Monthly Archives: April 2012
4 Keys to Great Leadership
http://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffloftus/2012/04/11/4-keys-to-great-leadership/
Geoff Loftus, Contributor
There are 4 keys to being a great leader. That’s a simple thing to say but not an easy thing to do. Then again, adjectives like “great” shouldn’t apply to leaders who only accomplish the easy stuff, right?
The keys:
Focus. If you’re not focused, you’re not going to accomplish a thing. What would have happened if Samuel Morse had lost focus as he invented the telegraph? Until the telegraph came along, no idea or information could travel faster than the man or woman carrying it, and they couldn’t travel faster than the horse or sailboat underneath them could move. Thanks to Mr. Morse’s focus, the first instant communication technology was born. If Morse had lost focus, maybe smoke signals (an instant communication but limited by distance and the need for repeater stations, used by the ancient Chinese and Greeks, and more recently Native Americans) would have become the dominant methodology. Just imagine the skylines of modern metropolises, with smoke rising from all of the towering skyscrapers . . . .
Communicate. If you can’t communicate — with all of your stakeholders — you can’t lead. (See Mike Myatt’s excellent 10 Communication Secrets of Great Leaders.) You can’t lead if you can’t tell your people where you want to go and if you can’t inspire them to go there. Imagine Teddy Roosevelt charging up San Juan Hill (actually a significant portion of the Rough Riders charge was up Kettle Hill) — all by himself? He might have made it to the top alone, but it’s highly unlikely he would have taken the hill. For that matter, he probably wouldn’t have survived. But Roosevelt communicated the urgency of taking the hill to his men, and they followed him into the face of withering gunfire and won the day. It’s unlikely that your organization has faced actual bullets, but the way the economy’s behaved for the last few years, it probably feels like it has. Communicating to your employees, stockholders and customers will get you through.
Care. Most organizations seem to have no problem caring for their stockholders. But that’s not enough. You need to care about your customers and workers. Before you say, “Of course we care about them!” review whether the majority of employee raises have gone to senior managers or front line workers as the economy — and hopefully your organization — have recovered. Have benefits been restored, at least partially, to pre-recession levels? During World War II, Dwight Eisenhower made sure that enlisted men had equal access to recreational facilities and to captured provisions as officers, and received equal amounts of leave. He even threw a general out of a captured French villa and ordered it to be used as a recreation center for enlisted men. Does your organization care that much?
Be Honest. This leadership key comes straight from God. He laid this out for Moses (a pretty darn good leader) as part of the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not bear false witness. Actually carved it in stone. Moses had his failings, but he followed this commandment pretty well. He led the Jews through the desert for 40 years and actually managed to keep them together through the decades of hardship. And he achieved his goal by staying focused on his goal (getting to the Promised Land). Equally important, he was honest — in his dealings with God (think: board of directors), the Jews (his customers and shareholders) and the Egyptians (the competition). When he needed resources, he told God, and he was provided with manna and water. When the Jewish people lost sight of their goal, he reminded them that they were on the way to the Promised Land, and when they worshiped a false god he destroyed it (that’s a form of violent, physical communication that most modern corporate types should probably avoid). And before the Jews left Egypt, Moses tried direct, honest negotiations with Pharaoh. The negotiations failed, and you may remember that large numbers of Egyptians drowned in the Red Sea.
So, as you lead your organization to the post-recession Promised Land, stay focused, communicate, care, and be honest with everyone. (It probably wouldn’t hurt to follow the Ten Commandments while you’re at it . . . .)
Choose Your Own Biz Dev Adventure
http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottpollack/2012/04/05/choose-your-own-adventure/
by Scott Pollack, Contributor
When I was a kid, I loved Choose Your Own Adventure books. Do you hike up the mountain or take the shortcut through the cave? Every page had a decision to make, and every decision had a consequence that impacted how the story played out.
In Business Development as with those books, every decision you make about how to pursue an opportunity to create long-term value will determine the fate of your journey. Do you train your sales force to sell a new product, or do you find a distribution partner to take it to market? Every decision has a consequence.
Whether it’s selling into a new market, or creating a whole new product to offer our customers, recognizing where there is an opportunity to create long-term value from customers, markets, and relationships is only the beginning – a fork in the road that prompts a series of decisions about how you will execute against the idea. Once you’ve decided to move forward comes the next important question: which path should you take?
Perhaps one of the most valuable tools for assessing the best path to pursue a Biz Dev opportunity is to ask a simple question: Build, Buy, or Partner? Understanding the pros, cons, and tradeoffs in pursuing an opportunity by one means vs. another is a necessity for Business Development success.
The “Build” Option
The “Build” option in a Build vs. Buy vs. Partner decision means that you will use your company’s own resources to pursue an opportunity. Perhaps that means a software company uses their own developers to write the code for a new product, or a company extends their current salesforce into a new territory.
Going down the “Build” path necessarily requires a certain investment of time, energy, and commitment, and that requires understanding the tradeoffs. Do you have the resources to pursue this opportunity in-house? Is it the best use of your company’s time, money, and people? Will pursuing this opportunity cannibalize your focus from other higher priorities? Can “building” your way to this opportunity allow us to realize its value faster/better/more cheaply?
Pursuing a “Build” approach may enable a company to maximize certain benefits: maintaining the most control over execution, or capturing the “biggest piece of the pie” by holding on to all of the revenue that the opportunity can create. But opposite is also true: when you “Build” your path to an opportunity, the potential risk of failure is entirely your own to bear.
The “Buy” Option
The “Buy” option means that a company acquires the necessary resources to pursue an opportunity. For example, an architecture firm may outsource the development of their website to a web design firm, or a Fortune 500 company may manage their customer relationships via a third-party CRM tool like Salesforce.com.
Knowing when a “Buy” decision makes the most sense for a given opportunity comes down to an assessment of your company’s core competencies and priorities. Is this opportunity out-of-scope for what you do best? Would utilizing another company’s solution enable us to retain your focus on higher priorities? Do you trust that the solution someone else can provide will be good enough for your needs?
The “Buy” option often enables the fastest and easiest path to pursuing an opportunity: by utilizing another company’s off-the-shelf solution or outsourcing the heavy lifting to a specialist, you can gain the advantage of others’ experience and avoid the mistakes from which they’ve already learned (though there are exceptions to every rule, as the challenges of integrating another company’s product or relying on someone else’s timing can have the potential to create more hassles than if you were to have opted for the “do-it-yourself” Build route). But that convenience comes at a cost as buying your way to the creation of long-term value can often be the most expensive course of the three in a Build vs. Buy vs. Partner decision.
The “Partner” Option
To partner means two or more companies work together to mutually benefit from their relationship. Partnerships come in a variety of forms with a variety of ends in mind, from generating awareness of each others’ brands (brand partnerships), to providing access to a customer group that one partner can’t normally reach (distribution partnerships), to creating or improving products (product partnerships). Many partnerships start with one particular goal in mind – say, a distribution partnership to sell a California company’s products into the European market through the sales channels of a company in London – but result in deals being forged that combine a mix of multiple partnership types.
Why is it that partnerships are so commonly selected as the path of choice for pursuing a given Business Development opportunity? Perhaps because partnerships can often be the best, fastest, cheapest – or only – way to create value for customers and enter new markets. And the idea that partnerships imbue a philosophy of “shared risk, shared reward” provides companies with a comfortable hedge against downside in the pursuit of mutual gain.
But it’s also important to recognize the inherent compromise of a partnership: any deal struck between two companies requires one or more parties to give up some amount of two precious commodities – money and control. All partners in any deal need to be motivated by the potential long-term value that may come from the relationship, and that motivation often comes in the form of financial incentive (be it a revenue share, a bounty payment, or a pay-for-performance bonus). And certainly any time you rely on a partner to help execute against a plan you are relying on their ability to perform to your standards. Control freaks, need not apply.
Understanding the balance of these pros and cons can determine whether a partnership is, in fact, the best path: if your partner serves as a distribution channel, can their sales teams correctly explain your products? If you’re creating a new product together, is it possible to seamlessly blend your assets to create something people want? Does their brand reflect the values you want associated with yours?
By off-loading some element of the pursuit of an opportunity to a partner, you are putting your trust and faith in their ability to secure the value of that opportunity. But at the same time, you may also enable the pursuit of value that is otherwise unavailable to your organization.
Choose Your Own Adventure
Build vs. Buy vs. Partner provides a convenient framework for assessing the options available to you when pursuing a Business Development opportunity, but at the end of the day the decision is yours to make. Knowing how to read the signs at the fork in the road will help you choose the best path for your company. Make your decision, and enjoy the adventure.
Adaptable Business Concepts, Inc. becomes BBB Accredited!
February 13, 2012
Adaptable Business Concepts, Inc. is proud to announce that we have officially been accredited by Better Business Bureau. BBB was founded almost 100 years ago and has grown to be the leading resource for providing objective information about charities and businesses. This organization has eight standards of trust that they look for in a business, including trustworthiness and integrity. Although there are many requirements that must be met for a business to become BBB accredited, these standards of trust lay the foundation for those requirements.
Adaptable Business Concepts, Inc. is very proud and excited to be part of this organization. Our independently owned sales and marketing firm prides itself on the growth opportunities it provides for our employees.
Adaptable Business Concepts on Perseverance
October 1, 2011
It means repetition in the face of opposition. You keep doing the same small things over and over and over again. As you do the small things it produces the big things over a long period of time. Regardless of what comes against you, you keep on choosing to do the right small things. It’s literally putting one foot in front of the other every single day.
Small investments over time turn into huge rewards. You can’t lose weight overnight just like you can’t make up for the mistakes that you’ve made overnight either.
Small changes are what change you as a person over time.
Never Quit
September 28, 2011
Every successful person in the world has been through tough times and failure at some point in their life
-Albert Einstein was four years old before he spoke one word and seven years old before he could read.
-Sir Isaac Newton did poorly in school.
-Beethoven’s music teacher once said of him “As a composer, he is hopeless.”
-A magazine editor told Emily Dickinson she could not publish her own poems because they failed to
rhyme.
-Young Thomas Edison was told by his teachers that he was too stupid to learn anything.
-A newspaper editor fired Walt Disney because he had “no good ideas.”
-Ted Turner was expelled from College.
-Michael Jordan was “cut” from the high school basketball team at the beginning of his sophomore year.
-As a young student, Martin Luther King, Jr. was told by a teacher that he would never be able to speak with enough emotion to inspire people to take action.
The point of this is obviously to never quit. If it was easy to be successful everyone would be doing it. Most great successful people that we look up to have failed at least once if not several times in their lifetime yet they persevered and became the great people we know of today. Never giving up ultimately makes people stronger and propels them forward to be amazing examples that people look up to. So tough times don’t last but tough people do.
AbConcepts’s Thoughts About Personal Finances.
September 27, 2011
Physical intelligence does not happen when you have money, it determines if you do. Usually when people have more money they seem to spend more too. The more you know about money the easier it will be to handle and organize your money properly. Studies show that a typical millionaire lives on 7% of their wealth. 80% of millionaires have not bought a car worth $35,000! The average household income (so in other words combined income of two people) is $31,000/year and recent reports have shown that the average American debt is over 10K!! Crazy right? Seems like the name of the game is saving money. The better you grasp the concept of delayed gratification, the better you will be with your money. Life is like a cafeteria not a restaurant. You have to pay for things before you enjoy them.
The financial decisions you make now will affect you later on in life. Financial freedom is created not handed out. You have to ask yourself how str
Pain vs. Pleasure
September 23, 2011
All people take different paths and make different decisions in life but it seems that most people fall into these four categories of pain and pleasure…
1. Pain now Pain later- An example of this would be living off of minimum wage, living paycheck to paycheck and ultimately never taking your life in a different direction
2. Pleasure now Pleasure later -An example of this would be growing up with money, having a large inheritance or winning the lottery
3. Please now Pain later – An example of this would be the mortgage industry or getting laid off from your job that you’ve been successful at for years and having to start all over. Or perhaps college grads who decide to put off really working hard in their 20s and wait till they’re “done partying” to find their “perfect job” that they have no experience for; would also fall into this category
4. Pain no Pleasure later – An example of this would be working really hard for a few years for that really big promotion or for the opportunity to do what you want. So starting out in entry level and working your way up. Studying really hard in college for your masters. Going to law school or med school. Working really hard now so that you won’t have to later.
People are either going to be motivated away from pain or towards pleasure. But it seems that in these categories there are only two forms of pain, the pain of discipline and the pain of regret. Let’s take a look at working out for example. If you set a goal to work out in the morning and you decide to press snooze on your alarm, you would be left with the pain of regret all day long. If you decided to actually get up and work out you would have that pain of discipline maybe 1-2 hours but you would feel great about your decision the rest of the day.
Which one is worse?
It seems that there’s always going to be pain somewhere when it comes to decisions people make in life. Would you rather have pleasure now pain later? Or would you rather pay now and play later?
Either way you’re going to have to pay…
Adaptable Business Concepts’ 90/10 Principle
September 22, 2011
10% of life is made up of what happens to you.
90% of life is decided by how you react.
What this means is you have absolutely no control over that 10% but you determine the other 90%
For example red lights would be something completely out of your control. You control your reaction to it. Do you stop at it? Do you run it? If you run it you would obviously be putting yourself at risk for getting into a crash which is where that 90% comes from. That situation could completely change the rest of your day week or even year. Is it the Red light’s fault for turning red? Or is it your fault for running it?
What if someone spills coffee on you? You obviously can’t control that. Say you decide to get really upset, you yell at your friend, child or significant other for spilling the coffee. That person feels horrible and is a little put off by your reaction. You let it affect your entire day. Is it the coffee’s fault for your bad day or is it your fault for reacting the wrong way to a situation you couldn’t control?
In business and in life in general , the happier more successful people are the ones who roll with the punches and are down for whatever. They know that there’s negatives, obstacles and uncontrollable.
Successful people have a “Im gonna make it happen anyway” attitude and aren’t affected by that 10% of what they ultimately can’t control.
What will you do with your 90% today?
Adaptable Business Concepts’ Tips To Being Your Own Boss
September 19, 2011
1. It takes 2-3 Years to become good at being a manager. So many people focus on the future too much. This is the time to practice becoming a good manager now.
2. Work hard. You HAVE to have a good work ethic
3. Save money. Figure out how to budget now.
4. You’re going to have to make some personal sacrifices.
5. Failure is quitting so don’t be afraid to make mistakes.
6. Accept help and advice from others.
7. Establish respect from other managers and leaders
8. Be confident and enthusiastic
9. Accept responsibility for everything
10. Troubleshoot and prevent. Be proactive not reactive
11. Keep things simple. Don’t overcomplicate things.
12. Give opportunity to other people. Pay it forward.
13. Go out of your way to help others
14. Build lasting relationships
15. Be humble. Have a student mentality
16. Be a leader. Don’t be afraid to lead from the front
Adaptable Business Concepts 