the invaluable assets you can’t afford to lose.

Choose the market segments and customers you will continue to serve, the products you will continue to make and the suppliers from whom you will continue to buy.  Eliminate the rest.

Seize opportunities to simplify your processes and reduce layers of management.  You’ll have fewer customers, products, facilities, people and suppliers, but you’ll set the stage for a stronger company.

Management Intensity

Day-to-day management practices may have to change. Now’s the time to use management intensity: a deep immersion in your business’ operational details, as well as the outside world. More hands-on involvement and follow-through are required.

Ground-Level Intelligence

Get out in the field and observe.  Salespeople are often closer to customers than other company representatives.  Find out what they know or suspect trends will be.

The need for unfiltered information extends to suppliers and partners. Probe carefully to learn what’s going on throughout the value chain.

All of this information needs to be shared and examined to extract key facts and patterns as they begin to emerge. Conversations must cut across silos so you know what management, peers and subordinates are picking up on, as well as what’s happening in your area.

Controlling in Real Time

Increase your frequency of control, setting targets on a quarterly, monthly or even weekly basis.  Revisit goals and key performance indicators, track progress toward them, and take corrective actions more often.  Your company may have to change its approach more than once before things return to normal.

Staying in close touch with your people and digging into the numbers more often will help you pick up early warning signals that your strategy, business model, tactics and/or execution aren’t working.

Build Confidence

Aggressive measures and decisive actions build optimism and confidence.  Spotting opportunities and pursuing them aggressively will inspire people and change their psychology from fear to realistic optimism.  Your actions and words will align people’s minds, physical energy, hearts and souls.

Authenticity Is Critical

Your presence on the front line is important to energizing people and transforming their fear into confidence—but it must be authentic.  Instill courage and optimism by putting reality on the table and addressing it decisively.  Show people a credible, concrete path, and enroll other change agents who have the courage to make tough calls, without sacrificing values.

If you’re like most leaders, you’ve never before experienced a downturn like this.  Reports about the end of the recession mean little if your company continues to fight cash-flow problems.  You know that the term 'jobless recovery' is an oxymoron.

You cannot allow yourself to be afraid.  Others look to you for strength and guidance. You must give the best you have and move quickly, even when faced with incomplete information.

In his new book, Ram Charan: Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty: Managing in a Downturn, the bestselling author identifies the key rules to follow if you want to get the right things done in difficult times. They include:

· Pay attention to salespeople’s contributions.

· Accept guidance from your board of directors.

· Understand how various business functions must be aligned and coordinated.

· Communicate candidly and frequently.

· Respond to external pressures in realistic, yet positive, ways.

Uncertain Data

Projections and estimates are little more than guesses these days.  We won’t know when we’ve turned the corner, and we cannot envision the future shape and scope of our businesses.  What we can say is that change will present as both a danger and an opportunity.

Smart leaders are reshaping their businesses to carry on through whatever hard times lie ahead.  They are making changes now so they can emerge in better shape than before, ready for new growth.  They’re pouncing on new opportunities, devising ways to move faster and trying to serve customers in different ways.

  Ram Charan: Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty: Managing in a Downturn