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Archive for March, 2007

Leadership according to Trevor

Sunday, March 25th, 2007

I was inspired by the leadership writings of Americans Warren Bennis and Tom Peters but the book that made the most impact on me was ‘The Business of Leadership’ by British authors Alan Hooper and John Potter. Sadly their book is no longer in print.

They suggest effective leadership is made up of the following competencies – what I like most is the simplicity of this approach of course.

*Setting direction – (my emphasis – this is vision)
*Setting an example – ( my emphasis – doing what you say)
*Effective communication – (my emphasis – listening as well as telling)
*Creating alignment – (my emphasis – getting people to work together to common objectives)
*Bringing the best out of people – ( my emphasis – valuing others, empowering)
*Leader as a change agent – (my emphasis – sustaining change)
*Decisions and actions in crisis or emergency – (my emphasis – offering calm yet decisive leadership in difficult situations)

Do you think there are other competencies missing from this list?

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Get Lucky!

Sunday, March 25th, 2007

The Pursuit of Luck
Innovation is a low-odds business—and luck sure helps. (It’s jolly well helped me!) If you
believe that success does owe a lot to luck, and that luck in turn owes a lot to getting in the way
of unexpected opportunities, you need not throw up your hands in despair. There are strategies
you can pursue to get a little nuttiness into your life, and perhaps, then, egg on good luck. (By
contrast, if you believe that orderly plans and getting up an hour earlier are the answer, then by
all means arise before the rooster and start planning.)
Want to get lucky? Try following these 50 (!) strategies:
1. At-bats. More times at the plate, more hits.
2. Try it. Cut the baloney and get on with something.
3. Ready. Fire. Aim. (Instead of Ready. Aim. Aim. Aim. …)
4. “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”—G.K. Chesterton. You’ve gotta start
somewhere.
5. Read odd stuff. Look anywhere for ideas.
6. Visit odd places. Want to “see” speed? Visit CNN.
7. Make odd friends.
8. Hire odd people. Boring folks, boring ideas.
9. Cultivate odd hobbies. Raise orchids. Race yaks.
10. Work with odd partners.
11. Ask dumb questions. “How come computer commands all come from keyboards?”
Somebody asked that one first; hence, the mouse.
12. Empower. The more folks feel they’re running their own show, the more at-bats, etc.
13. Train without limits. Pick up the tab for training unrelated to work—keep everyone
engaged, period.
14. Don’t back away from passion. “Dispassionate innovator” is an oxymoron.
15. Pursue failure. Failure is success’s only launching pad. (The bigger the goof, the better!)
16. Take anti-NIH pills. Don’t let “not invented here” keep you from ripping off nifty ideas.
17. Constantly reorganize. Mix, match, try different combinations to shake things up.
18. Listen to everyone. Ideas come from anywhere.
19. Don’t listen to anyone. Trust your inner ear.
20. Get fired. If you’re not pushing hard enough to get fired, you’re not pushing hard enough.
(More than once is okay.)
21. Nurture intuition. If you can find an interesting market idea that came from a rational plan,
I’ll eat all my hats. (I have quite a collection.)
22. Don’t hang out with “all the rest.” Forget the same tired trade association meetings, talking
with the same tired people about the same tired things.
23. Decentralize. At-bats are proportional to the amount of decentralization.
24. Decentralize again.
25. Smash all functional barriers. Unfettered contact among people from different disciplines is
magic.
26. Destroy hierarchies.
27. Open the books. Make everyone a “businessperson,” with access to all the financials.
28. Start an information deluge. The more real-time, unedited information people close to the
action have, the more that “neat stuff” happens.
29. Take sabbaticals.
30. “Repot” yourself every 10 years. (This was the advice of former Stanford Business School
dean Arjay Miller—meaning change careers each decade.)
31. Spend 50 percent of your time with “outsiders.” Distributors and vendors will give you
more ideas in five minutes than another five-hour committee meeting.
32. Spend 50 percent of your “outsider” time with wacko outsiders.
33. Pursue alternative rhythms. Spend a year on a farm, six months working in a factory or
burger shop.
34. Spread confusion in your wake. Keep people off balance, don’t let the ruts get deeper than
they already are.
35. Disorganize. Bureaucracy takes care of itself. The boss should be “chief dis-organizer,”
Quad/Graphics CEO Harry Quadracci told us.
36. “Dis-equilibrate … Create instability, even chaos.” Good advice to “real leaders” from
Professor Warren Bennis.
37. Stir curiosity. Igniting youthful, dormant curiosity in followers is the lead dog’s top task,
according to Sony chairman Akio Morita.
38. Start a Corporate Traitors’ Hall of Fame. “Renegades” are not enough. You need people
who despise what you stand for.
39. Give out “Culture Scud Awards.” Your best friend is the person who attacks your corporate
culture head-on. Wish her well.
40. Vary your pattern. Eat a different breakfast cereal. Take a different route to work.
41. Take off your coat.
42. Take off your tie.
43. Roll up your sleeves.
44. Take off your shoes.
45. Get out of your office. Tell me, honestly, the last time something inspiring or clever
happened at that big table in your office?!
46. Get rid of your office.
47. Spend a workday each week at home.
48. Nurture peripheral vision. The interesting “stuff” usually is going on beyond the margins of
the professional’s ever-narrowing line of sight.
49. Don’t “help.” Let the people who work for you slip, trip, fall—and grow and learn on their
own.
50. Avoid moderation in all things. “Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess,”
according to Edwin Land, Polaroid’s founder.
Now write down the opposite of each of the 50. Which set comes closer to your profile?*
In short, loosen up!
* This list was stimulated by a friend who attended a several-day seminar I conducted in early
1991. The group, I thought, was vigorous. Her comment on the last day: “Are all those people
dead?” It shook me and got me wondering about the narrowness of my own vision.

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Tom Peters Favorite Quotes

Sunday, March 25th, 2007

TP’s “Top 41” Quotes
“Do one thing every day that scares you.”—Eleanor Roosevelt
As year’s end approaches, one tends (well, I tend) to think a little bit philosophically. To do the accounts of the year past—and to imagine the year to come. As I began that not(for me) very systematic process, I stumbled across the Eleanor Roosevelt remark above.
And it got me thinking—the whole point. To add a little fuel to the fire I mined a few old presentations for more spurs to both reflection and forethought. What emerged, in ever so haphazard a fashion, follows. It is not a listing of “business quotes,” though 100% are applicable to business. It is not a set of “motivational quotes” (perish the thought), though most are in some sense motivational. I guess it simply is what it is … some comments that may help you, if you’re so inclined, to ruminate on where you’ve been and where you might go in 2006:

“Do one thing every day that scares you.”—Eleanor Roosevelt

“Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”—Helen Keller

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”—Mary Oliver

“Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.”—James Dean

“The two most powerful things in existence: a kind word and a thoughtful
gesture.”—Ken Langone, founder, Home Depot

“The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated.”—William James

“Don’t belittle!”—OD Consultant, on the essence of a well-functioning human
community

“If you don’t listen, you don’t sell anything.”—Carolyn Marland/
MD/Guardian Group

“It was much later that I realized Dad’s secret. He gained respect by giving it. He talked and listened to the fourth-grade kids in Spring Valley who shined shoes the same way he talked and listened to a bishop or a college president. He was seriously interested in who you were and what you had to say.”—Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot

“What creates trust, in the end, is the leader’s manifest respect for the
followers.”—Jim O’Toole, Leading Change

“If you can’t state your position in eight words or less, you don’t have a
position.”—Seth Godin

“Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the
world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”—Margaret Mead

“Make your life itself a creative work of art.”—Mike Ray, The Highest Goal

“Have you invested as much this year in your career as in your car?”—Molly Sargent,
OD consultant and trainer

“The most successful people are those who are good at plan B.”—James Yorke,
mathematician, on chaos theory in The New Scientist

“Tom, what have you done this year?”—Jessica Sutherland, Director, Institute for
International Research/Middle East (TP: “Yikes!”)

**********
“To live is the rarest
thing in the world.
Most people exist,
that is all.”
—Oscar Wilde
**********
“People want to be part of something larger than themselves. They want to be
part of something they’re really proud of, that they’ll fight for, sacrifice for, that they trust.”—Howard Schultz, Starbucks

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”—Charles Darwin

“We may not be interested in chaos but chaos is interested in us.”—Robert Cooper, The
Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-first Century

“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”—General Eric
Shinseki, retired Chief of Staff, U. S. Army

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”—Gandhi

“We eat change for breakfast!”—Harry Quadracci, founder, QuadGraphics

“If things seem under control, you’re just not going fast enough.”—Mario Andretti

“You can’t behave in a calm, rational manner. You’ve got to be out there on the lunatic fringe.”—Jack Welch, retired CEO, GE

“We have a ‘strategic’ plan. It’s called doing things.”—Herb Kelleher, founder,
Southwest Airlines

**********
A man approached JP Morgan, held up an envelope, and said, “Sir, in
my hand I hold a guaranteed formula for success, which I will gladly
sell you for $25,000.” “Sir,” JP Morgan replied, “I do not know what is
in the envelope, however if you show me, and I like it, I give you my
word as a gentleman that I will pay you what you ask.” The man agreed
to the terms, and handed over the envelope. JP Morgan opened it, and
extracted a single sheet of paper. He gave it one look, a mere glance,
then handed the piece of paper back to the gent. And paid him the
agreed-upon $25,000.

The Paper:
1. Every morning, write a list of the things that need to be done that
day.
2. Do them.
**********
“I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living, or get busy
dying.”—The Shawshank Redemption (Tim Robbins)
4
“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”—Steve Jobs, Apple

“Groups become great only when everyone in them, leaders and members alike, is free to do his or her absolute best.”—Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman, Organizing Genius

“The best thing a leader can do for a Great Group is to allow its members to discover
their greatness.”—Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman, Organizing Genius

“You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend
or not.”—Isabel Allende

“Nobody can prevent you from choosing to be exceptional.”—Mark Sanborn, The Fred Factor

“A leader is a dealer in hope.”—Napoleon

“Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm.”—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“If you’re enthusiastic about the things you’re working on, people will come ask you to do interesting things.”—James Woolsey, former CIA director

“Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before
you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself
believe.”—Winston Churchill

“A man without a smiling face must not open a shop.”—Chinese Proverb

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”—John Quincy Adams

The greatest danger
for most of us
is not that our aim is
too high
and we miss it,
but that it is
too low
and we reach it.
Michelangelo

“A year from now
you may wish you
had started today.”
—Karen Lamb

*********
Tom Peters*: Leadership is all about love:
Passion,
Enthusiasms,
Appetite for Life,
Engagement,
Great Causes & Determination to Make a Damn Difference,
Commitment to Excellence,
Shared Adventures,
Bizarre Failures,
Growth Beyond Measure,
Insatiable Appetite for Change.

*Would have been No. 42, but it does not seem appropriate to quote oneself and count it as wisdom.

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Funny Business

Sunday, March 25th, 2007

1. Don’t tell the reader that something is funny. Let the reader discover this for himself. Do this by painting a picture with words that the reader can relate to with all five of his senses. Describe the smells, textures, tastes, sights, and sounds.

As the writer, ask yourself how, why, who, when, and where, as you describe a character or situation. Tell the reader how something smells, tastes, feels, looks, and sounds. Describe why something smells, tastes, feels, looks, and sounds the way it does. And so on. Certainly you, the writer, don’t have to address all of these questions, but by doing so, you will cover all the potential bases toward painting the best picture possible.

In Hamlet, Hamlet tells Horatio of his dead friend, Yorick. As he describes his friend to Horatio, Hamlet holds the skull of Yorick in his hand. “Here hung those lips that I have kiss’d I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?” In this example, Shakespeare uses Hamlet to bring Yorick alive for the reader. The reader can almost see Hamlet holding the skull in his hand; additionally, the reader can hear the “roar” of laughter from the guests at the table as Hamlet describes Yorick singing or telling a funny story. Shakespeare creates images using words that stir the reader’s senses, evoking emotions in the reader as well.

We aren’t any of us Shakespeare, nor do many of us want to be. If your character gets hit in the face with a pie, it may or may not be funny. If your character gets hit in the face with a lemon pie, with yellow, gooey blobs of meringue dripping from his chin and snowy drifts of whipped cream sticking from his ears, this paints a picture for the reader that is more likely to be perceived as whimsical. If the pie “splats” across his face, sending wafts of tangy-sweet lemon scent, along with a bit of graham cracker crust, up his nose as he sticks out his eager tongue to bring home the cheek-puckering flavor — this is a hoot. Now the reader can smell, feel, taste, see, and hear that pie.

2. Use metaphors and similes that bring familiar images into your reader’s mind. Used effectively, metaphors and similes say volumes with a few words. A metaphor is a figure of speech using a word or phrase that usually means one thing to refer to something else. Such as Shakespeare’s metaphor, “All the world’s a stage,” said by Jacques in As You Like It. Using this metaphor, this character reflects on how people behave. Shakespeare uses the metaphor to paint an image of a stage in the reader’s mind.

Metaphors, such as “his driveway doesn’t go all the way to the street,” can paint a funny image in the reader’s mind of a not-all-there person. Everyone has met someone like this, so the reader can relate to such a metaphor.

A simile is a figure of speech in which the writer compares two unlike items, usually using the word “like” or “as”. Shakespeare’s simile, “I am constant as the northern star,” spoken by Caesar in Julius Caesar, compares Caesar’s strong will to the brightest star in the sky.

The simile, “we were wrestling around like two pigs in the mud, only he was enjoying it and I was just getting dirty,” shows, not just tells the reader about, a funny situation.

3. Blending description, metaphors, and similes with dialogue is another way for the writer to expand his medium. Metaphors in a dialogue can add a humorous flavor of their own to the story or character. Such as one character might comment using a metaphor, “The squeaky wheel gets oiled.” The other character responds with another metaphor, “And the quacking ducks gets shot!”

Similes can be funny in their own right, and added to a humorous situation can make it even funnier, such as, “I’m happy as a mosquito in a nudist colony,” creates a humorous image in the reader’s mind.

4. Words that portray movement are yet another way the writer can paint a funny picture for the reader. A character that is moving, like an actor on a stage, has more potential for hilarity than one that is not moving. Using action verbs, the writer can create a jovial image and elicit amusement from his reader such as in this example from a helicopter student learning to hover. “I madly made exaggerated corrections with the cyclic. We zigged crazily in mid zag, then zagged wildly in mid zig.”

5. Colorful adjectives help the writer paint the exact image he wants the reader to experience. Keep a dictionary and thesaurus handy to look up adjectives that will spice up your writing. If the writer describes “a cow,” the reader is left to color in the cow on his own. Use adjectives to describe all five senses as you paint a picture with words. “She was not just a cow but a sauntering bovine beauty with chocolate-bar swirls of milky browns and milk-shake white on a suede background — the most delicious contented cud-chewer I’d ever seen.”

6. Find new ways to say the same old thing. Was the woman large? Or does she look like she’s built for comfort rather than speed? Was the man skinny? Or did he have to run around in the shower just to get wet?

7. Satire and irony add humor to the written story also. Irony is the use of words to express the opposite of their literal meaning. Satire is the use of irony or wit to attack something. Be careful with satire and irony; a writer can easily miss his mark, leaving the reader confused.

Summary: Remember to paint that picture using all five senses. Add a metaphor or two, a few similes, action verbs, and colorful adjectives.

You may not be the next William Shakespeare when it comes to comedy, but you may amuse yourself with your newly honed talent. Whether you choose dry humor, pleasant humor, slapstick, or satire, you may find you’re a laugh a minute on the written page!

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Breakthrough Advertising

Saturday, March 24th, 2007

By Eugene Schwartz

In 1966 this book was released and a few years back, it went for over $900 on eBay. That is a story that is sticky.

The Simple Rule: Write a HEADLINE and an AD that follows it that will open up an entirely new market for its product.

In 1966 we had few mediums, so the power was in the mass market. Now with so many media outlets, it is about your niche. Although, the basic strategy of persuasion is mass desire, prospects state of awareness, and strengthening your headline.

The 7 Techniques of Breakthrough Advertising

1. Intensification
2. Identification
3. Gradualization
4. Redefinition
5. Mechanization
6. Concentration
7. Camouflage

This is an interesting perspective that does not work today, yet defines much of todays advertising. Advertising is dead, word of mouth marketing rules the market. Some of these rules assist our clients expand awareness of their company. We leverage the headline to draw interest. CareerTours brings a frictionless concept and transparent way to search for employment. Virtual Tours give people a way to experience a company from their own email box.

I LOVE the word Breakthrough. Our clients BREAKTHROUGH with our products because of some of these ancient methods.

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Made to Stick

Saturday, March 24th, 2007

Simplicity – How do you strip an idea to its core?
Unexpectedness – How do you capture people attention?
Concreteness – How do you help people understand your idea and remember it much later?
Credibility – How do you get people to believe your idea?
Emotional – How do you get people to care about your idea?
Stories – How you get people to act on your idea?

CareerTours is simply a frictionless Virtual Tour company.

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Calling all Top MBA Candidates…

Tuesday, March 20th, 2007

In April, W+K launched a pioneering advertising school called “12.” Instead of a formal curriculum or full-fledged faculty, 12 offers 12 students 13 months of real work for very real clients…

Jelly Helm placed a classified ad: “Talented/Directionless, With $/Time to Spare?” — an open call to misfits, oddballs, and wayward youth”. It drew more than 3,000 people to a cryptic Web site. The “application” instructions? “Tell us your story. . . . Charm us. Surprise us. Seduce us.”

An interesting idea from a pioneering advertising firm that wanted to keep things fresh.

My thought, provoked by Seth Godin’s book, small is the new big:

“Accepted to top MBA. With $/Time to Spare?” — an open call to skip class, save $100K and do something cool – now. Tell us your story. . . . Charm us. Surprise us. Seduce us.”

We can award the CareerTours MBA and create a level like program to get the best of the best talent!

That’s FUN – interested in working for Career Tours, call me – 602.334.5287. Charm me. Suprise me. Maybe not seduce me. Although make it interesting and you are hired.

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Best Talent Brands

Friday, March 9th, 2007

Here would be my top 10 and why. Each of these companies makes it easy to connect to their mission. Enjoy!

1. Google – simple, yet innovative in everything
2. Apple – be different, think different, genius
3. Microsoft – still on top after all these years
4. Yahoo! – #1 most trafficked site
5. Disney – where everyone plays a character
6. Ritz Carlton – good morning ladies and gentlemen
7. Whole Foods – CEO is a leader, working for $1 a year
8. IDEO – leaders of leaders in innovation
9. Southwest – THE low cost airfare with personality
10. Starbucks – Iced Venti Non Fat Sugar Free Vanilla Latte for me

Links:
http://www.careertours.com

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Bare Selling

Friday, March 9th, 2007

Bare Selling has finally been boiled down to one-page. Short, sweet and wonderful nuggets of wisdom. Enjoy!

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