Benchmark. 6 Truths of Building a Successful Online Community | LAF. Management Development | The Whole Brain Manager™ Program | Professional Development | Herrmann International Asia. Portfolio's best and worst CEOs - Portfolio.com recently released its list of the world's 20 best and 20 worst CEOs. Taken as a pair, the lists say a lot about American business, but say even more about how Americans view business. The compilation of the 20 best contains few surprises. America's car magnates are prominently featured, as befits a country in which the V-8 is next to godliness: Henry Ford is number one, and is joined by GM's Alfred Sloan and Chrysler's Lee Iacocca.
For that matter, some of America's greatest innovators also made it to the top 20; in addition to Ford, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Ray Kroc, and Walt Disney are all on the list. There are a few monopolists, including John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie, as well as a few dedicated money men, like Warren Buffett, JP Morgan, and Michael Bloomberg. Jemal Countess, WireImage 20 photos Perhaps the most interesting thing about the list of the 20 best CEOs is the odd coincidences and strange placements. Seth's Blog: Critics that matter.
If you invent or launch or market (and you're human) it's likely that you have the voice of the critic in the back of your head. It's natural to fear what they'll say, and if you're not careful, you'll end up redesigning your product to please them before you even launch it. Imagine the restaurant chef who changes the interior of the restaurant to please the Michelin critic (they insist on a certain quality of cutlery in order to award a three star review).
It might be your boss who is the critic. Or consider the B2B manufacturer who alters the product specs in order to meet the standards of the GAO so he can sell to the US Government... Some critics matter. (Your biggest customer, for example). Some are merely loud. Janet Maslin at the New York Times is a cranky hack. Robert Morris, on the other hand, is a useful guide for people in search of good books. The challenge is in figuring out which kind of critic is worth paying attention to as you create your product or service. Benefits of (Outsourcing) Payment Processing. Upclick Malta, Ltd (“Upclick”), and Product Owner (“Wholesaler”) agree: WHEREAS (1) the Wholesaler is in the business of selling certain products and services (together with related access codes) the ("Product"); (2) the Wholesaler wishes to retain UpClick to resell the Product pursuant to the terms hereof; and (3) UpClick wishes to resell the Product pursuant to the terms hereof. NOW, THEREFORE this Agreement witnesseth that in consideration of the mutual covenants by each of the parties hereto, the parties agree as follows: 1.1 Definitions.
For the purposes of this Agreement, the following terms shall have the following meanings: 2.1 Offer the Product for Resale. 2.2 Purchase Price. 2.3 Resale Price of the Product. 2.4 Purchase of the Product. 2.5 Payments to Wholesaler. 2.6 Record of Product Resold. 2.7 Transactions. 2.8 Chargebacks. 2.9 Refunds. 2.10 Customer Service. 2.11 UpClick License. 3.1 Sale of Product. 3.2 Wholesaler License. 3.3 Intellectual Property in Product. 5.1 Fees. Now you can experience what it’s like at Accenture without leaving your chair. Andy Kessler: Why AT&T Killed Google Voice.
Twitter’s Internal Strategy Laid Bare: To Be “The Pulse Of The Planet” On Tuesday evening more than 300 confidential Twitter documents and screenshots landed in our inbox. We said we were going to post a handful of them only, and we’ve spent much of the last 36 hours talking directly to Twitter about the right way to go about doing that. We’ll have more to say on that process in a couple of days. The documents include employment agreements, calendars of the founders, new employee interview schedules, phone logs and bills, alarm settings, a financial forecast, a pitch for a Twitter TV show, confidentiality agreements with companies such as AOL, Dell, Ericsson, and Nokia, a list of employee dietary restrictions, credit card numbers, Paypal and Gmail screen shots, and much more.
These are the last two documents we are going to share: a subset of the detailed notes from a set of executive meetings that took place between February 12 and June 9, 2009. Let’s start with a key strategy meeting which took place on February 25, 2009. Improving the Way Organizations Run. Why Few Executives Are Skillful Managers - Gill Corkindale - HarvardBusiness.org. By Gill Corkindale | 12:43 PM August 19, 2009 I work with senior executives from all over the world with remarkably diverse industries, backgrounds, and cultures, yet it’s always a surprise to realise that their development needs are very similar.
How can it be that a French CFO of a luxury goods company has the same management problems as a Kuwaiti operations manager? Or that a Japanese quality assurance manager has to deal with the same people issues as a German investment banker? The answer is partly due to the fact that there is a fundamental human psychology and partly because globalisation has narrowed the gulf between cultures. But there is another underlying truth: despite the billions of dollars, euros, and yen invested in coaching and management development, remarkably few executives can be regarded as skillful managers. There are three main reasons. With these thoughts in mind, I offer my clients a short and simple management development plan to get them going. Rules: 1. 2. 3. SixCentral : Client Proposal Organization and Management.
Schmoozing 101: Tips for shy techies. Gail Farnsley seems like a natural at networking. She made it part of her regular work schedule while an IT executive, and it's now part of her current job in academia. But Farnsley, a visiting professor at Purdue University's College of Technology in West Lafayette, Ind., says her networking skills didn't come easily. An introvert by nature, she says she was sick with nerves the first time she had to speak to the board of directors at one of her former employers. Nearly everyone has been unnerved at some time or another when meeting new people. But those who are introverted, shy or both usually have a more difficult time than others when faced with networking, says Naomi Karten, principal of Karten Associates in Randolph, Mass., and author of the e-book How to Survive, Excel and Advance as an Introvert. "In general, introverts are less likely to initiate a conversation," she says. Not to worry. 1.
"It has that connotation that if you're good at networking, you must be good at schmoozing. Catch Phrases That May Tip You Off to a Lie - Culture - Lifehacker. I used to work for a real d**k who was the model of the axiom, "you know he's lying because his lips are moving. " The number of times those of us working under him had to swallow our tongues while he lied through his teeth to his bosses were too many to count. One day, in a face-to-face meeting, he decided to critique my speech pattern telling me he never felt he could trust me because I would have many pauses in my speech - and he was "sure" others felt the same. Ignoring the irony of him worrying about trusting anyone, I suggested he learn more about people before he starts making ill-informed judgments. I explained to him that as a child I had to overcome a severe stammer, and that pausing is a way to short-circuit and instantly control it.
Made to look like the jackass he is, he shut up and changed the subject. And as I've learned over the years, my careful, well-paced speech is actually reassuring to most people, and enhances my credibility. Read This If You Hate Meetings - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com. This is the best explanation I have ever read of why I hate meetings so much, and why other people love them. If you are like me, you should save this link and simply forward it to anybody who asks if you’d like to “grab coffee” or “have a quick phone call to pick each other’s brains” or, God forbid, actually go somewhere and sit around a table with a lot of other people and have a proper meeting.
It is written by Paul Graham, and it divides the world into two kinds of people — managers and makers: One reason programmers dislike meetings so much is that they’re on a different type of schedule from other people. Meetings cost them more.There are two types of schedule, which I’ll call the manager’s schedule and the maker’s schedule. The manager’s schedule is for bosses. If this is a topic that interests you at all, you should go read the whole thing.
Perhaps I say this simply because I agree so strongly with what Graham has written. But when the time comes to write, I disappear. Getting Comfortable With People Who Make You Uncomfortable. If you’re out to create something truly great, you’ll likely need to challenge some widely held — but incorrect — beliefs. Challenging conventional wisdom is much harder than most people realize, and those that do make us uncomfortable. Which is why it’s so important to learn how to identify and embrace people who see the world differently than you do. Evolutionary Biology and Conformity Imagine our ancient ancestors out on the savanna in search of food. Chasing a large group of hunters who were running after something out of view was probably a better survival strategy than pursuing animal tracks that may or may not have led to food. Gregory Berns argues that mankind’s propensity to follow the crowd is at least partially a result of evolutionary biology.
Such a propensity is so ingrained in human nature that we will go to ridiculous lengths in order to adjust our beliefs to those of a group, as proven in the series of conformity experiments run by Solomon Asch in the 1950s. 1. 2. 3. 4. The Importance of Social Media Audits. In addition to constant listening and alerting to their market, brands should conduct an initial, then annual social media audit to be successful in their endeavors. Just as brands conduct audits of inventory, employees, and budgets on an often annual basis, they should also survey the landscape to find out what customers, influencers, partners and employees are participating on the social web. Audits are key for identifying priorities, benchmarking previous efforts, and planning for future efforts; the same applies for social media.
I’ve been reviewing social media strategy documents from a variety of large brands, and I’ve noticed the following three common traits: Understand the Three Types of Social Media Audits Initial Kickoff Audit. Brands should audit their social sphere as part of their initial planning process. Don’t conduct your audit in a vacuum. Steve Jobs on why Apple doesn’t do market research. Business of Software Blog: Seth Godin on why marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department. The Steve Jobs method. Image via CrunchBase It's been a long time since I did a post that was primarily a link to another blog with commentary, but I came across something today that I really want to share. One of the most common questions I get about the lean startup methodology is, "but what about Steve Jobs? " When I try to unpack what people mean by the question, here's my best take on what they are asking: "Look, Steve Jobs doesn't go out and ask customers what they want.
He doesn't put out crappy, buggy products and then ask for feedback. I rarely give a satisfactory answer to this question, because I don't know Steve, nor have I worked at Apple or Pixar. My normal answer is that I don't really think that's how Apple products are built. So imagine my delight when I saw this blog post with excerpts of a Steve Jobs interview. The key phrase for me is "having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it. " Kanban for Lean Project Management - Zen. 10 things you should cover in your social networking policy | 10 Things | TechRepublic.com. ROI Found Here: Online Customer Service Communities. In one of his more recent posts, FastForward colleague Jon Husband urges organizations to look past traditional return on investment (ROI) measures in today’s Enterprise 2.0 organization, because there are many intangibles that bring value to the organization.
Return on Investment in Interaction may be a more effective measure, he says. Straight ROI is difficult in Enterprise 2.0 environment, but there are some areas that can potentially be measured, as illustrated by Forrester analyst Natalie L. Petouhoff, Ph.D., in a recent study titled The ROI Of Online Customer Service Communities . The report observes that online customer service communities are now maintained by a host of mainstream companies, including AlterPoint , DIRECTV , Intel , and Verizon .
Natalie and her team spoke with some of these early adopters, and concludes that many are delivering an attractive ROI within “a short period of time while delivering better customer experiences.” Management Methods | Management Models | Management Theories. Why you have to engage in social media, even if you don't want to. If you read blogs about marketing small companies, you’re inundated with “social media” advice about why you need a blog and a Twitter account and everything else. Even my 90-year-old grandmother who doesn’t own a computer and reads my wife’s healthy cooking blog on print-outs asks “What’s Twitter?”
Because she read about it in the New York Times. Still, most people and most businesses don’t think they need a blog. In the next five minutes, I’d like to convince you that you have to jump into the world of blogging and Twitter and Facebook. Back in the late 1990s…. (Ew, don’t you cringe when you hear the phrase “back in the late 1990s?” Anyway, back in the late 1990s, there was a day (let’s call it October 19th, 1997) when suddenly every company in the western world decided they needed a website. Not that anyone knew what a website was for. What pushed everyone over the edge was that on October 19th, if you didn’t have a website you were invisible. How do you “win” the Internet? Want examples? Holistic Online Marketing. Home (Google-ize Your Staff Development)