21 Tips for Productivity

Ready for explosive productivity so you get big things done (and make your life matter).

Here are 21 tips to get you to your best productivity:

#1. Check email in the afternoon so you protect the peak energy hours of your mornings for your best work.

#2. Stop waiting for perfect conditions to launch a great project. Immediate action fuels a positive feedback loop that drives even more action.

#3. Remember that big, brave goals release energy. So set them clearly and then revisit them every morning for 5 minutes.

#4. Mess creates stress (I learned this from tennis icon Andre Agassi who said he wouldn't let anyone touch his tennis bag because if it got disorganized, he'd get distracted). So clean out the clutter in your office to get more done.

#5. Sell your TV. You're just watching other people get successful versus doing the things that will get you to your dreams.

#6. Say goodbye to the energy vampires in your life (the negative souls who steal your enthusiasm).

#7. Run routines. When I studied the creative lives of massively productive people like Stephen King, John Grisham and Thomas Edison, I discovered they follow strict daily routines. (i.e., when they would get up, when they would start work, when they would exercise and when they would relax). Peak productivity's not about luck. It's about devotion.

#8. Get up at 5 am. Win the battle of the bed. Put mind over mattress. This habit alone will strengthen your willpower so it serves you more dutifully in the key areas of your life.

#9. Don't do so many meetings. (I've trained the employees of our FORTUNE 500 clients on exactly how to do this - including having the few meetings they now do standing up - and it's created breakthrough results for them).

#10. Don't say yes to every request. Most of us have a deep need to be liked. That translates into us saying yes to everything - which is the end of your elite productivity.

#11. Outsource everything you can't be BIW (Best in the World) at. Focus only on activities within what I call "Your Picasso Zone".

#12. Stop multi-tasking. New research confirms that all the distractions invading our lives are rewiring the way our brains work (and drop our IQ by 5 points!). Be one of the rare-air few who develops the mental and physical discipline to have a mono-maniacal focus on one thing for many hours. (It's all about practice).

#13. Get fit like Madonna. Getting to your absolute best physical condition will create explosive energy, renew your focus and multiply your creativity.

#14. Workout 2X a day. This is just one of the little-known productivity tactics that I'll walk you through in my new online training program YOUR PRODUCTIVITY UNLEASHED (details at the end of this post) but here's the key: exercise is one of the greatest productivity tools in the world. So do 20 minutes first thing in the morning and then another workout around 6 or 7pm to set you up for wow in the evening.

#15. Drink more water. When you're dehydrated, you'll have far less energy. And get less done.

#16. Work in 90 minute blocks with 10 minute intervals to recover and refuel (another game-changing move I personally use to do my best work).

#17. Write a Stop Doing List. Every productive person obsessively sets To Do Lists. But those who play at world-class also record what they commit to stop doing. Steve Jobs said that what made Apple Apple was not so much what they chose to build but all the projects they chose to ignore.

#18. Use your commute time. If you're commuting 30 minutes each way every day - get this: at the end of a year, you've spent 6 weeks of 8 hour days in your car. I encourage you to use that time to listen to fantastic books on audio + excellent podcasts and valuable learning programs. Remember, the fastest way to double your income is to triple your rate of learning.

#19. Be a contrarian. Why buy your groceries at the time the store is busiest? Why go to movies on the most popular nights? Why hit the gym when the gym's completely full? Do things at off-peak hours and you'll save so many of them.

#20. Get things right the first time. Most people are wildly distracted these days. And so they make mistakes. To unleash your productivity, become one of the special performers who have the mindset of doing what it takes to get it flawless first. This saves you days of having to fix problems.

#21. Get lost. Don't be so available to everyone. I often spend hours at a time in the cafeteria of a university close to our headquarters. I turn off my devices and think, create, plan and write. Zero interruptions. Pure focus. Massive results.

Stay productive.

www.IndigoOceans.com

Need for Achievement

Need for achievement is not just an expression but an area of study in Psychology. This desire known as N-Ach can be tested in personality tests such as an AVA and TAT. For Managers, Business Owners and Senior execs, being able to determine N-Ach and Grit should be taken into consideration when recruiting and promoting people talent.

Need for achievement (N-Ach) refers to an individual's desire for significant accomplishment, mastering of skills, control, or high standards. The term was first used by Henry Murray^[1] and associated with a range of actions. These include: "intense, prolonged and repeated efforts to accomplish something difficult. To work with singleness of purpose towards a high and distant goal. To have the determination to win". The concept of NAch was subsequently popularised by the psychologist David McClelland.^{[citation needed]}
Need for Achievement is related to the difficulty of tasks people choose to undertake. Those with low N-Ach may choose very easy tasks, in order to minimize risk of failure, or highly difficult tasks, such that a failure would not be embarrassing. Those with high N-Ach tend to choose moderately difficult tasks, feeling that they are challenging, but within reach.
People high in N-Ach are characterised by a tendency to seek challenges and a high degree of independence. Their most satisfying reward is the recognition of their achievements. Sources of high N-Ach include:

1. Parents who encouraged independence in childhood
2. Praise and rewards for success
3. Association of achievement with positive feelings
4. Association of achievement with one's own competence and effort, not luck
5. A desire to be effective or challenged
6. Intrapersonal Strength 

Theory

The pioneering research work of the Harvard Psychological Clinic in the 1930s, summarised in Explorations in Personality, provided the start point for future studies of personality, especially those relating to needs and motives. David C. McClelland's and his associates' investigations of achievement motivation have particular relevance to the emergence of leadership. McClelland was interested in the possibility of deliberately arousing a motive to achieve in an attempt to explain how individuals express their preferences for particular outcomes — a general problem of motivation. In this connection, the need for achievement refers to an individual's preference for success under conditions of competition. The vehicle McClelland employed to establish the presence of an achievement motive was the type of fantasy a person expressed on the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), developed by Christiana Morgan and Henry Murray, who note in Explorations in Personality that "...when a person interprets an ambiguous social situation he is apt to expose his own personality as much as the phenomenon to which he is attending... Each picture should suggest some critical situation and be effective in evoking a fantasy relating to it" (p531). The test is composed of a series of pictures that subjects are asked to interpret and describe to the psychologist. The TAT has been widely used to support assessment of needs and motives.^[2]

The procedure in McClelland's initial investigation was to arouse in the test audience a concern with their achievement. A control group was used in which arousal was omitted. In the course of this experiment, McClelland discovered through analyzing the stories on the TAT that initial arousal was not necessary. Instead, members of the control group — individuals who had had no prior arousal — demonstrated significant differences in their stories, some writing stories with a high achievement content and some submitting stories with a low achievement content. Using results based on the Thematic Apperception Test, McClelland demonstrated that individuals in a society can be grouped into high achievers and low achievers based on their scores on what he called "N-Ach".^[2]

McClelland and his associates have since extended their work in fantasy analysis to include different age groups, occupational groups, and nationalities in their investigations of the strength of need for achievement. These investigations have indicated that the N-Ach score increases with a rise in occupational level. Invariably, businessmen, managers, and entrepreneurs are high scorers. Other investigations into the characteristics of the high achievers have revealed that accomplishment on the job represents an end in itself; monetary rewards serve as an index of this accomplishment. In addition, these other studies found that the high achievers, though identified as managers, businessmen, and entrepreneurs, are not gamblers. They will accept risk only to the degree they believe their personal contributions will make a difference in the final outcome.^[3]

These explorations into the achievement motive seem to turn naturally into the investigation of national differences based on Max Weber's thesis that the industrialization and economic development of the Western nations were related to the Protestant ethic and its corresponding values supporting work and achievement. McClelland and his associates have satisfied themselves that such a relationship, viewed historically through an index of national power consumption, indeed exists. Differences related to individual, as well as to national, accomplishments depend on the presence or absence of an achievement motive in addition to economic resources or the infusion of financial assistance. High achievers can be viewed as satisfying a need for self-actualization through accomplishments in their job assignments as a result of their particular knowledge, their particular experiences, and the particular environments in which they have lived.^[4]

Measurement

The techniques McClelland and his collaborators developed to measure N-Ach, N-Affil and N-Pow (see McClelland et al., 1958) can be viewed as a radical break with the dominant psychometric tradition. However, it should be recognised that McClellend's thinking was strongly influenced by the pioneering work of Henry Murray, both in terms of Murray's model of human needs and motivational processes (1938) and his work with the OSS during World War Two. It was during this period that Murray introduced the idea of "situation tests" and multi-rater / multi-method assessments. It was Murray who first identified the significance of Need for Achievement, Power and Affiliation and placed these in the context of an integrated motivational model.

Whilst trait-based personality theory assume that high-level competencies like initiative, creativity, and leadership can be assessed using “internally consistent” measures (see psychometrics), the McClelland measures recognize that such competencies are difficult and demanding activities which will neither be developed nor displayed unless people are undertaking activities they care about (i.e. are strongly motivated to undertake). Furthermore, it is the cumulative number of independent, but cumulative and substitutable, components of competence they bring to bear while seeking to carry out these activities that will determine their success. Accordingly, the N-Ach, N-Aff and N-Pow scoring systems simply count how many components of competence people bring to bear whilst carrying out activities they have a strong personal inclination (or motivation) to undertake.

An important corollary is that there is no point in trying to assess people’s abilities without first finding out what they care about. So one cannot (as some psychometricians try to do) assess such things as “creativity” in any general sense. One has always to ask “creativity in relation to what?” So McClelland’s measures, originally presented as means of assessing “personality”, are best understood as means of measuring competence in ways which break radically with traditional psychometric approaches. (See Raven (2001) for a fuller discussion).

How Collaboration and Social Networks Improve Productivity

Report|McKinsey Global Institute

The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies

July 2012 | by Michael Chui, James Manyika, Jacques Bughin, Richard Dobbs, Charles Roxburgh, Hugo Sarrazin, Geoffrey Sands and Magdalena Westergren

In a few short years, social technologies have given social interactions the speed and scale of the Internet. Whether discussing consumer products or organizing political movements, people around the world constantly use social-media platforms to seek and share information. Companies use them to reach consumers in new ways too; by tapping into these conversations, organizations can generate richer insights and create precisely targeted messages and offers.

Social media’s untapped productivity payoff

MGI principal Michael Chui discusses the potential value in using social tools to enhance communications, knowledge sharing, and collaboration within and across enterprises.

While 72 percent of companies use social technologies in some way, very few are anywhere near to achieving the full potential benefit. In fact, the most powerful applications of social technologies in the global economy are largely untapped. Companies will go on developing ways to reach consumers through social technologies and gathering insights for product development, marketing, and customer service. Yet the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) finds that twice as much potential value lies in using social tools to enhance communications, knowledge sharing, and collaboration within and across enterprises. MGI’s estimates suggest that by fully implementing social technologies, companies have an opportunity to raise the productivity of interaction workers—high-skill knowledge workers, including managers and professionals—by 20 to 25 percent.

MGI’s report, The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies, explores their potential economic impact by examining their current usage and evolving application in four commercial sectors: consumer packaged goods, retail financial services, advanced manufacturing, and professional services. These technologies, which create value by improving productivity across the value chain, could potentially contribute $900 billion to $1.3 trillion in annual value across the four sectors.

Two-thirds of this potential value lies in improving collaboration and communication within and across enterprises. The average interaction worker spends an estimated 28 percent of the workweek managing e-mail and nearly 20 percent looking for internal information or tracking down colleagues who can help with specific tasks. But when companies use social media internally, messages become content; a searchable record of knowledge can reduce, by as much as 35 percent, the time employees spend searching for company information. Additional value can be realized through faster, more efficient, more effective collaboration, both within and between enterprises.

The amount of value individual companies can capture from social technologies varies widely by industry, as do the sources of value. Companies that have a high proportion of interaction workers can realize tremendous productivity improvements through faster internal communication and smoother collaboration. Companies that depend very heavily on influencing consumers can derive considerable value by interacting with them in social media and by monitoring the conversations to gain a richer perspective on product requirements or brand image—for much less than what traditional research methods would cost.
To reap the full benefit of social technologies, organizations must transform their structures, processes, and cultures: they will need to become more open and nonhierarchical and to create a culture of trust. Ultimately, the power of social technologies hinges on the full and enthusiastic participation of employees who are not afraid to share their thoughts and trust that their contributions will be respected. Creating these conditions will be far more challenging than implementing the technologies themselves.

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/mgi/research/technology_and_innovation/the_social_economy

The happy secret to better work

How cool is Tedx? Here is Shawn Achor who studies positive psychology and it's impact on productivity.

http://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work.html

All In: It’s Culture that Drives Results

In the New York Times, Stephen I. Sadove, chairman and chief executive of Saks Inc., explains that it is culture that drives results:

It starts with leadership at the top, which drives a culture. Culture drives innovation and whatever else you’re trying to drive within a company — innovation, execution, whatever it’s going to be. And that then drives results.

When I talk to Wall Street, people really want to know your results, what are your strategies, what are the issues, what it is that you’re doing to drive your business. They’re focused on the bottom line. Never do you get people asking about the culture, about leadership, about the people in the organization. Yet, it’s the reverse, because it’s the people, the leadership, the culture and the ideas that are ultimately driving the numbers and the results.

While we know that our most important resource is our people, it’s not so easy to get people “all in”—convincing people to “truly buy into their ideas and the strategy they’ve put forward, to give that extra push that leads to outstanding results.”

All In by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton explains why some managers are able to get their employees to commit wholeheartedly to their culture and give that extra push that leads to outstanding results and how managers at any level, can build and sustain a profitable, vibrant work-group culture of their own. All In takes the principles found in their previous books—The Orange Revolution and The Carrot Principle—and expands on them and places them in a wider context.

They begin by explaining that it all rests on the “belief factor.” People want to believe, but given the fact that “failure could cost them their future security why shouldn’t they be at least a little dubious about your initiatives?” But belief is key. “As leaders we must first allow people on our teams to feel like valuable individuals, respecting their views and opening up to their ideas and inputs, even while sharing a better way forward. It’s a balancing act that requires some wisdom.”

To have a culture of belief employees must feel not only engaged, but enabled and energized. What’s more, “each element of E+E+E can be held hostage by an imbalance in the other two.”

The authors have created a 7 step guide to develop a culture where people buy-in:

Define your burning platform. “Your ability to identify and define the key “burning” issue you face and separate it from the routine challenges of the day is the first step in galvanizing your employees to believe in you and in your vision and strategy.”

Create a customer focus. “Your organization must evolve into one that not only rewards employees who spot customer trends or problems, but one that finds such challenges invigorating, one that empowers people at all levels to respond with alacrity and creativity.”

Develop agility. “Employees are more insistent than ever that their managers see into the future and do a decent job of addressing the coming challenges and capitalizing on new opportunities.”

Share everything. “When we aren’t sure what’s happening around us, we become distrustful….In a dark work environment, where information is withheld or not communicated properly, employees tend to suspect the worst and rumors take the place of facts. It is openness that drives out the gray and helps employees regain trust in culture.”

Partner with your talent. “Your people have more energy and creativity to give. There are employees now in your organization walking around with brilliant ideas in their pocket. Some will never share them because they don’t have the platform to launch those ideas on their own. Most, however, will never reveal them because they don’t feel like a partner in the organization.”

Root for each other. “Our research shows incontrovertible evidence that employees respond best when they are recognized for things they are good at and for those actions where they had to stretch. It is this reinforcement that makes people want to grow to their full shape and stature.”

Establish clear accountability. “To grow a great culture, you need to cultivate a place where people have to do more than show up and fog a mirror; they have to fulfill promises—not only collectively but individually.” And this has to be a positive idea.

Gostick and Elton explain that the “modern leader provides the why, keeps an ear close to those they serve, is agile and open, treats their people with deference, and creates a place where every step forward is noted and applauded.”

The authors skillfully examine high-performing cultures and present the elements that produce them. A leader at any level can implement these ideas to drive results. A great learning tool.

To succeed, you need everyone on your team all in; you need a culture of belief. A high performing culture is characterized by people that are engaged, enabled and energized. http://www.leadershipnow.com/leadingblog/2012/04/all_in_its_culture_that_drives.html

The Truth About Sleep & Productivity

Working overtime doesn't increase your output. It makes you stupid.
By Margaret Heffernan

Arianna Huffington talks often about how the key to her productivity is sleep.

It's a smart suggestion, not least because so many of us still imagine that the more we work, the more productive we are. For over a hundred years or more, this has been deemed nonsense.

The first productivity studies were conducted by Ernst Abbe at the Zeiss lens laboratories in the 1880s. They indicated what every other productivity study has shown since: that, up to around 40 hours a week, we're all pretty productive but, after that, we become less able to deliver reliable, cost-effective work. Why? Because when we get tired, we make mistakes—and the extra hours we put in are absorbed by correcting our errors. This is demonstrably true in industries like software coding, in which mistakes can cost a lot of time to put right. But it is equally true in manufacturing where more units of production also mean more flaws and waste.

Even though the data around productivity has proved pretty remorseless, humans have found the message hard to accept. It seems so logical that two units of work will produce twice the output. Logical but wrong. The critical measure of work isn't and never should be input but output. What matters isn't how many hours your team puts in, but the quality and quantity of work they produce.
Which is where sleep comes in. Although we might all like to imagine that we can work happily through the night, once again the data's all against us. Lose just one night's sleep and your cognitive capacity is roughly the same as being over the alcohol limit. Yet we regularly hail as heroes the executives who take the red eye, jump into a rental car, and zoom down the highway to the next meeting. Would we, I wonder, be so impressed if they arrived drunk?

The reason sleep is so important is because fatigue isn't simple. When we are tired, our performance doesn't degrade equally. Instead, when you lose a night's sleep, the parietal and occipital lobes in your brain become less active. The parietal lobe integrates information from the senses and is involved in our knowledge of numbers and manipulation of objects. The occipital lobe is involved in visual processing. So the parts of our mind responsible for understanding the world and the data around us start to slow down. This is because the brain is prioritizing the thalamus—the part of your brain responsible for keeping you awake. In evolutionary terms, this makes sense. If you're driven to find food, you need to stay awake and search, not compare recipes.
After 24 hours of sleep deprivation, there is an overall reduction of six percent in glucose reaching the brain. (That's why you crave donuts and candy.) But the loss isn't shared equally; the parietal lobe and the prefrontal cortex lose 12 percent to 14 percent of their glucose. And those are the areas we most need for thinking: for distinguishing between ideas, for social control, and to be able to tell the difference between good and bad.
I've sat in many boardrooms through the night, at the end of which seriously bad deals were done, I've seen the cost of sleep deprivation. Not just in bad tempers, bad diets, and bad decisions. But in the loss of truly productive work and discussion that could have been less heroic but a lot more valuable.

Top 18 tips (yes 18) on how to get and stay productive

Do you ever find that your day runs away from you? Here are some tips on getting and staying productive.

1. Start your day with at least 30 minutes of exercise.

2. Turn off all technology for 60 minutes a day and focus on doing your most important work.

3. Turn your Blackberry/Smartphone to silence. It steals your focus and creates unecessary interuptions.

4. Don't check your email first thing in the morning.

5. Turn all your electronic notifications off.

6. Take one day a week as a complete recovery day, to refuel and regenerate (that means no email, no phone calls and zero work). You need full recovery one day a week otherwise you'll start depleting your capabilities.

7. The data says workers are interrupted every 11 minutes. Distractions destroy productivity. Learn to protect your time and say no to interruptions.

8. Schedule every day of your week even Sunday morning. A plan relieves you of the torment of choice (said novelist Saul Bellow). It restores focus and provides energy. Organization is the key to productivity.

9. Work in blocks of time. Creative geniuses all had 2 things in common: when they worked they were fully engaged and when they worked, they worked with this deep concentration for long periods of time. Rare in this world of entrepreneurs who can't sit still.

10. Drink a liter of water early every morning. We wake up dehydrated. The most precious asset of an entrepreneur isn't time - it's energy. Water restores it.

11. Don't answer your phone every time it rings.

12. Invest in your professional development so you bring more value to the hours you work. Keep it fresh.

13. Avoid gossip and time thieves.

15. Keep a "Stop Doing List".

16. Get up early. 5 am....6 am... be productive before most people are out of bed.

17. Have in office days and out of office days. The inertia of the road is good but if you do it everyday it interrupts your opportunity to focus on in office activities.

18. Do the things you hate to do first thing in the morning. Just get them done and over with. Then they won't cloud your subconscious all day

It's challenging to be 100% productive every day but just like other commitments in life, you take your best run at it!

Dealing with Specific Types of Difficult People

Tim McClintock, PMP, Global Knowledge Instructor

Introduction
About 10% of the typical workforce falls into the “Difficult People” category. Some people are "surprised it's so little!" Sometimes it feels like they are everywhere! What is a difficult person? Perhaps the better question is: what is a difficult person for you? Perhaps it's someone who is disruptive. Or . . . it might be someone who is too quiet and hard to draw out; not a good listener and always interrupts; someone who bullies and is very abrupt.

The effects they have on the organization vary greatly, but usually involve the following: Low moral, increased conflict, group attitude goes as their attitude goes, intimidation, insults, team demoralization, decreased productivity, rising costs, increasing project risks, need for additional resources, etc.

What happens to you when you deal with a Difficult Person? Everyone has a slightly different reaction, but some common reactions include a rise in blood pressure, racing heart, lump in the throat, "fight, flight, or freeze" syndrome,” or getting red-in-the-face.

One thing you can be sure of: If you don't do something about the "thing" that someone is doing that makes them difficult for you, you'll continue to get more of it.

What Are the Different Types of Difficult People?

There are many types of difficult people. In general, they can be rolled into these main groups:

The Steamroller

This is the bully of the group - always interrupting, insulting, and yelling.We all know those types.

The Sniper

These are the folks who hide in the back of room, always sniping - taking shots at everyone, constantly nitpicking back at you, sending out comments, etc. They always want to do this from "under cover." If you call them on it they say, "Oh, I'm just kidding," or, "Can't ya take a joke?" or, "I didn't say anything!" They always have a comment.

The "Can't Say No" Person.

Will not say no to work. The problem is they won't say no, they won't say no, they won't say no . . . and then they finally just collapse!

The Know-It-All

Do I have to say anything else? Need I say more? They know it all!

The Complainer

Chronic complainers! Chronic whiners! To them, life is one big complaint!

The Staller

The Indecisive Staller. This is the person who just will not make a decision. They will not commit to anything; they are always stalling.

Time To Take Action!

No matter which one of these personality types is the difficult person for you, you must learn to effectively deal with them.

Dealing with Specific Types of Difficult People

So that leads to the question: How do you deal with these difficult types of people?

Dealing with the Steamroller

When dealing with a steamroller, also known as the verbal "big bully," stay calm. Typically, they are trying to "rile you up," wanting you to elevate your emotions to their level. Don't let them do it. Keep eye contact with them. Remain assertive. Let them go on and on, let them unwind. Then when they spool down a bit, interrupt them!

When you interrupt them, you will have the chance you need to become assertive. That's when you pick up the ball. One effective approach is close to Muhammad Ali's Rope-A-Dope! Muhammad Ali was known to have the ability take a great many punches to his mid-section. He would lean against the ropes, and let his opponent "box himself out"/get tired. He would wait for his opportunity, and then, BAM! He would knock them out. In a similar fashion, you should do the same thing verbally when dealing with the steamroller. Allow them to verbally wear themselves out, and then, when you see your opportunity, BAM! You take your turn.

Call them by name, and then say, "OK, now wait a minute, I have something to say. I've been listening to you, now you listen to me." You will start, and what will happen? They will interrupt! What should you do? Be assertive! Say, "Hey, I said wait a minute. I listened to you, now it's my turn." Don't back down! That's what they expect! Also remember to keep eye contact. Just don't back down. You may not "win" the argument or
discussion, but once you stand up to them, they typically will become your best buddy. It only takes one time!

They may still bully other people on your team, but they won't bully you any longer. By going "toe to toe" with them, you may have just earned their respect.

Dealing with the Sniper

Again, these are the folks who hide in the back of room, sending out comments, always sniping, taking shots at everyone, constantly nit-picking back at you. Think back to your high school classroom days. What would your teacher do with these guys? Most of the time, the teacher would call them out. For example, the teacher may say something like, "Excuse me, did you have something to say? Something to share with the entire class?" Of course they would rarely, if ever, stand up and say anything; they would always back down and say something like, "Oh, no, I was just kidding," or, "No, I don't have anything to share."
This approach works most of the time. Call them out; don't let them get away with it. Clarify: "Excuse me, but I thought I heard something in that comment. Do you have something to share with everyone in the meeting?"

One word of caution: be careful. Most of the time they will stop their sniping behavior, but occasionally they will shift gears and become the bully - the "Steamroller." But now you know what to do with a bully.

Simply switch tactics, do your own version of the "rope-a-dope," wait for your opportunity, and then when it's time, seize the moment.

Dealing with the "Can't Say No" Person

This is the person who has a hard time saying no, especially as it relates to work assignments. They will attempt to undertake any assignment, even those given to them by people other than their own boss.

Why would they do this? Some people really are afraid to say no. They are afraid to be seen as incompetent or unable to carry enough of the load. Some people simply do not know their limits, or worse, they ignore them.

In other situations, it is because the employee is a rookie on the team and doesn't want to let the others down; for others it is a personality issue, or even the result of the culture in which they were raised. In some cultures, saying no is highly discouraged. As a result, people raised in this environment have a hard time when it comes to balancing the work-load effectively.

In dealing with the "Can't Say No" person, the first thing you want to do is to build a relationship with them.You need to earn their trust and get them to be comfortable with you. Then, let them know what you are concerned about.

Once you have built a good level of trust, you can begin by asking questions that are designed to help them understand that they are out of balance. Be careful, though, as they will often be very sensitive. In their mind, they are doing a really good thing. From their point of view, if they were not doing the work, it really would not get accomplished. Quite often though, even if they do manage to complete all of the work that they have taken on, the quality of that work will suffer.

Occasionally you will find the "Can't Say No" person who is able to accomplish all the work with an acceptable, and even excellent, quality level. The problem here is that rarely will they be able to maintain that momentum, and they will eventually burn out. At that point, they will be of no use to the team, but more importantly, they will have done harm to themselves. Recovery from a true burnout stage is more than difficult.

Our goal is to prevent the "Can't Say No" person from ever reaching anything close to that stage. There are several things that you, as the boss, can do that will be helpful.

You can make suggestions for alternatives; there may be many people who can do the work that they have taken on, but they will not see that. You can point out the obvious, but quite often you will need to become their work filter. You will tell them that they are only allowed to take on work assignments that are passed through you. No one is allowed to give them an assignment that does not come by your desk first. They will resist this, because they will feel it to be an embarrassment. They will try to stall you and put you off. Just be firm, and reassure them that things will be fine, but they must continue to trust you.

You will need to keep on top of them, continually getting agreement that this is the best approach. You need to be their sanity checker. You can do a workload histogram to show them exactly how much work they have been doing. This will show them exactly how much they have been out of balance. It's almost like a 12-step program. They need to learn in baby steps that it's okay to say no, at times, and the world really will continue.
The work really will get done.

Dealing with the Know-It-All

In dealing with the Know-It-All, here are some bottom-line items to be aware of.

Typically, they have been around a long time, and they do know a lot. So, make sure you know your stuff, because if you don't, they will point it out very quickly. Recognize it, and respect it, but show them that maybe their ideas aren't always the right answer or the right way.

The typical Know-It-All tends to be a bit of a bully as well. They have their idea, and they just won't let it go. You can try saying things like, "That's a really good point, but have you thought of this? What if this or that happens?" Basically, you need help them see the alternatives. Will they ever admit they are wrong? Typically, not. It's like trying to catch a greased pig. Most of the time, it's not going to happen.

If you find yourself dealing with a Know-It-All in a meeting, ignore the temptation to make them look bad. Do not alienate them. Throw an idea out there, and let it sit for a minute. Sometimes they may actually come around to it, but quite often, they will want to spin it so that it will seem as if it were their idea. And you know what? That is okay sometimes. Occasionally, selling an idea someone else wants to take credit for, once in a while, is okay. Your job is done, and the elimination of conflict will be better in the long run.

Dealing with the Complainer

Understand that to them, life is one big complaint. Complainers typically come in one of two delicious flavors.

The first type of Complainer really doesn't care about solutions; they just want someone to listen to them. They will come into your office in the morning, and they will talk, and talk, and talk, until you finally chase them out! Here's what you can do. Listen for a while, and then move them to a problem-solving alliance.

Acknowledge their feelings, deal with the emotions if necessary, but try to push them toward finding a problem-solving solution. You can say something like this, "Okay, I hear your dilemma. Let's see if we can solve it."

The secret is when you move into problem-solving, they will typically leave. Very quickly. They really don't want to solve anything. They just want to complain!

With the second type of complainer, it's a little bit different. These are the folks who complain because they are paralyzed - they really don't know what to do. When you move to problem-solving, you really will help them. One thing to be careful of though: don't facilitate their dependence on you, otherwise they will come back again and again for the very same issue or problem. As the saying goes, you can feed someone, or you can teach them to fish for themselves. If you fail to do that, it is now you who has an additional problem, one of time management. Learn to be upfront. Say, "Okay, I will show you this one time. Here's a pen and a sheet of paper; I'm going to talk, and you will take notes. I will show you this one time. I will stay here all day if necessary, but when we leave, I expect that you will really have 'gotten it'. I expect that you will be able to do this for yourself after this conversation, so make sure to pay attention and ask as many questions as you need to understand."

Use a tone that is gentle, yet firm at the same time. By having this conversation, you will actually have helped two people, you and them.

Dealing with the Staller

Ah, the Indecisive Staller. They don't want to upset anyone, which really means that they want to please everyone.

In their mind, the way to accomplish this is never to make a decision that ends up upsetting everyone!

They don't want to take a stand. Instead, they take the attitude that if they just leave the issue alone, it will go away. Yes, quite often it will go away, but only because someone else will have done the work, and now they're mad too!

One way of helping them is to discuss the benefits of deciding. Talk about all the good that comes through getting off the fence and making a decision: work actually is accomplished, people are happy, morale will go up, projects will be able to move forward, and they get to continue drawing a paycheck! Another thing you can do is discuss a few options with them. This is basically the old salesman’s trick. Instead of saying, "Would you like to buy the vacuum cleaner today?" you say, "Which of the vacuum cleaners will you be buying today, the red one or the blue one?" What you are doing is narrowing down their options, and forcing them to make a decision.

Summary

From our short analysis of difficult people, one definite conclusion can be drawn. If you don't do something about the difficult people in your life, you will simply continue to get more of their problematic behavior.

Whether it is the Steamroller, the Sniper, the Can't Say No person, the Know-It-All, the Complainer, or the Staller, you must take action. Be gentle, but be firm, and remember they are human, just like you are. But, after all, it's a place of business, and work needs to be accomplished. And in the accomplishment of that work, sometimes the more difficult conversations need to take place.

Top 10 tools for Small Business

If you are a small business, here are the top 10 things to implement in 2011:
1. CRM: How can you possibly know who you are selling to without it?

2. Twitter: Will improve your search engine ranking and introduce you to people you never would have met ither wise.

3. Linked In: Because your best referrals and potential new customers are from people you already know.

4. Blog: Become a thought leader, industry guru, a go to source for potential customers. How fun is that! 

5. Sales Training: If you have new employees or old dogs, sales training will net you more sales or help you realize you need to replace your sales force.

6. Monthly Employee Reviews: How else will people know if they are doing a good job or why they were managed out?

7. Employee Recognition Awards: Because this is the easiest low cost - high value campaign that will drive the right behavior.

8. Vendor Costs Review: Telecom, Wireless, office supplies – whatever your major expenses are. You are likely spending too much money. It may be easier to save a $ than earn a $ some months.

9. Customer Communication Strategy: If you aren't talking to your customers, someone else likely is. Email Marketing (like Constant Contact), Twitter, Face Book and phone calls help you be in the right place at the right time when folks are ready to buy.

10. Make your office fun! Comfortable and homey. It should be conducive to working, building solid relationships with colleagues and keeping employees on task. Life can be a hamster wheel. At least decorate the cage, maybe even offer a Hamster in a ball!

20 Top Reasons that Startups Fail

Here is an insightful article posted on Chubby Brain (love the name!) on why Start Ups fail. As a Sales, Marketing and Productivity organization, it's not surprising that poor marketing was #4 and ignoring customers was #1. Simple stuff that everyone knows but companies run out of bandwidth to execute on.

Enjoy!

_________________________________________________________________

We’d previously highlighted the top startup failure post-mortems of all-time here (32 in total) written by a group of startup entrepreneurs gracious enough to share their lessons learned from their startup’s failure. Many of you read those post-mortems and asked, what are the most common reasons for failure cited across those posts?


Well, we’ve done the work, and below are your answers. After a thorough analysis of those 32 start-up post-mortems, we have determined the common reasons founders gave to compile this list of the top 20 ways to have your startup fail. First, a handy chart to highlight the top 20 reasons for failure followed by an explanation of each reason and relevant examples from the the post-mortems.

If getting VC or angel money is one of the ways that will help you avoid failure, why not check out the free Funding Recommendation Engine here?

#20 – Start the company at the wrong time

Many companies that failed started during the recent financial crisis (and continues to suffer through), and some startups highlighted the larger market negativity as a reason for their ultimate demise. The negativity either impacted investment funding (venture capital fell off a cliff in 2009) or the customers they were targeted as was the case for Untitled Partners who were building a platform for fractional art ownership. In their post-mortem, on this topic, they wrote:

Our analysis was supported by articles in the Wall Street Journal and the NYT, as well as the Mei Moses art index, which suggested the art market was countercyclical and had a low correlation to the S&P. What we didn’t account for was the magnitude of the current correction and the effect that it would have on discretionary luxury spending even within a population that financially could still afford our product. We were obviously wrong about Untitled Partners’ ability to grow through the subsequent downturn.

#19 – Not working on it full time

Startups are hard. There even harder when you’re pulled in a couple of different directions aka a day job. This came through in several post-mortems. If you’re working another full-time job with nobody fully invested, you are running the risk of burning out, acting with less urgency and just not having enough hours in the day to get what you need done. Also, with another job, there is the risk that a team acts with less urgency given they have sources of income. The team over at Overto felt the lack of at least one full-time resource was the primary reason for their failure writing:

We thought we’d able to run internet service after hours. To some point that was true. As far as nothing bad was happening with the servers and the application it was all fine. We were working on new features when we had enough free time. Problems started when we faced some issues with our infrastructure. We weren’t able to resolve issues on the fly and had several downtimes. You can guess how it influenced user experience. That also backfired on service development since we had to focus on current problems instead of adding new functionalities. Lack of person working full-time and being able to deal with maintenance and bug fixing was the most important reason of failure.

#18 – Location, Location, Location

Location was an issue in two different ways. The first being that there has to be congruence between your startup’s concept and location. By way of crude example, if your building innovative trading software for Wall Street, be where you customers are and where you can best network. Location also played a role in failure for remote teams. The key being that if your team is working remotely, make sure you find effective communication methods; else lack of teamwork and planning could lead to failure. Location issues were given as a reason for failure 6% of the time. In their startup post-mortem, Nouncer discussed their decision to be in NY as one that hurt their company stating:

In my case, New York didn’t lack money, community, able workers, or smart people with good advice. It lacked the audience my product needed to succeed – the early adopters web hackers looking for the next cool toy to play with. I can count on one hand the number of people I’ve met in New York meetups and events that fit this description. In San Francisco one can find hacking events on a daily basis, as well as many unconference events where people get their hands dirty playing with code. This is a very specific audience dictated by my decision not to build a consumer product.

#17 – Be unable to Attract Investors

While this may be a cousin of reason #20 (starting the company at the wrong time), there was a group of founders who candidly expressed that their inability to attract investors was the reason for their ultimate demise. If there is no money out there for your idea, reassess whether there is a market for it, and reassess your approach.

#16 – Get outcompeted

Despite the platitudes that startups shouldn’t pay attention to the competition, the reality is that once an idea gets hot or gets market validation, there may be many entrants in a space. And while obsessing over the competition is not healthy, ignoring them was also a recipe for failure in 10% of the startup failures. Marc Hedlund of Wesabe talked about this in his post-mortem stating:

Between the worse data aggregation method and the much higher amount of work Wesabe made you do, it was far easier to have a good experience on Mint, and that good experience came far more quickly. Everything I’ve mentioned — not being dependent on a single source provider, preserving users’ privacy, helping users actually make positive change in their financial lives — all of those things are great, rational reasons to pursue what we pursued. But none of them matter if the product is harder to use, since most people simply won’t care enough or get enough benefit from long-term features if a shorter-term alternative is available.

#15 – Burn Out

Work life balance is not something that startup founders often get and so the risk of burning out is high. The ability to cut your losses where necessary and re-direct your efforts when you see a dead end was deemed important to succeeding and avoiding burnout as was having a solid, diverse and driven team so that responsibilities can be shared. Burning out was given as a reason for failure in 12+% of the startup failures. The post-mortem of Diffle talks about the impacts of burn out after one’s startup fails which was quite telling in that burn out doesn’t end when the startup is over. It lingers for a while as this post-mortem reveals:

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was flying when I closed down Diffle – running on pure adrenalin. Part of this was from working with the YC startup, and part was just that entrepreneurship tends to put you into this highly-focused, tunnel-vision state that feels just slighly unreal.

That all crashed down about a month later, which happened to be about a week and a half after I started the job hunt. I ended up getting rejected by FriendFeed, and then told the other companies that I wasn’t quite ready to go back into the employee world and needed a few months to figure out what I really wanted to do next.

For anyone faced with winding down a company, I’d highlyrecommend taking a while off before making any big decisions, and not just the two and a half weeks that I’d initially tried. You’re not thinking straight when your startup dies – your perspective may be a bit different in a few months, as might your preferences for what you want to do next.

#14 – Lose Focus – Distracted by Shiny Objects

Getting sidetracked with all the ‘could-bes’ was cited numerous times as a contributor to failure. It is important to get one thing out on the market and focus on one product else you risk ending up with too many almost finished products that are not valuable to customers or you. In the post-mortem of Kiko, Mahesh Piddshetti writes:

Most entrepreneurs have lots of ideas. Often times, many of them may be really good. I don’t know about you, but my favorite part about startups is talking about new products and new business ideas. If you’re a creative person, it’s very easy to get side-tracked on side ideas when you really should be working on your main one. This is bad. Bad, bad, bad. We did this a lot with Kiko, and it caused many delays in getting the product out the door.

#13 – Disharmony with Investors/Co-founders

Discord with a cofounder was one of the most fatal issues for a company. Bricabox cofounder advises, “When a co-founder walks out of a company — as was the case for me — you’ve already been dealt a heavy blow. Don’t exacerbate the issue by needing to figure out how to deal with large equity deadweight on your hands (investors won’t like that the #2 stakeholder is absent, even estranged, from your company). So, the best way of dealing with this issue is to take a long, long vesting period for all major sweat equity founders.”

But acrimony isn’t limited to the founding team, and when things go bad with an investor, it can get ugly pretty quickly as evidenced in the case of ArsDigital. Investors and founders did not see eye to eye on what was best for the company, and eventually investors began to run the company per this account of failure. The post-mortem of ArsDigita takes the cake for candor and illustrating in graphic detail what goes on when investors and startup management have a falling out from the startup’s perspective. Phillip Greenspun writes:

For roughly one year Peter Bloom (General Atlantic), Chip Hazard (Greylock), and Allen Shaheen (CEO) exercised absolute power over ArsDigita Corporation. During this year they
1.spent $20 million to get back to the same revenue that I had when I was CEO

2.declined Microsoft’s offer (summer 2000) to be the first enterprise software company with a .NET product (a Microsoft employee came back from a follow-up meeting with Allen and said “He reminds me of a lot of CEOs of companies that we’ve worked with… that have gone bankrupt.”)

3.deprecated the old feature-complete product (ACS 3.4) before finishing the new product (ACS 4.x); note that this is a well-known way to kill a company among people with software products experience; Informix self-destructed because people couldn’t figure out whether to run the old proven version 7 or the new fancy version 9 so they converted to Oracle instead)

4.created a vastly higher cost structure; I had 80 people mostly on base salaries under $100,000 and was bringing in revenue at the rate of $20 million annually. The ArsDigita of Greylock, General Atlantic, and Allen had nearly 200 with lots of new executive positions at $200,000 or over, programmers at base salaries of $125,000, etc. Contributing to the high cost structure was the new culture of working 9-5 Monday through Friday. Allen, Greylock, and General Atlantic wouldn’t be in the building on weekends and neither would the employees bother to come in.

5.surrendered market leadership and thought leadership

#12 – Do not use your connections

We often hear about startup entrepreneurs lamenting their lack of connections so we were surprised to see that one of the top reasons for failure was entrepreneurs who said they did not not properly utilize their own network. Whether it was for advice or introductions, almost 16% of the startup post-mortems stated that the team did not use their connections well enough, which led to failure. So what does this teach us? If you have a network (and everyone does), be judicious in using it, but be sure to use it.

#11 – Pricing Issues

Pricing is one part science, 10 parts art. And a dark art according to a large number of startups which failed and who attributed product pricing that was too high or too low to make money. For example one entrepreneur said, “It took a lot of key chains bought at 50 cents and sold for $1.25 just to pay the phone bill.” The founder of EventVue said that their deadly strategic mistake was that they “went after enterprise sales model with a non-recurring, small price.”

#10 – A “User Un-Friendly” Product

Not sure there is any revelation here, but bad things happen when you ignore a user’s wants and needs whether done consciously or accidentally.

#9 – Do not cut your losses a la Pivot at the right time

One of the most overused startup words of 2010 was Pivot, but pivoting away from a bad product, a bad hire, a bad decision, etc quickly enough was cited as a reason for failure often. Dwelling or being married to a bad idea is not a good way to allocate resources. It’s not just ideas – if you make a bad-hiring decision, take corrective action (euphemism for let them go) sooner than later. As soon as you see that your product is not getting a response in the market, think about what product changes might be necessary. Letting inertia and stubbornness limit your growth and ability to change your business model was cited as cause for failure almost 1/5 of the time.

#8 – Lack Passion and Domain Expertise

There are many good ideas out there in the world, but our startup post-mortem founders found that a lack of passion for a domain and a lack of knowledge of a domain were key reasons for failure no matter how good an idea is. The co-founder of Untitled Partners stated, “I underestimated the importance of a relationship between our corporate and personal identities. “About 18.8% of the time, the post-mortems cited lack of passion as a cause of failure. In their post-mortem, NewsTilt candidly spoke about their lack of interest in the domain they selected writing:

I think it’s fair to say we didn’t really care about journalism. We started by building a commenting product which came from my desire for the perfect commenting system for my blog [17]. This turned into designing the best damn commenting system ever, which led to figuring out an ideal customer: newspapers. While there, we figured they were never going to buy, and we figured out a product that people were dying to use if it existed.

But we didn’t really care about journalism, and weren’t even avid news readers. If the first thing we did every day was go to news.bbc.co.uk, we should have been making this product. But even when we had NewsTilt, it wasn’t my go-to place to be entertained, that was still Hacker News and Reddit. And how could we build a product that we were only interested in from a business perspective.

This compounded when we didn’t really know anything about the industry, or what readers wanted.

#7 – Release product at the wrong time

If you release your product too early, users may write it off as not good enough and getting them back may be difficult if their first impression of you was negative. And if you release your product too late, you may have missed your window of opportunity. “This requires balance, if it is a critical user-based website where users need to depend on it like Ebay or Mint.com, an outage could mean catastrophe. But if it a website like Twitter, an outage is a joke. Know your website, don’t take forever to get it to the market. But, if it’s critical then make sure its sound.” As Reid Hoffman said: “If you’re not somewhat embarrassed by your 1.0 product launch, then you’ve released too late“. This was cited as cause for failure more than 20% of the time.

#6 – I got this product. Now I just need a business model.

Sure Twitter gets away with not having a business model, but they’re not the norm. Perhaps we’re old school, but if there is not a plan to bring in more revenue than expenses, that’s a problem. Failed founders seem to agree that a business model is important. Unfortunately, in 1 of 4 failure post-mortems, the lack of a business model was cited as a reason for failure.

#5 – Ran out of cash

Money and time are finite and need to be allocated judiciously. The question of how should you spend your money was a frequent conundrum and reason for failure cited by failed startups. The decision on whether to spend significantly upfront to get the product off the group or develop gradually over time is a tough act to balance. The team at YouCastr cited money problems as the reason for failure but went on to highlight other reasons for shutting down vs. trying to raise more money writing:

The single biggest reason we are closing down (a common one) is running out of cash. Despite putting the company in an EXTREMELY lean position, generating revenue, and holding out as long as we could, we didn’t have the cash to keep going. The next few reasons shed more light as to why we chose to shut down instead of finding more cash.

#4 – Poor Marketing

Knowing your target audience and knowing how to get their attention and convert them to leads and ultimately customers is one of the most important skills of a successful business. Yet, in almost 30% of failures, ineffective marketing was a primary cause of failure. Oftentimes, the inability to market was a function of founders who liked to code or build product but who didn’t relish the idea of promoting the product. The folks at Devver highlighted the need to find someone who enjoys creating and finding distribution channels and developing business relationship for the company as a key need that startups should ensure they fill.

#3 – Not the right team

A diverse team with different skill sets was often cited as being critical to the success of a starti[ company. Failure post-mortems often lamented that “I wish we had a CTO from the start, or wished that the startup had “a founder that loved the business aspect of things”. In some cases, the founding team wished they had more checks and balances. As Nouncers founder stated, “This brings me back to the underlying problem I didn’t have a partner to balance me out and provide sanity checks for business and technology decisions made.” Wesabe founder also stated that he was the sole and quite stubborn decision maker for much of the enterprises life, and therefore he can blame no one but himself for the failures of Wesabe. Team deficiencies were given as a reason for startup failure almost 1/3 of the time.

#2 – Building a solution looking for a problem, i.e., not targeting a “market need”

Choosing to tackle problems that are interesting to solve rather than those that serve a market need was often cited as a reason for failure. Sure, you can build an app and see if it will stick, but knowing there is a market need upfront is a good thing. “Companies should tackle market problems not technical problems” according to the BricaBox founder. One of the main reasons BricaBox failed was because it was solving a technical problem. The founder states that, “While it’s good to scratch itches, it’s best to scratch those you share with the greater market. If you want to solve a technical problem, get a group together and do it as open source.”

#1 – Being inflexible and not actively seeking or using customer feedback

Ignoring your users is a tried and true way to fail. Yes that sounds obvious but this was the #1 reason given for failure amongst the 32 startup failure post-mortems we analyzed. Tunnel vision and not gathering user feedback are fatal flaws for most startups. For instance, ecrowds, a web content management system company, said that “ We spent way too much time building it for ourselves and not getting feedback from prospects — it’s easy to get tunnel vision. I’d recommend not going more than two or three months from the initial start to getting in the hands of prospects that are truly objective.”


So brave startups, you now know the top 20 reasons startups fail based on the experiences, generosity and candor of 32 of your fallen brethren. We hope this checklist will come in handy on your startup journey and that you’ll share it with other startup cofounders who may benefit from some of its key messages.

Special thanks to Chandni Shah, a Carnegie Mellon graduate, for her fantastic work poring through these post-mortems to compile this analysis and assist with this write-up.

Technology for Business: 5 significant trends for 2011

Would you recognize a significant IT business trend if you saw one? Over the years, many products, technologies and IT-related business trends have been hyped beyond their significance. But the killers are the ones that go unnoticed and wind up being transformational. It's difficult to know the difference, but there's an old journalism adage: Follow the money. With that in mind, here are five things to keep an eye on as we march toward 2011.

1. The recession is transformational. Since late 2008, many companies facing reduced top-line growth have eked out profits with deep cuts. In many cases, those savings have been held aside, awaiting the right moment. Odds are, that moment will come in 2011. For IT shops, business growth could require new technology, but additional IT resources may not be added as quickly. Senior IT leaders should be planning now how to meet the demands of anxious CEOs with smaller staffs and shorter timelines.

2. The spotlight remains on cost-saving technologies. Given the recession, it's no surprise that virtualization, the head-slappingly obvious money-saver that was hot well before the recession, is even hotter now. A year ago, Gartner named it the No. 1 technology for 2010, based on a survey of CIOs. I'd put it there again for 2011, followed by cloud computing , software as a service and, to a lesser degree, business analytics.

In Computerworld's Forecast 2011 survey, respondents said cloud computing is the most overhyped technology, but they also said it's No. 2 on the list of technologies with the most promise for 2011. Both sentiments are true. Cloud computing holds even more potential for cost savings than virtualization, but is it ready for prime time? And cost savings might not even be the cloud's main advantage. Its biggest benefit might be the fact that it makes it possible to provision server and storage capacity quickly.

3. Mobile is exploding. Everyone can see this. But are IT shops focused on the management, support and security challenges that come with mobile computing? A huge percentage of employees are bringing personal quick-access storage devices to work and putting sensitive documents and e-mails on them. And here come tablets. Over 30 new tablets were announced or delivered in 2010, and they're inexpensive enough that a lot of people are buying them.

4. Software is undergoing rapid change. Take the public-cloud phenomenon and stir in largely Web-based mobile applications, and you'll see the start of a software trend that could transform the way we work. When you connect meaningful enterprise data to tablet computers served via your data center, private cloud or hybrid cloud, you've got a transformational technology. For years we've been trying to unchain knowledge workers from their desks so they can interact with one another and work wherever they go. There is a potential to create near-real-time business communication without us having to work at that full time. The days of large, monolithic, LAN-connected, proprietary enterprise apps are numbered

5. Enterprise 2.0 will run its course. Crowdsourcing information (the real value of Web 2.0 for the enterprise) is a powerful tool. It's a simple way to help us avoid starting every new undertaking from scratch. It shapes ideas and provides valuable insights. And it's on its way to becoming pervasive. But it's not a technology; it's more like a business strategy. The hype surrounding Web 2.0 technologies will die down, and business use of these tools won't be thought of as a key trend in 2011.

Thank you to Scot Finney of Computer World for sharing his thoughts. Scot Finnie is Computerworld's editor in chief. You can follow him on Twitter (@ScotFinnie).

Sales Planning: How To Develop A 2011 Sales Plan

Didn’t we just write a sales plan? We worked like crazy people to end the year in grand style while celebrating the Holidays with friends and family. Who has the time to write a sales plan for 2011? I urge you to find the time if you expect to keep your sales job. Besides, I’m here to help you write a successful sales plan for 2011.


Let’s not just write a 2011 sales plan for the sake of having one. Instead, let’s develop a 2011 sales plan that is truly a working document. Your 2011 Sales Plan should be a road map to a successful 2011 sales year.

There a many sections in a sales plan for 2011 but truly only two questions need to be answered.

• What Do You Plan To Achieve In 2011?

• How Do You Plan To Achieve It?

Develop a 2011 sales plan around realistic goals. Your sales goals may consider some of the following…

• % Of Quota

• Revenue Attainment

• Employee Turnover

• Churn Rate

• Sales Activity

• Close Rate

• Funnel Levels

• Forecasting Accuracy

This list could go on forever. I urge you decide what’s important and focus on those goals in your 2011 sales plan. That’s how to develop a 2011 sales plan that can and will achieve its sales goals.

How To Develop A 2011 Sales Plan

Use this data in your 2011 sales plan to plan for year over year improvement. If you ended 2010 at 101% of quota, you may have a realistic goal/projection of attaining 110% in 2011.

Now the hard part… What will you do to in 2011 to gain those nine extra percentage points?

What Should Be In A 2011 Sales Plan

Most reps and sales managers simply explain away extra productivity with plans to increase activity. Instead of 8 new appointments every week, the new sales plan for 2011 call for 10 new appointments a week. How weak is that? Let’s get real and develop a solid 2011 sales plan.

Use training and development in your 2011 sales plan as a tool to achieve your new sales goals.

How To Write A Sales Plan For 2011

You’ll close more sales if you have more qualified prospects. Institute sales prospecting training as a way to get more qualified prospects.

You’ll close more sales if you improve your close rate. Improve your close rate with improved sales strategies. This is the type of sales training that must be part of your 2011 sales plan.

Improve your team’s sales skills and you’ll be sure to pick up those nine extra quota attainments points. Ensure your team has the skills to master the sales process. This should be a key point in any solid 2011 Sales Plan.

I urge you to include employee development in your 2011 sales plan.

Plan for great sales success in 2011! Happy Selling!

Work Productivity: Why work doesn't happen at work

This is an outstanding talk by Mark Fried from TEDx from Chicago. When people are asked where they get the most work done they will say on the porch, at home, on the train, early in the morning, late at night. Why? interruptions. The day is made up work moments due to involuntary interruptions. Tasks that are completed there however but there is rare that long stretches of time to think, create and build are available at the office.

In this talk, they compare an 8 hour work day to 8 hours of sleep. How can you expect to get good quality sleep if you are constantly interrupted? How can you be expected to generate good quality of work if you are interrupted?

What's important to note is the concept of interruptions and involuntary interruptions. People can choose to be interrupted when working at home however the work place offers a cornucopia of involuntary interruptions.

Managers say that the interruption issues are Facebook, twitter and Your Tube. These are modern day smoke breaks.

Mark feels that the real source of interruptions is M&M; Managers and Meetings. He sites Managers and meetings are toxic. Specifically spontaneous meetings.

His remedy is that for the enlightened Managers is "No Talk Thursdays". A whole day or half day when no one is allowed to talk. That is when work gets done.

Switch from active collaboration to passive collaboration in the form of email and IM. You can choose to turn off IM and email, you cant turn off a manager or a meeting.

Cancel meetings. If you have the power, cancel meetings. More will get done.

As a conclusion, his observations really give cause to stop and think about reinventing the work place.

http://www.wimp.com/workhappen/