It's more than just the game

In watching my kids and the various sports teams they are involved with, one thing is apparent:  the athletes that put in extra time to develop their skills fare better in the game.

Some of the athletes on the team rely solely on scheduled practices to get them ready for the game.  In other words, they do what is required and not much beyond that.

In contrast, the "high performers" on the team tend to do more than that, such as practicing skills & drills on their own time, doing conditioning and weights to strengthen themselves, etc.  These “extra” activities make those players better athletes in general and you can see that in their performance on the field (and they also tend to experience fewer injuries).

There is something to be learned there about business, too.  Are you a “show up for practices and games” kind of person, or do you work on your skills, conditioning, and other aspects of self-improvement away from work? 

For me (while I’m not always consistent about it), this kind of extra conditioning involves reading, attending webinars / seminars, benchmarking with other people to share skills, and things like that.  It also involves trying out different skills in other environments such as some of the scouting, church, and other teams I’m involved in (it’s much safer to try out a new “influencing others” play in volunteer roles, and it can be fun).

What about you?  How do your sharpen your saw away from work?  If you have any best practices to share I’d love to hear them.

Marketing in the Time of Cholera

Just finished reading a book by a friend of mine, Mark Gaydos, who’s chosen the provocative title, “Marketing in the Time of Cholera: : 6.5 Fundamentals for Thriving in a Toxic Economy.” Mark’s an industry veteran in marketing, as well as a university instructor on this topic, so he really knows his stuff.

Mark’s premise is that you don’t have to create some wild, crazy, Kanye West-like incident to stand out in the market, and that “marketing fundamentals” can guide you on where and how to invest for maximum success and revenue influence from marketing programs.

The book is very instructive regarding how to view your marketing programs from the customer’s perspective, and what kinds of metrics and indicators you can use to measure your success.

The book include sample analyses of marketing programs, examples of effective & ineffective web sites, banner ads, newsletters, etc. which help illustrate how to take a customer-oriented marketing approach.

The best news?  The book is free, and Mark doesn’t even ask for your email address (I guess he’ll make it up in volume…) 

You can download your free copy at the Marketing In The Time of Cholera book site, where you’ll also find a couple of videos in which Mark discusses how the book can help you.  Enjoy!

Focus – is yours helping you or hurting you?

Some of you may know that I do some guest writing on the Joyful Jubilant Learning (JJL) community site.  If you don’t follow JJL, just wanted to let you know that my latest post, “Where are you focusing?,” went live a few hours ago.

Today’s post was inspired by a Johnny Cash song (which was a remake of a Nine Inch Nails song), which got me thinking about focus, and whether my current focus is making my life better or worse. 

In essence, the thinking is this:  When things aren’t going your way, it’s easy to get into a negative spiral.  You can’t control things around you, but you can control your focus and the way you frame your world.

Anyway, check it out (there is even a Johnny Cash video, which I highly recommend you watch). While you’re there, check out some of the other great thinking going on at JJL.

Get your Outlook Tasks directly on iPhone

When I jumped into the iPhone pool last year, one of the big surprises was just how hard it was to sync my Notes and Tasks from Outlook (our company uses Exchange, and I use the heck out of Outlook).

Version 3 of the iPhone firmware solved the Notes problem, as it will now sync Outlook Notes directly into the Notes app on the iPhone.  Not so for tasks (No task app on the iPhone?  After 3 versions?  Really?)

Taking the iPhone to Task

In searching for a way to automatically sync tasks to the iPhone, here were my requirements:

• Must offer the ability to sort / group tasks by Category (for GTD) and due date.
• Solutions should be as simple as possible (the fewer moving parts the better, no re-entering text, etc.)
• Must support offline viewing and updating of tasks, through a native iPhone app
• Reasonably priced

The most popular apps (I sampled systems like Remember the Milk, ToodleDo, Nozbe, Google, and several others) had (at least for me) show-stopper issues: 

• Some apps required syncing from Outlook to a service in the cloud, then from that service to my iPhone, and many of these required me to pay an additional fee for a subscription account.
• Some apps required me to run a separate desktop app alongside Outlook.  Yuck.
• Some apps provided only web-based viewers (not iPhone apps), which meant I couldn’t get to my lists on the plane or in areas with no data coverage.

Luckily, I have found one solutions that works quite well, and meets or exceeds my requirement.

My favorite task solution for Outlook and the iPhone [so far]

My favorite solution so far, is an app called iMExchange (available in the App Store for $7.99).  iMExchange syncs directly with Microsoft Exchange, and can bring in your Tasks and Notes (for those of you still running a pre-v3 iPhone OS). 

iMExchange also creates a local, cached copy of your Tasks and Notes so you can access them even when you aren’t connected to the internet.  Once you’ve synched (over the air), this means you can access your tasks, add new tasks, update the status of existing tasks and so on from the iPhone.

I’ve found that the flexible sorting options (see screen shot at right make it easy to work within the Getting Things Done methodology from my phone).

As an added bonus, since the app connects directly to your Exchange Server, you can edit your Out Of Office message and adjust your Out Of Office status directly from your iPhone.  Pretty cool bonus.

Bottom line:  If you use Microsoft Exchange / Outlook and the iPhone, I think you’ll like iMExchange for managing your tasks while on the go.

Heroes, supporting casts, and management

About 15 years ago, I was involved in a management situation that I still think about from time to time, because it made me so uncomfortable at the time.  Here is what happened:

As a call center manager in a large software company, I was tasked with finding a solution to a problem that was impacting customer satisfaction and increasing our support costs.  At the end of the project, I was to present my findings and recommendations to the company’s Operating Committee for their approval.

The project was a blast, and I pulled in several managers that reported to me to help with data gathering and analysis.  I also pulled in people from the product team to determine the feasibility of my product-related recommendations, and some financial analysts to help crunch the numbers to create a cost/benefit model.

At the end of the project, I was really proud of our results, and the Operating Committee funded us to act on my recommendations.

OK, sounds like a happy ending so what’s the problem?  In a word, the issue was “credit.”

One neck to wring?

You see, when I prepared my findings document and presentation, my first draft had a list of all the people who contributed to the research.  When I reviewed it with my VP, he told me to take those names off the report. 

“You own this – you’re the one throat to choke,” he said.  “I know they contributed to this, but you drove it and you are accountable so your name is the one that should be on there.”

I did what I was told, but it still bothers me to this day that they didn’t get their props in front of the Operating Committed.  If I had it to do over again, I’d probably add a section in the report listing the contributors and/or outlining the process I followed so I could mention them by name.  At least the VP knew who contributed, and most of them were in his division…

Remember the supporting cast

From this experience, I learned that I am uncomfortable taking credit for other people’s work.  Maybe it’s my desire for “fairness,” or perhaps it’s rooted in my own ego – I don’t like it when people take credit for my ideas, and I don’t want them to feel like I’m taking credit for theirs.

The “star” gets the limelight (and the big paycheck) in movies, but the people behind the scenes are still listed and recognized. I think that’s a good model for any team.

What do you think?  Are you a manager who’s cracked the code on this?  Share your secrets, please.