June 28, 2009

Reality Check Now Available in French

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Vient de paraître en français:

La réalité de l'entrepreneuriat

Le guide irrévérencieux pour dépasser, devancer, distancer vos concurrents

de Guy Kawasaki

Publié en français par les Editions Diateino, avec l'aimable autorisation de Portfolio, Penguin Group. 26 euros.

Ce livre, traduit par Marylène Delbourg Delphis, fait suite à L’art de se lancer, le bestseller de Guy Kawasaki traduit en 10 langues, paru en 2006 aux Editions Diateino.

La réalité de l’entrepreneuriat, comme L’art de se lancer, est un livre de chevet pour tout entrepreneur, où qu’il vive. Ce livre vous intéressera, vous motivera – et vous secouera peut-être un peu aussi, car il ouvre des perspectives nouvelles sur les difficultés de l’entrepreneuriat au début de la vie d’une entreprise et il vous donne les moyens de les résoudre. Il vous fera gagner un temps fou, car il vous évitera bien des bévues et vous renforcera dans votre conviction.

Cliquez ici pour l’acheter.

August 10, 2008

On the Nightstands of Famous Scientists

Ever wonder what scientists read when they are not mapping the universe or otherwise changing the world with their discoveries? Hint: They're not all geeky science texts. For example, physicist Freeman Dyson has printouts of 165 emails.

Here is a link to the books and other whatnots of a handful of famous scientists like cosmologist Max Tegmark, physicist Freeman Dyson, pediatrician Philip Landrigan, and primatologist Frans de Waal.

By Thomas Kang

May 13, 2008

The Art of Survival: An Interview with Jerry White

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Jerry White is the co-founder of Survivor Corps (formerly Landmine Survivors Newwork). His life changed in 1984 when he lost his leg in a landmine explosion while visiting Israel. After this experience he has championed the cause of survivorship and became a leader in the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. In 1997 this organization, Jerry, and Jody Williams shared the Nobel Peace Prize. He recently published a book called I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis.

  1. Question: What do people who are undergoing a life crisis need most?

    Answer: We crave empathy and support. We need to know that someone out there—anyone!—who understands what we are going through. Yes, there are emergency “things” we need like safety, food, shelter, direct assistance; but ultimately we are social beings in search of social connection and meaning.

  2. Question: What do they need most from their government?

    Answer: Governments add most value during emergency situations when they address macro issues such as rule of law, security, resource mobilization, strategic communications, respect for human rights without discrimination and coordination of services. Unfortunately, recent examples of Hurricane Katrina and the current mortgage crises suggest that government too often fails us, and is slow to react to mass destruction. It takes a village to survive emergencies, with help from the private sector, social sector and public sector. No single government agency or sector can do it all. We need our neighbors and civil society to come through for us. It is always a mistake to wait passively for bureaucracies and government agencies to “save” us.

  3. Question: What are the key stages of overcoming a crisis?

    Answer: In the face of crisis and catastrophe, we are afraid. Our first temptation is to fight the facts or flee from the facts. But to overcome, we must get our mind around the truth of our lives and circumstances. Here are five steps that survivors worldwide have used to overcome a life crisis:

    1. Face facts. This awful thing has happened. I can’t roll back the clock. This sucks.

    2. Choose life, not death. I want to find hope; create options for a positive future.

    3. Reach out. No one survives alone. Isolation will kill us. Let others into our lives.

    4. Get moving. You have to get up and out of the house. Do your “survivor sit-ups.”

    5. Give back. Become a benefactor not just a beneficiary. Yes, you will add value.

  4. Question: How can people be expected to “give back” when so much has been taken from them?

    Answer: The most generous can be found among the poorest of the poor, people who experienced crisis and poverty themselves. Many have discovered that the key to finding joy lies in giving back to our communities. Many of us exert enormous effort just to survive life, but when we learn to give again, in small and big ways, we gain in strength. Giving keeps us from slipping back into a victim mentality.

    None of the survivors I work with, from Bosnia to Vietnam to Ethiopia, wants to be dependent on our charity or pity. They want a chance to get back in the game. That’s why each and every survivor we work with agrees to perform community service. For example, if we help a survivor get a fake leg or find a job, then he or she is obligated to help another survivor in their community. Sometimes it’s as simple as a roof repair, or sharing of food. Everyone feels better after giving again. Does anyone out there feel good being in someone else’s “charitable” debt?

  5. Question: Is it accepting the impact of such a crisis the best case or can people go beyond and thrive or be stronger than before the crisis?

    Answer: Acceptance is just the beginning…slowly, we start to “face facts” to break through initial denial and fear. When life explodes, our first instinct is “fight” or “flight.” We rage at what as happened or we run from it. These are short-term survival instincts, but not healthy long-term survivorship strategies needed to get through tough times. And just “getting through” is not our primary life objective.

    We humans have an uncanny ability to reframe our thoughts and choose to find meaning in our scars. Thousands of survivors we have interviewed talk about growing stronger after a catastrophe. But they made healthy choices along the way; it was no accident that they rediscovered joy after debilitating loss.

  6. Question: Still, even for the “thrivers,” do you think they would want whatever happened to happen to them again?

    Answer: I never give “good press” to a “bad thing.” To this day, I wish I had never stepped on that landmine in Israel and lost my right leg. I don’t romanticize the pain nor do I give any credit for my thriving to landmines—they are lethal military litter that daily maims and kills innocent men, women, and children. I don’t know any rape survivor who would put a positive spin on sexual violence, nor any cancer survivor who fancies cancer and chemotherapy.

    The key to thriving is not the “thing” but our determination to choose the survivor path, en route to a healthy and positive future. Life can wound us terribly, but we, thankfully, are more than the sum of our wounds. We can choose our response to tragedy and trauma. As the cheerful but hackneyed saying goes, we can “make lemonade out of lemons.” Still, lemons never stop being sour, do they?

  7. Question: What differentiates someone who will overcome or even thrive from someone who will be defeated by a crisis?

    Answer: People who overcome and thrive are those who have learned to “rise above” their injuries and “give back” to their communities. People are defeated by their crisis if they become their crisis, letting it rule their lives. The key is to recognize a crisis for what it is—a turning point and an opportunity.

    I refused to let a landmine rob more than my leg. It couldn’t make me less of a whole person unless I let it do so. I would never define myself by a piece of me or by one aspect of my past. I don’t think of myself as “an amputee”…just a regular guy who happens to be missing a leg. Survivors who believe they are more than their bodies have an advantage. Faith and a sense of humor are hallmarks of resilient personalities.

  8. Question: Do you think there are fundamental differences between starting an organization like Survivor Corps and a for-profit company?

    Answer: I don’t see a big difference. The entrepreneurial impulse is the same across borders, even when there are different motives behind it. Some search for profits; others seek “higher profits.” Still, a balance sheet is a balance sheet. Cash flow is what it is. Revenue and expenses are simple math for any company or nonprofit organization. I have spent my whole professional career as a social sector guy because I am primarily motivated to address the mass market of growing numbers of marginalized people in need. I don’t call them “customers” or “clients,” but others could.

    As I earned my MBA from the University of Michigan, I was increasingly convinced that the dynamics of organizational development are the same for non-profits and for-profits alike. I do think businesses could learn more from the nonprofit sector, particularly with regard to tapping into intrinsic motivation, mission drive and passion. “Increasing shareholder value” is not a sustainable mission statement or business strategy. Employees want and deserve more.

  9. Question: What are the challenges of starting an organization that serves people thousands of miles away from most of your supporters?

    Answer: It is a challenge for people to feel empathy and compassion across oceans. It’s a fact of life that most charitable giving, like politics, is local. Less than three percent of American private philanthropy goes to international causes or organizations. Americans are very generous, but most of their gifts go to churches, synagogues, hospitals, schools and cultural institutions in our backyards.

    I once sat in on a focus group and heard many participants admit they would be more likely to give to an international organization like Survivor Corps if they also knew we were helping survivors here at home, such as veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. And we are. The United States is a very war-affected nation. We must have strategies to reach out and connect conflict survivors to offer support and promote successful community reintegration after war and violence.

  10. Question: What’s your step-by-step recommendation for someone who wants to “change the world” like you have?

    Answer: Look at your own life circumstances and take the Survivor Pledge: 1) I will not be a victim. 2) I will rise above. 3) I will give back. 4) I will change the world.

    As His Holiness the Dalai Lama once told me, “We have to remove the landmines from our own hearts first, before we can fully demine the world and bring peace.” So take a peak within, then gain some perspective to rise above self-centeredness and reach out to others in need. It can be scary at first because it requires us to get out of our comfort zones and cross boundaries and barriers to meet people who seem different, marginalized, threatening at first.

    The question becomes not whether to be a global citizen—we all are—but how best to become an active one. And it gets personal, because you have to get to know yourself and ask: Who am I? What do I care about? What am I good at? How can I help appropriately? And then align these things in our lives, our work, our giving patterns. Give locally; act globally. Or give globally; act locally. Do it your way by mixing it up, have fun as you learn your unique value-add place in the world. Turns out that giving is simply good for you. Like exercise, it boosts your serotonin levels.

  11. Question: What exactly happens when you win a Nobel Prize?

    Answer: It was certainly exciting to be in Oslo in December 1997, joining with leaders of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. A few weeks earlier, we had gathered together in DC to hear the news and jump for joy. The ceremonies are exquisite, replete with great musical performances and speeches and an audience with the Norwegian Royal Family. All heady stuff, and great fun.

    But, as we raised our champagne glasses, I worried that this public attention would move on from landmines, even as our work had only just begun. Tens of millions of mines still had to be destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of mine victims and their families desperately need our help. 1997 was a big year for our survivor movement. We worked closely with Diana, Princess of Wales. We launched innovative survivor networks worldwide. We helped draft and negotiate the historic 1997 Mine Ban Treaty—the first arms control treaty with specific obligations to help the victims of a weapon recover and reintegrate.

    Ten years later, we reunited in Oslo, Norway, to celebrate our progress. Today, casualty rates are down from 26,000 victims per year to south of 8,000 (still too many, but progress nonetheless). Tens of millions of mine have been destroyed and demined. Survivor Rights are starting to be recognized worldwide. Still more to be done, but a great survivor success story, worthy of the Nobel Prize of Peace. We are both proud and humbled to share this honor.

If you'd like to read more about people doing good, please check out Good.alltop.com.

April 17, 2008

The Impact of Social Media on Sales, Support, Marketing, and Branding

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Over at the Sun Microsystems small and medium business site, I published an interview with Josh Bernoff about his new book (co-authored with Charlene Li) called Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. In this interview he discusses the impact of social media on sales, support, marketing, and branding. He and Charlene are big wheels at Forrester, so this is recommended reading people in any kind of web marketing role. Click here to read the interview to learn about topics such as why the CEO of a publicly-traded company probably can’t write an interesting blog.

June 28, 2007

Ten Questions with Scott Berkun, Author of "The Myths of Innovation"

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Scott Berkun worked on the Internet explorer team at Microsoft from 1994-1999. He is the author of a recently released book called The Myths of Innovation. He also wrote the 2005 bestseller, The Art of Project Management. He teaches a graduate course in creative thinking at the University of Washington, runs the sacred places architecture tour at NYC’s GEL conference, and writes about innovation, design and management.

In his most recent book he explores (or, more accurately, “explodes”) the romantic notions of how innovation occurs. Join me in this Q and A session as he explains the real world of innovation.

  1. Question: How long does it take in the real world—as opposed to the world of retroactive journalism—for an “epiphany” to occur?

    Answer: An epiphany is the tip of the creative iceberg, and all epiphanies are grounded in work. If you take any magic moment of discovery from history and wander backwards in time you’ll find dozens of smaller observations, inquiries, mistakes, and comedies that occured to make the epiphany possible. All the great inventors knew this—and typically they downplayed the magic moments. But we all love exciting stories—Newton getting hit by an apple or people with chocolate and peanut butter colliding in hallways—are just more fun to think about. A movie called “watch Einstein stare at his chalkboard for 90 minutes” wouldn’t go over well with most people.

  2. Question: Is progress towards innovation made in a straight line? For example, transistor to chip to personal computer to web to MySpace.

    Answer: Most people want history to explain how we got here, not to teach them how to change the future. To serve that end, popular histories are told in heroic, logical narratives: they made a transistor, which led to the chip, which create the possibility for the PC, and on it goes forever. But of course if you asked William Shockey (transistor) or Steve Wozniak (PC) how obvious their ideas and successes were, you’ll hear very different stories about chaos, uncertainty and feeling the odds were against them.

    If we believe things are uncertain for innovators in the present, we have to remember things were just as uncertain for people in the past. That’s a big goal of the book: to use amazing tales of innovation history as tools for those trying to do it now.

  3. Question: Are innovators born or made?

    Answer: Both. Take Mozart. Yes, he had an amazing capacity for musical composition, but he also was born in a country at the center of the music world, had a father who was a music teacher, and was forced to practice for hours every day before he started the equivalent of kindergarten. I researched the history of many geniuses and creators and always find a wide range of factors, some under their control and some not, that made their achievements possible.

  4. Question: What the toughest challenge that an innovator faces?

    Answer: It’s different for every innovator, but the one that crushes many is how bored the rest of the world was by their ideas. Finding support, whether emotional, financial, or intellectual, for a big new idea is very hard and depends on skills that have nothing to do with intellectual prowess or creative ability. That’s a killer for many would-be geniuses: they have to spend way more time persuading and convincing others as they do inventing, and they don’t have the skills or emotional endurance for it.

  5. Question: Where do inventors and innovators get their ideas?

    Answer: I teach a creative thinking course at the University of Washington, and the foundation is that ideas are combinations of other ideas. People who earn the label “creative” are really just people who come up with more combinations of ideas, find interesting ones faster, and are willing to try them out. The problem is most schools and organizations train us out of the habits.

  6. Question: Why do innovators face such rejection and negativity?

    Answer: It’s human nature—we protect ourselves from change. We like to think we’re progressive, but every wave of innovation has been much slower than we’re told. The telegraph, the telephone, the PC, and the internet all took decades to develop from ideas into things ordinary people used. As a species we’re threatened by change and it takes a long time to convince people to change their behavior, or part with their money.

  7. Question: How do you know if you have a seemingly stupid idea according to the “experts” that will succeed or a stupid idea that is truly stupid?

    Answer: Don’t shoot me, but the answer is we can’t know. Not for certain. That’s where all the fun and misery comes in. Many stupid ideas have been successful and many great ideas have died on the vine and that’s because success hinges on factors outside of our control.

    The best bet is to be an experimenter, a tinkerer—to learn to try out ideas cheaply and quickly and to get out there with people instead of fantasizing in ivory towers. Experience with real people trumps expert analysis much of the time. Innovation is a practice—a set of habits—and it involves making lots of mistakes and being willing to learn from them.

  8. Question: If you were a venture capitalist, what would your investment thesis be?

    Answer: Two parts: neither is original, but they borne out by history. One is portfolio. Invest knowing most ventures, even good ones, fail, and distribute risk on some spectrum (e.g. 1/3 very high risk, 1/3 high risk, 1/3 moderate risk). Sometimes seemingly small, low risk/reward innovations have big impacts and it’s a mistake to only make big bets.

    The other idea is people: I’d invest in people more than ideas or business plans—though those are important of course. A great entrepreneur who won’t give up and will keep growing and learning is gold. It’s a tiny percentage of entrepreneurs who have any real success the first few times out—3M, Ford, Flickr were all second or third efforts. I’d also give millions of dollars to authors of recent books on innovation with the word Myth in the title. The future is really in their hands.

  9. Question: What are the primary determinants of the speed of adoption of innovation?

    Answer: The classic research on the topic is Diffusion of Innovation by Rogers, which defines factors that hold up well today. The surprise to us is that they’re all sociological: based on people’s perception of value and their fear of risks—which often has little to do with our view of how amazing a particular technology is. Smarter innovators know this and pay attention from day one to who they are designing for and how to design the website or product in a way that supports their feelings and beliefs.

  10. Question: What’s more important: problem definition or problem solving?

    Answer: Problem definition is definitely under-rated, but they’re both important. New ideas often come from asking new questions and being a creative question asker. We fixate on solutions and popular literature focuses on creative people as being solvers, but often the creativity is in reformulating a problem so that it’s easier to solve. Einstein and Edison were notorious problem definers: they defined the problem differently than everyone else and that’s what led to their success.

  11. Question: Why don’t the best ideas win?

    Answer: One reason is because the best idea doesn’t exist. Depending on your point of view, there’s a different best idea or best choice for a particular problem. I’m certain that they guys who made telegraphs didn’t think the telephone was all that good an idea, but it ended their livelihood. So many stories of progress gone wrong are about arrogance of perception: what one person thinks is the right path—often the path most profitable to them— isn’t what another, more influential group of people thought.

  12. Question: Is innovation more likely to come from young people or old people? Or is age simply not a factor?

    Answer: Innovation is difficult, risky work, and the older you are, the greater the odds you’ll realize this is the case. That explanation works best. Beethoven didn’t write his nineth symphony until late in his life, so we know many creatives stay creative no matter how old they are. But their willingness to endure all the stresses and challenges of bringing an idea to the world diminishes. They understand the costs better from the life experience. The young don’t know what their is to fear, have stronger urges to prove themselves, and have fewer commitments—for example, children and mortgages. These factors that make it easier to try crazy things.

May 18, 2007

The Nine Biggest Myths of the Workplace by Penelope Trunk

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I liked Penelope Trunk's interview so much that I asked her for more material. Here's her list of the nine biggest workplace myths:

  1. You’ll be happier if you have a job you like.

    The correlation between your happiness and your job is overrated. The most important factors, by far, are your optimism levels and your personal relationships. If you are a pessimist, a great job can’t overcome that. (Think of the jerks at the top.) And if you have great friends and family, you can probably be happy even if you hate your job (imagine a garbage collector who’s in love).

  2. Job-hopping will hurt you.

    Job hopping is one of the best ways to maintain passion and personal growth in your careers. And here’s some good news for hoppers: Most people will have eight jobs between the time they are eighteen and thirty. This means most young workers are job hopping. So hiring managers have no choice but to hire job hoppers. Ride this wave and try a lot of jobs out yourself.

  3. The glass ceiling still exists.

    The glass ceiling is over, not because people crashed through, but because people are not looking up. Life above the glass ceiling is 100-hour weeks, working for someone else, and no time for friends and family. And it’s not only women who are saying no to the ladder up: Men are as well. People want to customize success for themselves, not climb someone else rungs. So if no one is climbing to the top, the glass ceiling isn’t keeping anyone down.

  4. Office politics is about backstabbing.

    The people who are most effective at office politics are people who are genuinely nice. Office politics is about helping people to get what they want. This means you have to take the time to figure out what someone cares about, and then think about how you can help him or her to get it. You need to always have your ears open for when you can help. If you do this, you don’t have to strong arm people or manipulate them. Your authentic caring will inspire people to help you when you need it.

  5. Do good work, and you’ll do fine.

    For one thing, no one knows what the heck you’re doing in your cube if you’re not telling them. So when you do good work, let people know. It is not crazy to toot your own horn--it’s crazy to think someone will do it for you. Also, if you do good work but you’re a jerk, people will judge your work to be sub par. So you could say that good work really only matters if your co-workers enjoy hearing about it from you.

  6. You need a good resume.

    Only ten percent of jobs come from sending a blind resume. Most people get jobs by leveraging their network. Once you have a connection, the person looks at your resume to make sure there are no red flags. So you need a competent resume and an excellent network. This means you should stop stressing about which verb to use on the second line of your third job. Go talk to someone instead.

  7. People with good networks are good at networking.

    Just be nice, take genuine interest in the people you meet, and keep in touch with people you like. This will create a group of people who are invested in helping you because they know you and appreciate you. Use LinkedIn to leverage those peoples’ networks, and you just got yourself a very strong network by simply hanging out with the people you like.

  8. Work hard and good things will come.

    Everyone can put in a seventy-hour week. It doesn’t mean you’re doing good work. So here’s an idea: Make sure you’re not the hardest worker. Take a long lunch. Get all your work done early. Grand thinking requires space, flexibility and time. So let people see you staring at the wall. They’ll know you’re a person with big ideas and taking time to think makes you more valuable.

  9. Create the shiny brand of you!

    There is no magic formula to having a great career except to be you. Really you. Know who you are and have the humility to understand that self-knowledge is a never-ending journey. Figure out how to do what you love, and you’ll be great at it. Offer your true, good-natured self to other people and you’ll have a great network. Those who stand out as leaders have a notable authenticity that enables them to make genuinely meaningful connections with a wide range of people. Authenticity is a tool for changing the world by doing good.

May 15, 2007

Ten Questions With Penelope Trunk: Career Guidance for This Century

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Penelope Trunk is the author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success. She is a career columnist at the Boston Globe and Yahoo Finance. Her syndicated column has run in more than 200 publications. Earlier, she was a software executive, and then she founded two companies. She has been through an IPO, an acquisition and a bankruptcy. Before that she played professional beach volleyball.

My two favorite answers in this interview are #7 and #10. If I had a nickel for every time I had to answer questions regarding getting an MBA and a first job out of college, I would own my own ice rink by now.

  1. Question: How much money does it take to be happy?

    Answer: It takes about $40,000. It does not matter how many kids you have or what city you live in—that’s splitting hairs because peoples’ happiness levels are largely based on their level of optimism and the quality of their relationships. So as long as you have enough money for food and shelter, your optimism level kicks in to dictate how happy you are.

  2. Question: Is it more important to be competent or likable?

    Answer: People would actually rather work with someone who is incompetent and likeable than competent and unlikable. Most people nod in agreement when they read this. It’s the unlikable people who form arguments in their head.

    But there’s more. At work, if you are unlikable, people start thinking you are less competent. So stop thinking you can skate by on your genius IQ because you can’t. You need emotional intelligence as well. This situation is so pronounced that there are special-education classrooms rife with kids who could read when they were three. Social skills matter as much as intelligence when it comes to long-term success, even for the geniuses.

  3. Question: Should I sue a boss who is sexually harassing me?

    Answer: In most cases, you will destroy your career if you report sexual harassment. So unless you are in physical danger, you should not report harassment. The laws governing sexual harassment don’t protect women who report. The law protects companies from being sued by the women who report. Human resource professionals are trained to protect the company, not the woman who reports.

    When you report harassment it is usually the case that you lose your job through retaliation. Retaliation is illegal but nearly impossible to prove in court. And, even if you could prove it in court, you would go through emotional hell, with no salary, and high-profile drama that makes you unable to get another job. All this for a settlement that will almost certainly not enable you to retire.

    This is simply how the legal system works. I am not saying this is okay. But I’m saying that if you care about your career, you’ll do everything possible to not report. Most women are not in the position to sacrifice their career—and their earning power—in the name of trying to bring down one harasser. The legal system needs to step in and take care of this.

  4. Question: When should I ask for a promotion?

    Answer: Maybe never. The average salary increase is four percent. Is that going to change your life in any meaningful way? On top of that, someone is promoting you up their ladder, but their ladder is not necessarily your best path. So stay focused on where you want to go instead of the paths other people have created for you.

    Getting a promotion is so last century. Instead of letting last century’s carrots dictate your workplace rewards, figure out what will be really meaningful to you: training, mentoring, flex time, whatever it is that means more than four percent more money. These are all things that can really improve your life and your career.

  5. Question: Is being a generalist or a specialist the path to the executive suite?

    Answer: In Hollywood, the best way to get your pick of any role in the industry is to become a specialist—funny guy, tough girl, action hero—get known for being the best at something, and then use that star-power to branch out. The same is true in business.

    Jobs that don’t require a specialty are low level. To move up you need to be great at something, and you have to let people know what you don’t do. No one is great at everything. Even if your goal is not to get to the executive suite, you should specialize. When you want to take five months off to hike in Tibet, if you are easily replaced, you will be. If you have a skill that is hard to duplicate, your job will be there for you when you get back.

  6. Question: What do I do about the gaps in my resume when I traveled or couldn’t find a job?

    Answer: Talk about them well. A gap is really bad if you spent your days on your sofa watching cartoons. But if you watched cartoons to prepare for your next career move into children’s programming, then you sound focused and driven. Same TV, same sofa, two different stories.

    People don’t want to hear your life story. This is good news for people with sofa stints. In almost all cases, you learn something during a gap. Tell a great story about what you’ve learned and where you’re going, and your gap won’t get center stage. Leaving out details is not about lying; it’s about telling good stories.

  7. Question: Will getting an MBA or any other type of advanced degree be a good use of time and money since I can’t find a job?

    Answer: No. If you can’t find a job, then you should invest in something like better grooming, or a better resume, or a coach for poor social skills. These are the things that keep people from getting jobs. Instead of running back to school, figure out why you can’t get a job, because maybe it’s something that a degree can’t overcome.

    Grad school generally makes you less employable, not more employable. For example, people who get a graduate degree in the humanities would have had a better chance of surviving the Titanic than getting a tenured teaching job.

    Unless you are going to a top business school at the beginning of your career, you should not stop working in order to get the degree. Go to night school because you will not make up for the loss of income with the extra credential.

    Law school is one of the only graduate degrees that makes you more employable. Unfortunately it makes you more employable in the profession where people are more unhappy. Law school rewards perfectionism, and perfectionism is a risk factor for depression. Lawyers have little control over their work and hours, because they are at the beck-and-call of their clients, and many are constantly working with clients who have problems lawyers cannot solve. These two traits in a job—lack of control over workload and compromised ability to reach stated goals—are the two biggest causes for burnout in jobs.

    [May I interject here? I went to law school for two weeks and quit when I was young! Guy]

  8. Question: What’s the ideal length of a resume in a world where every resume is electronic and not viewed printed out on paper?

    Answer: A page. Still. Your resume is a marketing document, not a summary of your life, so every line should be about an accomplishment. The more amazing your accomplishments, the fewer you need to list. For example, if you can write “Evangelized Macintosh and made it one of the most beloved brands in the world,” then you don’t need any other sales and marketing bullets on your resume.

    If you have totally lost perspective, and you think you have two page’s worth of incredible and relevant achievements, consider that hiring managers spend ten seconds evaluating a resume, and a scanner looks for ten keywords, which certainly fit on one page.

    So unless you have a great connection with the hiring manager, and you know he’ll look at both pages, don’t bother sending them. And if you do have that great connection then you are probably going to get an interview even if your resume sucks.

  9. Question: How should I prepare for an interview?

    Answer: An interview is a test you can study for. So memorize answers to the fifty most common questions. Most interviewers ask standard variations on standard questions, and there are right answers to these questions.

    Whether you are a stripper or a CIA agent, the answer to the question, “What is your weakness?” is a story about how your weakness interfered at work—in a specific situation—and you overcame it. Most of your other answers should be stories, too. This means you need to make them up before you get to the interview. Stories of your life are memorable. Lists of your life are not. Be memorable if you want to be hired.

    Another way to prepare is to go to the gym right before the interview. It doesn’t matter if you never go to the gym—although you should, because people who workout regularly are more successful in their careers. You should go right before an interview because people judge you first on your appearance, and if do heavy lifting with your back and stomach muscles you will stand up much straighter in the interview. This will make you look more confident, which is half the battle in being judged by appearance.

  10. Question: What’s the right strategy for the search for a first job out of college?

    Answer: Don’t place too much importance on your first job. You’ll have a lot more. Most people have eight jobs before they turn thirty, and that’s fine. It is nearly impossible to know what career will be a good fit for you until you start trying things. So give yourself the latitude to try a lot. And don’t get hung up on a big soul search. To land a great job, you don’t need to know the meaning of life, just the meaning of hard work.

  11. Question: Do only losers live at home after college?

    Answer: On some level it would be insane not to move back home, which is why more than fifty percent of graduating seniors do it. Moving back to your parent’s house is a smart step toward finding a career that’s right for you.

    Entry level jobs typically cannot cover the cost of rent, college loan payments, and insurance premiums—all of which are rising faster than wages. If you don’t have to worry about paying rent, you have more flexibility to wait for the right job and to take a job that feels very right but pays very poorly. The rise of the prestigious but unpaid internship intersects perfectly with trend to move back home.

  12. Question: What should I do if I work for a jerk?

    Answer: Leave. I know there are classic Bob Sutton examples of revered jerks like Steve Jobs, but I wonder about the people who put up with him. Can they not find another visionary to work for who is not such a jerk?

    Staying in a job like this makes you look bad. People wonder why you put up with it. And, frankly, you should too. It’s like being an abused wife. The wife who stays always defends the relationship by how much she gets out of it, but to everyone else it is obvious that she should leave. The problem is a loss of personal perspective.

April 26, 2007

Ten Questions with Dr. Philip Zimbardo

Amazon.com_ The Lucifer Effect_ Understanding How Good People Turn Evil_ Books_ Philip Zimbardo.jpg

Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo has been a Stanford University professor since 1968. Zimbardo’s career is noted for giving psychology away to the public through his popular PBS-TV series, “Discovering Psychology,” along with many text and trade books, among his 300 publications. He was recently president of the American Psychological Association.

Dr. Zimbardo conducted the (in)famous Stanford Prison Experiment in the summer of 1971. He recently published a book called The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil in which he discusses the Stanford Prison Experiment, its relevance to Abu Ghraib, and the “banality of heroism.”

  1. Question: What are the sequence of events of the Stanford Prison Experiment?

    Answer: The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) was my attempt to determine what happens when you put good people in an evil place: Does humanity triumph or do situational forces come to dominate even the best of us? My Stanford Psychology graduate students, Craig Haney and Curt Banks, and I created a realistic simulation of a prison-like environment—a “bad barrel” into which we placed twenty-four highly selected college student volunteers for a two-week experiment.

    On the basis of the assessment from a battery of psychological tests and interviews we had selected them from among seventy-five who had answered the ad we placed in the city newspaper. By a flip of the coin of chance, half were to role-play guards, the rest took on the role of prisoners. Naturally, the prisoners lived there 24/7 while the guards worked 8 hour shifts. Initially nothing happened the first day as these college students from all over the U.S. were awkwardly getting into their roles.

    But on the second morning, the prisoners rebelled; the guard’s crushed the rebellion and then instituted stern measures against these now “dangerous prisoners.” From then on, abuse, aggression, and eventually sadistic pleasure in degrading the prisoners became the daily norm. Within thirty-six hours the first prisoner had an emotional breakdown and had to be released, followed in kind by similar prisoner breakdowns on each of the next four days.

    Good, normal young men had been corrupted by the power of their role and by the institutional support for such a power differential with their humbled prisoners. The Bad Barrel had proven to have a toxic effect on our Good Apples. Our projected two-week long study was terminated prematurely after only six days because it had escalated out of control.

  2. Question: What brought the Stanford Prison Experiment to an end?

    Answer: The guards were beginning to enforce sexually degrading “fun and games” against the prisoners. Obviously, I should have ended the study on my own after witnessing the emotional breakdowns and sexual abuses, but I did not because I had taken on the second role of Prison Superintendent added to that of Principal Investigator, and prison officials are not bothered by such reactions. Fortunately for me someone was bothered, bothered enough to force me to shut down this “little shop of horrors.”

    I had invited a number of “outsider” young faculty and grad students to interview everyone connected with our experiment to give me a fresh perspective on what they discovered. One of them was a recent Stanford PhD who as about to be a new assistant professor at Cal Berkeley named Christina Maslach; I had just begun dating her. She came down to our dungeon on the fifth night of the study, and after observing what had become the “normal” final toilet run of prisoners each night, got really distressed.

    She saw them with bagged heads, ankles in chains, hands on each other’s shoulders moving along the corridor like a zombie parade as guards shouted abuses at them. “It is terrible what YOU are doing to those boys,” she yelled at me, adding something like, “I’m not sure I want to continue a relationship with you if this is what you are really like!” That double slap in the face was the catalyst for my realizing that the study had worked too well, that those powerful situational forces had also corrupted me. After making all the necessary logistical arrangements, I pulled the plug on the Stanford Prison Experiment the next day.

    In The Lucifer Effect, I detail for the first time the full day-by-day and night-by-night chronology of the events that had such a transformative impact on virtually everyone who got immersed in that setting. It is only by seeing the creatively evil ways the guards invented to break the will of the prisoners to resist that one comes to appreciate how a host of situational forces can combine to make good people do bad things.

    I believe that such understanding puts us all in a better position to appreciate what the Lucifer Effect really means. Lucifer, God’s favorite angel, was cast out of heaven into hell for his sin of disobedience against God, and became the Devil, Satan. My book analyzes lesser human transformations of ordinary, good people as they are seduced by a set of situational forces to take the first steps down evil’s slippery slope.

  3. Question: How would you apply what you learned with the Stanford Prison Experiment to what happened at Abu Ghraib?

    Answer: Three decades later, the scenario of the SPE was reenacted with chilling similarity in another prison by other American prison guards. The images flashing across TV screens around the world of the abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. military police men and women were shocking, but not at all surprising to me.

    I had seen their counterpart in my basement prison at Stanford, naked prisoners, bagged heads, sexually humiliated. It was inexcusable behavior, but not inexplicable once I discovered that the beyond the visual parallels were the same set of psychological principles operating in that Bad Barrel of Tier 1A, Abu Ghraib, night shift.

    My sense of the sickening similarities between the mock prison of the SPE and that all too real prison dungeon in the middle of a controversial war was also highlighted in one of the investigations into the causes of this human tragedy.

    The investigation by the former Defense Secretary James Schlessinger and his committee concluded that the “landmark Stanford experiment” should have been a cautionary tale for the military. That report indicts the untenable situation created in that prison dungeon for creating the volatile environment that became a catalyst for abusive behavior. Good Apples turned sour in a few weeks on duty in that Hell hole of a Bad Prison Barrel embedded in the Bad Barrel of War.

  4. Question: Is there a difference between “good commanders” and “good professors” letting something bad happen?

    Answer: The worse abuses in both prisons occurred on the night shift, when there was least surveillance by me, the good professor, and by them, the good commanders. In both cases, guards were allowed to have too much unrestrained power without top-down oversight.

    In Abu Ghraib I believe the top brass intentionally designed that setting to give permission for these lowly Army Reservists, “weekend soldiers” without mission specific training, to “prepare detainees for interrogation,” to “take the gloves off,” to “soften them up” for interrogation.

    Tier 1A was the interrogation, “soft torture” center where 1000 detainees were housed, men and boys whom the commanders believed held the key to the insurgency’s success. But most knew nothing, and those that might have some worthwhile information had only cold, stale information after being confined for months. Pressure from Donald Rumsfeld went down the military chain of command and ended up with military intelligence in charge of Tier 1A soliciting the seven MPs on the night shift to step over the line of protecting their prisoners to breaking them down.

  5. Question: If it’s possible, how would you allocate “blame” to the three factors of disposition, situation, and systemic conditions?

    Answer: The Lucifer Effect makes evident that blame for such abuse should not be limited to the few grunts at the end of the food chain—the so called “rogue soldiers.” If their immoral actions were fueled by the horrible situation they were forced to work in then we must also put in the docket those who helped to create that situation—the Power Boys running that sorry show. It must include “Command Complicity” of the architects of the conditions that led to such abuses—those in the Bush administration, and the Military commanders who should have know what their subordinates were doing for three long months.

    In the book I invite readers to act as jurors judging each of a number of military and civilian personnel for their crimes against humanity in that place. My new web site [www.luciferEffect.com] goes further by providing visitors with a virtual voting booth to judge the guilt or innocence of CIA former head George Tenet, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, VP Dick Cheney, and our Commander in Chief of War, President George W. Bush.

  6. Question: How would you re-engineer the “system” to prevent a reoccurrence?

    Answer: Such abuses do not occur where there is responsible leadership; where commanders and leaders of all institutions make crystal clear that they will not tolerate doing harm; that personal dignity will always be respected; that the rules of engagement will be known by all; that everyone is ultimately personally responsible for their actions; and that any violations of such protocol will be meet with public censure and punishment.

    In addition, it is imperative for all leaders to appreciate the psychological dynamics operating in situations they create, and to have psychologically trained personnel who are charged with making them work positively not destructively.

  7. Question: Are people inherently and consistently good or bad?

    Answer: I begin my book with John Milton’s classic statement about the power of the human mind, that it is its own place, and can “make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” I follow with a psychological celebration of the mind’s infinite capacity to make any of us villains or heroes by enabling us to be caring or indifferent, selfless of selfish, creative or destructive.

    People are not born evil, but rather with survival talents, and remarkable mental templates to be anything imaginable — just as infants readily learn to speak and understand any of a thousand languages in an instant in their development. We get a push from nature in various directions, such as being more inhibited or bold, but who we become is ultimately a complex process of cultural, historical, religious, economic and political experiences in familial and other institutional settings.

    Most of us fail to appreciate the extent to which our behavior is under situational control, because we prefer to believe that is all is internally generated. We wander around cloaked in an illusion of vulnerability, mis-armed with an arrogance of free will and rationality.

    Instead, few of us really know ourselves or most others in our lives. We can hardly have confidence in assertions of what we would do in a new or alien situation because we chose to live in familiar, safe, predictable situations. And we play the same roles over and over in each of our various behavioral settings, as do those we think we know.

    Those roles come with scripted actions and dialogues that soon are familiar to our audiences, since we are rarely taxed to improvise but say the lines as stated. Another illusion we cherish is that the line between good and evil is impermeable, with those bad people on the other evil side and we and our kind and kin are forever located in the realm of goodness.

    A body of psychological science puts a lie to such an illusion by dramatically demonstrating the ease with which ordinary people can be seduced or initiated into the ranks of the other by blind obedience to authority, mindless conformity, diffusing responsibility, dehumanizing, adherence to norms and rigidly playing our assigned roles. That line between good and evil is not an abstraction but “cuts through the center of every human heart,” according to poet and former Stalin era prisoner, Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

  8. Question: What makes people go wrong?

    Answer: There are many reasons why people go wrong; it all depends on the situation – excluding those with mental disorders that can trigger rage and violence. They are hired guns in the mafia or the military or in children’s rebel militias. They mindlessly follow seemingly just ideologies that encourage any means necessary to realize their noble ends. They want to be “team players,” “to get with the program,” “to be in the popular click,” to not be rejected and cast in the out-group.

    They go wrong by doing nothing, by being guilty of the evil of inaction, doing what their mothers urged them—not to get involved, to “mind their own business,” and let bad shit happen by looking the other way and holding their noses. Good people don’t rush in to do evil where angels fear to tread, instead they start by straying only a small way away from their moral center, and each successive step down is hardly different, barely noticeable, until it is too late and their behavior is shocking and may even be awesome of awful.

  9. Question: How does a person resist undesirable influences?

    Answer: Situational forces can make good people do bad things, but that does not translate into either suspending personal accountability or endorsing pessimistic determinism. We are ultimately responsible for the consequences of any of our behavior that is enacted intentionally; however, now we add to the accountability mix those responsible for creating and maintaining evil-generating behaviors.

    I am advocating a revolution in legal theory that expands on the narrow individualistic focus by adding situations and systems to calculations of guilt and sentencing. Further, I advocate replacing the traditional medical model of individual disease and cure, which has spilled over into law, psychiatry, religion and most of our institutions, with a public health model.

    The presence of pathology in a society alerts the search for the “disease vector” which when found enables inoculation against its toxicity and environmental modifications to prevent its spread. Finally, I must add the obvious recognition that people create situations and thus with wisdom and good will can change them to work for us rather than against us.

    The last chapter of Lucifer lays out a basic program of central actions designed to increase our resistance potential. It is expanded in my web site to offer specific strategies and tactics of resistance geared to various types of influence—group conformity pressures, persuasive communications, compliance eliciting by influence professionals, cult recruiting, and more.

  10. Question: Using the same factors that make people do bad things, can you make people do better and better, even heroic, things?

    Answer: My new mission in life, my new calling, emerged as I was writing the final chapter of Lucifer. In rethinking Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil” as a kind of every normal person’s situationally specific but temporary excursion into the realm of evil, I realized is counterpart was missing.

    The “banality of heroism” describes ordinary people who engage in extraordinary deeds of service to humanity—in particular, usually once- in- a lifetime situational setting. Like those doing monstrous deeds that look “terrifying normal,” these ordinary heroes look “delightfully normal.”

    So I argue that the very same situation that can inflame the “hostile imagination” in those who become perpetrators of evil can inspire the “heroic imagination” for the first time in any of us. To become a hero involves only two steps on humanity’s path:

    • One must act; moving away from the passivity of the mass of silent observers of evil or threats to life by somehow being catalyzed into action in that setting.

    • That action is taken on behalf of others; it is a socio-centric act against the evolutionary imperative of being ego-centric, of not taking risks or putting those precious genes in harm’s way.

    My concern is how to promote in our children this heroic imagination, to make them accept the mantle of being a hero-in-waiting for a situation that will come along sometime in their lives when others are following the paths toward evil or toward indifference, and instead, they elect to act on behalf of another person or group or ideal without thought of personal gain or even recognition.

    I have to believe that by creating a generation of such ordinary heroes is our best defense against evil, whether on the battlefield, in prisons, or corporate headquarters.


April 22, 2007

The Big Dip: Ten Questions with Seth Godin

Barnes & Noble.com - Books_ The Dip, by Seth Godin, Hardcover.jpg

Seth Godin provided me with a copy of his new book, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick), and I think it will definitely get people to think about life. To give you a taste of what’s in the book, here’s an interview with Seth about the topics of perseverance and quitting.

  1. Question: Other than hindsight, how does someone know when it’s time to quit?

    Answer: It’s time to quit when you secretly realize you’ve been settling for mediocrity all along. It’s time to quit when the things you’re measuring aren’t improving, and you can’t find anything better to measure.

    Smart quitters understand the idea of opportunity cost. The work you’re doing on project X right now is keeping you from pushing through the Dip on project Y. If you fire your worst clients, if you quit your deadest tactics, if you stop working with the people who return the least, then you free up an astounding number of resources. Direct those resources at a Dip worth conquering and your odds of success go way up.

    What’s the worst time to quit? When the pain is the greatest. Decisions made during great pain are rarely good decisions.

  2. Question: If I’m in the middle of a dip, how do I know if it’s worth gutting it out toget to the other side?

    Answer: The best time to ask this question is before you hit the Dip. Smart people can see Dips in advance and plan for them. If you want to be a doctor, the time to decide is before you get to the organic chemistry midterm, not while you’re taking it.

    In picking a Dip, you need to think about two things: First, do you have the resources to get through it; second, is it worth what it will take? If your goal is to build a top 50 blog, you need to consider what that will take in terms of time and effort and money and what you’ll get if you succeed. If your goal is to displace Microsoft Word as the industry-standard word processor, the Dip is a whole lot bigger. The reward might be too, but you need to figure it out before you invest.

  3. Question: Is there a place for the intrinsic value of learning a skill—for example, playing hockey or the violin—even though you know you won’t be the best in the world?

    Answer: Mastery is an addiction. Most people never master anything and never experience the thrill of being on the other side of the Dip. As a result, they don’t seek out new opportunities for mastery. I hope that as parents, we can do a better job of teaching kids this habit.

    As for being “best in the world,” it doesn’t have to mean you play like Joshua Bell. The world can be whatever world your market chooses from. The best acupuncturist in town or the best $45 shoes ever made.

    Of course there’s room for passion—for doing stuff because you love it. I hope that my book doesn’t dissuade a single person from playing the violin for love. But my book is about investment and effort, in doing things not just for the pleasure of doing them but because you expect something in return.

  4. Question: What if the market is not established so there’s no way to know if it even exists and if it’s worth dedicating/rededicating to?

    Answer: Here’s the art of being an entrepreneur. There are almost no established Dips that are available to a big-time visionary entrepreneur. Instead, this kind of entrepreneur creates a new one—a new market, a new challenge, a new mastery. Part of the work of the successful venture capitalist is to imagine life after the Dip. For example, to fund Google because inventing a search site that dominates the market creates a new Dip, not because Yahoo can be replaced.

  5. Question: How can a company quit a product and not give the incorrect signal that it’s quitting the market?

    Answer: Tactics change all the time. Losing organizations embrace tactics because they’re not flexible or brave enough to embrace strategy. Smart organizations are clear and loud and vivid about their strategies and the market forgives them—endorses them too—when they change their tactics on the path of getting there. Nokia stops making various phone models every year, but this didn’t change its strategy. In fact, when Nokia stopped getting aggressive about making the best phones in the world, we lost interest.

  6. Question: What’s more powerful: a short-term pain or long-term gain?

    Answer: The power of quitting is that it empowers you. Just like the Toyota assembly line that stops when a worker sees an inferior part, the willingness to quit when you get off track pushes you on the path to mastery. An organization that refuses to settle for average stuff is far more likely to make remarkable stuff. Stuff that powers through the Dip.

    Too many organizations are willing to make a half-assed effort to try a new tactic, but require a writ from the Pope to quit a tactic. This not only dilutes their ability to execute—witness a9.com—but it also leads to an impotent organization that rarely breaks through, even when they’re on to something.

    This means that the Dip isn’t pain; nor is it something to be avoided. The Dip is actually an ally. Because when the Dip shows up, you’re know you’re close to a breakthrough, to getting to the other side, to mastery, and to being the best in the world.

  7. Question: Do most companies quit too early or try too long?

    Answer: Lucky for us, it’s both. They quit when they should be sticking: when they hit the Dip. And they stick when they should be quitting: when they’re on a dead end, when they’re stuck, and when it feels safe. I say lucky for us because this behavior makes it easier for those of us who can see a better way.

  8. Question: Should Microsoft quit the MP3 player market?

    Answer: I thought they already did. They’re spending a lot of money, but they’re on a dead end. They always were. They saw the Dip, but instead of embracing it by completely reinventing what it meant to be an MP3 player, they just played it safe and made a piece of me-too.

    When you copy something that’s already on the other side of the Dip, you’ve already lost. Microsoft “quit” the MP3 player market when they identified the wrong Dip. They picked the obvious, “safe” one—the one committees of people could live with, but one that is so big and so steep that even Microsoft doesn’t have the money to get through it.

    Microsoft has a long history of sticking through Dips, and a long history of quitting dead ends. I have no idea what they’re thinking when it comes to the Zune, but it’s a dead end, through and through.

  9. Question: Should Apple quit the personal computer market?

    Answer: Apple has already crossed that Dip, big time. Not the “personal computer Dip” but the Dip of “style-conscious, designer’s, multimedia, student, family computer.” They’re the best in the world at that. They own it. They profit from it. Sure, if Steve hadn’t been arrogant, they could have been best in the world at a much bigger, much juicier market. But they’re not. Once they deal with that—and I think they mostly have—then they can erect a wall behind them, a bigger dip, one that prevents others from following. Over time, personal computers become a profitless commodity while Apple’s market just gets sexier, more fun, and more profitable.

  10. Question: Should America quit the Iraq War?

    Answer: My opinion doesn’t matter. But I hope my method matters a lot.

    Here’s what we know: it’s easy to record and print a CD and hard to make a hit. Easy to write a book and hard to make it a bestseller. Easy to build a website and hard to create a viral success. We also know, and I hope Dick Cheney now knows, that it’s easy to invade a country and hard to be a successful invader and to dominate and change a culture.

    So, the questions are simple: Are we in a Dip in Iraq? Everyone knows we’re in pain, but is it the pain that comes from being in a dead end—a cul-de-sac—situation that might very well get worse but probably won’t get better? Or is it a Dip, where sufficient effort can push us through and get us out the other side…we better know the answer.

    The giant mistakes were made early. Cheney didn’t tell us what the Dip would look like, nor did he outline what we would do when we hit it. That’s a big difference between the current team and Churchill or Roosevelt. If you’re not ready for the Dip, it’s a lot harder to stick through it.


Addendum: Seth is going to make an appearance in Silicon Valley. Hope those of you in the area can make it.


April 18, 2007

The Essence of Duct Tape Marketing

Duct Tape Marketing_ The World_s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide_ John Jantsch.jpg

Duct tape (the tape) is simple, effective, and affordable—it’s not always the prettiest solution, but it does always work. The central theme of Duct Tape Marketing: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide by John Jantsch is that effective small business marketing is a system—not an event—composed of simple, effective, and affordable techniques.

When you combine that with the cult-like obsession many people have for all things duct tape you also get a pretty good example of how something simple like the right name can do a great deal for a company, product, service, or book. I asked John to distill his marketing ideas to a top-ten list, and here is what he provided:

  1. Narrow the market focus. Create a picture of the ideal client: what they look like, how they think, what they value, and where you can find them. Start saying no to non-ideal clients.

  2. Differentiate. Strip everything you know about your product or service down to the simplest core idea. Make sure that the core idea allows you stand out.

  3. Think about strategy first. Take everything you’ve done in steps one and two and create a strategy to own a word or two in the mind of your ideal client and prospect.

  4. Create information that educates. You are in the information business, so think of your marketing materials, web sites, white papers, marketing kits as information products, not "sales" propoganda.

  5. Package the experience. Put visual elements around every aspect of the marketing strategy that you adopt. Use design to evoke the appropriate emotional response from your ideal prospect.

  6. Generate leads from many points. People learn in different ways. Your lead generation efforts must allow your prospects to experience your firm from many different angles and views.

  7. Nurture leads along the logical buying path. There’s a natural way for your prospects to come to the conclusion that you have what they need. Build the lead conversion system for before, during, and after the sale.

  8. Measure everything that matters. Certain things always matter. The secret sauce is in finding and measuring the intangibles – those things down on the shop floor that eventually add up to profit.

  9. Automate for leverage. Embrace the Internet or else. Create access, stimulate community, capture innovation, and build knowledge to automate the basic delivery elements of your information business.

  10. Commit. Resist the temptation of the marketing idea of the week. Create daily, weekly, monthly, and annual marketing calendars, make marketing your new habit, and find the money to stick with the plan.


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