We have been invited to use some interesting new technology www.freesmartbox.com and are meeting the principals that are in from Malaysia this morning. Take a look and let me know your reactions/thoughts/interest and ideas if you can in a quick email. It looks and sounds quite intriguing and The RaynMakers™ and all our clients and partners are looking for more business leads and sales from online and social channels.
How about your firm or your clients?
SOAR Analysis Accentuates the Positive and Can-Do!
Research studies about women business owners and women executives consistently reveal how they are time-starved and pulled in multiple directions with the many roles they fill. As the new year begins, the recent past is in mind as they also focus on the year ahead and oftentimes find that the stress from the holidays and year-end wrap-up extend right into the new year with the desire to get off to a strong start. How to solve this problem?
As a business development agency working largely with women owned and women led companies, we know that given time constraints, the strategic planning process oftentimes suffers that can lead to “challenges” for the business owner, executive, team and clients. These realities can surface when it is too late to correct matters and the “we could haves” and “we should haves” admissions surface from clients who we have to remind to not should on yourselves.
Common business sense combined with a customer experience focus propel us to simplify strategic planning consulting down to easy to manage tasks and methods. The aim is to enable either self- administered or externally facilitated processes without taking too much of clients’ valued time and effort or costing them an “arm and a leg”.
In strategic planning consulting, two of these techniques that can be readily implemented are the SWOT Analysis and the SOAR analysis. The SWOT Analysis is fairly well known and practiced across many industries and cultures and has proven, in our experience, to be useful in both start-up, mature and companies “at risk”. The process requires the identification of both positive and negative internal and external factors evident in the current situation and/or projected to impact an individual, team or firm in the days, weeks and months ahead.
Our story of how we learned about and incorporated the SOAR Analysis into our services arose with a client in our “BraynStorming™” sessions. The RaynMakers™ had already started our engagement with the SWOT process and analysis and were informed that any focus on “negatives, on internal weaknesses and external threats did not sit well with the client whose entire orientation was on building on their achievements and moving towards the realization of their vision. So, we were required to shift gears and in so doing learn in the process through our collaborative implementation. Again, we witnessed that the best way to learn something is with the intention to share and teach it to others.
We learned about the tried and proven techniques of appreciative inquiry (there is an extensive amount of information online about AI) in the SOAR analysis which incorporates a strategic inquiry to identify the greatest internal strengths and external opportunities as does the SWOT process. Where it differs is in the manner focus is placed on a individual and/or corporate soul-searching concentration on the organization’s aspirations for the future and the development of recognition and reward programs for the achievement of specific results. Accentuating the positive is the key.
We’ve seen women business owners and executives take the mystery out of strategic planning by breaking it down into manageable steps. By using the situation analysis process delineated in our prior blog post and then focusing all energies on the possible; setting your intentions; listing the milestones you seek to reach and the measurement tools that will be employed in documenting your progress in the desired directions you will be empowered. The last vital component is how to share the recognition and rewards with the team that transformed a strategic plan into tactical actions which materialized YOUR vision into reality.
In our next post, we will share some more easy to understand and implement strategic planning processes, tips and techniques. There is still a week left in January to get this done.
Strategic Planning. Ladies, it is that time again.
Timing is everything: It is the end of one year and the beginning of the next. A time for reflection and a time to envision you and your brand, team’s, organization’s prospects and plans for the year ahead.
The strategic planning process sounds complicated but it is quite easy when you break it down into simple steps and use a few proven processes.
Here are a 3 easy tips to get rolling on your personal, professional or team’s strategic plan for the year ahead.
1. Accentuate the Positive
It is human nature to remember and repeat our successes. That is much easier than drudging up the past by thinking about and focusing on where we “failed” or on what went wrong or just did not materialize as you had hoped.
Action Item- List all your successes from the year behind and rank them from smallest to biggest. READ THEM and gain momentum and empowerment as you go up that ladder of YOUR success.
2. Remember You Did Not Get Here Alone
Think about those achievements and about those people who motivated you to create them and aspire to accomplish each one. Remind yourself about what YOU learned and how YOU grew from the actions you took and remember those who aided and supported you along the way.
Action Item- From Dale Carnegie’s Golden Book, “ Give Honest and Sincere Appreciation… for your good fortune, your many blessings and to those who were along for your ride last year. Send a note or make a call and just let them know, “ I am excited about this year because of the momentum of last year and could not have done it without your support and encouragement.” How can I support you?
3. Objectively Document Your Situation
Situation Analysis is often described as a marketing related process. Actually, it has far broader implications and applications. Ask yourself some simple questions:
• Where are you at now?
• What was the “place” that you were in before and how are you better off now?
• What knowledge, experience, techniques, tools and relationships do you have to work with now?
• What are the positive forces- in you, in your associates, in your team and in your business that will propel you forward?
• What do you have to build upon?
Action Item- Answer the questions in writing. Jot down what comes immediately to mind and set it aside for now but keep it nearby. When something you had overlooked comes to mind, add it to your growing list.
More to follow in our next installment of “Strategic Planning for Wise & Wonderful Women Execs and Biz Owners.
http://blog.marketo.com/blog/2012/01/how-do-entrepreneurs-feel-about-their-small-businesses-in-2012.html?fullsize=http://blog.marketo.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Marketing-Small-Business-Infographic.png
Ethics in Business. A search on Google for “ethics in business” yields about 479,000 results. make it 479,001.
OK the gloves are off. (Ray stands up on soapbox and grabs megaphone, clears his throat and bellows out).
This is my planned SWAN SONG to this unending string on the Global Entrepreneur Group on Linkedin® about what I think is purely about ethics in business. As a member of 49 groups on LinkedIn, I will continue to look to this group and those other groups for value I can gather and render.
It all started by an Indian Gentleman who, with all due respect, I THINK made a ?able query w/now 30 comments. “Honest person(s) are the first to get screwed – Chanakya (Indian strategist) How true is this ? If true then why ?”
OK.To Parag the person making the last comment about my opinion/observation stated “Ray you are half right”—thanks I think—which half sir?
Well let me make sure you & anyone else who reads this string ( and now the readers of our blog) cares which half I think I am right about. This is all about ethical issues in business, doing ethical business, having character and business ethics and cut the crap…you either have them or you don’t period. I guess I should have just kept my mouth shut but I didn’t and as the Japanese say the person who raises his head gets knocked down.
There are some people along the string who seem to be victims that I can’t help in any way except by trying to set an example. I feel sorry for them & others, whom I think, are just seriously confused. I am not going out with my head down OR my tail between my legs. I can try to encourage/ everyone to do the right thing.
I note (1) some people have taken some shots at me + others have defended my original post (thanks for your support!) (2) there are some obvious miscommunications I must be responsible for due to, I guess, my lack of having done recent business with people from India and the comments by others that India is the only place in the world where there are business ethics issues. Give ME a break! Are you kidding me or just uninformed sirs?
RE: trans-cultural communications: What is not clear in my prior posts? Where is the confusion? This is what started a small maelstrom.
“What a sad list of commentaries. I think several of your collective values are misconstrued and your experience teaches others little.
Leading an honest life is a virtue and the value comes from the pure of heart and solid minds that set these examples. Anyone who looks up to people who lead a life of dishonesty with themselves and others is seriously confused; not deserving of respect and has lost the war before the first battle has been waged.
Ethics in business and in life are virtues that inspire and encourage others. Leading by example builds character, companies and global brands.
And honest persons are NOT the first ones to “get screwed”–that is just stinking thinking! One may suffer hardships along the way at the hand of others but will also enjoy the kindness of others directly or indirectly on the path of life.
Now, back to that post-what is unclear again I ask you?
I have successfully managed multi-million dollar e-Commerce projects 22 years ago with very intelligent or brilliant Indian software engineers so I don’t understand where I am not being CRYSTAL CLEAR with my “OPINION” and that is all it is. I have the scar tissue to speak and act with conviction from when I was a little kid to now being an entrepreneurial baby boomer former corporate exec in 8 public and private companies and multiple business founder.
My associate offered this testimony about doing the right thing. “I’ve had the privilege of working with Ray at XX where he was the Chief Marketing Officer and I was a Senior Project Manager. Ray was one of XX’s most valuable and effective people, who brought in — and materialized — countless business opportunities. He was one of those rare marketing folk who took a great deal of interest in understanding the delivery side of solutions, which allowed him to better create excellent value-propositions for prospects, which were at the same time realistic and well-grounded. He was extremely well-organized and highly professional in his dealings both inside and outside XX. He always walked into meetings and presentations very well-prepared. Ray tended to think and present in terms of solutions, vision and value rather, rather than [pitching] mere products and services. He knew how to add luster and amplify the value of any offering.”
Thanks Usammah.
At least Mr. Siddiqi thought I was a little more than HALF right and he, though from another country and culture, understood what “makes me tick”.
By the way that firm crashed & burned for exactly some of the ethical issues discussed (after I left the firm for the record). Promises undelivered; loans not repaid; stinking thinking; poor leadership examples;lies.
I’m not an ingénue that just fell off the truck. I am a global businessman who knows from 1st hand experience in more than 90 industries some people’s different international business ethics from experience in the US, Europe, Mexico, Middle East & African are different from hundreds of years before ways of doing business.
Interestingly our SEO experts advised me that 1 of the searches on the Internet that has the most existing demand/supply imbalance is about ethics in business. Now is that a coincidence or what? More people need to talk about and share positive stories and serve as role models for others. They also need to shine a light on the ‘dark side” of business and not let it go unnoticed.
I am out of space (on the Linkedin group) & am not done with Ray’s Rant. I am posting this soap box speech on my blog for that reason and if you want to read on you can at www.theraynmakers.com/blog
Continuing….
I have “turned the cheek” more times in business than I care to extoll both as an employee for one of the largest corporations on earth. I have been a repeat victim of corporate politics and nepotism. I have accepted people for their word, vouched for them and then “LOST FACE” to my employees, executives who reported to me in my senior roles and to Chairman and Presidents and Boards. I have had 6-page employment contracts walked all over by businessmen from other countries so please..please don’t think that my beliefs which are VERY ESTABLISHED and are CONVICTIONS does not make me sensitive to the FACT that this is a very difficult business environment globally and everything is not always fair and just. There I got that off my chest.
I have rendered excellent services upon demand with a sense of urgency and not been compensated too.
I have also worked for many causes ( fighting cancer, fighting , supporting the arts; supporting women small business owners; supporting building schools in Africa and more) investing hundreds and hundreds of hours by choice because good works are their own reward. No one forced me or compensated me to do this-it is not a question of ethics–that is an example of good works and good deeds (see Mr. Chanakya’s brilliant not bonehead remark below). What goes around comes around.
Now:
(1) To all my fellow global businessmen and women in this Linkedin® group string who hold some thoughts and values in common about the importance of ETHICS in business , I commend you and thank you for making a positive difference.
(2)To others who are confused about intelligence and honesty I affirm BUSINESS ETHICS has nothing to do with intelligence per se as others have commented. It has to do with VALUES, MORES and breeding and experience. In business, in politics and in life- it is about ethics stupid. Just read or listen to all the junk on the airways about ethics- in office, in life. It has everything to do with doing the right thing for you, your client and your conscience always in every situation despite the pressures and conflicts. As I pointed out to one client who we FIRED…you can not be half pregnant. You cannot hide behind “partial truths”. Truth is truth and the facts are the FACTS. Ethical business is just that.
Thinking positive thoughts and doing GOOD business-the only type of business WE do, I am off the soap box and done with my rant.
If you want to continue this dialogue in a positive vein, I invite you to write and submit your positive contribution here and I will review and post. The naysayers can continue their diatribe and woe is me stories on the Linkedin® group for Global CEO – Entrepreneur – President – Top Executive – Elite… to read.
Ray Knight
Chief Envisioneer Officer
P.S. What is an Envisioneer?
I personally invented that term in 2001 after the towers came down and mistakenly didn’t trademark it. It was inspired by Disney corp’s imagineer with a twist. It has since been stolen/pirated by others-imagine that a lack of ethical business people. It was even a subject of a major 8 Accounting firm’s list of “over inflated” ( as I seem to recall they were referring to bovine excrement) statements in business plans designed to raise capital that were “warning signals” in all the WEB 1.0 business plans. The nerve of those guys—well they are OUT OF BUSINESS NOW-so how smart were they—some of the biggest white collar criminal cases if I recall correctly for financial mismanagement and public corporation reporting-Imagine that Figures don’t lie, but LIARS do figure- wise words my late father Whitey Knight taught me as I was growing up with some spine and guts and Business ETHICS.
Envisioneer: A combined word referring to a person of either gender and any culture who has the E(experience and expertise) and EN (the positive CAN-DO energy) and VISion and PassION coupled with sheer Marketing PowER to transform ideas into action and get the job done and done right. That is what an Envisioneer is in my jargon.
P.P.S. TO Gajanan who started the whole string-who I WON’T be following on Linkedin® your quote from Chanakya-who I have never heard of in 35+ years of international business proving again what my late father Whitey Knight always said, “It is amazing how much I have learned ever since I thought I knew everything”-love you Dad:
Chankaya also said, ” A man is great by deeds, not by birth.
BRILLIANT MR. Chankaya! You should have stopped when you were ahead
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/chanakya.html
DEEDS he said Gajanan as in your work, works, actions, truthfulness, honesty ETHICS!
And then I read a little furhter about the quote that started this whole conundrum,–
“A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and honest people are screwed first. “
showing his wisdom?? Chankaya also said,
A good wife is one who serves her husband in the morning like a mother does, loves him in the day like a sister does and pleases him like a #@*7^+! in the night.
Funny , never heard anything so insightful from many of the greatest thinkers of time. Yea, right Mr. C- get REAL- we DO exist in different worlds and/or eras-and that is fine. Welcome to the real world.
As such a large portion of our population are double income households and the fact that women now dominate spending and at least in the US and are responsible for 85% of all spending decisions,9see additional blog posts herein on the U.S. women’s market) see how far that chauvinistic attitude is going to get you in our culture.
That is the first of Ray’s Rants and I am sticking to it.
1. Clear objectives- reviewed and approved by client in writing.
2. Overall marketing, sales and business development strategy understanding.
3. Overall social media strategy including what sites are to be used.
4. Specific strategies and tactics per site including content guidelines and posting frequency.
5. Content Development Guidelines with major and minor subject topics.
6. Consultant/Client Production and Distribution Plans, approval process and quality controls.
7. Metrics that will be used- what, when and how
8. Reputation management tools and techniques.
9. Social Media strategy review and revisions timetable and meeting agenda.
10. Pre-Meeting Deliverables Report distribution.
We responded to an excellent question posed on LinkedIn Answers section today. The question revolved around a person seeking guidance for Gen X and Y employees communicating with Baby Boomer bosses.
We wrote:
As a baby boomer, I can share with you 7 simple tips I thought up and write here for the first time for your consideration.
1. Perception: Don’t underestimate us, we are still hard working and fun loving.
2. Self-Image: The more we age the greater the difference in our actual age and our perception of our age. Research David B. Wolfe his book Serving the Ageless Market was a milestone in understanding how our perceptions, values and priorities evolve as we do.
3. Be True to Yourself and Others: Always and always speak from your HEART and your head will follow-NOT the other way around. If you mean well and have good intentions we get it- loud and clear.
4. Passion: We love to learn and we can always learn from YOU and YOUR GENERATION.
5. Gender Differences: Understand that WOMEN rule more than the roost- they rule America’s pocketbook making nearly 85% of all financial decisions. When in doubt about anything, ask them their insights and opinions on anything that is important to you and your/their business.
6. Insights: Read Marti Barletta’s book Prime Time Women ( her website is below and I summarize my reaction to her book on my reading list on my LI profile)
7. Let Majority Rule-Listen First, talk second. Keep your eyes open and listen carefully– you might actually find that with age comes wisdom and their is no substitute for experience. Chances are, as corporate “survivors” we baby boomers have been there and done that-twice.
This message was sent out by Seth Gordon, Founder of MiamiLink
Dear LinkedIn Friends……..
As LinkedIn has swelled from the 37,000 members they had when I joined….to over 135,000,000 members today…….city-focused LinkedIn Groups have been formed in most major American cities. A selection of logos for these groups is above.
In Miami, the largest general interest LinkedIn Group – MIAMIlink – was formed in October 2007 and today numbers over 5,900 members from a wide variety of backgrounds and professions, and all fitting the profile for membership:
LinkedIn members located in or near Miami, Florida…..or with a demonstrated interest in the area (lived here, worked here, went to school here, plan to move here, visit frequently, etc.).
Members of MIAMIlink and my contacts on LinkedIn are Invited to a No-Agenda Holiday Reception to meet Fellow Members and Learn from Each Other How to Benefit from Membership in MIAMIlink & LinkedIn. Wednesday November 30, 2011 6:30 to 9:00 PM Hosted by the DoubleTree Hilton Hotel & MACC (Miami Airport Convention Center) in their Refurbished Hotel Lobby & Lounge 711 Northwest 72nd Avenue Miami,
RSVP to Laura@GDBMiami.com by Tuesday, November 29th
The Premier B2B Social Media Channel on the Planet
This is a response I posted on a LI Group posed question today about what you think about LI currently and how would you make it more valuable to marketers.
1/ LI is an excellent tool. IT is an invaluable free database of 135+ million members/users. I speak as a veteran user, speaker, writer, trainer at colleges and grad schools and have a long list of clients that have engaged us for profile development; profile optimization; prospecting and promotional strategies.
2/ Always give in order to receive. It does come around.
3/ Our strategy was quality over quantity to insure people our selected group could connect with through me would do so when I endorsed both parties. We have now opened up our criteria to build on that foundation and expand our reach and our sphere of potential influence and attraction.
4/ Groups participation and Answers sections have been my first best tool to elicit response. We moderate or co-moderate two groups – our own The RaynMakers and Bahamas Opportunities. ALL GROUPS should be required to respond to JOINING requests in a specified amount of time- several I have reached out leave you in limbo. Get on the train or turn over the group administration is my opinion/suggestion.
5/Activity Updates have been the best tool to promote awareness and generate inquiries and requests to connect.
6/ As a marketing pro/MENG veteran and long time chapter chair– I would like to learn how to easily produce my profile in Spanish which I speak well but do not write well.
7/ As a marketing consultant, I would tell LinkedIn to REWRITE their standard invitation messages- they are terrible and I always personalize any invites.
8/ I would love for LI to show something about the nature of searches to understand the demand side of the equation as you can learn about Google for example in their analytics and ADWords.
9/ As a sales prospector, I daily check the visits to my profile and see every new visitor as a prospect and try to send everyone a personal message offering to help -without obligation.
10/ As a LI veteran, I would try to figure out how to segregate clearly evident self-promotional messages and create a LISTSERV that is voluntary and not mandatory to accept messages from.
A primer about strategic alliances removes the mystery and extolls the power of strategic business relationships.
Let’s start at square one.
What is a strategic alliance?
Simply put, it is an agreement amongst business entities to work for both parties best interests.
Why are strategic alliances so important in a tough economy?
Because when times get tough, the tough get going. The weak start showing their fears by trying too hard to promote their wares, being concerned more about their well being then the customer’s needs and wants. And that is when things go awry like the concern for designing and delivering high quality customer service. The best time to form a strategic alliance is often in tough times. Help a business owner or an executive or a firm out of a tight corner and the majority will always remember you were there when they most needed the help. Success has many fathers-my Dad Whitey often said and he was right. Being a party to success-whether yours or your strategic alliance partner is a win-win that everyone can savor, learn from and leverage going forward. And as what goes around…comes around–you’ll get your reward–directly, indirectly or in kind.
For more about strategic alliances, and other forms of business development strategies visit www.theraynmakers.com