Today I received an email from a friend who had been flirting with the concepts of Getting Things Done for quite a while. He had followed Lifehacker off and on, read a few articles elsewhere, and even tried implementing some of the concepts, albeit minimally, in his own life. What he observed, however, was that most GTD-users seem to be hyper-organized, hyper-busy, and lacking in perspective.  He was right, and that’s exactly what David Allen observes in his new book, Making It All Work, albeit not quite as bluntly as my friend put it. GTD can, however, work wonders, if you remember to work the whole system. In fact, it’s pretty simple…

Working the full Getting Things Done system breaks down to four essential steps:

1. Understand and Remember that Perspective and Control Are Equally Important — I can’t overemphasize this step enough. The key to a balanced life is understanding that perspective and control are equally important. Allen argues that, in order to enjoy a fulfilled life, you need to know what you want and then take steps to get it. This statement seems painfully obvious to most of us, but take a moment to think about your life.  Do you really know what you want?  Do you know what you want personally? Professionally? In your relationships with your family and friends? With the world around you?  Perhaps more importantly, do you know how to get it?  If most of us are really honest, the answer is no.  We find ourselves in situations every day where we’re not sure what we want or don’t know how to get it.  Some of the situations seem unimportant–what to eat for lunch, for example–and some much more so–like making a major career decision or deciding to get married. Each of us face these challenges every day, and that’s okay. In fact, it’s normal. But the first step to successfully mastering your life is understanding that, in any situation, having both perspective and control will give you the tools you need to make the best decisions possible and get satisfying, fulfilling results.
2. Take Steps to Get Control — Once you understand that both perspective and control are necessary, it’s time to start getting some of each. Allen rightly starts with control, since most people have too much noise and face too many distractions to properly get perspective without first creating a sense of organization in their lives and taking a thorough inventory of their personal and professional obligations. Wikipedia provides a decent overview of Allen’s steps to gain control here, though you should really check out the book if you haven’t already.
3. Take Steps to Gain Perspective –After you’ve gained some control of your life, it’s time to gain some perspective.  The weekly review, which we’ve discussed previously, is a critical first step in this process. Creating and regularly reviewing horizons of focus, however, is even more important. Briefly, horizons of focus are the various levels at which you have commitments to yourself and others. They start small, at the project level, and continue to grow in size and abstraction. Considering these horizons, however, is critical to knowing what you want and achieving perspective.
4. Repeat — It should probably go without saying, but this is a cyclical process. Gaining perspective actual fuels the need to shift priorities and take actions, thus restarting the loop. As you realize what projects and commitments you’ve taken on that don’t meet your priorities, you’ll begin to shift your focus. Likewise, as you realize those people and projects that really matter to you, you’ll want to spend more time in those areas.

It’s important to note that Allen’s system doesn’t just apply to work; it applies to your entire life. GTD users may seem life they work harder than others and may appear “hyper-organized,” but those who truly understand the system and work it properly are actually quite better off. If your priority is your family, friends, or significant other, so be it. If your hobby is more important to you than getting a raise at your job, that’s okay. The key is to figure out what matters to you and then act accordingly.

Most GTD users forget, or perhaps never even realize that steps 1 and 3 exist. They don’t understand that what’s really necessary is a balance between control and perspective. This balance can only be reached by conducting weekly reviews and periodic assessments of the horizons of focus just as faithfully as creating next actions and organizing them by context. Succeeding at the “game of work and the business of life,” as Allen puts it, is about deciding what you want (perspective) and then choosing and enacting the steps necessary to make it so (control).

Although it’s certainly normal for people to have differing levels of control and perspective at any given point (in a day, a year, or their entire lives), anyone who tries to “get organized” without taking steps to gain both perspective and control will find themselves out of sync, with only an imbalanced, chaotic life to show for it.

The nature of bootstrapping requires every entrepreneur to fill multiple roles at once. Often, one or more of these roles is outside of the entrepreneur’s previous experience and comfort zone. Whether its industry knowledge, technical experience, are core business skills that you need to build, it helps to have some tools to rely on to build a working knowledge of a new topic fast. That’s why our first ever Entrepreneur’s Toolkit focuses on learning and development.  Here are some great resources to help you and your team bootstrap knowledge:

1. Academic Earth’s Entrepreneurship Section: Academic Earth is a great resource for aspiring learners in any field. The site aggregates courses and lecture videos from top univiersities, including Harvard, MIT, and Standford. Academic Earth’s Entrepreneurship Section has over 800 lecture videos to choose from, including topics like creativity and innovation, IT, strategy, finance, and leadership.
2. YouTube EDU: YouTube has rounded up another great selection of videos to choose from on their EDU channel, including videos from Harvard Business and The Wharton School.
3. Google Code: If you’re working on a technology-related startup and want to have, at a minimum, a working knowledge of programming or scripting, Google Code is an excellent resource and includes courses, videos, and a community to help you when you have questions.
4. The Personal MBA: If books are more your style, head over to The Personal MBA.  The site’s business-book-recommender and reading list will help you find the resources you need.

What would happen if employees pressed managers for results as often as managers required them from employees?  What would happen if you defined success as creating solutions, rather than completing tasks? What would happen if everyone in your organization stopped making excuses and started demanding results?

This is the Power of If.

It isn’t a pipe dream or a desperate plea for some long lost capitalist utopia. It’s what separates the best organizations from the crowd, and the best parts of every organization from the surrounding status quo. The great thing is, building on the Power of If in your company is easier than you think.

If you’re tired of rhetorical questions, you’re in luck. If demands that leaders, from the CEO to the lowest manager, ask one question and one question only. And it requires an answer:

What do you absolutely need to get the job done successfully?

Leaders who ask this question to their subordinates find themselves in the privileged position of playing a game with a much higher rate of success–the business equivalent to choosing connect-the-dots over tournament chess with a grand master.  Asking this question, and asking it frequently throughout the course of a project, allows managers to see clearly the challenges their teams face. It also forces team members to regularly assess themselves, their performance, and the manager asking the question. In short, it forces subordinates to provide qualified “if” answers, which usually fall into one of three categories, or a combination thereof:

• Time: e.g. “I could get this done if I had a few extra hours…would overtime be an option?”
• Support: “I would feel more confident about this if you’d look over my code with me to make sure the logic is sound.”
• Resources: “I could deliver a great presentation if I could only find data on last quarter’s national  performance in the aerospace industry.”
• Combinations thereof: “If I could spend a few hours with someone who knows about healthcare data standards, that would really help. Do you know anyone in our organization who I could speak with?”

While leaders won’t always be able to provide the solutions their subordinates request, asking what a team member needs allows managers to understand what obstacles a subordinate faces and suggest various courses of action. It also distributes power in a positive, balanced way. Subordinates have the power to suggest solutions, and managers have the power to either ‘make it so’ or to coach subordinates when the suggestion simply isn’t viable.

Likewise, asking what team members need requires leaders to take an active role in the success of their teams by forcing them to prioritize rather than simply plan and delegate. Leaders who ask this question will have to actively choose what’s important when the need arises rather than letting situations become critical. While planning ahead is certainly valuable, The Power of If ensures that managers can adapt to requirements that even the best plans can’t anticipate.

The Power of If, by the way, applies equally to subordinates, too. Empowered team members at all levels must learn to leverage If by asking themselves what they need to succeed, even if their managers don’t ask them directly. The willingness of even the most junior employees to ask themselves what they need to succeed and to act to obtain those critical requirements is directly proportional to the potential of the organization. The ability of managers to guide subordinates in this process is the deciding factor for success.

Take some time to think about your organization. Are you leveraging The Power of If?

We talk about virtual assistants fairly frequently at The Upwardly Mobile. But since it’s been a while, and since it’s more important now than ever to save time and money, here are 50 tasks you can give your virtual assistant that will help you save more of both. Have ideas of your own or stories about what’s worked for you and your virtual assistant? Post them in the comments.

1. Industry Research - If the facts are there, your virtual assistant can find them much cheaper than anybody else can. Do the math.
2. Product Research - Like number 1, but for products. Have your virtual assistant find and rate products based on whatever criteria are most important to you: price, features, quality, design, popularity, or anything else.
3. Search Engine Optimization - Great for a Website or a Blog.
4. Your Taxes - April 15th is on its way, and many virtual assistants specialize in the tax field.
5. Calendar Management - “Have your people call my people.”
6. Idea Creation for Your Blog or Newsletter - My virtual assistant came up with 7 of the items of this list.
7. Reminders - Don’t forget something important.
8. Bill Pay - If you hate doing it, why not outsource it?
9. Bill Audit - Have your VA review your statements before paying them to make sure you don’t overpay!
10. Grocery Shopping - Combine a virtual assistant with Peapod and you’ve saved yourself an hour a week or more.
11. Other Shopping - Ask Your VA to find you the top 3 books on a given subject and then choose between the three.
12. Event Planning - Want to meet a big group of friends for dinner?  Have your virtual assistant find a location, send out invites, answer people’s questions, and generally take care of logistics.
13. Trip Planning - Same as above; your VA can book your flight or train, make your reservation, and plan your itinerary.
14. Internet Marketing - Have an AdSense or other internet marketing campaign? Let your virtual assistant run it for you.
15. News Digests - Feed readers are a good way to keep on top of the news, but sometimes there’s just too much information for you to handle. Have your virtual assistant prepare a daily or weekly digest of the top news that matters to you.
16. Backlink Building - Have your VA help drive traffic to your site.
17. Web Design - Many virtual assistants specialize in web design; revamp your blog or website.
18. Contractor/Vendor Research - Thinking about purchasing a service for yourself or your startup?  Have your VA check out potential companies first.
19. Hire Screening - If you’re hiring, have your virtual assistant screen potential candidates first and only forward the top candidates’ resumes on to you.
20. Call Answering and Forwarding - Skype and a VA with good speaking skills can go a long way to making a small business seem more professional to current and potential clients. You usually don’t have to pay virtual assistants to man the phones except for the time they actually spend talking because they can work on tasks for other clients while they wait.
21. Comment Management - Avoid dealing with the spam and have your virtual assistant manage comments on your blog or forum.
22. Comment Response - Take a cue from Tim Ferriss and have your virtual assistant actually respond to your comments, too.
23. Email Response - Same as number 22; if an email asks a common question, have your virtual assistant answer it for you.
24. Email Sorting - Building on 23; have your VA read your email for you and seperate out those emails that require your personal response; if it works for CEOs and heads of state, it can work for you, too.
25. Networking Research - Networking is important, but there are a lot of networking events that waste time and don’t add value. Have your virtual assistant sort through the invites you get and find the ones that will best serve your agenda.
26. Keeping You in Touch - Create a list of important people in your life who you don’t see regularly, and have your VA schedule a call with one or two of them every week.
27. Making You Hard to Reach - The opposite of number 26; have your virtual assistant screen your calls and filter out the people who waste your time. Works great with a Google Voice Account.
28. Tracking Things Down - If you need to find anything–an expert in a given field, Barack Obama’s BlackBerry number, or the best Pizza in New York City–have your virtual assistant search for it.
29. Managing Voicemail - The same principle as managing email.
30. Following Up - Have your virtual assistant follow up on outstanding items for you. If you do a weekly review, have your VA follow up on all the outstanding items in your Waiting For context.
31. Meal Planning - After your virtual assistant organizes your party, have her plan the meal, too. You can even have her order your groceries for you, per number 10.
32. Diet Planning - Need to lose a few pounds? Set a goal and have your virtual assistant organize a diet and exercise plan for you that fits your lifestyle.
33. Wedding Planning - A glorified version of number 12. I now know someone who’s having their virtual assistant help plan their wedding. Let your virtual assistant find the top 5 vendors (for flowers, the cake, the reception venue, the band, etc.) that meet your criteria, and then choose from those 5. This will save hours.
34. Cost Management - If you’re running a project, use your VA to help you manage costs. Many virtual assistants are trained accountants and can manage the budget and provide audit services.
35. Data Entry - If it’s time-consuming and repetitive, you can get excellent rates.
36. Data Review - Same as above; if you don’t control the data input but need to validate it anyway, a good VA will lower costs considerably.
37. Fact Checking - Great for journalists and business people alike; let your virtual assistant help you do your due diligence by checking your notes, some one else’s facts, or anything else the might be subject to mistakes, typos, or bias.
38. Fact Finding - Need a specific statistic on global warming or everything there is to know about Abe Lincoln’s childhood? Put your virtual assistant to work on finding the facts.
39. Interface Testing - Need someone to click buttons until your software breaks? Virtual assistants are perfect for the task, especially when you’ve written good test scripts.
40. Interface Design - Need a trained designer on a budget? A good virtual assistant will work wonders.
41. Record Management - Have a large data set that needs to be updated manually? Have your virtual assistant scour the internet and work the phones for those hard-to-find phone numbers, addresses, and any other data you might gather yourself.
42. Grant Writing - Some virtual assistants specialize in grant writing. If your startup is of the social or non-profit variety, a good virtual assistant could be invaluable.
43. Subject Matter Briefs - If you’ve ever been scheduled for a meeting on a topic about which you know very little, a virtual assistant can be a great help. Have them find or write a short, five-page summary of the topic, major concerns and implications for you, and recent news.
44. Finding What Works - We’ve already talked about doing what works several times on The Upwardly Mobile. Have your virtual assistant find the people, companies, or organizations that already know and practice what works in your field.
45. Avoiding What Doesn’t Work - The inverse of number 43. Sometimes knowing where people made mistakes is just as valuable as knowing how the succeeded; have your virtual assistant find out both.
46. Finding New Clients - Having a fresh perspective has never been cheaper; have your virtual assistant look for clients for a given product or service without specifying an industry or giving too much detail. You may be surprised to find that you can adapt what you’re already doing to someone else that needs it.
47. Teaching You Something New - VAs have many different skill sets. Whether you want to learn chess, value analytics, or tai chi, chances are there’s a virtual assistant who can teach you.
48. Network Administration - Many virtual assistants are trained network administrators, and the vast majority of network administration tasks can be done remotely.
49. Situation Monitoring - Have a situation and can’t afford Wolf Blitzer? Have your virtual assistant keep an eye on things.
50. Motivation - Need somebody to keep you accountable for that goal that everyone says can’t be done? Have your virtual assistant take you to task.
51. Discovering New Opportunities - Want to save time and money in more ways than you can count? Challenge your virtual assistant to come up with new ways to save you or your organization time or money.

I fell in love with Getting Things Done about two and a half years ago. I was planning for an extended, six-month stay abroad in Germany, and I had too much to do and too little time to do it. The simplicity of disecting projects at the action level and sorting those actions by context helped me minimize stress and maximize productivity. Although I thought I knew how to work the system, I didn’t keep up with it after my trip. Now, after reading David Allen’s new book, Making It All Work, I finally understand that weekly reviews are the secret to keeping it all together.

Whether you use GTD or not, spending an hour or two each week on a weekly review will save you significant amounts of time and effort, and it will help you stay on track with your goals and avoid distractions. What makes the weekly review work so well its ability to give you perspective. Here’s a breakdown of how to conduct a weekly review and why the weekly review process works so well. I’ve included the template I use, so you can try (or retry) the weekly review yourself without too much effort.

The weekly review works because it forces you to look at the entirety of your decisions and actions over the past week and plan for the week ahead at the same time. It gives you a thorough view of all your commitments, both to others and yourself, and forces you to evaluate what you’re doing to keep them.

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, here’s a quick and dirty breakdown of the weekly review:

1. Gather all your inputs and process them: Grab all your loose papers, read your emails, listen to your voicemails, and make a decision about what you’re going to do with them. (This will take a while the first time, but I can now finish my weekly review in about 30 minutes). There are three options: act on it, file it, or throw it away. If an action takes less than two minutes, go ahead and just do it now. If it takes longer than two minutes, add it to your list of next actions (your to-do list) and come back to it later. Filing things and throwing things away, incidentaly, both fall into this less than two minute category and should be done immediately to eliminate clutter and increase focus. You’ll be surprised how much you get done by just completing this single step.
2. Process your notes: Why did you write all that down? When you process your notes, you increase your effectiveness considerably. Chances are, if you wrote something down, it was for a reason; it’s worth actually looking at your notes to figure out why you took them in the first place. Ask yourself if there’s anything you need to do based on any notes you took. Are there actionable thoughts in there or is it just reference? Add any actions to your list and then file the notes or throw them away.
3. Review Your Calendar: Review both the past week and the week ahead. Is there anything you missed or that you need to follow up on? Is there anything you need to do to prepare for what’s upcoming? This step keeps you prepared and helps you tie up loose ends.
4. Review Your Action Lists: What happened to all those next actions (TO-DOs) you promised yourself you’d do?  Are they still relevant?  Are they really the next action in the project?  A next action is defined as the next physical action you need to take to get something done.  Very likely, if you’ve added a next action like “Plan Vacation”, you’re going to put it off until the last possible minute because it’s a large, amorphous project that you haven’t really thought through.  If your next action is “look online for flights to France for the week of May 18th,” you’re much more likely to do it because it’s easy to slot in the 15 or 30 minutes it takes to do that small task when you’ve already decided that that’s the next step.
5. Review Your Waiting For Lists: If you don’t have a list of things you’re waiting on others for, you should make one! Call it an agenda or a “waiting for” list, but having notes on what others promised is one of the keys to being effective. Review this list every week as part of your review. Have you been waiting too long?  Do you need to follow up?  Is there a better way to get the same result?  Can somebody more reliable supply you with what you need?
6. Review Important People List: I have a list of all the people in my life that are really important to me. This list includes my family and close friends, my mentors, and important bosses, co-workers, and business partners. I review this list every week and ask myself if I’m expecting anything from them. I also ask myself what I’ve done for them lately. This is an excellent way to maintain relationships and make sure they’re fruitful.
7. Review Someday/Maybe Lists: Keep a list of all the things you want to do some day. These may be simple things like trying a new restaurant or big projects or goals like climbing Mt. Everest. You won’t accomplish all of these in your life (and some of them may be pipe dreams) but that’s okay. The key is to have someplace to store those things you’ve “always wanted to do” and to add some to your list of projects every once in a while. This helps keep your life balanced, and you’ll be surprised at all the fun new things you’ll try because you haven’t forgotten about them.
8. Incorporate New Knowledge: The final weekly review step is a bit like the dinner table when you were a child. Ask yourself what you learned at school today. In other words, what new things did you learn this week? Are there new concepts or ideas you can apply to doing business or living life? Is there a change in your workplace that you hadn’t heard about that may alter your career strategy? Think about your week a bit and ask yourself if you’ve made any progress in learning new things. If you don’t think you’ve learned anything, why not? Maybe it’s time to read a new book, take a class, or ask for an assignment outside of your normal area of responsibility.

This may sound like a lot of work, and an hour or two every week spent on simply “getting organized” would be. The reality is, though, that after you’ve done it once or twice, you can do it in about 30 minutes.

Perhaps more importantly, the power of the weekly review lies in its ability to force you to see your world as a whole.  When doing the weekly review, you remember the little commitments you forgot to write down and the items you should follow up on. You actually review those notes you took so that they weren’t a waste of time to take. You’re able to anticipate challenges in advance and plan for them while, at the same time, remembering to follow up with all the people who promised to do things and just haven’t quite time them.

In short, the weekly review makes you effective because it allows you to see it all. Try using this template or designing your own for your weekly review. That ounce of perspective saves hours of grief.

I travel every week, work an average of twelve hours per day, and don’t get nearly enough sleep. Chances are that I remember that I need to call a friend when I’m supposed to be working on a proposal, that I remember about the groceries I need when I’m on a business trip and away from my home and the store, and that I think of a great idea for work during my scarce “free” time. The concepts in David Allen’s Getting Things Done have helped me keep the commitments I make to myself and others without going too crazy in the process. Sometimes, however, I need to remind myself not to get caught up in the system itself and to remember the ideas that really make the system work.

Those of you familiar with GTD will know what I mean when I say that I use a “planning” context to hold significant projects and decisions I need to consider further before I can take any further action. For those of you who haven’t read GTD yet (and I suggest you do so now, it’s excellent), suffice it to say that GTD groups all tasks by context — for example, @Computer, @Phone, @Errands, @Work, @Home, etc. — and that this makes life easier because GTD users only look at a specific set of tasks when they’re actually in the location and have the tools they need to get complete those tasks. One of the contexts that many GTD users find helpful is the @Planning context, which groups significant projects and decisions that require a bit more thought before taking any action.

For the most part, the @Planning context works well for me, because it allows me to write down a thought or idea and forget about it until I have enough time to consider it thoroughly. Sometimes, however, a big decision grabs so much of my attention that I need to remind myself of one of one of Allen’s key insights: context isn’t just time, place, and tools… it’s also a state of mind.

Until today, I had been distracted for the last several weeks by a significant career decision, and the distraction was eating away at my productivity. I had faithfully put the decision in my @Planning context bucket as something to deal with when I had time, trusting that I would get around to it eventually. I couldn’t quite understand why having to make the decision was bothering me so much until I remembered Allen’s insight.

GTD, by design, allows you to focus on what you can most productively complete at any given moment. While we tend to define context in terms of place, time available, people, and tools (phone, computer, etc.) required, we need to remember that energy and focus are just as important in completing any task or moving any project forward. While some contexts, like @Computer and @Phone require specific tools to get the job done, the only real tools (besides, perhaps, a pen and paper) that the planning context requires are attention and energy. In other words, planning is all in your head.

Because planning is almost entirely mental, it should inherently take precedence over other contexts whenever you find it necessary. The very act of finding the need to make a decision distracting means the @Planning context is currently active for you. For the most part, you can safely add something to the @Planning context bucket and come back to it later. But if a choice is important enough that it keeps distracting you, let yourself spend some time mulling it over, choosing the criteria on which to base your decision, and thinking about any additional informationg you’ll need before you can reach a final verdict. This isn’t ignoring the system; in fact, it’s doing exactly what the system was designed to help you do.

Whether you’re a low-level analyst or a C-Suite executive, everyone has a boss. Even CEO’s have to answer to the board and shareholders, and miscommunication and differing expectations can make interactions difficult, especially during times of crisis. If you find yourself in a situation with an abrasive investor, board member, or boss in the coming days, here are some tips for dealing with them and improving the situation:

1. Understand Their Point of View: While we may occasionally encounter people who are just out to get us, for the most part, leaders in any field are simply looking to accomplish their goals just like anyone else. Spend some time thinking about why a difficult boss is doing what they’re doing. What are the financial, social, and experiential motivations behind their abrasive behavior? If a boss has been making deadlines unreasonably short, is it because she feels pressure to conform to the expectations of her boss? If a board member was angry at the last shareholder meeting, was it because he feels pressure from the investors he represents?
2. Explain Your Understanding: The first step to getting an abrasive personality to change their behavior is conveying that you understand their motivation. While you may think your boss is an ass, and while you may very well be right, telling them so is rarely effective. If your boss is working on a shoestring budget without enough staff, explain that you understand that problem. This will allow you to gain leverage, and look pretty good doing so, when solving the problem.
3. Offer a Solution: If you’ve ever thought, “it would be easier for everyone if…”, this step should be right up your alley. In most cases, solving your boss’s problems will usual stop them from causing yours. Think about what you have that can help. What data can you give the board member that will help him ease the concerns of his investors? What steps can you and your boss take together to eliminate pressure from other executives? Can you sit in on a meeting and explain the validity of the current timeline or budget and how it will help meet the firm’s overall goals? Can you suggest a better area for your boss to look for cost savings?
4. Help Them Succeed: After you’ve offered a solution, it helps to go the extra mile to help the person in question succeed. In addition to the fact that your boss will likely feel indebted to you, what you’re actually doing is taking steps towards eliminating the root problem instead of trying to treat its symptoms. This sophistication is effective, and it looks good, too.
5. Follow Up: Don’t forget to follow up. While it may not be appropriate to say thank you in all situations, you’ll usually want to express your happiness about the solution. Ask if there’s anything else you can do to help. If appropriate, this may also a good time to suggest further steps for improvement.

It may seem basic to many of us, but it always surprises me how few people actually do their homework before going into a meeting, let alone launching a product or starting a business. Whether you’re meeting with the CEO of a potential client, planning a launch of a new service, or trying to figure out how to solve an internal process problem, it’s important to have some background and know what you don’t know. That said, here’s The Upwardly Mobile’s quick and dirty guide to doing your homework:

1. Researching a Person: If you’re walking into a meeting with someone new, it always helps to know a bit about them.  Search Google, Wikipedia, and LinkedIn. Even if you your research subject isn’t Steve Jobs, these methods will often reveal quite a bit. If you can’t find enough information, try local newspapers and other sources of public record.
2. Researching an Industry: Industry Research is one of the most important pieces of groundwork necessary for entrepreneurs and companies seeking to become new entrants to a market. While Google and Wikipedia may be your friends for researching a person (and can be helpful when doing industry research as well), it helps to have a specific research strategy. There are several very detailed guides that explain different research methodologies, but in general, you’ll want to paint a thorough picture of the industry by identifying key players, changes and challenges to the industry, key cost drivers, and typical operating and profit models.  Performing a basic SWOT analysis will help you understand the industry as a whole and your place within it.
3. Finding an Expert: Sometimes what you really need is an expert. You may be surprised to find that you already have one in your network. An account at LinkedIn or any of the other popular professional networking websites may not seem helpful now, but when you need to find an expert, it can be just the right thing. If you can’t seem to find anyone you know, try calling your alumni relations office and reaching out to owners of industry blogs or magazines. You may be surprised to find that many people are happy to help, even without compensation.

Seth Godin wrote a great little post last Friday on the differences between fitting in and standing out. Although Seth doesn’t state it explicitly, the differences in mind set of those who seek to fit in and those who seek to stand out make up a significant portion of a company’s culture and have startling implications to productivity and the bottom line. Let’s examine three global companies to see the impact of this corporate culture ideal on a firm’s outlook:

1. General Motors: GM’s culture relies heavily on a motivation to fit in. Employees at GM make decisions on the basis of what has been done in the past, resulting in lack-luster product designs, poor quality, and such poor financial performance that the company had to borrow billions from the government. Most cars look like poor rehashings of previous models and tend to be feature-heavy, benefit-light products without much thought to the end consumer. While the occasional innovative product may make it through, GM’s overall ideology is clear from looking at its products: copy an old design, add a few poorly-designed features, and push it to the consumer with heavy advertising.
2. Google: Google, on the other hand, seems to make many of its decisions based on creativity or novelty. Products it designs and companies it purchases are new, different, and often unproven, and there is little emphasis on fitting in in the traditional corporate sense. Google’s philosophy results in some strikingly useful and innovative products that end-users really appreciate. The challenge Google faces, however, is that such products are rarely proven financially. Google continues, for example, to loose money on YouTube. While Google can, and I suspect will, turn YouTube around, the ideology does create a volatility that Google must counterbalance.
3. General Electric: GE, on the other hand, seems to represent a hybridized model. Like GM’s ideology, GE’s GE Way places a heavy emphasis on copying what others have done previously. Unlike GM, however, GE doesn’t copy every old idea. GE follows the Art of What Works. GE brings its people together to help improve their performance across all significant metrics. If a plant in one region is having a problem with sourcing, for example, the plant manager will travel to another plant, either for the same product or a different one, that has an excellent sourcing record and learn what works there. The idea is that there is no best person our group to follow or fit in with. There are only leading practices to be implemented. This allows GE to continue to innovate while building on the practices they already know to be effective.

These examples have powerful implications for every business. Spend some time thinking about your business. Do your firm’s executives and employees simply do what they’ve done in the past, or do they look for examples of what actually works and seek to innovate and improve upon them?

This is an advertisement I saw on CNN.com today.  It reads, “Obama is the New President!  $133,000 Mortgage for Under $679/Month!” I’m not one for pointing out the obvious, but those two sentences have absolutely nothing to do with each other. In addition to the fact that the ad doesn’t seem to make much sense, it states almost nothing about what the advertiser actually does, with the exception of the ominously vague “Calculate New House Payment” line that appears in tiny font at the bottom of the frame. If you do decide to click on the advertisement, you quickly learn that LowerMyBills.com, an Experian company, will offer you “free” lender matches after filling out a quick, two-minute form. Some of you may remember Experian as a company that recently got in trouble several times for misleading advertising and received a grade of “F” for customer service. What Experian won’t tell you, of course, is that “Britain’s most invasive company” hasn’t changed its practices much in the United States, and that your name, email, and contact information will be sold without regard to your privacy. All of this for something you could get for free by calling a few banks.  So why am I telling you this?

Today’s lesson is a simple one. Forget about the quick buck. Be honest. When you offer a product or service, try to actually provide some value instead of secretly causing your customers grief. In short, don’t insult your customers, stupid.

Examples of firms retreating further into their niche seem to increase with every day of the recession. Most companies will realize too late, however, that they’ve lost the opportunity to expand their scope and increase their revenues by being there for their customers in their time of need. The reality is that being too precise or too general eliminates your opportunity to grow and forces your firm to depend heavily on only its existing clients, many of whom may be looking for ways to cut costs that might include severing relationships with companies like yours.  In today’s market, companies don’t need an engineering company any more than they need a consulting firm. What they really need is a  company that can offer real value by solving a core business problem, aligning that solution with the firm’s goals, and implementing it in a way that ensures its acceptance by the company’s existing culture.

Six months ago, holistic solutions were buzz words that sounded nice but didn’t mean much.  Today, that’s no longer the case. Pressures to keep costs down are matched by public demand for increased corporate responsibility and sustainability. Firms are finding that their customers want specialized, customized products and services delivered now, and that they want them, indeed need them, at a fraction of the price. No amount of pure engineering, software packages, or consulting can fix these problems simultaneously.

Times are certainly tough for startups these days, but there are a few things you can do help your business brave the storm. Here’s The Upwardly Mobile’s list of the top five.

5. Network - When your customers can’t afford your services and your market is shrinking, there’s nothing like market to help you branch out. Expanding your network will help you meet new clients, discover hidden opportunities, and find support where you least expect it.  Go prepared to network with a purpose and a willingness to help others.
4. Have Good Support - It’s easy to doubt yourself when the economy is tight, but good support will help keep your business on track. In addition to the support of your family and friends, which every good entrepreneur knows is critical, it’s also incredibly helpful to find people facing the same kinds of issues. Try joining a small business or startup group and regularly participate in meetings. Not only is this a good way to work on your networking, but it’s also a great way to find solutions to the challenges that your business is facing.
3. Ask the Tough Questions - In a recessionary market, it’s important to ask yourself and your team the tough questions.  What do your customers really need?  How can you deliver it to them in a way that’s effective and affordable?  What changes can your business make that will deliver true value to your customers?  Go all the way with this one.  Recession-proof companies don’t simply cut prices to the smallest supportable margin.  They think about ways to help their customers avoid having to do so themselves.
2. Take Risks - While many businesses have frozen hiring and began a limping retreat towards what they believe are their core competencies (read: the old standby that doesn’t really add value to our customers), the best companies take risks based on the new opportunities the volatile economy presents.  Now is certainly the perfect time to launch a product that cuts costs, but there are a whole host of industry specific challenges that your business can help solve.
1. Persist - “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than successful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has always solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” - Calvin Coolidge

In Sunday’s post, I mentioned that being a Purple Cow is about delivering exceptional value to your customers that exceeds their wildest expectations.  It’s also about conveying that value through the kind of marketing that really lets customers know you’re something special.

Take a look at The Engine Is Red.  I stumbled across this company when reading an article from my news feed about 8 entrepreneurs who are defying the risk-adverse economic faux-wisdom of the times by starting companies during the recession. Each startup has its own story, and several have very interesting ideas. But despite the fact that The Engine Is Red was, perhaps, the least original concept of the eight, it was the only company that really stood out.  One look at the company’s website makes it clear that the firm is not an average design company.  Marketing with most firms, the site quips, is like a one night stand; marketing with The Engine Is Red is about solving core business challenges, driving sales, and increasing profits. Red is about creating value.

In short, The Engine is Red is quickly becoming the Little Red Engine That Could.

Spend some time thinking about what your marketing says about you.  In a time when most firms–even banks and insurance companies the self-proclaimed giants of experience and reliability–don’t really live up to their names, it’s time to focus on value, not tradition. When potential customers are looking at the herd, is your cow easy to spot?

No matter who you are and what business you’re in, you don’t know your customers well enough. I can’t overemphasize this. You don’t know your customers well enough.  What makes matters worse is, your customers are always changing, so you never will.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though.  Understanding this concept and integrating it into the heart of your bussiness operations always yields powerful results that can increase sales, eliminate waste, and connect you with your customers, suppliers, and employees in ways you’ve never imagined.

A few months ago, I got hooked on one of the most powerful business concepts I’ve encountered: Entrprise Lean / Six Sigma.  I had heard about Six Sigma before, and I knew it was a strong operational concept that worked for big companies like Toyota and GE. What I didn’t know was that EL/SS had been steadily growing outside of the manufacturing sector, and that firms whout any manufacturing business whatsoever had been changing their processes and connecting with customers with staggering results: 90% increases in operational efficiency without firing anyone, doubling of sales and halving time-to-launch for new service offerings, and significant increases to the bottom line.

One of the most powerful concepts behind Six Sigma’s Lean Thinking is the idea of customer pull.  Pull, in a nutshell, is the idea that, rather than creating a product or service and pushing it to your customers through oldschool advertising and PR or even newschool buzz campaigns, you let customers pull products from you. Pull is about having a relationship with your customers that allows you to cater your service precisely to their needs. The surprising thing is, Lean companies are realizing they can actually create customized products and services while continuing to decrease costs.  They’re realizing that being lean means increasing margins while selling customized products and services that don’t cost their customers more.

But what does all this mean for today’s service business?  Aside from learning all you can about applying Six Sigma to service businesses, it also means fundamentally adjusting your firm’s attitude about a whole host of business issues.  The first of these is your customer relationships.

You don’t know your customers well enough, and, because your customers are always changing you never will.

Accepting this maxim yields surprising implications.  If your customers are always changing–if your old cutomers change their preferences and your new customers have totally different expectations–then your firm will need to interact with customers at surprising level if it’s going to build lasting relationships and continue to sell services.

Examples of firms who have accepted this are everywhere, and the results are self evident:

• Amazon realizes that it can never know its customers well enough, so it implemented an automated system for customers to rate products and give feedback.  The system gives customers something back directly: increasingly good product recommendations and the ability to see what other customers think about a product before buying it.
• Lands End realizes it can never know its customers well enough, so it takes the time to actually talk to them. When you call Lands End, to place an order or return one, they ask you how they can help and they actually mean it.  I was ordering a Christmas present for my parents a few years ago and they asked me if I thought there was anything they could do to improve their business.  When I suggested that the Lands End line had about the best quality I could find but was “a little old” for my tastes, they took note.  A week later, somebody actually called me back to talk about it and get my feedback
• Emergent Energy, a small renewable energy consulting and development firm, realized they’ll never know their customers well enough either, so they implemented a revolutionary way to talk to them right during the design process. Emergent’s charrettes allow them to integrate customer feedback into the design of their wind turbine sites and get feedback instantly.  What’s more, their customer relationships prove it works.

Most entrepreneurs worth their salt have something interesting to say about why their  company matters. In the private sector, they can tell you that their product is cheaper, more efficient, and better designed. In the public sector, they can tell you why their service is eco-friendly and provides opportunities for the underprivileged. These entrepreneurs are certainly right.  But they’re also boring. You, however, don’t have to be.

The best leaders understand that it’s not enough to have an excellent product or service.  Even in industries with bleeding-edge technology, there’s somebody else who can do the same thing as you can, and somebody else ready to copy your design, steal your marketing, and sell what you’re selling at a fraction of the cost.

What then, differentiates you from the rest of the crowd?  It’s about the things you do that genuinely add value for your customers.  It’s the way you interact with your customers to deliver an experiences that exceed every expectation.  It’s the guarantee you make that your product will work right the first time, or every time without hassle. It’s how you actually design things that the user can’t forget.

As Seth Godin puts it, it’s all about being the Purple Cow.