“Passion is the genesis of genius.” — Tony Robbins

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from best selling author Shama Kabani on how to be a more effective entrepreneur. Shama is an award winning CEO of The Marketing Zen Group, an international speaker, and author of The bestselling book, Zen of Social Media Marketing. I asked Shama to share her lessons learned on finding your spark, following your passion, and succeeding in business.  Here is what she had to say …

I was recently invited to speak to a group of young college students at The City University in Hong Kong on the topic on entrepreneurship. And, I was quite thrilled by the challenge. I believe that entrepreneurship is partly inherent, but everyone has a spark within them to make it happen. At 26, I’ve learned quite a few things about entrepreneurship first hand. My first business was at the age of 9. It was no astounding success. As it turns out, your parents will only buy so much gift wrap before they force you to retire. Since then, I’ve become a savvier entrepreneur. Today, I serve as CEO of The Marketing Zen Group –a full service web marketing firm with a staff of 27 and a global clientele.

Top 10 Lessons in Entrepreneurship

Here are my top ten lessons in entrepreneurship. These are the same lessons that I shared in my physical presentation with the students of City University.

1. Don’t be afraid. It can be scary to start a business. There are a lot of variables and unknowns, but it doesn’t have to be a frightening experience. Take the time to plan it out, do your research, get help, and learn from other people’s mistakes. Ask yourself, what is the worst that can happen? Often what scares us the most is our own judgment.
2. Get adopted. The younger you are, the better this works. I had a professor who once told me that the best thing about being a young entrepreneur is that you can get adopted! People want to mentor and guide you. Most see you as the future, not as a threat. I’ve found this to be very true, and have always been grateful for the support of my community –offline & online!
3. Leverage technology. Technology continues to get cheaper and more user friendly. It has removed barriers, and flattened the marketplace. You can compete with the biggest of companies by leveraging what is available out there for you in terms of technology.
4. Think globally. As an entrepreneur, you are no longer bound by physical boundaries. Even if your business is local, you can generate a global following. I recently learned about a business in Singapore called “Awfully Chocolate.” And, as a chocolate lover, it is on my list to visit when I go there! \
5. Your age is an asset. No matter your age, it is an asset, not a liability. If you are older, you are a seasoned professional. If you are younger, you have a unique perspective to bring to the table. When I first started my company, I did not disclose my age. I felt it would undermine our good work. But then I realized that clients were seeking us out exactly because they wanted to work with a “young & hip” company. They wanted someone who understood technology as a first language. I was amazed at this revelation.
6. Hire by trial. Perhaps the toughest part about being an entrepreneur is that you can’t do it alone. You have to eventually hire a team. I recommend hiring by trial. No resume, no cover letter, no interview can ever take the place of actually seeing someone in action.
7. Marry a lawyer. And, it really helps if you are in love with them. I never realized what a huge role legal plays in a business. And, I’ve been lucky enough to marry one of the smartest attorneys in the world. If you aren’t married to an attorney, no problem. Befriend one! Find a great business lawyer, and make then a true partner in your business. They are trained to see things that you can’t.
8. Listen to your marketplace. Perhaps the greatest lesson you will learn as an entrepreneur is the ability to listen and respond to your marketplace. When I first started The Marketing Zen Group, we only offered consulting services. But, very soon, we saw that our clients were frustrated when they didn’t have the right resources to implement our recommendations. We then offered to take over their web marketing for them, and business has been booming since.
9. Invest in what matters. Bootstrap the rest. Invest in bettering your services, hiring the best, and marketing. You don’t need a fancy office. You do need to know what you are doing, and a competent team to help you do it. Don’t negotiate with your vendors on price. Negotiate on value. Make them feel like a part of your team.
10. Less money is better than more money. This is contrarian advice, but it is true when starting out. As you grow your business, this changes. But, if you are just starting a business, it forces you to be more creative. And, at the end of the day, entrepreneurship is really an exercise in creativity.

“Accountability breeds response-ability.” — Stephen Covey

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from best-selling authors Roger Conners and Tom Smith on personal accountability and how it’s the key to your success.

Roger and Tom are authors of the bestselling books The Oz Principle, How Did That Happen?, and Change the Culture, Change the Game.  They started Partners in Leadership more than 19 years ago and have been helping countless clients create rapid culture change and greater accountability. Increasing your accountability increases your ability to respond and take action.  Rather than just passively participate, you take the bull by the horns and you make things happen. You “own it.”  And when you own something, you’re engaged at a deeper level and things take on new meaning.  And it’s exactly this shift in mindset that  shapes your actions that shapes better results for you and the world around you.

Without further ado, here’s Roger and Tom …

For over the last two and a half decades, we have focused our consulting and training work on helping leaders of organizations large and small create a Culture of Accountability in their organizations. This has included projects and assignments with some of the worlds most admired companies and some of the toughest workplace environments. Through all of this, we have become the most published authors on workplace accountability with our three bestselling books, The Oz Principle, How Did That Happen? and Change the Culture, Change the Game, all of which took the No. 1 leadership book spot on New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, etc… The topic of accountability resonates for people in every type of organization and has been the subject of our careers. Here, we share with you what we have come to know as the five bedrock principles of accountability.

The Five Bedrock Principles of Accountability

The five bedrock principles of accountability are:

• Principle One:  Accountability is a choice.
• Principle Two:  There are two sides to accountability.
• Principle Three:  Accountability begins by clearly defining results.
• Principle Four:  What you create accountability for is what you get.
• Principle Five:  The most important person to hold accountable is yourself.

Principle One: Accountability is a choice.

Let us begin with a real story that happened to Suzanne Volle. She works for a large women’s clothing retailer that is organized into about 100 districts with stores located throughout the United States. Sue is a District Manager and considered herself the typical manager at her level. Her 10 stores never really shined, but they also were never at the very bottom of the pack in terms of same-store sales. However, her company was looking to improve performance, so they ranked their managers into two groups: “renters” and “owners.” Sue met with her Regional Manager and was told that she was seen as a “renter.” That is, she was not seen as someone who was invested in getting the results needed and was simply playing a glorified “caretaker” role with her district.

When Sue heard how she was seen, she was devastated. She had been with the company 12 years at that point and was looking to advance her career. With this news, she had reached what we would call the critical point of accountability: she could either decide to get mad and go “Below the Line” into what we call the victim cycle or the blame game, or she could choose to get “Above the Line” and take accountability to change her circumstance by taking four simple steps, to See It, Own It, Solve It and Do It. The difference between being Above or Below the line is the difference between getting results or getting stuck. It is not wrong to go Below the Line, it’s just not very productive and can become very frustrating.

This is the choice everyone must face when it comes to their own personal accountability for getting results. Do I go Below the Line when I am faced with tough, difficult obstacles or do I choose to get Above the Line and take accountability for my circumstances and get the results I want?

Principle Two: There are two-sides to accountability.

Webster’s Dictionary defines accountability as “subject to having to report, explain or justify; answerable, responsible.” In other words, accountability is something imposed upon you, probably when things go wrong. We think this definition misses another, even more important side of accountability. That is the personal ownership that people should demonstrate when they truly take personal accountability for something. When you take personal accountability, you own it. You buy-in and invest. You tell yourself, this is mine, I’ve got the ball. You ask yourself, “what else can I do to make progress, overcome obstacles and achieve the result?” You don’t waste time blaming others or waiting for someone else to solve your problems, you actively engage and deeply pursue solutions. This proactive, before-the-fact aspect of accountability is the essential ingredient that makes accountability a bedrock principle to optimizing personal and organizational performance.

Accountability, correctly understood and effectively applied, produces results. And with those results comes a level of personal satisfaction that can be achieved in no other way. Sue, in the story above, made a choice that she would take accountability for being seen as a “renter” and that she would now become an “owner.” Helping people make the choice to operate Above the Line and take accountability for their circumstances and overcome the obstacles they face is an essential skill that anyone who manages and leads people must learn to master. When you create that level of personal accountability first, your ability to execute both personally and organizationally becomes all that more effective. When you skip that step and try to execute on a foundation that lacks this personal accountability, then you get problems, not solutions; mistakes not innovation; frustration, not motivation; and excuses instead of results.

Principle Three: Accountability Begins by Clearly Defining Results.

This may seem like common sense, but our experience has shown it is not common practice. In our research, surprisingly 9 out of 10 leadership teams cannot give a consistently aligned answer between team members as to the top three key results the team needs to achieve. They always have a general idea, but are often unable to provide the details. Accountability begins by clearly defining results. A clear definition of results, one that everyone throughout the entire organization can understand and repeat, are essential to getting your accountability system to work.

In a leadership workshop, we asked the European management team of a large pharmaceutical company we worked with what the top result was that they needed to achieve. They told us it was “BUC,” which stood for Business Unit Contribution. We asked the team, “what’s the number?” Everyone went silent. No one wanted to say. We asked them to write down the number on a piece of paper and pass it to the CFO in the back of the room. There was a $300 million dollar variance between the high number and the low number; and that was the senior management team! You can’t hold either yourself or others accountable for unclear results. Well, you can; but it will destroy morale and stop your progress. And you can’t hold yourself accountable for unclear results. Accountability begins by clearly defining results and that always yields alignment, engagement and achievement.

Principle Four: What you Create Accountability For Is What You Get.

Back to the story with Sue, she realized that what she was getting, in terms of results, is what she was creating accountability for. So she chose to create accountability for succeeding with an annual promotion, the women’s suit sale contest that runs for 4 weeks. She states, “You have to understand, we never won anything. My district has always been at the bottom. I’ve bought into ‘it’s the economy, it’s the weather, people don’t buy suits in our city, I can’t sell suits.’” Sue decided that the result they needed to get was to win the women’s suit contest. She went to work at creating accountability around the weekly VIP event held in the stores during the sale. Here, they closed the stores for 2 hours and allowed the invitation-only customers for shop with special discounts. Sue not only let everyone know what the desired result was, but she went on a campaign to achieve it. Her surprise visits to the stores during the VIP sales provided the forum to create personal accountability in the stores. Her visits even revealed one store manager who said they were doing the sales, but weren’t.

Her clear accountability for the result her district needed to achieve helped the store managers get everyone involved. Store associates networked and invited friends to the VIP sale. Store managers came up with innovative promotions and discounts for the customers. The result: Her district finished No. 1 in the entire company in the women’s suit sale! She was recognized at a leadership conference and asked to speak about the transformation that occurred. What you create accountability for is what you get!

Principle Five: The Most Important Person To Hold Accountable Is Yourself

We like to ask, who is the most important person to get Above the Line? Of course, that’s you!  For Sue, the payoff for taking personal accountability was impressive and lasting. In 2006, Sue was ranked 89 out of 94 districts in sales % over the previous year. In fiscal year 2010, she was ranked in the top 3! The reward: a trip to Costa Rica with some of the executives of the company. The payoff: the personal satisfaction that comes from being fully invested and successfully achieving results. She’s no longer seen as a “renter,” but a true “owner” that makes things happen. Applying these principles has even produced a better relationship with her father that might not have otherwise occurred.

What’s more, the power of her personal example impacted a fellow district manager at work. She and this good friend used to “crab together, ” having conversations that would allow them to wallow Below the Line and get stuck in the blame game, feeling the victim. What happened to her friend? In a subsequent Suit sale, her district finished No. 2 in the company!

That’s the power of personal accountability. That’s what happens, every time, when people are faced with difficult circumstances or tough obstacles and they make the choice to operate Above the Line. When we do accountability to ourselves, it is empowering. When someone does accountability to us the wrong way, it feels threatening. Making the choice to operate Above the Line and be accountable has an enabling affect on everyone around you. Nothing can take the place of your good example when it comes to operating Above the Line.

We are sure that you have had both positive and negative experiences with accountability and would appreciate hearing about them.

• Partners in Leadership Home
• About Roger and Tom (Partners in Leadership)

Roger and Tom’s Bestselling Books

• Change the Culture, Change the Game: The Breakthrough Strategy for Energizing Your Organization and Creating Accountability for Results
• How Did That Happen?: Holding People Accountable for Results the Positive, Principled Way
• The Oz Principle: Getting Results Through Individual and Organizational Accountability

Above the Line, Below the Line, See It, Own It, Solve It, Do It, The Oz Principle, How Did That Happen? and Change the Culture, Change the Game are trademarks of Partners In Leadership.

“It is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.” — William Shakespeare

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Weldon “Wally” Long on how changing your thoughts, changes your life.

Weldon is the author of  the book, The Upside of Fear: How One Man Broke the Cycle of Prison, Poverty, and Addiction, which is Winner of the 2009 New York Book Festival’s award in the Biography/Autobiography category, and is endorsed by Stephen Covey and Tony Robbins. Weldon’s story is less of a “rags to riches” story and more of a “rock-bottom to riches and meaningful life” story. Weldon’s story also reminds me of the adage, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Weldon’s twenty years of drinking, drug abuse, and crime led him to spend more than a decade in prisons, jails and halfway houses. But after a profound personal transformation, Weldon learned to change fear into a positive motivating force in his life. With that force, he transformed an idea into a multi-million dollar business just six years after he was released from prison. Talk about a turnaround, and writing a new story forward. Without further ado, here’s Weldon…

There once was a man who had completely destroyed his life by the age of thirty-two.

In 1996, he sat in the prison cell that served as his home, devastated over the news that his father had died. He looked deeply into the eyes that glared at him through the scarred stainless steel mirror in his tomb.

Through the initials scrawled by unknown tenants before him, he saw an unemployed high-school dropout and a three-time loser who had spent his entire adult life in this hopeless state of despair. For as long as he could remember he had known a life of prison, poverty and addiction. He was a garden variety loser who was giving a bad name to self-respecting losers everywhere.

He had no money, no hope, and by all accounts, no future. He had never had a steady job. He had abandoned his three-year old son. He had never owned a home. He had never done an honorable thing in his life.

We Become What We Think About

As he stared at his pathetic countenance, grieving over his wasted life, his abandoned three-year-old son and his dead father, he considered the words of Emerson, which he had just discovered:

“We become what we think about all day long.”

He concentrated on these words and repeated each one separately.

We. Become. What. We. Think. About. All. Day. Long.

He thought about the words intently as he gazed into his own miserable reality.

He stared and wondered. Was there more to life? What would it take to find out? Was he even remotely capable of altering the course of his seemingly forged destiny by changing what he thought “about all day long?”

Despite odds that seemed insurmountable, he decided to give it a try

A Journey of Personal Transformation

He set out on a journey of creating transformational change in his life. He was desperate, and desperate men do desperate things. He was determined to change the course of his destiny.

And he did.

By the time the man was released from his third and final trip to the penitentiary in 2003, he had earned a Bachelors degree and an MBA. In 2002, just one year before his release, he was credited with saving the life of a prison guard.

After his release he married an amazing woman and together they raised his son to become a remarkable young man. They started a small company from their living room and grew it to $20,000,000 in revenue in just 60 months, earning a spot on Inc Magazine’s list of “fastest growing privately held companies in America.” They bought beautiful homes in the mountains of Colorado and on the beaches of Maui.

The man went on to write a memoir called The Upside of Fear: How One Man Broke the Cycle of Prison, Poverty, and Addiction, which won numerous awards and was endorsed by Dr. Stephen R. Covey and Tony Robbins. He went on to earn millions of dollars teaching businesses the sales and prosperity system he used to create his own wealth and prosperity.

Today he lives a life of honor and unimaginable prosperity.

I know this story well because I am that man.

After living a desperate life of prison, poverty and addiction, including thirteen years behind concrete walls and razor wire, I emerged a transformed man and built the life I once dreamed about in my dark, cold prison cell.

Changing Your Thoughts, Changes Your Actions

Today, as I travel the country speaking to others about creating transformational change in their lives and business, I am often asked a simple question: “How?” As in, “How did you do it?”

My response is always the same. “I changed my thoughts. And when I changed my thoughts, I changed my actions. And when I changed my actions I got different results. It isn’t rocket science.”

I realize that people are often searching for a more complex, deeper explanation, but it’s that simple.

Let me explain.

How Your Thoughts Shapes Your Actions

Take any thought and contrast it with another thought that is the complete opposite. For example, consider the basic thought that “Times are tough, and I should expect to struggle during this difficult period.” Now consider the opposite of that thought: “Times may be tough, but I am going to transcend any obstacle and prosper in the face of every adversity.”

Now consider what actions logically flow from each belief.

A person who holds the first belief might be more inclined to have a bad attitude. They might find it easier to approach each work day with a mindset of doing just enough to avoid getting fired. Do you think this person would be more or less inclined to take efforts to improve their work skills? Would this person be likely to study and read books to enrich and inspire themself? Would they get up a little earlier to prepare for the day or be more inclined to hit the snooze button and get to work at the last possible moment?

Now imagine a person who holds the second belief. Would that person be more inclined to take whatever measures necessary to improve themself at work and in their personal life? Would they be inclined to give their all, rather than doing just enough to get by? Might they be willing to invest time in studying ways to improve the quality of their professional and personal life? What about the snooze button?

Your Results are Consistent with Your Actions

Now consider what results logically flow from each series of actions.

It’s likely that each person will produce results that are consistent with their actions. And each person’s actions flow logically from their thoughts and beliefs about their circumstances.

In both cases each person will eventually say, “I knew it! I knew things would end up like this!”

For better or for worse.

Anyone Can Do It

Radical transformation in your life and business is closer than you think. In fact happiness, wealth and prosperity are just a thought away. As I always say, “If this knucklehead can do it, ANYONE can do it!”

Happy thinking!

“Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future.” — Robert H. Schuller

Editor’s note:  This is a guest post from Neil Senturia on his lessons learned as an entrepreneur.  Neil is the current CEO of Blackbird Ventures and the author of I’m There For You, Baby; The Entrepreneur s Guide to the Galaxy . As an entrepreneur with more than 25 years of diverse entrepreneurial experience, Neil has re-invented himself several times in his relentless pursuit of entrepreneurial success.  Without further ado, here’s Neil …

To be successful at your start-up, you need to get the first 10 things right. In other words, you need to bat .1000 on the first 10 decisions. After that, you can bat .400, and in the aggregate, you can still make a strong company and a lot of money.

So, when I teach this concept to students at UC San Diego and San Diego State, they always raise their hands and ask politely, “OK, so what are they?”

My answer infuriates them: “They are different every time. But you still need to bat .1000. The first 10 are the most important, they cannot be finessed or nuanced, they need to be dead on, rock solid, concrete and correct.”

Embrace Ambiguity

So here is one rule that is constant. The entrepreneur must not only tolerate ambiguity but in fact they should embrace it. The willingness to not know what you need to know informs the decision- making effort—for example, the effort to define the business model and the product.

You would think that product and business model are what you have before you start the company but in fact, what you have is a quarter-baked idea, based on some half-baked assumptions that rely on some raw opinions.

Step One is Taking the Effort to Find Out What You Don’t Know

The concept of ambiguity implies that you are not sure what the business really looks like. Only 20% of companies actually end up doing what they think they set out to do on day one– the day they finished writing the business plan or the infamous 13 slide power point with its attendant hockey stick and the verb “we will.”

“Will” is a powerful word. You think the venture capitalist wants you to make a presentation with answers, and what I now strongly believe is that presentation should mostly have questions. I am not being cute. What I am suggesting is that step one of the start-up is the effort to find out what you don’t know.

This is the embrace of ambiguity. This is the willingness to change your mind, your plan, and yes, your underwear.

Changing Your Mind and Your Plan is a Good Thing

Currently, I am the CEO of a start-up in the alternative energy space (www.oberonfuels.com), and I recently was speaking with one of our key investors. I told him that we were going to make DME instead of gasoline. The various twists and spins and reasons are not relevant.

What is interesting is that one of our key investors was happy with the switch. Another one said, “You have changed your plan. You told us one thing, and now you are telling us another.”

Now I viewed changing my mind and our plan as a good thing. It might save you guys $25 million while some of our investors thought that changing your mind indicated weakness, vacillation, uncertainty, confusion.

The entrepreneurial spirit demands that you be willing to tack and jibe and then tack back (I race sailboats) because things change, and you are always looking for the right wind on the right side of the course with the right pressure. If you fear reprisal when you change your mind or your course, then you will not get one of the first 10 things right and you will not bat .1000.

When You Make a Big Mistake, Fix It

Here is another example. Recently I built a new house, and the day before they were going to pour the footings for the house, I realized that I had made a mistake– a big one. I had miscalculated the dimensions. I had two choices– pour anyway since the concrete trucks were in front of the house or stop the presses and send everyone home and fix it.

I picked the second option. It cost me seven months and some serious money. But I have been living in this house for five years, and immodestly I would say it is quite lovely. The proportions are now correct.

Wade Through the Ambiguity

It is mandatory to seek the correct answer and to be willing to wade through the ambiguity of indecision and the fog of revenue calculations and the mist of customer adoption.

Because once the footings are poured, the damn thing is cast in concrete.

Ambiguity is your friend. Love it and embrace it.

Editor’s note:  This is a guest post from Gino Wickman.  Gino is the author of the award-winning book Traction; Get a Grip on your Business .

Gino is an entrepreneur with skill and his passion is helping business owners and leaders get what they want out of their business. What I like about Gino’s approach is that he turns business into a system of core components to help you get a handle on your business.  Without further ado, here’s Gino …

Through his Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), Gino helps businesses succeed and achieve greatness.  EOS is is essentially a way to make business success more systematic and repeatable, and it’s based on his real-world experience (Gino has been an entrepreneur since the age of 21.)  Without further ado, here’s Gino …

Having personally delivered over 1,200 full-day sessions working hands-on and intimately with over 110 entrepreneurial leadership teams to help them build great companies, I find one fact undeniable: When an organization strengthens its key components, everything falls into place.

At EOS Worldwide, our team of EOS Implementers and I spend our days helping people build very well-run businesses by strengthening Six Key Components. So what are the Six Key Components, and how do you strengthen them?

One Holistic, All-Encompassing System

Before we take them one at a time, the first step is to start seeing your organization differently. Assuming you have the right product or service that has value in the world (no buggy-whip businesses, please), you must organize all of the many moving parts of your business into one holistic, all-encompassing system that consistently delivers that product or service with excellence. To help you do that, I suggest that you see your business as being made up of Six Key Components. As you focus on strengthening these Six Key Components, your business will become complete, everything will start to work harmoniously, and all your obstacles, problems, and frustrations will greatly diminish. As a result, you’ll gain tremendous traction.

The Six Key Components

Drawing from my Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), any organization has Six Key Components:

1. Vision
2. People
3. Data
4. Issues
5. Process
6. Traction

#1 – Vision

Now, more than ever, an organization’s vision needs to be simple, clear, and concise. If you can’t clearly articulate and communicate your vision in a page or two, it’s too complex.

The real power is in keeping it short and sweet while getting everyone on the same page. The Vision Component is strong when everyone in your organization is 100 percent on the same page with where the organization is going and how it’s going to get there. To strengthen your Vision Component, get your vision out of your head and onto paper by having your leadership team meet to answer these eight questions:

1. What are your core values?
2. What is your core focus?
3. What is your 10-year target?
4. What is your marketing strategy?
5. What is your three-year picture?
6. What is your one-year plan?
7. What are your quarterly Rocks?
8. What are your Issues?

Don’t move on to the next question until you have absolute buy-in, agreement, and commitment to each question’s answer. With your leadership team now completely on the same page, share your vision with the rest of your organization to get everyone moving together in the same direction and sharing that vision. By default, this means that anyone who doesn’t want to be part of it must go. Harsh, but true. By fully strengthening this first component, you’ve gone to the root of most of your symptomatic issues.

#2 – People

People are both a company’s greatest asset and potentially its greatest liability. Getting past emotion, personal histories, individual egos, and subjective opinion and getting “great” people in place to do the work that needs to be done is a vital step. The impact of even one individual who’s a poor fit can be profound, and I’ve worked with clients whose entire operations were revitalized and reinvigorated by a single personnel shift.

Strengthening the People Component means that you’re structured properly, with only the seats necessary to deliver your product or service consistently with excellence. Always focus on and solve structure first, then people second. With the right structure in place, you can now get to what defines “great” people in your organization. It’s two simple truths: First, every person possesses your core values, and second, they’re sitting in the right seats and you’re convinced that they Get it, Want it, and have the Capacity to do the job (GWC). You must hire, fire, review, reward, and recognize your people consistently around these truths. If you’ll stay true and consistent to these two truths, someday soon, you’ll look up and realize you have great people at every level and your culture will thrive.

#3 – Data

Strengthening the Data Component enables you to objectively manage your business through a small set of activity-based numbers that are leading indicators of future results, giving you an accurate pulse on the business and the ability to predict future results. To make the Data Component stronger, pick five numbers right now that you should be looking at on a weekly basis to assure that everything is on track in your business. If you can‘t come up with five, here are a handful to get you thinking: number of sales contacts, number of sales appointments, number of quotes, closed business, customer satisfaction, gross margin, and A/R balance. Set a weekly goal and assign someone to manage and be accountable for each number, and then start tracking them weekly. When a number is off track, the accountable party must take appropriate action to get that number back on track. Keep 13 weeks at a glance; this will give you the ability to see patterns and trends. Continue to refine this Scorecard as you move forward; it takes about one to three months until it evolves into something you love.

#4 – Issues

Strengthening the Issues Component helps you to compartmentalize all issues in your organization and solve them effectively in order of priority at all levels. Unresolved issues drain your energy and are barriers to moving forward. To strengthen the Issues Component, list all issues as they arise. Help everyone understand that calling out issues is good, healthy, and right. Get them on paper. When you meet with your team weekly, rank the issues in order of priority, starting with the top three, and then follow the Issues Solving Track to resolve them in order of priority. Step 1: Identify the underlying root cause of the issue. Step 2: Discuss the best possible ways to resolve the issue. Step 3: Solve the issue by selecting the best action steps to take to make the issue go away forever. This will stop issues from lingering for days, weeks, months, and sometimes years.

#5 – Process

Strengthening the Process Component aids you in creating a scalable, consistent, and easier-to-manage organization that’s ultimately more profitable. To strengthen your Process Component, take a big step back and think about what your business model is and what its core processes are (e.g., HR, marketing, sales, operations, accounting, customer retention). Document each of the core processes at a high level without too much detail, focusing on the major, essential steps within each process, and then manage everyone to follow them. Identifying the core processes that make up your business model, documenting them in a simplified fashion, and then getting them followed by every single person enables you to systemize the predictable so you can humanize the exceptional.

#6 – Traction

If you make no other investment of time and energy in your company, commit to locking your leadership team in a room every 90 days for a full day and spend that day hashing things out, getting back on the same page, solving issues, and deciding what the three to seven biggest priorities are for the coming quarter. You’ll see huge returns on the time invested. A large percentage of problems and nagging issues get solved simply by devoting the time necessary. With that discipline in action, take it a step further and, within those 90-day periods, plan to meet for 90 minutes every week, spending at least half of that meeting time productively working to resolve issues (following the Issues Solving Track above). Businesses who commit to this “90-day world” gain huge results and actually save time, reduce errors, miscommunication and unresolved problems. It also stops them from trying to take on everything. It’s the operational equivalent of periodically recalibrating your instruments and synchronizing your watches.

Build Your Solid, Well-Oiled Machine, One Component at a Time

If you work to strengthen these Six Key Components, all of the obstacles and frustrations you have been facing can be greatly reduced. If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed right now, simply pick one key component to focus on and strengthen it and then move to the next. Before you know it, you’ll build a solid, well-oiled machine and have a stronger business than you ever thought possible.

Clarity is the Key

Ultimately, the bottom line is clarity. Business owners, entrepreneurs, and leaders who adopt this holistic approach—as all of our clients do—train themselves to stop treating symptoms and start getting to the root causes of problems.

I wrote Traction as a complete how-to manual for helping a company strengthen its Six Key Components, and our supporting website offers many free downloadable tools for easy access and use. You can download any of the above mentioned tools and disciplines at www.eosworldwide.com.

Enjoy the journey.

• EOS Worldwide (website)
• Blog
• Traction (book)
• Decide! (free eBook)

“Business has only two functions – marketing and innovation.” — Milan Kundera

I’ve put together a comprehensive list of marketing books that I’ve found to be insightful or useful in some way.  I see marketing as identifying needs, sizing and segmenting markets, surfacing value, differentiating, positioning in the mind and market, branding, sales, pricing, packaging, distribution, and relationship management.  Marketing is ultimately a blend of skills, capabilities, and focus across a variety of disciplines.

Personal Marketing is Everybody’s Business
In today’s "open and connected" world, I think personal marketing is even more crucial whether it’s selling yourself, selling your work, or creating a name for yourself among your peers … or becoming indispensible to your employer (… Linchpin, anyone?)  Simply put, learning marketing skills is a way to take care of your personal business … the business of you.

The Marchitecture of Business is Evolving …
I see social media transforming marketing in very deep and pervasive ways.  From relationship-marketing on Twitter and Facebook to micro-niches and highly-targeted, location-specific advertising to customer-connected product development, the game is changing.

Proven Practices and Timeless Principles
You can learn a lot about the patterns and practices of marketing from many amazing books.  For example, you can learn proven practices for influence from Robert B. Cialdini in his book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.   Claude C. Hopkins was an early pioneer in the art and science of advertising, and he was a big believer in sampling.  You can lean about his mindset and methods in his book, Scientific Advertising.  If you want to learn a set of timeless principles that help explain our changing world, you can read The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, by Al Ries.  In Married to the Brand, William J. McEwen teaches you proven practices for measuring customer engagement and emotional connection.

Call to Action

1. Explore my list of insightful marketing books.
2. Tell me what books I need to know about.
3. Tell me *why* I need to know about them.

It’s a living library of marketing books.  I’m regularly expanding my library and I regularly recommend books to people, beyond the halls and walls of Microsoft.

* update – Thanks to Guy Kawasaki for suggesting I add The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited and Crossing the Chasm to the list.

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” – Peter Drucker

One of the best ways to deal with change is to anticipate it.  At the beginning of each year, I take a step back to see the forest for the trees.

This is my summary of key trends to watch for 2011. Putting it together is a time-consuming exercise, but it’s one of the most important things I do for the coming year. It helps me see the bigger map. With the bigger map, I have a simpler way to understand what’s going on, anticipate what to expect, respond more effectively, and most importantly – make better bets on where to spend my time.

Don’t read this as a definitive list. Draw from it to help you create your own lens to make sense of the landscape and find your path forward. It’s long, I tried to keep it as scannable as possible. I didn’t want to cut it short for the sake of simplicity. Instead, I wanted to provide a solid map with sources you can draw from as you plan your road ahead.

What’s a Trend
Faith Popcorn’s BrainReserve describes trends in this way:

“Our Trends are not fads. Our Trends endure. Our Trends evolve. They represent underlying forces, first causes, basic human needs, attitudes, aspirations. They help us navigate the world, understand what’s happening and why, and prepare for what is yet to come.”

Key Questions I Ask to Find and Rationalize Trends
These are some of the basic questions I ask to find and rationalize key trends:

• Where are the investments? (e.g. Where are the CxOs betting?)
• Where’s the growth?
• Where’s the pain?
• Who are the pillars in the relevant niches and what are they saying?  … more importantly, what are they doing?
• What are the results?
• What’s the data say?
• What are consumers doing?
• Is it a real trend or just a fad? … and does it matter?

The Short List – 5 Keys to the Future
Before the longer list, I want to shine the light on 5 key things:

1. Clouds and Clients.  This is a key growth spot.  How else do you keep up in a rapidly changing world, deliver services. disrupt the game, and bring new game changers to market faster than ever before?  It’s the cloud.  It marks the commodization of IT and computing.   Companies can now innovate and disrupt at speeds and cycles we’ve never seen before.   One simple metric is how quickly you can reach a million users now with a new service or product, compared to five years ago.  If you want to stay relevant, you have to be thinking about your cloud and virtualization story.  The opportunities here are amazing from the one-man band code slinger who spins up a Web farm for their app that changes the world to businesses that expose new capabilities to the World and help build the programmable Web.  It’s also a way to simplify computing and move up the stack.
2. It’s a gamer’s world.   I don’t just mean Farmville.  It’s like Second Life meets the real world.  With virtual goods on the rise, and more people connecting and having fun through games online, it’s a sweet spot for innovation.  To fully appreciate why it’s a gamer’s world, check out Jane McGonigal’s TED Talk on how gaming can make a better world.   (Here’s the gist  — Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds and the incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems?)  BTW – way to go Activision Blizzard.  World of Warcraft: Cataclysm shattered previous sales records, by selling more than 3.3 million copies in its first 24 hours, making it the fastest-selling PC game of all time.  I expect more lines to blur with work and fun and edutainment, as companies find ways to use gaming approaches to motivate today’s Web worker world.  It’s gamer + education + business + life.
3. NUI experiences.  NUI (Natural User Interface) is in.  Great user experiences are the differentiator that drive adoption and make things stick.  This is a great area for innovation, patterns, and practices.  Speaking of innovation, how cool is the Kinect for XBox 360?  It’s a hands-free controller.  Talk about a game changer (and talk about getting closer to interacting with computers Minority Report style.)   When you think about the possibilities of rich media, touch, speech, location-aware services, and “you-as-the-remote control” (think Wii and Kinect), the possibilities for amazing and immersive experiences are endless.  More importantly, we can finally start showing how software improves productivity, effectiveness, efficiency, and fun.   Have you also noticed the explosion of 3D into the cinema and living room?  What’s next … 3D gaming?
4. The Mobile Internet.  Take the Web wherever you go.  It’s a powerful platform and ecosystems that bring the power of software to everyday scenarios, anywhere and everywhere.  With Apple iPhone and iPad, Google Android, Windows Phone 7, the Web is truly in the palm of your hand, and the app story is just going to keep getting better,
5. The Year of the eBook.  This is THE year.  Earlier this year, Seth Godin said, “I’ve decided not to publish any more books in the traditional way.”  With the Apple iPad, Sony Reader, Barnes & Noble Nook, and of course the Amazon Kindle, the game is on.  Oh, yeah, and Google has a shiny new Google eBookstore.   (You can read about the new Google eBookstore in Discover more than 3 million Google eBooks from your choice of booksellers and devices.)

One way to be thinking about changes is to put them into context.  You can think in terms of home, on the road, and at work.

Key Trends for 2011
Here is my summary of key trends for 2011:

1. Analytics / BI (Business intelligence).  Data-driven decisions win over guesswork.  It’s tough, especially when statistics lie and we want to trust our instincts over our indicators.  Start by asking, how do the great businesses drive their great decisions?  Between information markets and crowd sourced intelligence and social networking, the real issue is how you leverage the data and turn it into intelligent decisions and smart feedback loops, and how you learn and respond.
2. "Consumerization" of IT.  A while back, Gartner said Consumerization Will Be Most Significant Trend Affecting IT During Next 10 Years … I think we see that accelerating.
3. Cycles of change speed up even more.    Life cycles shift to warp speed and lines blur between versions, creating living, breathing products.  This creates pressure to master change management, adopt more Agile methods, figure out compliance and governance for the new landscape.
4. Digital Health.   This is where cloud, BI/analytics and diagnostics can seriously change the game.  There is also a shift to more user empowerment.  If you take a stroll through Best Buy, you might notice the expanding Digital Health shelf.  This is an area where more people may start to outsource their health to smart applications that can see patterns, provide monitoring, and alerts.
5. Education 2.0.   Have you met Bill Gate’s favorite teacher, Sal Khan?   Khan created Khan Academy.  The Khan Academy is the free classroom for the world with hundreds of free videos and exercises and it’s mission is to provide a world-class education to anyone, anywhere.
6. Global distributed development.  Competing in a global market means finding and using the best resources at the best price, anywhere in the world.
7. Location based services.   Talk about relevancy in action and just-in-time ads.  It’s all about specialization + location.  Location, location, location takes on new meaning and relevancy.  Jim Carroll says, “Consider the concept of a ‘location-intelligence professional.’ Today, this involves someone working within the insurance industry, learning how to link the extensive data-sets of geographic oriented information – think Google Maps – with existing insurance underwriting information, and with other statistical databases.”
8. Micropayments and virtual currencies.  Second Life really set the trend here a while back, but it’s becoming more important in today’s world.  This paves the way for real money for micro-transactions.  It also creates a model for reputation based systems, which is important in a reputation-based economy.
9. Private cloud.   The time is ripe for Enterprises to move to the cloud, and private clouds and integration will be key stepping stones.
10. Reputation based.   It’s reputations that cut through the clutter and rise to the top, helped by word-of-mouth marketing and raving fans.
11. Standards / open systems.  One of the way so win in today’s world is to build great experiences on top of open standards.  Optimize for open over closed.
12. Talent Economy / Skills-for-Hire Economy.   Specialization, market maturity and rapid cycles of change drive a demand for key skills.  The key is to balance “generalist” skills in business and technology, along with specialized skills that the market values.
13. The rise of Social media / social networking.   Between world-of-mouth marketing, raving fans, and real time information markets for customer feedback that can make you or break you, embrace and leverage the power of the people.
14. Tribes.  Tribes are who you’re making your products for.  Tribes are your network.  You’ll find your next job through your tribe, or you’ll help members in your tribe find their next job.
15. User empowerment.  It’s the rise of the spider and the fall of the starfish in a federated world.
16. User experiences.   This is where reputations are built and raving fans are won.  Think speed, simplicity, immersive experience, visualization, how you feel … etc.  Design working backward from the end experience in mind.  If the resulting experience suck will suck, don’t even start to build it.
17. Virtual goods.  Whether it’s eBooks or information products or rewards in game worlds, virtual goods have real-world potential.
18. Web TV.   Web TV is truly here.  Improvements in broadband have certainly helped.  Whether your box is  Roku, Playstation, X-Box, Wii, Apple TV, an internet-ready blue-ray, or an Internet-ready TV, and whether you stream from Amazon video-on-demand, NetFlix, or Hulu, video-on-demand has become a reality.  With Google TV on the scene, things really get interesting.

The Meta-Pattern for Trends
These are some of the patterns I’m noticing about the patterns of the trends:

• “Built to Change” Over “Built to Last.”  Again, this goes back to shifting from a static world, to a dynamic world and embracing change over fighting it.  Run with it.
• Consumer patterns drive Enterprise patterns.  At the end of the day, people are consumers and the patterns show up in the Enterprise.
• Decentralize and federate.   Think starfish and spider.
• Differentiate.  Differentiate by giving your best where you have your best to give.  Compete by dividing the niche and small is the new big (so you win with a portfolio that’s flexible and responsive to market demand.)
• Execution is king.  Operational efficiency and innovating in your product cycle is how you survive and thrive.
• Prosumer.  Think Consumer + Producer.  Get your customers into your production cycle earlier so they help you create and innovate in your product line.
• Pull vs. Push.  Know the mental model from push to pull.  In Push Me, Pull You–Dueling Business Models, Steve Bosserman says, “Through the three hundred-year reign of the Industrial Age, businesses “pushed” their products and services onto consumers. Limited choice accompanied by considerable marketing hype was enough to make the consumer buy. It was a sellers’ market. Now, thanks largely to the Information Age, consumers are evolving into customers who can select what they want from a variety of providers. It is becoming a buyers’ market.”
• Relevancy is king.  Google taught us this.
• Reputation and brand are king.   In a social networked world, it’s the network that says who the authority is and what works and what doesn’t.
• Simplicity.  Simplicity always win in the long run when it comes to adoption.  Find ways to reduce friction and make things simple out of the box.  Design for simplicity and keep things simple where you can.
• Social Value / Community Good.  Green is not optional.  In a green world, if you’re business doesn’t play well with green values, it’s not a sustainable path.
• Results are king.  Talk is cheap.  Results speak for themselves.

There are a lot of kings here.  In checkers, it’s easier to win when you have a lot of kings.

The Way Forword
What’s past is past and the future

• Absorb what is useful.  Do it Bruce Lee style — take what you need, adapt it, and throw out the rest.
• Agility. Stay adaptable.  Flexibility is your friend.  See The better adapted you are, the less adaptable you tend to be.
• Anticipate change.   Look ahead.  Build your anticipation skills.  Know the system.  Things don’t just happen.  The more you know the system and the ecosystem, the more you can anticipate what’s coming down the line.  Pay attention to market leaders, trend setters, patterns, and cycles.  Everything happens in cycles whether it’s growth or decline. best.
• Be the Best on the Web.  there’s no room for #2.  Be the best at what you’re the best at.  This is Good to Great in action.
• Build a firm foundation.  Know Maslow’s hierarchy and prioritize taking care of your basic needs.  Know your “monthly burn” and be mindful of your decisions to support your firm foundation.  The stronger your foundation is, the more you can help yourself and others when they need it most.
• Compete where it makes the most sense.  Compete on price, or quality or customer and don’t mix them up.  This depends on which stage of the maturity cycle you are in, what the state of the market is, and what you can be the best at.  For example, in a commodity market, don’t be the most expensive.  Turn competition into collaboration and find the win wins to really change your game and rock the world.
• If it doesn’t help you be your best, cut it out.   This means living your values, and playing to your strengths.  It also means giving your best where you have your best to give, as a person, and as a company.  It’s how your survive, and it’s how you go from surviving to thriving.   Any other way drains you in the long run and you get priced or pushed or competed out of the market.  It’s the sustainable path.
• Follow the Cycles.  Knowing the path from cradle to grave, gives you an edge.  It helps you anticipate what to expect and it helps you apply levers where they count.  At a meta-level, there is a pattern for market maturity cycles.  According to Alonso Martinez and Ronald Haddock, the 4 stages of market maturity are: 1) survival, 2) quality, 3) convenience, 4) customization.
• Follow the Data.   With all the usage data and analytics power of a Web world, you don’t need to guess at success.  It’s very easy to use surveys to figure out what your customers want.  It’s easy to provide options for customers to provide actionable feedback.  Drive your decisions with data and make informed decisions.  Do A/B testing and experiment your way forward.
• Follow the growth.  Follow your own growth, and follow the growth in the market.  For example, in the tech industry some growth areas are mobile and cloud.  Along these lines, create the growth.
• Follow the money.  Where there’s money, there’s growth.  You can look to where CxOs are investing, or even where you company is investing and making its bets.
• Follow the people.  Great people have track records for a reason.  Find the people who are connected and always seem to be ahead of the curve.   Great ideas flow from great people and this is an idea economy.
• Get back to the basics.  Practice the fundamentals.  They work.  Among the chaos, there are always core principles, patterns, and practices that you can bank on.
• Hone your personal brand.  Make the most of what you’ve got and make sure your differentiation is obvious.  For example, one of my differentiators is “getting results.”
• Invest in yourself.  Inner-engineering always pays off.
• It’s your network and what you know.  People sort and sift through people they know.  In a skills-for-hire economy, your network is how you find the opportunities.
• Know the cycles of things.  For example, know the Four Stages of Market Maturity, the Technology Adoption Life Cycle, and the Diffusion of Innovations.
• Lead yourself from the inside out.   Follow your values, play to your strengths, and follow your purpose.  It’s the sustainable path.
• Learn and respond.  Your ability to learn and respond will drive your best results.  Innovate in your process and your product.
• Model the best.   You can speed up your learning curves and avoid costly mistakes by modeling from best practices and working examples.  Whenever you think you’re faced with a new problem, first ask, who else might share this problem, and see if you can find three good examples of how this problem was solved.

Key Sources
I primarily draw from my own experience working with customers, and paying attention to what they’re paying attention to, as well as paying attention to my mentors and smarties across Microsoft, and whoever they tell me to pay attention to. One of the easiest ways to see where the action is and where the growth will be is to watch where companies put their best people and where they invest (I call it a “charter and bets check”). I also draw from the following:

• Jim Carroll – Jim helps me see the trends across industries and look to patterns. He’s also great at identifying where the growth and opportunities are, and more importantly how to frame the landscape in a way that makes it actionable instead of analysis paralysis.
• Trend Hunter – It’s effectively “crowd-sources insight” and it’s a great source for consumer trends. I’m a big believer that consumer trends pave the path for Enterprise trends. By watching consumer trends, I learn what to expect. I then watch how it shows up as I work with my customers. This pattern serves me well.
• Internet Trends by Morgan Stanley –  This is a data-driven view of the emerging trends.  What I like about this report is how the data is used to help identify and illustrate the patterns.
• C:Insights Trends – They focus on consumer trends and they specialize in research and advisory services.  I look to them for patterns and key words in consumer trends.
• Craig Mundie, Chief Research and Strategy Officer, Microsoft – Mundie has been in the business for more than 35 years, and he’s a forward thinker.   I pay attention to Mundie because he is in the center of a lot of action.  He’s also good at being able to see the forest from the trees.
• Faith Popcorn – I first heard about Faith from Tony Robbins and I can see why he looks to her for patterns and trends.  Her super skill is finding the more pervasive trends that shape the culture, consumers, and the community.  She specializes in turning the insight from trends into actions for business and weaving them into strategies and tactics for business.
• IBM Executive Exchange – The beauty of the IBM Executive Exchange is that it’s real insight from actual CIO, CFO, and CEOs.  If you want to know what kinds of things will be getting attention in the coming year, simply look to the CxOs.  The CxOs have an important vantage point in their company.  They know their company’s strategy, top pain points, and key investments.  You can expect ripple effects from their decision.
• IDC (International Data Corporation) — IDC is an analyst that specializes in analyzing the future.  I look to them to see what insights and trends they see across various sectors include energy, financial, government, health, manufacturaing, and retail.
• JWT Intelligence – JWT is all about finding trends and turning cultural shifts into opportunities.  I find their synthesis and the way they name their trends, insightful and compelling.   I cross-check them against the other consumer trends I see.

With that in mind, here is a quick roundup of key trends to watch for from these sources  …

C:Insights Trends
20 Mobile Trends for 2011 — http://www.slideshare.net/CinsightsTrends/20-key-mobile-trends-201011

1. Trend 1 – Augmented Reality (AR)
2. Trend 2 – Social Search
3. Trend 3 – Social Gaining
4. Trend 4 – Mobile social Networks
5. Trend 5 – Mobile Discount Coupons
6. Trend 6 – QR Codes
7. Trend 7 – Micro Blogging
8. Trend 8 – Video Sharing
9. Trend 9 – Instant Networking
10. Trend 10 – Niche Networks
11. Trend 11 – Multitasking
12. Trend 12 – Virtual Personas
13. Trend 13 – Mobile IM
14. Trend 14 – Social Music
15. Trend 15 – Organic Technology
16. Trend 16 – Conversational Content
17. Trend 17 – Open Source Applications
18. Trend 18 – Peer Advertising
19. Trend 19 – Social Media Aggregators
20. Trend 20 – Mobile Apps

CIO Insight
Lundquist’s Top Tech Trends for 2011 – http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/IT-Management/Lundquists-Top-Tech-Trends-for-2011-656290/

1. The CIO as Services Maestro
2. IT Services
3. Reverse Consumerization
4. The Mobile Enterprise
5. Virtualization, Cloud Computing
6. Big Blue vs. Big Red
7. Remember PCs?
8. Tablets
9. Video
10. Apple Stores

Computer Economics
Technology Trends – 2010/2011 –- http://www.computereconomics.com/images/default/ISS2010/TechTrends2010sample.pdf

Computer Economics identifies 19 hot spots for focus and where the action is:

1. Application Consolidation
2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems
3. Data Center Consolidation
4. Desktop Virtualization
5. Enterprise Social Networking
6. Enterprise Resource Planning Software
7. Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance (GRC) Systems
8. Help Desk Self-Support Systems
9. Infrastructure Cloud Computing
10. Legacy System Renewal
11. Microsoft Windows 7 Migration
12. Mobile Applications
13. Open Source Business Applications
14. Predictive Analytics
15. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Systems
16. Software as a Service
17. 10G Ethernet
18. Unified Communications
19. Video Conferencing Systems

Craig Mundie
Reimagining Microsoft’s Future, Financial Analyst Meeting, July 29, 2010 -

http://www.microsoft.com/investor/Downloads/Events/Mundie_FAM_2010.docx

Mundie identifies three trends that are coming out of the labs and showing up in products:

1. Clients and Clouds – “The combination of the client and the cloud to create the new computing platform that will redefine both how people develop applications and ultimately how people consume them and what kind of things are possible to solve.”
2. Natural User Interface – “As the computer has become more and more powerful, and yet it’s more and more pervasive in our lives, we need ultimately to change the way in which we deal with the computer. There have been many technological trends that we’ve been studying in research for 10 or even 20 years, and they’re all starting to come together, enabled by this revolution in the microprocessor capability and networking, to some extent.”
3. Working on your behalf – “For time immemorial, computers have been a great tool, but increasingly, the world has so much stuff available to us that if we have to navigate it all by hand, it just becomes tedious. So, we’re now starting to turn a lot of the power of the computer to helping us get things done.”

IBM Executive Exchange
2010 IBM Global IT Risk Study – The Evolving Role of IT Managers and CIOs

The Evolving Role of IT Managers and CIOs

http://www-931.ibm.com/docs/vrmhost/GBE03365-USEN-00.pdf

Top 5 Emerging Technologies in terms of risk:

1. Social networking tools
2. Mobile platforms
3. Cloud computing
4. Virtualization
5. Service-oriented architecture

Additional insights …

• “IT risk management and compliance has remained largely immune from budget cuts or cost reductions.”
• Risk management helps defensively with business continuity, protecting reputation and proactively with a company’s agility, creating growth, and reducing costs.
• Business continuity is about building a “risk-aware culture” and baking into the tools, processes and methodologies.
• “IT security (vulnerability to hackers and unauthorized access/use of company systems) is the number-one concern among 78 percent of the IT professionals surveyed.”

Analytics: The new path to value

http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/thoughtleadership/ibv-embedding-analytics.html

• How the smartest organizations are embedding analytics to transform insights into action. The success pattern is to use analytics over best guesses – “The tendency for top-performing organizations to apply analytics to particular activities across the organization, as compared to lower performers.”

Smarter Cities – Cities are getting smarter. Watch the trailer on Smarter Cities

http://www-03.ibm.com/innovation/us/thesmartercity/index_flash.html#/home/trailer/

• According to the video, cities around the world are tackling: “How to keep traffic flowing, cure a health care system, protect citizens while protecting their privacy, and how to demonstrate how one decision affects millions of people and involve them in making their city a better place to live.” Check out http://IBM.com/TheSmarterCity

IDC
Worldwide System Infrastructure Software 2011 Top 10 Predictions – http://www.idc.com/research/viewtoc.jsp?containerId=225895

1. Private Cloud Plans Will Mature, Dominate the Enterprise Infrastructure Software Agenda in 2011
2. Battle for Next-Generation Cloud Platforms Will Shift Focus from IaaS to PaaS
3. Microsoft Windows Azure Will Get the Respect It Deserves
4. New Enterprise Mainframe Will Create Integrated/Hybrid Solution Opportunities for Management Software Vendors, But MIPS Wars Will Continue
5. Server Virtualization Will Continue to Subsume High-Availability and Replication Functionality
6. Client Virtualization Will Become a Strategic, Mainstream Desktop Choice in 2011
7. Big 4 Will Become the Big 5 — Microsoft Will Displace HP as the Number 1 Global Distributed Systems Management Software Provider
8. Social Collaboration Will Force Shift in IT Service Management Support Best Practices
9. Enterprises Will Push for Broad ELA Subscription Pricing as ISVs Struggle to Accommodate Elastic Infrastructure and Cloud-Scale Operations
10. Novell Acquisition Will Be Catalyst for Linux Market Upheaval During 2011

IDC Predictions 2011: Welcome to the New Mainstream – http://www.idc.com/research/viewtoc.jsp?containerId=225878

1. Worldwide IT Spending Growth Will Be Solid, with Hardware Moderating and Rebounds in Software and Services
2. Emerging Markets Will Continue to Lead Global Growth in IT
3. Public and Private Cloud Adoption Will Surge, Two Cloud "Power Position" Battles Will Enter High Gear, and a Buzzword Will Get Ready to Fade
4. Cloud-Driven Datacenter Transformations Will Pick Up Speed
5. The Mobility Explosion Will Continue — with Huge Device Volumes, New Form Factors, and Billions of Mobile Apps
6. Broadband Networks Will Struggle — and Innovate — to Keep Up
7. Social Business Momentum Will Drive Consolidation, SMB Adoption
8. The Expanding Digital Universe Will Drive Cloud-Friendly Information Infrastructure and Real-Time Analytics for "Big Data"
9. "Intelligent Industries" Will Put Mobility, Social Networking to Work
10. Industry Positions for Customers Demanding "I Want My Web TV!"

2010 UtiliQ Rankings: Top 25 Intelligent Utilities

http://www.idc-ei.com/research/UtiliQ.jsp

In their “Looking Ahead” section, IDC provides a set of guidelines for strategies and investments for companies that want to improve their position:

1. Partner with the customer. “Recent customer backlash in some areas is in large part due to insufficient communication with the customer. Develop a b communications plan to make the customer aware of the long-run advantages of intelligent investments and use pilot programs as a testing ground for customer partnership.”
2. Drive company cultural change.” Becoming a more intelligent utility has a lot to do with people. Your employees need to understand your company’s vision, your strategy for getting there, why it’s important to all major stakeholders – including customers and regulators – and what this all means to your employees on a day-to-day basis.”
3. Improve processes for both "lean" and "green." “Efficient processes drive down the cost of maintaining the current environment and free up resources for innovation and growth.”
4. Make intelligent technology investments.” Find ways to get the best return from your technology investments by ensuring that your spending on information, communications, and energy technologies is in line with the business.”

Jim Carroll
Trending in 2011: 10 Major Trends to Start Thinking About Now!

http://www.jimcarroll.com/2010/10/trending-in-2011-10-major-trends-to-start-thinking-about-now/

1. The expectations gap. "Western society is defined by an increasing divergence between what people expect, and what they will get."
2. Industries blur. "The world of fashion and healthcare are going to merge. We are going to see an increasing number of bio-connectivity health care devices that will be used for the remote monitoring of health care conditions."
3. Energy gets smart. ".. Continued high-speed innovation with renewable energy sources, and velocity with grid-parity: the point in time at which the cost of producing renewable energy equals that of carbon based sources."
4. The collapse of attention spans. "If you don’t know how to think, market and promote at nano-speeds, you’re not ready for the future!"
5. Faster market evolution. "New products flood the market at ever increasing speeds, and fast-consumers snap them up in a moment and evolve their lifestyles quicker."
6. Innovation partnerships. Companies can’t keep up and just innnovate on their own … "enjoy greater success through open innovation and other external innovation partnerships."
7. The fight against workplace boredom. "Organizations are fighting back against boredom by trying to keep staff engaged."
8. American-Idolotry. People love heroes. "The future of workplace and partner renumeration is all about the red-carpet, the spotlight, and the celebration of success!"
9. The big impact of small incrementalism. "Everyone is learning that one way to win the future is by having a lot of small wins that add up to big gains."
10. Communities redefined. Community ergonomics will be a high growth industry. We have a growing senior population, which means communities need to be "rethought, re-designed, and reconstructed."

JWT Intelligence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtTk2J935Bg&feature=player_embedded

1. All the world’s a game
2. The urgency economy
3. Non-commitment culture
4. Eat, pray, tech
5. De-teching
6. Retail as the third space
7. Creative urban renewal
8. Worlds colliding
9. Hyper-personalization
10. Outsourcing self-control

Morgan Stanley
CM Summit, June 7, 2010

http://www.slideshare.net/CMSummit/ms-internet-trends060710final

1. Mobile Internet – Unprecedented Early Stage Growth
2. Innovation — Unprecedented Intensity?
3. Online Advertising — May Be Entering Golden Age, Finally
4. Online Commerce – Mobile Should Be Share Gain Accelerator
5. Communications — Share Shift to Sharing
6. Cloud Computing — Consumer First, Enterprise Next
7. Technology — What’s Next …
8. Beyond Technology — It’s Complicated …

Internet Trends, April 12, 2010

http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/techresearch/pdfs/Internet_Trends_041210.pdf

Morgan Stanley on the “Mobile Internet” …

1. Wealth Creation / Destruction is Material in New computing Cycles — Now in Early Innings of Mobile Internet Cycle, the 5th Cycle of Last Half Century.
2. Mobile Ramping Faster than Desktop Internet Dic and Will Be Bigger Than Most Think — 5 Trends Converging (3G + Social Networking + Video + VoIP + Impressive Mobile Devices).
3. Apple Leading in Mobile Innovation + Impact, for Now — Depth of App Ecosystems + User Experience + Pricing Will Determing Long-Term Winners.
4. Game-Changing Communications / Commerce Platforms (Social Networking + Mobile) Emerging Very Rapidly.
5. Massive Data Growth Driving Carrier / Equipment Transitions.
6. Growth / Monetization Roadmaps Provided by Japan Mobile + Desktop Internet.

Rudolf Melik
Ten Major Trends for 2011 and How They Impact Professional Services and Project Delivery

http://www.psvillage.com/pulse/ten-major-trends-2011-and-how-they-impact-professional

Rudolf, CEO of Tenrox, does a great job overlaying his experience and perspective against Jim Carroll’s map of 10 majory Trends for 2011. Check out his article, but here is a quick blurb from his take on how the workforce will shift to more project-based execution.

• Rudolf on Hollywood movie style execution — “More companies are also adopting a Hollywood movie style execution strategy by bringing people together to shoot the film (execute the project) and then disband the crew (the team) just as quickly as it came together once the film is completed (project is closed).”
• Rudolf on project history over employment history — “Project workers are increasingly giving more importance to the next project they will work on instead of the company they will work at. More and more personal profiles take the form of an individual’s project history rather than their employment history.”

Trend Hunter
2011 Trend Report Samples

http://www.trendreports.com/2011-Trend-Report

1.  Interactive Retail – “Stores focus on customer engagement as primary business strategy.”
2. Social Shopping – “Shopaholics are using social media for networking and retail therapy.”
3. Perpetual Adaptation – “Obsessed with aesthetics, society embarks on the eternal makeover.”
4. Democratic Selling – “Online retailers rely on customer votes to push production.”
5. Radical Rebranding – “Pushing boundaries of reinvention to gain consumer attention.”
6. Hyperrealism – “Real life is simulated in photorealistic artworks that defy deception.”
7. Geriatric Couture – “Seniors become the anti-fashion inspiration for young people.”
8. Augmented Reality – “Augmented reality combines reality and virtuality, offering a new way to imagine.”
9. Half Formal – “Classed up business casual is a reflection of the new corporate attitude.”

What else is important that I should know about or have on my radar and heat map?

“Give a person a fish, and you feed them for a day. Teach a person how to fish, and you feed them for a lifetime.”

One of the questions I keep asking is, what skills do we need to survive or thrive in our new world?  It’s a world where you can’t count on a corporation for your job.  It’s a world where change happens faster than ever before.  It’s a world of global competition, where somebody, somewhere, with a lower cost of living can do your job for a fraction of the cost.  What kind of skills do we need to adapt and respond?  What skills do we need to teach our children?

There is a pattern and a way out.  It’s entrepreneurship.  If you look to the people that consistently bounce back, and if you look to the people that find a way out of poverty, and if you look to the people that get laid off, but then create a prosperous business, a common pattern is entrepreneurship.

In the book, Ultimate Guide to Google Ad Words, 2nd Edition: How To Access 100 Million People in 10 Minutes , Perry Marshall and Bryan Todd write about how entrepreneurism is the path out of poverty.

The Story of Paul in Kenya
Marshall and Todd write:

“But the epiphany occurs when I meet a fellow named Paul Mungai, who runs a cobbler shop.  Paul, ironically, is crippled, but he knows how to make and fix shoes.  And he knows how to run a business.  He started with just $50.00 of see money and now has, by Kenyan standards, a sound business.  He’s feeding his family, he’s paying his rent, his kids have uniforms to wear at school, and everyone in his care has enough to live on.”

I’ve heard similar stories like this before.   People can turn their lives around, and sustain themselves, when they can find a way to make a living.

Entrepreneurship is the Path Out
Marshall and Todd write:

“We exchange a few words and share our mutual understanding:  There is one and only one path out of poverty.  The one and only path out of poverty is entrepreneurship and business success.”
Well put.  Time and again, I’ve seen business create opportunity, growth, and new jobs.

My Related Posts

• Skills for the Road Ahead
• Using Trends to Improve Your Anticipation Skills
• Step into Your Future

Photo by bugeaters.

“A strategy delineates a territory in which a company seeks to be unique.” –  Michael Porter

Strategy guides your tactics.  One of the most effective tools I’ve used for designing a strategy is a Strategy Diamond, which outlines the five key components of your strategy: arenas, vehicles, differentiation, staging, and economic value.

Why care about strategy?  To put it simply, your strategy can help you compete more effectively or find a sustainable way to stay in business.  If nothing else, it’s about being mindful and deliberate about where you are spending your time, energy, and resources.  In today’s world, strategy is more important than ever, where strategies are battle-tested in a world-wide market and it’s survival of the fittest and the most flexible.

You can think about strategy whether you are a one-man band, a team, an organization, or a company, and beyond.  You can use strategy to your advantage to better guide your actions and investments.  Even the most effective bloggers have a knack for strategy.

In the book, Managing the Design Factory , Donald G. Reinerstsen writes about how your product has to start with strategy, and that it can’t be an after-thought.

Key Take Aways
Here are my key take aways:

• Good strategies make money.  You can measure your strategy, by measuring whether it makes money.  It’s a cut and dry way to get market feedback and to tell whether your strategy is sustainable.
• Product choices must fit with the strategy.    If your strategy is the market segment you’ll compete in, who you’ll compete with, and how you’ll compete, then you need to check whether your product is going to work for your strategy.  For example, is your strategy about price or quality or a unique difference?  Will that work in the market segment you chose, and does your product deliver?
• Your customer or channel has to value the difference.  The market might not value what you bring to the table.  If you have unique value, but your customer or channel doesn’t value the difference, then you have a mismatch.   A very cutting question is does your customer value what you do?

In my experience, if you don’t have a way to measure the economics, because you’re playing the game to win mind-share, then you can measure success against your mission.  One additional point I’ll add is that if your strategy is easy to copy, then you aren’t taking advantage of your unique strength.

Which Segments, Who to Compete with, and How to Compete
The key point here is that the market will give you feedback on whether your strategy is working.  Either it’s making money or it’s not.  If you’re not making money, you might need to change your strategy.

Reinertsen writes:
”Our company strategy is a key context in which we do product development.  Strategy determines which market segments we will compete in, who we will compete with, and how we will compete.  The single yard-stick by which we measure our strategy is an economic one.  Good strategies make money, bad strategies do not.  We need to understand our internal economics, those of our distribution channels, and those of our competitors to do a good job setting strategy.”

Our Products Need to Fit Our Strategy
The key point here is that you have to match your product to your strategy, and your differentiator has to match what your channel and customers can value or appreciate.

Reinertsen writes:

“The products we choose to develop are a critical piece of our strategy, but our product choices must fit with the rest of the strategy.  For example, one computer peripheral company tried to differentiate their product on the basis of its performance advantages.  Unfortunately, the channel of distribution they used were order takers who had little technical knowledge and no ability to explain these benefits to the customer.  This channel sold products on the basis of price alone, which means the company achieved no premium for is superior technical performance.  It is quite common to see such misfits between the product and the distribution channel.  The important thing to remember is that good products cannot fix bad strategies.  We need to start with a well-crafted strategy to make money-developing products.”

My Related Posts

• Selecting the Customer
• Strategy Diamond
• Energized Differentiation Separates Brands from the Pack
• Measure of Success

Photo by everywhereisimagined.

“You were born an original.  Don’t die a copy.” — John Mason

In a world that’s over-crowded and over-flowing with competition, what makes some brands stand out?   I’ve been trying to answer that question, and then I came across The Trouble with Brands, an article by John Gerzema and Ed Lebar.

It turns out, the answer is Energized Differentiation.  That’s the term Gerzema and Lebar use for brands that stand out in how they communicate excitement, dynamism, and creativity.

Why Does Energized Differentiation Matter
Why does that matter?    It’s actually a really big deal.  According to Gerzema and Lebar, “The unique measure of energized differentiation establishes a direct link between brand momentum and creativity, financial earnings, and stock performance. “  They also found that, “The more energy they have, the greater consideration, loyalty, pricing power, and brand value (as a percentage of firm value) they command.”

On the flip side, It’s also a big deal because it turns out that the classic way of measuring brand equity, by measuring 4 attributes (trust, awareness, regard, and esteem), just isn’t working anymore.

Whether you are a solo-preneur, a blogger, a company, or a corporate warrior, differentiation is the name of the game.  And Energized Differentiation is how you win.

3 Keys to a High Energy Brand
According to Gerzema and Lebar, the three keys to a high energy brand are:

1. Vision – how the company presents leadership, convictions, and reputation.
2. Invention – how consumers perceive innovation in the design or content of the product or service.
3. Dynamism – how the brand creates a persona, emotion, advocacy, and evangelism.

Some examples of high energy brands include Adida, iPhone, McDonald’s, Nike, Walmart, JetBlue, and Virgin Atlantic.

Energy is Where the Action Is
Gerzema and Lebar write:

“But energy is where the action is. It reflects the consumer’s perception of motion and direction. It sustains the brand’s advantages. High-energy brands create a constant sense of interest and excitement. Consumers sense that these brands move faster, see farther, and are more experiential and more responsive to their needs.”

I like the visionary, fluid and flexible picture this paints.

Differentiation is Offering, Uniqueness, and Distinction
According to Gerzema and Lebar, differentiation is how a consumer perceives three brand attributes:

1. Offering – the products, services, or content.
2. Uniqueness – the brand’s essence, positioning, and equity.
3. Distinction – the reputation of the brand.

You can take a look at your offering, uniqueness, and distinction in light of the three keys to a high energy brand.

Relevancy is Still King
Gerzema and Lebar write:

“Without relevance, the brand will languish. The brand may stand out with energy but have no meaning to consumers. Relevance is the pathway to strong consideration, trial, preference, and ultimately share of wallet. This is especially important in today’s downward-spiraling market.”

This makes perfect sense.  The way to stay connected is to stay relevant.

Photo by Fremlin.