Draw the Line from Problem to Strategy and Back

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment

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Problem to Strategy

Problem to Strategy

I wrote an article awhile back called Reaction is Not Solution. In it I wrote about how you can discover a problem and are then presented with a couple of different paths to solve it. Unfortunately, the culture in many businesses is to not even bring a problem to the surface unless you have a solution ready to share. In that article I go over why that’s probably not a great idea.

While it was more about decision-making and problem-solving, I never addressed strategy and planning in that article. Admittedly I am in a different position now as an entrepreneur, and it can seem to others that I can afford the “luxury” of working on mapping strategy and plans to a problem, spending the time needed to research and virtually test possible scenarios before heading in a single direction. I’d like to say that (a) that always happens, (b) it always works, and (c) I always have time to do it. None of those is true. So, the only difference between my current state and that of when I worked in corporate is that now my own business needs drive my discipline to the process, as opposed to the requirements laid on me by my manager. The latter is annoying, but the former will raise the hairs on the back of your head, believe me.

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Best of March – SEO, LinkedIn, and Solving the Right Problem

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March, according to the old saying, either comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, or vice versa. This month’s collection of top articles is the LION portion of that saying!

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Measuring Social is HARD!

Measuring Social is HARD!

Measuring the impact of digital marketing efforts seems like it should be easier, with all the data that is available. But that’s the problem: so much data to look at, and some of it is not just “apples to oranges”, but “apples to wood screws.” Know what you should be looking at and measuring, given your business’s specific goals and requirements. It can be hard, but not impossible.

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Business Critical: Listen-To-Understand

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Listening-to-understand

Listening-to-understand

I wrote an earlier article called Listening is Visual that was about a trip during my last corporate job to Florida to meet with some technical community leaders there. I had planned to do “the usual”: I had created a PowerPoint presentation that represented the bullet points I would talk to and would help guide the discussion.  However, there was no projector and no real place to project, anyway. So much for the presentation and what seemed like control of the meeting.

What originally looked like a standard meeting became much more valuable! The real listening, the responses, the dialogue that took place was really wonderful and very valuable. I came away with a great understanding of their passions and concerns.

Since that time I have made “listen-to-understand“ my goal in every meeting.

…I cannot emphasize this enough…

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Hire for Nice

/ Jeff Hora / 1 Comment

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Hire for Nice

Hire for Nice

If the heart of all really valuable business is referrals, then “Hire for Nice” makes sense.  Consider it the foundational policy for any company wishing to survive in the blizzard of noise that is the competition for customers and clients.

I ran across an article this week on NBC News called “One CEO’s Secret to Success: Always Lead with Kindness” that triggered a distinct memory of this for me…

My family moved here a couple of years ago and the search for new services to replace the old began (you know: doctor, grocery store, barber, pizza delivery, pet sitter…). It had been awhile since my last haircut, so I looked up the local spots using Yelp and found Bon Cheveux with good reviews. I called and got an appointment for the next day (this would not happen where I lived before…if you didn’t book at least a few days out, you were out of luck). I arrived a few minutes early and was met by the friendly concierge at the front desk. As a newbie, she asked that I fill out a very short form for customer information. I then sat down with a cold glass of water for about 3 minutes before Tarra came out. I was ushered into the actual salon area and commenced the actual haircut. Since I was new, I had to try a describe what I was looking for, which isn’t easy for me (“Four weeks shorter than it is now” isn’t really much help…). Tarra was very patient and we worked through the process collaboratively, which was good. We also engaged in the usual chit-chat conversation, but it wasn’t forced and was enjoyable, especially when it would lapse for a few minutes into silence…..I’ve been to other barbers who are VERY uncomfortable with silence.

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Rudeness Wrecks Everything

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Rudeness

Rudeness

According to an article recently published in the New York Times, rudeness, even just “slight incivility”, has a negative impact upon those exposed to it. The article concerns a study published by the American Academy of Pediatrics by several co-authors from the Coller School of Management at Tel Aviv University and the Bnai Zion Medical Center.

The objectives of the study were:
  • “Rudeness is routinely experienced by medical teams. We sought to explore the impact of rudeness on medical teams’ performance and test interventions that might mitigate its negative consequences.”
The conclusions were:
  • “Rudeness has robust, deleterious effects on the performance of medical teams. Moreover, exposure to rudeness debilitated the very collaborative mechanisms recognized as essential for patient care and safety. Interventions focusing on teaching medical professionals to implicitly avoid cognitive distraction such as CBM may offer a means to mitigate the adverse consequences of behaviors that, unfortunately, cannot be prevented.”

I also read an article by Valeria Maltoni entitled “Alain de Botton’s Ten Virtues of the Modern Age.” Alain de Botton is, among other things, a prolific author and founder of the School of Life. (I highly recommend following these links and finding out more…). The reason this article resonated so much with me as I thought about the rudeness study is the potential solution the Virtues present to the problem of rudeness in our societies.

Unfortunately, our society has begun to prize rudeness over civility. While the most rabid examples can easily be found or recalled from the past election season here in the US, it’s been around for a very long time. We justify it by saying that we’re just “being real”. I have witnessed numerous scenes in corporate meetings and relationships where the cutting remark or put-down was used to discredit someone’s idea, derail a conversation, or redirect a discussion that wasn’t going someone’s way. One of several articles I published reviewed how this can severely impact innovation and communication, making success or even progress highly unlikely.

The study cited earlier showed that the rude remark has a global negative effect on physical performance, cognitive performance, communications and teamwork for a significant time after the comment is made. While this has potentially life-ending effects in health care, was does this imply for business?

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Best of February – Competition, Local Online Tips, Customer Experience and Content!

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment

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competition is beating you

Is your competition beating you?

You’re probably at least mildly aware that the Internet is in constant flux. Changes you made to your web site or digital strategy last year (let along last week…) may already be defunct! This great article gives you five points to check and find out if you’re falling behind your competition.

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Must-have features

Must-have features for Local Business Web Sites

You’re not global, but you ARE in a very healthy and opportunity-filled market. You are also aware that one requirement for business today is an awesome web site….so  how do you make sure that YOUR site has all the right bits? Check out this tip-filled article and then hire a simply INCREDIBLE web site designer (if you’re not sure who you could talk to, contact me and I can give you some top-notch recommendations!)

Online Reviews and Comments

Online Reviews and Comments

Knowing when and how to respond to reviews and comments online is crucial to customer experience. This article tells the true story of one business’s experience and how they worked through it successfully.

Stock photo sites

Under-the-Radar Stock Photos

Every business only has so much budget for content creation, including one of the more challenging pieces: images. It’s not that there aren’t tons of great images and videos out there, it’s just that a lot of them are beyond the budgets of many entrepreneurs and start-ups. This article lists out some great photo sites you never heard of….

Real estate tips

Social Media for Real Estate Pros

The opportunity for and competition within the real estate industry is to have you, the agent, become the “go-to” name in your market. It’s not easy, it takes resources, but the pay-off is HUGE! This article covers ten tips that the most successful agents do…

Common Questions

Pay Attention to Common Questions

Writing content regularly for publication can occasionally make you run up against “the white page” – ideas are just not there! Figuring out the various facets of topics that your audience is passionate about can seem overwhelming. But, sometimes the most common questions asked can really help provide the seed of a LOT of great ideas….this article goes over a number of tips and tools to help.

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Doing Specifics the Right Way

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specific

Be Specific!

The challenge of being specific is that it seems impossible to scale.

What does being specific mean in your business? It’s the truth behind perception, communication, understanding, prejudice and the barriers presented by a kind of ‘telephone’ game space between people. It means that if you can connect with one person, that doesn’t mean you can connect with the next one, no matter HOW much alike they are. And that is the end point….how do you plan or strategize for this kind of connection?

Going by previous data and experience will only get you so far. And sometimes it doesn’t even work for the same person! Think about how your own thoughts and feelings have changed over the years. If the “younger me” tried to convince the “today me” of a number of things about people, places, beliefs, prejudices and things I’ve learned more about over the years, well….I would have walked away as a younger man.

So back to being specific…in business, I’ve learned that a focus on “anybody who” as a customer is actually no one. Even honing it down to “A small business owner with a company that has 5 – 100 employees and has been in business for at least 5 years” is too broad. What do they care about? What are those 2 or 3 things that are nagging, painful problems they just can’t seem to crack? While each business is unique and has its own problems, there ARE business norms and trends in the U.S. There is a certain amount of consistency.

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When Should You DO Something?

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment

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Online Reviews and Comments

Online Reviews and Comments

A while back I wrote an article about how customer online reviews and comments can actually enhance and grow your business….and that you don’t need to be afraid about what people post on your various business social media pages. In that article I described a process with which you can work through any kind of review or comment, and you will end up looking like a hero! This turned into a VERY POPULAR article!

This week a colleague (I’ll call her Tonya…) told me about another friend’s case where a comment was made on a Facebook page that was negative concerning this friend’s business. The friend (I’ll call him Rob…) didn’t find out about it until several days after the comment was posted (he found out via a different friend, who mentioned it to him….). It wasn’t on Rob’s business page, but just someplace else on Facebook that this other person happened to stumble upon, and so mentioned it to Rob in passing.

Rob nearly flipped! He went onto this other page, read the comment, and started to agonize about whether to do anything about it….I mean, this was a surprise! Upon further inspection, Rob noted that others on the page had begun to respond to the comment in positive ways, and, in fact, the incident had pretty much resolved itself in a good way. Rob still didn’t know whether he should hop on the thread and say something, just to show that he cared, but was also afraid that it much churn up the discontent afresh. Tonya thought I might be able to help Rob “climb down off the ledge”, so to speak, and then I could help him understand what he should do.

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How Hard Is It To Actually Listen Online?

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment

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Listening

Listening

Listening to the various voices online looks very different from listening to someone sitting across from you. You don’t get visual cues, body language, tone or very much context. Valeria Maltoni has written that “Listening is the most valuable skill nobody teaches.”

I’ve written in the past about the difference between “listen-to-respond” and “listen-to-understand”. Much else has been written and discussed about the importance of active listening, listening without judging, and the like. We concede its importance, but where is it taught? How is it learned? If learned in some way, do we use it, or do we fall back into “listen-to-respond” or, worse, blocking what others have to say because it doesn’t align with what we already know or believe? Do we actually believe that we can’t be wrong or include new information that will clarify or change what we know?

Are we REALLY THAT ARROGANT?

In business, you can play the role of a Subject Matter Expert (SME) online, which is quite helpful for your customers and audience. Doing so builds your reputation and gains recognition for you as someone “with the answers.” Of course, you have to keep working on that all the time, especially if you work in an area that is constantly in flux (which is most professions….). But, as long as you honestly work to deliver true and helpful answers, you’re good.

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Start by Engaging in the New Year! – Best of January

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment

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Social Media Engagement

Social Media Engagement

This case study, while focusing on the use of Post Planner as a tool, provides a number of terrific strategies on going full-tilt to build engagement across your social media channels. Take note of his advice at the end of the article….understand the importance of a solid yet flexible strategy!

Social Media Changes

Social Media Changes

There are number of lesser known changes to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn that are going to impact your activities and those of your audience, so you should definitely become familiar with them. This article goes over 8 of them that are most likely to make a difference.

Video Tools

Video Tools

You’re already aware that video is HUGE online, and 2017 is only going to see its influence increase. You need to figure out how to leverage it and world-class story-telling for your business. The 6 tools described in this article are each just different enough that you should be able to find the one that will work for you, even if you think are, shall we say, “ability constrained”…

David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy

This excellently focused article by Valeria Maltoni underscores the clarity and wisdom of this list of guiding tips by David Ogilvy on writing well. Much harder than it seems, if you’re looking to up your content writing game, you can’t do better than this.

Facebook Cheat Sheet

Facebook Cheat Sheet

I and most all my clients constantly refer to cheat sheets for image sizes online. To neglect this bit of information means you’re more likely to post a graphic or photo that gets cropped or, as one of my clients says, “Schmooshed”! Don’t let that happen to you…
Awareness

Awareness

This article confronts the challenge of getting noticed online despite all of the noise on the Internet. Building awareness, especially in a crowded industry, is tough. Think differently about how to do this and your chances improve a LOT!

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