Experience – A Critical Business Driver

By Dan Coughlin

Woke up the other day and found out I’m middle-aged. Here’s what happened. A friend of mine said, “Dan, now that you’re middle-aged, how do you feel about such-and-such a topic?” I said, “What are you talking about?” He said, “I’m serious, I want to know your thoughts on this topic.” I said, “I’m not talking about that part. I’m talking about that crack about being middle-aged.” He said, “Dan, how old are you?” I said, “I’m 46.” He said, “Dan, I have bad news for you. Not only are you middle-aged, you’ve been middle-aged for several years now.”

Well I’ll be darned. The whole thing happened so fast I didn’t even know it. Guess I have to order the Corvette now. Barb is not going to be too excited to hear about that. Now that I’ve come to grips with being middle-aged I have a few thoughts on experience.

Define What Words Mean
I’ve learned that definitions matter and we should never assume what people mean by a certain word or phrase. For example, when I say I “coach” someone, I mean I observe, ask questions, discuss ideas, and offer suggestions. However, when some managers say they need to “coach” an employee, they mean they need to tell the person what to do and how to do it. We’re using the same word but we have two totally different meanings. If I suggest to a manager to be more of a coach with her employees that can mean two different things, so I need to define what I mean by that word.

To me, “experience” means “extracting lessons from one set of circumstances and applying them successfully in another set of circumstances.” Consequently, experience is a function of being able to step back, reflect on what has been learned, and determine how that lesson can best be applied in future situations.

Experience is Not a Function of Age
The most experienced person in a group is not the one who has gone through the most situations or is the oldest, but rather the person who is the most effective at extracting lessons from one life situation and successfully applying them in another life situation.

I used to get jealous of people who achieved amazing results at a far younger age than I was at. I used to think they were just lucky. However, I’ve learned to dig for the truth behind their success, and I’ve found that experience can be gained at all age levels.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google, Inc., became millionaires in their 20s and billionaires by the age of 31. Recently they ranked in the top five of the Forbes 400 richest people in the U.S. They were just lucky, right? Well, let’s look at their life experiences and how they extracted lessons from one set of life circumstances and applied them to another. Eugenia Brin, Sergey’s mother, is an accomplished scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Michael Brin, Sergey’s father, teaches math at the University of Maryland. He has published a number of academic papers on complex mathematical systems. Carl Page, Larry’s father, was a world authority on computer science and artificial intelligence and a professor at Michigan State University. Gloria Page taught computer programming as a professor at Michigan State.

Growing up Sergey Brin and Larry Page spent endless hours studying and debating a host of intellectual topics within their families. When they met at Stanford in the spring of 1995 at the ages of 21 and 22, they almost immediately immersed themselves into intense arguments about a wide variety of topics. Through these arguments a great friendship emerged. Shortly after that they became intensely focused on organizing information on the world wide web in a way that a reader could get the content he or she wanted as fast as possible. They wanted to democratize information. With this single clear goal in mind, they applied lessons they had learned from earlier in life and began to develop a mathematical system for gathering content on the web and organizing it in a way that was useful to the viewer. Thus, Google was born in 1997. And as they learned more about how to improve their search engine, they applied those lessons back to their business. Today they are 35 years old and are two of the most influential business people on the planet.

Katey Charles started her own business at the age of 34 in February 2003 in e-marketing. She wanted to help organizations clearly communicate their messages in an efficient and cost-effective manner. Within two years, Katey Charles Communications was sending out over 13,000 e-newsletters a month. By 2008, her organization was sending out over 850,000 e-newsletters a month. This year alone her company has sent out over 5,000,000 e-newsletters. She was just lucky, right? Prior to launching Katey Charles Communications, Katey was head of communications and public relations for world-renowned artist Mary Engelbreit, where she developed Mary’s first e-newsletter in 2000. She invested 14 years as an Internet marketer, writer, managing editor (IPI Report magazine, now Global Journalist), graphic artist, art director (Missouri Life magazine), and overall communications manager. Katey extracted lessons from three critical areas, writing, media, and computer technology, and then compiled them together into an extraordinarily successful e-marketing business.

Jason Jennings wrote his first book, It’s Not the BIG that Eat the Small…it’s the FAST that eat the SLOW, at the age of 44. Within a few weeks that book went to number one on amazon.com and hit the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and New York Times Bestsellers Lists. Published in 32 languages, USA Today named it one of the top 25 books of the year. How lucky can a person get? First book and it became an instant bestseller. He seemed lucky until I dug into the details.

In his 20s, he was the youngest radio station group owner in the world. Later, he founded Jennings-McGlothlin & Company, a consulting firm that, within three years, became the largest media consultancy in the world. Jason combined lessons he learned on how to interview top performers, craft their ideas together in meaningful ways, and communicate those powerful messages in ways that could make a huge difference for the readers of his books. His purpose was to search for the very best companies in the world on a given topic, interview the executives responsible for running those companies, and then artfully combine the best of the best ideas for readers to be able to use in their organizations. He has since followed that book with two more bestsellers: Less is More and Think Big, Act Small. His fourth book, Hit the Ground Running, will be in bookstores soon. He has spent more than 25 years extracting lessons from one set of circumstances and applying them to others. It’s really not luck. It’s a proactive approach to improving one’s level of experience.

Ed Catmull didn’t really taste great business success until the age of 50. In 1970 at the age of 25, Catmull established a clear dream: to create a feature-length computer animated film. The only problem was that in 1970 you could barely get a computer to put out a still image. Over the next 25 years Catmull worked with a variety of investors, computer technologists, and animators to steadily extract lessons at each point in the journey and apply them to furthering the dream. In the end, he built Pixar Animation Studios and created the first ever computer animated feature-length film, Toy Story, in 1995. That film went to number one at the box office. Over the next 13 years, Pixar made eight more films and each of them went to number one at the box office.

At 62, Alan Weiss is today the world’s leading guru on how independent management consultants can build their own business. He has written more than a dozen books on this topic including his classic book, Million-Dollar Consulting, and his most recent book, The Global Consultant. How did he do it? Essentially, he extracted lessons from more than 30 years of experience as a consultant and taught them to other people wanting to start and grow their own independent professional services firms. Have you ever met a person who did something for more than 30 years and yet never extracted any lessons from the experience that they could apply to another set of circumstances? The key to Alan’s success is he stepped back on a regular basis, identified what lessons he had learned, applied the lessons in his future work, and shared those lessons with other people. That’s how experience becomes a business driver.

Experience Can Be Strengthened Like a Muscle
Regardless of your age, you can strengthen your level of business experience level right now. Here’s the process:

The Process for Gaining Experience

1. Recall a situation you have been in at any point in your life.
2. Identify the lesson you learned from that situation.
3. Clarify how you can use that lesson in your current work situation.

I know, it seems so simple, and that may be why so few folks do it. You’re busy doing your job and you have a ton of responsibilities, and I’m asking you to take out a sheet of paper and start proactively writing down memories, extracting lessons, and applying them to your work. Ok, we’ve established that this seems a little crazy. Now do it. Give it a try. Actually give it about ten tries. Within 60 minutes I believe you will land on a powerful insight that can improve your performance. And you will dramatically improve your level of experience.

The difference between investing time and gaining experience occurs when you step back from a situation, extract a lesson, and apply that learning in another situation. Going forward, I encourage you to pause after each situation you find yourself in, and ask, “What lesson can I take away from this event, and how can I apply it to improve results in another area of my life?”

“Good things come to those who wait.”
My dad’s not doing well right now. He’s been living in a nursing home for the past few months. When I visit him, I push him in his wheelchair all over the campus. When I put my arms around my dad and tell him I love him, memories of growing up with him start to flood back to me.

My dad’s favorite saying was, “Good things come to those who wait.” When I was about five years old, my dad bought our first electric typewriter. I can picture him sitting there writing, “Good things come to those who wait.” When I was 16 and wanted to borrow his car, he said, “Good things come to those who wait.” That was code for, “You’re not getting my car.” When I wanted to buy my own car at 18, he explained that waiting was better because my money could be used to help pay my way through school. Just now I’m starting to realize the true economic brilliance of my dad’s advice. Here are a few paraphrases of my dad’s philosophy:

Good things come to those who wait to buy a house or a bigger house until they can realistically afford the loan.

Good things come to those who wait to give out a loan until they find a person who can realistically afford to pay it back over time.

Good things come to those who wait to buy something until they can pay cash for it.

Good things come to those who patiently invest in improving their craft and not worry about how well other people are doing.

Really, really good things come to those who clarify a purpose and sustain their focus within that purpose for long, long periods of time.

As you read the examples above you may have noticed a pattern. Whether the story was about Google or Pixar or Katey Charles or Jason Jennings or Alan Weiss, they all had one thing in common. They clarified a purpose in terms of adding value to other people and then they stayed focused within that purpose for a very long period. Over the course of many years, their experience level for that particular purpose grew and grew and grew until one day they had each separated themselves from all the others in terms of the value they could contribute.

My purpose is to help people achieve remarkable results by explaining simple, practical processes of two to seven steps that they can use to improve their performance regardless of their title, function, education, industry, or age. It sounds so simple when I write that, but it’s really the challenge of a lifetime. Each process has to be so simple that any person can understand it, but so useful that every person who wants to improve his or her performance will gain value by giving it a try. Now the key for me is to continually gain more experience at crafting and honing the content and delivery of these practical processes.

Whether you own a business, run a business, or manage a part of a business, what is the purpose you are going to operate within for a very, very long period of time? After you identify that purpose, then stick with it. Someday you will have more experience within that area of focus than any other person in the world. And that will be your ultimate business driver. Find your purpose, stay patient, and gain experience. That’s how to generate extraordinary results.

Book Recommendations
The Pixar Touch by David Price. This is a remarkably well-researched book that supports my point about experience both with Ed Catmull and John Lasseter. I found these stories to be enormously useful and inspiring.

The Google Story by David Vise and Mark Malseed. This is another useful corporate biography from which you will be able to extract lessons for your job and your organization.

Dan Coughlin is a business keynote speaker, management consultant, and author of ACCELERATE: 20 Practical Lessons to Boost Business Momentum. He speaks on leadership, branding, sales, and innovation.

Blogging Is Dead, Long Live Twitter!

By E. Brown

Really? Who says, blogging is dead? Maybe it was Jason Calacanis. Well, if you’re Jason and your tired of writing lengthy content…yeh, blogging is probably dead for you. Twitter is short, sweet, and to the point. And, it doesn’t hurt if you have a following or are seen as a bit of a celebrity.

Well…it makes all the difference!

If you’re an average person, what do you care? If you’re blogging for your family and friends, then guess what? Blogging is not dead. If you’re tweeting for family and friends, good for you. Although, I question whether your family is reallt interested in where you are at any given time or how many times cute-little-Suzy rolled peas up into her 8-month-old mouth (See Twitter Is For The ADD Generation).

Sorry Jason, blogging is not dead. Twitter is fun for some, but it will soon be replaced by a type of video tweeting and live friend0finder mash-ups.

What do you think? Take the poll or make a comment.

Related Articles
- Twitter Is For The ADD Generation – Part 1
- Twitter Is For The ADD Generation – Part 2
- Twitter For The ADD Generation – Response
- Now, Some Possible Value In Using Twitter

35 Tips Toward An e-Learning Plan For Your Organization

I saw this, of all places, on the San Diego City College site under their military education department. It is really, quite a well put together list of tips, things to do, and think about when forging out into the world of online learning and training. Enjoy!

1: First Things First

The “e” in e-Learning stands for education — we too often forget that — it is not about bandwidth, servers, and cables. It is about education – first and foremost.

2: Find Your Roadmap

Do your homework understanding the basics of e-Learning — terminology, types of systems, resources available. The task seems daunting at first, but keep reading, asking questions and recognize that it is a cumulative process.

3: The Times They Are-a-Changing

Training organizations must rethink their mission, redesign their metrics, and retool their staff. From “We deliver classroom training that we think someone might need” to “We work with the entire company organization — senior management to individual learners — to provide whatever is needed at each stage of the learning life-cycle”; From “butts in seats” (or even “happy butts in seats”) to “discovered gaps addressed and met effectively as shown by multiple levels of assessment”; From “stand-up trainer” to “multi-modal consultant” (or from “a cadre of stand-up trainers” to “a team of learning specialists: analysts, assessors, designers, builders, and deliverers.”)

4: There is a Place and a Time For Everything

Be assured that e-Learning is not a silver bullet. Refrain yourself from using e-Learning for every training/learning opportunity. There is a place for e-Learning, but it is not appropriate in every circumstance.

5: Know & Respect

Know your team/role expectations and then communicate effectively with the entire team. I suggest brainstorming with the team to determine the most effective way and including IT resources. Respect all team members.

6: Start Small, Grow Later

If you’re just starting out with e-Learning, target a course that is small but high visibility for your organization. After it is deployed successfully, developing future courses will become more easily acceptable.

7: Learning Is Learning Is Learning

e-Learning is just a media, a small “e” in front of learning. Thus, everything fundamental about learning applies as well.

8: e-Learning = Learning

Be sure to wrap the e-Learning experience with pre-work and/or communication (motivation and preparation), real-time support (either on-line or a point of contact), and post-learning transfer activities (further coaching from manager, follow up communications, post-learning reading and activities, etc.) Just because it’s e-Learning doesn’t mean we should forget all the things we know about adult learning, moving new skills to performance, and enhancing memory.

9: The e-Learner’s Pledge

Recognize the skills that serve e-Learners well: Self Advocacy : “I need to learn”; Self Sufficiency: “I am responsible for my learning”; Self Confidence : “I can Learn”; Learning Process: “I know how I learn” and Self Evaluation: “I know whether I am learning.” Without this recognition, e-Learning is at best acknowledged as difficult.

10: Put Your Toe Slowly In The Water

Be slow with the ‘e’ in e-Learning. It’s always about learning first.

11: Don’t Fix What Isn’t Broken

Sometimes the classroom is the best solution. Keep an open mind and don’t create e-Learning just for the sake of having e-Learning.

12: The Rules Of The Game

Focus on people, then on corporate needs, then on technology.

13: Those That Can, DO

For e-Learning to be effective in business, it has to support “doing,” not only learning. Go back to a fundamental concept in education: behavioral objectives. After an e-Learning session, the student must be able to DO something, not just know something. If you can’t state a behavior that the student can do after the e-Learning session, you may have used the e-Learning tool as a hose to spray a thirsty student instead of as a glass.

14: Unite, Don’t Divide Your students

Before introducing e-Learning, find out more about the basic skills of the students. What proportion use a PC at work? What proportion have the required PC skills? What proportion are able to undertake e-Learning in the working day without prior clearance with a boss? The answers to these questions are critical in designing the overall strategy (and especially important at implementation time). If ignored, there is a possibility of creating or accentuating a digital divide in the students.

15: Show Me The Way

If the main reason you want to implement e-Learning is to save money … stop and ask for directions.

16: Do You e-Learn?

Make sure you experience being an e-Learner yourself before you attempt to deliver a course online.

17: Become an e-Learner

Experience e-Learning first hand to understand the student’s point of view in an e-Learning situation. What are the frustrations? What becomes easy? What do I, as the student, need to do differently? Do I have enough access to my instructor? Do I have access to the other learners? Do I feel connected to the class? Shut out and lonely? By putting oneself in this situation, trainers can begin to understand what they need to build into their design to assist the learners, who are also making the transition to e-Learning.

18: The “Hard Stuff’ Is The “Soft Stuff’

What’s hardest about e-Learning isn’t really the design, development, and technology. What’s hardest about e-Learning is getting learners motivated and organizations energized. Spending time on the “people-side” of e-Learning will pay great dividends.

19: Bottom Line

E-Learning is like any other benefit – staff will not use it if they (a) don’t know about it, (b) don’t understand it, or (c) don’t get it free.

20: First Time?

Consider blending e-Learning with classroom learning as a short mandatory component. This may help people to become comfortable with e-Learning if they haven’t tried it before.

21: Fill The Gap, Don’t Patch It

Do yourself, your organization, and/or your clients the favor of doing the preliminary footwork necessary to honestly determine whether the targeted reason for the proposed training will actually be affected by training. For example, is the “gap” something that can be narrowed via training, or does the underlying reason for the gap lie elsewhere (internal communication, company culture, management, tools, etc.)? Often times large efforts and budgets are expended building solutions to the wrong problems. Take a little time and money up front to properly analyze what should be done and why – it’s a step that will undoubtedly pay for itself several times over (either by preventing unnecessary training from being developed, or by focusing the purpose of the training that is needed).

22: One Step At A Time

First step: think about Learning. Second step: think about e-Learning.

23: Begin By Connecting The Dots

Always always always start with the business need the e-Learning is intended to meet. If you can’t draw a straight line from the course or Performance Support you are proposing to a bottom-line business result, then don’t do it. The only valid way to “make a business case” for e-Learning is to start with the needs of the business.

24: Training Is For Life

If you believe that your training is finished, you may be trained but you are finished.

25: Just Getting Started?

Making It Required May Lead To Success

Often an e-Learning course is successful because it is required. Associating a test with the completion of the e-Learning effort could lead to success especially in an environment new to this method of learning.

26: So Well Said!

On the road to e-Learning, make sure that Learning is in the driving seat, and Technology is in the passenger seat with the map. Learning decides the destination, Technology helps you get there.

27: Start From Square One

Analyze if/when online learning makes sense in your organization. Perform a needs analysis. Is there management buy-in? Do learners have access to the right equipment and software? Analyze which e-Learning delivery method is best: Blended/Hybrid Courses (part classroom, part online); Synchronous (online course, with instruction taking place in real-time via the Internet); Asynchronous (courses taken independently with minimal instructor support).

28: Don’t Get Myopic About e-Learning

E-Learning is only one of the many, many resources available to you to meet your organization’s learning needs. Use it appropriately. I got caught up in the hype until I was forced to step back and gain perspective about all the available tools and resources. As a result, my toolbox is now equipped to handle each job in a more effective and efficient manner.

29: e-Learning = Change

Treat e-Learning as a “Change Initiative,” not just another training program. E-Learning will represent a behavior change for most employees so you and your trainers need to act as “change agents.” If your organization has a Change Management discipline, use some of the techniques to guide you as you implement.

30: Look For Grants In All The Right Places

For associations and other non-profits, look for grants and other funding sources to get started in distance learning. We identified three curriculum development projects of key importance to the conservation profession and I was able to find funding for at least portions of all three, including assistance for our initial venture into distance learning. Once we gain experience, expertise, a body of courses, and (happy) learners, we anticipate that future projects will be more time and cost-effective.

31: Practice Safe e-Learning

For your first attempt to launch e-Learning in a slightly skeptical organization which has accepted the Business Case but is awaiting the outcome with interest, select a topic of enterprise wide significance which is needed by as many employees as possible and has to be delivered in a very short time. The message is to focus on an operational problem/challenge, see it as an opportunity to “‘sell” the e-Learning, produce something good but simple and practical, and go for it. Don’t begin with management development topics where the immediate gain may prove more difficult to specify to everyone’s satisfaction. Be safe, but effective.

32: Use e-Learning To Solve Specific “Pain Points”

Don’t go for an all-out Napoleonic attack with e-Learning, it might just result in your Waterloo. Rather, focus on a few pain points that can be best solved with e-Learning and just go after these.

33: Use e-Learning To “Info-Include”

e-Learning is a very good way to allow people to acquaint themselves with computers and the Internet. If you have “info-excluded” people that you want to involve and gain exposure to IT, try e-Learning with any content that helps this person to develop their competency on the job.

34: The Grandma Rule

If you are just starting out with e-Learning in your company, assume that your people know as much about computers as your grandmother. Then you won’t be too off base as you work towards changing their paradigms.

35: First Impressions Stick

Make sure a learner’s first experience of e-Learning is a good one or else they won’t try again.

More Mobile Learning With iTunes U

This has been out for a time, but thought I’d share. So, load up your iPod, hit the road, and keep learning!

Design Thinking (plus MIT Video)

My friend and co-worker, Craig Dockery, recently posted about an interesting article he read on Harvard Business Online.

Just a couple of weeks ago I read a great article called Design Thinking at Havard Business Online. In that article, Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, says, “Thinking like a designer can transform the way you develop products, services, processes—and even strategy.”
Read more…

This particular article above requires a nominal fee for downloading but there is a video (Real Video format) presentation on the same topic available at MIT World.

Some Guiding Questions To See If Your Organization Is Ready For Online Learning

By E. Brown

I was reminded of this just the other day while presenting to a client: Had they assessed their readiness to commit to online learning or had they derived a fanciful idea to move to e-Learning without counting the cost?

If you’re considering putting your content online for learning and training, I suggest you do a little homework and become familiar with what it will take to get there. Migrating to online learning is a journey, not a single event. Based on what your business and training goals are, you need to put together a plan or ask someone to help you put together a plan.

For instance, if you desired to build a house, what would you do? You would not buy a truckload of lumber and expect to have a house built in 2 weeks. No — first you would need a plan. During this phase of the project you must ask and answer a lot of questions that allow you to assess your readiness to build. It is much the same with online learning.

Here are some guiding questions to ask of yourself and your team as you get started:

Is your leadership willing to explore this innovative approach? You will need the support of your organization’s leaders to obtain the funding, technology, staffing, and other resources necessary to begin and maintain any new approach to education.

Is your competition already taking advantage of this new option on the corporate training menu? Although most new ideas take time to gain wide acceptance, some –online learning, for example–take off like a rocket. If your organization hasn’t yet made the leap, you may not be alone, but you soon will be.

Is your workforce ready to buy in? A Readiness Assessment may be the way to find out. This usually covers audience expectations, technology requirements, policies and processes, change management, and end-user support.

Is your workforce prepared to commit the time? The amount of development time will depend on your technology needs, the sophistication of your current training programs, the interest and comfort level of your leadership and workforce, and other factors.

Does your workforce have the literacy level and writing skills needed to contribute in a meaningful way to online dialog? Sure, cyberspace has pictures and sound, but it is primarily a world of written communication. Online learning for adults is mostly a matter of interaction via the written word, and online classes consist mostly of “living letters” written back and forth among students and facilitators. Is your workforce up to it?

Do you and your team have a rudimentary understanding of how online learning works? This is usually a basic introduction to the equipment and procedures involved in online education.

- Source: These particular sample questions came from FutureU

These are only a few of the questions to get you thinking. I hope this helps. Feel free to contact me for more information or visit TiER1 Performance.

Related Articles
- New To eLearning? Count The Cost

Inamo – Innovative and Practical Use of Technology

I just saw this on Dustbowl and thought, “Now that is cool!” Here’s a restaurant in Soho London that utilizes technology in a creative way. Visit Inamo to see and learn more.

Menus are projected onto tabletops, sweet.

East meets West / Asian Fusion

5 More Reasons To Love Your Mac (PC Magazine)

I saw this nice little article on PC Mag.com and had to share. Some of these I knew and some are now favorites. Enjoy!

Everyone has secrets—even your Mac. And your Mac may be your friend, your best friend, or even your only friend, but there are still a few things it’s not going to share with you no matter how close the two of you are. Did you know that your Mac can proofread—out loud? That it can help you create new keyboard shortcuts in most apps? Are you familiar with its security tricks? Its productivity skills? Come along as we uncover some of your Mac’s more exotic capabilities. Some you probably already know about. But we’re willing to wager that most will be new to you, though they’ve all been around at least since Panther (OS 10.3) and some have been a part of the Mac experience for as long as we can remember. Let’s get started.

Read more…

(Image Credit – PC Mag.com)

Amazon Kindle 2 – Maybe

What do you think — a new version?

After rumors surfaced on the Web a few months back that a new Kindle might be on the way, Amazon.com did its best to shoot them down, saying a new Kindle was not coming this year. Well, Boy Genius Report has gotten ahold of some photos that appear to be the Kindle 2, so we’re curious what Amazon has to say now.

Read more on CNet…

What do you think of the Kindle? I like the Kindle A LOT from what I have seen and read, but it seems very pricey. Kindle owners speak up. Is it really worth the $360 price tag?

Need A Blogging Strategy For Your Business?

My friend, Justin, published a nice little article on strategies he has been developing for clients. Many companies have Marketing Strategies, PR Strategies, Technology Strategies, Business Strategies, and Learning Strategies, but I do not know any that have Blogging Strategies. This would fit nicely within a Learning Strategy… don’t you think, Justin?

Recently I have been turning my attention to blogging strategy for business. And there are some interesting things to observe out of the process that are a tweak on good old fashioned communications planning.

1. If multiple blogs are a part of the strategy, you must decide on who the audience is for each one.
2. Decide who the author/s should be
3. Determine the appropriate tone of voice
4. Provide a guide to general direction of the posts and content. If you can outline 50 potential posts before you start you might be onto something – if not, rethink
5. Consider frequency and quality of posts
6. Integrity of the blog is very important

Read More…

In Learning Strategies we often talk about leveraging Web 2.0 technologies. We often recommend using Blogs, Wikis, Message boards, Chat sessions, and Social Networking. Yet, the idea of a complete strategy around blogging is intriguing.

What do you think?

Branding And Management Lessons From NASCAR

By Dan Coughlin

Thanks to the extraordinary hospitality of the folks at Toyota Motorsports, I had a dream day for a business writer on July 12th. My next book, which will be coming out in a year, is about management lessons gleaned from the history of auto racing.

On July 12th I attended the 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series LifeLock.com 400 at the Chicagoland Speedway. The race began at 7 PM, and I drove into the parking lot at 11 AM; it was eight hours before the action started. Or so I thought. It turns out that I was attending my first NASCAR race as a fan on the exact 50th Anniversary of Richard Petty’s first NASCAR race as a driver.

If I had had even a small clue about how many management insights I would gain from studying auto racing, I would have written this book five years ago. Here are just a few things I learned.

Add Value
A NASCAR race is so much more than just a car race. It’s a Super Bowl event. There were 75,000 people there, and I estimate there were at least 20,000 people tailgating at 11 AM. I repeat, this was eight hours before the race started. It’s a giant carnival, with actual old-fashioned barkers yelling out that they had free offers inside their tents. It’s a giant concert with singers and entertainers on stage all day. It’s a massive outdoor mall with over 100 booths selling caps, shirts, buttons, miniature cars, giant corn dogs, and even lemonade.
A NASCAR event attracts every conceivable brand name product. I walked through the largest Abraham Lincoln museum I’d ever been in, and it was on wheels. I even saw a display set up with dozens of the largest and most magnificent televisions I had ever seen.

The race – and the organization – provided value beyond its product.
What is the overall concept of the value your company offers and how can you deliver that value in synergistic ways that can support each other?

Personalize Your Brand
The strongest brands there were the racecar drivers themselves. People of all ages wore shirts with the faces and numbers of their favorite drivers. There was booth after booth of shirts, cups, cars, and other take home goodies with pictures of an individual driver and the number of their car on them. I bought two small replicas for both of my children of the M&M’s car that Kyle Busch drives and a Toyota Racing t-shirt for myself.
On top of all that, the drivers themselves appeared all over the place to meet with fans. These drivers are highly paid and are doing extremely intense and dangerous work for nearly three hours during the race. However, for several hours leading up to the race they are going around and saying hello to fans.
Can you imagine a CEO who makes millions and millions of dollars a year going around to customers for several hours to talk with them right before an important board meeting? That’s essentially what these racecar drivers do before every race.

How can you make your organization’s brand more personal for customers?

Create an Experience
There are 43 drivers who compete at each NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race and there are 36 such races each year all over the U.S. This is a traveling circus that is bigger than any circus I had ever witnessed. And then there’s the race itself. You haven’t heard loud until you’ve heard a NASCAR race. If you haven’t been to a race, then watching it on television doesn’t demonstrate the speed well either. These cars were within a few inches of each other going at least 160 MPH and jumping from high to low on the turns in the track.
The whole day pulsated with lessons both on and off the track including: branding, innovation, teamwork, strategy, execution, planning, problem solving, winning, dealing with change, and preparation. It wasn’t just a race; it was a 360 degree experience. I encourage you to read “One Helluva Ride” by Liz Clarke, which is about the history of NASCAR and also provides powerful thoughts on business momentum.
How can your organization take your product and create a compelling experience around it?

Make Your Own Pit Row
One of the highlights of the day was being allowed to spend 45 minutes walking up and down pit row a few hours before the race started. Pit row houses 43 pit stalls used to replace tires, refuel cars, and fix any car problems. The actual racecars were sitting about 25 feet away from pit row itself while I walked up and down.
This was branding heaven. A place where customers, corporations, and racing teams all met in one spot. It created an extraordinary win-win-win situation. The racing teams provided additional value to the customers by letting them see up close where the cars went during the race. I saw hundreds of photos being taken where fans would sit with the crew members and get their pictures taken in the pit stalls. Every one of those pictures the fans took had corporate logos in them. That meant the sponsors would be seen thousands of times when those pictures were developed and shown with pride to family members and friends. These corporate sponsors weren’t just hidden on the last page of a brochure. They were part of the fan interaction with the racing teams at the pit stalls.

As I watched all of this several questions popped into my mind. Can you imagine professional baseball or football players letting fans look in their lockers a few hours before the game and have their pictures taken standing in front of those lockers? Can you imagine corporate logos all over the lockers and the field itself? You might think that would ruin those games, and you might be right. However, think of the total cost of going to a Major League Baseball game or an NFL Game. I can’t afford to take my wife, Barb, and our children, Ben and Sarah, to very many Major League Baseball games. We have this thing called college tuition to pay for someday. The last time I went to a Major League Baseball game it cost me something like $225 for one night.

Yikes.

At the NASCAR event, the parking was free, the food was reasonable, and the ticket prices were not exorbitant.

How can you create a pit row in your business? Make a list of all of the types of customers you have. Now make a list of all of the companies that would like to sell to those customers. Could you create a unique event for your customers featuring your products and services? Could you then include other companies at that event as sponsors who would underwrite the cost of the event and benefit from being in front of your customers?

Mind the Caution Flags
During the race there is one turn in the track that has nothing to do with what’s right in front of the racecar driver. It’s called the caution flag. When debris lands on the track or a car gets damaged while racing, the caution flag is waved and all the drivers have to slow down and get behind the pace car. That doesn’t seem too bad, except for the lead driver, who has to slow down and let all the other cars line up right behind them. The cushion suddenly evaporates.

This same thing happens in business. You’re doing a good job and staying focused. You’ve built tremendous momentum and you are well beyond the projected pace. Your organization is by far the best in the industry, and you continually generate significant, sustainable, and profitable growth.
Then suddenly the market place changes. Instantly all of the businesses in your industry slow way down. A series of national stories about your industry immediately sends even your most loyal customers searching for alternatives.

Think of the housing downturn that occurred in 2007 and 2008. Suddenly the most successful and the least successful real estate agents were compressed into an incredibly tight market. The leader’s lead was no longer what it had been. When there is even an isolated incident of Mad Cow disease, it sends restaurants and grocery stores into a temporary spiral, whether they were way ahead of their plan or way behind.
This is why it is so important to focus on improving performance and not solely on your relative position compared to others at any given moment. Just because you had a great or terrible quarter doesn’t mean you’re stuck in that position forever. Perhaps your competitor made a big sale right before the quarter ended, and you made one right after the next quarter started. It looks like you’re way behind when in reality you’re not.

When your market gets compressed how will you be prepared to win the race in front of you?
I encourage you to go to a NASCAR race, but get there way, way before it starts and let the lessons on management soak in.

Dan Coughlin is a business keynote speaker, management consultant, and author of “Accelerate: 20 Practical Lessons to Boost Business Momentum.” He speaks on entrepreneurial habits, quality, leadership, branding, sales, and innovatio

Rethinking iPhone

When the iPhone first came out I was skeptical about it’s longevity…

As fantastic as the BlackBerry is for letting you connect to your office while you’re on the go, you have to have that office to connect to in the first place. I have a home office so I can telecommute to my Virginia-based job from New Jersey, but lately due to family demands I’ve been out of that office more than I’ve been in it. Next month I’m moving to a different part of New Jersey. The app store convinced me that I can lead a crazy web working life and still get done what needs to get done for my employers without keeping my laptop and its associated gear with me all the time.

Thinking about joining me in switching fruits from berry to apple? Here’s a quick look at what’s to love (and not-so-love) about being a new iPhone owner from the point of view of someone very used to the BlackBerry experience.

More…

Judi Sohn at Web Worker Daily made the switch and lived to tell about it. How about you?

Related Links
- iPhone: Apple Responds to Price-Cut Backlash
- iPhone – You Get What You Pay For
- iPhone Needs a Software Update Soon
- Why You May Not Want An iPhone
- Apple iPhone: 25 Days and Counting
- Apple’s Waning “Wow!” Factor