Get Tweetable

* Which customers or collaborators can help your business grow?
* Decision makers, always in the market for quality information.
* As long as it’s relevant, clear and concise. Really concise.
* Don’t expect them to read wordy, derivative articles or blogs.
* Or hang around networking events and flaccid Facebook pages.
* They demand real value, in messages that’ll fit on iPhone screens.
* Offer them bite-sized solutions to business problems and challenges.
* Excellent concise content can transform leaders into your followers.
* They’ll read articles like this on Twitter, posted one line at a time.
* So your messages will help business succeed for years to come.
* Just keep the messages short and sweet. Tweet tweet.

Colin Powell Leads With Curiosity

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Recently, General Colin Powell told me and several thousand other folks, “You’re a good leader when people follow out of curiosity.” Famous media mogul Barry Diller agrees: curiosity helps us outpace the competition, and avoid getting lost in the crowd.

This is great news for emerging leaders. The internet’s already taking most of us off into directions that are interesting, exciting, adventurous, new, and even controversial.

So we already enjoy asking ourselves “why not” and “what if?” You just need to become the first individual we think of when such questions arise. Then zap–you’re our fearless leader!

With no shortage of intriguing or thought-provoking material available on the internet, it’s never been this easy to come up with surprises and charm.

So nothing can stop you from becoming a good leader. Just give us a good reason to follow you. Out of curiosity.

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• Confidence of a Leader and his People (christopherscottblog.typepad.com)

Ownership Isn’t For Real Leaders

Image via Wikipedia

It’s ironic, isn’t it? We use social media super-widgets like Facebook; iPhones; and internet technologies to gain control over our lives. But in the overcrowded networking age they tend to reduce personal ownership of communications. This means less real productivity.

Think: how many of the last 20 non-salesmen you’ve tried to reach actually answered, maybe two or three? And if you’ve left messages, how many people returned your call in a reasonable amount of time–if ever?

Even friends or acquaintances, like strangers, seem too busy to talk. “Don’t call me, I’ll call you, when I want help or to chat about my priorities.”

This isn’t cruel or unfriendly behavior; it’s how we maintain ownership over our lives.

In a perfect world, everyone would be waiting for my call. Conducting business would be as easy as driving down the freeway at 2 a.m. But the communication superhighway is becoming snarled in a perpetual rush hour.

It’s the rare soul who’s willing to personally answer a call, or at least return it promptly.

That rare soul is also a Leader. Why? Because leadership’s no longer about status or position. It’s about offering more value to every task or interaction. And in our “drive-by” era, nothing is more valued than personal attention and authentic engagement.

Extraordinary leaders have always acknowledged others’ value, and relinquished direct ownership of tasks and solutions. Think of Kambei in “The Seven Samurai,” or the great CEOs. Each built teams respectfully, the way a conductor builds a great symphony orchestra. One superior participant and collaboration at a time.

This approach is also at the heart of Servant Leadership.

I feel like a celebrity every time I get through to the super-busy publisher of the local business newspaper. What a class act! And a few other folks are just as ready to answer and help when I call. Guess who I share my work or referrals with?

You carry your phone around to make calls with. Why not pull the autocratic little thing out of your pocket or purse when it rings as well? Your business will thank you for it.

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• The Conductor doesn’t Make a Sound (conversationagent.com)

The Internet as “Experiential Marketplace”

Image via Wikipedia

(Dedicated to my friends at Jobs Ministry Southwest)
It makes the news when an 89-year-old man straps himself onto the top of a plane for his 20th wing-walking jaunt over the English Channel (http://bit.ly/7IQpwR). He’s one example of the growing experiential marketplace.

It’s not as newsworthy when a laid-off executive sees his or her job status as “just another stage of exploration” and actively begins “tossing aside presumed limitations” by creating or enriching opportunities on the internet. But these men and women achieve much more in the long run than aging thrill seekers.

Their families, industry and community all benefit every day from their vision and bravery.

It takes guts to put aside years of identifying yourself with a title or job description, and adopt entirely new modes of communication. It’s scary to join in the hunt for online success alongside much younger people. First you have to unlearn many outmoded “secrets of success” that you learned over your long, often illustrious career.

You have to see yourself as a leader rather than one more cog in some corporate machine.

You do whatever it takes to stand out, because you’re determined not to fade out.

God bless all those old-timers who challenge their physical limitations to try something completely different. But let’s also honor those who reinvent themselves and transform society into a new and better experiential marketplace.  These pros are charting a more elusive and uncertain territory, and helping improve the life experiences of millions of us uppity “younger folks.”

The World’s Happiest Leader: A Personal Tribute to Tom Beebe

“Imagine that the key to happiness is following your own intuition instead of other people’s opinions and advice.” Alex Ostrowski

Great leaders never stop following their intuition. They maintain a child-like faith in their insights. The rest of us mostly flit from one opinion du jour or breathless bit of “wisdom” to the next, like butterflies fading in the grass.

The greatest leaders create a culture in which employees or followers have faith in their own intuition. Because happiness happens, too.

As a child I was very fortunate to have a Sunday School teacher named Tom Beebe, and will always remember climbing happily onto his lap for a story. At the time he was VP of Personnel at Delta Airlines; he was eventually its President, and Delta became famous as a truly great company to work at (featured on page 253 of In Search of Excellence).

Mr. Beebe built “The Delta Family Feeling” on his amazing intuition about what people need and respond to. He was too smart to leave the fate of his company to impulsive or copycat decisions. For example, every stewardess was chosen from thousands of applicants, interviewed twice and screened by the company psychologist.

But all the procedures didn’t blanket his intuition, they validated it. Every employee gained a new confidence in the intuition that Delta recognized and celebrated. That confidence stayed front and center on the job, and every customer felt special to be served.

Delta made its employees so happy to work there, they once chipped in to buy their company a new airplane.

Today it’s much easier for great leaders to recreate at least part of that excitement. Like Tom Beebe, you’ll acknowledge your intuition and instill it in your employees or team members. All in a matter of hours. With the right tool and a world full of self-educated people, anyone can become a great leader like Tom Beebe.

Other people’s opinions and advice are fine, as far as they go. Just don’t confuse them with what brings real happiness. Use your intuition.

Build a Corporate Culture the Old Fashioned Way: Institutionalize It

I lived in Japan for eight years in the ’60s and ’70s, when it was hard to miss crowds of coworkers beginning their day with calisthenics and brief motivational speeches by managers. At the beginning of every workday any open space might come alive with neat rows of jumping jacks and jills. Even in offices, people did it behind their desks.

And this wasn’t just for workdays. One summer I spent a week camping near the ocean in Niigata Prefecture. Every morning Japan’s top-rated radio program blared calisthenics from loudspeakers, like a vacation reveille. Hundreds of campers up and down the beach dutifully hopped from their sleeping bags to do squats and stretches in unison.

Early morning calisthenics apparently became a national pastime during World War II, when the military government decided that every citizen should be ready to repel the expected Allied invasion. Since their only weapons would be sharpened bamboo poles, the citizen soldiers would obviously have to stay in good physical condition.

This invigorating ritual also came in handy after the war, when assembly-line workers streamed into factories to help create Japan’s industrial “miracle.”

It was never hard to get most Japanese to participate. Since the feudalistic days Japan has been a nation of poor rice farmers; crops failed without highly focused cooperative effort during planting and harvest seasons.

The Japanese model spread across East Asia and attracted the attention of some important visitors. At a Korean tennis-ball factory in the 1970s, Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton was inspired to institute a similar kind of team-building activity, and it became part of the retail behemoth’s corporate culture.

Even today, as each shift starts all Wal-Mart employees everywhere must follow a manager’s lead as he or she does a few calisthenics and group shouts of “Good morning, [colleague]!” — clap, clap, stomp, stomp — “Whoo-whoo!” To make the exercise more relevant, part of the group cheer includes a hearty chanted prediction of the store’s success.

Wal-Mart believes this helps employees more efficiently move over 5.5 billion cases of merchandise a year. But this practice also blurs the line separating corporate process (for greater efficiency) and company culture (which should revolve largely around inefficient people).

Raising their hands in a pledge to work safely reminds employees to help reduce company costs. But is it viable culture for smaller businesses in the social media age, when every company is increasingly focused on HR and employees are increasingly fractious? Stay tuned.

What makes someone a leader in the social media age?

Image by lumaxart via Flickr

Effective leaders build bottom lines. A 2007 Corporate Executive Board study found that sales reps receiving great coaching reach on average 102% of the company’s goals, and those who get poor coaching only 83%. So good coaching can improve ROI by 19%!

This is especially true in enterprises and small business organizations, where business development is more entrepreneurial and authentic engagement is an important feature of the culture.

Most of us want leaders to be enthusiastic as well as competent. And he or she should be ready to promote individual development without feeling threatened by any team member’s success.

Then that leader will bring real value to the team. In the internet age, whoever brings the most value gets leadership–just as the sales rep who offers the best value in their service or product gets the sale.

Powerful core message + effective communication =  value. Equals leader.

Make your Mantra viral with great content …

1. And every new message will add value, somewhere
By creating a Mantra, you’ve discovered what makes you unique. Now use online or offline forums, meetings, blogs and start leveraging that uniqueness. Make greater contributions every time you participate by bringing new value to every discussion, where you work or on the Web. Whether you’re on the Web or working with people who use it, ideas with real merit will help you define a new culture and attract the followers you’ll need to make a difference.

2. And add new value to every contribution
You are already a leader or an acknowledged expert; by raising the “flag” of your Mantra you can begin to attract followers and supporters. As they follow and support you, the sum of their individual contributions will add even more value to the discussions or projects that matter the most. Al Gore got the Nobel Prize not as a former VP, but because all of his followers’ contributions added (real or perceived) value to their communal cause.

3. And watch your leadership gain impact and real relevance
Leadership is no longer bestowed by an institution, or artificially grown in the hothouse of a hierarchy. Whoever brings the most value to their “tribe,” community, group or team will naturally command the respect and attention it takes to attract more followers–because the evolving leader can help every other group member grow and prosper. A hierarchy will promote the myth that benefits “trickle down”; but in our new world, authority trickles up to the person who deserves it the most.

4. So your passion and humanity becomes an added benefit to every follower
A great butler shares many acquired skills and talents. He brings them to life by adding his passion for detail, and his (or her) humanity. A leader shares innate and acquired skills and talents  as extra value for every follower or team member.  Having a Mantra makes it unnecessary to try and command or control anyone. Now you attract them with  content that’s clear, concise and compelling. Every new message will be rich with relevance, proof and real value. Just become more useful and generous, and your followers will become more loyal to you and to each other.

5. And key tasks or decisions will always be on the front burner–where they belong
When you use the Mantra process to complete a project or reach a decision, as a by-product you will have more buy-in, credibility and long-term support. You also empower the group to prioritize what they’ve been working on together. Everyone else will perceive the project or decision’s extra value that your community members have helped make extra valuable. and everyone will see the value of making sure it receives the attention, and gets the credit, that it deserves.

6. And ensure your followers’ commitment to defining and organizing
Forget the silos. On the Web or during the Mantra process, your followers and supporters can come from any background to choose you, or the culture you’re creating around your new Mantra “flag.” Everyone will link up to or  ignore what you’ve done, depending on how much value they see in their interactions with you and each other. Working through the process together will give them get many chances to choose. They will do it constantly so what you’re doing will have an organic and healthy ebb and flow.

7. And make “pushing” (or “pulling”) a thing of the past
In brick-and-mortar organizations, resources were allocated up and down through silos, with little concern for their function, applicability or long-term relevance. More recently, “push and pull” advocates thought they could manipulate our behavior through negative or positive influence. Sharing time and attention is just one way people show who’s the rea boss in every transaction. Get them actively involved in defining and spreading value and build a real community to make a real difference.

8. And lose your fear of sharing your best ideas
The most effective way to copyright your good ideas? Turn that “your” into a plural pronoun. Develop all your ideas as a team. Then you’ll never worry about being beaten to the punch, or who gets the ecredit. No individual can make an idea as good as what a focused team will come up with. And by the time anyone learns of the idea, it will already be at least partially be documented and put into practice.

9. And take on the online (or offline) world with ideas born whole to a group
See number 8–then move into the future with it.

10. And you’ll watch your followers and supporters carry you forward
It’s not just online users who are loyal when they have a substantial say in key decisions, or how a project is being planned and implemented. You may think you’ve built the community you lead; but once the users get involved they are its creators. They truly own it, along with any culture that grows up around it.

11. And give everyone involved a very personal stake in your success
Is the web a testament to the power of intrinsic rewards and the commitment of all the people who grow online communities? Of course it is. And a nation is testament to the sacrifices and vision of all who’ve contributed to its growth. People have always given generously of themselves when they actively contributed to something; they will remain actively engaged with the leader and group that made it happen. Take this to heart and start leading.

12. And find a legitimate, meaningful way to acknowledge those who bring us the most value
Finding a group of millions of individuals with a dream, and giving them an eloquent voice and renewed sense of purpose, is what got Barack Obama elected president. They were ready to overturn the status quo; he gave them a way to do it–by electing him. His problems and loss of popular support started when he didn’t acknowledge their contributions. When he stopped valuing them, their sense of ownership over where the country is heading under his administration disappeared. Avoid making the same mistake, and you can achieve greater success.