9 Tips for Effective Networking
June 29, 2009 at 7:25 pm | In Business, career | 1 CommentTags: Networking
One of the most useful things you can do for personal and professional success is to network effectively. And as with most activities, there is a right way to network and a wrong way to network.
If you have the time, I recommend reading ‘Never Eat Alone’, which is the seminal work on networking and Ferrazzi has a talent for describing the most effective techniques of Networking in an easily understood and accessible way.
If you don’t have the time or the inclination for the big volume then here are some tips for networking:
1. Talk to anyone about anything. Participate in other peoples thinking as much as possible as no one is as smart as all of us are together and you never know who has the innovative solution to your problem.
2. Develop a high tolerance for ambiguity as opening yourself up to other ideas will often result in your challenging your own ideas, beliefs and sometimes even your values.
3. Don’t enter a discussion with an attitude of getting something out of it. By going into a discussion with a viewpoint of giving more than you hope to receive will make you appear truly sincere and helpful and not just out to use the relationship for your own ends.
4. Have a fearless attitude because starting a conversation with people who you don’t know can often be intimidating. Get comfortable with this feeling and you will look at networking as a delight rather than something to fear.
5. Always think about the connections that you could help each person make. One of the most beneficial influences that good networkers develop is being a social node, a person who people will contact just to get to another person in the network. If you add value to relationships you nurture, everyone profits over time.
6. Go on gut instinct. If you think the connection won’t endure, move on. You have to be happy with the person you are networking with in order connect them with others that know and trust you with their details.
7. Expand your conversational topics and your sense of humour. Being confidence when you discuss topics or being able to break the ice with a humorous comment will make you a person that is happy with networking and someone that people will want to network with, making the problem of making the first approach disappear!
8. Have a way of keeping track of the people you meet and what they talk about. It is the chance to think about how they fit into your network and who would benefit from knowing and how they could benefit from others in your network.
9. Maintain the integrity to yourself and your network. People are trusting you with their personal information. Live up to that trust.
If you look at the most successful people, they are generally those people that have the largest network, touch each element of it regularly and add value to all those with whom they connect.
Dare to Aspire
New Article: Developing Self Esteem
June 29, 2009 at 1:48 pm | In Uncategorized | Leave a CommentCatch this new article on Developing Self Esteem
Dare to Aspire
Seven Steps to Solving Problems
April 7, 2009 at 6:45 pm | In Uncategorized | Leave a CommentNo matter the scale of the problem, a simple problem solving method can help you find a solution. The Seven Step Method shown below. Although simple, is both methodical and effective.
Define the Problem – Sometimes the presenting symptom is not the real problem. Be vigilant to find the core problem.
Define Objectives and Performance Measures – You need an idea of the outcome you want. Knowing what a good job looks like helps you identify the performance measures you will need to decide when you have solved the problem.
Identify the Boundaries and Constraints – Bounding a problem ensures that you are not trying to solve too much. Constraints are those things that restrict your solutions.
Identify, Generate and Prioritise Options – Options are building blocks of solutions. Creating lots of options gives you more choice and more chance of creating a better solution.
Develop Options into a Plan – Develop the promising options further and discard options that offer little if any benefit.
Implement the Solution – Decide how to implement the solution to be most effective. Remember that some solutions can be quite simple but others can be comprehensive and require significant effort to deploy.
Evaluate the Outcome and Ensure the Problem is Solved – Evaluation a continuous process. As your solution takes effect, ensure the change is moving towards your desired outcome. Ask ‘What is working and what isn’t working?’
If the problem is well defined and a working solution well implemented, you should we well on the way to having solved the problem.
Remember that you don’t need a perfect solution first time. Indeed you will probably not create one. A more likely approach is to make consistently better decisions moving you towards a robust solution.
Dare to Aspire
Tips for critical thinking
March 25, 2009 at 9:23 pm | In Improvement, Performance, Thinking | Leave a CommentTags: Thinking
In this sound bite filled world, we are rarely given very much time to think critically about the information that we are presented with.
The media presents the message they want to in a 30 second snap shots and move on to the next story before you question the message. Written articles are little more than hidden agendas presented in small visual fields primed for mental grazing rather than serious contemplation.
Critical thinking is important to ensure you are not left thinking the same as everyone else and in the way that the media want you to.
If we all think the same, then no-one is actually thinking, just following everyone else. Here are a few tips to help you think critically:
- Be informed – Read as much as you can on key subjects and read what different people think about those subjects. Having a variety of opinions to consider allows you to make a more informed decision about what YOU think.
- Avoid making an early decisions – Allow yourself the time to consider and don’t pre-judge any situation or idea. Think ‘vu ja de’ not ‘de ja vu’. Look at everything as though you have never seen it before.
- Be open to new ideas – Having a curious mind will allow you to ask questions more readily and be critical of those ideas read and hear.
- Be honest with yourself – People have prejudices and biases, we all do. They allow us to make rapid decisions without the effort of thinking too much. Being aware of these prejudices and biases can help you be more open to alternative views.
- Look for the truth value – Spin is endemic in the media. Look for the truth in the message and search for the reason a message is crafted in a particular way.
- Find the facts hidden in the opinion – Facts are facts no matter which way you look at them, opinions are different views of those facts. Find the facts and develop your own opinion.
Although not a rigorous set of rules for critical thinking, applying these ideas can help you sort the information from the agenda. Even in this posting!
Dare to Aspire
Eating the Big Fish: Adam Morgan
March 24, 2009 at 8:30 pm | In Book Summary | 1 CommentTags: Synopsis
In Eating the Big Fish, Morgan explains how “challenger brands can compete against brand leaders.”
Morgan’s aims to provide a “magnetic compass” that will allow smaller companies (Small Fish) to compete successfully.
That is, how to become a “challenger brand”?
Morgan suggests that it is based on eight “credos”:
- Break with the immediate past – Forget everything you know and think again
- Build a lighthouse entity – Tell consumers what you are, don’t let them drive your activity
- Assume thought leadership of the category – Be the one that everyone talks about
- Create symbols of re-evaluation – Do things differently
- Sacrifice – Decide what you are not going to do
- Overcommit – Aim beyond the mark
- Use advertising and publicity as a high-leverage asset – Use it to enter the popular mindset
- Become ideas-centered rather than consumer-centered – Constantly reinvent to stay ahead of the trends and competition
Reading this book is worthwhile because:
- It focuses on the practical things that can be done
- It describes how to run a workshop and apply the thinking
- Most of the credos can be used to overcome organisational inertia
- It can help small marketing team do big things
- It can also help brand leaders act like a challenger to become number one
After reading this book, ‘Small Fish’ are able to answer several critically important questions:
- What is the core issue for the Big Fish?
- What business are we in now?
- What business should we be in? What are our best opportunities?
- How can we implement a Challenger strategy to take full advantage of those opportunities?
Dare to Aspire
Blink: Malcolm Gladwell
March 21, 2009 at 9:34 am | In Synopsis | Leave a CommentTags: Gladwell, Synopsis
Blink is another interesting book from Gladwell. In its pages he looks at the phenomenon of intuition and arrives at an interesting conclusion.
Intuition is not some psychic talent that arises from the depths of our mind.
It is the result of long hours of repetition and complete immersion in an environment, skill of behaviour that is constrained by particular rules and principles.
Harnessing the power of intuition can give you a distinct advantage in a world where flexibility is essential. After reading this book, you’ll never think about thinking in the same way again.
The key points from the book include:
- Knowing something in a split second is one of the most powerful skills we have.
- A snap judgement can often prove more effective than a considered decision.
- By focusing on narrow slices of experience we can read complex systems in the ‘Blink’ of an eye.
- Thin slicing is Gladwell’s theory that the first 2 seconds of an encounter will determine how you will respond or the likely outcome.
- For 80% of instances, a snapshot provides all the information that is needed.
Although Gladwell’s argument is well supported with expert experience and examples, the theory seems to only hold true when you are dealing with true experts.
Complete immersion in the environment or experience is essential for results of up to 80% accuracy.
The rest of us are probably less accurate with our intuition, but that doesn’t make it a poor tool, only something that needs to be supported by other evidence and consideration.
Dare to Aspire
Simply Brilliant: Fergus O’Connell
March 16, 2009 at 8:29 pm | In Book Summary, Synopsis | 1 CommentTags: Synopsis
Simply Brilliant is a simple book presenting simple ideas without being simplistic. It advises the reader to look for simple problems, simple solutions and direct approaches.
The general tenet is for you to be nice to people you work with, and to see problems from their point of view.
The key points from the book are:
- The best ideas are often the most simple, don’t search for complexity
- Smart people often fail to demonstrate common sense
O’Connell outlines 7 principles to deal with everyday problems. These are:
1. Many things are simple despite our need to make them complicated
2. You need to know what you are trying to do
3. There is always a sequence of events – join the dots in your mind to see the cause and effect
4. Things don’t get done if people don’t do them
5. Things rarely end up how you planned, so plan for the unexpected
6. Things either are or they are not – Don’t fudge it to meet your expectation
7. Look at things from the other person’s point of view
O’Connell structures the book as an informal manual. It covers:
- How to plan
- How to prioritise
- How to complete projects
- How to remember the customer’s needs
He suggests you write the minutes of a meeting in advance to know what you want to get out of it.
He also highlights the difference between the duration of a task and the time is takes to complete it.
Activity isn’t progress.
He outlines why things don’t get done – Confusion, Over-commitment, lack of knowledge or skill.
He also suggests that you plan your time assuming that there will be interruptions
The final point I think is most telling of people in general is that common sense isn’t all that common in reality.
A good little book that highlights the need to keep things simple in a complicated world.
Dare to Aspire
The Tipping Point: Malcolm Gladwell
March 14, 2009 at 5:51 pm | In Synopsis | Leave a CommentTags: Braincram, Gladwell, Synopsis, Tipping
The Tipping Point is an excellent book that captures the imagination and presents a new view of why large scale events occur. It contains an analysis of the strategies people apply to influence and create significant change. Well worth reading and considering, perhaps with a view to applying the idea to your busines.
The key concepts from the book include:
- Little things, changes and events can make a big difference.
- A tipping point is the moment when an idea, social behaviour or trend crosses a point of no return and spreads in a viral fashion.
- Epidemics start with a person, evolution begins with a single mutation and products and ideas can explode following minor changes.
- Big results don’t always require big effort, a lever can make all the difference
The main reasons that something crosses the tipping point are:
- The Law of the Few – A core number of people can drive a significant change when they are perceived as the correct messenger with the correct message using the most appropriate channel.
- Stickiness – The message has to be worth taking action on
- The Power of Context – Tipping points are subtle, highly dependent on time, place and circumstances.
Here are a few questions you may want to ask when considering how to apply this idea:
- What message can you create that is sticky?
- Who can spread this message for you?
- How should they spread it?
- Why is it worthy of being spread?
- What is the best time, place and circumstance to start?
These questions clearly have a marketing flavour but the concept is transferrable to many areas including ideas, politics and even social events.
Flash mobs serve no obvious purpose but typify the idea of a tipping point.
A Mexican wave is another example.
How can you reach a tipping point?
Dare to Aspire
New Website Launch
January 24, 2009 at 8:16 pm | In Uncategorized | 2 CommentsA period of house moving and career change meant that I haven’t been able to maintian the blog like I aimed to when I started.
That being said, I have now started with a new company in a new profession and finding time to write some more articles, blog posts and book summaries.
The BrainCram website has had a refresh and has a few more book summaries.
Take a look and please leave feedback or business book review requests.
Take action and Dare to Aspire
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