By Verne Harnish

“…keeping you great”

HEADLINES:

Hiring the Right #2 — “Jemma is a great barrier to protect the team from my overzealousness and enthusiasm,” notes Naomi Simson, founder and CEO of Sydney-based RedBalloon, on her #2. “She balances all my ‘brilliant’ ideas with a focus on making them process driven.” Take five minutes and read ((http://www.gazelles.com/new_articles/Hiring_the%20Right2.pdf)) how she and other CEOs found their right #2s, one of the most important hiring decisions an entrepreneur will ever make, in my latest “Growth Guy” syndicated column.

Hiring the Right #3, #4, etc. — Gazelles is hiring; we’re excited many of our clients are hiring; and it’s still a great time to acquire critical talent. But it’s no time for amateur hour when it comes to recruiting and interviewing. The ONLY selection and hiring technique found to give a 90% success rate is the Topgrading methology. The rest of the methods: testing, behavior-based interviewing, or “passing the breath test” have between a 30% and 60% success rate — too costly! Join us for the #1 selection process if you’re going to hire at least one person in 2010:

“19 Appointments with the Right People” — and this note from Mark Dover of Canadian-based warehouse supply firm Doverco “I wanted to share the success we have enjoyed as a result of the Webinar we participated in several months ago given by Chet Holmes (http://www.gazelles.com/ggs_chet.html). Following the model of his ‘Best Buyer’ program, we conceived of a program of 10 monthly letters directed at 165 ‘Best Buyer’ prospects. Each letter contained industry intelligence (teaching is the highest form of selling as related to us by our Gazelles coach Les Rubenovitch) and our related capabilities. And every other letter had a small, low cost, attention grabbing gift related to the theme of the missive. We are at letter #6 and have already been able to secure 19 appointments with the right people! We have reached our objective and we’re only 60% through the project. Thanks to Les, Chet and Gazelles for making us smarter. BTW, the (Dr. Robert) Cialdini Webinar (http://www.gazelles.com/ggs_cialdini.html) on ‘Influence’ was awesome.”

Keeping the Right People Smart — commit to 90 minutes of first class executive education each month using our monthly online seminars — LIVE or archived; alone or with your team (perfect for the monthly management meeting). Jeff Jarvis (http://www.gazelles.com/ggs_jeff.html), author of What Would Google Do? is our February 18 online seminar; and Chip Heath (http://www.gazelles.com/ggs_chip.html), author of Made to Stick and Switch is our March 25 online seminar. These are the #1 business thought leaders of our time that would cost you $25k plus in speaker fees and travel expenses — now delivered right to your desktop for a fraction of the cost.

Vision Board Update — the children loved the experience of putting vision boards together this past weekend and I especially enjoyed sitting with my 6 year old daughter who surprised me with her desire to be a high board diver, something my wife always wanted to do but had never shared with any of us. We used Google image and lots of magazines to find the appropriate images for the boards — and appreciated the guidance given by John Assaraf’s The Complete Vision Board Kit (http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Vision-Board-Kit-Visualization/dp/1582701911/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263315748&sr=8-2)

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By: The New York Times/ Jennifer Walzer

I recently lost a longtime client, who was also a dear friend and valuable mentor, to prostate cancer. He was 52 years old and left behind his wife and two children. The other day I learned that another good friend was found to have skin cancer that had progressed to the point where he had to have glands removed. He was so busy running his company, he didn’t notice the moles that had started to look different. My friend is only 38 years old.

Like many entrepreneurs, I’m often too busy to breathe. I try not to put work ahead of friends or family, but I often end up with little time to take care of myself. When I started my business, I was in great shape from years of dance and regular exercise. As my business flourished, however, working out was replaced by simply working. And let’s not even think about the decline of my eating habits and sleep schedule. My business became my life.

After watching my close friends battle health issues and after dealing with a few of my own, I’m starting to look at things differently.

First, I realized that by not getting any exercise and not watching what I was eating, I was sapping myself of the energy I need to run my business. If you are like me (and I know I’m not alone here) you will get that energy artificially from coffee, Red Bull, sugar, candy or any other weapon of choice (my personal favorite is sugary gum and licorice along with hazelnut coffees and caramel apple ciders from Starbucks).

Next, regular checkups. There have been times when I felt I couldn’t afford two hours out of my day to see a doctor. I’ve canceled many appointments over the years because I felt I needed to go to that client meeting (and then it would take me months to get the doctor visit back on the calendar). Now I realize that I can’t afford NOT to go to those appointments.

Finally, I’m trying to listen to my body. As hard as it is, I know that when I’m feeling sick or run down, I need to try to rest for a day. If something persists, hurts, looks weird, or just doesn’t feel right, get it checked out. I know that sounds obvious, but so often we let things go. Now, I think about my friend who has skin cancer.

I turned 36 on Sept. 11, and I’ll be getting married in less than two months. I want to have the energy to continue running Backup My Info! for years to come. My fiancé, Brad, and I have started getting up together at 5:30 in the morning to go on our “workout dates.” I’ve started running and even participated in a few road races in Central Park. The difference in my energy level and the way that I feel has been incredible. Now, I’m only slightly tired from getting up early to run.

My team is in on it, too. One of my engineers has lost almost 50 pounds. Now, we try to make smart choices when we order our lunches or buy snacks to keep in the office. Not only does everyone look great, I have noticed that they are getting sick less often and are more enthusiastic and energetic.

Having my own business has some great perks but it’s also about making sacrifices. I just know that my health can’t be one of those sacrifices anymore.

Jennifer Walzer is founder and chief executive of Backup My Info!, which is based in New York. You can also follow her on Twitter: @BackupMyIn

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By: Harvard Busines Publishing/Bill Taylor

The Economist owes much of its popularity to its knack for challenging conventional wisdom. In a recent column, it applied its contrarian mindset to the question of what kinds of leaders make the best CEOs, making the case that what the world needs now are more “raging egomaniacs” and “tightly wound empire-builders” rather than the “faceless” and “anonymous” bosses running so many companies today — “bland and boring men and women who can hardly get themselves noticed at cocktail parties.”

The crux of The Economist’s argument relies on what’s known as the Great Man Theory of History. After trumpeting the virtues of business geniuses such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Lou Gerstner, and Jack Welch, it then generalizes from this handful of larger-than-life moguls: “The best ambassadors for business are the outsize figures who have changed the world and who feel no need to apologise for themselves or their calling.”

It’s an intriguing essay and a good read. It’s also a false choice — and a bad reading of history. For one thing, when it comes to larger-than-life CEOs, I can name as many scoundrels and failures as I can geniuses and world-changers. There’s a reason Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind titled their bestseller on the Enron disaster The Smartest Guys in the Room, and it goes beyond the criminality those deeply flawed executives displayed. That familiar phrase captures the mindset too many of us expect even our most honest leaders to display — the assumption that being “in charge” means having all the answers. In simpler times, fierce personal confidence, a sense of infallibility as a leader, might have been be a calling card of success. Today it is a warning sign of failure, whether from bad judgment, low morale among disillusioned colleagues, or sheer burnout from the pressures of always having to be right.

That’s not a case (and here’s the false choice) for aiming low or being dull. The best executives I’ve met understand that there is a vast difference between advancing big, exciting, important goals — aspiring to change the game in your field — and assuming that you know best how to achieve those goals. Sure, great leaders champion new ideas and disruptive points of view — they have vision. But that doesn’t mean they have to see the future on their own.

Just because you’re in charge doesn’t mean you have to have all the answers. Real business geniuses don’t pretend they know everything.

To be sure, it’s easier to divide leaders into either-or categories: risk-takers vs. bureaucrats, those with ambition vs. those with humility. Fortune just named Steve Jobs its CEO of the Decade — and while it’s hard to argue with the choice, it’s even harder to reproduce his talents. The problem with trumpeting the virtues of one-of-a-kind geniuses like Steve Jobs is that — duh — there is only one of them! Memo to The Economist: It’s not a good idea to urge CEOs to emulate leaders whose success is, almost by definition, impossible to copy.

Keith Sawyer, a creativity guru at Washington University in St. Louis, has literally written the book on where good ideas come from. In Group Genius, he explains how few leaders are prepared to recognize the messy and hard-to-manage truth about the real logic of business success. Many (perhaps most) executives subscribe to what Sawyer calls script-think — “the tendency to think that events are more predictable than they really are.” In fact, he says, “Innovation emerges from the bottom up, unpredictably and improvisationally, and it’s often only after the innovation has occurred that everyone realizes what’s happened. The paradox is that innovation can’t be planned, it can’t be predicted; it has to be allowed to emerge.”

Harriet Rubin, one of the great innovators in business-book publishing, and an accomplished author in her own right, uses different language to make a similar point about leadership and innovation. “Freedom is actually a bigger game than power,” she reminds executives who are eager to make their mark in the world. “Power is about what you can control. Freedom is about what you can unleash.”

The most effective leaders no longer want the job of solving their organization’s biggest problems or identifying its best opportunities on their own. Instead, they recognize that the most powerful ideas can come from the most unexpected places: the quiet genius buried deep inside the organization, the collective genius that surrounds the organization, the hidden genius of customers, suppliers, and other constituencies who would be eager to share what they know if only they were asked. For companies, and the CEOs at their helms, those are the smartest (and most sustainable) sources of greatness.

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By: Seth Godin

If you walk into a company-owned cell phone store to sign up for a contract, what are you worth?

Given the huge gross margins at AT&T and Verizon and the standard two-year contract, I think it’s easy to figure on more than $2000 in lifetime value.

If you ran a business where a customer represented an additional $2,000 in profit, how would you staff? How long would you make someone wait? If staff costs $25 an hour, how long would that extra person take to pay off?

Few businesses understand (really understand) just how much a customer is worth. Add to this the additional profit you get from a delighted customer spreading the word–it can easily double or triple the lifetime value.

So, a chiropractor might see a new patient being worth $2,500, easily. And yet… how much is she spending on courting, catering to and seducing that new customer? My guess is that $50 feels like a lot to the doc. Instead of comparing what you invest to the benefit you receive from the first bill, the first visit, the first transaction, it’s important to not only recognize but embrace the true lifetime value of one more customer.

Write it down. Post it on the wall. What would happen if you spent 100% of that amount on each of your next ten new customers? That’s more money than you have to spend right now, I know that, but what would happen? Imagine how fast you would grow, how quickly the word would spread.

Here’s how you’ll know when you’ve really embraced this–a good customer at your podiatry practice (or supermarket or tax firm) walks out the door in a huff and you turn to your partner and say, “There goes $74,000.”

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By Seth Godin

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By: Andrew McAfee/ Harvard Business Review

You’ve probably heard by now that “your brand is no longer yours.” The assertion’s based on simple math. In the era of blogs, discussion boards, Facebook, Twitter, and other Web 2.0 tools, virtually everyone can get online and talk about your company and its offerings. As a result, the amount of information your marketing and PR departments can generate is only a small percentage of the total volume of content on the Internet about your firm.

What’s more, if some of the external voices become as popular, or perish the thought, more popular than your official voice, then they’re going to show up high in organic (as opposed to paid) search results. For example, I just typed “Hummer” into Google. The second result is the Wikipedia entry about the vehicle, and the fourth one is a site full of user-submitted photos that are not likely to please the brand’s owner.

Every large organization I’m aware of is highly sensitive about its brand, and few are happy about losing or even sharing control over it. They react to the reality of Web 2.0 era in many ways, but most of them amount to some form of trying to exert or reestablish control. Some move their mass media campaigns online to counteract the outside conversation. Some try to influence the influential external voices. Many companies monitor the new online conversations, and also participate in them by setting up official Facebook fan pages, Twitter accounts, and so on. More than a few try “sock puppeting” or having someone on the payroll pose as an outsider with nothing but good things to say. This rarely works; Web users are reasonably good at sniffing out inauthentic voices and ignoring or blowing the whistle on them.

A few large, brand-sensitive organizations have taken another approach; they’ve accepted their lack of brand control and have actively encouraged insiders to join the online conversation without making any attempt to censor or even guide them. They’ve said, essentially, “You know us really well. Talk about us on the Web. We want the world to hear what you have to say.”

Does that sound risky to you? Can you envision dozens of ways in which that approach can go horribly wrong? Me, too. And yet, I keep reading stories like the recent one in the New York Times about MIT’s student bloggers, and they make me appreciate the brilliance of this approach.

Five years ago Ben Jones, then the director of communications in MIT’s admissions office, added a single student blog to the office’s web page; there are now eleven of them. Student bloggers are selected after submitting writing samples, and are paid $10 per hour.

I was an undergrad at MIT (just a few years before the blog era) and I assure you that most students there would treat the administration’s suggestions about appropriate self-expression about the same way Roger Federer might treat the local club pro’s tips on improving his forehand. The admissions office understands this, and wisely doesn’t try to edit posts or comments.

And not all content reflects glowingly on the institution. One blogger complained about problems with the resident advising system, while another wrote that she’s felt several times that she didn’t fit in at MIT. She also went on to say, as the Times story reports, that “MIT is the closest you can get to living on the Internet…IT IS SO TRUE. Love. It. So. Much.”

MIT could spend lots of money on their brand and image and never come up with a better advertising tag line than “The closest you can get to living on the Internet.” Indeed, part of what makes it so effective is not just its clarity and cleverness, but the fact that it’s being shouted across the Internet by a current student who is clearly speaking in her own voice. It’s just tremendous marketing; the admissions office couldn’t ask for, or pay for better.

Putting student blogs front and center is a mark of MIT’s confidence: confidence in itself as a healthy organization where the pros outweigh the cons, confidence in the members of its community who represent it to the world, and confidence that the people who come to its website will know how to interpret the information they find there. According to the Times article, potential applicants to the university are “less interested in official messages and statistics than in first-hand narratives and direct interaction with current students.” Does that sound at all like your customers?

Is your organization as confident as MIT? Are you ready and willing to let more internal voices communicate and shape your brand over time? If not, why not? Is it that you don’t trust your people, or your customers? Is it that you don’t want any negativity at all to appear on your digital properties? Or is it that you’re afraid there might be too much negativity?

I don’t think these are unfair questions, or trivial ones. Their answers will reveal not only how your organization sees itself, but also about how it’s responding to a world of reduced control over brands, conversations, and messages. Leading organizations are embracing this trend and, like MIT, they’re giving up tight control even when and where they don’t have to.

Lagging organizations are holding on to the illusion that tight control is still possible. 

You’ve probably heard by now that “your brand is no longer yours.” The assertion’s based on simple math. In the era of blogs, discussion boards, Facebook, Twitter, and other Web 2.0 tools, virtually everyone can get online and talk about your company and its offerings. As a result, the amount of information your marketing and PR departments can generate is only a small percentage of the total volume of content on the Internet about your firm.

What’s more, if some of the external voices become as popular, or perish the thought, more popular than your official voice, then they’re going to show up high in organic (as opposed to paid) search results. For example, I just typed “Hummer” into Google. The second result is the Wikipedia entry about the vehicle, and the fourth one is a site full of user-submitted photos that are not likely to please the brand’s owner.

Every large organization I’m aware of is highly sensitive about its brand, and few are happy about losing or even sharing control over it. They react to the reality of Web 2.0 era in many ways, but most of them amount to some form of trying to exert or reestablish control. Some move their mass media campaigns online to counteract the outside conversation. Some try to influence the influential external voices. Many companies monitor the new online conversations, and also participate in them by setting up official Facebook fan pages, Twitter accounts, and so on. More than a few try “sock puppeting” or having someone on the payroll pose as an outsider with nothing but good things to say. This rarely works; Web users are reasonably good at sniffing out inauthentic voices and ignoring or blowing the whistle on them.

A few large, brand-sensitive organizations have taken another approach; they’ve accepted their lack of brand control and have actively encouraged insiders to join the online conversation without making any attempt to censor or even guide them. They’ve said, essentially, “You know us really well. Talk about us on the Web. We want the world to hear what you have to say.”

Does that sound risky to you? Can you envision dozens of ways in which that approach can go horribly wrong? Me, too. And yet, I keep reading stories like the recent one in the New York Times about MIT’s student bloggers, and they make me appreciate the brilliance of this approach.

Five years ago Ben Jones, then the director of communications in MIT’s admissions office, added a single student blog to the office’s web page; there are now eleven of them. Student bloggers are selected after submitting writing samples, and are paid $10 per hour.

I was an undergrad at MIT (just a few years before the blog era) and I assure you that most students there would treat the administration’s suggestions about appropriate self-expression about the same way Roger Federer might treat the local club pro’s tips on improving his forehand. The admissions office understands this, and wisely doesn’t try to edit posts or comments.

And not all content reflects glowingly on the institution. One blogger complained about problems with the resident advising system, while another wrote that she’s felt several times that she didn’t fit in at MIT. She also went on to say, as the Times story reports, that “MIT is the closest you can get to living on the Internet…IT IS SO TRUE. Love. It. So. Much.”

MIT could spend lots of money on their brand and image and never come up with a better advertising tag line than “The closest you can get to living on the Internet.” Indeed, part of what makes it so effective is not just its clarity and cleverness, but the fact that it’s being shouted across the Internet by a current student who is clearly speaking in her own voice. It’s just tremendous marketing; the admissions office couldn’t ask for, or pay for better.

Putting student blogs front and center is a mark of MIT’s confidence: confidence in itself as a healthy organization where the pros outweigh the cons, confidence in the members of its community who represent it to the world, and confidence that the people who come to its website will know how to interpret the information they find there. According to the Times article, potential applicants to the university are “less interested in official messages and statistics than in first-hand narratives and direct interaction with current students.” Does that sound at all like your customers?

Is your organization as confident as MIT? Are you ready and willing to let more internal voices communicate and shape your brand over time? If not, why not? Is it that you don’t trust your people, or your customers? Is it that you don’t want any negativity at all to appear on your digital properties? Or is it that you’re afraid there might be too much negativity?

I don’t think these are unfair questions, or trivial ones. Their answers will reveal not only how your organization sees itself, but also about how it’s responding to a world of reduced control over brands, conversations, and messages. Leading organizations are embracing this trend and, like MIT, they’re giving up tight control even when and where they don’t have to.

Lagging organizations are holding on to the illusion that tight control is still possible.

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By: Sue Shellenbarger/ The Wall Street Journal

Are things you need to get done falling between the cracks? Does taking an entire day off seem impossible?

Maybe you need a time-management system.

Many readers seem to think they do, based on the email response to my recent column on the importance of taking time off. Dozens asked me to recommend a time-management method that would help them get on top of their work and home duties. In response, I asked a half-dozen executive coaches to help me pick the most widely used time-management systems—not just software tools or high-tech to-do lists, but behavioral-change techniques that help people get organized, clarify thinking and increase output. Then, I tried out for a week each of the three methods they mentioned most often—including one that involved a ticking plastic tomato.

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Patrick Conlon/The Wall Street JournalFollowers of the ‘Pomodoro Technique’ tackle tasks in 25-minute increments, with the help of a kitchen timer.

Of course, a week isn’t long enough to reap the full benefits of these methods. Still, I learned a lot from this experiment. Like many people, I am often my own worst enemy in managing my time, distracting myself from the task at hand, or setting myself up for failure by starting each day with an unrealistically long to-do list. Second, the key to getting more important stuff done is often doing less of everything else. And finally, getting control of your time requires a significant up-front investment of mental effort—and, well, time.

Here, in no particular order, are the methods I tried:

• Getting Things Done: The reigning gorilla of time management, “GTD,” as its followers call it, was created in the 1980s by David Allen, an Ojai, Calif., consultant whose coaching, training materials and seminars can be found at davidco.com. Mr. Allen has since sold more than one million books about GTD and attracted 1.2 million followers on Twitter. GTD’s aim is to corral all the projects and tasks floating around in your head into an organizing system you update weekly. No matter what chaos erupts, the system in theory enables you to quickly identify the next step to take on every front to keep all your projects moving forward, while keeping your mind clear to relax, think and be creative.

I start GTD with a weekly “mind sweep,” writing down all the stuff I should be doing, want to do or dream of doing. The resulting list ranges from essentials, like meeting my next deadline, to nagging worries, like updating college-financing plans for my kids, to future hopes, like volunteering as a writing coach for needy kids. Next, I sort it all and create new files, action lists, calendar items or reminders based on what is needed next—for example, whether a project requires action (the deadline); input from someone (a talk with my accountant about college financing); or deferral (the tutoring plan). My daily calendar is reserved for only the most urgent items, such as the deadline.

How We Did It

To pick the time-management methods described in this column, I asked several experienced executive coaches and consultants which systems they see used most often. The three that were cited by at least two or more of them are featured.

• The coaches: Marshall Goldsmith, Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., cofounder of an executive coaching network and author of a forthcoming book, “Mojo,” on happiness and meaning; Michael Goldberg, a consultant and speaker with Building Blocks Consulting, Jackson, N.J.; Rich Gee, a Stamford, Conn., executive coach; Brian Underhill, owner of a San Jose, Calif., coaching firm; Pete Walsh of Peak Performance Coaching, Phoenix, and D. Luke Iorio, an executive with the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching, Shrewsbury, N.J.
• Time-management systems specific to particular fields, such as sales, weren’t considered. Also, I chose to feature only approaches that offer practical help managing a typical, mainstream workday. That eliminated such popular but unconventional philosophies as the freewheeling approach set forth by author Timothy Ferriss in “The 4- Hour Workweek.”

When all the collecting, reviewing and categorizing required by GTD is portrayed visually on a “workflow map,” the result resembles a cross between a corporate organization chart and a map of Middle-earth in “The Lord of the Rings.” GTD fans liken it to learning a new sport, such as tennis, and say mastering it can take two years.

Nevertheless, I see some benefits right away. GTD has me clump tasks together by context; phone calls, for example, are grouped so I can run through them quickly during a spare moment. And GTD ends sloppy habits, such as stashing piles under my desk, forcing me instead to decide what to do with all the stuff and either file or discard it. As I comply, I revel in the vast expanse of clear desktop that appears before me. I doubt, however, that I have the perseverance to stick to this system.

• The Pomodoro Technique: This quirky method had me working in intense spurts guided by a kitchen timer shaped like a tomato—or pomodoro, in the inventor’s native Italian. Developed by Francesco Cirillo, director of XPLabs, a software design firm based near Rome, this technique is spreading via Twitter and other social networks. It can be learned in a few hours from a free guide at pomodorotechnique.com; making it a habit takes up to 20 days.

Journal Community

• Discuss: Do you use a time-management system? What’s worked best for you?

While any timer will do, I purchased my own tomato for $14.95. I start each day by making a log of things to do, then tackle each in 25-minute intervals called Pomodoros. When a Pomodoro is over, I mark an X on the log next to the item I am working on, then take a refreshing 3- to 5-minute break. Nothing must be allowed to interrupt a Pomodoro. If co-workers barge in, Mr. Cirillo advises trying to defer the conversation.

The method is based on the idea that time-management tools and techniques should be simple; that frequent breaks can improve mental agility; and that changing the way people think about time can ease anxiety, freeing them to concentrate better.

Although I found this method laughable at first, its simplicity is deceptive. Working with my ticking tomato made me aware that I constantly interrupt myself. Users are asked to put an apostrophe over the “X” on the log each time they are tempted to break a Pomodoro. I had no less than eight apostrophes over one “X”—marking impulses ranging from reading email to ordering a toner cartridge to running outside to see if my car had a flat tire. (Seriously.)

This method offers less help than the others with organizational problems; it is narrower in scope. However, it eased my anxiety over the passing of time and also made me more efficient; refreshed by breaks, for example, I halved the total time required to fact-check a column.

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Patrick Conlon/The Wall Street JournalAn example of a “Getting Things Done” workflow map

• FranklinCovey’s Focus: This method, subtitled, “Achieving Your Highest Priorities,” hits workaholics where it hurts—in their upside-down priorities. Created by FranklinCovey, Salt Lake City (franklincovey.com), Focus aims to help users jettison busywork and wasted time and devote themselves to their most valued pursuits. FranklinCovey has trained more than two million people in the method. Some of its concepts are widely known, such as “sharpening the saw,” a metaphor for setting aside time to take care of your health so you can work (and play) with more vigor.

Another well-known symbol, its four-quadrant “time matrix,” helps users distinguish among tasks based upon whether they are truly urgent and important; important but not urgent; urgent but not important; or neither. A pretest shows I squander one-third of my time on unimportant stuff. To remedy this, I settle down for a half-hour planning session, a weekly Focus requirement, to think through my values, identify the roles and goals most important to me, and block out time in advance to pursue them. I enter other tasks day-by-day on my calendar, prioritizing them based on their importance. Like GTD, Focus requires a fairly high up-front investment of mental effort to be useful.

Focus aims to break users’ “urgency addiction,” the habit of rushing around needlessly. By week’s end, I am surprised at how much calmer I feel, as I let insignificant stuff slide; in a spillover benefit, I am able to help my teenage son see that his race to finish a college research project early isn’t truly urgent. Also, in pursuit of the value I place on generosity, I start working early on a holiday gift for my extended family, a photo calendar; not only do I take more pleasure in making it, but I know it won’t be the usual slapdash, last-minute affair. In an era when values are often neglected, this system is a worthy antidote.

In the end, I expect I will embrace elements of each of these systems—the approach experts recommend for most people. The essence of good time management is sticking to rituals that make you more productive, and rituals are largely a matter of personal preference. “The only system that matters,” says Luke Iorio, president of iPEC Coach Training, Shrewsbury, N.J., “is the one that works for each individual.”

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By: Peter Bregman/ Harvard Business Publishing

Many years ago, when I first started my consulting firm, a friend of mine, Jane*, who worked for a large company, suggested I speak with her colleague, a man named Fred, who might be in a position to hire Bregman Partners.

So I called Fred, mentioned Jane and asked to meet with him. I’m very busy, Fred told me, let’s just talk on the phone.

But I knew the phone wouldn’t cut it. How about lunch?, I suggested. Or a drink after work? Or maybe just fifteen minutes in person somewhere?

Fred finally agreed to a short lunch. Then he canceled. We rescheduled. He canceled again. We rescheduled again. He canceled again. It was clear he didn’t want to meet with me. I almost gave up.

Here’s what I realized though: if I could avoid reacting to my feelings of frustration or hurt, then the cost to me of rescheduling the meeting was a two minute phone call with Fred’s secretary. And the upside was potentially enormous.

So I kept rescheduling until, one day, several months later, Fred didn’t cancel and we had lunch. Which was very quick, of course, but long enough for me to ask him to let me submit a proposal. A couple of weeks after I sent it to him, he left me a short message explaining that I had missed the mark but he’d keep me in mind. Right.

I felt affronted. All that work I put in and all I got in return was a voicemail? Again, I almost walked away.

But instead I called and asked for another lunch to understand what I misunderstood. He declined but suggested I speak with his colleague, Lily, who was in a different department and might have a need for my services.

So I set up a meeting with Lily. Who canceled. As I prepared to reschedule I noticed something unexpected: I started to enjoy the process of trying to get in, the challenge of making the sale. It became a game to me and my goal was to keep playing until, at some point, I’d say the right thing to the right person and get my foot in the door. I was, surprisingly, having fun.

And I was starting to be good at it. Scheduling. Rescheduling. Finding a way to keep the conversation going. You’d think it wouldn’t be something hard or useful to become good at but you’d be wrong on both counts.

Most of our jobs hinge on repetition. That’s how we become good at anything. The problem is we give up too soon because anything we do repetitively becomes boring.

That is, unless we have a peculiar taste for the task; if it captures our interest. For some reason, maybe we don’t even understand — and we don’t have to — we enjoy it.

That’s how I learned how to do a handstand. It always seemed completely out of reach for me. But then someone told me they learned as an adult. So I figured I could learn too. It took six months but now I can, somewhat reliably, stand on my hands.

Which has led me to believe that anyone can do anything. As long as three conditions exist:

1. You want to achieve it
2. You believe you can achieve it
3. You enjoy trying to achieve it

We often think we only need the first two but it’s the third condition that’s most important. The trying is the day-to-day reality. And trying to achieve something is very different than achieving it. It’s the opposite actually. It’s not achieving it.

If you want to be a great marketer, you need to spend years being a clumsy one. Want to be a great manager? Then you’d better enjoy being a poor one long enough to become a good one. Because that practice is what it’s going to take to eventually become a great one.

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell discusses research done at the Berlin Academy of Music. Researchers divided violin students into three categories: the stars, the good performers, and the ones who would become teachers but not performers. It turns out that the number one predictor of which category a violinist fell in was the number of hours of practice.

The future teachers had practiced 4,000 hours in their lifetime. The good performers, 8,000 hours. And those who were categorized as stars? Every single one of them had practiced at least 10,000 hours.

And here’s the compelling part: There wasn’t a single violinist who had practiced 10,000 hours who wasn’t a star. In other words, 10,000 hours of practice guaranteed you’d be a star violinist. According to Gladwell, 10,000 hours of practice is the magic number to become the best at anything.

Which is why you’d better enjoy trying to achieve your goals. Because you’ll never spend 10,000 hours doing anything you don’t enjoy. And if you don’t enjoy the trying part you’ll never do it long enough to reach your goal.

Eventually, after five or six cancelled meetings, Lily and I met for lunch. Which, as it turned out, was perfect timing. When we finally met, she had a real need, which hadn’t existed when we first started scheduling a meeting.

By this time, I was familiar to her and the company even though I had never done any work for them. I had been around for months and they trusted me because I followed through on every commitment I made to them.

That year I signed a large contract with Lily’s company. Twelve years later, they’re still a big client of Bregman Partners. And they still cancel lots of meetings with me.

*Some information has been changed to protect people’s privacy.

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By: Web Work Daily

Last year, I attended a professional workshop where the instructor asked us to write out our worst habit. Unfortunately, more than one answer flooded my brain, and I had to seriously consider which to choose. In the end, I decided that my most unabashed, shameless and ubiquitous bad habit is impatience.

My impatience invades every aspect of my personal and professional life. For instance, I constantly find myself wondering, “Why do these people take so long in line at the grocery store?” Counting out each precious penny, then pulling out a coupon, then deciding they don’t really want the milk after all. Instead of an express line for 12 items or less, I think grocery store lines should be divided up into only two lanes — a line for those of us who move fast, have somewhere important to go and something worthwhile to do and a line for those who don’t. See, I told you I was impatient.

In terms of how it’s affected my productivity at work, I’m embarrassed to say that my impatience has led to countless instances of emails sent in a hurry, which only needed to be retracted or clarified latter; decisions made on quick assumptions  — that turned out to be wrong — and occasional crankiness with those around me who are not moving fast enough.

Having pulled back the curtain on my own worst habit in the workshop, I decided to do something about it. I’ve spent a good deal of time over the last year working on my bad habit of impatience. And while I’ll never be “the soul of patience,” I have made progress. I’ve learned to quell my initial reaction to respond immediately, and, instead, take a deep breath and wait things out a bit. It’s helped my productivity by saving me time, money and stress.

“We all walk around on a daily basis with habits that are detrimental to our productivity,” says Larry Tobin, co-creator of Habitchanger.com.

Tobin, whose 42-day online habit-changing program deals with everything from quitting smoking to reducing stress, says that science has shown us that we can teach an old dog new tricks.

“A habit is an involuntary, unconscious action,” says Tobin. “Habits are learned, not instinctual. They are something we have taught ourselves to do, so it is possible to unlearn them,” he says.

In fact, a whole slew of recent scientific research in the field of neuroplasticity has proven that the brain has the ability to adapt to new information, if it’s consistently presented over a period of time. “It takes between 30 and 60 days of doing the same thing over and over again on a daily basis to create a new habit or break an old one,” says Tobin.

According to MedicineNet.com, Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. Neuroplasticity allows the neurons (nerve cells) in the brain to adjust their activities in response to new situations or to changes in their environment.

Why not put the power of your flexible brain to work? Here’s a simple, two-step process I teach my consulting clients to help them break down their bad habits and build up their productivity.

Step 1: Call out the bad habit and identify its negative consequences.

“To break a habit, the first thing you need to do is step aside and become aware of what you are doing,” says Tobin. In my 25-plus years as a consultant, I’ve noticed a consistent group of productivity-killing habits including procrastination, disorganization, being ill-prepared and operating in crisis management. What are your bad business habits and what negative impact has the bad habit had in your business (and perhaps personal) life? Here are a few examples:

• You work full-time for a company and often find that you arrive at meetings unprepared. The negative impact might include: Feeling unable to make a decision in the meeting, or the progress of the group being hindered by your lack of preparation.
• You’re a freelancer and procrastinate to the point of lost productivity. The negative impact might include: Missing a deadline for submitting a proposal for a new piece of work or delivering late on a project to an important client — hurting your credibility and chances for future work.
• You telecommute and have a disorganized home office. The negative impact might include: Being late to meetings at the office due to looking for needed documents at home or becoming distracted by to-dos around the house, rather than confronting cleaning up a messy home office.

Step 2: Create alternative actions.

One way to change an old, bad habit is to replace it with a new, better one. By practicing the new action, a pathway is created in your brain that, over time, can become as strong as (if not stronger than) the previous behavior. The key is to start small, with little actions you can implement easily. So get creative and think of some alternate actions you could take to counter the bad habit you identified. For example:

• I will schedule my computer alarm to notify me 30 minutes before the start of the meeting so that I have time to look over the meeting agenda and my notes before I arrive.
• The next time I have a proposal to write for a potential client, I will set aside a specific block of time in my calendar, on a specific date, to get it written.
• The first thing I will do every morning when I go into my home office is spend 15 minutes clearing off my desk or cleaning out a file.

Just remember, good habits don’t suddenly appear overnight; instead, they develop slowly over time, as certain behaviors — repeated over and over — begin to overlay the way you work. The good news is that, given a mind as malleable as yours, breaking bad habits is just a few new neural pathways away.

What’s your worst bad habit?

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By: Andy Liu

Have you been itching to leave your company for the past five years?  Do you have an idea that you’ve been passionate about but too lazy or chicken to get started?  Do you have a business now that is struggling to grow?  Have you been watching the late night commercials on how to get rich quick and maybe even bought a system or two?  Do you lack the confidence or knowledge to take the leap of faith and start your own dream company?  Then, you’ve come to the right place!  InspiredStartup will help you start and grow your company to as big as you can dream.

My name is Andy Liu and I’m the writer of InspiredStartup.  This is not about how to get rich quick nor is it an academic exercise in how to build a company.  This site is for people who dream and execute.  We’ll talk about how to start a business and how to grow it to the next level.  We’ll learn how to do hand-to-hand combat daily to build successful businesses together without the MBA mumbo-jumbo.  I want to see you succeed and to share your experiences here.  I want to learn from you.

My Story

As a kid, I learned the basics of entrepreneurship in my parents basement.  As soon as I would learn of guests coming over, I would find stuff around the house and put it up for sale.  I think my folks and the guests found it amusing, but I found out it wildly profitable since I never paid a cent and I made a lot of profit, it was fun and I was hooked!

At the age of 15, I started working at Godfather’s pizza.  I think that everyone should work at a restaurant at least once in their life – what an eye-opening experience as I learned about the good, bad, and ugly of running a restaurant business through the eyes of a cashier and pizza maker.  I think in one summer, I consumed on average a large pizza each day.  Those were the good ol’ days of being able to consume without worry of mushrooming…

Due to a variety of personal and family reasons, I started working full-time for AT&T at the age of 16 in the summer and then continued working for a variety of large companies including Boeing, Keane, Active Voice and other places including a failed startup while getting my bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering.   I learned quickly that I didn’t enjoy the engineering lifestyle and naively, I thought I learned enough from those experiences to jump into my first “real” startup with investors at the age of 23 while going to school for my MBA.  Nothing ever came real easy, but we were able to work hard hours to build a great, profitable company in 5 years and eventually sell the company.   

Beyond my professional pursuits, I am just as passionate about using entrepreneurship to solve the problem of extreme poverty (defined as those who make less than $2/day).   After traveling and volunteering in developing countries as often as I can, I’ve been moved by our personal responsibility to human dignity and bridging the inequality between the rich and the extreme poor.  I’ve partnered with other tech folks to build a technology center for an impoverished community in Central America.  We have a teacher and social worker on staff and have graduated several students and committed to a 5-year plan.  It’s been a total blast to see real progress and awe-inspiring to see students embrace entrepreneurship in their own pursuits and dreams.  I’m looking forward to sharing more inspirational stories here.  I also want to hear about your passions and thoughts in this area as I think we can as entrepreneurs change the world.          

About Me and Inspired Startup in a Nutshell

I’m a serial entrepreneur and angel investor.  I’m also a die-hard never-say-die Seattle sports fan. I’m now running a web company (BuddyTV.com) and sit on 4 boards as well as 2 non-profits and have invested in 13 companies (including one exit).  I feel very fortunate to have a great partner in my businesses and have been extremely lucky that despite my shortcomings, I’ve seen more successes than failures.  I could talk for hours with entrepreneurs about new ideas and I get energized hearing about other entrepreneurial successes.  We do not exist in a zero-sum world, where someone must fail in order for someone to win, if we can all help each other succeed, we’ll only be better for it!  Remember the saying, a rising tide raises all boats.  InspiredStartup is here to raise the tide for all entrepreneurs (including wanna-bes!).  If I can help you, let me know.

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