Empowering Innovation

by Paul Sloane

The challenge with innovation is finding products and services that are easier to use, easier to maintain and more appealing to customers. Where can you draw the creativity and drive to make this happen? Often the best source for innovation is the team within your business. A great leader can turn them into entrepreneurs who are hungrily looking for new opportunities. The key is empowerment. By empowering people you enable them to achieve goals through their own ideas and efforts. The leader sets the destination, but the team chooses the route.


What do employees need to be empowered?

People need clear objectives so that they know what is expected of them. They need to develop the skills for the task. They need to work in cross-departmental teams so that they can create and implement solutions that will work. They need freedom to succeed. And when you give someone freedom to succeed you also give them freedom to fail. Above all, empowerment means trusting people. It is by giving them trust, support and belief that you will empower them to achieve great things.

Empowerment is more than managers setting objectives and then leaving people alone. It is about encouraging and enabling people to solve problems, meet customer needs and seize market opportunities on their own initiatives - either individually or in groups from different disciplines.

The goal is to have everyone think of themselves as an entrepreneur who has the right and the duty to solve problems and seize opportunities - not to offload them to others. In many organizations problems are passed up and down a long chain of command. They are postponed, delegated, transferred, ignored and eventually handled by some remote manager who cannot avoid the issue any longer. In the empowered organization they are handled by the first employee who encounters the problem. They have the authority to solve problems and take initiatives fast. They do not do this in isolation - they communicate. The senior team knows what is going on – but because they trust people to do the right things they find out later - after the fact in most cases. This involves risks but it pays back in a much more agile, effective, creative and dynamic mode of operation.


Encouragement Is Not Enough

The goal is to change the business from a routine group of people who are doing a job to a highly energized team of entrepreneurs who are constantly searching for new and better ways of making the vision a reality. We want to use creative techniques to drive innovative solutions to reach the goal. But just encouraging innovation is not enough. You need to initiate programs that show people how they can use creative techniques to come up with new solutions.


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Paul Sloane writes, speaks and leads workshops on creativity, innovation and leadership. He is the author of The Innovative Leader published by Kogan-Page.

Creating Preference in a Commodity Business

by Matt Heinz

I was asked recently how to successfully sell value in a commodity business. When your product or service is virtually identical to what is available elsewhere, how do you create differentiation, preference, value and market share acceleration?

It's not easy, but there are ways. Here are five to start:

Service: How well you treat your customers can make a big difference, especially if you want to be a premium-priced commodity seller. Customers who don't value service will always buy on price, and if you want to be the low-cost leader, that's fine too. But if you want to sell value with a commodity, provide excellent, remarkable service at every level and every interaction with your customers and prospects.

Trust: What's your reputation? What are you known for? Do customers trust you, and why? Know what your customers value, and establish a tight bond between those values and the trust you create and strengthen in the way you do business, every day.

The Little Things: There are countless ways to do little, remarkable things for your customers. Unexpected things that make you stand out, thoughtful gestures that show you're different, and that you care. Real estate agents who bring new buyers a pizza or sandwiches on moving day, that's special. Auto dealerships that offer free car wash service for life. Things like that can be huge for differentiation and preference, not to mention word-of-mouth for your business to new prospective customers.

A Consultative Approach to Selling: Are you just selling the commodity, or are you providing additional value in the sale? Are you teaching customers more about the industry they work in, the environment in which they need that commodity. Are you helping them be more successful in the process of buying? Provide that kind of value-added service as part of the sale, and you're creating immediate value & differentiation.

Results: A commodity market doesn't necessarily mean that every option is the same, and will deliver the same results. How are you able to transcend what you're selling, and deliver differentiation and value in how that commodity impacts your customers? Is the end-result better through you? How? And how effectively can you communicate that results-based differentiation? Let your happy customers tell that story for you. Use their enthusiasm and success in the market to drive preference and value.


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Matt Heinz is principal at Heinz Marketing, a sales & marketing consulting firm helping businesses increase customers and revenue. Contact Matt at matt@heinzmarketing.com or visit www.heinzmarketing.com.

Importance of Employee Engagement

by Mike Myatt

The topic of "Employee Engagement" is something that many CEOs tend to struggle with. Long gone are the days where the executive leadership of a company can remain sequestered in their offices with an internal focus on hard metrics. Given the current economic climate, it takes far more than cost-cutting to survive. It is the CEO who understands the need for focus on the soft metrics of customer centricity and employee engagement that will create sustainable growth in revenue and brand equity. In today's post I'll examine the need to have a fully engaged work force...

Before you read any further, I want you to stop and ask yourself the following question: How many of your employees are truly passionate about your company, its values, its vision, its mission, and the role that they play within the organization? Don't fool yourself... Conduct a harsh, critical analysis and come up with a true head count of the passionate employees within your organization.

Your answer to the question above should be a very telling sign about the overall health of your business. Are people just showing-up and punching the clock to collect a paycheck, or are they personally consumed and committed to achieving the company vision? Are your employees corporate evangelists serving as a motivating force to be reckoned with, or do they gather in small groups to gripe and complain about all the things wrong with the company and its leadership?

The key to having an engaged workforce is to have a passionate workforce. And the simple truth of the matter is that no single person in the company can instill passion in the ranks like the CEO can. Despite the consensus recognition that employee engagement matters, the enormity of its impact on the company's bottom line and its capacity for innovation, still appears to be misunderstood by most CEOs. I rarely talk to a CEO that doesn't understand this principle in concept, but yet I rarely see chief executives who put theory into practice.

So it begs the question, why are CEOs listening but not taking action? The answer seems to be that CEOs continue to allocate considerable effort and resources toward engineering the corporate strategy, yet they seem to be unaware of what forces can prevent said strategy from being delivered successfully. Not surprisingly, employee engagement is often the critical missing factor.

As the CEO you must also become the chief engagement officer. Operating in a vacuum and being out of touch is never a good position to find yourself in as the CEO. I have consistently espoused the value of walking the floor, dropping in on meetings on an impromptu basis, taking employees of all ranks to lunch, and any number of other items that focus on raising your internal awareness and creating a passionate workforce.

It is your passionate employees that are the franchise talent (regardless of position) that you should be building around. If you can't get employees to see the light and become passionate about the company and their contribution, then seek to replace them as quickly as possible. Just as passion is a positive, contagious trait so are apathy and dissatisfaction. Passionate employees are productive, energized, committed and loyal assets. Apathetic employees quickly become disenfranchised liabilities that will hurt both productivity and morale. To drive home the point of how much I value passionate employees, I would take a moderately talented but passionate employee over a very talented but complacent employee eleven times out of ten.

Truly great companies are built around passionate employees. When you walk into a dynamic, thriving company you can sense the passion. You feel a certain buzz and fervor that pervades everything. Contrast this with a company that feels as if it has no pulse. If you've ever walked into an organization that feels like rigor-mortis has set in, you know what I'm referring to. In today's economy, the old saying that "the only thing worse than an employee who quits and leaves is the employee who quits and stays" has never been more accurate.

As a leader you need to understand that your employees not only want to be led, but they want to be led by a passionate leader. Ultimately employees want to be passionate about what they do; in fact, they'll go to the ends of earth and sacrifice tremendously if passionate about the endeavor. Think of the employees that started off with Gates and Allen at Microsoft, or those that worked with Phil Knight in his garage before Nike even had a name, or those employees that endured the early days with Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Google. It was their passion and commitment that helped change the landscape of business, not their starting salaries.

To build an extraordinary company, you must light the fire in the bellies of your workforce. You must get them to feel passion about your organization and to connect with your vision. You must get your employees to engage. As the CEO, your ability to transfer your passion to your employees is the essence of being a great leader. So much so that if you can't accomplish this, you simply can't be a great leader. Think of any great leader, and while you'll find varying degrees of skill sets, intellect and ability, I challenge to name even one that did not have passion, as well as the ability to instill said passion in team members.


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Mike Myatt, is a Top CEO Coach, author of "Leadership Matters...The CEO Survival Manual", and Managing Director of N2Growth.

Can social media take the place of marketing automation platforms?

Our October Innovation Contest winners won a signed copy of "7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis" by Bill George and the right to have their article re-published here on Blogging Innovation. Here is the second of the three winning entries:


by Barrett Coakley

The Corporate Learning group at Harvard Business Publishing currently uses Eloqua as our marketing automation platform (MAP). Eloqua is very robust and does everything we need and more. However, I have been thinking lately as social media applications mature do they have the potential to be a free marketing automation platform, especially for a small business? Already today there are services that you can use to do some rudimentary tracking. For example, if I use bit.ly to shorten my URL and post a note on Twitter about a free article on my site I can track click throughs and retweets through bit.ly's tracking capability. I can then use Google analytics on my site to gain even more information.This certainly is not as robust as an Eloqua, but it certainly gets the job done, and it's free.

Another important aspect of social media that can't be replicated by a MAP is highlighted by the findings in the recent Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey as seen in the chart above. The survey found that recommendations from personal acquaintances or opinions posted by consumers online are the most trusted forms of advertising. Ninety percent or consumers surveyed noted that they trust recommendations from people they know, while 70 percent trusted consumer opinions posted online.

"The explosion in Consumer Generated Media over the last couple of years means consumers' reliance on word of mouth in the decision-making process, either from people they know or online consumers they don't, has increased significantly," says Jonathan Carson, President of Online, International, for the Nielsen Company."

Marketing is all about building trust and being relevant to the consumer. I know I regularly look at recommendations on sites like Best Buy before I purchase any electronics. I do not know these people, but it goes back to James Surowiecki's Wisdom of Crowds theory, "under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them." Social media has a much greater advantage over a marketing platform because a Tweet to people who follow you is more likely to be taken more seriously than an email from a campaign.

Think of the power of some of the services below and compare them to how you would react to items posted there versus an email in your inbox from a vendor that you may have a passing knowledge of but no real relationship. What do you trust and believe more?

• LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• Digg, Stumbleupon, etc.
• revver, knol (yes, knol), etc.
• Gist
• Meetup
• Youtube
• Hollr

What other services are out there that have this same power? Do you think that social media could eventually be the defacto MAP as the technologies mature and people start building applications to track items (like Metricly)?

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Barrett Coakley is currently a Senior Product Marketing Manager for the Corporate Learning Group at Harvard Business Publishing.

Here's to the Passionate Creatives

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

Apple ad, "Think Different", 1997




by Hutch Carpenter

Why did Apple's ad resonate so well with you? After all, how much time do we spend disagreeing. Admit how happy it can make you when your manager praises you for executing well on an assignment. I know I feel it. No "think different". More like "think excellence".

But that Apple ad. It was damn good, wasn't it? Seemed to reach inside us to something else beside the praise we get for doing an assigned job well. It was celebrating some thing in each of us.

John Hagel recently wrote A Labor Day Manifesto for a New World. The post is a call to action for work that better fits our human nature. Our desire for creating better ways to address problems, in ways that fit our personality, interests and skills. To reach our full potential. We're not all doing this though.

Hagel terms people whose personalities and drive are based on making situations better than what currently exists as "passionate creatives". There have always been these types, but recent changes in the global economy and shifting market dynamics (e.g. digital technology rewriting one industry after another) are increasing their importance.

Passionate creatives exist within organizations, and as independent entrepreneurs. For those inside firms, Hagel notes:


"They experience deep frustration today with the institutional barriers that have been put in their way as they seek to more effectively achieve their full potential. They want and need platforms that can help them connect with others and drive performance to new levels."


For many of us, even if we wouldn't label ourselves "passionate creatives", the point about frustration resonates. How often have you had an idea, but can't attention for it, nor resources, nor figure out who else to work with? I've had jobs like that in the past. You know some things are not working well, and you can see how to improve the product/delivery/business model. But you can't make headway on iterating through new possibilities.

Hagel's manifesto is a great read. I want to hit on two points I take away from it:

• What is the role of "passionate creativity" in daily work?


• The gathering of passionate creatives at the edges and the accelerating rate of change in markets

The Role of Passionate Creativity in Work

Very few of us get to live a life of unfettered passionate creativity. The realities of the mundane trump the thrill of the new. And that's not a fault of the system. If all we did was work on new stuff, there'd be no stability and no scalability. More like mass economic anarchy.

But that's too heavy handed a look at it. We can be quite productive and help our companies, and careers, while working on tasks that hit our passionate creative sweet spot. A good question to ask is, how much of this passionate creativity infuses our work days?



Take a look at those two Venn Diagrams. They're saying different things. The left one says that we all have to execute on tasks assigned by others, or assigned by ourselves for the role we fill. In some of that work, we'll have the opportunity to reach deeper, to deliver creativity on an activity that animates us. But the primary focus is executing on the plans and processes already in place.

The right one indicates a job which is dominated by passionate creativity. Hagel's call-to-action is more aligned here. We work primarily on things which stimulate and energize us regularly. But there is a twist to this notion. It doesn't mean spending one's time on only starry-eyed big picture thinking, producing little of tangible value for your organization. It includes work by those "who are searching for new and creative ways to do the most 'routine' tasks."

Which model of work are we likely to see arise in the next decade or two? Both. Neither. Yes.

Hagel's manifesto is not so much a clear-eyed plan for rearranging organizations. Rather, it's a wake-up call to the corporate world that the nature of work and what employees seek is changing. As he says:


"Why will more and more people evolve into passionate creatives? Because we live in a world that is shifting inexorably from an obsession with efficiency to an obsession with learning. We have come to call this the Big Shift."


In that statement, I draw some conclusions that relate which model above will emerge. First, note that the Big Shift is a shift in "obsessions". From efficiency to learning. That's a shift in attention, and in resources. It's a shift in the dynamics of the supply side of the equation.

What hasn't shifted is the demand side of the equation. Consumers worldwide still depend on the massive efficiencies that Tayloresque methodologies have brought to our economy.

So there's the quandary: if we're all working on things that inflame our passionate creativity, who is minding the massive scalability store?

My sense is that the Venn Diagram on the left is closer to what we'll see. Enlightened companies will follow the examples set by Google and 3M, encouraging employees to pursue initiatives outside their regular routines. This does a couple things:

• It provides an outlet for growing passionate creativity on a wider basis


• Some of those initiatives will turn into full-fledged projects

The second point then lets employees live a life in the right-side Venn Diagram.

Passionate Creatives at the Edges

Another point Hagel makes is that passionate creatives tend to occupy spaces that are "edges":


"Passionate creatives are everywhere among us, but they are not evenly distributed. They tend to gather on the edges where unmet needs intersect with unexploited capabilities. Edges are fertile seedbeds for innovation."


Reading this, I was struck by how well this fits with the observation that Gary Hamel made. The pace of change in markets is faster now than it ever has been in history. What this means is that Hagel's edges - unmet needs intersect with unexploited capabilities - will be more frequently found.

Companies need to get better in pivoting to meet changes in their markets. And this keeps CEOs up at night. IBM surveyed global CEOs in 2008, asking them about their view of changes in their markets. The results are eye-opening:


"Collectively, CEOs set their organization's ability to manage change 22 percentage points lower than their expectations for the level of change they will have to manage - a 'change gap' that is widening."


A wide 'change gap' there, isn't it? If Hamel identifies the problem companies face, Hagel identifies the types of workers who will make a difference in addressing the problem. The passionate creatives.

The edges are places of opportunity and uncertainty. It's hard to know what the demand dynamics are, and existing infrastructure and processes don't address the changing market needs. New alternatives are emerging, it's time for fresh approaches by existing firms.

Companies are best-served by allowing employees who are attracted to these changes to pursue innovative ways to address them. Why? They get energy. They get an experimenter's mentality. They get a happier workforce. Let employees exercise some form of self-organization to accomplish this.

The alternative may be incumbent staffers who have fallen into routines, or have reason to protect the status quo. This does not help companies address rising levels of volatility. Free the passionate creatives!

Passionate Creativity Will Fall on a Spectrum

My sense is that work will evolve, over years and decades, to allow people to shift attention to work that energizes them more fully. It will happen on a spectrum, with daily jobs that fall between those two Venn Diagrams above. Society cannot get away from the requirements of predictability, efficiency and scalability. We're all going to have elements of our jobs that are routine.

I think Hagel's post is right on though. It will be a slow change where companies integrate the existing passionate creatives more effectively, and develop the passionate creativity in all employees. Companies doing it well will need to celebrated and publicized repeatedly for the value to be understood more widely in the market. Over time, we'll see the change.

Note what G. Michael Maddock and Raphael Louis Viton wrote in this recent Business Week article. Passionate creatives like to "follow the challenges":


"Stop and think about the last truly great person who left your organization. First think about what made that employee great. We bet you name such characteristics as action-oriented, driven, passionate, fun, and genuine."


Now think about where that worker went. Chances are, to a position with a perceived promise of putting his or her talents to better use - moving into a role with greater challenges and opportunities to learn and make a difference. It wasn't about money.

It will happen. Here's to the passionate creatives.

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Hutch Carpenter is the Director of Marketing at Spigit. Spigit integrates social collaboration tools into a SaaS enterprise idea management platform used by global Fortune 2000 firms to drive innovation.

Broken Trust

by Mike Myatt

This is the final post in a three part series on trust. The first post was an interview with Chris Brogan, the second was on creating a No Spin Zone, and today's post is on the topic of Broken Trust. Some of my work happens to be in the field of crisis management, and given the recent calamity surrounding what seem to be an ever increasing number of personal and professional indescretions by our elected officials, I thought I'd share some thoughts on what I've learned over the years. While I have long made it a point not to sit in judgment of others, as it is very difficult to properly connect the dots from afar, it is my belief that there is something to be learned from any gross error in judgment. In today's post I'll attempt to stay away from personal accusations and will provide you with my thoughts about what can be learned from such tragic and public mistakes.

Regardless of how you feel about the recent actions of South Carolina Governor Sanford, former New York Governor Spitzer, Blago, and various other senators, congressman, mayors etc., these individuals are after all more than businessmen and politicians, they are human beings who are husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, and community members. Even when the facts stack-up against someone, and there is no doubt as to fault or guilt, I always find it tragic when people's lives are reduced to personal attacks, gossip and innuendo. Humans are imperfect creatures, and I have yet to come across any business leader or politician who can't rattle off several decisions that they wish they hadn't made. It just so happens that some mistakes are more public and tragic than others, and for most people, it is much easier to point the finger at those who have been in the spotlight rather than to deal with their own private indiscretions.

It is also important to note that there are indeed at least two sides to every story, and that what often times appears in the media as hard news can actually be editorial commentary that may, or may not, portray the reality of a given situation. Furthermore, just knowing someone who knows someone, will rarely provide you with accurate information relating to the actual events of a situation...especially one veiled in controversy. Where there is controversy you will always find the attack dogs ready at the leash to exploit the situation to the advantage of their personal, political, or professional agenda...sad, but true.

Okay, enough of the platitudes...I'll climb down from my soap box for a moment and provide you with some thoughts surrounding some of the indiscretions that have dominated our headlines of late. However, I would encourage you not to focus on the issue du jour, but rather to take a step back and read the following commentary with the bigger picture in mind. As you read the following comments think about your perspective on people in general, as well as about how your broader outlook on life:

The Facts: Wrongdoing is certainly wrongdoing, and even the best of intentions don't justify deviant behavior. That being said, good intentions rarely have anything to do with the breach of trust. We are talking about public officials that are stewards of the public trust, and regrettably, personal decisions that impeach one's character matter. Whether mistakes involve acts of a criminal nature, violation of the public trust of constituents, or the emotional devastation to family and friends, these were ultimately conscious decisions that were 'made', and the price for such decisions have unending consequences. As you watch a person's reputation go up in flames, careers come to an abrupt end, and worst of all the emotional and psychological pain inflicted upon family and friends, you cannot help but wonder how a person allows these things to happen.

Why this Happened: From my perspective these matters are rarely as simple as people would like to try and make them. They are rarely due to momentary fit of passion, rage, mental exhaustion or breakdown. Rather you'll find in most cases that these 'indiscretions' have typically gone on for years. Through my reflective lens of observation, they normally appear to be a case of poor decision upon poor decision, further compounded by an out of check ego, pride, arrogance, an addiction to power, and quite possibly an extreme case of narcissism bordering on sociopathic behavior. When all is said and done, I believe you'll find the consensus opinion to be that most people who fall hard, have lost touch with reality, have become lost in themselves, and almost view themselves to be untouchable or invincible. It is truly sad to watch the transition of someone who was once selfless become totally selfish.

What We Should All Take Away From This: Nobody is invincible or above the law…Some notable quotes also seem to apply here: "pride comes before the fall", "don't let your ego write checks you cannot afford to cash", and "your sins will surely find you out". In this media and technology driven world nothing will be kept a secret for long. Whether recorded in audio, video, IM files, phone records, credit card history, e-mail archives, personal testimony, or any number of other forensic audit trails, NOTHING IS TRULY PRIVATE. Therefore, my suggestion is that you consider your thoughts and actions carefully when decisioning anything of consequence. I would recommend putting any meaningful decision up against the following litmus test:

1. Perform a Situation Analysis


• What is motivating the need for a decision? Who will the decision impact (both directly and indirectly)? What data, information, analytics, research or other supporting information do you have to validate your decision?


2. Subject your Decision to Public Scrutiny


• There are no private decisions. Sooner or later the details surrounding any decision will likely come out. If your decision were printed on the front page of the newspaper how would you feel? What would your family think of your decision? How would your shareholders, constituents, and employees feel about your decision? Have you sought counsel and/or feedback before making your decision? When I'm faced with a tough decision, I've learned to take pause and ask myself what decision would make my wife and children proud?


3. Conduct a Cost/Benefit Analysis


• Do the potential benefits derived from the decision justify the expected costs? What if the costs exceed projections and the benefits fall short of projections? What are all the possible rewards and when contrasted with all the potential risks, and are the odds in your favor or are they stacked against you?


4. Assess Whether it is the Right Thing To Do


• Standing behind decisions that everyone supports doesn't particularly require a lot of chutzpa. On the other hand, standing behind what one believes is the right decision in the face of tremendous controversy is the stuff great leaders are made of. My wife has always told me that "you can't go wrong by going right" and as usual I find her advice to be spot-on. Never compromise you value system, your character, or your integrity. Do the right thing.

Lastly, here is some food for thought. It has been my experience that those most critical of certain behaviors likely have their own issues they're trying to distract attention from (case in point, Mr. Spitzer aggressively prosecuting prostitution crimes). What we should all be concerned with is not judging others, but rather how we treat other individuals in general during both the best of times and in worst of times. Don't allow yourself to be a fair weather friend, a gossip, or insensitive jerk. Rather understand that most of us are not privy to the inner thoughts of others and their motivations.

We need to keep in mind that all people make mistakes, and that mistakes alone don’t necessarily make you evil, they just make you human. While it is much easier to avoid disaster than it is to recover from it, perhaps the most important lesson is that it's not the mistake you make, but what you do with your life after the fact...will your fall define you as a failure and disgrace, or will the event serve as the impetus to correct your thinking and actions such that you redefine yourself to become a better and more trustworthy human being?

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Mike Myatt, is a Top CEO Coach, author of "Leadership Matters...The CEO Survival Manual", and Managing Director of N2Growth.

A No Spin Zone

by Mike Myatt

As a follow-up to my interview last week with Chris Brogan, New York Times bestselling author of "Trust Agents", I felt that it was only appropriate to take a closer look at the topic of trust. My feeling is that business should be a no spin zone because trust really does matter. However in the wake of some of the recent, and highly publicized business, financial, and political scandals, one may question the existence of truth in business or government. If you peel back the layers on most of the debacles that often transform themselves into highly sensationalized headlines, you'll see that said problems often begin with rationalizations, justifications, posturing, and spin being substituted for the truth. I think sometimes we all need to revisit reality, and examine why we do the things we do. Hopefully the text that follows will be of some use in this regard.

Try this thought on for size. I believe that truly great leaders view business as a no spin zone. The most successful business leaders of our time have built their personal brand by letting right thinking, right decisioning, and right acting serve as their guide. If you have to manipulate the truth to gain an advantage, the advantage is not worth the perceived gain, for any advantage gained in deceit will surely come at a very high cost...the sacrifice of your honor and integrity. In today's post I'll address the often overlooked benefits of truth telling as a key success metric.

While there is not an adult breathing today that hasn't told a lie, not everyone is pathological liar. A key difference between those that succeed and those that fail as leaders is whether they are known for their honesty or lack thereof. One of the best traits you can possess as a leader is to be known for your candor. Whether in written or oral form, communication that is clear, concise, on point, and truthful will gain the respect and admiration of peers and subordinates alike. While many wannabe leaders possess the ability to selectively self-edit on the fly as they wax eloquent for the purpose of persuading their audience, true leaders understand that all the justifications and rationalizations in the world cannot replace the value of the truth.

The truth is an interesting tool in that it is often a difficult master to serve. Telling the truth is not always easy, and may subject you to substantial opposition and controversy over the short run, but it will do nothing but help build your reputation, success and sustainability over the long haul. While I've come across many executives that have been able to achieve short term success via less than honorable conduct, these successes to the one have been short lived as poor business practices will eventually be found out and in turn will unwind any ill gotten gains. However I have yet to meet a CEO or entrepreneur who has endured the test of time without having an exceptionally strong moral compass. When reflecting about how you communicate and conduct business with others consider the following thoughts:

1. Telling the truth is a habit

• For those not grounded in the truth you'll find that it requires practice. Each truth-telling event strengthens you for another, and each one gets easier, until telling the truth becomes second nature. It is never to late to start telling the truth. Regardless of whatever your past indiscretions might be, you can change your future by beginning to tell the truth today. Truth is a habit well worth forming.

2. Telling the Truth is the right thing to do

• Lying is wrong. It's just that simple, and oh by the way, omitting, editing, spinning, blurring or repurposing the truth is also wrong. Selective truth telling is synonymous with being a liar. Resist any form of deceit or manipulation if you want to achieve sustainable success.

3. The heaviest baggage you can carry is a lie

• By opting not to tell the truth then you are simultaneously opting to take on the heaviness of the burden of deceit. Each time you encounter a person, circumstance, or situation that reminds you of the untruth, your conscience will weigh you down as you become a fugitive in your own mind running from the lie you told.

4. Lies will always come back to haunt you

• We've all witnessed some fairly elaborate cover-ups over the years, and as we've all seen they always turn out the same way...in disasters that could have been avoided had the truth been told to begin with. You might be able to run, but you can't hide from your lies. While you might be able to conceal your deceit for a time, your lies will always resurface at some point in the future...it may be a week, a month or a decade but they will find you out.

5. Lies create a barrier to personal and professional development

• Time, energy and worry are often spent on hashing and rehashing wrong acts and untruths. Instead of wasting resources on fruitless endeavors you could be invest in transacting business, building relationships, learning, or any number of other positive things.

6. Truth strengthens your reputation and enhances your personal brand

• If you consistently and effortlessly tell the truth a strange thing happens...other people will notice. You will quickly earn the respect of others by becoming known as a person of character and integrity. There is no more valuable mental association you can tie to your personal brand than that of integrity.

7. Truth deepens the quality of relationships

• There is a distinct difference between the surface level acquaintances that will gravy-train your success and the deep professional relationships and true friendships that will endure the test of time regardless of circumstances.

8. A clear conscience leads to a healthy mind

• Its a nice feeling to be able to look at yourself in the mirror each morning and actually like what you see. I don't know about you, but I have better things to do than try and remember all the different stories that I've told to people. The truth is a gentle, healing sponge that keeps your conscience clear, provides you with a positive outlook and a confident and formidable presence.

9. Truth is a powerful example

• As a leader you have in fact chosen to be a role model and as such it is incumbent upon you to model the truth. When friends, peers, subordinates, competitors, vendors, partners, suppliers, investors, lenders, etc. see that you actually walk the talk, you will not only have earned their confidence and respect, but you'll find that they will also try to model that behavior.

I think the Bible says it best: "The truth will set you free." It has been said that a person is only as sick as their secrets, and I would strongly encourage you to be honest and forthright in your communications and actions as you'll be healthier, happier and more successful. Remember that business should be a no spin zone...

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Mike Myatt, is a Top CEO Coach, author of "Leadership Matters...The CEO Survival Manual", and Managing Director of N2Growth.

Who are your Trust Agents?

An interview with Chris Brogan

by Mike Myatt


I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Chris Brogan. Chris is the President of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency. With the market being awash of so called social media "experts," Chris, who would never refer to himself as such, is absolutely the real deal. In addition to running a successful agency, Chris has reached celebrity status as a blogger, social media advisor, and most recently as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of "Trust Agents".

If you want to see Chris at work, just follow him on Twitter where his followers (now numbering more than 100,000) represent one of the most fiercely loyal and engaged communities on the web. However, what I admire most about Chris is that with all his success he has remained one of the true nice guys in the business. On with the interview...


The world of social media has not only become big business, but it's also become one of the most crowded niches in today's business world. What has been the thing that differentiates you from the legions of other social media advisors?

I don't try to compete with other social media types. Instead, I try to work with companies on ideas that improve their business communications efforts. My background in social media is 11 years long and growing. My background in online community participation and then leadership starts in the mid-80s. So, instead of being a marketing professional who figured out social media, I'm a social media native who learned some things to help people do vibrant things with their marketing and internal communications.


What inspired you to write "Trust Agents"?

I'm working on building out information that others can use to empower their own efforts. Blogs are great, but the idea of a book was that people could share it with their colleagues, their bosses, their clients, whoever needs to know. It's a chance to share the bigger ideas of what I think works underneath the movement of using social media, and to give people much more than the 'which tool is cool' type stuff I'm reading mostly these days.


How is social media impacting your clients?

My clients realize that these tools allow people to be human again, that we can have a face on the brand. There are plenty of opportunities for people to build relationships. For example, one of my clients, Citrix Online (who do GoToMyPC, GoToWebinar, etc) were looking to reach more people interested in the mobile and distributed workforce. We created workshifting.com, which is a group blog that engages people without being any kind of an ad for their product. In fact, nearly none of the posts have anything to do with their products directly. Instead, we write about the kinds of challenges facing people who workshift for some parts of a week. My other clients, Cisco, Microsoft, Sony Electronics USA, etc, are all enjoying the chance to connect with people in a much more personable level.


Up to this point, can you point to any single defining moment in your career?

I'm not sure I've had my most defining moment. Personally, hitting both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller's list for my ideas was great, but as my clients go, or in my overall business, I haven't really hit my biggest success just yet. My clients are happy and have all kinds of appreciative things to say, but I don't feel like I've really taken things high enough or deep enough or successful enough.


How do you gauge your success on a day-to-day basis?

On a day to day basis, my sense of success comes from trying to be as responsive as possible, to the most people possible, and from working on delivering actionable ideas to people for their efforts (be those clients, or readers of my blog). Any day I can help someone move the needle forward is a good day for me. Working with big clients gives me the chance to try big ideas, and when we can see some signs of success, that's what matters the most to me.


What is the toughest part of your day?

Great question. Not being able to respond fast enough to everything is my cross right now. I've over 129 unprocessed emails right now collected over the last few days. I'm traveling so much and working some very long hours, and very few of them are in front of a computer to answer email, so I'm frustrated but trying to accomplish more every day. I'm re-reading Leo Babauta's The Power of Less to try and improve that all the more.


If you could give any advice to our readers what would it be?

Be helpful, be consistent, be everywhere. I'm doing everything I can to equip people to do new things with their business goals, but I feel this advice is timeless and yet timely. We've somehow become selfish, as businesses and as people, and my goal is to help empower people to think about others as much as they can, and to derive sustainable business value from doing it.


What's next for Chris Brogan?

I'm working on editing my second book, which will be a much more typical 'about social media' book, and working on the proposal for the third book (my second with Julien Smith) which will be a shift from where "Trust Agents" left off. We're writing about how human business works, and what we believe will be the DNA of disruption. It should be quite different from "Trust Agents", and yet, in compatibility with what we've written there.


Conclusion

As you can tell from the interview, Chris is focused, smart, and totally engaged with his market. You'll be hard-pressed to find someone who models the definition of customer-centric like Chris does. Thanks for sharing Chris...

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Mike Myatt, is a Top CEO Coach, author of "Leadership Matters...The CEO Survival Manual", and Managing Director of N2Growth.

How are you holding up?

by Steve McKee

Well, Labor Day is behind us, autumn is upon us, and we're about to come up on a year since the fall of Lehman Brothers.

The recession itself is almost two years old, having officially started in December, 2007. Most companies began to feel the slowdown early last year, followed by an unanticipated shockwave that rippled through the economy in September. Since that time there has been a steady drumbeat of bad news, and businesses have had to find ways to cope with and adjust to continuous uncertainty about what's going to happen next. Washington hasn't helped, taking on one of history's most consequential and divisive arguments about the role of government at a time when the economy needs rest. No one has any idea what the outcome--or the consequences--of the argument will be.

So how ya doin?

It's not a trivial question. When the story of this recession is written with the benefit of hindsight, I believe we're going to see significant analysis about the psychological effect the protracted downturn has had on corporate culture, and particularly corporate leadership. Fatigue makes cowards of us all, as the saying goes, and as business leaders we're nothing if not fatigued.

As a consultant I'm seeing an increasing amount of decisions made based on emotion, many of them ill-advised. The kindling of internal conflict is dry and dangerous, vulnerable to the slightest spark of insult or dissent. Longstanding customer relationships are weakened as tensions rise and trust declines. Managers are struggling to manage not only the financial challenges at work, but those at home as well.

There's no easy way out. There's only a way through. And we have to get through it together. The good news is that, like most things in life, recognizing the struggle is the first step towards overcoming it.

Take a minute today and reset your perspective. Determine to persevere. And offer a word of encouragement to someone you know who needs it. It might just make you feel better too.

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Steve McKee is a BusinessWeek.com columnist, marketing consultant, and author of "When Growth Stalls: How it Happens, Why You're Stuck, and What To Do About It." Learn more about him at www.WhenGrowthStalls.com and at http://twitter.com/whengrowthstall.