The Anti-Establishment Innovator: March 2012

Friday, March 30, 2012

Jim Rohn - The Day That Turns Your Life (and business) Around

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Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A global management consulting firms specialized solely in helping organizations of all sizes in all industries catalyzing top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. He is a former U.S. Navy Seabee and grandfather of five. To arrange for Jim to speak at your next event or devise an effective hypercompetition strategy email or call us at 719-649-4118 for availability. Subscribe to our free innovation and competitive advantage newsletter. Don't miss a single new business idea!

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Thursday, March 29, 2012

It Could Happen Anywhere: Best Buy's Amazonian Nightmare

Where did you buy that snazzy Zenith 19″ or VCR however many years ago? Circuit City? Crazy Eddie? Nobody Beats the Whiz? Service Merchandise? Incredible Universe? The list of departed—dearly or otherwise—big boxes that once dominated the consumer electronics landscape is endless. (Not to mention the mass extinction of regional players such as Lechmere, Tweeter, Sound Advice, and Kaufman & Roberts.) So you’d think the last man standing in the field, Best Buy, the world’s top electronics retailer, would be living large right about now. Instead, with its stock at a multiyear low, the Richfield (Minn.) retailer today announced it will be shutting 50 of its 1,100 stores amid a revenue shortfall. Management promised to scale back on discounts, effectively ceding low-margin sales to rivals. Best Buy also says it plans to slash $800 million in costs over the next three years.
Best Buy’s moves show how even those traditional merchants that have managed to trump their brick-and-mortar rivals can’t automatically count on picking up their former customers. Channeling Johnny Cochran, Gimme Credit analyst Carol Levenson explains: “If you don’t perform, you must transform. … No amount of adjustments or restatements can obscure the fact that the company returned to negative comparable-store sales in the fourth quarter … and posted a second straight year of comparable-store sales declines.” All this, she says, despite the fact that ”Best Buy was handed a gift when Circuit City left the building.”
One retailing shift that’s likely at work here is a phenomenon known as “showrooming,” in which window shoppers go to one of Best Buy’s well-appointed stores to avail themselves of quality face time with gadgets and salespeople (think inventory and salary costs) before consummating the transaction elsewhere—online. Most often, they do that through Amazon.com, where shipping is frequently free and, depending on your state, sales tax does not apply. Fueling that growing practice are price-comparison apps such as Amazon’s Price Check, which lets those obnoxiously savvy smartphone users scan a particular item’s barcode at a store and immediately know who has the best deal on the Web. Consumers can then just buy it right on their phone. It’s like a scene from the vintage cartoon comedy The Jetsons, but traditional retailers with hundreds of costly stores, such as Best Buy, Sears Holdings, and even Wal-Mart, aren’t laughing.

Data: Compiled by Bloomberg

via businessweek.com

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

In Japan, emergency provisions delivered by subscription twice a year

Last month Yamory launched a subscription service for regular delivery of prepackaged emergency provisions in Japan.

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It’s no real surprise to see emergency-oriented innovations coming out of Japan following the 2011 disaster there, and recently we came across yet another example. Ripe for pairing with Cosmo Power’s escape pods in fact, Yamory just last month launched a subscription service for regular delivery of prepackaged emergency provisions.

It’s not uncommon for consumers to buy a store of provisions in anticipation of the next emergency of course, but limited shelf lives mean that goods may be expired by the time the need arises. That’s where Yamory’s concept kicks in, with a plan that ensures nothing is ever more than six months old. Each package contains three days’ worth of supplies for one person, including items such as water, vitamins and toothpaste. Pricing ranges from JPY 5,000 for a half-year plan to JPY 26,000 for three years. The video below (in Japanese) outlines the concept in more detail:

<p>非常食定期宅配サービス yamory from Yuki Furukawa on Vimeo.</p>

The subscription model has already been applied to countless other product categories, but expiration-prone emergency provisions seem to be a natural fit. An idea to bring to consumers in your part of the world? via springwise.com

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Finding Our Authentic Self and Our Way to Meaning

Before the moment of birth, and before our Ambition phase kicks in, each of us is completely aligned with God or the Tao, or whatever name we choose to call the Source of our being. In that pre-form stage of "Fromness," Ambition isn't something we entertain--we have no goals, no aspirations. There's nothing we have to do or take care of, no one to impress or defeat, all we need to do is just be.

Our existence in the experience of "From" is precisely what our Source of being intended: free of interference. We are our authentic self. At that stage, we are as much like God as most of us have ever been since.

We come in to this world a perfect creation, but for many reasons, we're encouraged to leave this authentic self behind and to take on a false one. We, and those responsible for our parenting, often disregard that our destiny and all we need to fulfill our dharma is built in to us. With good intentions, we're seduced into becoming a self that is diametrically opposed to who we are authentically.

Imagine a creature proceeding through its developmental journey in form here on Earth, learning and believing that it is something other than what it came here to be. Take, for example, a baby hyena who's told by parental figures that he really isn't a hyena. This baby hyena is forbidden to follow his natural inclinations to frolic, sharpen his teeth, stalk prey, run with the pack, hunt in a group, make noise, or chew the carcasses of animals he's killed. Instead, the young hyena's parents have told him to stop all of the weird behavior like laughing and howling and to sit still while the other hyenas hunt--in other words, to believe that he's something he's not.

The point is that everything that's part of creation has a dharma. No animal, bird, insect, fish, or plant can cultivate a false self or believe that it's something other than what the creative Source intended. There's still no evidence to doubt what Emerson once noted in his journal: "All the thoughts of a turtle are turtle." Emerson was making the same point that I am here: that all of God's creatures are authentic and can only be what their dharma intended them to be. Are human beings an exception to God's intention? Some aspects of our development pose that question.

We didn't continue to unfold as creation determined, in the same way we did in those first nine months inside our mother's womb. Following that developmental time, we were greeted by parents, a culture, and a host of well-meaning folks representing religious, educational, and commercial interests. They held us, admired the miracle of creation, and looked heavenward, saying, Great work, God! But now we'll take over from here. Thus began our shift to the bizarre twisted world of Ambition.

We received metaphorical training wheels and became trainees in the vigorous effort to convince ourselves that we're not a part of Divine consciousness. In the shift to become part of the world of Ambition, we learned to aspire to something totally alien to our "Fromness." This path required us to reidentify ourselves in ways that no hyena or turtle would ever imagine doing!

The shift to Ambition requires humans to cultivate an ego, to edge God out. We're trained to believe that who we truly are is whatever our ego convinces us is our true self.
We spend more than half of our life, on average, believing in and relying on the training we underwent concerning the importance of having Ambition. The next big shift is when we realize that a false self only offers empty promises and a guarantee of self-recrimination and futility.

As we emerge from the world of Spirit at the moment of birth, we begin the perilous journey of acquiring an identity that's virtually the opposite of our true self. I call this development of the ego or the false self the "Ambition period." It's a sharp contrast to our "Fromness," where Ambition was unknown.

Thus begins the journey from being nobody--and feeling content with our nobody status--to being immersed in a curriculum that Ram Dass calls "somebody training." Ego insists that we traverse from nothing to something, from being no one to being someone, from oneness to twoness, from unity to separation. It is this journey that requires us to edge God out and learn to believe in a false self. Ego's number one job at this stage is eliminating our nobody status by encouraging Ambition and creating a new (albeit false) identity.

If we want to know pure happiness and live a blissful life, we need to do as Sri Ramana Maharshi says and learn to scorch ego by ignoring it. But ego is adept at resisting our efforts to ignore it, and it will do everything it can to prevent us from sacrificing our somebody status. Ego wants us to be a somebody who is more important than the other somebodies!

I've isolated six components of the ego, the false self. They're what our ego tells us to convince us that we're something other than the nobody we might have remained. Beginning with infancy and throughout our somebody training, we learn to believe in them.

1. "Who I Am Is What I Have"
Early on, we learn that the more stuff we accumulate, the more important we are. Our self-concept shifts from feeling that we're valuable because we exist as a piece of God to assessing our worthiness on the basis of how many toys we own, their monetary worth, and how prestigious they're assumed to be by other somebodies in our culture.

2. "Who I Am Is What I Do"
We learn that doing things--especially if we do them earlier and better than others--is rewarding. We learn to be more of a human doing than a human being. A human doing is evaluated on the basis of what he or she does and how it stacks up with all of the other doers. None of this reinforcement for performing is bad; it simply teaches the aspiring human to believe the ego's personalized message of "You are what you do," which is blatantly false. You are not what you do. If you never did a thing in your entire life, you'd still be a spiritual being having a human experience rather than the other way around. Ego craves confirmation of our value through indicators; Spirit operates on a totally different basis.

3. "Who I Am Is What Others Think of Me"
Throughout life, we're bombarded by ego messages attempting to convince us that our worth comes from the observations and opinions of others. It's necessary to remind ourselves who we truly are. We're Divine pieces of the whole, individualized expressions of God created out of the great void. Our authentic self is the same as that which it came from. Our connection to our Divine self remains healthy and strong as long as we recognize and repudiate the false idea that validation of our self-esteem is external to our being. Self-esteem stems from internally held positive beliefs about ourselves, not from the approval of others. Ego's worldly survival guide dictates that we're physical beings without a core spirituality. It pursues the false idea that our value is determined by what others choose to think about us. If we truly know who we are, we can ignore those ego messages. Believing that who we are is defined by what other people think of us cripples the joyful spontaneity of our authentic selves.

4. "I Am Separate from Everyone Else"
In the ego sense, Ambition wants us to believe that we're the only one who matters. If we're well indoctrinated in this ego belief, it's very difficult to consider the idea of Earth existing without us, or of Earth having a reason to be here in the first place! The key word in these final three components of ego's inventory is separation. If we believe that we're separate and distinct from everyone else, we fulfill the false self's program. But recall that we emerged from nonbeing, characterized by oneness. Ego insists on separation because that's how it undermines allegiance to the authentic self. When we recognize and respect our connectedness to each other; the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the sun we rely on; and, most significantly, the invisible Source we're animated by, the ego can return to its rightful space.

5. "I Am Separate from What's Missing in My Life"
Ego has a vested interest in our believing that there are things missing in our life. It insists that we're not connected to an invisible creative Source because it gets its identity by edging God out. If we start believing that we're permanently attached to God, ego's reason for existence disappears. If there's no place that God is not, then God is in each of us, as well as in everything that our senses interpret as missing from our life. This means that in some invisible manner, we're connected to everything we perceive to be missing. The question might then be, how do we manifest the things we desire that appear to be unavailable? The answer is to realign ourselves in a way that allows what we seek to spiritually harmonize with us.

6. "I Am Separate from God"
In this sixth component, the ego acronym continues to effectively describe our actions of edging God out by believing that we're not the same as what we come from. The God essence and our worldly self remain ensconced in distinct and separate compartments. Ego is terrified that we'll believe we're a piece of God. Its leadership position is doomed if we truly realize our Godness. Naturally, one of ego's primary functions is to keep us believing that we're two very distinct and separate entities.

What does it take to shift out of this detrimental belief system? I suggest we think of our relationship to God or the great Tao by imagining the ocean as symbolic of God, and ourselves symbolized by a small glass of water from the ocean. If asked what's in the glass, we'd say, "A glass of God." If we empty the glass of water on the sidewalk, we'd see it disappear as it vaporized. Ultimately, it would return to its source. While the ocean water is in the glass, separate from its source, it lacks the power of the ocean. But when it rejoins its source, it is once again part of the powerful ocean. That water on the sidewalk having lost its connection to its source is a symbol of ego. via shareguide.com  Excerpted and adapted with permission from The Shift: Taking Your Life from Ambition to Meaning, ©2010 by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, published by Hay House in Carlsbad, CA. Available at your local bookstore or online at www.hayhouse.com.

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Doubling Down on Your Business Plan To Thrive

Economists say the Great Recession--the longest and deepest since World War II--ended 18 months ago and that the U.S. economy is, in fact, growing again. But growth is relative. Even the rosiest economic forecasts for 2011 come in well under 3 percent growth. Unemployment is still high, and consumer spending is still sluggish.

"However optimistic you may be about your business, you need to let the overall economy temper your expectations," says Scott Shane, an economics professor at Case Western Reserve University and author of The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths that Entrepreneurs, Investors and Policy Makers Live By. "You need to assume that the recovery is going to be tepid and plan accordingly."

That doesn't mean sit and wait for things to improve. Rather, retool for the economy that exists today, and will be lingering for many tomorrows. Here are 10 places to start.

1. Overhaul your business plan. In a climate as unforgiving as this, stasis is death. So dust off your business plan and scrub it of any assumptions you may have made three years ago. Roll up your sleeves, do the math and zero in on the best strategy to grab market share and win new business. Then start treating your business plan as if it's a work in progress. Create hard benchmarks and measure results often. That's how you improve performance, says Tim Berry, president and founder of Palo Alto Software Inc., developer of Business, a small-business software tool that creates plans and financial projections.

"Planning means tracking how assumptions change and reviewing progress and plan versus actual results," he says. Rethinking your business plan also can help you spot new opportunities and point your company in the right direction. For step-by-step advice, check out the U.S. Small Business Administration's guide.

2. Double down on what works. Whatever paid off in 2010 is worth investing more time, money and resources next year. Ask yourself: What was your top-selling product or service, and how can you get your customers to buy more? What money-saving strategies went straight to the bottom line? What incentives or promotions got your customers' attention?

Elyissia Wassung, CEO of 2 Chicks With Chocolate, a South River, N.J., chocolate maker, is doubling down on in-store demos, which have boosted sales. When she learned a chain retailer was planning to order exclusively from 2 Chicks for Christmas, she says, "We decided to double our demos with them this holiday season and blitz all of their stores on the same day. We are also giving away prizes to the top performing stores."

3. Experiment. The best time to try something new? When the old isn't working. It may feel safer to stay in your comfort zone, but sticking with the same old product, service or marketing strategy might actually be riskier.

The best new ideas often come from conversations with your customers, suppliers and, most of all, employees. "The unexpected can often be the obvious," says New York business and personal coach Carol Vinelli. Talk less, listen more and really tune in to ideas that could lead to breakthrough products and services.

Need some inspiration? Check out Seth Godin's bestselling book Purple Cow about how to make your company remarkable.

4. Fire your D-grade customers. "High-maintenance, low-margin customers are an impediment to deploying time and resources more profitably," says Joseph Fulvio, a consultant in Doylestown, Penn., who specializes in growing small businesses. "Get rid of them."

Make a list of your customers and give each of them a grade. Then dump everyone below a C--or a B, if you can afford it. Once you've separated the winners from the losers, put a plan in place to turn those laggards into A-listers. Going forward, use those criteria to size up new business.

Though most businesses worry whether they'll meet clients' expectations, "it's actually a two-way street," Fulvio says. A better vendor-customer fit should produce a healthier bottom line.

5. Become an 'A' customer. When prices are low, as they are now, it's generally a good time to lock in long-term contracts with your regular vendors, contractors and suppliers. Indeed, you might be able to negotiate a lower price in return for the promise of your business. Small-business management expert Tim Sciarrillo of The New England Group in Milford, Conn., suggests asking your supplier for a volume discount and to hold the goods until you need them.

Instead of ordering 10,000 custom labels five times a year, for example, order 50,000 at once but have them delivered in batches. This lowers the supplier's manufacturing costs, reduces your unit price and speeds delivery on future orders because the labels are already printed.

Exclusivity is the key to a sweetheart deal like this. "At one client company, we reduced corrugated suppliers from five to one," Sciarrillo says. "The client received better service, reduced pricing and every time there was a price increase, the salesman usually kept our increase a percent or two below the standard."

Make sure your contract covers all the details, such as delivery cost, timing and quality guarantees.

6. Expand your network. Facebook and LinkedIn have their uses, but they'll never replace face-to-face meetings, especially to win new business and get referrals.

"Some folks aren't ready to go out there and mingle, but in today's economy, it is imperative," says Bryan R. Adams, owner of FAB Communications in Teaneck, N.J.

Think about it: A single coffee, meeting or lunch with a lawyer, financial planner or supplier could bring in dozens of new customers next year. If you're afraid to jump in right away, Adams suggests starting by searching Meetup.com for a group that matches your interests and attending local chamber of commerce events.

Once you find your groove (and refine your elevator pitch), consider joining a dedicated networking group such as BNI International, LeTip International or National Association of Women Business Owners. "Getting out there keeps you sane and you get to hear what's working and not working for other businesses," Adams says.

7. Leverage your brand. In this economy, it's more important than ever to avoid becoming a "me, too" brand. Low prices and quality service are no longer enough. Whether it's a YouTube video, an iPad app or a free tasting event, offer something to make customers take notice.

"What do you bring to the table that no one else is serving up to clients and potential clients?" asks Debra Condren, a New York business psychologist. "You must first understand what sets you apart and then become completely fluent in communicating to your target audience what separates you from the herd."

For more tips and tools on leveraging your brand, check out Entrepreneur's free online marketing guides at entrepreneur.com/marketing.

8. Get some credit. The mortgage market is starting to thaw, and that's good news for small-business owners who can tap their home equity for working capital. If you have good credit and some equity in your house, now may be the time to refinance before interest rates rise.

Be sure your credit score is solid and that your business shows positive cash flow before you start shopping for deals. You won't get the loan unless your bank is convinced you can cover the monthly payments.

"Banks are willing to provide credit but are still very selective," says Case Western's Shane. "Financials help a lot right now."

9. Fire up your employees. Think about creating a bonus plan to motivate employees to hit your 2011 goals. Bonuses, while not always successful, says Rich Armstrong, president of The Great Game of Business Inc., can help focus your staff's attention on key metrics such as sales, profits, productivity and customer satisfaction.

Armstrong's Springfield, Mo., firm provides training in the open-book management philosophy, which advocates sharing financial and operational information with employees so that they can make better decisions, and it gives them a stake in the company's success.

"Your people must clearly understand the goal, the improvements that are needed, how they can make a difference and what they stand to gain," he says. "Bonus-plan success will have everything to do with how well you communicate, educate and encourage your people to stay in the game and reach for the goal."

A bonus plan can work in all types of businesses, including manufacturing, sales, even restaurants. Goals can be tied to easy-to-measure numbers such as revenues, new business volume or gross margin. There's more about open-book management practices on The Great Game of Business website, greatgame.com.

10. Team up. Working with "channel partners"--companies that target the same market but with products or services different from yours--can be an ultra-efficient marketing strategy. They've already spent the time and money to attract the customers you want, and you can piggyback on those efforts. Naturally, your partners are going to want reciprocal benefits. Vinelli, the business coach, says, "Set aside time each week to brainstorm new ways to create added value to your relationships, fostering more referrals and new partnerships."

Anne Maxfield, chief visionary officer and founder of Accidental Locavore, a new-media venture in New York that demystifies farmers markets for shoppers, is partnering with companies that appeal to food- and health-conscious consumers. She's pitching a show to the Food Network and forging alliances with NYCH2O, a New York bottled-water company, and EcoPlum, a website selling green products.

"Our success in 2011 will come from partnerships [with companies] that consumers believe in and trust," she says. via entrepreneur.com

Monday, March 26, 2012

Leaders Make Values Visible by Marshall Goldsmith

The corporate credo. Companies have wasted millions of dollars and countless hours of employees' time agonizing over the wording of statements that are inscribed on plaques and hung on walls. There is a clear assumption that people's behavior will change because the pronouncements on plaques are "inspirational" or certain words "integrate our strategy and values." There is an implicit hope that when people - especially managers - hear great words, they will start to exhibit great behavior.

Sometimes these words morph as people try to keep up with the latest trends in corporate-speak. A company may begin by striving for "customer satisfaction," then advance to "total customer satisfaction," and then finally reach the pinnacle of "customer delight."

But this obsession with words belies one very large problem: There is almost no correlation between the words on the wall and the behavior of leaders. Every company wants "integrity," "respect for people," "quality," "customer satisfaction," "innovation," and "return for shareholders." Sometimes companies get creative and toss in something about "community" or "suppliers." But since the big messages are all basically the same, the words quickly lose their real meaning to employees - if they had any in the first place.

Enron is a great example. Before the energy conglomerate's collapse in 2001, I had the opportunity to review Enron's values. I was shown a wonderful video on Enron's ethics and integrity. I was greatly impressed by the company's espoused high-minded beliefs and the care that was put into the video. Examples of Enron's good deeds in the community and the professed character of Enron's executives were particularly noteworthy.

It was one of the most smoothly professional presentations on ethics and values that I have ever seen. Clearly, Enron spent a fortune "packaging" these wonderful messages. It didn't really matter. Despite the lofty words, many of Enron's top executives either have been indicted or are in jail.

The situation couldn't be more different at Johnson & Johnson. The pharmaceutical company is famous for its Credo, which was written many years ago and reflected the sincere values of the leaders of the company at that time. The J&J Credo could be considered rather quaint by today's standards. It contains several old-fashioned phrases, such as "must be good citizens - support good works and charities - and bear our fair share of taxes" and "maintain in good order the property that we are privileged to use." It lacks the slick PR packaging that I observed at Enron.

Yet, even with its less-powerful language and seemingly dated presentation, the J&J Credo works - primarily because over many years, the company's management has taken the values that it offers seriously. J&J executives have consistently challenged themselves and employees not just to understand the values, but to live them in day-to-day behavior. When I conducted leadership training for J&J, one of its very top executives spent many hours with every class. The executive's task was not to talk about compensation or other perks of J&J management; it was to discuss living the company's values.

My partner, Howard Morgan, and I recently completed a study of more than 11,000 managers in eight major corporations. (See "Leadership Is a Contact Sport," by Marshall Goldsmith and Howard Morgan, s+b, Fall 2004.) We looked at the impact of leadership development programs in changing executive behavior. As it turns out, each of the eight companies had different values and different words to describe ideal leadership behavior. But these differences in words made absolutely no difference in determining the way leaders behaved. One company spent thousands of hours composing just the right words to express its view of how leaders should act - in vain. I am sure that the first draft would have been just as useful.

At many companies, performance appraisal forms seem to undergo the same careful scrutiny as credos. In fact, more effort seems to be given to producing the perfect words on an appraisal form than to managing employee performance itself. I worked with one company that had used at least 15 different performance appraisal forms and was contemplating yet another change because the present sheet "wasn't working"! If changing the words on the page could improve the performance management process, every company's appraisal system would be perfect by now.

Companies that do the best job of living up to their values and developing ethical employees, including managers, recognize that the real cause of success - or failure - is always the people, not the words.

Rather than wasting time on reinventing words about desired leadership behavior, companies should ensure that leaders get (and act upon) feedback from employees - the people who actually observe this behavior. Rather than wasting time on changing performance appraisal forms, leaders need to learn from employees to ensure that they are providing the right coaching.

Ultimately, our actions will say much more to employees about our values and our leadership skills than our words ever can. If our actions are wise, no one will care if the words on the wall are not perfect. If our actions are foolish, the wonderful words posted on the wall will only make us look more ridiculous. via Marshall Goldsmith

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. We are one of the very few consulting firms specialized solely in helping organizations of all sizes in all industries catalyzing top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Email or call us at 719-649-4118 to speak at your event or devise an effective competitive advantage and innovation strategy for your organization. Subscribe to our innovation and hypercompetition newsletter?

Sarah Ban Breathnach: Savoring Life and Overcoming

I found this story first published in People Magazine in 1996 on the success of bestselling author Sarah Ban Breathnach absolutely inspiring. In our rush to achieve we often forget the importance of our journey in becoming. There is a reason success can be tumultuous. It forges us to become. Jim

In 1993, SARAH BAN BREATHNACH was a successful journalist, the author of two well-received books on 19th-century life and a wife and mother living in suburban Washington. Yet, like millions of other women juggling too many responsibilities, she was angry and frustrated. "I thought I could only be happy if everything was perfect," says Breathnach, 49. "I wanted to live in a Martha Stewart world."

But instead of buying new slipcovers, Breathnach became what she calls "a detective of my own life." She concluded, six months later, that she had let minor frustrations—bad hair days, cluttered closets—get in the way of contentment. Last year she turned her insights into Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy, 528 pages of homey essays—one for each day of the year—with titles on the order of "The Art of Puttering" and "Caring for Your Soul." The book's mantra—"All you have is all you need"—has kept it near the top of The New York Times bestseller list since April, with more than 1.1 million copies in print.

Breathnach, who next year will release Authentic Success, a series of essays on spiritual and material fulfillment, isn't surprised by Simple's appeal. "I knew I wasn't the only woman who was frazzled and at times depressed," says Breathnach, who saw frustration in the faces of her friends. "We were sleepwalking through life." Her commonsense advice: Learn to appreciate little pleasures like a great dish of pasta, a serendipitous discovery at a tag sale, a new lipstick.

Finding an editor who believed in her was no simple task: 30 publishers turned down her initial proposal, which some considered unfocused. "I cried myself to sleep at night," she says. "I really felt I was born to write this book." Her daughter Katie, now 13, began ending her nightly prayers by pleading, "Please help Mommy find a publisher." Eventually, Liv Blumer, then of Warner Books, came to Breathnach's rescue, pruning her 977-page manuscript and releasing it with little fanfare but lots of faith. "I felt it was a word-of-mouth book," Blumer says. "There are some books that are so good, they can't be stopped." Blumer herself offers a dramatic testimonial: The book inspired her to quit her job and join a small literary agency so she could have more free time. "I had this nameless unease," says Blumer. "When I read certain pages in the book, it was like, 'Eureka!' My direction became much clearer."

Breathnach had taken far longer to find her own direction. Born in West-bury, N.Y., to Pat Crean, a construction equipment salesman, and his wife, Drusilla, a nurse, she wanted to be an actress, while her practical mother insisted she go to business school. At 25, Breathnach (a pen name) moved to London, where, she says, "I thought it would be easier to set the world on fire. I was wrong." She worked as a $100-a-week secretary and lived in a grim one-room walkup while auditioning, unsuccessfully, for acting jobs. Breathnach soon gave up the stage and tried writing, but once again there were rejections, until she finally sold a fashion article to a London trade publication. By the time she moved to Washington in 1975, she was accomplished enough to be published in newspapers like The Washington Post—though she still had to work as a secretary to pay the bills.

Then in 1977, after losing a secretarial job, she applied for unemployment benefits and met claims examiner Ed Sharp, now 47, who remembers that Breathnach "seemed very exotic and intriguing." Two years later they were married. After Katie was born, Breathnach continued freelance writing until one day in 1985 when she was lunching in a fast-food restaurant. A ceiling panel fell on her head, causing a concussion and landing her in bed for months. Blurry vision persisted for more than a year.

While recovering in her Takoma Park, Md., home, she became fascinated with some Victorian-era magazines she'd bought earlier. Then she captured her passion for the past in two lifestyle books: 1990's Mrs. Sharp's Traditions and 1992's The Victorian Nursery Companion. Both sold well, but when her publisher asked for another, similar book, Breathnach balked. "I just didn't think I could ruminate on Victorian ruffles for a year," she says. Instead, she ruminated on her unhappiness. "Nothing that I had was ever enough," she says. "I decided I had to put my life in a new perspective." Her soul-searching led to Simple Abundance, which found a small audience before Oprah Winfrey discovered it and, this spring, put Breathnach on her show—and on the bestseller map.

True to her convictions, Breathnach hasn't let fame and fortune shift her back into fast-forward. Her house is still far from Martha Stewart perfect—the kitchen ceiling is peeling, and a retaining wall needs repair. She'll get around to those chores one of these days—after her daily stroll to the post office and her leisurely cup of coffee at her favorite local cafe. Alex Tresniowski and Rochelle Jones

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. He is a consultant; author, motivational speaker and coach on helping people find meaning and purpose. Email or call Jim at 719-649-4118 to have him speak at your event.

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Thursday, March 22, 2012

Innovation Stagnation and The Greatest Economic Opportunity

Let’s begin by looking at the last decade. Much of the innovation that defined the American experience in our first two centuries stagnated during the past 10 years. But this innovation stagnation has created the greatest opportunity we’ve ever seen for people wishing to start a new business. Provided, of course, that their product or service either improves the life of their customer or provides something their customer is already using but at a lower price.

In the 20th century, America grew to become the world’s greatest economy because of entrepreneurial innovations. From Henry Ford (cars) to Abraham Levitt (homes) to Steve Jobs (iPods, iPhones, iPads), entrepreneurs created new products and services so compelling that consumers had to have them. Americans wanted to work harder than ever to purchase items that hadn’t even existed when they were born. Moreover, each of these new products or services created entire industries of support products, such as gas stations, restaurants, furnishings, cell phones, etc.

However, for entrepreneurs today, the last decade of innovation stagnation has created the greatest economic opportunity in history because there are so many readyto- be-implemented advances in virtually every sector of our economy. The greatest personal fortunes of 2020 are about to be created by entrepreneurs who either lower the price of existing products or introduce new products and services to our economy.

From Wall Street to Main Street

Many people blame today’s financial crisis on Wall Street. However, once the crisis had begun, the crash on Main Street was caused by consumers realizing the emperor had no clothes—that many of the products and services they were buying were simply not worth their cost.

The same house that sold for $250,000 in 1999 was not worth $450,000 in 2009—even though many homebuyers were willing to pay that much for it, due to easy credit and a fear that prices would keep rising. A new car with the same features as last year’s model did not justify an annual price increase, especially in the summer of 2008, when gasoline reached $5 per gallon and consumers wanted more fuel-efficient vehicles. And no mass-produced handbag was really worth $10,000 or more.

When consumers rebelled against paying more for the same or less, businesses were forced to cut their costs. Employers worldwide laid off millions of employees and blamed it on the recession.

When we look closer at what happened, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, we see the decline in consumer purchasing and the resultant unemployment were not caused by a traditional economic slowdown. They were both caused by the inability of many businesses from 1999 to 2010 to keep up with their customers in an expanding economy by providing new or improved products and services. This caused consumers from 1999 to 2010 to spend money on the same products and services, bidding up the prices among themselves beyond their true value, rather than spending money on things like wellness, better cars or better housing that would improve their lives.

More significantly, this failure by many businesses to keep up with their customers’ needs created an unprecedented opportunity today for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs (those who use entrepreneurial skills within an existing organization) to start new businesses that provide real value-added products and services to consumers and businesses. There was already a backlog of what I term Ready-to-be-Implemented Technological advances (RITs) before the great crash of 2008, and the need to implement them and retool our economy is now greater than ever.

As we assimilate the events that led to the great crash of 2008, as well as where we are now, it’s clear there is no better time to step up and be the entrepreneur or intrapreneur who has enough vision and courage to give consumers what they really want: innovation. How do you do this?

Consider these strategies:

Master your industry. Learn as much as you can about your industry. As you learn more, your functional skills will improve and you will build a network, adding value to your new idea.

Fix the world. Notice the problems your customers have and fix them in a new way or in a less expensive way than your competitors.

Focus on the solution. Instead of focusing on the struggling economy, focus on ingenuity. How can you separate yourself from the crowd?

Hold on to your dream. Don’t let past failures or dire economic forecasts make you a pessimist. Keep your youthful dreams alive and create your own opportunities. via success.com

Business today is a chess match without rules. Requiring nimble competitiveness in which conventional thinking is discarded. InnoThink Group is provocative. Dynamic. Imaginative and committed to helping our clients out compete for top line growth. Hire Jim Woods To Speak to Your Organization.

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group; a global innovation, growth and hypercompetition consultancy. He is an author and speaker on strategic innovation, education and competitive advantage. To hire Jim to speak to your organization - Call 719- 649- 4118 or email us for availability. Subscribe to our innovation and hypercompetition newsletter?

Demand Total Accountability to Make Meetings Effective

Meetings are a fact of life, whether you’re running a three-person startup or a growing company with hundreds of helping hands. But not all managers are born to run them, and that can prove detrimental—in part because unproductive meetings can eat into valuable work time, undercutting the company’s performance and competitiveness.

“Time is currency,” says Jon Petz, “If you’re pulling workers away from their tasks to attend a meeting, you need to think in terms of results, of focus.”

How do you know if your company or team suffers from bad-meeting syndrome? Aside from the obvious signs (lack of eye contact from employees when you speak, too many PowerPoint slides, sub-meetings or texting going on during your meeting), other indicators of unproductive meetings may include the following:

Workers leave meetings without specific tasks and deadlines for completing them
Discussions during meetings don’t lead to decisions.
Brainstorms become complaint sessions versus idea-generating machines.
The meeting rehashes but doesn't advance prior meetings’ accomplishments (what Petz calls a “déjà meeting”).
Meetings force attendance from nonessential employees (“over-invitation syndrome,” in Petz-speak).

Fortunately, taming bad meeting habits isn’t difficult—if you pay attention to a few basics.

Define Your Mission

Petz says meeting organizers need to develop two statements going in: a mission statement that includes goals (make decisions, assign tasks associated with a big project, etc.) and an outcome statement (who will do what as a result of the meeting’s findings?).

For instance, Petz says he was recently in a meeting in which the goal was to narrow a list of five possible technology vendors down to two finalists. If the meeting’s goal had been simply to debate pros and cons of the vendors, its purpose would have been vague and wouldn’t have resulted in a useful outcome—actually selecting finalists. But with shortlist formation as a goal and a time limit for participants to share feedback, the group came to a consensus efficiently.

“I’d say 99 percent of people miss doing an outcome statement,” he says. “If you have an outcome statement—a sense of what your goal is from the meeting—you can end meetings on time.”

Choose the Right Meeting Format

Meetings have different purposes. Is your meeting a short, weekly status update? A brainstorm and pitch session? Is it a problem-solving or decision-making effort? Is it an all-day offsite mixing morale boosting, big-picture thinking and mission building? Are you making major management or business announcements? Or does your meeting incorporate a mix of elements?

Depending on the meeting’s goal and your organizational goals, you may need to rethink meeting formats, says Todd Cherches, a consultant who has worked with clients ranging from small businesses to American Express in his role as co-founder of New York-based Big Blue Gumball.

“Problems with the standard meeting in many organizations are the question of who is running the meeting and whether the meeting is dialogue-based or presentation-based,” Cherches says.

The meeting organizer needs to set expectations. If the meeting is presentation-based, with a leader explaining a new practice or breaking some news to the group, that’s different from a dialogue-based meeting, where attendees might need to prepare by pulling numbers, doing some solo brainstorming beforehand or doing research so that the group can make collective progress.

“You have to let people know beforehand if they have homework,” Cherches says. “Otherwise people show up unprepared and sit back like they’re going to the movies.”

A good meeting is like a stimulating conversation that fires workers up, sending them back to their corners with a sense of mission and excitement about tackling clearly defined next steps and making specific things happen. A bad meeting is like a long, frustrating dinner with in-laws.

First Person

Company: Cerebyte in Lake Oswego, Ore.

Source: William Seidman, co-founder and CEO

Staff size: 4

Strategy: Declaring “early and open discomfort” when a meeting is veering off course.

How it’s going: Management can swiftly see who can make course corrections during decision-making and who can’t, then assign and prioritize tasks accordingly.

When our company swelled to more than a dozen employees, I noticed that meetings had become political, places where staff jockeyed for resources or credit. We said to ourselves, “We’ve got 12 people. What’s going on?” We didn’t want to become bureaucratic.

Meetings are a reflection of a company’s overall performance, and improving performance at a company involves changing the elements of a workplace’s culture. Dan Pink, in his book, Drive , says that if you want to change an organization, you need to have a sense of “compelling purpose.” In the absence of that strong sense of purpose, meetings can be territorial, competitive, status-reporting sessions.

The dot-com crash in the early 2000s forced our company to shrink, but as the years passed and we began growing again, we decided to stay small—we have a four-person team—and hire outside vendors. This means we hold meetings only when all brains need to hash out a decision, or when the team and a vendor need to reach agreement on a scope of work.

The executive team runs meetings according to three key principles: Everyone has good intentions (meaning all are putting the company first); everyone can disagree by calling “early and open discomfort” with the direction a conversation or decision is moving (meaning bad ideas get shut down fast); and a good decision achieved quickly is betterthan a great decision made eventually.

The “early and open discomfort” rule is one of the best meeting tools in the company’s arsenal. We actually call it that. People declare “early and open discomfort” all the time. In a recent meeting, a public relations agency kept insisting that we hire them to provide the latest and greatest social media marketing techniques. We declared early and open discomfort in an effort to reorient what seemed the PR agency executive’s personal agenda to use particular techniques rather than listen to the less-sexy but demonstrated direction we needed from her company.

The PR agency principal kept turning the conversation toward why we should buy or use their services. But we agreed in minutes on how to use social media. We were at a conclusion, and she wasn’t. Finally, I had to become the CEO and say, “This topic is closed.” Ultimately, the tension between the visiting agency and the company led us to shrink the PR agency’s scope of work around a few key social media projects.

If it’s clear that someone isn’t aligned to the core purpose of the company from an interaction in a meeting, you can take action accordingly. But you have to create a culture where honest dialogue is possible.

First Person

Company: Envision Marketing & Design in Waltham, Mass.

Source: Jeff Shaw, principal

Staff size: 5

Strategy: Making sure that employees know the “priorities takeaway” from any given meeting.

How it’s going: Employees revisit who’s tasked with what at the end of the meeting, and someone keeps a running list of “interesting, let’s revisit later” ideas.

We’re a boutique graphic design firm, and meetings can go off-topic as creativity starts churning, with ideas begetting ideas that may not be pertinent to the urgent business at hand. On the one hand, the team needs to think on the fly and listen to flashes of brilliance, but on the other hand, we need to make sure client projects are moving forward and problems are solved.

Before and at the start of each meeting, we define the purpose of the meeting, including what actions and decisions need to be made. This frames the meeting and creates a touchstone to return to when conversation inevitably veers off topic—which is a part of life at a creative agency. When conversation does veer off course, we acknowledge the idea. Typically I say something like, “Good point. We do need to discuss that further. But let’s put that on the agenda for next time because we have a problem we need to solve.” Someone will note the idea for a future revisit.

At the end of the meeting, we go around the room with to-do lists of tasks discussed in the meeting. It may sound a bit elementary, but it works. When there’s a lot of back-and-forth during meetings, it can leave staff with different impressions about what next steps should be. So it’s good to end the meeting by going around the room briefly so people are clear on what they are doing and by when.

First Person

Company: Espresso Supply in Seattle

Source: Myra Gold, general manager

Staff size: 10

Strategy: Using one-on-one assessments and a full-day summit meeting to realign job descriptions and company culture.

How it’s going: Espresso Supply trimmed four jobs and added another, while identifying job growth goals that suit both company goals and employee interests.

When I joined Espresso Supply in November 2009, a lot of job functions overlapped. The company employed a small and hardworking team, but over its nearly two decades in operation, the business had begun enabling some workers to devote more time to work that suited personal interests than work that served the company’s goals. Ideally, a company can permit both personal fulfillment and fulfilling the workplace’s needs, but when in doubt, the company’s goals must come first.

We needed to organize around the functionality of the company, not necessarily what people wanted to do personally inside the company. We were keeping some people for personal reasons—we liked them!—instead of company reasons.

So I and other lead executives here began holding meetings to inventory who actually does what inside the business and sort out what those employees like to do along with what the business needed from the person holding their job title. In one-on-one meetings, I learned who wore what hats and that many of the company’s staff meetings were overly inclusive, requiring attendance by, say, warehouse workers, when really only customer-facing roles like sales and marketing needed to show up. The over-inclusivity was a symptom of overly broad job descriptions, but once those job descriptions were unwound and roles were clearer, meetings could become more efficient.

Once the company finished realigning job descriptions, we held a large one-day off-site so people could reintroduce themselves and their roles to one another, and we could reinvigorate morale around a company-focused—not just people-focused—mission. The off-site demonstrated to workers that the cultural change was all-inclusive—and a big deal, to boot.

I worked with each individual at the company in advance of the meeting to prepare a flipchart with what their role involved. And everyone was given time to share their role and goals while also hearing that every single employee was shifting their role to align with management’s mission. With the culture realigned, the business is more efficient. Weekly meetings are smaller and faster and more targeted, essentially quick huddles, but once every few months the company pulls out the BBQ and shares a noontime meal—just to keep things fun. via success.com

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Managing Yourself to Make the Job Search Work for You

If you are looking for a job right now, it is certain to take longer than you would like. The culprit is not just the recession — job boards have made it easier to apply, so now it's the norm that hundreds of resumes from across the world chase the same job. With that amount of activity, the job search has become more like a marathon than a sprint.

And because the job search takes longer with so many still out of work, inevitably more people are frustrated, even devastated, by it. Many employers use automated systems to cull the resumes down, which makes the process more impersonal and harder to penetrate.

So how do you keep your spirits up in such a tough environment? I asked this question of several people, including Lila, a Greek marketing professional job-hunting in Athens (which has got to be one of the toughest searches out there).

The best advice Lila gave was to manage your feelings. Becoming negative, cynical, or depressed will work against you. When you get angry with yourself, it shows, Lila says. Don't believe you can easily fake energy and enthusiasm. Most interviewers will pick up your real feelings.

Actively manage your feelings so that you actually are happy, focused, and energetic. Admittedly this is not easy, especially for the millions of long-term unemployed. Here are some changes that should help in this culture of rejection:

Be your own good manager. Since searching for a job is indeed a full-time job in itself, manage yourself appropriately. Bad managers are never satisfied, setting impossible goals and then punishing people for not accomplishing them. Instead, set reasonable weekly goals for networking, researching, or applying for jobs. Reward yourself for accomplishing your goals or doing something difficult. And never beat up on yourself for doing things wrong or not doing enough, the way a bad manager would. The people around you should be good managers too — encourage them to be supportive.

Don't just sit there, do something. This means get out of the house. Take a class. Join a professional group — they generally have special benefits for unemployed members. Volunteer. Check a few things off your bucket list. Do anything that will get you out, teach you something new, connect you with new people, and perhaps become a new line on your resume.

Multitask — don't ride the rollercoaster. Most people put all their eggs in one basket and stop looking at other jobs once they have had an interview. Later, if they are turned down, they become even more discouraged. They then have to fight an uphill battle to motivate themselves all over again. I call this the rollercoaster approach — as the prospects of just one option working out rises and falls, so do your emotions, which I usually draw out like this

But when you keep initiating new search activity until you get an actual offer, you won't get so depressed if you are turned down for a job, because you're still pursuing other options. And you won't have to start the process all over again:

Keep to a routine. Manage your time as if you were working. Keep a regular schedule for researching new positions, following up, and volunteering. Work in exercise — you'll look and feel better. A daily and weekly schedule will provide the structure that will enable you to have a sense of accomplishment.

I'm going to give Lila the last word on how to keep your spirits up during a job search. "Remind yourself of the people who love you and that you love back. This positive acceptance from loving and being loved creates miracles. It is a huge hug of protection when you really need to feel safe, while you are in the storm."

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