Less People, More Work? Try Gold Standard Leadership.

After decades of time and millions of dollars spent on leadership development and mentoring programs, why are we still facing a leadership crisis at many levels of the business world? By Steve Farber at HBR.

By now, most business leaders have learned that our job is to expand and develop our own capacity, while simultaneously preparing the next generation of leaders to take the reins. Develop talent, we've been taught. Be helpful. Be a coach. Mentor someone. But it doesn't happen all that often — at least, not in any significant way.

I believe it's time for us to set a new gold standard for what it means to be a leader of substance and influence.

We need to pick up where many "programs" leave off by realizing that it's simply not enough for us to be helpful coaches and advisors to the people around us at work. The greatest, most successful and well-respected leaders that I've encountered in my two decades of consulting, advising, writing, and speaking are not just helpful: they've come to understand that the true measure of their greatness as leaders is their ability to develop leaders who go on to surpass them — who rise to a level greater than themselves in skill, influence and ability.

There are pitfalls, of course. Devoting yourself to another's elevation potentially carries a whole boatload of emotional (or egotistical) baggage, for example. But I won't argue those points here or try to convert the skeptics; instead, just for the sake of this discussion, I'll assume you're with me on this and offer these 6 steps to help you get started on your own "Greater Than Yourself" endeavor:

1. Choose Wisely While, ideally, Greater Than Yourself (GTY) is something you should do with many people ("all people" may be a bit of a stretch for even the most high-minded among us), it's often best to start small. In the beginning, you should choose one person as your "GTY Project." But choose wisely. Pick someone you trust and deeply believe in. It should be someone whose personal aspirations can be served by your unique experience, skills, values, and network. Be conscious and deliberate about the qualities you seek in your GTY: pick someone who has the drive, energy, heart and desire to take full advantage of what you have to give them, and whose values are congruent with your own. And — most important — it should be someone you (dare I say it?) love. Okay, I'll accept "deeply care about."

2. Open The Door and Invite Them In Sit down with the person you've chosen and have a frank and open discussion about what your intent is for him or her, and make sure that they're willing and up to the task. Let them know that your job will be to do and give whatever you can to raise them up above yourself in capacity and success in the appropriate arena. For example, my GTY project, Tommy Spaulding, wants to excel in the arena of writing and public speaking — my professional playground. In the very beginning, I made a commitment to Tommy that I'd do everything humanly possible to help him become a better-known, more influential author/speaker than I am, as long as he was willing to take full advantage of the opportunities and contacts, etc. I would offer to him. He was.

3. Hook Them Up Think through your entire network of contacts and determine who would be valuable to your GTY. Who can help? Whom should they meet? Then open the floodgates and make all the appropriate introductions. Hold nothing and no one back. I've introduced Tommy to my favorite speakers bureaus, my business manager and my publisher. He just got his first book deal through those contacts.

4. Sing Their Praises Think of yourself as the advocate for your GTY's value and talent, and talk about them every chance you get. Shine the spotlight on their accomplishments when they have them. Look for opportunities to let others know about your belief in this special individual.

5. Practice Tough Love Someone once said that feedback is a great gift until you get some. Of course you'll want to offer plenty of words of encouragement, but you'll also need to hold them ridiculously accountable to their own goals and aspirations, which means smacking them around when necessary. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

6. Demand the One Commitment GTY is fundamentally selfless act (think of it as The Golden Rule on steroids), and you should expect nothing in return, no quid pro quo. With one exception: demand that your GTY take on someone else as their GTY, and so on down the line. It's the old pay it forward approach, and the implications of such a commitment are significant.

The idea of changing the world has become more than a little clichéd, of late. But this on-going commitment to another's enrichment really will add up. Maybe it won't change the "whole wide world," as we used to say when we were kids — but it can certainly change the world of your company, your business unit, your team, or your community.

And I can't think of a better, nobler way to solve a leadership crisis.

Losing Your Job & Breaking Shovels.

I broke two shovels today. This weekend, my family and I spent the day digging forsythia bush roots out of the ground. If you've ever done this before — it's not easy. There is a lot of effort with shovels, pick-axes, crowbars, pitchforks, saws and just about every other tool I own. In combination, you try to dig under the main mass of roots and slowly cut/sever each main root from the root ball so it will eventually come out. But enough of removing roots. What did happen during this process is that I broke two shovel handles trying to pry the root ball out of the ground. The first one was a surprise to all of us — honestly, we're pretty lucky that no one got hurt. The shovel gave way when it broke and part of the handle flipped into the air, giving everyone a quick jolt of adrenalin. We then stepped back, took a quick breather, and then attacked it again with another shovel.

And then the second one broke. The funny thing is that we were not as surprised — and frankly — we all started laughing. I probably had too many Wheaties for breakfast this morning. We then didn't give up — we just attacked the root ball with even more vigor (and more robust tools) and eventually got all four root balls out.

It's a lot like losing your job. The first time it happens, people are pretty shell-shocked. They do a lot of soul searching (why me?), denial, hatred of their company, boss, etc. — you know the drill. Ultimately, when the adrenaline dissipates, they get down to business and look for a new job. The second time someone loses a job (and this happens more often that you realize in this economy), they tend to almost laugh about it, pick themselves up quickly, and go after that next job.

Moral of the story — losing your job is not a life or career ending experience. In fact, the faster that you move forward, the faster you will find that next position. The more that you sit and question yourself (and procrastinate) - the less likely you will climb back on that horse and ride into the sunset.

So pick up that shovel and start digging that root ball out!

Out of Work? Here's How To Socially Network & Get That Job!

By Robert "Scobleizer" Scoble at Scobleizer.com. Robert is the KING of Twitter, Facebook, All software, and social marketing in general. This article hits so many personal points I discuss with clients that I just had to post it. So let's all lift our glasses - here's to Robert!

I’m getting a LOT of chats from people who have been laid off. Most of the time I find that they just aren’t presenting a good face to me for me to help them find a new job.

If you are laid off, here’s what you need to do:

1. Your blog is your resume. You need one and it needs to have 100 posts on it about what you want to be known for.
2. Remove all friends from your facebook and twitter accounts that will embarrass you. We do look. If we see photos of people getting drunk with you that is a bad sign. Get rid of them. They will NOT help you get a job.
3. Demonstrate you are “clued in.” This means removing ANYTHING that says you are a “social media expert” from your Twitter account. There is no such thing and even if there were there’s no job in it for you. Chris Brogan already has that job and he’s not giving it up.
4. Demonstrate you have kids and hobbies, but they should be 1% of your public persona, not 99%. Look at my blog here. You’ll see my son’s photo on Flickr once in a while. But mostly I talk about the tech industry, cause that’s the job I want to have: talking to geeks and innovators.
5. Put what job you want into your blog’s header. Visit Joel Spolsky’s blog. He’s “on software.” That’s a major hint that if he were looking for a job that he is totally, 100%, thinking about software. If you want a job as a chef, you better have a blog that looks like you love cooking.
6. Get rid of any 'smart' name/acronym like "LOLCats". Do not argue me on Twitter about this. Google finds Twitters. Do you want your future potential boss noticing that you post LOLCats all day long? Believe me, you do not. It will NOT help you.
7. Post something that teaches me something about what you want to do every day. If you want to drive a cab, you better go out and take pictures of cabs. Think about cabs. Put suggestions for cabbies up. Interview cabbies. You better have a blog that is nothing but cabs. Cabs. Cabs. Cabs all the time.
8. Do not beg for links. If you did the above, you can Twitter me and say “check out my great software blog” though. Include @scobleizer in the tweet so I’ll see it. I’m an egotistical person so I read all Twitter replies that include my @scobleizer name in them. Hint: I haven’t met a blogger yet who is not an egotistical person. Take advantage of it. But no begging.
9. If you want to be a plumber, look for other plumbers to add to Twitter, friendfeed, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Remove all others. Be 100% focused on what you want to do.
10. On Twitter you can tell me what you had for lunch, but only after you posted 20 great items about what you want to do. Look at Tim O’Reilly’s tweet stream. Very little noise. Just great stuff that will make you think (he wants a job as a thinker, so do you get it yet?)
11. IMPORTANT: Invite influentials out to lunch. Getting a job is now your profession. If you were a salesperson, how would you get sales? You would take people out to lunch who can either buy what you’re selling, or influence others who can buy. That means take other bloggers (but only if they cover what you want to do) out to lunch. That means taking lots of industry executives out to lunch.
12. Send out resumes. Make sure yours is up to date and top notch on LinkedIn and other sites where employers look for employees. Craig’s List. Monster. Etc.
13. Go to industry events. I have a list of tech industry events up on Upcoming.org. If you want to be a plumber, go to where contractors go. Etc. Etc. Make sure you have clear business cards. Include your photo. Include your Twitter and LinkedIn addresses. Your cell phone. Your blog address. And the same line that’s at the top of your blog. Joel’s should say “on software.” Yours should say what you love to do. Hand them out, ask for theirs. Make notes on theirs. Email them later with your LinkedIn and blog URLs and say “you’ll find lots of good stuff about xxxxxxxx industry on my blog.”
14. When you meet someone who can hire and who you want to work for - Follow them on Twitter. Facebook. LinkedIn. Their blog. Stalk them without being “creepy.” Learn everything you can about them. Build a friendfeed room with all their stuff. That way when they say on Twitter “I have a job opening” you can be the first one to Tweet back.
15. Tell others where the jobs are. One thing I learned in college is by helping other people get jobs you’ll get remembered. So, retweet jobs messages (if they are relevant to your professional friends and to you). Blog about job openings. Help people get jobs. Hold lunches for people who are jobless. Some of them will get jobs and they’ll remember you and invite you along.
16. Do what you want to do. Let’s assume you’ll be laid off for a year. Are you going to lay around on the couch waiting for a call? No. You will do exactly what you want to do. Want to be an engineer at a great startup? Go and volunteer to work there for free. Make sure you do a blog post about every day you do what you’re doing for free. Say “I could do this for you, call…”
17. Do some work on SEO. Make it possible for people to find you. THINK about how people would search for someone with your expertise and skills. Here’s how, Visit the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. Do a search on a word that you think represents best what you want to do. I just did one for “Electrical Engineering” and it brought up a ton of great info about what people are searching for. Include those terms in your blog. And, even better, blog about those things!
18. Remove any hint that you hated your old job from all your online things.

Good luck. It sucks. I know that. I was laid off last time and, who knows, might be laid off again, but if you’re doing all this stuff and you aren’t finding a job, let me know. You know where to find me.

Don't Give A Speech — Put On A Show.

When you attend a workshop, keynote, or lecture, you usually go to see the speaker not to hear what they have to say. You know what they have to say. That's why you go to see them. How many speeches have you heard? How many of them can you remember? See where I'm going? They're all blah . . . blah . . . blah.

In a song, we first remember the melody and then we learn the words. Instead of giving people the benefit of your wit and wisdom (words), try painting them a picture.

Tony Robbins is a master of this art form. Even if you don't like him or his message, you have to say that he is a powerful speaker. His arena events change people's lives — he uses music, visuals, and physical energy to rev up the crowd. You don't need to be like Tony, but you can appreciate some of the elements of his talks.

Bottom line, the more strikingly visual your presentation is, the more people will remember it. And, more importantly, they will remember you.

Leadership Blind Spot: Recognizing Your Team.

"There are two things that people want more than sex and money - recognition and praise." - Mary Kay Ash, Mary Kay Cosmetics

We all forget to do it. You focus on work, meetings, reports, etc. and ignore the most powerful leadership tool you have in our arsenal - recognition and acknowledgment. When you neglect it, your teams tend to wander and lose focus. When you regularly insert it into your leadership practices, you'll have the best performing and energized team money can buy.

1. Be A Star Catcher. Regularly "catch people doing things right" and recognize them for it. And, Make recognitions self-perpetuating by recognizing those who recognize others. Remember: What gets recognized gets reinforced, and what gets reinforced gets repeated.

2. Develop A List of At Least 20 Ways To Recognize Others. Some ideas to get you started: a homemade Thank You Card or Praise-A-Gram; small gifts: special assignments, etc. If you would like the best Rich Gee recognition tool - check this out.

3. Customize The Recognition You Provide. Ask each member of your team how you can best demonstrate your appreciation for them. Then provide "different strokes for different folks."

4. Let Everyone "Hold The Trophy". Be sure each contributing member shares in the recognition for achievements.

If you practice and regularly schedule (not with a calendar, but in the moment) these tips — you will realize that some of the best things in life are free!

Resume Writing Tips for CEOs.

Baby boomers who’ve enjoyed an uninterrupted string of successes, and have been laid off, are struggling to recapture the magic. By Michael Winerip, a staff reporter at The New York Times.

Greg Sam, 50, has always been a rising corporate star. In his most recent job, as a vice president for Millipore, a company that services the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, Mr. Sam built a quality-oversight program from scratch into a staff of 350 working worldwide, from the corporate headquarters in Billerica, Mass., to offices in China, Japan, Ireland and France.

For this, he earned a mid-six-figure income and traveled the globe, making two dozen business trips a year. At Millipore’s 50th anniversary celebration in Puerto Rico, Mr. Sam delivered the keynote speech in Spanish. In France, he sometimes conducted business in French.

In fact, Mr. Sam was so good at what he did, he was fired.

“He came in, built us a global quality assurance program, but now that it’s in place, we don’t need a person of his skills and caliber to continue running it,” said Dr. Martin D. Madaus, the president of Millipore, who fired Mr. Sam during a round of 200 layoffs in December. “Someone with lesser expertise can do the job, because Greg essentially did such a good job.”

As Dr. Madaus explained when he visited Mr. Sam’s office to deliver the bad news, it was nothing personal. But because Mr. Sam was so highly valued until he was fired, Millipore added about $40,000 to his severance package for job placement services.

“The higher up you are,” said Dr. Madaus, whose company employs 6,000, “the longer it takes to find a new job.”

For three months, instead of going to work, Mr. Sam has come to a handsome fifth-floor office in a renovated warehouse overlooking Boston Harbor that is the headquarters of New Directions, a top-of-the-line job-search firm. As its literature says, New Directions specializes in helping unemployed “C.E.O.’s, C.O.O.’s, C.F.O.’s, C.I.O.’s” find their way back up the corporate ladder.

Situated in the heart of Boston with beautiful views; staffed by friendly professionals with advanced degrees; stocked with plenty of fresh-brewed coffee and free lunches; offering glassed-in offices for making calls, New Directions feels like an exclusive corporate retreat — except that the participants have lost their corporations.

Like Mr. Sam, most of the 85 current clients are baby boomers who’ve enjoyed an uninterrupted string of successes that have seemed almost magical, but now, in very bad times, they are struggling to recapture the magic.

Mark Gorham, a Harvard Business School grad and a former Hewlett-Packard vice president, has been unemployed for six months. At first, he said: “I sat around thinking someone will realize how great I am and call me out of the blue. Next, I figured, I’ll throw out my great résumé to search firms and someone will come knocking.”

Now he’s learning networking from Jeffrey Redmond, his personal job coach.

“Mark grew up in an age when being understated about yourself was valued,” said Mr. Redmond, a partner who has been at New Directions since its founding 23 years ago. “At 53, he has to learn to tell his story and, like a marching band, toot his own horn.”

Mr. Gorham is looking for a job using his management skills in the renewable-energy field.

“We try to work on it a little every day,” Mr. Redmond said. “Three contacts today, three tomorrow. At the end of month we have 60 people thinking about this guy who can bring all this knowledge to a growing industry.”

Mr. Gorham dreaded his first networking call in January. For weeks, he and Mr. Redmond rehearsed.

“Like a lot of senior executives, Mark was used to going on and on,” Mr. Redmond said. “He used to give speeches to thousands of people. When there was quiet, he was the one filling in the air.”

They practiced answering questions in 45 seconds.

“Jeff told me I could just talk 40 percent of the time,” Mr. Gorham said.

Mr. Redmond had him write a one-page script.

“We rehearsed to get it shorter,” Mr. Redmond said.

“Before calling,” Mr. Gorham said, “I must have rehearsed five more times at my office at home.”

THAT first call was to a colleague he hadn’t spoken with in eight years.

“I knew he’d be nice,” Mr. Gorham said. “We weren’t supposed to pick the toughest one for our first call. It went a hundred times better than I thought it would. Part of the dread was saying I didn’t have a job. I’ve never not had one. But I realized, I wasn’t calling to say, ‘Hey can you hire me.’ I basically was letting him know what’s going on and getting his advice on my plan. He was very engaged and threw out a bunch of ideas. He said, ‘Let’s get back together.’ Afterward I wondered why was I so worried.”

Mr. Redmond said in its 23 years, New Directions has served 2,400 executives and, typically, they find new positions in seven to nine months, although in a recession that could be a year.

If it is a year, Mr. Sam said his severance will cover him, but after that he would have to dip into savings.

“My frame of mind is realistic, a bit anxious,” he said. “Last night I sat with my wife and we looked at our finances. My philosophy is, be aware of it, manage it, but don’t get obsessed by it — that’s not doing myself or family any good.”

ON a recent Tuesday, Mr. Sam sat in on a seminar about LinkedIn, the online business network. Many of the men attending were dressed as they had for work, in jackets and ties. Though sitting in a room full of such bright, urbane unemployed people could be worrisome, Mr. Sam found it calming.

“When you’re at home,” he said, “you feel you’re the only one.”

He spent six hours at New Directions that day. He had his weekly meeting with his job coach, who gave him tips on cutting his résumé from five pages to three. (Too many bulleted lines like: “Performed due diligence on M & A targets and developed integration plans to extract value and support growth.”)

He met with the New Directions research director, Claire Burday, and asked her to do a search for Food and Drug Administration-regulated companies with sales over $10 million that had offices within 30 miles of places where he would like to live, including his home in Andover, Mass., and his cabin in Vermont.

He spoke with the staff psychologist, Dr. William Winn, who’d given him a battery of tests, and for several hours interviewed him to make sure he was suited for the jobs he’s seeking.

Dr. Winn concluded that it wouldn’t be wise for Mr. Sam to take a position that would focus solely on what’s wrong with a company. Mr. Sam is a builder who needs to be involved in fixing what’s wrong, Dr. Winn noted.

Indeed, asked what he missed about his old job, Mr. Sam said, “There was still plenty of opportunity to improve the company.”

Later, sitting in one of those glassed-in offices, a mob of gulls hovering outside his window, Mr. Sam checked his BlackBerry.

“A call last night from Millipore,” he said softly. “More layoffs. Two directors who worked for me were let go.”

Great Leaders Empower Others.

"The best leader is the one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what they want done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it." - Theodore Roosevelt 1. Share authority. Let each person be the owner of something meaningful. Having ultimate authority changes the scope and perception of a responsibility that is already part of the job description.

2. Create opportunities for non-managerial people to shine. Invite them to participate in, or even chair, task forces and project teams. The frequently untapped potential of this group is one of your organizations greatest Hidden Assets.

3. Never turn your back on people after giving them authority. Instead, increase communication, feedback and interaction. Make sure they understand the parameters and expectations of that authority. And, help them be successful by providing the resources and support they need.

4. Speak ENERGETICALLY. Add statements like these to your vocabulary:

• "Would you like to take the lead on this one?"
• "How can I best support you?"
• "It's your call." (my favorite)
• "I trust your judgment."

The more you step out of your managerial comfort zone and empower others, you will get more accomplished, have more time for strategic projects and have an energized team that makes you look good. How can you lose?

To Be A Great Executive — Be Flexible.

"In life, change is inevitable. In business, change is vital." - Warren G. Bennis

Encourage others to break tradition, when appropriate, in order to find better ways of doing things. Remember: If you continue doing what you've always done, you'll continue to get the same results.

Understand and appreciate that others may not do things exactly as you would do them. Be open-minded . . . you might discover their way is even better.

Remove Stop Signs to Progress by avoiding statements such as "We've tried that before" or "That's not the way we do that here."

Don't cast all decisions in cement. Be willing to modify them as changing circumstances or data dictate.

Working Longer, Never Get Anything Done? Rid Yourself of Interruptions.

"Hey, you got a minute?" That's a question - not a demand. Don't get angry with the interrupter if you answered, "Sure!" to their question. General rule: If you cannot eliminate the interruption, make the interruption as short as possible. 1. Meet them at the door. When people arrive to interrupt, meet them at the door and talk outside of your office. Letting them in may add minutes to the interruption.

2. Stand Up! When someone shows up unannounced, keep standing until you decide if you want the conversation to continue. Standing is not comfortable for most people and the length of most interruptions is in direct proportion to the comfort level of the interrupter.

3. You're the Timekeeper. Signal the end of the time allotted by politely saying, "One more thing before you go." Be respectful but  take control. Remember that this is your office and you're responsible for the time here.

4. Get rid of extra chairs in your office. You can always pull one from somewhere else if you need it.

5. Positioning. Arrange your office so that your desk doesn't face the door. People are less likely to interrupt if they can't see your face.

Henry Ford was always dropping into the offices of his company's executives. When asked why he didn't have them come to him, he replied, "Well, I'll tell you. I've found that I can leave the other fellow's office a lot quicker than I can get him to leave mine."

10 Killer Executive Interview Questions (to ask and answer).

Interviews have morphed into very weird experiences for my clients. I've heard some of the most stupid questions, tests & assessments come out of highly respected organizations. My opinion? I think they're lazy.

Bottom line — you want a good candidate for that position? You'll have to work for it. Ask very specific questions and see HOW they answer.

Here are some of my favorite questions I would ask executives interviewing for a position under me (I found it in an old file from my days in corporate):

1. RESULTS - Tell me about the results you have achieved at your last two positions. How did you achieve them? What was the effect to the business?

2. KNOWLEDGE - Give me an example of how you understand my business (broad). Where do you think the growth areas are? Where do you think we can do better with customer experience? Give me an example.

3. RISK - When was the last time you took a risk? What did you learn from it? (Cause & Effect - learn from mistakes; learn from successes).

4. COMMITMENT - Show me how you are committed to your customers, associates, peers?

5. COMMUNICATION - Tell me about a time when you communicated effectively (up-down-across — effective, clear, convincing).

6. SPEAKING UP - Give me an example when you pushed back, made some noise, offered constructive dissent.

7. STYLE - From where do you manage (Desk, email, phone, floor, in-person)? When do you make your BEST decisions?

8. PEOPLE - What are you currently working on (personally)? What are your people working on? How do you grow them?

9. EXECUTION - What actions do you take to deliver on time? How do you connect yourself to priorities?

10. ROLE PLAY - Show me how you solve problems (I give them a typical scenario they would face in that position).

You can easily modify these questions for yourself - whether you are promoting internally or hiring externally. You can even develop powerful PARs (call me, I can explain - 203-500-2421) for YOUR interview and talk to these points. You will come off looking like a true professional.

Stay Alive: 10 Career Tips to Win in Bad Times.

I know - things are bad out there and you're worried about your position. Firings are capricious and no one knows where the axe is going to fall next. Based on many of my current client sessions and 20+ years of management and coaching, here are 10 productive actions you can put into practice to solidify your position. 1. Don't drink the Kool-Aid. The news is sensationalized and fear sells. Things are rarely as good as they seem and things are rarely as bad as they seem. If you allow yourself to give in to the news, you will determine your destiny. When people tell me about the bad economy, I tell them “I have chosen not to participate. So let's get to work.”

2. Reach out to your contacts - NOW. Past and present contacts, colleagues and friends are the lifeblood of any career (“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”). The ’robustness’ and recency of your contact list is a great barometer of your career’s health.

• Call your closest contacts & colleagues and ask them how they are. Listen. Don't talk, offer help. Have lunch, drink coffee, and strengthen those contacts!
• Send birthday or ‘just for being you’ cards to keep in touch and make them feel special. No one does this and it makes the recipient feel special.

3. Focus on what you do best. You need to present a extremely positive persona to management - this is the time where they might be looking at cutting the bottom 10%.

• Be a partner to your boss - ask for more work. No one really does it and you will stand out as a “can-do” member of their team.
• Come in early or stay late (or do both!). The perception of a hard worker is a valuable one during bad times. In addition, you might be there when your boss comes back from a grueling exec meeting and needs help with the newly assigned project.
• Be smart and flexible - look at all of your activities and projects - which ones are more important and which are the ones that can be shelved, streamlined or retired?
• The 80/20 rule comes into play - make a list and then review with your boss.

4. Keep your ear to the ground. It is essential in down times to have a clear picture of where your company’s revenues and expenses come from. Companies are retrenching and focusing on the areas that will deliver the highest ROI.

• Stand back and see what projects, departments, or people are slated to be cut.
• Ask questions, read industry journals/blogs, and keep up on the business news.
• Track your company on the web - sometimes you hear something that isn’t currently communicated in your company. But take it with a grain of salt.
• Listen to what your colleagues are saying - but don’t accept it as gospel. Also, don’t add to the gossip or play “what-if” scenarios with them - it will waste time.

5. Look at your “product”. It’s IMAGE, IMAGE, IMAGE. How do you clothes look? How does your hair look? How do YOU look? Hate to say it - it’s perception people. Not only when people first meet you - it’s when they work with you day in and day out. Critically look at yourself and see what you might need to change and how you would go about it.

• Always dress one step above everyone else. No excuses. If everyone is casual, you wear country-club casual. Ensure that your clothes are made of the highest quality and are regularly pressed and clean.
• Spend the money and go to a better barber/stylist. I don’t have much to work with and I still go to one of the most expensive barbers in the area. He makes me look as good as I can.
• Do you need to tone your physique? Hit the gym - watch what you eat. It’s that simple.

6. Connect with new people. The best defense is a good offense. This may be a sports cliche, but right now, it rings true. Now is not the time to go into hiding, based on fear of the recession. It’s the time to ramp up your networking, personal public relations, and marketing to actively remind people of your presence.

• Go to associations, meetings, conventions that are associated with your profession.
• Not only will you meet a lot of engaging people, you will re-energize your batteries AND your might get a lead on a great position!
• Set up coffees and lunches with people that you don’t know, but want to know. We all have people that we admire - reach out to them - take them to lunch. They eat just like you do! And what is the benefit? They are always on the lookout for new talent!

7. Review your resume. Too many people let their resumes grow old gracefully. When they really need them, they have to scramble and cobble together a mish-mash of experience that no one really wants to read. You need to get your resume in order NOW. So some tips:

• Use a professional resume writer. They should run $200-$400, but you will get an incredible document that sells. Call me - I know the best!
• Keep it concise. Unless you have been in the business for 30 years or are a CEO - keep it to 2 pages or less. Again - people are looking for someone who can say less with more impact - your first chance is your resume.

8. Get financially fit. One of the biggest worries people have during downturns is losing their job. They crawl into a hole and hope for the best. Usually, it is financially motivated. How would you feel if you had six months worth of available funds if you suddenly lost your job? A little bit better? A little bit more confident?

• Start now. Having 3-6 months of current income stashed away in a cash account (savings, money market) will allow you to act normally during times like these.
• Worst case scenario? If you do lose your job, you have 3-6 months of full-time looking to find a new one before you begin to really deplete your savings. In addition, you probably will get some type of severance with COBRA - so stop worrying!

9. Talk with your boss. During an economic downturn everyone is skittish and hungry for information. You’re wondering how the company is doing, whether the team is vulnerable to layoffs, or if the strategy for the next few quarters has changed.  Even if the situation is tight, being upfront with your boss about your concerns creates and reinforces an environment of trust.

• Catch them at the end of the day - sit down and just converse with them. During a pause ask (in a very light interrogative tone): “So how are we doing? Is there anything we need to worry about?”. Your boss will probably open up and tell you info that normally they would not tell the team. Try it - it works.
• But if you have a boss that tends to keep information or hide things, watch their body language - if their eyes look downward or away from you when talking - they might be hiding bad news.

10. RE-vision your career. I love downturns in the economy. Why? When executives get scared, they get going and they get SMART. They begin to look at everything they do - how can they use time more effectively? If the company is losing customers, where can they find new and different customers/clients?  Take a step back and RE-vision your career - understand your key interests and strengths and investigate new opportunities in YOUR marketplace.

• Are you still a hot commodity on the market?
• If yes, great - get out there and sell YOU to potential new bidders.
• If no, you need to re-vision your career - measure your capabilities and apply them to the NEW marketplace. I know of a lot of realtors, hedge fund managers and financial planners that are doing this right now.

You need to partner with an expert and co-create your new career vision and direction.  So get going!

How to kill e-mail (before it kills you).

E-mail has become a pandemic disease. Here's the cure. By Mike Elgan at Computerworld

The average executive spends two hours a day on e-mail. That adds up to roughly one day per week.

We probably waste a lot of time every day on phone calls and meetings, too. The difference is that the demands on your time don't grow automatically as they do with e-mail.

E-mail has become a pandemic social disease. The more you get, the more you send. And the more you send, the more you get.

And I'm not just talking about e-mail viruses. The longer you use it, the more of it comes at you. The quantity of e-mail you get grows and never stops growing.

In the 1990s, e-mail was all good. At first, you had to be on the same office system or consumer service to exchange e-mail. But then the Internet made it possible to send messages from AOL to CompuServe, and from CompuServe to MCI. E-mail was wonderful. You could search it. You could send attachments and links.

Slowly, gradually, e-mail became something else. Every communications medium has its own costs and benefits. But with e-mail, the costs grow over time as the benefits shrink.

What's wrong with e-mail? In a nutshell, the medium is perfectly designed for information overload. Both message size and quantity are essentially unlimited. Unfortunately, electronic communication is like a gas: It expands to fill its container. It's way too easy to copy everyone and "Reply All." It's also easy for companies to automate the sending of e-mail. There are almost no barriers to an unlimited number of people sending you an unlimited quantity of random stuff. But your time and attention are truly limited.

Because e-mails tend to be so many and so long, it's not friendly for reading on a cell phone. So, as we become more mobile, e-mail becomes less compatible with how we live and work.

E-mail has always suffered from another flaw: It facilitates miscommunication. When you're typing out words, you're thinking one thing, but the receiver can perceive your intent as something else. You're being funny. They perceive hostile. The reason is that humans are designed to communicate with words, facial expressions, body language and hand gestures all together. When you send only cold, black-and-white words, the other person can easily read into your message inaccurate intent or emotional content.

The experience of using e-mail has become like walking through a bad, big-city neighborhood at night. This person wants to rip you off; that person wants to offer you drugs or some shady sexual service; yet another is trying to infect you with a virus. You're literally dealing with organized crime syndicates every single day. Who needs that?

Everything -- from the most important business communication to love notes from your spouse to software that will damage your computer to bank fraud -- is all dumped into the same in-box in random order. In order to find an important message from your boss, you have to wade through raw sewage.

Meanwhile, the most precious resource you have is your own attention. At the very least, e-mail is a massive, constant distraction. And because you really do live in an attention economy, all that objectionable e-mail you get every day is taking money away from you and your company.

While the signal-to-noise ratio of e-mail has declined, other forms of communication have emerged and improved. Now we have free video messaging, chat, social-network messaging and Twitter.

Those are nice, but that e-mail just keeps coming.

It's time for you to reboot your entire communication strategy and start over. The goal is to transition to better forms of communication, and stop using e-mail altogether -- at least stop using it the way you have been doing. Here's how:

1. Set up a Twitter account. You can use your account as a way for people you don't know to contact you.

2. Set up a "public" e-mail account as a data repository. Use an online e-mail service. I prefer Gmail because it has better spam filtering and better search than other services.

Use the public address for whenever you set up an account with any service and it requires an e-mail address, and give it out as your one e-mail address. In most cases, you can just use your existing e-mail account for this.

Set up an autoreply message informing e-mail senders that you do not check this e-mail. If they would like to contact you, they should call you on the phone, message you on Facebook or send you a direct message on Twitter. But here's the trick: Give them only your Twitter name, not your phone number or Facebook profile address. (People you know should already have your phone number or Facebook profile. If they don't, they can ask on Twitter.)

(If you want to explain what you're doing, just link to this article in your autoreply and let me explain it for you.)

The purpose of all this is to set up a barrier or a filter. If people want your attention, they'll have to earn it. Only real, motivated people will be able to contact you, not automated message servers, not Nigerian scammers. When they do, they're forced by the system to keep it short. If you don't want to hear from them again, you can block them on Twitter with one click.

If you have to send long-winded e-mails for whatever reason, you can use this public account to do so. If others have to send long-winded e-mails to you, they can use this address, too. But they'll have to inform you on Twitter, and you can decide whether it's worth the trouble.

Whenever you need to access the stuff that flows into this e-mail address, you use Gmail's search feature to find it. It works just like Google itself.

3. Set up a "secret" e-mail account for content. This second account is for content, namely e-mail newsletters. Use whatever service you want for this. Move all your subscriptions to this account. Now, whenever you want to read your newsletters, you can do so without spam or all the other clutter and junk that normally accompany e-mail.

4. Set up a Facebook account. I recommend doing all messaging with people you actually know well (friends, family and co-workers) on Facebook because people need your permission in advance to send you messages.

5. Set up a Skype account and get a webcam. When you get in the habit of using Skype video calls instead of certain types of e-mail, you'll skip all the needless miscommunication that happens with e-mail. Let's say you need to discuss a personnel issue with a subordinate working in another city, or discuss a personal matter with a relative. Do yourself a favor and do videoconferencing. It will be faster, and you'll communicate without misunderstandings.

The idea here is to take all that stuff you're getting via e-mail and separate it into an appropriate place. Each type of communication is directed into a vastly more effective process based on who's sending it.

Random information is autofiled into a searchable system in case you need it. Newsletter content is all put in one place so you can read it with concentration. Strangers are forced to contact you on Twitter in a short message. Friends, family and co-workers that you approve send you messages on Facebook. And video Skype is for any conversation prone to miscommunication.

Once you've set this up, you've eliminated e-mail from your life, and with it, the spam, scams, junk, long-winded messages and other massively time-wasting garbage. Meanwhile, you're forcing anyone who wants to consume your most precious of resources -- your time and attention -- to get permission in advance and keep it short. And it's all mobile-friendly, too.

If killing e-mail is proscribed by company policy, you'll have to modify these instructions. A typical scenario is that an employee is required to give the corporate e-mail address to business contacts and to reply to e-mail on the company system. But you can still redirect all Web site sign-up traffic, e-mail newsletters and other stuff to the "public" and "private" Gmail accounts. You can urge colleagues or contacts to call you, or use chat. In other words, you can minimize, rather than kill, your company e-mail. And, of course, you can kill your personal e-mail.

E-mail is a disease. By taking strong action to cure yourself, you'll radically reduce the quantity of messaging in your life, while improving its quality.

Stop Micromanaging.

All managers want their employees to be more productive--to collaborate more energetically, to work more efficiently. But in pursuit of productivity, many fine managers have traipsed down some perilous paths. by Christina Bielaszka-DuVernay at HBR

Yes, we're talking about micromanagement. It's a natural tendency, even among seasoned managers, to think close examination of a direct report's work will improve it. Sure, such scrutiny might reveal opportunities for improvement: processes she could streamline, shortcuts she's taking that undermine quality, shortcuts she's not taking that she should.

But tread this path too often, and any gains realized from process improvements will be offset by the deleterious effects of disengagement.

What is disengagement? Fundamentally, it is a state of distance from one's work. A disengaged employee puts in time but little else, and his apathy affects not only his own productivity but that of his colleagues. Because a consistent pattern of micromanagement tells an employee you don't trust his work or his judgment, it is a major factor in triggering disengagement.

And disengagement is costly.

According to the book "12: The Elements of Great Managing", absenteeism caused by disengagement costs a typical 10,000-person company $600,000 a year in salary for days where no work was performed, and that "disengagement-driven turnover costs most sizable businesses millions every year." By contrast, engaged employees are more likely to show up to work, to stay with a firm longer, and to be more productive while they're on the job. Gallup research cited in the book finds that highly engaged teams average 18% higher productivity and 12% greater profitability than the least engaged teams.

The good news is that you, as a manager, have enormous influence over your direct reports' engagement levels. So what can you do to increase their engagement and hence their productivity? For starters, you can take a page from the Gallup playbook and make a practice of building on employees' strengths.

Say you have a direct report who rarely submits sales reports on time or fills them out correctly. Ask yourself, "At what tasks does this person excel?" Maybe he's great at troubleshooting customer complaints. Or he's a consistent source of creative ideas for the next promotional effort. Whatever his strengths, think about ways to build on them so that they can add more value to your organization. At the same time, see if you can minimize or redistribute some of the work at which he's less successful. Budgets, capacity, and other constraints can sometimes make this impossible, and the best course will be to let the person go. But given turnover costs and the looming talent shortage, figuring out a way to make an employee's strength your strength is likely to be worth the effort.

Other actions you can implement:

• Be clear about performance expectations for new hires. As they grow more comfortable in their roles, lessen your direct supervision of their work.
• If you find yourself feeling consistently negative about a particular employee's performance, check that you're not falling into the set-up-to-fail syndrome described by Insead-affiliated management scholars Jean-François Manzoni and Jean-Louis Barsoux. This syndrome is marked by a downward performance spiral. The manager, expecting poor performance from the employee, starts noticing only mistakes and overlooking or minimizing successes.To avoid this pattern, regularly challenge your perception about the employee by asking yourself: What are the facts about her work? Is it as bad as I've been thinking? Of course, it may be that her performance is so bad that you'll have to let her go. But in some cases, adjusting your lens might reveal that she's actually doing some worthwhile work.
• You don't want to create a culture that says you're always right, and the employees are usually or always wrong. So invite employees to challenge your opinions. Over time, as they grow more comfortable in this role, they'll feel freer to discuss any performance concerns they have with you.

When your employees perceive that you value their strengths and their judgment, everyone benefits. As their engagement increases, it's likely that their performance will as well. And the time you might have spent micromanaging them can be put to more productive use.

15 Steps to a More Productive Workday.

We often face the challenge of getting the most productivity out of our time and achieving maximum efficiency. To be successful, you’ll have to place a priority on productivity and find techniques that work for you. From the blog:  Vandelay Design

Each of us is unique and no process will work for everyone, but all of us have plenty of things that we can do to improve our workflow. In this article I’ll cover some of the lessons that I have learned through my own experience.

For me, productivity is a constant goal, and always interested in finding new ways to get more out of my time. I’m far from perfect in these areas, but making consistent improvements. Hopefully some of these things will help you in your own work.

1. Have a Task List for the Day The best way to have an unproductive day is to work throughout the day without a clear definition of what you need to accomplish. Simply having a to-do list will go a long way in keeping you on track.

One of the problems with work is that there is usually a million different things that you could be doing on any given day. While all of these things may be helpful to your business in some way, they’re not all equal in terms of importance and urgency. Without a task list you run the risk of working all day on things that seem like they are benefiting your business, but in the end you’re not focusing your efforts on the right tasks.

2. Prioritize Tasks One of my biggest frustrations in my daily work is that it seems like I’m never able to do everything I want to do in a day. In this case, a task list is likely to have a few things left untouched at the end of the day. Because of this, it’s important to not only create a task list, but also to prioritize the items that you’re looking to get done. Your tasks will differ from day-to-day, but it’s likely that you’ll have a few very important things that must get done, and then some others with varying levels of importance and urgency.

My personal approach with prioritizing is to simply to set the tasks that must get done, and then I also list a few stretch goals for the day. If and when I get all of the most important items done for a particular day, at that point I can move on to the stretch goals, which usually carry less urgency than my main tasks. This way I don’t finish my work early and have nothing to do, and I also don’t have too much on my plate that causes adverse effects when I can’t get everything done.

3. Finish Tasks Rather than Starting New Ones Most executives have a few different projects going on at all times. On top of that, each project may have several different tasks that need to be done, and you may even have some of your own personal projects that require time. With all of these things fighting for your attention at once, it’s tempting to dig in to new tasks before completing others. By doing this you’ll usually be costing yourself more time and effort later when it comes to finishing those tasks and projects.

In order for an executive to keep the income flowing, it’s critical that projects are getting finished. Being able to finish a project will help you to get paid sooner and allow you to move on to another project. From my experience, when I’m struggling with too much to do, it’s best if I can devote time to tasks and projects that are near completion. Being able to get things crossed off the list feels good and helps to reduce stress and create a more productive environment.

4. Know the Strongest Times of Your Work Day Some people work best early in the mornings, others prefer afternoons or evenings. Everyone has times of the day that are stronger than others in terms of focus and productivity. I tend to get up early, but I’m not at my peak for the first few hours of the day. I’ve found that rather than fighting this and trying to get more done at the start of my day, I’m better off to use that time for tasks that are less demanding mentally. During the times when I struggle to concentrate I’ll clean out my email inbox, moderate and respond to comments on my blog, evaluate my overall process on current projects, or anything that requires time but not the highest amount of mental focus.

With this approach I’m able to make productive use of my least productive times of the day, and that will save my best hours for more taxing activities like working on a client’s website or writing articles. With the varied tasks of a executive, there are always plenty of things that need to get done that require different levels of intensity in terms of work and focus. If you can match your best times for work with the most intense tasks, and your least productive times with more routine tasks, you’ll get more out of your day.

5. Give Yourself Some Flexibility I’ve already talked about the importance of having prioritized tasks and the use of different times of the day, but it’s also important to not get so rigid with this that you don’t leave yourself some room for flexibility. There will be some days that don’t go quite as planned and when you don’t feel like you do most other days. Allow yourself to have some flexibility to change things around according to the circumstances.

6. Have a Specified Ending Time for Work One of the biggest challenges that I face throughout the week is knowing when to end my work day. When you’re working for someone else it’s much easier to make a clear break, but as a executive there is always a temptation to keep working.

With so many things to do and your income riding on getting things done, it seems like you will be more productive by working longer days. But from my experience I’ve found that I often feel like I get the most done when I have something going on that forces me to end the day at a specific time.

With a set ending time it’s easier to get moving quickly and to get more productivity out of each hour, since they are limited. Without a set ending time I often find myself working with a little bit less efficiency since I feel like I have plenty of time.

On those days I wind up with less time away from work and I often don’t seem to get that much more accomplished, even with the extra hours of work.

7. Bulk Process With so many different things to do, it’s likely that your day is broken up into many small blocks of time for specific tasks. In order to achieve more efficiency and productivity, try to use larger blocks of time and get similar things done all at once (depending on the nature of your work this may or may not be possible).

For example, if you can avoid working with your email open you may be able to spend less time each day on email by checking in 2 or 3 times throughout the day and emptying your inbox each time. Checking email many times throughout the day may lead to more time than necessary. An example from my process is writing blog posts.

My preferred method of producing content for my blogs is to have specific days set aside where this is my only focus. I can finish one post and move right on to the next. I may have a list of ideas that I want to work on so I don’t waste time trying to decide before I start writing. With this approach I feel like I’m able to get more out of my time as opposed to writing a post here and there whenever I have time.

8. Track Your Time You might be completely surprised to know exactly how you spend your time throughout a work week. Tracking your time can help you to find inefficiencies and ways to improve your productivity. Without knowing how your time is spent, it’s hard to know how you can improve the use of your time. I’m not suggesting that you need to track your time everyday, but if you do it for a few typical days you may be surprised at how easily you can identify some areas for improvement going forward.

9. Recognize Your Distractions One of the benefits of tracking your time is that it helps you to identify things or activities that may be distracting you in your work. Whether or not you are tracking your time at any giving point, one of the first steps to working productively is to recognize your distractions. Eliminating or controlling these distractions will lead to greater efficiency, but in order to do so you’ll first have to accurately recognize and understand specifically what challenges you have when it comes to working productively.

10. Have Realistic Expectations Ambitious executives will often feel the pressure to get more done than is humanly possible with a given amount of time. This can obviously lead to increased stress and pressure, not to mention a lower quality of work. Realistic expectations will allow you to be able to accomplish the things you set out to do with a day of good work.

The biggest part of having realistic expectations is the amount of work that you assign yourself for the day. Taking on too many projects at once and trying to juggle too many different tasks will result in a cluttered work day with unimpressive results. Resist the urge to try to get too much done, and focus more on doing your best work with what is currently on your plate. If you struggle in this area you may be able to increase your productivity by outsourcing some of your tasks.

11. Plan Your Next Day at the End of Each Day This is probably more of a personal preference, but I have found that if I take a few minutes at the end of my day to plan for the next day, I’m typically more aware of things and I can do a better job as opposed to waiting until the next morning to plan the day. If I wait till the next morning I find that it takes me a few minutes to remember exactly where I was on certain items at the end of the last day, and I may overlook something that I would have remembered had I taken care of this the day before.

At the end of each day I can look at my to-do list for the day and quickly see where I stand on the items that I wanted and needed to get done. At that point, planning for the next day is a quick process and I know exactly where I need to start, without running the risk of forgetting things. Now I’ll waste no time the next day trying to figure out what I need to do.

12. Get Enough Sleep the Night Before During my time as an executive, particularly when I was freelancing part-time on top of a full-time job, I’ve averaged less sleep than at any other point in my life. However, sleep is an important part of a productive schedule. Each of us functions differently in this area, but personally I tend to notice it the most at the very beginning and end of the day. If I’m feeling well-rested I can be productive through these times. If not, I struggle to stay on task.

13. Eat Healthy The food that you put into your body can have a big impact on your energy level and your feelings in general. I’m not going to go into detail here because I’m not that knowledgeable on the topic, but generally eating healthy foods will allow for better productivity.

14. Get Fresh Air One of the things I dislike about working from home is the amount of time that I spend inside the house. I often find that it helps just to take a few minutes for a walk or a drive to get some fresh air. Sometimes working in a different environment and getting out of the house for a while can really lead to a boost in productivity. This is something that you can accomplish with just a few minutes of your time, but it may have a noticeable impact for the next few hours.

15. Work in a Comfortable Environment As a executive, you’ll probably be spending a lot of time in an office. Making that office a comfortable space is important in terms of increasing your productivity. What you do with the office isn’t really important, but it should be an area that allows you to focus on your work comfortably for long periods of time. I recently wrote a post at DesignM.ag on the essential qualities of a home office that takes a more in-depth look at this subject.

On The Job, But On The Lookout for Work.

With the economy in the tank, one can never have too many friends. By Laura Holson at The New York Times

So a few weeks ago, Katherine Wu, an executive at NBC Universal, packed an overnight bag with her yoga mat and drove 80 miles to Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, N.Y., to a retreat organized by 85 Broads, a women’s networking group. In between spa treatments and sun salutations, she and 17 fellow executives discussed career prospects in an unsettled economy.

It was not her first time at such an event. Ms. Wu, 30, found the job she has now through 85 Broads. A self-described “networking evangelist,” her profile is posted on LinkedIn and she gets five to seven calls a month from people looking for jobs. She answers every one. It makes good sense, she explained. Someday it could be her placing the call.

“I equate this to dating,” Ms. Wu said. “Networking is a basic numbers game. If you don’t get out, you won’t meet as many people.”

With companies firing workers in droves and those with jobs worried that they could be next, 2009 is shaping up to be a golden era of networking. Universities have shifted alumni outreach efforts to focus on career counseling and networking instruction, rather than social gatherings.

The Center for Networking Excellence in New York, which advises companies, says requests for corporate seminars have increased 50 percent in the last year. Informal groups are popping up everywhere, inspired by people’s hopes that any connection might lead to the next job.

Although networking has traditionally been the urgent preoccupation of the unemployed, these days many are subscribing to the axiom that it is easier to find a job if you already have one. Networking before the pink slip arrives is a measure of the anxiety seeping into nearly every corner of the work world, during a recession that has already claimed 1.5 million white-collar jobs.

“People are worried about where the next job will come from even before they lose their old one,” said Janet Hanson, a former Goldman Sachs executive who was a founder of 85 Broads in 1997. “They know that three months from now, they could be gone, too. What we are seeing and what we expect to happen even more is that people are going to become chronic networkers.”

If anyone appreciates this, it is Vincent Lauria, the 29-year-old organizer of the Silicon Valley NewTech Meetup Group, whose membership has swelled 75 percent since last fall, to 3,500. Since December, attendance at a monthly gathering that Mr. Lauria organizes at a Palo Alto, Calif., law firm has tripled. He cuts off the guest list at a generous 200 and is still forced to turn people away. “I don’t want it to turn into a convention,” he said.

But clearly he is filling a need. Conversations among guests, Mr. Lauria said, tend to focus on two things: how long will the recession last, and whom can they meet who will help them if they are laid off.

Mr. Lauria said there is an increasing wariness in Silicon Valley among engineers and developers who are concerned about their own job security and, at the same time, are being hounded by peers desperate to connect. Two weeks ago, he had lunch with a friend who asked him for a contact at Twitter.

“I e-mailed two people who are connected to people there, but they both said ‘no’ because they have been asked to make too many referrals,” Mr. Lauria said. “They didn’t want to waste the political capital on someone they didn’t think would get a job.”

In this on-all-the-time generation, ubiquity is key. Consider Sonja Kosman, a 32-year-old executive at the online video advertising firm Spotzer Media. She attends two career-related events in New York each week, she said. Some are sponsored by Columbia University, from which she graduated in 2008 with an M.B.A. Others are through professional groups like Sobel Media NY: Media Information Exchange Group.

And that does not include Ms. Kosman’s online forays. Last year she joined a group through the networking site Meetup.com. And she has profiles posted on LinkedIn and Facebook, where she currently has 460 friends.

“You don’t know where the opportunities are going to come from,” she said. “They could come from sites. You could meet someone at an event, at the grocery store. You have to be open to anything.”

Social networking sites, particularly the business-oriented LinkedIn, are aggressively taking advantage of the hunger to connect in the current economy. LinkedIn has more than 37 million members and says it is adding a new one almost every second. Requests from people using the service to find jobs are up 48 percent from a year ago, the company says. The number of members writing recommendations for friends or colleagues (which are included on users’ pages) has grown 65 percent a month since December.

But so much networking comes at a price.

“If you are a good networker, it takes a lot of time,” said Cathy Stembridge, the executive director of the alumni association for Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. “It’s not everyone’s cup of tea.”

Recently, Northwestern shifted its focus from organizing alumni parties and social events to offering job counseling seminars instead, Ms. Stembridge said. In February and early March, it held networking events in New York City, Austin, Dallas and Minneapolis. It also offered a new, four-part Web series with classes such as “How Do I Develop Lasting Connections?”

Anxiety about economic uncertainty has forced many to adapt in ways they might not have imagined a few years ago.

Joseph Farren, a vice president for global public affairs for Waggener Edstrom Worldwide in Washington, recently joined Twitter. He also began reaching out to old high school friends through Facebook. He said he feels the pressure to network more than he used to. “People are doing things differently because they feel vulnerable,” he said.

It is not just individuals promoting the benefit of having as wide a network as possible. Large institutions do so as well, said Liz Lynch, the founder of the Center for Networking Excellence. Recently, Ms. Lynch said that she was hired by both Google and Boeing to instruct employees on how to network within their own companies. “That is as vital to keeping a job as finding a new one,” she said.

Attending a yoga retreat or reminiscing online about the senior prom is strictly beginner stuff for the most enterprising networkers. A few weeks ago, while Scott G. Cooney, a real estate developer in Missoula, Mont., was getting his monthly $14 haircut, he was approached by an engineer who wanted to switch firms. He took the man’s card but he didn’t hire him.

The most enterprising job seeker he has seen, however, was a woman who for three months last year attended local planning commission meetings, introducing herself to Mr. Cooney each time. She was working part time at a construction company but wanted full-time work. Mr. Cooney finally hired her as his outreach coordinator.

“It has gotten quite interesting,” he said.

So, too, for Robert Raciti, a senior vice president at GE Capital. Recently a colleague asked him if he could get a free ticket to a media conference for a friend, a prominent employment recruiter. Mr. Raciti happily obliged.

“I thought, ‘Why not?’ ” he said with a laugh. “He’s a job recruiter. It couldn’t hurt.”

Global Crisis Forces Corporations To Look Beyond Quarterly Earnings.

With the US economy in turmoil, Wal-Mart, the nation’s leading retailer boasting more than 144 million customers per week, is taking on a new leadership role. In a country where about one person in three is considered obese and 47 million people are without healthcare, the company is taking a unique stand in educating both its consumers and suppliers. by Rahilla Zafar at Insead

Five years ago, it would have been unheard of for the company’s top executives to be talking about reducing the firm’s carbon footprint, cutting transportation costs, reducing excess packaging, creating more transparent supply chains and starting initiatives to provide credit to millions of low income Americans who normally would not have access to any.

More and more companies are finding that their efforts to reduce their carbon emissions and become more environmentally friendly have led to increased profits.

At the 2008 Net Impact North American conference held this month at Wharton Business School, Matt Kistler, Senior Vice President of Sustainability at Wal-Mart, spoke about his company’s role in shifting consumer culture.

The story began 10 years ago, while Kistler was managing coffee sales at Kraft Foods. A group of Yale University students had begun requesting that their campus food service serve only 'socially-conscious' coffee.

Kistler admits that his intention at the time was to add a product to the portfolio that consumers wanted and not necessarily do something for the planet but in the process of doing that, he discovered much more.

“I got thrust into working with different NGOs (non-governmental organisations) and people like Paul Rice, the founder of Transfair USA, enlightened me,” says Kistler.

In 2004, after joining Wal-Mart, he raised the question if the company should be thinking about sustainability in packaging. His insights led to company executives deciding to hold the retail giant’s first ever meeting on sustainability.

“Our goal is to take care of the customer and such initiatives help people both save money and live better,” he says.

It was not long ago that the green movement was perceived as being an alternative lifestyle rather than something mainstream. Now, many Americans are beginning to recognise that what they thought to be the norms of everyday life are unsustainable.

Kistler says that at Wal-Mart, it was not just about the company making changes like working on supply chains for responsible sourcing and using more fuel-efficient vehicles, it was also about ensuring that their two million employees understand that there are ways to live better.

“We started a personal sustainability project to get associates engaged. It is a voluntary program first launched in the United States which has prompted thousands of pounds of weight loss, more employees biking to work and the company saving hundreds of thousands of kilowatts in energy,” says Kistler.

The change also brought to the attention of employees things they normally would not have given a second thought about. For example, one employee noticed that a vending machine had an unnecessary light bulb in it. After suggesting to management that the bulb was wasting energy, the company removed the bulbs from all stores nationwide, saving the company one million dollars a year.

Kistler says the company can go further in guiding customers in what they should buy, but the question remains: how far can it go?

“The chairman of Patagonia, an organic clothing retailer, says we should work with suppliers to change some of our product ingredients. For example, high fructose corn syrup is part of the ingredients of some of the products we sell. Wal-Mart could ask these companies to shift to cane sugar, which many believe to be a healthier alternative,” says Kistler, who admits the company is not quite there yet to make such a push.

However Wal-Mart has worked with suppliers to eliminate red and green lighting on devices such as televisions.

“It is staggering the number of power plants that would be erased from the grid from just a small decision like that. Thinking like that is simple and our company plays a unique role in making those changes happen,” he explains.

The biggest roadblock for companies is making many of these changes in the current economic situation.

“We are willing to pay more for products coming from companies who show that their price increase is related to making investments to become more fuel efficient and taking better care of their workers. But do not bring us higher costs that are not justifiable,” says Kistler.

“We are going to make some mistakes. This is a new area, there are no books written telling us what to do. It is okay to take a prudent risk as long as the mistakes are not long lasting,” he adds.

For John Brock, CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises, sustainability has taken centre stage at the company.

“When Wal-Mart, our largest customer, says we are going to have a sustainability conference and want all CEOs to come, we show up. The commitment of companies such as Wal-Mart and (UK retailer) Tesco has been remarkable; institutionally this is no longer niche, it is mainstream” says Brock.

Brock adds that the game has changed tremendously.

“We are working with NGOs as partners, when five years ago none of us would have been caught in the same room together. We are all committed to the same end result. There are some disagreements over how we get there, but sustainability has become the core of everything we do.”

One of the company’s long-term goals is to sell a litre of beverage without a single drop of water going to waste. Today, it takes 1.77 litres of water to make one litre of Coca-Cola. When government officials in Georgia, where the company is headquartered in the US, asked the beverages firm to reduce water usage by 10 per cent, the company was able to cut it by 30 per cent.

But in the current economic downturn, many believe that while consumers are becoming increasingly aware, they are not willing to pay more for change.

“Americans are keenly interested, but will not sacrifice formula and an increase in price. It is our responsibility to figure out how to deliver,” says Brock.

Many believe much will now depend on the leadership provided by the new administration.

According to Paul Herman, founder of HIP Investor, a San Francisco-based company which advises investors and corporations on how to be more sustainable and profitable, the United States could be the world’s leader in producing the technology for alternative energy.

“That is something possible in one presidential term. Today for solar energy, it is a competition between China, the United States and Germany. If there was a government incentive to invest in it, large corporations like General Electric would. China has invested 586 billion dollars into its infrastructure, which will likely include investments in clean energy,” says Herman.

The best role for the United States government would be to set the efficiency metrics and rewards for outcome, but not prescribe what process or technologies companies should use, Herman says.

“For example, when the government subsidised the price of ethanol, it put pressure on corn prices. A better approach would be when the government set fuel efficiency standards, which they have not updated,” explains Herman, who believes the top companies in the US could be doing much more.

“Of the S&P 100, a third are reporting sustainability data and actively integrating that within their management systems. Only ten of the 100 are actively educating Wall Street and just a few are having proactive conversations with shareholders on this topic,” says Herman.

Cross-sector discussions also remain limited and it is yet to be seen if a government push will be enough to bridge the divide, or if it will take another crisis to get companies to shift from self-interest towards a common interest.

The Secret of 'The New Marketing' by Seth Godin.

This, in two words, is the secret of the new marketing. Find ten people. Ten people who trust you/respect you/need you/listen to you...

Those ten people need what you have to sell, or want it. And if they love it, you win. If they love it, they'll each find you ten more people (or a hundred or a thousand or, perhaps, just three). Repeat.

If they don't love it, you need a new product. Start over.

Your idea spreads. Your business grows. Not as fast as you want, but faster than you could ever imagine.

This approach changes the posture and timing of everything you do.

You can no longer market to the anonymous masses. They're not anonymous and they're not masses. You can only market to people who are willing participants. Like this group of ten.

The timing means that the idea of a 'launch' and press releases and the big unveiling is nuts. Instead, plan on the gradual build that turns into a tidal wave. Organize for it and spend money appropriately. The fact is, the curve of money spent (big hump, then it tails off) is precisely backwards to what you actually need.

Three years from now, this advice will be so common as to be boring. Today, it's almost certainly the opposite of what you're doing.

Catch Seth at his blog.

No Time? Focus on the Important.

Busy people have two options when they decide how their workdays will go: they can choose to be reactive to urgent demands on their time, or proactive about focusing on what they decide is important. The only way to actually get things done is to mitigate the urgent to work on the important. Let's differentiate between what I call urgent and important.

Urgent tasks include things like that frantic email that needs a response RIGHT NOW; a sudden request that seems like it'll only take two minutes but often ends up taking an hour; a report you've got to write up before a meeting. More often than not "the urgent" is putting out fires, or busywork, or tasks that you'd rather do first because they're less intimidating than your current project list.

Urgent tasks are usually short-term and we're drawn to them because they keep us busy and make us feel needed. (If we're busy people, we must be important people.)

But dealing with a constant stream of urgent tasks leaves you wrung out at the end of the day, wondering where all the time went, staring at the undone actual work you've got to complete.

On the flip side, important work moves you and your business towards your goals. The important stuff doesn't give us that same shot of adrenaline that the urgent requests do. It can involve thinking out long-term goals, being honest about where you are and want to be, and just doing plain hard work that feels boring and tedious. On a personal level, important stuff may include making time to get to the gym every day. On a business level, important stuff may be devising your yearly plan, breaking it down into quarterly and monthly deliverables, and evaluating your current performance against last year's plan. (Doesn't the mere thought of going to the gym and deciding on this year's goals make you want to check your email? Still, that's the work that will help you meet your goals.)

If your workplace encourages that frantic vibe of headless-chicken running and constant urgency, it can feel impossible to focus on what's important versus what's urgent. Still, an awareness of the difference and a few simple techniques can help.

Choose three important tasks to complete each day. Write them down on a slip of paper and keep it visible on your desk. When you have a moment, instead of checking your email, look at the slip, and work on an item. Keep the list to just three, and see how many you can complete.

Turn off your email client. Shut down Outlook, turn off new email notifications on your BlackBerry, do whatever you have to do to muffle the interruption of email. When you decide to work on one of your important tasks, give yourself an hour at least of uninterrupted time to complete it. If the web is too much of a temptation, disconnect your computer from the Internet for that hour.

Set up a weekly 20-minute meeting with yourself. Put it on your calendar, and don't book over it — treat it with the same respect you'd treat a meeting with your boss. If you don't have an office door or you work in an open area that's constantly busy, book a conference room for your meeting. Go there to be alone. Bring your project list, to-do list, and calendar, and spend the time reviewing what you finished that past week, and what you want to get done the following week. This is a great time to choose your daily three important tasks. Productivity author David Allen refers to this as the "weekly review," and it's one of the most effective ways to be mindful about how you're spending your time.

by Gina Trapani at HBR.

Grow Your Business Tweet by Tweet.

Entrepreneurs are finding the fast-rising microblogging site to be a useful tool for reaching out to customers. By Jeremy Quittner at Newsweek

Here's what happened when Chris Savage, the chief executive of Wistia.com, searched for the phrase "private video sharing" on Twitter, a social networking site. One post he found read, "A teacher requested a private 'video sharing' Web site so that specialists can observe student behavior—can anyone refer one?"

That got Savage's attention. He e-mailed back: "Still looking for a private video sharing site?"

Minutes later came the reply: "YES! It's the first request for one—thought I'd hit up my tweets before [I] go digging."

Savage: "Cool. You may want to check out Wistia.com. Full disclosure, I'm the CEO; -)"

While this exchange may seem a bit cryptic, Savage is one of a growing number of business owners to whom it makes an awful lot of sense. Savage frequently trolls Twitter looking for sales leads for his five-person, $1 million company, which makes software that facilitates video sharing through a private network. Although Savage has been using Twitter for only a year, it's already helped him find 12 new clients for his Lexington (Mass.) company. "This is a no-cost way of marketing," he says. Because Twitter provides a public forum, each post becomes a form of promotion as other users follow Savage's posts. "You are building a reputation; people can go back and look at your Web site and the quality of your content, and you are becoming part of the community," Savage says. Other business owners are using Twitter for market research and to keep an eye on customer service issues. BREVITY'S BRAWN Twitter distinguishes itself from MySpace (NWS) and Facebook by relying less on picture-laden profiles and more on posts of fewer than 140 characters, referred to as "tweets" or "microblogs." Twitter's simplicity is paired with a powerful search function that allows users to mine others' updates in real time for useful nuggets. "Twitter lets you stay on top of what is happening within your client base," says Chip Lambert, owner of Network2Networth, a business development consultancy in Phoenix. "You can look at conversations and reposition yourself, your products, and your services in a way that appeals to the market you are reaching out to."

An estimated 5 million people use Twitter, according to Cambridge-based Forrester Research. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone says businesses "that are not quite big enough to make an impact on the Web, or to spend resources there," have been some of the earliest users of the site. He says some San Francisco-based coffee shops and bakeries have sent tweets to tell their customers about specials or products they may be out of that day. One Los Angeles taco truck uses Twitter to tell customers where it will be that day. "Businesses use this as a hybrid between marketing and customer service," says Stone. "They use the Twitter Search to track mentions of their products and services and as a way to begin a conversation."

Like any online forum, Twitter may not be for everyone. Its immediacy and conversational nature make it a boon to those whose products and services may take a bit more explaining or back-and-forth. And it can be a time suck. "One of the major drawbacks is that [Twitter] is very addictive," says Savage, who has 800 followers and in turn follows just as many. He uses a popular add-on called Tweet Deck, which lets members organize messages by category.

GETTING STARTED Joining Twitter is easy and free. You create a user name and password, then log onto the site. (You can also sign up to have tweets delivered to your mobile phone.) Once inside, there's a big box at the top labeled "What are you doing?" While you could start by typing something as mundane as "I am drinking my coffee and checking out Twitter," you'll see tabs on the right that say "following," "followers," and "updates," enabling you to follow others whose posts you find interesting. Once you've been posting for a while, people follow you too. A certain viral element takes over, and soon you may wind up in the middle of a Twitter community with common interests.

You'll also find thousands of irrelevant posts. "It is easy to get lost and sidetracked," says Lambert, who suggests entrepreneurs think strategically about how they might use Twitter. A mortgage broker, for example, could follow discussions people are having about new tax credits, learn what advice they're getting and which sites they're linking to, and then compose a suitable message to address them.

The viral component of Twitter has helped Andra Watkins, founder of Positus, a consulting firm based in Charleston, S.C. She joined Twitter about six months ago, and at first found it a bit daunting. "I did not grow up using these tools and it has taken me time to develop the voice and approach," she says. Still, she has built a following of 600 Twitterers—friends, colleagues, bloggers, and potential customers. She in turn follows about 600 other people, including a group from her home state of South Carolina—85% of whom she figures could help bring in business. She also follows influential bloggers and those with large Twitter followings, in hopes of establishing a dialogue with them, and keeps tabs on her competitors. Watkins sometimes sends out tweets that have nothing to do with her business, such as a few complaining about exercise. "It makes me more approachable," Watkins says. In the past six months, she's found 10 new paying clients through Twitter.

Other business owners, like Michael Coffey, chief executive of BlueCotton in Bowling Green, Ky., are using Twitter to enhance customer service. The 25-employee, $4 million company lets customers design their own shirts online. For the past two months, two of Coffey's factory workers have used iPhones to snap pictures of completed shirts, and then to send photo tweets to customers right before shipping. "Customers have some anxiety when they purchase shirts online," Coffey says. The tweets help alleviate those concerns—and have won new customers who spot the designs on Twitter. "Having people follow BlueCotton is a feather in our cap," Coffey says. "It helps create real fans of the company."

Want to keep your job? Be happy.

Study shows that a bright disposition helps workers navigate darker times. By Becky Fleischauer

Does the recession with its rampant layoffs and cutbacks make your job look better all the time? Believe it or not, donning a pair of "recession goggles" can be good for your career and your mental health. Research shows that an attitude of gratitude in trying times can not only help you keep your job, but get you the job you want.

It's a counterintuitive concept, for sure. In today's economic maelstrom, the most common responses are panic, fear, anger, distrust, and even hostility. But a Harvard Business Review article "How to Protect Your Job in a Recession" studied the characteristics of recession survivors and found that those who avoided being cut were cheerful, likable, generous contributors, and not necessarily the most skilled and proficient.

"Just don't be the guy who's always in a bad mood, reminding colleagues how vulnerable everyone is. Who wants to be in the trenches with him?" caution authors Janet Banks and Diane Coutu.

Workplace relationship expert Courtney Anderson agrees, and observes that tolerance for bad actors – particularly those higher up the food chain – is shrinking.

"The handwriting is on the wall for them in a lot of organizations," says Ms. Anderson, founder of Courtney Anderson & Associates, a human resources firm in Austin, Texas. "When times are good, companies will tolerate a lot. But in this economy, every single decision is double- and triple-checked. It will be tough for the really poor managers to make it through,"

This could explain why the ax is falling higher up the management chain. Companies are looking to save more money, and bigger salaries yield larger savings. Today's unemployment rate for college-educated workers, 4.1 percent, is the highest it's been since the US Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking the data in 1992. It is more than twice its prerecession level, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, putting the risk of being unemployed proportionately higher for college-educated workers than for less-educated ones.

When productivity is in decline, Anderson says, other factors gain more value in the decisionmaking process about who stays and who goes. "I used to go to organizations," Anderson says, "and they would describe a horrible situation: 'Felicia curses people out, she yells and is mean, but she delivers.' They would want me to figure out how to keep the person and be flexible because the person delivered. Now, with the current macroeconomic picture, they won't put up with it. There is a financial opportunity to get rid of the people who create problems."

Anderson says corporate leaders are now placing more value on workers who add positive energy to the atmosphere beyond increasing sales and visibility. She says that includes placing those who are grouchy and unpleasant on the layoff list, but also the person who never says anything, the colleague who is invisible and flies under the radar.

"All variations of not contributing and making it a positive, efficient workplace are being considered," Anderson says. If striking a cheerful pose in tough times doesn't come naturally, consider that it does require conscious effort. And even the act of trying to be happy can make a difference.

"If you stay positive, you'll have more influence on how things play out," advise Ms. Banks and Ms. Coutu. Banks is a veteran of at least a dozen corporate downsizings, and Coutu has studied resilience in many settings. They say survivors and those who leverage layoffs to their advantage focus on anticipating the needs of customers and those above and below them inside the office.

During periods of numerous layoffs, vacuums occur at all levels, leaving many opportunities to help your boss and the company get more accomplished. "Prove your value to the firm by showing your relevance to the work at hand," Banks and Coutu note, "which may have shifted since the economy softened."

The key to donning recession goggles is to make decisions you won't regret when the recession fades and more prosperous times return.

"We should affirm to ourselves each day why we are doing what we do," Anderson says. "If you are truly, truly miserable, even in a bad economy, you may be better off doing something else: taking a break, going back to school, or working part time. It's valid to ask ourselves: 'Do I enjoy this? Why am I here?' Reevaluate."

She reminds us that if you find you are in a job exclusively for the paycheck – that is, uh, OK. It is a superb reason to go to work and be satisfied in this economy.

"You can still go to work and have a good day," Anderson says. Especially pay day. "Bad times remind us all of the basics.... We shouldn't take things for granted."