Amazon Wish Lists - what took me so long?

Have you ever been reading an interesting article and it turns out the author has written a book which sounds equally interesting, but you just don't have time to read their book right away? What happens?

For some of us we open a document, or make a note and try not to lose the note and generally never get around to reading the book because we can't remember it when we get around to purchasing our next book.

Well not anymore. Now what happens is that I finish the article on my Kindle (see previous post regarding downloading articles to a Kindle), connect to the Amazon Store from my Kindle, search for the book, scann the user reviews and depending on how it looks put it on my Wish List.

It only takes a couple of minutes. This way I never forget the interesting book and new author.

While this may not be news for some of you, for others this may be a complete revelation. I never took advantage of the Wish List option on Amazon because I thought it wasn't worthwhile. It is, you should take advantage of this opportunity to always have a great list of worthwhile reading.

Now if there way only a way to be easily link these author's blogs and websites to this blog from my Kindle...

When CEOs speak: How execs’ quotes doom your pitches

What makes some press releases more effective than others? Mostly it is in the focus of the message. Here is an excellent article regarding something that all of us who are responsible for any type of outreach need to always keep in mind when crafting our messages.

It is so easy to begin any type of advertising or outreach with how great your product or company is. It is much harder to begin with statements about why your customers and prospects would want to use your product or company but they are much more effective. Take a good look at the direct mail, e-mail and the copy of advertisements you see and receive. Or better yet, reread your own press releases and advertisements. How many of them start out directed how great you are, and how many of them begin with why your prospects would / should be interested in you and your product? You will begin to see the difference.

Ever since somehow getting onto the Ragan PR Daily e-mail list I have been reading their articles and have been consistently impressed. If you are interested in PR this is a must read site, don't miss the "must read" section of articles.

Great article on future of Social Networking

Here is a very interesting article on the future of Social Networking. Lots to think about in this article.

Lessons Learned Q4 - 2009

Over the years I institutionalized Lessons Learned meetings with the various teams I have been leading, most recently Marketing and Product Management. I firmly believe in the value of making certain we understand the reasons for what happened for good and bad. These meetings are invariably valuable and have no doubt been one of the many reasons these teams consistently improved. It was great to hear people say in the middle of projects "well, that is going on my Lessons Learned list". While we certainly made mistakes and wrong decisions, we rarely made the same mistake twice.

Likewise, by getting into the habit of reviewing and updating my resume every quarter (thank you Manager-Tools, see the post on My Favorite Podcasts) that process is close to a personal Lessons Learned session. So if formal Lessons Learned meetings are worthwhile for teams, wouldn't they also be worthwhile for individuals? This post is a personal Lessons Learned review. This was an interesting quarter and there is a lot which should never be forgotten.

However, prior to starting that topic, the quarterly resume update comment should probably be expanded. The team at Manager-Tools recommended a quarterly resume update on one of their podcasts a while ago. Like much of their advice I followed it and as usual was happy I did. It is important to have an updated resume because you never know when you will need it. Forcing yourself to update your resume with specific quantifiable information, because resumes need to highlight results and results are quantifiable, you get into the habit focusing and measuring your results all the time. Certainly we should all be doing this but a quarterly update has helped me focus on making certain that what I am working on is measurable not just to the company, but to me and my career.

Back to Lessons Learned. The normal process for our team meetings is that everyone provides at least 3 - 5 items which worked well and 3 - 5 items we don't want to repeat. We put everything together count up the items which were mentioned multiple times, group everything together, send it out to everyone, review it at the next meeting and again when a similar project is started as part of the kick off meeting.

This list will be slightly different, this is a simple list of items I don't want to forget:

• I will always get promises in writing
• We all know this, but really, are all the promises which you are counting on in writing?
• My career takes active management - what did I do today to actively manage my career?
• Always know my value statement
• This is not a job description this is how I provide value to my employer. This should be in writing. Review as part of my quarterly resume review.
• It was very valuable to create a personal SWOT analysis - I will review this and update regularly along with my resume, quarterly.
• Always know what I want to improve and make a point of working on that
• Continue to make this specific i.e. time management, team management, better hiring, more effective presentations, better listening, etc.
• There are always ways to improve effectiveness and efficiency. Work on these relentlessly.
• Always be expanding my personal network of friends - continue to expand my network of friends.
• Make a point to reach out to people and connect regularly. Having more friends and being interested in others makes for a much happier and fulfilling life. Congratulate friends on their success and reach out to comfort those in need. Be nice to people, say hello to everyone, smile. I can meet a lot of interesting people that way.
• Always be open to new opportunities
• I may have (had) the best job in the world but don't kid yourself, it is not secure, don't ever think that again.
• Have a written set of goals which cover all aspects of my life that I review regularly
• Momentum takes a long time to build but can be stopped very quickly.
• Don't make big moves without making certain I understand the underlying issues.
• It may look good on paper but reality can be different. Remember the saying "the map is not the terrain".
• Leadership - have a vision, make it big, communicate it clearly.
• Develop multiple lines of communication and relationships within any organization.
• That is the only way to really understand what is happening. Always listen more than I talk. Always triangulate.
• Don't wait until the end of the quarter to build a list of Lessons Learned. Create a document and update it as needed. Clean it up and post it quarterly. I have the feeling that I have already forgotten some important lessons.
• Compensation drives actions and activity.

I would love to hear what you learned this last quarter.

Is Social Media worth the effort for most businesses?

I was talking with a friend regarding the value of social media the other day. His question was basically - is social media worth the effort for most businesses? My answer is yes, absolutely social media is worth the effort and cost. Even at the most basic level businesses need to be aware of social media and even if not trying to activity engage their public, completely ignoring social media and the online world is is dangerous.

The minimum actions every business should take:

1. Setup automated Alerts in Google to keep an eye on what is being said about your company, your brand and you. Even if you are not being proactive about building your brand online you need to be aware of any mentions in the online world. You may not stop something negative from going viral but you need as much time as possible to quickly craft a response.
2. Keep an eye on Review sites. One of the most popular is Yelp. These are sites where customers (and others) comment and rate everything about your business. If someone leaves a poor review sometimes you have the ability to respond. Be careful and take a deep breath before responding, don’t make things worse with a poor response. Apologize, invite the person back and see if they just experienced an “off” day. Offer to make it up to them.
3. Look up your business on Google, Yahoo and Bing. Make certain that what is displayed about your business is accurate.

Better yet, proactive actions to take:

1. Work to get your customer’s e-mail addresses with offers of discounts and advance or special sales. But don’t just spam them relentlessly, be careful about how you use your mailing list.
2. Setup Twitter and Facebook fan pages and make certain all your customers know about these. Provide updates on new products, new services, new employees, industry news, sales, discounts, specials or even publicize positive reviews or mentions on other sites.

Extra credit

1. Use videos of customers in your store offering testimonials about your products and services, post these on You Tube and link them to your facebook page or website. Twitter about them. The Flip camera is inexpensive and it has an easy to use interface to help you upload videos to these sites.
2. If a customer tells you how satisfied they are ask them to write a positive review on Yelp or to Twitter about it and you can re-Tweet it to your followers

Basic measuring of results

One of the benefits of online publicity, public relations and advertising (and let’s be clear, using social media to publicize your business is a component of public relations and advertising) is the ability to easily track results. The goal of all this effort is to increase sales. Like any marketing effort, measuring results is critical to determine effectiveness. The result of successful use of social media is generally to drive traffic to your website. Converting website traffic to sales is another topic. This means, however, that you need to be tracking the number of visitors to your site. The easiest way to do that is through placing Google Analytics code on your website and keeping a regular eye on number of hits, length of stay and general navigation. If your social media efforts do not begin to increase traffic then you need to change what you are doing with the social media.

 

Summary
While the use of social media is hard to quantify for many businesses, social media provides a cost effective outlet to help most businesses stay in front of clients and potential clients and it is hard to ignore the low cost and high potential. Do whatever you can to quantify results and start with tracking your website traffic. Then move onto conversion of traffic to leads and sales. Ignore social media at your own risk.

The unrealised potential of ERP and CRM

Have you or your company implemented either an ERP or a CRM system? Are you getting all the expected value from that system?

If so you are in the minority. Is that surprising? This is a very interesting article on the issues companies are having with the implementation of both ERP and CRM systems.

Although people like me who are responsible for the design, sales and implementation of CRM systems work diligently to help our clients extract all the value possible from our systems, the implementation issues seem somewhat out of our control and are dependent on the client. These numbers certainly look accurate to me.

While these systems are not easy to implement, it is possible to use phased approaches to implementation and make certain to get value at each step and make certain that the users are able to understand and use the system to get more effective at their jobs. However, many times we see installations which incorporate so much technology and have such lofty goals that the entire implementation takes too long and the business changes during the implementation which requie specification changes, team changes and soon a loss of focus.

To resolve this problem. See and understand the big picture. Target your objectives, solve immediate problems and require ROI at every step.

Measuring Marketing Efforts

If you are interested in measuring results of marketing and PR efforts check out this fascinating article “A Powerful New Set of Public Relations Measurement Standards - This time they're based on business outcomes. By Katie Delahaye Paine

Why is this an interesting article? Because so many organizations don't or can't measure the ROI of marketing efforts!

Upon taking over the Marketing department at our company there were many surprises but perhaps the largest surprise was an astounding lack of measurement. Sure we had a hard working group of professionals, but there was virtually nothing being done to quantify results of all the hard work.

However, the more people I talked to, the more I read and studied marketing the more obvious it was that we as a company were not alone in not measuring results.

Although this article is specifically about PR, the basic concepts are certainly applicable to all types of marketing efforts. Especially these days when so much marketing is social marketing. Social marketing feels a lot like PR so the framework proposed in this article is applicable to a much larger canvas.

This article outlines measuring results on business outcomes in the following four areas:

1. Financial
2. Reputation
3. Employee
4. Public Policy
and offer measurement guidelines for outcomes related to each category.

In our company's case, in order to begin measuring anything we had to start from the beginning including defining what we should measure. We started with a multi-month effort to clean up our internal database which included removing outdated information, de-duplicating records, updating choices and creating new processes to make certain that new data being entered was clean and contained the information needed to measure results.

We trained sales team members to correctly input data they collected and built reports which were reviewed daily to identify when data was not entered correctly. We held people accountable for quality of data issues. Important point – do whatever it takes to enforce clean data going in, it is worth the effort.

As all this was happening we began reviewing our website make certain that we had the analysis tools active on every page (we used Google Analytics) and were tracking web traffic accurately.

We reviewed and updated our lead forms, to make certain we were capturing the correct information and correctly mapping that information into our database.

We chose to focus on lead generation and conversion. Were we effectively generating enough leads for our sales team and which of the leads were being converted to sales? Not rocket science but something we could all understand and communicate. Of course “creating enough leads” turned into “creating enough high quality leads” because now conversion ratios were being watched.

As always, attitudes change, efficiency and focus improves because something is being measured. People wanted to be associated with a winning campaign or idea which also meant that our ability to measure and monitor constantly improved. Everyone wanted to make certain the numbers were good. When campaigns didn’t work, we made certain to no repeat the same mistakes which saved money. We did small quick tests – which is easy with e-mail campaigns to make certain that larger efforts would return the best results.

Unfortunately, the company was sold and the team partially disbanded, Marketing was taken over by the acquiring company. However, most of the team members were retained, just repositioned mostly because they could articulate their value and results. For those who were not retained, their resumes look much better because they are able to accurately portray the result of their efforts.

We would never have been considered effective if we hadn’t been measuring results. This article and the measuring framework described, if adopted, will help a lot of people and organizations.

Prezi - An Alternative to PowerPoint?

Have you seen enough PowerPoint presentations? By now we all know how to use PowerPoint but just because we use PowerPoint, does that mean that it is the most effective way to communicate complex ideas?

If you are ready for something different check out Prezi. This mostly web based presentation system provides some marvelous ways of enabling you to create compelling presentations. However, you need to be willing to change your thinking about how you organize and present ideas and concepts, which is probably a good thing. Of course some people would say that we have all had to change our thinking in order to get all of our ideas onto bulleted lists and into basic PowerPoint formats. I get the feeling that the people responsible for Prezi would say their system is a much more natural way of thinking.

The interface is mostly intuitive, once you get the hang of it. Additionally there are enough examples of Preszi presentations to provide some good ideas, on what you can do with this system and your seemingly limitless options on how it can be used which you will find to be very helpful.

Be aware there are some strange things in the system and I am still trying to figure out how to get that optimum level of creative, effective and quick with the system. But after a couple of hours of playing I was able to take our standard corporate overview and turn it into something which is potentially more compelling visually. Theoretically if we can get people to pay better attention, we should be able to convey our value more effectively, right? I know there is much more I can do but it is exciting to see the possibilities with this tool. Certainly the first couple of presentations created with Prezi will take longer to create but as you get more comfortable with this I am pretty certain this wouldn't take any longer than PowerPoint and the end result should be a more memorible presentation which effectively conveys our message.

There are some shortcomings which will hopefully be taken care of in the future such as the ability to group objects so they can be worked on all together and some more intuitive ways of controlling exactly some of the display during a presentations (probably my issue).

Overall I am going to continue to see if this can be used this for my corporate presentations. Certainly the next time I am asked to do a generic type of industry presentation Prezi will be the tool I turn to first.

Digsby is very cool

Just loaded up Digsby and this is something else that I wish I did earlier. This free utility makes it very easy to access and track all sorts of IM (instant messaging) clients, social media and some web based e-mail.

You can also add in Facebook and a load of other types of accounts. All these show up on your taskbar which makes it very easy to access and update whatever account you need. At work we had everyone on Yahoo IM but it looks like other divisions are using other systems and this will make it very easy to communicate with everyone with a single client.

Also I have a couple of Twitter accounts one personal account and one business account and this looks like the perfect way to keep up with traffic and messages.

I'll be playing with this a bit more but so far very impressive and easy to setup and configure.

The coolest technolgy ever - so far!

This 14 minute video showing Pranav Mistry talking about the thrilling potential of SixthSense technology is absolutely worth watching and considering.

Not only that but at the end he says he will be providing the code as Open Source.

This is a game changer. How long do you think it will take to hit the street?

Ice cream? Well maybe not

This list of the most unhealthy ice cream desserts would be almost funny if there wasn't such a massive obesity issue here in our country.

Hard to believe there is a milkshake with over 200 calories and 131 grams of fat (68 saturated)!

The best thing about this article is that it also provides some alternatives to the artery clogging calorie bombs.

I have been trying to eat a significantly more healthy diet over the past several years and the hardest food to pass on is ice cream. Thank goodness for frozen yogurt. My latest favorite "Cherry On Top" a price performer with all sorts of toppings and a pay by the ounce menu. Almost replaces ice cream. Almost guilt free.

What do we know about Motivation?

Think you understand what motivates people? Check out this 18 minute presentation by Dan Pink. Just as interesting are the comments and discussion below the video.

Looking back I think some of the best work our teams accomplished was due some of the motivators Dan outlines:

• Autonomy. Providing some sense of independence and control over their work.
• Mastery. Motivatation by opportunities to improve and excel.
• Purpose. Driven by what matters to themselves deeply and personally.

It would be great have an entire organization which implements these types of ideas. Can this be done company wide instead of department by department? Some are doing this.

If you are a manager, can you use this information to help you and your team be more effective?

Any thoughts or comments?

My Favorite Podcasts

Many years ago while watching the behind the scenes footage of the making of the Lord or the Rings trilogy, it showed the cast getting their daily makeup. They would sit in the chair for something like 60 – 90 minutes or more a day getting ready for filming. What did they do while sitting there day in and day out? Listened to music on their portable media devices.

I remember thinking, wow with 5 – 7.5 hours a week of sitting doing really nothing, you could learn a language, take a class or do something to expand your mind. Then I realized that for 30 minutes every morning while working out, what was I doing? Listening to a couple of random morning DJ’s prattle on about nothing interspersed with commercials. And I realized that I was wasting time just like the actors.

Within a couple of weeks I received an iPod and the same day a friend mentioned that I should check out all the podcasts that were available then he added magic words “for free”. I did and without trying to be overly dramatic, these podcasts have changed my life.

Every day while working out for 30 minutes, everywhere I drive one or more of the following podcasts are playing. These are my favorites, the ones that I regularly listen to. To get this list there were many others that were tried and discarded or that are just no longer in production.

Hope you find this list worthwhile. Here are my favorites and why:

Please leave your comments and thoughts on some which are worth listening to and why.

Business Casts

BusinessWeek – Behind this Week’s Cover Story
One of the casts I rarely miss. Keeps me current with the most important business thinking of the current week.
http://www.businessweek.com/search/podcasts/cover_stories.rss

BusinessWeek – Smart Answers
Generally good interviews with small business people who have interesting perspectives and thinking. Sometimes the interviewees are pushing their book but still there are a lot of good ideas in these casts.
http://www.businessweek.com/search/podcasts/smart_answers.rss

BusinessWeek – The Welch Way
It is too bad that with Jack Welch’s recent surgery these have been stopped for a while but it is worth anyone’s time to go back and listen to these short casts to hear Jack (and Suzie’s) thoughts and perspectives on business and current events. Facinating.
http://www.businessweek.com/search/podcasts/welchway.rss

Manager Tools
This is one I never miss and have listened for probably 80%+ of all there casts ever. These have made me a significantly more effective manager. These are a must listen for anyone working today.
http://www.manager-tools.com/premium/manager-tools-premium.rss

Career Tools
Part two of the Manager Tools podcasts which focus not on management skills but the individual’s personal career management. Important for everyone who has a job. I don’t know anyone else who is teaching this.
http://career.managertools.com/rss/rss.xml

Gartner Voice
Gartner has a lot of great research on a lot of topics. I pick and choose what I listen to on these casts. When there is an interesting topic to me I always find these worthwhile.
http://www.gartner.com/it/products/podcasting/rss/asset_137461_2635.xml

Harvard Business – IdeaCast
This is another cast I never miss. The topics are all over the board but always interesting.
http://hbsp.libsyn.com/rss

The Invisible Hand: Management, Economics and Strategy for the Thinking Person
This is a book review / interview podcast where the books are about the current thinking on economics. It may not sound interesting but Chris Gondek the host is a great interviewer and he almost always has interesting books and authors. He does a series of other podcast I have not listened to but could be worthwhile.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheInvisibleHandEnhancedVersion

Jenerous
Although there have not been any recent casts I have to put this down because I learned so much from these ~200 casts. I found this right when I took over the Marketing department and needed to understand what I was doing. Eric Mattson interviewed leaders in marketing, social media and more in these casts. There was so much information and he did such a great job with the interviews that I grew into an effective Marketer very quickly. Thank you Eric!
http://feeds.feedburner.com/marketingmongerpodcast

Marketing Voices
Jenifer Jones talks to all sorts of interesting people regarding the use of social media in marketing. I have learned a great deal from this podcast.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/MarketingVoices

Marshall Goldsmith
I just wish I found this earlier. Marshall is so filled with great perspective and he gives away what he offers his coaching clients. Absolutely a goldmine.
http://coachm.hipcast.com/rss/marshall_goldsmith.xml

McKinsey on Finance Podcasts
I can’t apply a lot of what is in these podcasts but they do help me change perspective and broaden my thinking. As this group influences companies all over the globe, why not listen to their perspective.
http://ksmediaserver.net/ftp/Podcasting/MoF.xml

Negotiation Tip of the Week
These casts are only 3 – 4 minutes long. Sometimes the sound quality are not great, but the host Josh Weiss is a very respected authority on negotiation and he packages little gems on the how, what and why of negotiation into great bite size pieces. Who couldn’t afford to be a better negotiator?
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ottergroup/negotiationtip

Technology

This Week in Tech (twit)
The granddaddy of technology podcasts. I learned a lot but eventually got tired of the length and the extended dialog about non tech items. They referred to BOL (Buzz out Loud) multiple times and so I eventually started listening to that Technology cast. One day I will try this again. But I did learn a lot with Leo and company.
http://leo.am/podcasts/twit

Buzz out Loud
My technology cast of choice right now. Although it comes out daily I only listen a couple of times per week. They generally stay on track and listening does keep me current.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/cnet/buzzoutloud

Personal Development and Other

43 Folders
Merlin Mann's show about finding the time and attention to do your best work. Based on his site, 43folders.com. Wow great stuff here. You have to find the right ones, but if you are looking to improve your time management and general organization skills do yourself a favor by listening and implementing Merlin’s suggestions. This certainly helped me. Another one of the shows I wish I knew about earlier. Some of the shows are several years old, but it does not matter one bit.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/43FPodcast

Stuff You Missed in History Class
Great hosts, great topics. These just make everyone who listens a more interesting person.
http://www.howstuffworks.com/podcasts/stuff-you-missed-in-history-class.rss

Stuff You Should Know
I pick and choose which casts I listen to. Again, these are topics which make us all more interesting people
http://www.howstuffworks.com/podcasts/stuff-you-should-know.rss

Pickup Podcast
I debated on including this. I can’t remember who introduced me to this but the topic was about meeting and talking to people especially in a sales situation. How do you walk into a room and make friends, get people to trust you? While this cast is all about pickup, there really are some gems about how to go out and make friends. The basis of what the hosts AJ and Jordon talk about are applicable to any sales person or to anyone who wants to make friends. There are a a lot of interviews which are way too much about pickup which you can skip but the early casts are filled with some good information about how to carry yourself and what type of attitude attracts people to you. All in all there is a lot to learn from these pickup artists.
http://www.pickuppodcast.com/podcast.xml

JapanesePod101
I travel to Japan and wanted to learn the language. It is possible. Although I have to listen over and over again. Additionally the hosts of this show have so much personality they were great to listen to. Too bad this show is still not on. Glad I downloaded a lot of shows prior to them going off the web!
http://www.japanesepod101.com/feed/

ChinesePod
John, Ken and Jenny do a great job with a very difficult language. They have gone to move of a pay model but if you want to learn Chinese this is a great way to do it. These hosts also have great personality. Very easy to listen to, just not easy to learn.
http://chinesepod.com/morganu/lessons/feed

Japanese SurvivalPhrases
Sort and sweet. Very helpful, but again, learning language takes huge amounts of time and effort.
http://survivalphrases.com/japanese/feed

Worst Cover Letter Ever?

Well maybe not the worst but it is pretty close. Although I have seen some poorly written letters this one really is in a class by itself. What makes this post especially interesting are the instered comments. A lot to learn from both the letter and the comments.

Click here.

Does anyone else have a great letter to share?

Enjoy.

Pearls before Breakfast - facinating article

My daughter turned me onto this wonderful article in the Washington Post.

Joshua Bell played a concert in a Washington D.C. subway station at rush hour. Pretty much no one noticed.

The article is so well written and the story is so interesting it just has to be shared.

You can access the article directly by clicking here or you can read what my daughter had to say on her blog by clicking here.

I would like to think that I would notice that the world's greatest living violinist was giving a concert in a subway station while I was racing to a meeting. Part of me says I would have noticed, stopped and appreciated because I appreciate beauty and music and I try to notice my surroundings. But part of me says that I would have barely noticed and would have kept walking, like the vast majority. Pretty sad. Guess that is just one more thing I need to improve on.

I Love my Kindle

Well maybe love is a little strong. But the Kindle 2 (www.amazon.com/kindle) has been a lifesaver for a road warrior who loves (yes loves) to read. But I am surprised at the other benefits this little device has provided over the last 5 months, other than getting me to purchase more books on Amazon over the last several months than in the previous entire year.

Invariably when leaving for the longest trips I am in the middle of a large heavy book. Halfway through the trip, the book is done and another is started. I can’t just leave a book somewhere, so it gets carted around taking up precious space and weighing down bags which get heavier and heavier as the trip wears on.

It’s not that the Kindle couldn’t be improved, yes there are a couple of little annoyances including poor image quality, not being able to easily find a glossary in the back of a book you are reading, not being able to go chapter to chapter easily, etc. but overall. It is a great device. The seamless connection to the Amazon store is especially nicely done.

But more and more I am finding that the Kindle isn’t just about being a great light, personal library of books which is great on a trip. It is becoming more and more about all the other reading which used to get saved up and gone through while traveling. For years I have cut out newspaper and magazine articles which look interesting but just not interesting enough to read, right now. All of these are put into a file which I would read while on planes, trains, hotel rooms or while eating a meal alone. However, more and more now these interesting articles are blog entries, or other online postings. But just like magazines and newspapers, I don’t always have time to read these “right now”. I am experimenting with ways of clipping these into little online libraries so when there is time I can get to a single location and read over everything I have marked. But I still don’t have a great system for doing that.

Well the Kindle pretty much solves this problem. It also solves the issue of my not wanting to spend any additional time in front of my computer other than what I am already spending. One thing about being in front of the computer at home is that my family assumes I am working and they are reluctant to talk to me. This is not the case while reading the newspaper or a book, but it happens when I am sitting in front of the computer. Sometimes this is just fine, but really, when at home, I shouldn’t put up any more barriers to talking with family than I already do!

How does the Kindle help solve these problems? When an interesting article appears somewhere, I print it to a PDF using a free PDF print driver, or copy it to a Word document and save it to a directory called “Upload to Kindle”. This way I can surf the web and find a number of articles pretty quickly and just save, save, save. I do this for several days and collect a number of articles or posts. When there are about a dozen or so I attach them to an e-mail and send them to [myname]@free.kindle.com

In just a couple of minutes Amazon sends a return message with the files all converted to Kindle format and it is easy to save them to the Documents directory on the Kindle. They are now ready to be read any time. Additionally once they are uploaded I move the PDF or Word files to another directory called “Already Uploaded” in case one is so good I want to send it to a colleague. This empties out the “Upload to Kindle” directory so there is never any confusion as to what was uploaded.

Also unlike purchased books, none of these articles are stored by Amazon so keeping them on the computer is a simple way of backing them up and I don’t feel strange about deleting them off the Kindle once they are read.

The other nice thing about the Kindle is the Clippings File. There are a lot of great articles our there but the fact is many times I really only want to remember a single section or a couple of ideas or links. Do you really need to keep the entire article for that? No, not with the Kindle. Just highlight the interesting section and the Kindle puts that selection into the Clippings File and it stays there even when you delete the original article!

You can also copy this clipping file to your computer where you can open it in Word or a text editor in order to navigate any links you may have clipped or send off information to anyone else.

I know it is possible to subscribe to blogs and even to surf the net with the Kindle. But I am cheap and don’t feel like paying to read blogs. It is cheaper, quicker and easier to use the computer to surf and it is easy to download only the articles which look interesting.

So now instead of carrying multiple books and loads of clipped paper articles, everything is all in one simple package. Plus the benefit of not spending as much time on the computer and getting at least at little more talk time with the family.

Better Late Than Never!

I think we all try and live without regrets, but invariably some slip through the cracks.

With all the listening and reading of management and leadership related topics, how did I not come across Marshall Goldsmith’s website earlier? What a goldmine of information he provides for free!

If you don’t know who Marshall Goldsmith is go to this link to see all his accolades and awards (www.marshallgoldsmithlibrary.com/html/marshall/Marshall-Goldsmith.html) or just know he is the most successful business “coach” ever. He has written 27 books, yet gives his information away on his website.

Until recently I ran two teams for my employer, a large Product Management team and a small Marketing team. Very different groups, both filled with wonderful hard working people. I worked hard to constantly improve both my personal effectiveness and the team’s effectiveness. For the most part everyone responded. Those that did respond and improved were rewarded, those that didn’t were replaced.

Much of what we implemented was based on the Manager-Tools program (http://www.manager-tools.com/) but some of us were also looking for other ways to improve other areas, everything from time management to leadership abilities. While I and others leveraged some other great sites which will no doubt be included on future posts, the one I wish I came across earlier was Marshall Goldsmith and his library website http://www.marshallgoldsmithlibrary.com/

Unfortunately I started reading and listening to Marshall about 3 weeks prior to my employer selling the company! I just started the process of implementing some of his techniques and both teams are reorganized away from me. Marketing is gone to the new corporate office and Product Management is being lead from a combination of the corporate office and my ex-right hand man (who is totally capable and this is a great opportunity which he is taking excellent advantage of as he should).

Just been given running International Sales leadership which means I will need to build some new teams and you can be certain that I will be using what I am learning from Marshall.

The regret is that I didn’t find him earlier. I could have been more effective and everyone on the teams I was leading could have also been more effective. But we all have to start sometime and I am just thankful I finally found these actionable ideas and steps to becoming more professional and effective.

Has anyone else been reading and implementing Marshall's ideas and programs? If not, why not? and If so, how have they worked for you?

Best management podcast and material ever

For the past several years I have been on a real self improvement kick. Not that I haven’t been trying to get better long before that.
But several years ago I received an iPod and other than downloading music I didn’t really know what to do with it until a friend turned me onto Podcasts. So as I exercise every morning which has been going on much longer than the iPod I have been listening to Podcasts.

These have ranged from learning Japanese and Chinese (still very bad at both) to business, management, marketing, social media, book reviews, news, economics, leadership and many more topics. It is hard to believe there is that much great information available for free.

My all time favorite Podcast has to be Manager-Tools (http://www.manager-tools.com/) Mark Horstman and Mike Auzenne have over 250 podcasts just on how to be a more effective manager. They also have casts on general career development and how to interview to both get hired and how to hire better people.

However, don’t let the massive volume of material scare you away, they have links to get to started with the management basics http://www.manager-tools.com/podcasts/basics-rss.xml and you can go from there.

Although I will be commenting on the other material which has made me more effective and there is plenty of great material out there, if you are a manager you need to listen and implement what is shared on these podcasts. The steps are very simple and actionable. I was able to implement their entire 4 step trilogy (you have to listen to understand that) and everyone on my teams improved tremendously. We all became much more productive and professional.

Do yourself a favor and check out this site and all the material they continue to make available.

First Post

Well I think it is time to have a blog.
It may take me a while to really get into this but it should be interesting.