Category — Performance Coaching

I am not a huge fan of providing material from other people, as they all have their own outlets. I always assume that visitors coming here would like to see and read what I have to say. Well, today we make an exception because I think what Paul Maloney said about social networking and business is importnat.

I have been working on my social network presence and will do much more this months in preparation of a massive effort for the second half of 2008. I think you will benefit from reading about Paul’s perspective. (italic)

Social politics in business: then and nowImagine its 1985 and the current office gossip is about a young fresh recruit getting a promotion because of their looks or behaviour. If the employee losing out on the promotion wanted to do something malicious they could write a letter, photocopy it and give it to all the staff, they could make banners and hang them outside the building or they could write to the local paper and reveal the juicy gossip.

Imagine the reaction in 1985 seeing an article from a colleague printed in the local paper about office gossip, assuming any paper would print it. An example of how office gossip worked back then in the 80s can be found at the New York Times.
Fast forward to 2007, the same two people, in the same position.

This time the losing candidate heads home (or even sits at their desk) and writes about it on their personal blog, adds some incriminating photos (possible faked with Adobe Photoshop) to Facebook and encourages other colleagues to add comments, and the BBC have a story that shows how this impacts individuals in the 21st Century.

Call it bullying, intimidation, discrimination or just plain abuse, these types of personal commentary on office life don’t just affect the individuals involved, they affect the image of the company. Even embarrassing tricks and behaviour can affect the company and peoples jobs. Would you want to be the Health and Safety Manager explaining the videos in this Contract Journal article?

Analysing the Social Network profile of a company should be something done on a regular basis, but it should be combined with policies, training and guidelines. If the employees don’t know how to behave correctly when revealing details about the company then disciplinary action can be hard to take.

Managing a businesses Social Network ProfileStart with the training, show employees what damage thoughtless comments on a Social Network can cause to them, their colleagues and the company.
Detail the things you expect them not to post about and the things they can post about.

Use the example of Kevin Colvin to show personal impact, his photo appeared in major newspapers around the world, potentially damaging future career prospects.
Follow up the training with procedures and guidelines to ensure everyone has the same understanding. The policies should detail the consequences of ignoring them.
Once all these measures are in place the Social Network Forensic Analysis can begin.

On a regular basis, use search engines and Social Networking websites to find information on the company.
Use the company name, address, any abbreviations or nicknames for the company and also the names of employees.
Review any content and see if it breaches any company policies that are currently in place.

Mark Ellis makes a number of good points in his blog, the most important one being to seek legal advice on the whole procedure before relying on it for disciplinary action.

Using the sledgehammer approach to this and forbidding all posting about the company can have two very negative effects. The first that people continue to blog and comment on Social Networking websites, relying on either not being caught or the disciplinary action not being enforceable.

The second negative effect is that it could reduce the positive publicity from Social Networking activity, Josh Ledgard discusses the impact corporate blogging had on Microsoft.

One way to view this whole area is to treat it like the anti-smoking legislation; everyone knows smoking is bad for them, but some people can’t stop. The company can encourage them to stop, promote alternatives and provide information on how smoking is dealt with in the workplace. If they smoke at home and the company has done everything they possibly can then there is some justification to place personal blame and fault. Positive encouragement can go a long way for both smokers and bloggers…

Paul Maloney is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional and a Specialist of the Business Continuity Institute.

Are you sick and tired of having to pay more and more of your hard earned money for gas?

Did you get one of these nice SUV’s when they were offering them with huge discounts, 72 months financing, employee pricing?

What about all the other things that seem to get more expensive daily? Are you ready to shout and find someone to blame?

I know how you feel. I just bought 2 apples for my wife for $3 and they weren’t anything special. The same purchase last years was about $1.49. Also, for the first time since I own my car (which only allows 16 gallon per filling) I actually reached the $75 limit at the gas station before the tank was full.

Don’t get me wrong. I am a big fan of protecting the environment, recycling what we can, and finding new technologies for the future, like Hybrid cars and hopefully soon, electric cars.

What makes me angry is the story of inevitability we are being fed every day. The government says that it isn’t in the business of regulating free enterprise. Ok- but why would you then allow the oil companies to keep tax benefits when they make more money than ever?

The oil companies say they can’t do anything about these insane prices because the oil is traded on the world markets and they only buy it for the barrel price the market dictates.

Actually, that’s not really true because these same oil companies are the ones that pump the oil out of the ground. Do your really believe the Saudis invented their own systems? No, they brought in the western companies, just like the Iraqis are doing now, the Kuwaitis did, the Mexicans did, even the South Americans.

In some cases, especially South America, the socialist governments decided to nationalize the equipment after the fields were ready to produce, but they didn’t come up with the technology.

Lately Congress, the oil companies, consumer advocates, politicians, and anybody else you can find have begun blaming the speculators at Wall Street for the high price of gas.

There is probably some truth in all of these arguments and taking it all together brought us ever closer to $5/Gallon.

So what will happen next? – I bet the prices will keep going up until somebody finally takes action and stop the robbery of the customer at the pump.

I assume while you reading this you are probably nodding and asking yourself who this someone is going to be?

Well, let me tell you. It’s you and me and good old fashion demand-and-supply.

Why is it that we are very aware of demand and supply, getting told about it every day, but accept that it doesn’t really apply when it comes to getting gas?

In my town and many places I visited around the country and actually around the world, there are several gas stations, but curiously, gas is always priced within a few cents of each other, no matter where you go.

We are paying the same if the gas is pumped in the Gulf o Mexico or the California Coast, basically on our doorstep, as we do for the gas that comes here all the way from Saudi Arabia. How is that possible?

I tell you how. The oil companies don’t consider us, the consumer, in the pricing. They look at every aspect, from taxes, to transportation, to refining, to sales volume of the gas station owner, but not at you and me.

Economy works best when the product that gets the most sales has an advantage over the one with the least sales. – Sounds familiar? Sounds like Economy 101?

Yes it is. So what we need to do to force some change for the prices at the pump is being selective.

In reality every expert will tell you that the quality of the gas you pump is so similar across all brands that it doesn’t make a difference if you choose Shell, Exxon, Mobile, Union 76, Citco, BP, or any of all the other brands. In the vast majority of cases it doesn’t even make a big difference if you get regular or premium (your engine might run better and smoother, but it would run with regular if you let it)

If we want to take back the influence we can have over gas prices at the source of sale, I suggest to avoid pumping any gas from any of the largest station, like Shell, Exxon, Mobile, Texaco, and BP. Typically within a few miles you will find plenty of other choices.

I am sure if we all stop getting gas from the biggest oil companies they will start asking themselves what happened. Quickly they w ill realize that the consumer is getting gas at other places. I am sure you agree that they still want to sell us gas and make the Billions of dollars of profits, so they will have to start competing.

When they lower prices, we can all switch to them and force the rest to review their prices, and so forth. Only when we take back our power as consumers will we have some influence on the prices. We can do that through conservation and jumping on new alternatives as they become available. In the mean time, let’s only get gas from the little guys and leave the tanks of the large oil companies full.

I am telling my more than 3000 readers here today. If you forward this idea to everybody you know (typically about 50 – 100 people) and they do the same, we will have millions of consumers by the end of next months taking back their power over gas prices.

I am sure that will change the prices. Supply and demand has always won over foreigners, speculators, currency fluctuations, and whatever other reason they throw towards us. I hope you join me in this effort and tell as many people as you can about it.

Axel Meierhoefer, AMC LLC

Discover the 7 secrets to salvation from the C-Problem

We live in a world where everything seems to get more and more accelerated.

Do you feel that you have less time but more things to do than a few years ago?

Does it appear that time is running and you are always attempting to catch up?

Have you craved for an opportunity to stop, take a deep breath and get a good view of what is going on, before getting back into the rush?

For a long time I have been in that same situation, maybe because when flying fast jets it appeared as if everything had to be done faster.

What did I do to overcome this probelm?

Well, the issue is that most of us have more and more things we try to cram into the same amount of time. We feel we need to answer emails, write letters, attend to meetings, get our chores completed, make sure our finances aren’t getting out of whack, and on top of it all, meet the deadlines for the projects assigned to us.

Most people try to cope with this load by prioritizing. Finding out what is most important, what’s less important, and what might be so unimportant that it doesn’t matter if we do it or not. That works well in theory, but when you are rushing around, life happens and priorities get shifted. Suddenly you have to decide, often without all the information desirable for a sound, well thought out decision.

When this is happening, you are bound to forget something or shift certain things in a position that make it appear as if you’re already past that chore or commitment. When the actual deadline or delivery date arrives and passes without you performing as you probably promised, you have “crastinated” on this particular issue.

That’s the C-Problem strutting it’s ugly head.

If this only happens in seldom, rare cases, you can consider yourself an “Amateur-Crastinator”. I sincerely hope you identify/recognize when this happens and begin to take corrective action.

If you don’t and this happens over and over, you will become a “Professional”. At some point you might even become known for this behavior. Don’t let the pressure of fast decision making and an ever increasing number of balls to juggle turn you into a “Pro-Crastinator”.

On this particular topic, you don’t want to be an Amateur or a Professional. You want to be a “No-Crastinator”!

How do you do that?

Well, it starts with the right frame of mind. You can review the free special report we created for this issue at http://www.meierhoefer.net/special

In addition you need to have a daily planner or at least a calendar with enough space for you to put in your assignment. Here are the 7 secrets to avoid becoming an “Amateur-Crestinator” or even worse, a “Professional Crastinator”:

1. Develop a system of priorities (A,B,C; or 1,2,3, or high, medium, low, or color in Red, Blue, Green)

2. Pick a day in the week when you sit down and enter all the known assignments, projects, deadlines, etc. into the planner/calendar for the following week.

3. On that same day, enter every new item you already know about for the weeks and months beyond the week following the one you are currently in.

4. Next, go backwards in your planner/calendar from today through the last 5 days, and identify any item that has not been checked off or completed. Move it into your current week and make sure the priorities are still correctly showing. If they need to be updated, make sure you do this right away. This way any uncompleted items will still get taken care of. (Better late than never)

5. Review every day of this current week (old and new entries you just made) from the last day of the week towards today’s day, and check if all the items are still current and have the correct priority annotation. If something changed, make sure it is showing in your planner/calendar.

6. Check tomorrow and today and make sure everything is set for you to be successful and meet your commitments. Make any changes needed to have a good plan.

7 - (A) For your work tasks, in case you have an assistant or confidant, tell them what the three most important items on your planner are and encourage them to ask you about those entries at least once a day. Let them know that this is helping you rather than bugging you (if you feel you can, give them a copy of your planner/calendar pages).

7 - (B) For your private/family tasks, do the same as for the work tasks and encourage your spouse/partner or a friend to ask you about the important items as a reminder (if you feel you can, give him/her a copy of your planner/calendar pages).

Armed with this kind of system and following the ideas and recommendation in our free report, you will have no problem avoiding to become an Amateur -Crestinator or a Professional Crestinator.

Should you determine you need more coaching or help on this issue, please feel free to contact us or get your hands on a wonderful package at http://tinyurl.com/4hqyzq

Good luck to you and let us know how these 7 secrets worked for you.

Axel Meierhoefer, AMC LLC

Have you read the articles in the papers about the status of our economy? I am not sure that we are really in a recession or even in a depression, as some pessimists seem to indicate. May that be decided by the historians in a few years when all the data is available and analyzed.

Have you heard about the relatively low confidence readings by the public? You yourself might have asked yourself how to continue to pay for $4/gallon gas at the pump, ever increasing prices for food, and many other daily necessities.

Officially we have an inflation rate of about 1.5 – 2 % but when I look at most of what we consume, it has increased easily by 20% or 30%, and in some cases even 40%, not to speak of the 100% increase when filling up the tank of my car.

Do you feel the same pain? If so, you might ask yourself what you can do. You might also ask yourself what your organization can do, as your place of work is probably the one resource you can’t afford to loose in these challenging times.

With unemployment racing towards 6% nationwide, there is an increasing fear among the workforce about job security. The overall mood of the population is suppressed by the jump in prices, the war that doesn’t seem to end, the negative economic news, the unending stream of reports about foreclosures. It almost looks like everything is on a negative downslide right now.

Individually we can’t change the fundamentals of the economy and the associated political decisions. What we can do is get back to the very basics of doing business. One of these very basic things is customer service.

I strongly believe that the trend we currently see in many organization is going to be regretted when the dust of all the turmoil settles. When companies want to reduce cost, they typically look at those parts of the organization that don’t deliver obvious returns on investment. These include, almost on equal levels, expenses for training, and expenses and salaries for customer service.

One of the additional fallacies is the believe that a reduced number of customers coming into stores or visiting your website means you don’t need as many people providing services. The opposite is actually true.

When you want to maintain reasonable sales figures and thereby secure the jobs in your organization, you need to be better in customer service than most everybody else.

Many people who would have been customers a year ago are prospects right now. That means they might be interested in what you have to offer in products and services, but they have a generally negative state of mind. You know the reasons from reading all the bad things above.

To convert a prospect with a negative frame of mind into a buying customer, you will have to find out what they need, and show them all the benefits of what you have to offer. In these times, customer service becomes a needs satisfaction task, not a pure sale.

If you can satisfy the needs of a prospect by clearly showing how he or she will benefit from spending the little money they currently have with you, you have a much better chance to actually make a sale.

The second and almost more important task for your customer service providers is the transformation of a customer into a client. When the economy is restarting and the general mood will turn more optimistic, those organizations able to convert lots of prospects into customers and ultimately into clients, will be in a prime position to accelerate even more.

Never forget that a customer buys once (maybe because you just happened to have what they were desperately looking for). A client buys over and over again and builds a relationship with you that is often stronger than the lure of a lower price your competitor might offer.

To have a lot of clients, you want to determine what the needs of your prospects are, what the benefits of your solutions are, and then bring the two together in a smooth, caring, supportive way. If you can trigger the urge of a prospect to fill a need by buying what you offer, you will have a seamless sale.

If you keep serving your customer well after the sale, he or she will turn into a long term client and no recession in the world can change that.

Make sure that everybody in your organization understands that customer service is even more important in these challenging times than it is during a boom. You might even want to change the term from customer service to client service.

If that becomes the frame of mind of everyone working with and for you, your chances of flying through this demanding economy are way better than any of your competitors.

Make sure you don’t save at the wrong end of your business and invest in the skills of those among you who deliver the all important client services. That will secure the longevity and prosperity of your organization automatically.

Axel Meierhoefer, AMC LLC