The stories we’ve been reading these past few weeks about Kazuo Hirai, Sony’s new CEO, and the challenges of reversing a 10+ year slide are downright sad – but not entirely surprising. For a long time we’ve been watching Sony act as if it were run by a bunch of tired veterans from an out-of-touch generation. At one point in its sixty-five-year history, however, Sony was an electronics rock star.

• Trinitron was king of the TV market; now it’s Samsung and LG.
• The Playstation used to be every teenager’s dream. Now Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is crushing the competition.
• Sony invented portable music with its Walkman. Smartphones now own that business.
• Speaking of smartphones, ten years ago it would have been Sony that would have been most likely to invent that category. Today they are nowhere in sight.
• Tablets? Sony is again missing in action. In a category of the type they used to dominate, but here’s what PC Magazine had to say of Sony’s recently-released Tablet S: “Underpowered, overpriced, and doesn’t pull Sony’s multimedia services together in a convincing way. Where Apple’s and Amazon’s tablets fuse device and content seamlessly, the Tablet S does not.”

So what’s Sony’s new CEO to do?

Let’s not kid ourselves, for a company the size of Sony, there’s no easy fix. But for starters, Hirai might benefit from a sit-down with Sergio Marchionne, a CEO who knows a thing or two about inheriting –then turning around – major corporations on the brink of ruin.

In 2006, Marchionne rescued Fiat, an Italian automaker headed for the junkyard and created not only one of the fastest growing companies in the industry, but a culture of youthful, fast-moving enthusiasm. A few years later, he was instrumental in Fiat Group forming a strategic alliance with Chrysler, another automaker at death’s door. Marchionne muscled Chrysler from the clutches of the US government, including paying off the company’s 19.7 percent interest. The automaker is now making a profit each quarter and generating real excitement with its new models.

How did he do it?

1.) When he first arrived at Fiat, Marchionne was shocked by the practice of executives communicating with each other through their secretaries. As a result, he replaced most of the top executives with aggressive outsiders or super-talented middle managers who were also highly critical of the current state at Fiat. Marchionne says his job as CEO is not to make business decisions — it is to push managers to be leaders. As E.M. Kelly once said, “The difference between a boss and a leader: a boss says, ‘Go!’ – a leader says, ‘Let’s go!’”

2.) A little lower down the food chain, Marchionne also dismissed thousands of “old-acting” employees who were tied to the past and risk-averse.

3.) Marchionne installed accountability and aggressively fought to squelch bureaucracy and consensus decision-making. When Marchionne came to Chrysler, the chairman’s office was a top-floor penthouse. It’s now empty. Instead, Marchionne’s office is located on fourth floor, which happens the same floor as the engineering department. In other words, Marchionne is on ground zero, where decisions are made and the action actually happens.

According to Money CNN, “The principles of (Marchionne’s) management style are simple: He values merit over rank, excellence over mediocrity, competition over insularity, and accountability over promises.”

Make no mistake, “old” here has nothing to do with gray hair. I’m sure Marchionne has a few of his own and probably more than he did when he first took the helm as Chrysler’s Chief Automaker. In my experience, “old” is a mentality of doing the same thing you’ve always done hoping to get the results that once put you at the top of your game.

It’s a dangerous trap that too many in the C-Suite succumb to.

It’s also one Kazuo Hirai and Sony cannot afford to repeat.

- Bob Herbold is the retired executive vice president and Chief Operating Officer of Microsoft Corporation. During his tenure, Microsoft experienced a seven-fold increase in profits and the company’s revenues increased four-fold. Bob is also the author of three books on leadership, including his latest What’s Holding You Back: 10 Bold Steps that Define Gutsy Leaders. More on his books and “gutsy” leadership blog can be found at www.bobherbold.com.

Wrong.

Simplicity wins.  Every time. (iPod, anyone?)

As an entrepreneur, I get to hang out with other entrepreneurs (and we act all clubby and hip and cool like it’s some secret club – but it really is).  In those circles I get to see and hear a gajillion awesome ideas and pitches.

Oftentimes, many of the idea pitches suck (and if you want to know why they suck, here’s a straightforward post that explains all the contributors to suckitude).  For the ones that don’t suck, the difference between a winning or losing product invariably comes down to simplicity and elegance.

For example, you’ve probably heard the urban legend that during the late 1960′s, NASA spent tons of money on pens that would write in the zero gravity of outer space.  Huge amounts of R&D by private firms went into creating the highly-specified, super cool, usable-in-any-environment writing devices.  I mean, who wouldn’t want a space age pen that could write anywhere?

Now you’ll remember, the dirty nasty red menace commie bastards of the USSR were also locked in the space race with us (chillax – I’m saying that tongue in cheek for those of you who are new readers and aren’t familiar with my style or lack thereof).  They didn’t have as much cash and they were super-lazy too.  They just said “Here komrade kosmonaut! Is pencil!  Is good, da?”  (They actually totally said that too.  I’ve heard the recording).

A pencil.  A freakin’ pencil.  Simplicity of design wins.  Lower cost.  Easier to use.  Arguably more effective.  Frees up resources to work on higher value stuff or to market the simpler product and outspend your competitors on advertising.

Here are a couple of examples of how I’ve seen the space pen dynamic show up in entrepreneurial ventures and, more importantly, what you can do to prevent spending hoards of cash on useless products that no one ultimately wants:

RFID

RFID is awesome.  Mini chips that let you trace, tag, and track stuff.  Cha-ching.

A buddy of mine came to me with an idea pitch.  He followed my prescribed format.  “The problem is you lose socks in the wash or it’s just a pain to match socks up and pair them when you’re folding laundry.” OHMYGODYEAH! I HATE THAT! (Mind-blower: what if you’re actually not *losing* a sock in the dryer but instead the dryer is magically giving you an EXTRA sock each time?  Noodle on that one for a bit).

“So my idea is we’ll embed RFID chips in the socks and then you can just scan the laundry with a hand scanner and you’ll totally be able to match the socks up lickety split and you’ll save tons of time.  You’ll also be able to find the one sock you always seem to lose.”  Sounded like a good solution.  Super-techie.  Cool.  Futuristic.  You could clearly see charging a lot of money for this solution.

I couldn’t resist destroying his idea.  “Hey dude, why can’t I simply tie my socks together before I put them in the wash?”  Silence.  Clearly the solution was overengineered.

Website Mockup Engine

Entrepreneurs and companies alike all have needs to mock-up new websites and platforms.  More often than not, that design is done on a whiteboard which, admittedly, can be challenging to share with developers, marketers, etc.

A friend of mine came to me saying he had cracked the problem.  He showed me this wicked awesome web-based cloud engine where you can drag and drop text boxes, images, and type stuff in to have it look like a website.  A user can have a prototype drawn up reasonably quickly using the software.

Enter the dreamcrusher (me).  “Hey, it’s just like using PowerPoint, huh?  Like, I make my mockups in PowerPoint and send the slides to the developers and they make the site in a jiffy.”

I got a bunch of reasons why it was better on the web based platform that I would be charged $30/month to use instead of on the laptop-based-always-with-me-even-when-I-don’t-have-connectivity-and-I’ve-already-paid-for-the-software-once PowerPoint solution.

Hmm.  Cool factor: 9.2.  Extra value relative to next best solution: negative 3.4.

Awesome Show Up Exactly on Time App

Apps are kewl.  You have to have a hip iPhone or Android to have them (unlike me with my uncool BlackBerry).  A guy was pitching me the merits of his sweet new app that used GPS data and mapped out my current location and the location of my next meeting.  It then calculated the shortest route, adjusted for real-time traffic information, and hit me up with an alarm for EXACTLY (within 30 seconds) when I needed to leave to get to my next meeting on time.  It was super-awesome and he was going to charge $6.99 for the app.

Dreamcrusher: “Um, why wouldn’t I just set a calendar reminder to alert me 30 minutes before my next meeting and just leave then and if I show up a little bit early, I can read the interwebz on my phone?”

“Because my app is cool and edgy and it gets you there exactly on time!  Besides, you’re not my target market.  I only target hip people who want to be uber-cool and show up exactly on time and show people my cool app is how they did that bit of scheduling magic and then that person buys the app and it goes totally viral!”

Right.  Got it.

The Fix

Look folks – if you want to win in the marketplace, focus on simplicity (twitter’s 140 characters anyone?).  A few things to think about:

- What EXACTLY is the problem you’re trying to solve?  Do a lot of people have it and want it to go away?

- What’s the CURRENT way they’re treating the problem?  THAT’S your competition – it’s their next-best alternative relative to your proposed solution.  THAT’S what your product has to beat (both from a capability and cost standpoint including accounting for switching costs).

- What’s the ABSOLUTE MINIMUM product you need to put on the market to solve the problem (pencil/tying socks/calendar reminder)?  BUILD THAT and validate you have a solution that works.

Stop making product development so hard, complex, and confusing.  You’re wasting investment dollars that instead could be used for marketing and scaling your much simpler (and cheaper to build) alternative product.

How have YOU dealt with the complexities of product development, overspecification, and scope creep?  Share your thoughts in the comments below.

- Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

In The Road to Value (Part 1) I revealed a powerful way to lead a changing or emerging industry by developing a roadmap that delineates the way to create and capture value in that industry. The post showcased market-based benefits to doing this leading work. It also referenced the internal value that could be gained inside the company architecting the roadmap. Internal value is the focus of this post.

Infographic by Dennis Michael Dimos

A value roadmap can provide a number of sustainable benefits inside the company that invests in the effort.

1. The capabilities section of the value roadmap showcases the gaps between what the roadmap says is needed and what the company can actually provide. The gap analysis showcases exactly where the company needs to improve its own capabilities in terms of people, process, solutions, and services.
2. The gap analysis becomes a decision tree for what, when and how a company needs to fill the gaps. It sets up decisions that need to be made regarding
1. Priorities
2. Timing
3. Investments
4. Methodology – build, buy or partner
3. The effort to develop the value roadmap can motivate a company. Let’s face it. The work is highly strategic. It’s about creating an innovative yet functional form of intellectual property that can help catapult the company to category leadership. It represents a significant value opportunity, and everyone involved knows it.
4. The roadmap team is a reflection of how powerful a company can be when it aligns its critical assets. The construction of a value roadmap requires the active participation of a cross-functional team from Product Management, Sales, Services, and Marketing. Input in = input out. Smart, committed people supported by executive sponsors will produce a really good result.
5. The roadmap identifies what each department needs to do
1. Product Management needs to fill gaps in the product portfolio while continually improving existing products that are core to what’s needed
2. Services can elevate its game from simply supporting customers to strategically guiding customers through a new consulting practice
3. Marketing must leverage the thought leadership value of the roadmap, first with influencers like analysts and the media, then as a vehicle to drive higher value engagements with customers and prospects
4. Sales needs to be trained on how to leverage the roadmap content in two ways: to create a new narrative with current customers; and to be able to have a credible conversation with senior executives who heretofore have eluded the company’s reach
6. The content of the roadmap can be repurposed into other thought leadership forms, such as keynote addresses, Point-of-View booklets, executive seminars, workshops, articles, and the like. For one company, we even formed a partnership with a top business school to create an executive education series off of the content of the roadmap. We received money (nice), valuable input (good), access to executives (really good), and the pedigree of partnering with a leading institution (invaluable).

As you have seen in these posts, a value roadmap is a highly worthy endeavor for those companies looking to lead a changing or emerging category. It has clear and sustainable benefits within the marketplace and within the company doing it.

But, it’s not easy. Not in the least. To be successful you have to be willing to commit to the hard work of doing it properly. Here are some tips.

- You have to stay firm with a skeptical sales force used to selling from demos

- You have to test the content of the roadmap as it’s forming with real customers in real sales situations as often as you can

- And, you have to be willing to take to heart what one of my executive partners in one of these efforts said when he admonished a services team for not fully committing to the roadmap as it was forming. He said, “Get with the (expletive) program! If you’re not on the roadmap you’re off strategy!!!”

That was … and very much is … the point. A value roadmap is the strategy that can make all the difference. It has for the many companies with whom I’ve done this. It certainly did for the company and executive in the above story. Now, 10 years later, the company is leveraging version 6 of their roadmap as the clear leader of their market space. And that passionate executive is the CEO/President of the company!

- Thomas Butta is Founder and CEO of 21 Weeks, where he drives sustainable transformation for organizations in rapidly changing markets. He is an experienced and sought after thought leader; having worked with top tier companies such as Red Hat, Parametric Technology Corp, NICE Systems, and FGI. He is the author of the popular blog, Speed Matters, and writes for the Huffington Post, Best Thinking, Business2Community and Examiner.com. He speaks on matters of capitalizing on critical moments and accelerating value.

Leadership is perilous territory.  People’s lives are at stake (sometimes literally).  While avoiding the following 7 deadly sins won’t guarantee you’ll be a great leader, succumbing to them will guarantee you’ll have a significant learning moment (translation: you’ll fail miserably but hopefully you’ll learn something from it).

We’re human (if you’re not, lemme know because I’ve always wanted to meet either a zombie or an android).  We make mistakes.  We succumb to temptation, pressure, and insecurity.  Many times we don’t intend to behave badly but it happens to all of us.  Sometimes we’re left wondering how the heck we ended up in a certain predicament and other times we deliberately choose the wrong choice.

The following are common ways you might find yourself in trouble and, more importantly, things you can do to avoid that trouble or extricate yourself from it.

Lust

Don’t worry – we’re not talking about sex here.  But I am talking about appearances.  While it’s important to dress the part of a leader and to be charismatic and have sex appeal, more than a hint of it can be your undoing.  Sex appeal is like cologne or perfume.  It needs to be understated because the moment you even think about being too charismatic, you’ve gone too far and you reek of it.  Let your actions and achievements attract others to be members of your team – not your Gucci Armani Coach Louis Vuitton Polo ensemble.

Gluttony

Resources are scarce.  Budgets, people, IT support, etc. are all at a premium.  If you’re lucky enough to have some of these assets, bully for you.  As a leader, you must resist the urge to hoard these resources.  You’ll be seen as not being a team player and you’ll hurt other areas of your business who need the resources more than you do.  When you’re offered resources, take only what you need.  Being a resource pig is a quick way to earn a bad reputation.

Greed

If you’re in leadership role for the money, you’ve got it all wrong.  You’re responsible for the care and feeding of the people around you.  Doing it for cold, hard cash is the antithesis of being a servant leader.  Don’t get caught focusing on the raise, the bonus, or the corner office.  It will come back to haunt you when everyone on your team quits in search of a leader who cares more about them than they do about stock options.  Keep your priorities straight – if you lead well, the compensation will naturally follow.

Sloth

Don’t be a paper pusher who signs off on things in between rounds of Minesweeper and Solitaire.  Every once in a while you need to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty.  Being a lazy ass who does nothing but preside because you’re a president/vice president or direct because you’re a director will earn you nothing but disdain.  Your team members model your behavior.  If you’re lazy, they’ll be lazier.  If you bust your behind, you can expect great things from them.

Wrath

Things at work will make you mad (especially if you’re exceedingly passionate about the work you do).  When things go poorly, you might have the urge to explode and take it out on the nearest team member, colleague, or boss.  Don’t.  Check yourself before you wreck yourself (Ice Cube!).  The ability to restrain your anger and instead redirect it into fixing things will go a long way.  No one wants to work for a hot head.  Practice counting to 10.  Wait a day before sending that scorching email.  Go take a walk.  No matter what, don’t lose it.

Envy

You want that corner office and the peach of a parking spot, don’t you?  Focusing on the roles, possessions, and achievements of others is cancerous.  It leads you to get distracted from the things that really matter – the members of your team.  All of us want to get promoted and advance our careers.  There are two paths to doing so – getting pulled up by those above us or getting pushed up by the members of our teams.  Avoid the temptation to covet those things above you and instead focus all your time, energy, and attention on your team.  You’ll be in the corner office before you know it.

Pride

If you’re too busy telling others about your accomplishments, you’re not improving your business.  We all have a desire for rewards and recognition and all of us are good at what we do.  But instead of telling people how awesome you are (and likely deriding others in the organization along the way), let other people sing your praises.  It’s your boss’ job to promote your accomplishments – not yours.  Do incredible things for your boss, your team, your customers, your partners, etc.  When you do, they’ll be more than happy to tell people how great you are.  And no matter how much they praise you, don’t let it go to your head because doing so will be your downfall.

There you have it – seven deadly sins that will derail you on your leadership journey and make you twitter and facebook fodder (and not in a good way). Avoid these failure points and temptations if you truly are interested in being a leader of character.

- Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

Today’s post is by Jan Rutherford – author of The Littlest Green Beret. You can learn more about Jan at the end of the post.

The thing about leadership development is that it all starts with everyone’s favorite subject – themselves.  Self awareness is the starting point for effective leadership, and it’s always interesting to watch my students obsess about survey results, feedback from peers, aptitude tests, and what it all means to their careers.  The focus shouldn’t be on oneself, but on the leader’s effect on others.  That is, our primary leadership tool is how we effectively communicate.

The variables are simply how well do we listen and how well do we speak to align expectations, and achieve results?  Ultimately, we control two things:  where we spend our time, and how we respond to our environment.  What priorities will best produce the results we’re after, and what attitude will we choose to deal with everyday ups and downs?  After all, a leader’s environment is largely made up with a bevy of complex and unending interpersonal relationships.

Nick Petrie recently published a brilliant white paper on “Future Trends in Leadership Development” where he discussed the transfer of greater developmental ownership to the individual.  As a strong proponent of self-reliant leadership, I believe Petrie expertly articulated the need for developmental ownership to be squarely on the shoulders of the individual.  Leadership can be an illusion of control, but changing your perspective on everyday experiences can provide inspirational learning opportunities for personal growth and development.

What questions should you routinely ask yourself?  On a daily basis, what steps should you take to find personal success in your life’s work?  Do you know your life’s work?  Some say it’s the place where your passion and others’ needs intersect.  I believe a key determinant of success is whether you can rely on yourself for self-coaching.  However, self-reliant leadership is dependent on achieving a balance between independence and the interdependence of working with others to accelerate your own personal growth and development.

Self-reliance and leadership may seem to be contradictory notions, but there are three mutually supporting concepts:

1. Leadership requires self-awareness.  Leaders understand their strengths and shortcomings and how those traits affect their ability to create willing followers.

2. The second is selflessness.  A leader needs to have a steadfast passion for serving others, and that requires putting others first.

3. Lastly, self-reliance is essential because leading means being out front, and there are more naysayers than supporters when trailblazing.  Self-reliant leaders believe in leading by example to develop followers who have initiative, persistence, and determination.

An additional trend Petrie identified was a greater focus on collective rather than individual leadership.  The concept of collective rather than individual leadership is intriguing in this age of collaboration, teaming, social networks, and the need to bridge generational gaps that will persist for some time to come.  Petrie asks us to consider “What conditions do we need for leadership to flourish in the network,” and how can we “spread leadership capacity throughout the organization and democratize leadership?”

With vast quantities of information, matrix structures, virtual teams, less command and control, the answer to Petrie’s query lies in organizational alignment.  Does the leader know how to harness and execute strategy when the unknowns will always outweighs the knowns?  Can the leader set the general direction without being ambiguous or micromanaging?  Can the leader create an environment where an ownership mentality exists to create a sustainable sense of urgency?

The “collective leaders” will have to balance the purpose of the organization with their own self-interests.   One of Petrie’s conclusions is that leadership will flourish when a number of perspectives are compiled and integrated.  There is no doubt technology will play a role in facilitating the sharing of perspectives, but it will still take a savvy leader’s use of basic communication skills to create organizational alignment and effectively execute a given strategy.  In the end, we all want answers to three basic questions we rarely ask of each other:

- Do you care about me?
- Can I trust you?
- Are you committed to my success?

It’s 2012, and everything has changed except the way organizations are structured and led.  You don’t have all the answers and you’re not expected to; but you are expected to ask thought-provoking questions.  Here’s one:  Are you ready to convey personal responsibility for leadership development while encouraging collective versus individual leadership to advance your organization?

Jan Rutherford is the author of a book on self-reliant leadership called The Littlest Green Beret. Jan entered the US Army at age 17, and spent six years in Special Forces as a medic and “A” team executive officer, and three years as a military intelligence officer. For the past 20 years, Jan’s business roles have been in the areas of marketing, business development, sales management, corporate training, product management, and government affairs.  He is also a professional speaker where he speaks in Europe and the United States.

The following is an excerpt from my book One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership (you can get your copy here).  This post focuses on the importance of eliminating buzzwords and instead simply speaking from your heart. 

If you have been in the professional world for more than a year, you have probably heard something like this a million times:

“My leadership philosophy is to optimally leverage the passions of my people such that at the end of the day we maximize employee engagement to get them to think outside the box and synergistically drive value-added activities in a profit-maximizing way that is a win-win for our people, our shareholders, and our customers.”

It sounds great.  It is polysyllabic.  It uses words with long definitions.  I have only one question: what the hell does it mean?

I want you to wipe away all those unproductive phrases and words that get in the way of you being an authentic leader.  Consider this a bit of a slap upside the head.  You may not realize how deeply ingrained some bad behaviors have become in your daily routine.  You have likely looked through the same lens on the world for a while and that lens colors the way you view leadership.  The color of that lens is determined largely by your organization’s culture.  Somewhere along the way that culture has shaped you more than you are shaping it.  We are going to reverse that dynamic.

Leaders should determine the culture of their organizations – not the other way around.  Sure, leaders have to operate within their given organizational culture but they do not have to succumb to its tendency to create drones and sacrifice their personality to it.  Some aspects of culture are good.  Others. . . well. . . not so much.  One thing I have noticed over the years is many organizations have cultures that lead people to articulate ideas in a less-than-genuine way.  In other words, we end up using buzzwords, which if left unchecked, turn into bullshit.

The worst part is that these buzzwords have migrated from corporate strategy and consultant presentations into how we talk about ourselves as leaders.  We are taught that all good leaders must have a leadership philosophy.  As we cave in to the pressure of “me too” we frantically assemble a philosophy of our own.  After days or weeks of effort, we end up with a lengthy manifesto that articulates our leadership philosophy in terms worthy of inclusion in a Ph.D. program syllabus.  We think to ourselves “Since I finally have a leadership philosophy of my own, I must be a leader in the organization now, right?”

Then it happens.  Our team members open the document.  They see “Page 1 of 13” and their eyes glaze over.  As leaders, we have succumbed to the pressure of business schools and their frameworks.  Sometimes we are simply emulating leaders at levels above us who have used fancy words to define their leadership philosophy and we choose to use fancy words too.  These pressures and weaknesses on our part are turning us into vapid clones.  When this happens, we are turning leadership into something disingenuous, ephemeral, and bland.

The only way I know to roll back the tide of all this meaningless jargon is to say what you really mean.  Words spoken from the heart and the gut are clear, concise, meaningful, and genuine.  They help ground you and your team.  They signal that you are willing to take a stand for something you believe in instead of watering down your beliefs with complicated words so you will not offend someone or so your simple thoughts will sound more important.  Using buzzwords makes you sound less intelligent.  Filling your leadership philosophy with obscure or difficult to define concepts diminishes peoples’ trust in you.  Both behaviors are counterproductive and hinder you from reaching your goal of becoming an authentic leader.  That is why you are here, isn’t it?

Allow me to share a story that demonstrates the trouble jargon-filled leadership philosophies can cause, as well as how an executive avoided such a trap.  I know several executives who were members of the same senior leadership team.  After a reorganization, their new boss, Jared, worked hard to get the team to gel.  The team members were mistrustful both of Jared and of each other.  The team was quickly devolving into chaos.  Jared decided he would break through the dysfunction by getting everyone on the team to know each other better as people and as leaders.  He held a three-day long offsite where he and a consultant he knew well worked with the team members on leadership.  They discussed what leadership meant to them and related leadership to the corporate competency model.

The seminal event of the offsite required each leader to share their leadership philosophy with the group.  The expectation was the philosophy would be a typewritten document they would read aloud.  Jared read his leadership philosophy first.  It said all the right things.  It emphasized the importance of teamwork, trust, hard work, and fun.  When he finished ten minutes later, he asked every other member of the team to share their leadership philosophy with the group.  After the third reading, the room sounded like a beehive from all the buzzwords.

Craig, one of the team members, grew more and more visibly uncomfortable and frustrated with every reading.  By the time all the other team members finished reading their leadership philosophies, Craig’s lips were nothing more than a short, thin line covering his clenched teeth.  He gently shook his head from side to side as he stood to take his turn.  He set his typewritten leadership philosophy homework aside and took a moment to look each of his colleagues in the eye.  Craig’s gaze stopped at Jared.  With a calm, clear voice Craig stated “My leadership philosophy is simple.  Say what you mean.  Do what you say.”  He then turned and took his seat again.

With eight short words Craig had said more than every other member of the team – combined.   Those two sentences enabled him to swat away the buzzwords and quickly share a clear articulation of his standards, his beliefs, and his code of conduct.  Everyone on the team instantly knew what he expected of them and what they could expect of him.  Craig’s statement was practical and applicable to every interaction he could ever have at work.  Just like that, he demonstrated the power of one well-crafted leadership maxim.  As a result of Craig’s actions several members of the leadership team later shortened their own philosophies and the members of Craig’s team always knew how he felt about any situation and what he planned on doing about it.

I’d like to debunk the conventional wisdom that leadership philosophies must be full of buzzwords.  It destroys the myth that the longer the philosophy is, the better it must be.  Clear, meaningful, and simple are the rules that apply to maxims.  By replacing buzzwords with personal stories and experience, you will humanize yourself as a leader.  In many cases you will endear yourself to your team.  They will understand what you stand for and appreciate the time and effort you put into distilling your philosophy down into a short, crisp document.

Throwing a bunch of words on paper is easy.  Figuring out which words truly matter and arranging them in an accessible and compelling way takes energy and thought.  It is that kind of energy I am asking you to invest in writing your maxims.  The leadership maxims approach will help any leader articulate their leadership philosophy on one piece of paper.  The approach will help you make leadership personal, inspiring and exciting again.

How do you demonstrate authenticity?  How do you avoid the trap of excessive use of buzzwords?  Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

- If you’re serious about strengthening the connection between you and your team, grab yourself a copy of One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership. There are plenty of suggestions in there for how you can be a more authentic leader. CLICK HERE to get your copy.

Today’s post is by David Chapman – Director of Marketing at Webrageous.  Here’s David:

Musicals never go out of fashion, because the formula is well understood. It is tried and tested and everyone knows what to expect when they sit down to watch a good musical. The audience is given what they want. The marketing strategy is a classic strategy and doesn’t need to change because the audience and their desires are considered first.

Online marketing managers could learn a lot from this kind of simple approach. The old school marketing strategies should be at the top of our modern marketing plans, even though the marketing world has developed incredibly over the past ten years.

Why?

Because even though the marketing world has developed from a technological point of view, buyers are still the same. People are dinosaurs at heart. We don’t change. We approach a sale in the same way as we have always done and we will continue to approach our sales in the same way as the years sail by, because human beings don’t really change.

So… with this in mind… what are the 5 most important marketing strategies that a marketing manager must utilize when working on any campaign to ensure marketing success, even within our technologically advanced marketing world?

Audience, Audience, Audience and 40/40/20

The “40/40/20 marketing strategy” essentially explains how any kind of marketing campaign can be broken down and should be broken down in order to be fully understood. This strategy reminds us that…

- 40% of the success of a marketing campaign comes from the audience
- 40% relies on the offer or product
- 20% is affected by the creative

In simple terms this means that a marketing specialist must firstly understand who their audience is. If they don’t know who their audience is, they are never going to be able to advertise their products with success. All marketing specialists must have permission to market to their target audience and they must be aware of how to find them using all the available marketing tools and routes possible.

Once the marketer has learned how to find their target audience, they can choose the right kind of advertising message to hit them with and select the optimum time to send that message too. This is why re-marketing is one of the most successful forms of new marketing ideas over recent years.

If you are not taking advantage of re-marketing strategies in your online marketing campaigns as of yet, think again and start putting re-marketing ideas in place as soon as possible.

Recency, Frequency and Monetary Value

This simple marketing strategy emphasizes the importance of investing your marketing efforts in the right areas. The idea behind this strategy is that you look at who recently bought from you, how many times this person buys from you and therefore how much money they spend on your products within a given period of time (for example, a month).

If you can identify who bought from you recently and whether or not that same person buys from you frequently, you can definitely assume that this person is more valuable to you on a financial level than any other kind of customer.

You should be investing your marketing strategies into communicating with the people who buy and who buy frequently. If you focus your attentions on this segment of your customer base, your ROI will look healthier and healthier every single month.

80/20

The 80/20 marketing strategy is an interesting idea which treats the 80/20 divide as a magical numerical formula for marketing campaigns on many levels.

For example, you will normally find that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers, who are what you should refer to as your regular customers. In addition, 80% of the products that these regular customers buy is most likely to be 20% of the products that you have for sale overall.

This is because most people are pretty routine in their approach to most things in life and if they come back to buy from you, they will come back to buy the product that they have already found a use for on the majority of occasions.

On a similar note, 80% of your marketing emails, for example, are likely to be read by 20% of your audience. 80% of the Facebook posts and “likes” are likely to come from 20% of your Facebook fans.

If 80/20 is the magic formula, it pays to find out who your 80% regular audience is and what 20% of your products or emails do they buy / open. If you are aware of this information, you can use it to your advantage and spend time and marketing money where it will be best spent.

Attention, Interest, Desire and Action

Avoid sending yourself mad by analyzing your Google Analytics reports and thinking about whether you should be advertising via the Display Network, the Paid Search Network, the Mobile Network, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogs, blah, blah, blah, and get back to the very basics…

Have you generated the amount of “attention” needed via a creative message that is designed to attract your audience to your marketing ploy in the first place? Have you then marketed to the right kind of audience to ensure that they will be “interested” in the benefits and solutions of your product? Have you listed the information required to make your audience “desire” your product? Have you made it easy for your audience to take “action” and buy your product?

If you can answer “yes” to every single question above, every single time you market your product, your marketing campaign will be successful over time.

Making it Easy

It may sound strange, but offering 40 dollars off of a product in any marketing campaign is so much more effective than offering 40% off.

Why?

Because you are asking your audience to do math. You are asking them to figure something out, to work at something, to work, work, work.

Never ask your audience to work in any way before buying your product. Make deals easy to understand and make the benefits available to your audience as obvious to them as possible. Spell everything out. Leave no stone unturned and you’ll find that your ROI will grow.

Remember, marketing methods may have changed, but people have not. Considering the fact that we always want “people” to buy our presents, we should pay great attention to detail when it comes to attracting “people” to our products. Makes simple sense, right?

- David Chapman, Director of Marketing at Webrageous, a PPC Management Company based in Reno, is an expert in online marketing strategies.

Sometimes those failures are market-driven.  A great new competitor beats you to the punch.  The economy tanks and you run out of cash.  Meteors take out your corporate headquarters.

However, many failures are self-inflicted.  I’ve been lucky enough to be an entrepreneur for a while and I’ve also hung out with a ton of great (and not great) entrepreneurs.  I’ve seen businesses thrive and I’ve seen others fail.

I’ve noticed a few things along the way that can cause entrepreneurs to fail.  I’ve tried to neatly bundle them up into what I affectionately refer to as the seven deadly sins of entrepreneurship.  If you want to succeed in building your new venture, I strongly suggest you avoid these sins at all cost.

Lust

Sex sells.  But sometimes trying to make your product so sexy can lead to your downfall.  Excessive thoughts of sexy UI’s, features, bells, and whistles can distract you from building something a little frumpier but more durable.  When you spend all your time thinking about how to make a sexy javascript HTML Boolean double-quad Flash SDK widget app, you’re likely not focusing on the core functionality you need to create to solve the one or two major problems your customers actually want you to solve.  Throw a non-sexy muumuu and a bathrobe on your product and build the basics.

Gluttony

Over-consumption can kill you.  Just because you have the funding you need (now) it doesn’t mean you need to go buy all sorts of crap so your offices can be hip and cool.  It also means you shouldn’t go out and buy up a ton of people (via hiring) unless you’re equally prepared to fire a similar number of people when your cash can’t keep up with your appetite.  Know your burn rate and keep it to a minimum.  Buying stuff just because you have cash will burn your business down to the ground.

Greed

Greed sucks.  I’ve seen it WAY too many times where an entrepreneur (founder) owns 100% of the business and greedily hoards every last share rather than using that equity to build a solid initial team.  To be clear – that entrepreneur owns 100% of squat.  I know of many situations where a founder imploded their business before it even got launched because they got greedy before the business was even built.  Share (that’s why they’re called SHARES people!).  Use early equity as a tool for bringing on the right people because if you’re stingy and greedy, you’re not going to find anyone to work with you.

Sloth

If you’re serious about being an entrepreneur, you’d better learn the meaning of hustle.  No, I’m not talking about the dance from the 70′s (do do do do doo do do do doo, do do do dooo doo do do do dooo – good luck getting that out of your head…).  If you’re not out there hustling 148% of the time, you’re probably going to fail.  There’s always too much to do and not enough time.  If you’re going to “take it easy” for a little while during the growth (or even running) of your business, be prepared to take it easy for the majority of your time when the business fails and you have nothing to do.

Wrath

People will piss you off along the way.  An investor may spurn you.  A prospect might buy from your competitor instead.  A customer might dump you.  In that angry moment, there’s always the temptation (and now with social media – the ability) to lash out at that person as a moron, clown, idiot, etc.  If you let that anger fly, you’re toast.  Why?  Because people talk.  Investors share stories.  If you piss off one investor, the likelihood that others will want to give you money decreases exponentially.  Check that rage or you’re going to get it back in spades.

Envy

You see other entrepreneurs do amazing things.  Get funding, land customers, exit at ridiculous multiples.  Many of us want those same things.  The nasty part about envy is the belief that not only do you want what someone else has but you also believe they should be deprived of it or that they don’t deserve it in the first place.  Resist the urge to say “Those guys are morons!  How did they get funded/bought/etc.?!?! They’re idiots!”  Instead, I encourage you to drop them a congratulatory note on their success.  If you’re always running around bad-mouthing others who are successful, you begin building a lousy personal brand.  Karma is always watching you…

Pride

“We’re so awesomely unique that we don’t have any competition and no one can replicate what we’ve built in 7 months because it will take them 700 years to catch up to us.”  Yeah.  You’re all that and a bag of donuts.  You’re awesome.  We get it.  But don’t let yourself believe it (let alone broadcast it).  Why not?  Because it will damage your credibility (with customers, investors, etc.) and it gives your competitors added motivation to kick your ass.  Swallow hard, go heads-down and let your results speak for themselves.

There you go – seven deadly sins that will destroy your entrepreneurial venture.  I’m not saying that if you avoid these that you’ll be the next Google – but I am saying that if you *don’t* avoid them you’ll be the next failed business everyone is laughing about.

I’ve shared plenty of other thoughts on entrepreneurship here on the blog.  I encourage you to read those as well if you are currently an entrepreneur or are considering becoming one.  Hopefully those lessons learned and shared will help you be as successful as you can possibly be.

- Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

Have you ever found yourself making this statement, “I just call it like I see it” or have you known a leader, friend or family member who says this?

Calling something as you “see” it can be strength. People are not left wondering what you think or how you feel, which can be refreshing and provide clear communication. So many leaders “beat around the bush” and their teams are not clear on what they want.

The challenge in “calling it like I see it” is one key word, “I.” We all see things differently in the world. One of the most thought provoking movies I have seen that illustrates this is the movie Crash. If you have not seen the movie, I highly recommend it. It will open your eyes to your own personal judgments and the importance of creating strong paradigm shifts. Just about the time you think you have a character figured out in the movie, something shifts and your paradigm is rocked. You will find yourself in deep thought and mentally stimulated at the end of the movie.

Similar to Crash , in our leadership when we “call it like I see it,” we may learn that the way we see it could be very different from how another person sees it based upon their perspective.

I could place 5 people at 5 different vantage points to view an automobile accident.  Each person would come back with a different story of what happened, simply based on the location from where they were able to view the accident.  I am confident each person viewing the accident in this experiment would feel quite confident in their story based upon what they saw.  They would each be “calling it like I see it.”

As leaders we need to guard against “calling it like I see it” until we know exactly what “it” is that “I” just “saw.”  To help you, try the stop, look and listen technique:

• Stop – and think before you judge or speak and ask yourself “is there another way to see this?”
• Look – inside to determine how your beliefs, judgments and personal opinions could be affecting your response
• Listen – ask someone else what they think, saw or concluded about the situation

Thinking before speaking, drawing judgment and conclusions will help in the following areas:

1. You will reduce the times you have to come back and clean up a mess made based upon wrong assumptions you made
2. You will build trust with people by not going straight to conclusions
3. You will learn to  broadly scan and take in all that could be going on and not just what you see from where you stand
4. You will build relationships through asking for feedback to learn whether what you saw, judged, viewed, etc., is  the same as what others observed.

I am sure there are other benefits to thinking before speaking, judging or drawing conclusions; I would like to hear your thoughts.

- Michelle Braden is CEO of MSBCoach. For over 17 years, she has coached and trained business owners, executives, non-profit leaders, teams, managers and individuals in transition.

Yes – I do love being an entrepreneur but a few things need to be clarified about the lifestyle.  If you want to know what it’s really like to be an entrepreneur, grab your coffee and settle in – I’m about to take you behind the secret curtain.  Warning: it’s *not* like being the guy in the picture about to board the plane.

First – I’m not “lucky” to be an entrepreneur.  I bust my ass every day to do it.  I’ve earned being an entrepreneur and all the benefits that go along with it.  Luck is where preparation meets opportunity and being an entrepreneur requires tons of preparation.

Second – I do have a boss.  Two, actually.  Their names are Wells Fargo Home Mortgage and the United States Treasury.  They take pretty much half of everything I make.  Unlike most bosses in corporate America, they’re not very forgiving when I miss budget…

Now, as far as the average day in the life of an entrepreneur, it’s not always as glamorous as it’s made out to be in all these tech blogs, magazines, and books.  And working from home isn’t the highly productive and totally chillaxed lifestyle most people believe it to be.  To debunk some of these common myths and misconceptions, here’s a look at an average day for me.  It’s an aggregation of many real events:

5:25AM – wake up.

5:27 – day-old coffee heated up.  Time to rock.

5:28 – read the news including critical blogs like FailBlog.org, FreakJet.com, and textsfromlastnight.com.  Get suckered into watching a Yahoo “news” video that is falsely labeled as a news exclusive but it’s actually some lame attempt at comedy.

6:03 – personal hygiene. You gotta look pretty if you want to be a titan of industry!  (Some mornings this part takes longer if I’ve ignored shaving for several days or if I need a longer shower to wake me up).

6:23 – email catch-up. Delete all Viagra, Nigerian inheritance, Canadian pharmacy, penny stock gazillionaire, and parental spam emails.  Respond to the one “real” email in the pile with “Okay. I can push our coffee back to 9:30.”

7:16 – hear a strange hacking sound behind me.

7:17 – clean up Gunner’s dog vomit (Gunner is my Jack Russell Terrier.  Elapsed time: 10 minutes.  It was a lot of vomit).

7:27 – begin working on an urgent client proposal that the client wants immediately.

7:38 – stop working on urgent proposal because kids next door are waiting for the bus and while they do, they bounce 647 basketballs simultaneously while screaming at the top of their lungs.

8:27 – almost done with urgent client proposal

8:28 – Angel (my boxer) whines at me.  I ignore her and keep working on the urgent proposal.

8:34 – notice an odd smell.  Angel stops whining.

8:35 – clean up Angel’s poop that she cleverly dropped on the other side of my desk (out of my line of sight) while I was ignoring her.

9:07 – finish urgent client proposal.  Send to client.  Receive out of office response that they won’t be back for two weeks.  Urgent, huh?

9:17 – send email to a client’s Accounts Payable department about an invoice that is 4.5 months overdue.  “Oh.  Sorry.  We can’t find it.  Just resubmit it and we’ll pay it on the standard net 60 days from the date we receive it.”

9:28 – arrive for networking coffee with another local entrepreneur.  He’s not there yet.

9:38 – he’s still not there.

9:40 – I leave.  He never called or texted.  It’s always fun getting stood up.

9:47 – Local entrepreneur calls. “Hey, I’m running a little late…”  Reschedule the meeting.

10:15 – back at the desk.  Prepare for big, important one hour long client conference call at 10:30.

10:54 – deep into the client conference call.  All is going great.  Looks like I may make a sale.

10:55 – FedEx guy rings the bell (despite the big “Please don’t ring the bell” sign I post over the doorbell for when I’m on conference calls).  Buddy (my poodle-schnauzer) goes ballistic like the four horsemen of the apocalypse are at the door.  Gunner and Angel join in the barking for good measure.  I frantically search for the mute button on my phone.  Accidentally hit the power button instead and disconnect from the client.

10:59 – put dogs in their kennels.  Call client back and sheepishly resume call.  Call resolution is “we really like the proposal Mike.  Let’s connect in a couple of months and discuss getting our VP involved to evaluate the proposal.”

11:28 – lunch!  Go raid the kitchen with hopes of a banquet.  Warm up leftover Manwich and baked beans.  Go to the pantry for some Doritos goodness.  All that’s left are crumbs but someone put the bag back in the pantry anyway.

12:02 – do some strategic thinking about my business.  Big long-term thoughts kinda stuff.  To get in the proper mindset, look at my awesome aquarium because it’s soothing and serene.  Begin thinking big ideas.

12:04 – notice the angelfish I paid $95 for is dead at the bottom of the tank.  Commence dead fish recovery and removal operations.

12:18 – admin hour.  Pay taxes.  Pay bills.  Send invoices.  Forecast cash flow.  File bank statements.  Rewrite three contracts.  Set up four conference calls.  Book travel including air, car, and hotel for five different trips (which part of me dreads because I’ll likely be traveling alongside some of these folks).  Delete more Nigerian emails (if those guys ever get a hold of someone who is fluent in English, they’re going to bring down the world economy).

1:19 – new high score on Minesweeper.

1:22 – update company website and moderate blog comments.  Update twitter feed, Facebook page, write new blog posts for the coming weeks.  Try to decide whether to write something new and original or to recycle an old post.

1:34 – As I’m deciding whether to write something new or recycle that old post, the yard maintenance guys arrive and begin mowing and blowing the yard with their 900000000 HP jet engine packs.  Recycling the old post it is…

2:00 – Coaching conference call with a team of five clients.

2:07 – While discussing the intricacies of problem solving methods, I hear a rustling behind me.  Turn around to see Gunner has folded his pillow in half and is getting amorous with it… vigorously amorous.  Suppress a guffaw while coaching clients.  Unfold Gunner’s pillow and tell him to settle down.

2:08 – Gunner folds his pillow in half again and resumes his activities.  Gives me his “do you mind?  A little privacy, please.” look.  I debate between stopping him or putting on some Isaac Hayes.  I choose the former.

2:23 – nap.  (Seriously – this is honestly the best part of being a work-from-home entrepreneur).

2:27 – kids next door get home.  Resume their basketball game from the morning.  Awesome.  It’s only murder if they catch you, right?

2:40 – follow up on the sales pipeline.  Drop emails and calls to 27 separate prospects.  5 have left their roles to join new companies.  6 are out of office for anywhere from 3 days to a 6 month sabbatical.  2 bounce back as undeliverable.  13 calls go straight to voicemail.  One call gets answered.  The reply is “we’re doing a reorg so give us a call back in 6 months.”

3:16 – son is home from school.  Violates the “doors closed means don’t interrupt me” rule.  Asks if he can buy something on iTunes.

3:18 – son comes in again.  Asks if I finished the Doritos.

3:19 – son comes in again.  Tells me Gunner puked in his kennel.

3:21 – commence vomit cleaning operations.

3:29 – son comes in again.  Learns what a death glare is.  Son doesn’t reappear for the rest of the day.

3:42 – calculate last month’s revenue generated from various advertising programs on multiple web properties I own.  Sources include Amazon Affiliate, AdWords, TextLinkAds, 888Media, Adify, and PulsePoint.  Grand total is $126.29.  Awesome.  Update cash flow forecasts accordingly.

4:16 – calendar planning.  Schedule 6 coffee meetings, 3 lunches, 5 conference calls, 1 rescheduled coffee, and 3 training sessions.  Sync to BlackBerry.  Sync software deletes 42 appointments.  Reschedule 42 appointments.

5:19 – quitting time.  Go pull weeds, clean dog poop, change outdoor lights, and other homeownerly type things.

See?  It’s totally glamorous being an entrepreneur.  I get tons of work done in the solitude of my home office and I work on things that make me a true titan of industry.  I hope some of you are inspired to pursue the entrepreneurial lifestyle after seeing what it’s really like.

Note: I *do* love what I do and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.  My clients are fantastic, the work is fun, the flexibility is great, and the people are interesting.  I’ve shared plenty of other thoughts on entrepreneurship here on the blog.  I encourage you to read those as well if you are currently an entrepreneur or are considering becoming one.

- Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC