Overcoming Adversity

Everyone faces adversity in the workplace and at home.  Whether it’s a co-worker who is jealous of your accomplishments, a vindictive supervisor, an unhappy employee whose daily goal is to make everyone else have a lousy day or a teenager at home who has questionable friends, every day presents a new challenge.  When I face daily challenges, I follow a few simple rules that can make the most difficult day an enjoyable one.

Spirituality/Prayer

Spirituality and prayer can be a powerful force for stress relief. Every day before I go to work and on my way home, I pray for my co-workers, family and friends.  Many of them are facing their own sets of challenges with sick or elderly parents, kids who are in trouble, an abusive spouse, financial stress and the list goes on.  If you think about it, by the time you get to work, there is an incredible dynamic of people of all different backgrounds and experiences, coming to one place to accomplish a goal of making your company perform like a well-oiled machine bringing their own experiences both negative and positive to the workplace.  If that’s not a recipe for prayer, I don’t know what is.  To learn more about the power of prayer and spirituality and how it relates to stress relief, check out this Mayo Clinic article.

Attitude

I have found that attitude has a lot to do with how I react to different experiences throughout the day.  When I go to work with issues and concerns about things happening elsewhere, I find myself bringing baggage with me at work.  It’s like going on a flight.  Check your bags and forget about them until you arrive at your destination.

Let your positive attitude be contagious.  People like being around positive-minded people.  When you surround yourself with people who are negative and every goal is impossible to achieve, you will fail.  Oftentimes, I have found that my attitude and not my co-workers is the thing that is holding back our success.  Don’t let your attitude be the reason why goals aren’t accomplished or why your co-workers are having a bad day.

Give

You’ve heard the old saying “it’s better to give than receive.”  It’s true.  Go to a soup kitchen and help feed the homeless or go to an organization like Habitat for Humanity or the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts of America and work on a community service project.  Reaching out to injured military service personnel like Wounded Warriors or being a volunteer for newly settled Syrian refugees will quickly put things back in perspective.

What does this have to do with adversity at work or home?  Everything.  Organizing a community service project with your co-workers, enables you to build a stronger community both outside your workplace and within your office.

Communicate

Communication within your workplace and at home is very important.  Many misunderstandings stem from miscommunication.  Email is easily misinterpreted.  How many times have you sent what you thought was a clear message only to get responses back that totally misconstrued your original message?

It might make sense to get up from behind your desk, walk over to the person you were sending an email to and have a conversation.  In a world of texts, SnapChat, and online messaging, it’s refreshing to have an “old-fashioned” face-to-face conversation.

Conclusion

Whether you are at work or at home, I recommend starting and ending your day with prayer (sometime you need to keep praying throughout the day especially when it’s an overly challenging one), have a positive attitude, have a charitable heart giving back to your community whenever you can and keep your lines of communication open and clear.  Using these simple guidelines can help anyone successfully deal with adversity.

If you want to learn more about me, please visit my LinkedIn profile, my website and my blog.

Photo credit: jlwo via Foter.com / CC BY-NC

Social Media Tips for 2016

Companies vary in their usage and understanding of social media.  Some are just starting out, while others have been leveraging several social media platforms to listen to what the market is saying about them, engaging with their customers and finding new ones through social media.  For B2B and B2C companies, think of social media as the new “barbershop” or “beauty parlor” of the next generation.  In other words, it is a place where you can update friends and family on what is going on in your life, as well as to hear what is going on in their lives.  Unlike your local gathering place, social media is a network of millions of people who talk to each other about everything and you have the opportunity to hear what they are saying.

Here are some social media tips you may want to try in 2016.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is one of the best business networking platforms on social media.  This is the place where recruiters find new job applications, businesses grow their customer base by reaching out to prospects and customers, professionals meet other professionals in their field to share ideas and insight, and you can learn from people all over the world.  If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile, create one.  If your company doesn’t have a presence on LinkedIn, create a profile for them.

Some professionals don’t understand why you should create a profile on LinkedIn when you already have a website.  LinkedIn enhances your company’s visibility in several ways. Often customers use LinkedIn to get an overview of the company and to find key contacts at that company to build relationships with.  LinkedIn also provides a personable side of your business. If you want to show the world that you value what customers have to say about you, you need to be on social media.  LinkedIn is the central location where new talent is looking for work and where leaders of companies and corporations go to network.

Facebook

Facebook was originally created for college students, but has expanded to every age and background all over the globe.  As Facebook continued to expand, parents and family members of all ages began using Facebook as a place to post family updates.  Why is this significant for business?  Facebook has 1.19 billion active users every month.  Putting it another way, that’s 1.19 BILLION potential new customers.

Facebook ads continue to grow in popularity as a way to drive traffic to your website.  Facebook Groups are clusters of like-minded individuals so you can target whatever groups of people that you want to.

Twitter

Twitter is an outstanding medium for broadcasting short, marketing messages about your products and services.  You can announce promotions, discounts, and new products while drawing attention to the interests and knowledge of your company.  The power of Twitter is listening to the conversations on social media and adding to the conversation.

The proper use of hashtags (i.e. #StarWarsTheForceAwakens) can get your announcements and messages in front of the right people at the right time.  You need to monitor what is trending and determine if it makes sense to join into those conversations.  You can also just put a # in front of a topic that makes sense for your product or service, like #businesstrends, #digitalmarketing or #marketingtools.

YouTube

If you have corporate or product videos, post them on YouTube.  YouTube has over one billion users, almost 1/3 of the number of people using the internet.  Videos are a great way of demonstrating your products, telling your story or showing your company’s DNA.  Like the other social media platforms, you can advertise on YouTube or through Google Adwords remarketing, allowing your ads to show up when people visit your site, then go to other Google network sites like YouTube.

Pinterest

Pintererst is a social media platform where you can “pin” photos and videos on other people’s or company’s boards.  Think of it as an electronic bulletin board.  Like LinkedIn and Facebook, there are groups of like-minded people that share their interests, recipes, photos in interesting places, etc.  If you find like-minded customers, Pinterest is an excellent place to start conversations and relationships and to increase search engine optimization for your website.

Instagram

Instagram is a photo-sharing social media platform that focuses on your personal experience to a particular brand.  It is a great place to build brand awareness.  Your Instagram page can connect to your Facebook business page to help solidify your brand.

Instagram allows you to show your customers the personal side of your business by sharing photos of your products, team and services.  Customers are more comfortable dealing with people they can relate to versus cold, aloof companies.  Small businesses can effectively use Instagram to show their personal side and hopefully relate more effectively to customers compared to big businesses.  Instagram can really help your customers visualize your company.

Making An Impact Using Social Media

 I like to think of Social Media as the next evolution of communication where you can connect with anyone all over the world.  How do you leverage social media to help grow your business?

1. Make sure that you have dedicated people in your organization who are knowledgeable about and skilled at social media. Business people that suggest that companies only need a part-time social media person don’t understand the power of social media. If you could listen to what your customers say about your company, products and services 24/7, wouldn’t you take advantage of that? Social media allows you to set your company apart from your competitors.
2. Determine which social media platform works best for your industry. There are many social media networks beyond the ones that I mentioned.  Do some research and find out where your customers and competitors are congregating.  Figure out which media platform will best reach your customers and bring in new customers.
3. Once you get your social media team in place and identify your networks, now it’s time to build a social media strategy and implement it. I’m a firm believer in synchronized marketing – getting all of your marketing efforts including social media working together in harmony.  For example, if you put a product on sale in a flier, make sure it is also on your website and be sure to communicate the sale through email, Google Adwords and social media advertising.  You can do “Facebook Only” contests that aren’t offered anywhere else but your Facebook landing page so you can then drive traffic to your website.
4. Once you get your social media marketing machine in motion, you can then train your entire staff to broadcast messages about your company, new products, and services on several social media platforms simultaneously. Be very careful that your staff is fully trained.  Social media is a very powerful tool – when you broadcast a message, it can easily be seen by millions of people.  Make sure the message that goes out is monitored and presents your company in a professional and positive light. Imagine that instead of a handful of people sending out targeted messages through social media, your entire company can expand your message exponentially through careful implementation.

Conclusion

In 2016, identify the social media platforms that make sense for your company.  Go where your customers and competitors are online.  Identify who in your company is responsible for social media, particularly in the marketing or corporate communications departments.  Make sure that you build a social media strategy leveraging other marketing platforms like print, web advertising, email marketing, Google Adwords, social media advertising and messaging.  Once you have tested your messaging and start building momentum, you can expand your social media messaging throughout the company under the careful direction of your marketing and corporate communications management team.

If you want to learn more about me, please visit my LinkedIn profile, my website and my blog.

Photo credit: Peter Ras via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA

Leadership – Learn from the Past, Thrive in the Present and Plan for the Future

True leaders learn from the past, thrive in the present and plan for the future.  Too many leaders focus on one or two of these elements, but not all three.  Without the proper balance, it is more difficult to get where you want to go.

Learn from the Past

Winston Churchill once said “Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.”  I believe this is true.  When you ask leaders why you do something a certain way, it’s alarming to hear “Well, we’ve always done it that way.”  That answer begs the questions the following questions.  “Is it still the right way to do it?” or “Is there a better, more efficient and cost effective way to do it?”  It is very easy to fall into the trap of continuing to do things a certain way because of process deficiencies or technological limitations.  If your ERP system can’t do what it needs to in order to move your company forward, then maybe it’s time to look at a new ERP system.  I know it’s expensive and painful.  I’ve lived through a few ERP system migrations.  If you live in the past, you will stay in the past.  The past is a great teacher for the present and the future.

Before large screen, high definition video, new car announcement shows often used large screen, multi-projector synchronized slide shows.  The images were crisp and clean, and with the images synchronized to powerful music, it was a sight to behold.  I know because I used to program them earlier in my career when I was in Cleveland and Detroit.  When large screen, high definition video became a reality, the market for multi-media slide shows quickly died.  Companies that had built their businesses on 35mm photography for these shows, slideshow creation, and multi-media programming either had to morph into something else or go out of business.  At the time, many of those businesses said that this high definition video thing was just a fad.  Tell that to Sony, Samsung, Vizio, Panasonic and LG.

Great leaders understand their company’s history and learn from past failures so they don’t repeat them.

Thrive in the Present

Thomas Edison probably didn’t wake up one day and say to himself “Hey Tom, we need to invent a light bulb today.”  He looked around in the present, saw the need for something that didn’t exist and found a way to make it.  It wasn’t easy and he failed more than he succeeded, but it was through the failures that success was born.  There were other sources of light before the light bulb was invented, but he saw the need to innovate and create something better.

Let’s talk about breakfast for a minute.  When I was growing up, it was common for families to go to a restaurant like Big Boy, Denny’s or Bob Evans to have a nice breakfast.  In 1972, McDonalds introduced the Egg McMuffin and five years later, a full breakfast menu.  The breakfast landscape changed.  Today, coffee, donut and other fast food chains like Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, Taco Bell, and Burger King are all getting deeply into the breakfast food market.  Not to be out marketed, McDonalds decided to offer an All Day Breakfast Menu in October 2015. Keeping your eyes on your existing competitors and watching for new ones is always on the mind of effective leaders.

Great leaders are aware of the business landscape of the present, know who the competition is and what needs to be done to compete and grow. Sales and revenue growth are important, but so is creating a working environment that draws the best talent that is out there.  Creating a workplace that is safe, fun and emphasizes a great work-life balance is critical. Customers like to do business with happy people.  Making employees happy today will make your company thrive tomorrow.

Plan for the Future   

Great leaders are future thinkers.  They don’t just look at where they have been or where they are, but they know where they want to go and have a plan to get there.  Although you can’t always predict where technology might take you, or what is going to happen in a global marketplace, you can decide how to get there today and make adjustments to your plan as the technology and business markets become more defined.  Did Blockbuster see the evolution of VCRs and Betamax to DVDs?  Did they see that the corner brick and mortal stores were going to be replaced by Redbox vending machines and streaming movies from Netflix, Amazon Prime and various flavors from different on demand channels?  No.  When that title wave came, they had too much invested in brink and mortar stores, they couldn’t recover quick enough.  Dish Network purchased Blockbuster in 2011 and by 2013 the brick and mortar stores were closed.  In 2015, “Blockbuster@Home” was renamed “Dish Movie Pack”.  As innovative as Blockbuster was in the early 2000’s, they didn’t see that technology would quickly overtake them.

Be honest, did anyone think 20 years ago that computers could be smaller than an 8 ½ x 11” pad of paper or that you could watch your favorite TV show, movie or sports team on your phone or you can listen to music on a device that is smaller than a pack of gum? Did anyone think that Dick Tracy’s wrist phone or Marty McFly’s hoverboard from Back To The Future II would be real? You might not be able to predict exactly what future technologies will be, but you can predict change and innovation.  It’s coming.  Be ready for it.

Learning from your past and not repeating the same mistakes is one leg of the stool.  Thriving in the present including understanding your marketplace, competitors and making your company a great place to work so your employees pass that enthusiasm onto your customers is the second leg of the stool.  Planning for the future by be being aware of technologies, domestic and global markets that will impact your business is the third leg of the stool.  You need to use all three to be an effective leader.

If you want to learn more about me, please visit my LinkedIn profile, my website and my blog.

Photo credit:  http://vividscreen.info/pic/future-present-past/19169/for-800×600

Stay Positive, Be Patient and Persevere

Things don’t always go the way you planned.  Let’s face it, you will have your share of good days and bad days.  Everyone around you has good days and bad days. It’s not unique to just you.  It’s a fact that you can’t control what you can’t control. When people around me have a bad day, they often take their frustrations out on me, and then I start to have a bad day.  Being negative is like a cancer that spreads.  Bad, negative things will happen.  The key is how you handle it when it comes your way.  Having a positive attitude is key.

When was the last time you said to yourself “I want to be miserable today, so I’m going to hang with someone who is already miserable?”  I would imagine not very often.  People don’t like to be around people who are going to bring them down.  Stay positive even when negative things happen.

I know a man named Bob who has been blind for most of his life due to a disease that took away his sight at a young age.  He could be miserable or angry, but he isn’t.  He’s one of the most positive, inspiring people that I know.  His positive attitude and faith in God are an inspiration to everyone around him.

Successful people stay positive despite setbacks.  Thomas Edison once said “I have not failed.  I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”  Edison took a positive spin on a negative situation and he didn’t give up.

Here are some tips that I use to keep positive.

• Volunteer and serve others – It’s easy to feel sorry for yourself when you have a bad day, but remember to serve those who are less fortunate than you to keep things in perspective. Helping others is a great way to get rid of negative thoughts.
• Speak positively about those around you – Don’t repay evil with evil. If someone says something negative, say something positive back.
• Smile – It sounds trivial, but it works. Regardless of how bad things seem, it will turn around. Smile through the tough times.
• Laughter is good medicine – Watch a funny movie or if you don’t have time, watch a funny scene on YouTube.
• Talk to a friend or family member – I find that talking things over with a friend or family member helps me put things back into perspective.
• Pray – Talking to God about what is bothering you is also important. He listens all the time.  Prayers do get answered.

Finally, when things start getting negative, stay positive. Be strong and courageous.  Remember, when the glass is half empty, it’s really half full and you can fill it to overflowing with a positive attitude and taking positive actions in your life.

Stay positive, be patient and persevere.

The Elements of Leadership

My last post about leadership talked about Bo Schebechler’s famous speech to his Michigan football team called “The Team, The Team, The Team.”  It emphasizes putting The Team ahead of everyone else including the head coach.  Servant leadership is a key element to strong effective leadership.  I’m going to highlight some other elements that I feel are equally important.

One of the foundations of being a good leader is honesty.  You need to be honest with your team, your customers and yourself.  How many times have we read about companies that made millions or billions of dollars only to find that the company as built on a smoke-screen of lies.  Enron’s C-level management stole $74 billion from shareholders.  Honesty is always the best policy.

Another very important element of good leadership is integrity.  Not only being honest, but having a good, strong moral character is key.  Leaders who have questionable moral character have that dark cloud over their heads.  Do you know what the leaders in your company stand for and believe in?  If you don’t, find out.

Tied very closely with integrity is trust.  Leaders with questionable integrity are difficult to trust.  Immorality is the enemy of business.  We’ve all done the test of trust at team building events when you fall backwards and trust that the person behind you is going to catch you.  You have to trust that the person behind you is going to catch you.  It’s the same in business.  It is much easier to do business with people you know and trust.

One element that is often forgotten is compassion.  Are your leaders compassionate to others? Do they contribute to charitable organizations with time and talents in your community?  How are your leaders giving back to the community?  Have you ever seen or can you envision your leaders working in a soup kitchen to help those less fortunate?  Do you serve your community?

To be a leader, you need to be courageous.  They take chances and do things that others won’t.  They are brave facing strong competition and are often criticized, but still stand strong through adversity.

One of the key drivers of any good leader is passion.  The leaders that have impressed me the most are ones that have a fire in their belly about what they are doing.  They love what they do and love doing it with the team around them.  If you don’t love what you are doing, do yourself and your team a favor.  Do something else.

The best, most effective leaders that I have observed are overflowing with humility.  Arrogance is another enemy of business.  Leaders don’t know everything.  Some leaders think that they have to always have the answers.  Good leaders don’t, but they do know where to get them. Good leaders have a great deal of experience and expertise, but they realize that they don’t know everything.  They surround themselves with talented people that are experts in their fields.  It is through this diverse and talented team who offer recommendations and suggestions to the leader that the leader grows and helps the team and the company grow.

The final element of good leadership is being experienced. You can implement all of the elements of leadership above, but if you don’t have the hands-on experience in the marketplace, you are trying to lead from theories and concepts, not real-world trials and tribulations.  A good leader is battle-tested.  They’ve been there, done that.  The other leaders of the company should be battle tested too so when they come together to lead the organization, their collective experiences should be shared and best practices should be gleaned from them.

To summarize, the elements a good leadership are:

• Servant – Serving others and putting the team first
• Honesty – Being honest with your team, your customers and yourself
• Integrity – Be of strong ethical and moral character
• Trust – Trust your team and be trustworthy
• Compassion – Give of your time and talents to those who need it in your community
• Courageous – Be brave and fight what you believe in
• Passion – Love what you do and appreciate those around you.  Passion is contagious.
• Humility – Humble yourself.  You don’t know everything.  Surround yourself with people who you can learn from.
• Experienced – Learn and grow from your experiences.

People like Bo Schembechler, Ronald Reagan, Pope Francis and others have demonstrated these elements and helped make them very effective leaders.

If you want to learn more about me, please visit my LinkedIn profile, my website and my blog.