5 Mentors Every Entrepreneur Should Have. Image credit: Star Wars Editor's note: A version of this column previously appeared at JoannaLord.com. Entrepreneur. It's a tough word -- both to spell and to call yourself. Being an entrepreneur brings with it a love of leaping head first into the unknown.
Life-long entrepreneurs love new challenges, and live their lives in a constant growth phase. One of the common resources an entrepreneur turns to is a mentor. I've been fortunate to have a variety of mentors over the years, and I can't imagine standing where I am if it wasn't for them. I also think it's important that mentors come from many different perspectives, as mine have. Related: Taking Advice: It Isn't What You Ask, It's Whom You Ask 1.
For instance, when I go back home to the East Coast, my friends ask me about everything except tech and business. 2. There is a confidence that can come with camaraderie like that. Related: The Art and Craft of Listening to Your Critics 3. 4. 5. The author is an Entrepreneur contributor. Apple Takes Cue From Google, Encourages Employees to Work on Pet Projects [REPORT]
Apple has launched an initiative called "Blue Sky," which encourages employees to devote some of their time to personal pet projects. Not much is known about the program except that it allows a "small group of staffers" to spend "a few weeks" on their pet engineering projects, the Wall Street Journal reports. Apple's Blue Sky is similar to Google's "20% Time" policy, which lets employees spend a fifth of their time working on personal projects. Google, however, is a very different company from Apple; the latter is known for being focused and tightly organized, with upper management controlling all important projects. The WSJ says the program is just one of a few new initiatives started by Apple CEO Tim Cook. Others include new employee discounts on Apple products and a charitable matching program. But the current status of Blue Sky is unknown. 6 Exercises To Strengthen Compassionate Leadership.
Disney has been known for its litigious nature in the past, going so far as to change copyright law in order to keep Mickey Mouse out of public domain. That's why it's kind of weird that a movie filmed at Disney World, unapproved by the Mouse House, even exists at all. After making a splash at Sundance this year, though, the intriguing Escape From Tomorrow appears to be heading for a theatrical release--and the first trailer is now online.
First-time director Randy Moore shot the film at the Florida theme park, guerrilla-style, over a series of visits with his crew and an unknown cast. Details of the terms Moore worked out with Disney remain under wraps for now, but the controversial matter seems to be settled. While the circumstances surrounding Escape's production have dominated the conversation thus far, with the release of this trailer, perhaps talk will shift to the movie itself. The Lost Art of Encouragement. We’ve all heard of American literary great Walt Whitman. But did you know that Whitman struggled through years of obscurity to get anyone interested in his poetry? One day, in the midst of crippling discouragement, Whitman received a life-changing letter from an admirer of his work.
The note read: “Dear sir, I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of Leaves of Grass. I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I greet you at the beginning of a great career.“ It was signed by none other than Ralph Waldo Emerson. Though Walt Whitman’s honored place in literary history is now firmly established, when times were tough he needed encouragement to keep going. So do we. When we are on the brink of failure or in the midst of heartache or frustration, an encouraging word can keep us in the game! “You never know when a moment and a few sincere words can have an impact on a life.” - Zig Ziglar, salesman, author, and motivational speaker Never?
The Strengths and Weaknesses of Your Leadership Style. There are many leadership styles and a cottage industry has cropped up around defining them. Gayle Lantz, president of WorkMatters, Inc., a human resources consulting firm in Birmingham, Ala., uses the popular DISC assessment tool to as part of her practice to identify leadership styles. DISC, an acronym for dominance, influencing, steadiness, and compliance, uses a series of questions each with four answers. Respondents indicate which style is most and least like their own. Lantz says she usually sees four core leadership styles emerge from these assessments. "To get the best results on a team, it's important to have a balance of different styles and also to get to a place of appreciating the other styles, as well," she says.
Conductor. Be careful of: Conductors may be characterized as difficult or egotistical. Related: How to Make Criticism Drive You Influencer. Be careful of: Influencers may be too verbose and have trouble staying focused. Supporter. Analyzer. Cultivating Workplace Culture. Workplace culture is a hard thing to get right. It’s a moving target that means something different to everyone. It grows and evolves over time and is the result of action and reaction. It is the lingering effect of every interaction. Culture may not be on the top of everyone’s ‘to do’ lists but it is always present and always captivated by opportunity. So how do we identify this ambiguous culture? Culture is simultaneously the feeling when you arrive to work on a Monday morning and the feeling you have when you leave on a Friday evening. Considering the time we spend at work, building a healthy work culture is absolutely crucial. 1.
Enthusiasm is contagious. 2. A good flow of communication is crucial in any office environment. 3. Sit down with your co-workers and let them know you appreciate their efforts. 4. As the saying goes, work hard play hard. 5. Cultivating a healthy workplace culture simply cannot be accomplished overnight. What do you do in your workplace to cultivate culture? Mismanagement and Bad Communication. Most of you know that I lead a team of AMAZING people at SHIFT Digital.
They are some of the most talented, creative, and intelligent people in our industry. I tell them often: “I would put you up against any other creative agency out there!” And it is true, I would, but that is for another day. What you may not know is that my background is in the “Not For Profit” world. I got into marketing there and saw success helping many of the organizations I worked with use “social media” to build brand awareness.
I saw enough success that I launched my first company, with the goal of helping Not For Profits use digital media to tell their story to the masses. I’ve always played sports throughout my life. Now that I lead a team, I’m always wondering and thinking about teams: what makes them work and what makes them fail. I’ve been on many business teams that have failed, and I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing, trying to identify the single point of fail. My team is amazing. Connect: Authored by: 5 Maneuvers The Tech Biz Should Steal From The Fashion Industry. Let’s face it. Technology is fashion. We don’t update our operating systems to get tighter Twitter integration, or buy a new phone for the opportunity to display four more icons.
We update them because the new one makes our present one look a bit, well, last season. I’ve worked with many of the stars of the technology world and I’ve air-kissed with some of the darlings of the fashion world, too. Fashionistas and technologists deal with a lot of the same stuff: fickle consumers, fast turnaround of products, and diva designers with planet-sized egos. Here are five things I think the geeks can learn from the chic: 1. Some years ago, IBM had a problem. Big Blue reeled from what it heard. CIOs were buying a multimillion-dollar computer for the same reason that kids buy one pair of sneakers instead of another. 2. Fashion designers become famous for a “key piece.” Women walk into Chanel for that little black dress, some No. 5 perfume, a tweed suit, and a 2.55 quilted handbag. 3. 4. 5. Why Your Company Needs A Chief Collaboration Officer. Collaboration. It’s a $1 billion industry, according to an ABI Research study on worker mobility and enterprise social collaboration.
And it's projected to grow to $3.5 billion by 2016. No wonder lots of ink has been spilled on this business buzzword on everything from how to start (hint: build trust) to doing it better with social platforms, to using it as a way to achieve that holy grail of business: innovation. Two years ago, the Harvard Business Review even touted the need for another C-suite executive: the CCO. A chief collaboration officer would be charged with integrating the enterprise as companies scramble to innovate from within.
Authors Morten T. But in an ideal scenario, this most critical of business strategies would have a dedicated individual toiling to make collaboration part of the daily doings of the company. They even have proof. "You don’t have to compromise, you don’t have to teach someone, you don’t have to deal with other people’s timetables," Gardner says. Why Employees' Big Dreams Should Be Your Company's Top Priority. As a manager, you can create a tremendous amount of loyalty just by listening to your employees. And loyalty matters--a lot. When Kelley Lindberg became a manager at a software company several years ago, she inherited some employees who were confused about where they were headed.
She sat down with the project managers individually to learn more about their job questions, career goals, and ideas. One employee in particular had been working with the company for months with no solid assignments and only a vague idea of what he was supposed to be doing. “I asked him what his career goals were, and he surprised me completely,” Lindberg says. “Instead of the standard ‘I want to move up the career ladder into management’ answer, he told me he really wasn’t interested in management, and he wasn’t even very interested in a long-term career in software at all. Creating a sense that you care about your employees can both motivate and inspire them. •First, start with yourself. Free Infographic: How to Solve Online Registration Challenges.
How often have you become frustrated filling out online registration forms? There is a better way. Janrain has compiled data on some of the most challenging aspects of online registration forms and simple solutions to improve the user experience…and conversion rates. Click here to download the full infographic [PDF]. Important Stats 86% of people may leave a website when asked to create an account50% of people dislike creating new passwords 60% of people have more than 5 unique passwords to remember 40% of people use the Forgot Password feature at least once a month 88% of online users admit they have lied on form 2 in 5 people would rather solve world peace than create a new password 2 in 5 people would rather scrub a toilet than create a new password 77% of online users prefer social login Facebook is the preferred social login provider of choice Embed Code How to Solve the Online Registration Challenge – An infographic by the team at Janrain.
Why Your Company Needs A Full-Time, Idea-Killing Chief Dissent Officer. Big companies get a bad rap. We think of them as creativity-killing machines that constantly crush the world-changing ideas of their hardworking employees. As if such internal mechanisms don’t also save us from countless bad ideas, creative darlings, and disasters-in-the-making.
In fact, in my business experience, it’s nearly too scary to contemplate how many horrible ideas almost make it out the front door. And they would have were it not for some lone dissenter who turned the tide. Last year, anthropologist Grant McCracken proposed the idea of a C-level executive to track trends and monitor the “deep waves of culture in America and the world” in his influential book, Chief Culture Officer. As we enter a high-speed, digital-driven economy, companies are under increased pressure to roll out more and more new things, to do it faster, with tighter development cycles. It turns out successful companies have been doing this for quite some time. As F. [Image: Flickr user Bruce Denis] To Achieve Your Goals, Learn How To Hack Your Brain.
During the Major League Baseball playoffs over the next few weeks, you’ll likely hear a comment about a pitcher having a bad outing. You’ll hear commentators say he’s throwing but he’s not pitching. They mean the pitcher is going through the mechanics of delivering the ball to the plate, but his motion isn’t coming together as a cohesive whole to achieve his goal of getting outs. This usually means the athlete is overly focusing on the goal of the pitch--aiming it to a location, getting a strikeout, “not giving up a home run.” Often pitching coaches will advise the pitcher to focus on one concrete detail of their mechanics, such as their release point.
This helps the pitcher subconsciously assimilate all the other details of his motion--the position of his fingers on the ball or the angle of his arm--to deliver a perfect curveball. As with pitches, we can think about goals in different ways that can affect our success or failure. [Image: Flickr user Marco Barbieri] Bikes Aren't Just Good For You, They're Good For The Economy, Too.
By now, we all know that cycling is good for health, fitness, cutting road accidents, reducing carbon emissions, and increasing energy security (and so on, and on). But what about biking’s economic impact--its cyclonomics, if you will? This graphic, from the League of American Bicyclists, highlights studies from across the country showing the positive benefits. You can see, for example, that bike recreation and tourism contributes an estimated $924 million a year to Wisconsin, plus $409 million in health benefits.
Or that biking generates $400 million for Iowa, according to the University of Northern Iowa, and the Iowa Bicycle Coalition. Or that bike tourism brings in $60 million for North Carolina’s Outer Banks area. The League put the map together to publicize a recent report by its policy director Darren Flusche. "You can see that in a vibrant business district that there’s a lot of foot traffic and bicycle traffic, and you instinctively understand that it’s really good for business. How To Manage Thinkers, And Feelers, Effectively. Your success--and fulfillment--as a manager is neatly encased in one bite-size nugget: Be who you are, just flex your style to manage others.
Flexing your style means being versatile in how you lead, communicate, and motivate. A tough approach propels one employee; mild-mannered encouragement inspires another. Being flexible requires proficiency in a range of techniques, to draw upon as needed. This does not require disregarding your own temperament. Flexing your style does not mean holding people to varying standards--accountability remains consistent across the board. Flexing requires customizing your communication to motivate different staff members.
So what's the difference between a thinker and a feeler? Listen For Clues For beginners, the first level is to listen for the frequency with which a staff member uses variations of the words think and feel. Sample words favored by thinkers: Principles Fairness Analysis Consistency Validity Rationale Sample words favored by feelers: Being Funny Can Get You A Raise. Instapaper. 3 Ways to Amplify Small-Business Marketing with Crowdsourcing. Twitter Launches Self-Serve Advertising for Small Businesses. Three Secrets to Using Google Analytics for Measuring Your Website's ROI. The Creators Of "Workaholics" On Keeping The Stupid And Weird In Your Creative Process. Apple v. Samsung: Why the Future of Ideas Is at Stake.
6 Obstacles of an Internal Community Manager. How to Host a Google+ Hangout on Air. Social Media Requires a Cross-Functional Team. Social Media Is Now a $16.9 Billion Business. The State of Women-Owned Businesses [INFOGRAPHIC]