This advertising/promotion event caught my eye because it was different, and also because it played off a unique central theme in the movie. When you’re promoting something, look for the unique strength that will make your product or service attractive to others and then intentionally tell them about it.
From MediaLife.com
Joy Behar asks Marcus Buckingham about his StrongLife Test and his latest book on maximizing strengths. As a Buckingham Certified Strengths Trainer, I’ve seen this stuff work first-hand.
The makers of WISK have come up with a clever way of gaining some franchise space in the minds of younger consumers. Inside Facebook is reporting on a new app for FB users who have found unflattering photos of themselves in the online albums of their friends.
The new app is called WiskIT and allows users to request the offending photos be removed. The genius is in the not-so-subtle connection between the product virtual and actual use.
Balance is a good thing for bicycles, tightrope walkers and ballerinas. Toddlers need balance, as do the wheels on your car and those amazing young women who jump and spin on a four-inch wide balance beam in the Olympics.
The adage “all work and no play . . .” speaks to the need for variety. It’s often used in conversation where someone complains of needing to achieve balance in their activities but most of us would agree that “50% work and 50% play . . .” would be a poor formula for success.
In bike riding, ballet and circus acts, balance is not the objective but rather the means to a successful end. You don’t balance a bicycle for the sake of balance, you do it to enable the bike to move forward. Getting to Point B is the goal — balance is only part of the process.
Warning:
Too much focus on balance will
impede forward progress.
Little children tumble over as they learn to walk because it’s necessary to upset their balance in order to take a step. If staying in balance were the objective, the toddler would simply stand up and stay standing. But they would never learn to walk.
The same is true of individuals and the teams they populate.
The most successful individuals, groups, and organizations are those where balance is not the focus but only part of the process.
In-N-Out Burger is widely popular because of, not despite, their unbalanced menu – nothing but burgers and fries.
If every musician in an orchestra played their instrument at the same level of volume, the result would be – well, you’ve heard this if you’ve ever attended a junior high band concert.
Think about this:
Instead of looking for balance, think about how each team member has a unique strength that can be applied to forward momentum. Requiring the analytical people on your team to pretend they are visionary wastes their time and their talents just as much as asking the big picture people to plan out the details. Let your dreamers dream and your analysts analyze.
Your team has a greater likelihood of achieving its goals if everyone on the team concentrates — not on maintaining a balance, but rather — on playing their own part to the best of their ability.
Ask these questions of yourself and then discuss the answers with your team:
1. Do you know the personal strength you bring to your team?
2. Do you know the personal strength of everyone else on the team?
3. Describe a recent situation where balance impeded forward momentum.
Is it counter intuitive for a certified strengths trainer to post an entry focused on weaknesses?
My friend Andrew Cooley sent this video clip from a Washington Post series and it resonated so strongly with me that I just had to share it with my readers.
Watching this clip is well worth the 4:40 of your life you’ll invest in it.
When you’ve finished watching, pop me an email and “own up” to something at which you suck -
Peter Druker is credited with saying that one of his greatest skills as a consultant was his ability to ask good questions.
Scott Ginsberg is famous for at least two things and one of them is a great opening line he uses, “Let me ask you this.”
I just completed a 45 minute call with a long-time client who has been stuck on the horns of a dilemma for about six months. The call was set up to give him a chance to verbalize replies to a series of probing questions I’d sent him in an email.
By the end of our chat, he had a couple of action items related to solving the problem and he shared that he was “encouraged for the first time in a while.”
La Pieta
He admitted that he’d already thought about some of the action items but wasn’t clear on how they would work or if his perspective was correct. I didn’t have the answers, but the questions I asked helped him clear away the debris and see things differently.
Reminds me of a Michelangelo quotation,
“Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.”
The best solution is quite often already there, waiting for someone to use questions like chisels to chip away and reveal a masterpiece.
This clip from Sweden proves the value of providing a workplace where people get to do what they do best; play to their strengths.
When given a choice, 66% chose the option that gave them personal pleasure. No incentive offered other than personal pleasure. Do your staff have an opportunity EVERY DAY to do what they do best? Your productivity will increase if you do?
Of course you know this – a brand is so much more than a logo. The graphic image and the name are merely representations of the metaphysical connection your customers have with your company.
The big question should be: Do they love us SO much that they cry when we’re not available?
This month marks the beginning of my ninth year as a private practice consultant. Nine years is longer than my tenure at any other job, so I just might be on to something. This month is also the end of a 6-month process of professional evaluation, leading to some significant changes to my business model. Presuming that you will find value in a brief case history, here are a few highlights from the process:
The Paradox of Success
The first seven years were incredible. The diversity of my client list was invigorating and my efforts were rewarded both financially and personally. Succeeding is quite enjoyable. The brand I had sought to establish had continued to gain momentum and equity as people began increasingly to refer to me as “the new idea guy.”
Despite preaching a contrary message to others, I viewed the formula for success as merely repeating what had already worked. The advent of 2009 found me planning to do more of the same things that had previously resulted in success. 2009 was going to be a bit harder, but I’d just power up and move on. I held steadfast to my previous approach even as the economy went into a nose dive, believing that the world still needed new ideas and would eventually come knocking.
I was applying yesterday’s successful solutions to my current problems and finding the results you might expect from such futility.
Had I been consulting myself, my advice would have been – “Stop doing that.” To enjoy success over time, you must do different things or do things differently. How many times have I written that on a flip chart in a client’s conference room?
Building on my Strengths
As a StrengthsFinder® advocate, I am convinced my best contribution involves working with ideas and helping folks maximize their future. My personal brand has been built around that. I am not interested in doing a new thing – but rather in doing the same thing differently.
This past week I completed an intense certification course and am now licensed to facilitate training workshops using the SimplyStrengths™ system developed by Marcus Buckingham. I like SimplyStrengths because it adds an explicit component of accountability and performance that was merely implied in StrengthsFinder. The SimplyStrengths workshop is a structured, content-rich program, quite different from the open-agenda, brainstorm-driven approach for which I’ve become well known.
More than one adviser has asked, “Will this mean ‘Jim the idea guy’ is going away?”
The answer is NO. Buckingham’s system enhances the ideation process by giving clients a great tool for achieving objectives that result from a healthy retreat or strategic planning session. My “thing” is still new ideas, I’ve just found a different way of doing it.
So – ask this in your next staff meeting:
Until next time,
As a SimplyStrengths™ trainer, this little three-minute TED talk is music to my ears. Watch it and pass it along. If everyone paid attention we might even achieve whirled peas.
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