seventhstorm

How to Really Use LinkedIn

Engineers Should Take An Art Class!

Is Integrity Dead?

Last week at a conference, I was presenting a talk about Personal Branding. In my view, brand identity is closely linked to a set of our own personal values. A value system defines the parameters of our own behavior and actions and provides the motivation for them. To this point, I asked the participants how they would define "integrity."

Silence.

It seems nobody is able to articulate what integrity means; how it looks and how it feels. Is integrity dead? If it is, then does it mean that people no longer care for their personal brand?

What do you think?

 

Should You Let Your Employees Work from Home?

Curriculum on Steroids

Finalized a deal with a professional development services firm to re-brand online training materials.  The client's content is pretty strong.  Where we add value is the design and visual storytelling strategy.  The CEO was very happy with the few slides we mod'ed to serve as proof-of-concept (POC).  This was key and served as the catalyst for our snagging the project.

Lesson learned: pictures speak a thousand words!

CIO Branding

When it comes to personal branding “if you’re not appearing, you’re disappearing” — a quote by jazz musician Art Blakey — was the advice delivered to IT leaders at Sydney's 2011 CIO Summit. Former CIO editor and founder of the CIO Executive Council in Australia, Linda Kennedy, said that the development of a personal brand can aid CIOs looking for greener pastures or to widen their career prospects. “If you’re not communicating, nobody’s hearing you,” Kennedy said. Kennedy told the summit that three steps of brand strategy are Developing your brand Package your brand Communicate your brand

"Should I Work for Free?"

Should I Work for Free?

Very funny and not so funny site with regard working pro bono.  Recently, I have also been asked to extend credit work by all kinds of business.  It's got to be the economy.  In other words, this economy has produced a ton of freelancers - "free" being the operative word.

Check out the site.  It even provides Google translation.  Now you can't use "I don't speak the language" as an excuse to do free work.

The New Workplace According to Gist.com

According to Gist, the workplace is going through a transformation. More trust, more empowerment? Is it really happening?

HBR's 10 Must Reads: The Essentials

Source: Harvard Business Review

If you read nothing else, read these 10 articles from HBR's most influential authors:

1) "Meeting the Challenge of Disruptive Change," by Clayton M. Christensen and Michael Overdorf,explains why so few established companies innovate successfully.

2) "Competing on Analytics," by Thomas H. Davenport, explains how to use data-collection technology and analysis to discern what your customers want, how much they're willing to pay, and what keeps them loyal.

3) "Managing Oneself," by Peter F. Drucker, encourages us to carve our own paths by asking questions such as, "What are my strengths?" and "Where do I belong?"

4) "What Makes a Leader?" Not IQ or technical skills, says Daniel Goleman, but emotional intelligence.

5) "Putting the Balanced Scorecard to Work," by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, includes practical steps and examples from companies that use the balanced scorecard to measure performance and set strategy.

6) "Innovation: The Classic Traps," by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, advocates applying lessons from past failures to your innovation efforts. She explores four problems and offers remedies for each.

7) "Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail," by John P. Kotter, argues that transformation is a process, not an event. It takes years, not weeks, and you can't skip any steps.

8) "Marketing Myopia," by Theodore Levitt, introduces the quintessential strategy question, "What business are you really in?"

9) "What Is Strategy?" by Michael E. Porter, argues that rivals can easily copy your operational effectiveness, but they can't copy your strategic positioning-what distinguishes you from all the rest.

10) "The Core Competence of the Corporation," by C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel, argues that a diversified company is like a tree: the trunk and major limbs its core products, branches its business units, leaves and fruit its end products. Nourishing and stabilizing everything is the root system: its core competencies.

Edge-Centric Strategy and High Performance

High Performers conduct edge-centric strategy before they become irrelevant in the  martket place or experience sluggish financial performance.

 

Failure Drives Innovation? Yes!

"There is no such thing as a commodities business. No matter what your products or services are, you should always strive to identify and focus on your differentiators."

-seventhstorm

Strategy on One Page

This is a fantastic and high-level summary on strategy.  Simply put - this is as basic as it gets: