An original post by Seth Godin

In 1993, I saw the web coming. I was hired to write the cover story for a now defunct computer magazine about the internet, and dismissed the new Mosaic browser in a single paragraph.

I figured the web was just like Prodigy, but slower, harder to use and without a business model.

About as expensive a wrong analysis as a single entrepreneur with an email company could make in 1993.

The reason it was an insanely valuable lesson: I got better at announcing that I was wrong, learning from it and doing the next thing.

Politicians, of course, are terrible at this. They are never wrong, apparently, and when they are, spin instead of admitting it. Which not only hurts their trustworthiness, it prevents them from learning anything.

Two elements of successful leadership: a willingness to be wrong and an eagerness to admit it.

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The ORGANIZATION OPTIMIZER is the right choice to measure organizations and drive their success.

An original post by Derek Sivers

What I’m about to tell you is one of the most interesting things I’ve read or heard in the last few months, and I know you’re going to love it, so please read to the end.

The Marshmallow Experiment

40 years ago, at a nursery school at Stanford University, psychology professor Walter Mischel ran an experiment.

A bunch 4-year-olds were brought into a room, one at a time. They were given one marshmallow, and told they were allowed to eat it immediately, but if they could wait 15 minutes without eating it, they’d be given a second marshmallow, and could eat both.

70% of the kids ate the marshmallow right away. Only 30% of the kids could wait the full 15 minutes to get the second marshmallow.  This experiment has been repeated in other countries (Brazil and Japan) over the years, and the ratio stays the same: two-thirds can’t wait, one-third wait.

But here’s the interesting part:

15 years later, the researchers followed-up and found that those kids who waited for the second marshmallow scored, on average, 250 points higher on the SAT test, and were higher achievers in whatever field they had chosen (academic, athletic, artistic).  They were all-around more successful and happier.

So the ability to delay gratification is one of the best indicators of future success.

YOUR TIME FOCUS

So what are you really doing when you delay gratification?

You’re giving more importance to the future than the present.  Willing to give up a little pleasure in the present, to benefit your future self.

The great book, The Time Paradox, notes that we all have a different time-focus that greatly shapes how we think and act.

Future-Focused People

For future-focused people, long-range goals fuel today’s decisions and actions. This keeps them ambitiously working, saving, and planning for a better life. Self-discipline and the ability to delay gratification are key.

Future-focused people are more successful professionally and academically. They also eat well, exercise regularly, and schedule preventative health exams.

But by always looking through the present to the next goal, they often do not fully appreciate the present.  Think of the stereotype of the successful executive who is always too busy for his family.  (Friends and family require your attention to be in the present.)

Present-Focused People

Present-focused people actively seek activities and relationships that bring pleasure, variety, immediate gratification, and short-term payoffs. They avoid anything tedious, requiring effort, maintenance, or routine. They’re playful and impulsive, engaging in leisure activities (until it becomes boring).

Present-focused people are more likely to gamble, use drugs and alcohol. They’re less likely to exercise, eat well, floss, or get regular health exams.  They are the least likely to be successful.

While some present-focus is needed to enjoy life, too much present-focus can rob life of the deeper happiness of accomplishment.

Past Focus

How you view the past is also important because we see our lives as having a trajectory. If you remember the past as happy, you predict your future will be happy.  If you are haunted by an unhappy past, you probably predict your future to be unhappy, too.

What causes or changes your focus?

Though the experiment with 4-year-olds shows that we each have a built-in tendency, we can intentionally change our focus.

Ask a future-focused person to name every background sound they can hear, or where their body is touching their chair.  Their focus will change to the present. Ask a present-focused person to describe their ultimate career, then brainstorm step-by-step ways to achieve those goals.  Their focus will change to the future.

Circumstances change focus. You need safety and stability in the present to start thinking about the future. Cavemen needed a full present-focus at all times to survive in the wild and find food each day. It was only after the development of agriculture that people could spend more time thinking about the future.

People who lived in tropical climates had less future-focus than people who lived in places with cold winters, since winters required planning and saving.

Political and economic instability also cause people to focus more on present survival than long-term investing of time or money.

Balance is best

Please don’t think this means we should all be extremely future-focused.

The happiest and most effective people are balanced: equally high in future-focus and present-focus, and viewing the past as positive.

When you have work to finish, be future-focused. When your work is done and it’s time to relax, be present-focused. During family holidays, be past-focused to enjoy family customs.

Which leads to the most colorful example of this need for balance….

Ghana football (soccer) team

The Ghana national football team always played beautifully and creatively but was at the bottom of the league because they often lost for not adhering to the disciplined rules of the game.  In the context of this story, let’s say they were very present-focused.

In 2004, they brought in a tough new coach from Serbia: Ratomir Dujković.  He relentlessly focused on discipline, toughness, goal-scoring and punctuality. He set high expectations for future success, telling them they could get into the semi-finals for the world cup if they worked hard.

Sure enough, in 2006, with their great combination of present-focused creativity and a new future-focused desire to win, they almost won the World Cup, only losing to Brazil in the final game.  They did win the FIFA “Most Improved Team of the Year” award.

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Combining focus with understanding your organization by implementing the ORGANIZATION OPTIMIZER is a powerful combination.

An original post by Andy Nulman

Here’s a big statement to start your day:

A dinner at Chicago’s Alinea restaurant should be obligatory for every major executive in America.

Here’s why.

I’m no “foodie,” but a 35-year business career has taken me to some of the finest food emporiums all over the globe.

Well, nothing, but nothing, has even come close to the epicurean delight I experienced at a most majestic place called Alinea. It didn’t merely shatter expectations for a restaurant, it was one of my great life experiences, period. (I am forever in debt to my son Aidan for being the driving force in jumping on a cancellation and getting us in front of the two-to-three month waitng list.)

The 20-some-odd (and I do mean “odd,” but in the most complimentary and awe-inducing way) course “Tour” menu was the most expensive meal I have ever eaten (just one bottle of wine, at $80, hardly put a dent in a bill that masqueraded as a mansion’s mortgage payment)…but it was a great bargain nonetheless.

Calling Alinea a “restaurant” is a disservice to the establishment and what it does.  It is to other eateries what Cirque du Soleil is to Barnum & Bailey (a woman at the table next to me coined the phrase “Cirque du Manger,” or, “Circus of Eating”).  It markets itself brilliantly by being itself brilliantly. I could go on for terrabytes about the food (which included  Dr. Moreau-like hybrid delicacies like onion cotton candy, hot mustard ice cream, olive oil sorbet, powdered A-1 steak sauce, watermelon bombs and bacon-flavored challah bread), but amazingly, Alinea rises far above the palate-acrobatics it induces.

Needless to say, this was a Surprise junkie’s paradise.  Everything, but everything, set off waves of euphoric shock, starting with the entrance-way (off the street, you walk down a narrow hallway towards a natural “V” but enter the restaurant via the hidden door that slides open on the wall to your left), and ending with an 4:29 a.m. email from much-renowned chef Grant Achatz, who admitted to personally following the progress of my consumption throughout the night after being informed that I left the meal’s first course uneaten.

This type of attention to detail permeated the experience, and the magical, enchanting results were beyond staggering (Saul Colt would be in heaven).  Tables are bare wood (albeit near-black mahogany) to optimize the visual component of each dish (water is served at a specific temperature to ensure no condensation rings on said tabletops). Walls are covered with art that, while tasteful, do little to draw the eye away from the focal point of one’s food. If the silverware and glassware are not specifically chosen to match the course being eaten (as was the case of the antique crystal and cutlery chosen to highlight an old French recipe for quail), they are created specifically for Alinea by one of its partners, Martin Kastner, and his Crucial Detail design firm.

Alinea is a team effort, but a team like the New York Yankees of the ’50s or the Montreal Canadians of the mid-’70s.  Achatz has assembled an executive partnership that shows the grand vision of his dining experience, working hand-in-hand with a business manager, architect, interior designer and sculptor.  Even the wait staff, outfitted in Zegna, rise far above industry greatness, never mind the norm.  They complement each course put down with a story, factoid or red herring about it, and are single-minded in their corporate duty.  When I asked one of our servers, a brilliant South African young man, why he gave up his studies to work as a waiter, he said: “Because I want to help Alinea be recognized as the top restaurant in the world.“  No need to guess what this place’s mission statement is…

Alinea and Achatz have been much ballyhooed (Grant’s personal story is a movie just waiting to happen…but not until he can direct it himself, I suspect), but after my adding to the ballyhooing, here’s the reason why it should be required eating for every American exec:

RESPECT

• Alinea respects its clientele; treats them like gods.  It listens to them, but it is no slave to public opinion. It takes chances for them. It has the guts to say “We’re in the driver’s seat.  Trust us…you’ll enjoy the ride.”

• Alinea respects its surroundings.  Nothing is random.  There is a reason for everything.  And there is no compromise. On anything.

• Alinea respects its raison d’etre.  You’d figure the ingredients must be transported via private jet and pampered in a spa before being prepared in the kitchen. There is indeed a love, a passion for what is being concocted, and it shows.

• Alinea respects the need to make a profit.  Expensive as hell.  But no cutting corners.  As I said before, despite the Zimbabwe-like state of my overall bill, I didn’t just get what I paid for…I got more.  Way more.

So imagine American business being built on this backbone.  I know, I know…this is one restaurant; one tiny microbe in the behemoth that is the economy.

But if more people gave a damn, if more people treated customers as partners in a journey and not just a necessary evil, if more people dared to delight and lead instead of follow the latest onslop (a word I just made up) of surveyed public opinion, and if people did this in such a way that whatever you paid seemed worth it, well…the business world–the world itself, Godammit!–would be a better place.

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And if every organization used the ORGANIZATION OPTIMIZER to challenged itself to always do better by having a measure to monitor itself, well…the business world – the world itself, Godammit!– would be a better place (thanks Andy).

A very well done ‘Just Thinking’ post from John Caswell

Ah, sorry to bother you Mr. CEO, Sir…

Excuse me Mr. CEO, Sir? Um . . I know you’re busy, and important and stuff. I mean, running the business is very important and - ah – I hate to bother you, Sir. I will only take a minute. Ok, Sir? See, I have these missing pieces that are holding me up, and I was wondering, Sir, if you could take time out of your busy schedule and help me out.

You know, no big deal, just some loose ends and things. Hey, you have a nice place here! The wife sees houses like this on TV all the time and says, boy, she wishes she had digs like this, you know? Is that painting real? Really? Wow! I saw something like that in a museum once.

Oh, sorry Sir. I didn’t mean to get off the track. So if you could just help me out a minute and give me some details, I will get right out of your way. I want to close this case and maybe take the wife Coney Island or something. Ever been to Coney Island Sir? No? I didn’t think so…

Well, listen, anyway, I can’t seem to get some information I need to wrap this up. These things seem to either be “Not known”, “Not clear” or “Not understood”  I’m sure it’s just an oversight or glitch or something, so if you could you tell me where these things are I have them written down here somewhere – oh wait. I’ll just read it to you.

Could you please help me find these things, Sir?

• What are you are aiming to achieve? The outcome of it all? This business of yours? Sir…?
• The measures that might tell you that you are getting there? Where are they?
• And Sir? – what’s the actual need you are trying to fulfill?
• What is your vision exactly?
• Does the world actually need what you are aiming to do?
• The story. What’s the story really Sir?
• And your strategy? No-one seems to know what that is.
• The people in the business don’t seem to care Sir? Why should they?
• The road map you say you have? Where is that?
• The alignment. Where is that Sir?
• And the things that differentiate the business from all the others? Can you tell me that Sir?

Oh and one more thing Mr. CEO Sir, I can’t seem to find the criteria you used for any of this. Can you explain that to me, Sir? but hey – listen! I know you’re busy! If this is too much for you right now – I mean – tell you what. I’ll come back tomorrow. Give you some time to get these things together, you know? I mean, I know you’re busy. I’ll just let myself out. I’ll be back tomorrow. And the day after.

What’s that Sir?

Who wants to know these things? Well the people in your business, the customers and partners who rely on you Sir.

You know the ones that keep you alive?

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The ORGANIZATION OPTIMIZER would certainly have helped this CEO deal with and answer many of Detective Colombo’s questions.

An original post by Jim Clemmer

A long time reader, P.K. Seshadri, sent this “quip to enjoy and use in your future posts:

An amateur photographer was invited to dinner with friends and took along a few pictures to show the hostess. She looked at the photos and commented ‘These are very good! You must have a good camera.’ He didn’t make any comment, but, as he was leaving to go home, he said, ‘That was a really delicious meal! You must have some very good pots’.”

This anecdote succinctly reminds us that it’s the skilled use of the tools that makes the difference. The point made here is pretty obvious. But after decades of working with hundreds of management teams and thousands of strong, aspiring, and wallowing leaders, when it comes to leadership development, obviously the obvious isn’t so obvious! Despite the reams of ongoing research, many people still believe that leaders are born, not made.

It’s a dangerous excuse to believe that leaders are born not made. It takes you off the hook and gives you too easy an out from the difficult work of reframing your outlook and building your leadership skills.

If we are not working hard to continually improve our leadership skills because we weren’t “born with natural talent,” then we are copping out, misinformed, or both.

Thanks for the reminder in your pithy story, P.K. You must have a very good computer!

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The Organization Optimizer is an invaluable leadership resource providing an efficient and effective way to monitor organization change.

An original post from Alan Webber

It’s getting close to the end of the year.
A good time to clean out old drawers filled with even older files.
Here’s one I just found: Lessons From Fast Company. It was a speech I gave in Brazil at a program organized by the remarkable Oscar Motomura not long after Bill Taylor and I exited the magazine that we had jointly created.
Here’s what my speech notes say:
1. You have to believe in your own idea. I genuinely believed that Fast Company was ‘destined’ to happen–even though it took more than 3 years to go from business plan to launch.
2. You have to be open to others’ input on your idea. Just because it is your idea and it is ‘destined’ to happen doesn’t make it perfect from the inception. Write it down. Show it to others. They will see it differently. They will have good suggestions. They will have bad suggestions. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. That’s part of the process!
3. The world does not need your idea. It’s important to remember that–people are getting along just fine without your idea. So learn to see the world through their eyes–explain how your idea solves their problem!
4. Who you are and what you’ve done are often the best arguments for your idea. Your track record counts as much as the merits of your idea.
5. Do you have skin in the game? If you really believe in your own idea, how do you show your commitment? If you want others to commit, you’ve got to make your own commitment clear and visible.
6. What’s your motivation? Love is more powerful than money. If you’re just doing it for the money, the day will come when you look at how little progress you’ve made on your idea and say, ‘There must be easier ways to get rich.’ If you’re doing it for the love of the idea, that day will never come.
7. It’s all an iterative process of learning and doing. Ted Levitt used to say, ‘Make a little, try a little, sell a little.’ The idea is to keep your own thinking moving forward by coming up with an idea, testing it, getting feedback, refining it. Lather, rinse, repeat.
8. If you plan some things you can leave other things looser. Leave everything loose and it’s harder to innovate–constraints act as boundaries within which innovation can take place.
9. Your idea is only as good as the people you attract to work on it with you. It’s all about the talent on your team, the allies you develop, the supporters you woo and win.
10. Remember Gandhi: The means are the ends in the making. Be the project you want it to be. Whether the project succeeds or fails in the long run may be less important than how you’ve conducted yourself in the pursuit of the project.

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Always know where you are and track your movement. Use the Organization Optimizer to create a baseline and monitor change.

SHOULD YOU BE READING THIS BLOG?

By: Jerry Tarasofsky

This is not MY blog – rendering ideas opinions that I HAVE.

It is a permission based MODERATED blog, posting ideas about leadership from OTHER leaders, academics, industry gurus, and only occasionally from yours truly.

In most of the cases these are ‘older’ posts – yes rehashes of what these persons have posted at one time or another – so you may have already read them, if you are (were) one of their followers.

So why even have such a blog?

Reason #1: It’s because there are so many elements involved in leadership, and knowing them all is challenging, if even possible, and practicing them even more difficult, that I, and hopefully some of you, find it worthwhile hearing them again; reminding us of them; refreshing our memories; and hopefully seeing new ways of applying them in our leadership roles.

Research on management, organizations and leadership picked up momentum in the 1960’s and was very extensive in the late 90’s. Very little in terms of breakthrough ideas has happened since other then the component of speed and communications thanks to the emergence of the internet and computers/Smartphone’s/ pads, etc. Today we can not only revisit the wisdom gained by others, but hear about how they are being applied and gaining new insights.

Reason #2: I just looked up Leadership on Google and got 503,000,000 results. Where do you start? How much can you absorb? I guess that if you are a student, this could be a challenge to pursue. But who has the time?

Ideas for Leaders is a once a week blog. A few minutes a week to read or see a video on leadership is doable for any of us. Absorb the content. Maybe think about its applicability and even best if you can actually implement some of the learning presented. Bite sized learning/education I have found to be a most effective approach. I hope that you do as well.

Reason #3: The blogs are cataloged (in the left hand column) of the Home Page according to the five Universal Challenges of successful organizations, and the three Essential Capabilities of each of them. So if you are involved in a specific leadership need, you can quickly research the multiple blog postings for any of the topics: an easier and more efficient approach to possibly discovering an idea/solution to help you out.

SHOULD YOU BE READING THIS BLOG?

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­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Ideas For Leaders weekly posts are also available on EFactor (www.efactor.com); Ecademy (www.ecademy.com); LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com);  The Leadership Hub (www.theleadershiphub.com); Head of the Curve (http://www.headofthecurve.com) and on the Blog Sphere of multiple other Blogs.

An original post from Seth Godin

[If you are a leader you should read Seth’s new book.]

My latest book, We Are All Weird, came out 8 weeks ago, to very strong reviews and gratifying feedback.

It’s likely you haven’t had a chance to read it yet. I hope you’ll give it a shot. (The Kindle edition runs on all computers and tablets and you can read it for free if you’re an Amazon Prime member).

Here’s an excerpt from the beginning of the book:

The mass market redefines normal

The mass market—which made average products for average people—was invented by organizations that needed to keep their factories and systems running efficiently.

Stop for a second and think about the backwards nature of that sentence.

The factory came first. It led to the mass market. Not the other way around.

Governments went first, because it’s easier to dominate and to maintain order if you can legislate and control conformity. Marketers, though, took this concept and ran with it.

The typical institution (an insurance company, a record label, a bed factory) just couldn’t afford mass customization, couldn’t afford to make a different product for every user. The mindset was: This is the Eagles’ next record. We need to make it a record that the masses will buy, because otherwise it won’t be a hit and the masses will buy something else.

This assumption seems obvious—so obvious that you probably never realized that it is built into everything we do. The mass market is efficient and profitable, and we live in it. It determines not just what we buy, but what we want, how we measure others, how we vote, how we have kids, and how we go to war. It’s all built on this idea that everyone is the same, at least when it comes to marketing (and marketing is everywhere, isn’t it?).

Marketers concluded that the more the market conformed to the tight definition of mass, the more money they would make. Why bother making products for left-handed people if you can figure out how to get left-handed people to buy what you’re already making? Why offer respectful choice when you can make more money from forced compliance and social pressure?

Mass wasn’t always here. In 1918, there were two thousand car companies active in the United States. In 1925, the most popular saddle maker in this country probably had .0001% market share. The idea of mass was hardly even a dream for the producer of just about any object.

At its heyday, on the other hand, Heinz could expect that more than 70 percent of the households in the U.S. had a bottle of their ketchup in the fridge, and Microsoft knew that every single company in the Fortune 500 was using their software, usually on every single personal computer and server in the company.

Is it any wonder that market-leading organizations fear the weird?

The End of Mass

This is a manifesto about the mass market. About mass politics, mass production, mass retailing, and even mass education.

The defining idea of the twentieth century, more than any other, was mass.

Mass gave us efficiency and productivity, making us (some people) rich. Mass gave us huge nations, giving us (some people) power. Mass allowed powerful people to influence millions, giving us (some people) control.

And now mass is dying.

We see it fighting back, clawing to control conversations and commerce and politics. But it will fail; it must. The tide has turned, and mass as the engine of our culture is gone forever.

That idea may make you uncomfortable. If your work revolves around finding the masses, creating for the masses, or selling to the masses, this change is very threatening.

Some of us, though, view it as the opportunity of a lifetime. The end of mass is not the end of the world, but it is a massive change, and this manifesto will help you think through the opportunity it represents.

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Understanding the threats and opportunities that Seth talks about is important. Understanding your organization and being able to measure it is the basis for a undertaking a successful transformation and making changes to it. That is what the ORGANIZATION OPTIMIZER delivers.

An original post from Karl Moore and Peter Neely

To date, companies have embraced social networks by setting up Facebook and LinkedIn pages. Many view these as an extension of their current marketing mix and offer product information, sales notices and contact information which is no different from their website. Many companies have also started using Twitter as a broadcasting medium, tweeting when they have new products or are having a clearance sale as a syndicated one-way communication with its followers. Really savvy companies are using new software monitoring tools to search social media for discussions, comments, and complaints by customers and employees about their company and products and services. In many cases, they get some great information that they use to improve their product or service, and sometimes they even contact people who complain to gather more details as indicative about how other customers might feel.

But the biggest value that social networks offer goes beyond being marketing channels to push communication to prospects and customers. They are morphing into new channels for collaboration and innovation. Social networks are becoming unique touch points to engage communities, start conversations, recruit skillful employees, and develop new innovative ideas. Firms that successfully leverage social networks are doing so to engage their communities in conversation explicitly to tap into their brainpower and energy. They ask customers and followers to participate in brainstorming with them so they can learn how to be a better company, offer better products and services, or support the values and issues of the community.

Social networks are increasingly tapping into this collaborative mindset in ways that continue to evolve. We first saw the power of mass collaboration with the advent of Linux, an open source operating system, when it opened its source-code and allowed software developers around the world to openly add and improve the core product. The collaborative process raised the level of quality, innovation and speed of new feature delivery for Linux.

Since then, many other companies have started to embrace and develop collaborative networks to create value. They understand that ideas can come from anyone, anywhere and at anytime. Three examples demonstrate how some organizations have taken advantage of this new collaborative mindset and are leveraging the power that networks offer.

* Toronto-based Goldcorp, a gold mining firm, sought a new approach to finding gold deposits on their 55,000-acre Red Lake, Ontario property. With analysts believing that the fifty-year old property had been emptied, high production costs, labor strikes and lingering debt, the firm was desperate to find new life. Without options, CEO Rob McEwan created the “Goldcorp Challenge” whereby he placed every piece of information about the property on the web for all participants to download, study and submit recommendations. More than 1000 participants from over 50 countries signed up to solve Goldcorp’s problem. Submissions came from a diverse group of participants, many not trained in geology. This open-source innovation network proved to be invaluable identifying 110 targets worth more than $3 billion. By opening the information to a wider network, the company benefited from collaboration of internal and external knowledge banks.

* The second example uses the idea of social and collaborative networking within the four walls of the organization. In mid-2007 IBM created Beehive, an internal social network to connect employees worldwide. The network gained momentum and supports 30,000 employees. Each employee can add a bio page, photos and connect with employees from other IBM offices around the world.What’s interesting about Beehive is how the employees use the internal network. There are three distinct categories of use. The first is to connect with employees they meet at conferences or when working on interdepartmental or inter-divisional projects. The network provides a mechanism to stay connected and get to know other employees and their area of expertise.The second use is to gain project support and brainstorm with others on how best to complete a project. The connections provide a collaboration channel to promote the project to others and gather ideas from other people at different levels.The third use of Beehive is the opportunity to connect with people at higher levels of the organization that are not accessible via traditional channels. Employees use connections to these executives as a method to share ideas and get career advice with the hope of advancement. IBM Beehive is a great example of leveraging an internal social network to cultivate communication, interaction, and collaboration within the widely distributed company.

* The third example is InnoCentive, the first global web community for open innovation created back in 2001. InnoCentive is designed to bring seekers (companies with problems) and solvers (scientists, engineers, professionals, and entrepreneurs with solutions) together to collaborate on challenges that R&D-driven organizations are facing. In 2011, this web-based network has more than 250,000 engineers, scientists, inventors, business people, and research organizations in more than 175 countries available to solve seekers problems. Companies like DuPont, Procter & Gamble, Dow AgroSciences, BASF, and Eli Lilly and Company, post problems their own in-house research teams cannot solve, offering rewards that range from $10,000 to $100,000. To date, InnoCentive has paid out more than $7 million dollars in rewards to solvers. Access to external resources helps companies source experts throughout the world. Without the internal knowledge to solve these challenges, many firms would fail to develop new products at the rapid pace needed in some markets.

The benefits of a collaboration networks are limitless. These networks breed co-creation, shared value, and cultures of collaboration that can be leveraged beyond the network. The new generation of Millennials and Generation C (connected, computerized, and community-oriented) have fully adopted the collaborative mindset as their own. They are educated, interactive and collaborative and have grown up using social networks as a tool for brainstorming and problem solving. This reflects a broad shift in generational thinking that is taking place. The broadcast generation from the industrial age is being met by a collaborative generation from the new knowledge age. The old ways of staying within the four walls to solve problems, guarding company information and developing products, services and solutions in isolation are gone.

Companies that can create or participate in a collaborative network and organize themselves to best leverage the benefits will enjoy a competitive advantage. Companies of all sizes can start by setting up a network of internal experts, suppliers, partners and customers. There are even technology platforms that can be employed to facilitate this collaboration so that you can get started immediately if you want.

So stop thinking of social networks as just another venue for your marketing.  Their next evolution is already underway and holds much promise for the business world.

Peter Neely is a practicing manager with more than 20 years of experience in management, strategy and implementation. Peter holds an MBA from Richard Ivey School of Business and is a 2012 International Masters in Practicing Management candidate from McGill University.

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You can only change what you can measure! The ORGANIZATION OPTIMIZER is the first methodology that measures an organization on the 15 essential capabilities of successful enterprises.

An original post by Derek Sivers

“When do you go running?”

“When the time is right.”

“When is the time right?”

“When it’s a nice day, and I’ve finished my work, and I haven’t just eaten, and I’m feeling energetic.”

“Repeat that last sentence, changing ‘and’ to ‘or’.”

“When it’s a nice day, OR I’ve finished my work, OR I haven’t just eaten, OR I’m feeling energetic.”

“That sounds like a better plan.”

Got a list of conditions you need satisfied before you do something?

Try changing and to or.

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The ORGANIZATION OPTIMIZER identifies those capabilities that need improvement and helps establish priorities.