How To Spend Your Last Week of 2015

It's here! The last and final week of the year 2015. If you work in a corporate environment, chances are your office looks a little like a ghost town this week. When I was younger, I used to love working the last week of the year as the general office drama was lower than any other point, and I could focus and get some things done. But what to do? As the clock winds down, try a few of these activities over the next couple of days.

Cleanup

Got a project nagging you from two weeks ago? How about those expense reports that need to get filed before year end? Use the next couple of days to clean up any of those open tasks from 2015 so that you can start the year fresh. New projects start much more quickly when unburdened with baggage and leftover work from prior initiatives. With fewer interruptions this week, you have the opportunity to maximize your "flow" and get into the groove to knock those tasks out one by one. Cleaning your inbox down to zero can actually happen with a lower volume of incoming messages. Whatever hangs over your head, knock it out to start 2016 fresh.

Grow

On Friday, I talked about taking some time to invest in yourself. If you were wondering when you might find time to watch a few videos or browse one of those books, this might be your window. If you've cleaned your plate of prior work, you may have a peaceful lull before the next influx begins. Fill that time by filling your brain with outside thoughts and ideas that can help you think differently into the next challenge in the new year.

Reflect and Plan

I always found the last week of the year most useful for planning for the upcoming one. Look at the previous year and honestly reflect on what you have accomplished. Write as much of it down. Then look at the next year and what you need and want to accomplish. Is it reasonable considering what you did last year? Is it pushing yourself just a little to do more than last year? Once you have your list of goals and what you want to accomplish, set intermediate steps to get there. What can you do in six months? Three months? What will you get done Monday morning? Write it all down.

Recharge

Don't overlook the need to recharge the batteries. This week should be a low pressure week from external forces. Don't put internal pressure on yourself to ruin that. Every now and then you need to allow yourself to breathe. Down weeks provide the perfect opening to inhale deeply and relax, even if just for a minute. Rest in the fact that you will accomplish quite a bit this week. Then get back to it.

Next week is a whole new year. Get ready!
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Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! I hope you are having a wonderful week! For the past 36 hours or so, I hope you have been following along with my Christmas Playlist over at Twitter (just search for #CameronsChristmasPlaylist).

So, what are you getting for Christmas? Are you getting yourself a little something to go along with the gifts to others?

I've read a few folks lately talking about the "greatest gift you can give yourself" and, honestly, it's true. The best thing you can do for yourself is to invest in your own growth and development. Certainly, if you are in school, that means finish your education and do the best you can to learn as much as you can in the process. But if you are in the workplace (as most of my readers are), or even retired, what types of investments can you make? Here are some last-minute gift ideas to give yourself.

Training or Continued Education

Probably the most expensive gift in this category would be professional training or a continued education program, whether seeking a Master's or other degree or just attending an instructor-led class. Formal training adds skills that can help you grow, and that you can also add to your resume and help you find a new career or move to the next step.

Books

With eBooks being an instant download to your Kindle or iPad or phone, a wealth of knowledge, experience, and stories are at your fingertips. Reading may not always teach you, but it can share perspectives and validation for points you already believed, as well as provide facts and different perspectives that challenge your world view. Here are some books (and yes, these are affiliate links) that I have read recently or are on my "to-read" list:

Videos

You can also find a vast amount of free content online in the form of online videos. TED talks and other famous inspirational speeches litter YouTube. Here are a few you might be interested in.

Blogs

Another free resource full of information for you are blogs. Subscribe for updates and get daily or other updates that give you nuggets of motivation. Here are some that grace my inbox daily.

Podcasts

Lots of the blogs or authors above also have podcasts, but one that I listen to that may be a little different is Stuff You Should Know. It has over 700 episodes explaining how just about everything works. Rather than give you a huge list of podcasts, I recommend you check out Stuff You Should Know for general knowledge and seek out two podcasts in your specific interest area (I've got some on marketing, finance, and brewing beer littering my iPod).

Whatever gift you decide to give yourself this year, make it one that makes you positioned to succeed next year. Growth in yourself doesn't break and won't wear out or get used up in a month. It lasts.
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Happy Holidays! And a Christmas Bonus

Happy Holidays! December has been a bit of a crazy month, and I'll admit, you haven't heard all that much from me on the blog here. But I thought I would take a little bit of time and thank you for following me on this crazy experiment this year, and wish you and your family a happy holiday season, whether you are celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or another holiday.

My Christmas Present to You

If you do like Christmas, then I have something fun for you. I've curated a playlist (I've done this before, but I think I did it better this time) of some of my favorite holiday songs, and will be posting them to Twitter every hour (at the :30 mark) all day on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It should give you some insight into my tastes and preferences, between novelty songs, classics, and crooners.

This year, I've tried (I think I was mostly successful) to link each song to a youtube video containing the whole song, as well as an Amazon link if you want to buy the song for digital download. Legal Transparency Disclaimer of Sorts: All of the Amazon links that I will be sharing are affiliate links, so I will get a few pennies if you buy one of my favorite songs. Maybe that's your present to me. But really, I just wanted to share and enjoy some holiday music with you that has been pretty special to me.

So, if you don't follow me on Twitter (no, really, you should), then either fix that problem or just look for my special hashtag for the playlist - #CameronsChristmasPlaylist - you should find maybe a couple of tweets from 2013 when I did this before, and then the new and improved ones tomorrow and Friday.

But Wait, There's More

OK, so I probably won't actually wait until tomorrow. Check this evening if you want to get your Christmas spirit on early. I'd say, maybe... 8:30 PM Central Time?

What Can You Get Me For Christmas?

Really? You want to get me something? Hey, that's great. I really appreciate it, and honestly, the ability to communicate with you here is more than enough gift. But if you do really want to get me something, then I have the perfect last-minute gift idea that you can give me and it won't cost you a thing. That's right - something I would love and it is free for you to give. Join my mailing list. That's it. There's no long-term commitment, and I will send you updates when I post stuff to the blog (you can reply straight to me from the emails instead of having to come all the way over here to the blog every week). I might send you a few other things, too, from time to time.

Want to get me something else? Wow, you really are generous. Well, I will make it easy for you. Click this link and tweet something nice about the site to your friends. Then head on over to Facebook and Like my page. If you have done all of that? Well, there's not much more I could ask for.

Have yourself a wonderful holiday season.

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Hosting a Professional Conference

I spent a large portion of last week at Gartner's Application Architecture, Development and Integration Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada. The conference contained three days of in depth content around Enterprise Architecture, Cloud Development, Microservices and API Management, and more. But rather than dive into the technical details, which I may write about later, I thought I would point out a few hallmarks of the conference that really made it smooth and helpful for the attendees. In the event you ever need to put together an event like this, see if any of these lessons from the best might be helpful.

Event Website

I did not take as much advantage of this before the conference as I should have, but after signing up and paying for the event, a website was made available to conference attendees. It contained agendas for the event as well as the ability to click in and view the presenters and information about each session. Attendees could even select sessions on the website to create a custom agenda tailored just to their interest

Badges and Scanners

Upon registration at the conference, every attendee received some small gifts and a conference badge. From that point on, everywhere you went, you had your badge scanned for access. This did not really benefit the attendees much, but certainly helped the organizers to know how many attendees were in each speaking session, provided information and feedback to vendors on who was interested in their software and services, and allowed an easy way to track eligibility for certain pre-registered events. Kiosks placed around the convention could also be used to print off custom agendas that attendees had made on the website.

Presentation Length

Depending on the style of conference, the length of presentations may vary. Thirty to forty-five minutes per topic seemed to be appropriate, though, at the Gartner event I attended and a prior conference last month. When the presentations were scheduled in forty-five minute increments, the entire day could be scheduled in hour-long blocks, leaving fifteen minutes for attendees to make their way to the next session as well as check their email and voice mail without missing any content.

Segregated Vendor Area

I've been to conferences where the vendor booths are mixed right into the conference area between rooms. This can be handy in that you can check out one or two vendors in the fifteen minutes between sessions, but often there is not ample time to check out everything you want. One good benefit of the conference last week was a segregated vendor area and allocated times to make your way through the booths. This allowed for a nice pace to the event and a dedicated block of time to make your way through the zoo of vendors. It also allowed a perk to the vendors in that they could attend some of the sessions outside of their dedicated windows of time.

Ample Staff

The host organization for a convention has a huge task to keep the attendees happy and the pace flowing along. One area that Gartner excelled was in the number of available staff on hand to help with any problems. Additional tip: springing a few extra bucks to get them matching shirts will help the attendees to locate a staff member if there are any problems. After the first day, the volume of questions to staff may diminish, but having visible people available if they are needed cannot be understated.

I noticed a ton of other great tips and tricks that Gartner managed to pull off to make it a great experience for all of the attendees, but I had too many to fit in a single post. What feature of a conference impresses you?
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Don't Threaten the King and Other Medieval Lessons from Game of Thrones

Evidently, I am going to have to wait until April to watch the next season of Game of Thrones, but in the meantime, I can still theorize on how the complex social interactions it portrays could be interpreted in a business sense.

While (hopefully) no one literally gets their head chopped off at your office, even the most open environments have some levels of politics at play. People have desires and ambitions, and sometimes those wants can cause behavior reminiscent of medieval fiefdoms. So how can you navigate the landscape?

Pledge Fealty

Threatening the king will result in your elimination. If you find yourself disagreeing often with your leadership, instead of presenting yourself as an open challenger to their authority, position yourself as a trusted adviser with their best interests at heart. How do you do that? Simple: actually have their best interests at heart. Try to view projects and interactions from the perspective of what the leader (your manager, the CEO, your VP, etc.) needs. Work to enable them to get exactly what they need, and offer private counsel to guide them away from potential pitfalls. But overall, recognize that they are the management, and therefore in many ways, you can enable their success with your loyalty.

Create Alliances

The office workplace should not resemble an episode of Survivor (Is that still on the air anywhere?), with groups of people making backhanded deals and alliances to shut people out or kick them off the island. Instead, find ways to work together with whomever is open to it. Much like the different lords across Westeros in Game of Thrones forge alliances to assist one another, you can reach out to partners in IT, or Marketing, or Operations to develop relationships. You must give to these relationships, though, so they become two-way. Real delivery of business value across departments builds true alliances. You never know who talks to whom at the office, but having alliance partners to whom you deliver real business value will ensure the right tone of the conversation.

Be a Believer

The struggle between the religious leaders and the Queen does not get played out by physical factions in the corporate world, but rather as an attitudinal battle between culture and operations. Don't be a skeptic. Believe in the possibility of improvement, of change. Believe in the good intentions that people bring to the table. Believe in the culture of the organization. Belief opens you up to opportunity, change, and success. Skepticism only leads to inaction and doubt.

What other tools do you have for navigating office politics? Avoid dragons? Be aware of threats of war? Prepare your army at all times? Drop me an email and let me know.

Image credit: skeeze via Pixabay
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Marketing Tricks To Learn From Black Friday

It's BLACK FRIDAY, which means that thousands will be already up and out of the house shopping for deals by the time this post hits the web. One of the largest retail days of the year, Black Friday offers opportunities to score some really great deals. It also offers up the opportunity to recognize some key marketing tricks, which you can leverage for your business at other times of the year. Try to see if you can recognize how the most successful retailers utilize these and brainstorm how you might use them to help your own business.

Scarcity

"While supplies last." If something becomes available only in limited quantity, consumers will feel a sense that it is more urgent to buy that item. If they do not make that purchase, they might miss out on the deal. Scarcity can also be used to create a sense of exclusivity, where only a select few can obtain a particular item. Those that manage to purchase it have their status elevated by ownership.

Time Limits

You might see these listed as "Doorbusters" or some other name to reference an even more specific time limit on a deal. Perhaps a particular sale is only available from 8:00 a.m. until noon. The idea of this one inspires that same sense of urgency, but it also plays more specifically to a timing factor. Appropriate use can create sales in a specified window that might not have materialized otherwise. This also explains some of the crazy purchases that happen in auctions, like eBay, where the time pressure encourages non-standard buying behavior.

Loss Leaders

Your big discounts on Black Friday? They are probably loss leaders. While the strategy of pricing some items at incredibly low or negative margins to get people in the store to encourage additional sales generally works best at brick-and-mortar retail outlets, some online retailers with wide varieties of products have been able to successfully utilize this strategy as well.

Companion Discounts

Similar to the loss leader, this strategy specifically targets items, so that you get a discount on product A if you also purchase product B. Driving additional sales of the non-discounted product is the primary objective, allowing a more commodity item to be sold at a reduced price when purchased together. The benefit of this strategy over pure loss leaders is that you avoid consumers who only buy the discounted items, but based on the ads I got in the newspaper this week, I don't think that particularly concerns the large retailers.

Feeding Frenzy

Done right, the combination of strategies creates a mad feeding frenzy of shopping today, or whenever these strategies are effectively employed. Even if the spike in sales only affects discounted products, the sheer volume of the transactions can boost a quarter with lagging profits. And when appropriately tied to other offers, it can lift transactions across the board.

What other marketing tactics have you seen in place to drive frantic buying behavior? How could you use them to boost your business? Leave me a comment and let me know. I'd love to hear your thoughts, unless you are out shopping for the big deals right now.

Image credit: KERBSTONE via Pixabay
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Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope that you are able to enjoy time with family and friends and reflect momentarily on what you have that you can appreciate. We all have so many blessings and sometimes the small stresses of the world can get in the way of remembering that.

I'm thankful for my family and friends and so many other things. This year, though, I am also thankful that I have been able to share quite a bit through this site. I hope there are many more to come!

Have a happy holiday.

Image credit: Schmucki via Pixabay
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Seeing The Bigger Picture

You have certainly heard the expression, "can't see the forest for the trees." The statement implies that someone focuses completely on the tactical items and has a difficulty or fault in observing the big picture.

But how can you avoid being the person having difficulty seeing the forest? What if you are the one scratching on the bark of an elm tree and telling everyone it is important? Here are some questions that can help you get to a bigger vision.

Is this part of something bigger?

This question seems like a no-brainer, but the key isn't in asking it. Rather, the key is in continuing to ask it. I got in a discussion the other day with a coworker who was talking about a project and making the claim that it was bigger than what we were discussing. I agreed, but indicated it was also bigger than what she was saying it was. My guess: it was bigger even than my description. Ask the question of whether your idea or project belongs to some higher calling repeatedly, and you should devote yourself to the larger image, not the individual objective.

Can I make it bigger?

Just because something is not already part of something bigger does not mean that you cannot ask it to be so. You might even take a few stabs at how you could make your current question part of a larger picture if it isn't. Increasing by 10%? Add a zero. Gaining some efficiencies within a department?What would it take to eliminate the department? Asking yourself to look outside your current scope helps to frame the conversation correctly.

What is preventing me from seeing a broader view?

Acknowledge that something prevents you from seeing everything at once. Got a cool mastery of your product? How is it doing outside your region? Your country? What is your limiting factor in the knowledge of viewpoint that you hold? Acknowledging that you are limited in some ways helps propel your mind beyond your own limitations. Recognize them and move on.

Sometimes, seeing a big picture  helps shape the remainder of your actions around a topic.

What is your best way to deal with uncertainty?What happens when or if part of all of gets thrown together? I'd love to hear your best technique or question for kicking it up a notch.

Image credit: Memory Catcher via Pixabay
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Where Does Your Time Go?

Have you ever reached the end of a week and thought to yourself, "Where did all of my time go?"

We've all been there. The weeks that appear to be the most busy can disappoint the most when at the end, you realize you have not accomplished anything you can recall worthwhile.

How can you command control of your time, to avoid it slipping away? Here are a few tips to keep the time from slipping through your fingers as easily as sand through an hourglass.

Know Your Time Wasters

Do you spend every free second checking email? Scrolling through your Twitter account? Binge-watching shows on the television? Take a few moments to think about what your "go to" time waster is. I know my general way to waste time involves scrolling through the piles of television recorded on the DVR. And during the day, it's compulsive email checking. But like the old cartoon commercials would inform us "The More You Know," once you have identified the culprit, you can take active steps to avoid wasting time on those activities.

Track Everything

Your calendar shows your meeting history for a week. Take a quick glance at yours. Do meetings consume more than 80% of your time? If they do, you might start taking a look there. You might also want to use that calendar for a week or so to add in what you were working on the rest of the time. Are you working on the right, most important things? Once you track what you are working on, you can identify where you might be seeing the waste.

Be Intentional

Instead of wondering at the end of the week where the time went, try planning it out in advance. Sit down with your calendar on a Sunday afternoon or Monday morning and sketch out every minute of your week, including what you want to work on and when. When you intentionally plan out your timeline for the week, you control the outcome. You are no longer reacting rashly to the priority of the day. Instead, you are planning out the most important activities for your week. Be sure to schedule some time to handle those items that come up out of the blue, and some down time as well.

Your time is finite. Every minute that passes will never be available again. Hopefully these tricks can help you maximize your usage of it.

What other tricks do you have when pushing yourself and making sure you don't waste time? Shoot me a note and let me know.

Image credit: khfalk via Pixabay
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6 Tips to Engage Your Audience

You thought you had your speech worked out perfectly. The content, the cadence, and the visual aids all aligned perfectly. And yet, just a few minutes into your presentation, you start to notice a few audience members glazing over or nodding off.

How can you keep them plugged in? The good news is that you have several tools at your disposal that can help pull the audience in and keep them in. Some of them require preparation, so they might not all be an on-the-fly fix, but they can all help engage your audience.

Move Around

Audiences have a more difficult time tuning out an active speaker. Someone delivering a dry lecture from a stationary podium almost encourages the audience to ignore them. On the other hand, a mobile speaker causes the audience track their movements with their eyes which keeps them engaged with the speech as well. You can get bonus points if the setup of your venue allows you to leave the stage and move through the crowd itself.

Ask Questions

You can engage the audience directly by making them a participant. Ask them a question. Make them think. Encourage answers to be shouted out, and you have actually made your presentation into a form of conversation.

Take a Break

If things are hitting the snooze zone, your best bet may be to encourage a break, if time permits. Maybe you have been droning on too long. A quick, timed, break may result in an audience returning refreshed.

Have Playtime

Structure an activity into your presentation that requires the audience to participate, or even better, to get up and move around the room or auditorium. Then get interactive feedback on the results of the activity. Not only will the audience have an interruption that prevents them from snoozing in their chairs, but they might start to own some of the content themselves and find a higher level of buy-in to your message.

Stare-Down

You know the old trick of looking just over the audience as you speak? It may help your nerves, but it kills your audience engagement. Instead, look your audience members in the eye (don't actually stare at one member too long) as you move through the content. See if they are engaged, and let them know you appreciate their attention.

Pause

Silence can work wonders. A pause in your presentation forms a natural break. Letting the pause hang for a few seconds longer than necessary, though, can pull even the sleepiest snoozer out of drone-monotone-talk-daze to wonder why your constant verbiage has stopped. Make yourself uncomfortable with the pause for a second or two and you've probably hit the right length.

There are many other ways to engage with an audience, but these quick tips should get you started. Remember, you want your presentations to be a conversation, even if you are doing most of the talking. The body language and other cues of your listeners should be responsive feedback on their end. Take it, run with it, and get your message out there.

Image credit: kherrmann via Pixabay
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What's the Most Important Thing to Work On Today?

Last week I attended a training teaching how to improve the quality of our conversations by focusing on the most important topic to discuss. Great session, to say the least, but it also got me thinking about how that hyperfocus could help in other areas. For instance, asking "What's the most important thing to work on today?" to get started in the morning.

How could you add the most value today? Which project can you have the most impact on? What one thing if you accomplish would make the day a success?

Sure, getting one thing done a day starts you on the path of my Productivity Challenge (which you can get in full by starting at the end here), but the key thought for today is to select the right thing to work on. Use these criteria to help you decide.

  • Can you finish it today?
  • Are you adding high value?
  • Is there anything else you could do more important or adding more value?
The selection criteria seem simple, but the process of selecting your highest value priority can daunt you. Don't let it. If you have trouble deciding between two similarly prioritized items, just pick one. Doing one important thing takes precedence over being paralyzed deciding on the thing to do.

So, what are you going to do today?


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Book: The Phoenix Project

So, the latest book I checked out happened to actually be a fiction book. More accurately, it's a nonfiction walkthrough of how to transform an IT department towards DevOps concepts wrapped in a novel that pays repeated homage to The Goal, a book I read in my Operations Management class in college.

Remember, as always, links in my book posts are affiliate links and I make the smallest amount of money possible if you were to actually buy this book.

So this book (which you can buy from this lovely affiliate link: The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win) is a novel, which follows an IT leader who gets thrust into the spotlight only to find there are several problems to solve with the new organization.

Under the tutelage of a mentor who clearly loves some Lean methodology and may have read The Goal a few hundred times, the IT organization develops several DevOps capabilities and evolves to a much more efficient organization.

If you work in (or with) IT, this book is an easy read that provides (in my opinion) an accurate representation of challenges that IT faces and some potential solutions. We are actually doing a small group book study on this book at my office and it has sparked some extremely useful conversations in how we can move our IT organization forward.

I'd love to hear what you think. Go buy the book, read it, and come back and let me know your opinions. We could even start a discussion on the principles here on the site.
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Happy Veteran's Day

To all that have served in the military, defending the freedoms that most of us take for granted, thank you.

I appreciate your service to our country and its citizens.

Have a wonderful Veteran's Day.
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Change of Pace and an Interesting Week

If you haven't noticed, I've backed off a little from the post every single day of the business week. I'm still trying to put at least three or four things out a week. I have had some feedback that every day is a little too frequently for you guys to consume whatever I am pumping out (understood), and I have been trying to find some good time to add some words to the two books I am playing with as well.

Beyond that, schedules have been a little crazy. Last week I attended the TM Forum InFocus Catalyst conference for telecommunications industry folks and learned a good bit there. This week has a holiday in the middle for me, on which I've scheduled every contractor I could find to come do something on our house while I hope it doesn't rain so I can get some beer brewed. Monday, I am in an all day training. I also have a few other things going on the rest of the week.

With the holidays coming up, I am sitll trying to push out several items a week for you, but please understand that schedules will start to get crazy.

As always, let me know directly if you need anything and I will see if I can help. Have a great week!
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What's the Scariest Thing in Business?

Last weekend, we saw little ghouls and goblins racing around the neighborhood in search of candy. As an adult, you likely weren't afraid. You probably didn't even jump when you were rewatching Halloween and Michael Myers jumped out to attack Jamie Lee Curtis.

In fact, as adults, we have conditioned ourselves to not fear imaginary and pretend villains or ghosts. We save our fear for real threats, most of which get recapped on the nightly news. But we also fear some intangibles that, in the end, boil down to one thing: a fear of failure.

Entrepreneurs extend that fear of failure to every element of their business:

      • "What if I don't have enough sales?"
      • "What if I can't deliver on my promises?"
      • "What if my customers don't come back?"
      • "What if I can't pay my bills?"
      • "What if we have to close the doors?"
So how can you keep from letting your fears become a prophecy? How do you prevent fear of failure from crippling you?

Ignore The Fear

First, realize that every one of those fears and questions begins with the same phrase, "What if." That phrase should scream one thing to you. The thing you fear has not come true yet. As such, you are wasting time and energy on something that has yet to pass. Wouldn't that same time and energy be better spent on growing your business? Focus on the real challenges at your doorstep. Prepare for the sale you need to close tomorrow. Finish the marketing copy for the campaign you are launching next week. Spend some quality time on product development. Do all of those things instead of worrying about and fearing things that may or may never come true.

Channel The Fear

Do you remember in The Waterboy when Henry Winkler's Coach Klein encouraged Bobby Boucher to use everyone that had ever insulted him as "Tackling Fuel?" (If you don't, it's available on YouTube) For business owners, the fear of failure can serve as your tackling fuel. Channel that fear into motivation. Run from it. Fight against it. If you're successful, you might find yourself headed to your own Bourbon Bowl.

Embrace The Fear

If you can't fully ignore your fears or channel it into your personal tackling fuel, perhaps you can and should embrace the fear. As an entrepreneur, the potential for failure has some reality to it. Whatever percentage your latest statistic shows, the reality is that many (even a majority of) small businesses still fail within the first five years. So understanding that failure may be your future reality should empower you. In fact, it should encourage you to fail faster, if that is the business's destiny, so that you can move on to your next business and next project. If you aren't certain of the failure, you can embrace the potential for failure and plan worst-case-scenario plans and contingency plans. Just don't let that consume your entire workday. Make your Plan B and move on with the business.

Whatever the underlying reasons that you fear failure, that fear only damages you when you let it hurt your business. Whether you ignore it, channel it, or embrace it, the fear cannot control you. You must find a way to work past it and maintain focus on growing your business and moving forward.

What else do you fear? How can you keep it from paralyzing you?

Image credit: AdinaVoicu via Pixabay
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Starting Anew

Starting new projects always excites me. The potential that the new project has to be something great, the allure of learning along the way, and the anticipation of change from whatever path I had been previously walking all give a thrilling boost of confidence to the beginning of a new challenge.

Somewhere along the way, the shiny newness fades and the project transforms into real work. At that point, you may be tempted most strongly to abandon the project and start another new initiative. Doing so only guarantees that you fail to finish the first project.

The middle is the most important part. In the middle, you press on against the odds, against your judgement, against the fear of failure, and you move closer, inch by inch, towards the end.

You will know you are at the end when everything feels like it races downhill towards the finish line. You can not only see the end in sight, but you can see the end growing closer and closer, and more inevitable than ever.

Then, you can start something new.
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Happy Halloween!

From our jack-o-lanterns to yours, here's hoping you have a safe a wonderful Halloween weekend. Enjoy spending time with your family and friends. Stay safe and check back in with us next week!
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How to Hire the Right Person (Hint: Flip a Coin)

Hiring the right person can prove to be one of the most difficult challenges for a manager, new or old. I've had every possible outcome from hiring over the years.

I've hired someone who performed very differently on phone technical screens than on the job and spent a ton of effort trying to coach to skills that should have been brought into the job.

I've hired superstars.

I've hired people based on the recommendations of others, with mixed results.

I've hired people multiple times for different positions, where they excelled in some and less so in others.

At times, I have thought hiring might be as accurate as a coin flip. When I sit back and think about it, I might actually be right.

Heads, You Win

Sometimes when you flip the coin you get exactly what you wanted. When hiring, this means you have stumbled across what we might call an "A player." These hires come from a pool of high performers not appreciated in their current role. Whether underpaid, living with poor benefits, or bored, high achievers looking to advance in some way make up a decent portion of the pool of potential hires in the market. 

Tails, You Lose

The other chunk of the candidates you will come across fall into the category of low performers. Some of them bounce from job to job, and some manage to hold a steady position for quite some time. Their motivation to leave may not have been by choice, or it may be that they saw writing on the wall. Either way, several hit the marketplace as candidates because they have lost or fear losing their job due to poor performance. This is not an indicator of whether or not they will perform well in your job, but it could be.

The Coin Lands On Its Side

The coin never lands on its side. Likewise, hiring middle of the road performers does not frequently occur, as those individuals perform well enough to avoid any severe disciplinary action at their current job, and at the same time they may not be motivated to leave in the same way as an extremely high performer.

So What Side Of The Coin Are You Looking At?

Unfortunately, few giant red flags will jump out at you. You can't base an assessment on whether a candidate is currently employed, because as the higher that high performers go, the more that external factors such as politics, unrealistic goals and expectations of outsiders, or performance of broad groups of people beyond the control of the candidate. Likewise, low performers may be employed but fearing some sort of coming activities.

It's also difficult to base any decisions on experience, since someone who may be a high performer in some situations could be a low performer in others. And without some serious career coaching, some individuals (who I have seen perform at an extremely high level) spend time bouncing around as a low performer in the wrong jobs because they have not found their appropriate skill niche.

So flip a coin. Half the time you will hire superstars, and half the time duds, just like I used to. Or...

Get A Trick Coin

There are some tricks, though, to at least skew your coin flips towards the winners. For starters, don't limit yourself to one interview. You might do this on a contractor hire where you feel you have more flexibility to let them go if it doesn't work out, though that sometimes requires more interviews and restarting the cycle again. Multiple interviews with different types of questions gets you a better feel for a candidate.

Skew your questions towards personality traits as equal weight to skills. You can't ignore obvious queues, but rather than looking for someone who has held the same job you are hiring for twelve times (great experience, but perhaps a bouncing low-performer), you might take a risk on someone who truly wants to get into the position, wants to learn from you, and displays an eagerness to step up to whatever challenges you throw at them.

Ask no-win questions. Throw a question or two into your interview with no canned right answer. Look for questions where no matter how they answer, they are choosing the lesser of the evils as opposed to trying to put a smiling rainbow around the answer. Make them defend the poor choice and see who uses appropriate logic to negate the other choices versus trying to defend their own poor option.

Do some real world challenges. Trending among some companies is to throw a situation at the candidate to solve and evaluate how she or he solves the problem. Drop a laptop in front of a developer and ask them to code something. Give a scenario for a project manager to resolve and compare their tactics, even role play. 

There are certainly other tactics you can use to weed out the As from the Ds (I'm assuming the vast majority of all the Bs and Cs are happily working at their current jobs and not seeking new ones). What advice do you have on making those smart hires and pulling only the A players (where you need A players)?

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Is This Going to Be On the Test?

"Is this going to be on the test?" I can still hear my classmates (and me) as we asked that same question of various teachers. The intent, of course, was to try to see if we could get some inside track that would help us to maximize the effort we spent studying the things that would be on the test, while totally ignoring those things that would not.

The teachers rarely gave us a straight answer, though, and with good reason. Their expectation was that we treated all of the material in the class as if it were part of the test. As such, we were always paying attention and learning as much as we could.

At work, we often search for the same lowest common denominator. Sometimes we try to guess which items are most important for our performance review. Sometimes we try to figure out what our supervisor really wants us to say before we say it. Sometimes we overkill the due diligence and overanalyze the problem just to avoid making a mistake.

Instead, we should go to work every day and give the best we can give. Make decisions. Take risks. Be bold. Do not fear failure.

Stop trying to guess what you are being judged on, and start acting like everything you do matters. Tweet This! Go to work today and try to do something. Better yet, do something important. Then tell me what it was.

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What's Your Minimum Viable Business?

Are you familiar with the concept of a minimum viable product? Basically, the product contains the core features and functionality required to launch, and nothing more. I've seen it misinterpreted in a way to try to deliver the minimum amount of work, but it truly should include the core required features regardless of the amount of work involved.

Over the weekend, though, I wondered: what would it take to create a minimum viable business? What required features would be needed to launch a business? If you thought about your business idea this way would it allow you the same benefits - to test ideas with minimal investment, maximize ability to capitalize on feedback, and speed the time to market? I came up with two key components. That's correct, just two.

A Product or Service

The first thing you need is a minimum viable product of your own. What, exactly, are you selling? What core set of features would give you something to sell that your customers would want? Developing the product also requires that you have a way to deliver the product or service to your customers. If you make a physical product, perhaps hand delivery or mail is the way to go. If you are creating informational products, like training, books, or videos, you may need a digital distribution method, perhaps a website or even emailing the product after it is purchased. Either way, in order to start making money as a business, you start with something to sell and find a way to get it to your paying customers.

A Way to Collect Money

If you have something to sell, you also need a way to collect payment for that product or service from your customers. Again, you do not need to get too fancy with it. Perhaps you collect payments in person. You could do something as simple as set up a Paypal account. Or maybe you put your product into an online marketplace like eBay or Amazon. However you plan to get money from your customers, once someone decides to buy from you, you need to be able to accept their money and provide them with what they purchased.

Beyond That, Just Hustle

Some types of businesses (like that brewery I want to open) have some additional requirements like permits or equipment. Those become part of the model of your product. At that point, you have a business. You have something to sell, and a way to collect money for it. Then everything falls on you. Sales, marketing, and promotion become your life. You have to hustle. Put as much effort behind it as you can.

The point of defining your minimum viable business is speeding up your business start up. Get something off the ground. Worry about getting fancier with your product offering once you've sold something. Get a better payment collection method when you pull in enough payments that you become concerned with your existing method. Just get started.

What other requirements does your minimum viable business have?
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What's The Big Idea?

I decided to approach a meeting recently in a new way. We had some topics to try to brainstorm around, and I had an inkling that the results would end up in some of the "usual suspects" of conclusions and actions, only to lead to the same results that caused us to need new ideas in the first place. What was the new way? Thinking big.

Before the meeting, I took the agenda and brainstormed myself five "big ideas" around each topic. The goal? To drive the conversation in a direction it would not have naturally flowed.

What's A Big Idea?

So what, exactly, am I referring to as a "big idea" and where do they come from? A big idea here implies something radical, something different than usual. In order to get some of these ideas, you have to free yourself of your normal constraints. Think to yourself, "given unlimited budget, what would we do?" or "how would I look to solve this problem if nobody had personal interests at stake?"

Do this a few times and you will realize that you shut down many of your own ideas before even truly considering them due to constraints in the organization or the environment. Seeking the big idea lets you think truly free from all of the constraints. If you determine the big idea is worth the effort, you can focus your energy on removing the constraints rather than spinning your wheels on sub-par plans.

What Do You Do With It?

Share it. The point of having a big idea is to be able to use it. But, if the idea is big enough, something prohibits you from implementing the idea. Constraints, culture or cash, something stands in the way. Those constraints have historically prevented you from even mentioning the idea. As you share the idea, though, it has the opportunity to grow.

For starters, those you share it with will help you vet the idea, making sure that you should pursue it. They might help you prove it worthless as well, or identify enough other constraints to make the idea impossible. But beyond that, once everyone agrees on the idea's value, they may be in a position to help eliminate the constraints. They might help improve the idea. They might have connections to further socialize or try to rally behind the idea. They will never be able to help, though, if they don't know the idea exists.

So What's Your Idea?

What's your big idea? What's the giant concept that could transform your business? Who will you share it with? If you don't know, you can always share it with me.

Have a great weekend and make something happen!

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Death to the Autoresponder

Last week I wrote about the different challenges that I learned about through use of a Twitter autoresponder that I had been sending to each of my new followers. It proved to be an interesting experience, but on Friday, I decided ro remove that autoresponder on Friday, though, based on a couple of responses I got Thursday and Friday. One misinterpreted my question as some sort of a sales pitch (I'm not really selling anything - yet) and the other one somehow didn't get my autoresponder joke that accompanied the autoresponder.

I still got a ton more positive responses than negative, but I decided to end the experiment anyway. After all, I had already done the read out on the results, and I knew I was only getting feedback on a small percentage of followers. On the contrary, risking offending or irritating someone immediately before they had a chance to interact with me was something I determined was not worth it over something like an autoresponder question.

So I put a bullet in it and now just offer simple thanks for following. If someone reaches out, I'll take it a step further and interact.

I also realized in the meantime that lengthy autoresponders bother me as well.

What about you? Do you ignore autoresponders? Hate them? Love some witticism buried therein? Drop me a line if you like and let me know.
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What's Your Conversion Rate?

You can measure any number of metrics, as thousands exist for you to choose from. In most businesses, though, one metric stands out as the first you should really get a handle on: your conversion rate.

What Is Conversion Rate?

At its most base, conversion rate is the rate at which non-customers convert into customers. But you cannot compare your customer base to the entire world's population, so to narrow it just a bit, conversion rate refers to potential customers (prospects) converting into paying customers. For online businesses, it could mean converting web site visitors into paying customers, or email list prospects into paying customers. Both are conversions.

Determine what your world of potential customers that you have had contact with looks like first, then you can determine your conversion rate.

Why Does It Matter?

If your business seeks money, which most do, conversion rate directly determines how much money you make compared to how much you could be making. You likely will not reach a 100% conversion rate, but knowing how well you perform will guide you towards making different choices. It also guides the choices you make already. If you run a website and get a 6% conversion rate from leads you receive from Facebook, but a 9% conversion rate on those that find your site through searching Google, you might find it wiser to spend some dollars on Google AdWords than on Facebook Advertising. The converse could also be true. If you don't know your conversion rate, though, you might be likely to spend half your budget on both,

How Do You Calculate It?

Conversion rate often gets measured against campaigns, or against a particular activity targeting a group. Perhaps you run an ad campaign. Or you send an email blast to your list. Or you actively target Facebook users. The conversion rate against those would be the total number of sales (count, not dollars) from that source divided by the total number exposed. So if you send an email to 100 list subscribers and 8 purchase the product, that's an 8% conversion rate.

Breaking It Down

Once you understand and put the basics in place, you can grow more granular with your metrics. Let's take the same example above. You sent an email to 100 list subscribers and 8 purchased. However, 50 read the email and 19 clicked on the link. So your conversion rate was 8%, but among those that read the email it was 16% and of those that clicked on the link, it was 42%. This level of breakdown lets you identify where you can improve, first in getting people to read your mail and second in improving the number of clicks on your link. You may see your percentages shift but your overall sales will increase.

So what's your conversion rate? It all starts with something to sell, doesn't it. Here's hoping you all have a great week.

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When Goliath Eats Goliath

If you've been reading the blog for a while, you know that I am a fan of beer. Usually, I'm seeking out some delicious craft beer when I am not brewing my own. I will, of course, consume a Bud Light hanging with friends, but I do generally seek out what I perceive as tastier options from some of the craft breweries popping up around the country (and several here locally in Dallas). However, the news story that Anheuser-Busch InBev last week made an offer to purchase SABMiller did not fly under the radar. The deal would reportedly give the merged company 60 percent of the global beer market and put them in charge of the top brands in the U.S. including Budweiser, Bud Light, Coors Light, and Miller Lite, unless challenged by the courts.

How Can Small Breweries Compete?

This story doesn't echo David and Goliath, because in this story, one Goliath merges with another Goliath to fight off a horde of ever-proliferating Davids. The small breweries have little to worry about in one sense, because their existence and success have, in a way, led to the merger. 

The trend in the past ten or fifteen years towards craft beer and breweries has disrupted the traditional market in a throwback to the pre-Prohibition competitive landscape. That shift has dramatically altered the competitive landscape for the large behemoths that had dominated the landscape for the previous seven decades or so. What's worse for the big guys, the smaller breweries tend to cooperate, collaborate, and support one another as they try to grow the share of the pie that they have access to, sometimes at the expense of the major brands.

Why Merge?

Why would the giants need to merge, though? It all comes down to growing organically versus inorganically. For the major beer producers to grow organically, some variables would have to change. 

They would need a larger market, but given regulations around alcohol consumption and general social norms, the market is likely not expanding rapidly enough to sustain a growth trajectory. 

Alternatively, they could be innovating, creating new beers to compete in the market, but much of their lifespan as a company, they have focused on mass market production, rather than creativity. They have attempted pushing competitors into the craft beer market, for sure, but the effort to launch a new brand at their global level does come with cost and substantial work. 

Inorganic growth provides a much easier approach. All you need is a big wallet, which they have. The majors have been gobbling up craft breweries for years, but this move allows for a huge boost to profits, probably looking for overlap and synergies in cost centers with a mere stroke of a pen. The ease makes it attractive.

What's Next?

The brewing industry continues to explode, and the uptick in craft competition across North America and the globe shows little sign of stopping anytime soon. But the explosion fits naturally in a boom-and-bust, grow-and-merge cycle. More and more competition will be created, some will succeed, some will fail. Among those successes, several will consolidate through mergers. 

The industry right now mirrors the telecom industry after the Telecommunications Act of 1996, where competitors to the "Baby Bells" were springing up in every corner of the United States. Here, twenty years later, only the largest of those competitors remain, many created through merging and inorganic growth of their own. 

Only time will tell if the independent entrepreneurial spirit of the craft brewers can hold out against ever-increasing offers from larger and larger competitors.

What's The Takeaway?

If you don't own a microbrewery, you might let this news slip on by. But the story contains lessons for those at all levels of a competitive landscape. 

For the giant incumbents, the market could change, or new and innovative competitors can arise that will dramatically erode your profits or growth. Where one competitor might only nip at your heels and fight with you over a percent of a percent of market share, four thousand of the same competitors become a serious problem.

For startups and competitors, the message could be one of hope. No matter how insurmountable the behemoths ruling the marketplace, your innovative approach could knock them down a peg. With many more of your peers competing, your landscape could be busy. And never, ever stop innovating.

Whatever your industry, continuous innovation and disruption of your existing market can keep you on your toes and away from complacency. How else could these trends relate to you? Let me know what you think.
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Building Your Team Around a Star Recruit

Every now and then, managers are faced with a unique opportunity: building a team from scratch. Usually, though, they are expanding slightly or replacing someone who has left the team, voluntarily or not. In some cases, the team acquires an extremely talented individual, which may require rethinking how to continue to build the team to function most efficiently. I may have been watching too much football lately, but most of the coaches and managers have the right idea on this front, namely, to build the team around the star recruit. But as a manager, how do you craft the team that way? Here are some ideas that can help you maximize the potential of your organization.

Play to Strengths

If you have identified a superstar, you know what talents make him or her particularly strong. He is completely organized and can keep the rest of the team in line. She has brilliant ideas that need a support structure to implement them. Take those strengths and balance them out with the rest of the team, providing the superstar with the resources needed to succeed. 

Defend the Weaknesses

Even superstars have faults. These may require a keener eye to identify, however, and might even be disguised. He sometimes underestimates time required to do tasks. She needs deadlines set explicitly to get things accomplished. Find a way to protect the team from the implications of these weaknesses. Utilize coaching on your part to help the individual grow and get better in those areas. Task a team member with filling in the holes (provide second guesses to his estimates, or provide her with reminders of the deadlines). Just don't let the weaknesses spread to the rest of the team.

Vary the Gameplan

Just like running the same play over and over can wear down a team and become predictable to their opponents, repeating the same process over and over again can become monotonous, dull, and outright life-sucking to the best, or worst, employees. Vary the approach from project to project. Swap responsibilities slightly between team members if they are capable. Use your power as the manager to guide and direct the team towards keeping fresh.

Focus the Skills

Resist the temptation to assign everything to the superstar. Likely in your mind, this will increase risk of failure on various projects. However, in reality, it should improve your chances of success. Your star player will still have a bandwidth cap, whether three projects or five or sixty-seven. Anything you assign above that cap will either not get done at all, or will diminish the quality of what gets done. Instead, spread the love around and keep your premier player focused on the areas where he or she adds the most direct benefit.

Relieve the Pressure

The burden of carrying a team can eventually bog down and burn out the performance of the strongest star player. You can relieve that pressure by hiring another superstar to share that load. Sometimes additional headcount is not a realistic option, though, so look at developing mentoring programs where your superstar can take a coworker under his or her wing and teach some of the unique skills to another.

Conclusion

If you stumble across a star player on your team, as a manager, you must maximize the opportunity for the team to take advantage of that person's strengths and weaknesses. This takes a careful balance of assigning activities and tasks around to other team members and making sure that you have recruited the appropriate skills to fill the positions around your star, as well as making sure that she or he has ample time to work. Difficult as it may be, the strategy will help maximize your team's performance and the star player's happiness.

Got another idea? I'd love to hear about it, if you want to reply by email or drop me a comment below. And don't forget to sign up on the email list if you haven't already to get notified when I drop a new post on the blog.

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Challenges and Change

A few weeks ago I tried an experiment. I set up an autoresponder on Twitter for the new people that were following me. I normally don't like autoresponders, but I thought I would give one a try and see if I could engage some people in conversation.

Basically, my autoresponder message asks all new followers what one thing could they change about their business to make the most impact.

The first thing I learned is that responses to autoresponders is incredibly low. I think I maybe got about 3 replies out of every 20 or 30 people. But I did learn some interesting things about what challenges entrepreneurs in the community.


  • Sales - Several people wished for more sales. I've heard the old expression "There are few problems that more sales can't fix" and that likely applies here. Basically, if you had more sales than you knew what to do with, you likely have the accompanying revenue stream that you can use to purchase help if you need it. But for most of these folks, I have tried to engage on whether or not they had a plan to address more sales. The good thing was that most did whether a combination of new marketing tactics additional reaching out to potential customers or something else. 
  • Marketing - Several others thought that more marketing would help; whether an unlimited budget which we know is fantasy-land or just an expanded reach for their marketing message. Again, most had a good plan but several could use some additional avenues. Perhaps doing joint venture marketing or trying to capitalize on some opportunities that might be out there. Enough people really struggle with marketing, and one thing I saw that they had in common was a hyper-focus on a single-channel of marketing. I fall in that trap, too, sometimes, whether trying to get more followers on Twitter, neglecting Facebook, etc., or just a focus on social media alone. Think about where you spend your marketing focus and try to add at least one new channel to it.
  • Hiring - The other major struggle entrepreneurs comments pointed to was a difficulty in hiring the right people. I've done some posts of late on some specific hiring scenarios, but some comments I engaged with lead me to believe that some general overviews might be helpful. Hiring challenges even the best managers, so that new entrepreneurs find it difficult does not surprise me.
As far as this experiment goes, I'll keep it going. I might even add a new question into the mix for some. If you haven't had a chance to answer, go follow me on Twitter then send me a reply to your incoming direct message.

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Enjoying the State Fair

Later today I'll be hitting the State Fair of Texas - home of Big Tex, rides, the Cotton Bowl, and some of the most ridiculous fried food concoctions known to humanity.

It's an annual tradition with us, particularly to consume the new winners of the annual food competition.

If you are interested in following along, I recommend you follow my Twitter account (at least for the afternoon of October 12).

Have a wonderful Monday!

Image credit: Scutter via Flickr courtesy Creative Commons Attrib. Non-Comm No Deriv
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Survey Results!

Back around 100 posts in the middle of August, I surveyed you, the audience, to get some sense of who you are and what you like or dislike about the blog. It's been a while, but I thought it might be fun to share some of the results now that I've closed the survey down.

I'll save the marketing demographic results, except to note that it was interesting to me to know that about half of you are likely reading this on your laptop and the other half are staring at your phone right now. So hi there! I've put a few links in here to tweet at me and let me know your thoughts. Feel free to use them!

I asked what topics you found most interesting, and here are the results in a visual word cloud format. If something's missing, click this link and let me know!

I also learned that only a few of you have actually gone out and recommended the site to your friends. While I am curious if that has changed (based on statistics) in the past couple of months, I would love to know how to make it exactly what you are looking for.



I was heartened (and also disheartened of course) to know that the survey was nobody's first post to stumble upon (and think, "What in the world is this?"), and that most responders had read several posts, if not every single one. If these survey results are your first post to read, though, I recommend you browse some of the older posts (maybe start with the really popular ones), and then subscribe to the email list to make sure you never miss another one!

Speaking of email lists - I also asked how many of you already subscribed to the email list. Here's what that looked like:

So, several of you answered "No, but I probably should be" to that one. Have you subscribed yet? If not, I've made it easy - there's a page right here where you just pop in your email address and get these lovely updates every day in your inbox to read at your leisure. Or you can do it up there at the top right hand of the page. Either way, I love those that subscribe by email because you can always reply back to me and let me know what you're thinking.

Have a great weekend everyone!
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5 More Tips To Be a Smoother Speaker

A couple of weeks ago, I gave you a few ideas on how you could become much more comfortable and natural as a public speaker. Everyone gets called on to speak, and how you execute a speech or presentation can have implications for your career, determining whether you make the sale, communicate what you need to on the project, or teach the masses what they came to hear you talk about. Chances are, you will need to speak in public, so here are five more tips to make it go well. (Tweet This!)

  1. Get rid of garbage words - Uncomfortable speakers often break up their content by throwing in "garbage words." You'd recognize these words as "uh," "um," "you know," "like," and various others that, when repeated, become a staccato chopping noise preventing the content from making its way through. While these phrases or words are usually uttered unconsciously, as your brain searches for the next section of content, they erode the fluency of the message and your credibility as well. It takes a strong conscious action to break this habit. Instead of throwing out "um," which appears that you don't know your content, force a pause, which gives the audience the idea that you are intentionally waiting for them to absorb your previous statement before moving on. Intentional pauses also provide nice breathing breaks for you and help to pace the content. If you cannot force yourself to ditch the words by yourself, give some practice speeches and have friends throw things at you when you use one of your crutch phrases.
  2. Don't read - I've commented before about how reading content to the group can make for a truly awful meeting. Reading content in place of a speech has the same effect. I have often heard people reading (primarily people uncomfortable with public speaking) and trying to thank a group of people or express gratitude for someone's hard work. Unfortunately for them, because they were reading, their delivery came across as insincere and absent all feeling. Even if they broke into a cold sweat, danced from foot to foot, and looked uncomfortable delivering the message, a person delivering the message spontaneously appears more genuine than someone reading the same message.
  3. Move around if you can - This one depends on your setting. Sometimes you are expected to present from behind a podium, and sometimes you are crammed in a tight conference room. But if you have the floor space, I recommend moving around a little. Don't pace, as that will make you seem more nervous than standing still. But use the movement to work the room, getting closer and more intimate with each side of an audience. A little walking around also loosens you up and makes the speech more like a discussion rather than a lecture. It also can keep your blood flowing (so you don't pass out like that kid on the third row of your middle school musical presentation).
  4. Use the crowd (feed off of feedback) - Crowds are alive. They can give you cues just like a person in a one on one conversation would. If a hush overtakes the room, your words have fixated the crowd or they are rolling their eyes at you and yawning as they have lost interest. Look for individuals who might actually be yawning. Body language will also tell you a lot. Those taking notes or sitting forward in their seats may be more in tune with your content. If the crowd laughs, shouts, applauds, or provides other feedback, work with it. Solicit it. You need to interact to be able to connect with your message and make sure it hits home.
  5. Use your hands, but not your arms (gestures) - In case you haven't figured it out by now, most tips on how to make your speeches smooth and fluid are about relaxing and engaging in a conversational style discussion with the audience. Imagine talking to a friend standing rigidly with your arms at your side or planted firmly in your pockets. The posture certainly does not invite engagement. Likewise, waving your arms wildly while conversing gives off more of the insanity vibe. Your sweet spot lies somewhere in the middle. Use your hands to gesture, motion, engage in the conversation, but don't go flailing your arms about like a mallard duck trying to take off. Be demonstrative, not distracting.
Do you have a speaking engagement coming up? Can you use some of these tips or even the overall concepts to make it better? What do you think? Leave a comment below and let me know.



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How to Get Away With Murder(ing Your Meetings)

I've written a few posts now on meetings, the omnipresent bane of office workers everywhere. We all hate them, and yet often, we all attend them without question. We sit through "death by PowerPoint" where slide after slide presents so little value to propelling business forward. We engage in endless discussion, entertaining the whims of those that just want to discuss rather than do. We allow meetings to clog as much as four out of five days on some of our calendars. So here's a thought: kill your meetings. Want to know how to get away with their murders? Try some of these tactics.

Pre-meditated Meeting Murder

Start by finding out the agenda for the meeting. If the meeting invite itself does not contain a detailed agenda, reach out to the meeting organizer and determine the specific purpose for the meeting. If you can, go so far as to ask, "What would we need to know to make this meeting not happen?" Then go and spend some effort gathering exactly that information and distributing it to the meeting participants. Suggest that you have everything covered and perhaps the meeting can be cancelled. If others raise objections, work to quash those before the meeting as well.

Get an Alibi

Wonder how to not attend so many meetings? Don't attend them. To be fair, if your calendar gets so full of meetings, popular meeting times will get booked over and over again. I remember a time when I had five meetings scheduled at the exact same time. Obviously I could not attend all five. While I tried to work with others to send some delegates to cover for me, some meetings just got dropped. To avoid that situation, you can just skip the meetings anyway, but you need a good reason. Consult with your management to understand if you have to attend a particular meeting and if the response is lukewarm, suggest what other work you will be able to accomplish if you can skip a particular meeting. Once you have agreement, you have air cover and a valid explanation if someone decides to escalate why you weren't in a particular meeting. Let the meeting organizer know that you will not be making it and offer to provide feedback in advance if required. Make sure you have that alibi and management approval, though, or you will come out looking like a slacker or incompetent at managing your schedule.

Hide the Body

I recommend scheduling time on your calendar to actually do work, rather than just maintaining an endless to do list that you keep snoozing. However, scheduling time on your calendar also has an added benefit: it blocks out time in your calendar, where you look less available for meetings. You will still have to move and reschedule your personal work from time to time to make room for a meeting you actually need to attend, but it may cause you to have a little more time to work in between.

Colonel Mustard With the Lead Pipe in the Ballroom

If you do end up in the meeting, you can still try to kill it, but recognize you are in a public place and will have to bludgeon it repeatedly. Work as both a contributor and a pseudo-facilitator to help drive the meeting to the objective. Use phrases like "here's what we're trying to accomplish" and "can we keep on point" to guide the meeting to a particular end. Tag team with the meeting organizer to drive the meeting towards a decision and closure. Give yourself bonus points for every five minutes you can shave off the meeting. Don't be rude, as that will hurt your ability to persuade others to join your cause, but be firm and direct in your facilitation. 

Avoiding Double Jeopardy

Once the meeting ends, do everything in your power to avoid a "follow-up" meeting. Ask questions: "Why do we need a follow-up?" or "What more do we need to talk about?" If the facilitator schedules the follow-up anyway, use one of the above tactics to try to kill it if you can. Make sure someone (you if not the facilitator) takes excellent notes in meetings and distributes them afterwards with highlighted actions, timelines, and decisions.

Conclusion

You cannot kill every meeting. Sometimes you will be forced to serve time in the conference room or on the web share and bridge. But with some practice and effort, you can start to reduce the time that meetings take up on your calendar and force yourself and your teammates into a productive rhythm in between. Got any other tips for killing meetings and getting away with it? I'd love to hear about them. If you are on the email subscription list, hit reply and let me know. If you're not, you should sign up now, but also drop me your answer on Twitter.

Image Credit: ClkerFreeVectorImages via Pixabay
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