How Much Do You Manage? Pick a Lane

When it comes to titles on your business card, less is more. The more areas you decide to "specialize" in means the less time you can spend on being an expert in each of those areas. Especially in an organization where you're leading multiple departments...pick a lane.

Managing five departments is like trying to manage traffic on five lanes of an interstate; everyone is traveling in the same direction, toward the same goal, but you are trying to lead all the cars in each lane. As you merge and switch lanes, weaving through traffic, you end up slowing the traffic and work flow of EVERY lane.

It's better to choose one or two areas of expertise and spend your time streamlining those specialties. Hire people smarter than you and people that you trust to manage the department. That way when one project consumes your time, or you're unexpectedly absent, you don't slow the pace and progress of your entire lane. You can set yourself at cruise control and let your team lead you down the fast lane.

How much do you manage?

by Renee Halgerson

Snakes on a Cane

Brilliant marketing for a brilliant show. Who would have thought the TV drama ‘House,’ with the highest network ratings, would need more advertising? That’s the point. It doesn’t. But with a cryptic new website, sidewalk chalk drawings in NYC, and subliminal ad flashes, it’s the new guerrilla marketing tactics that are getting attention. And it’s almost as clever as Dr. House himself. That’s why it’s no surprise…Hugh Laurie drew the new icon that inspired the entire marketing strategy.

Do you need to add a fresh element to your marketing strategy?

Click here to read the article, see the icon and view the new website.

Social Media: Fad or Revolution?

Is social media a fad--or the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution?

Click here to read the entire article and decide for yourself--posted August 11, 2009.

Here are my top 10 statistics to show that Social Media is bigger than you think:

1.) By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers. 96% of them have joined a social network.

2.)1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media.

3.) 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction.

4.) Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Ireland, Norway and Panama.

5.)Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen.

6.) The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube.

7.) Wikipedia has over 13 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English.

8.) There are over 200,000,000 blogs.

9.) If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour.

10.) In the near future we will no longer search for products and services they will find us via social media.

How Fast is Technology Changing the World?

Elizabeth Gilbert Book Review: "Eat. Pray. Love." (2006) Favorite Lines

"That's the thing about human life--there's no control group, no way to ever know how any of us would have turned out if any variables had been changed."

"I met an old lady once, almost one hundred years old, and she told me, "There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. 'How much do you love me?' and 'Who's in charge?' Everything else is somehow manageable. But these two questions of love and control undo us all, trip us up and cause war, grief and suffering."

"This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. If you bring the right earnestness to your ceremony, God will provide the grace. And that is why we need God."

"Imagine the universe is a great spinning engine. You want to stay near the core of the thing-- right in the hub of the wheel-- not out at the edges where all the wild whirling takes place, where you can get frayed and crazy. The hub of calmness--that's your heart. That's where God lives within you. So stop looking for answers in the world. Just keep coming back to that center and you'll always find peace."

"Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes ever travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings."

"...he sometimes encountered devils who looked like angels, and other times he found angels who looked like devils. When asked how he could tell the difference, the saint said that you can only tell which is which by the way you feel after the creature has left your company. If you are appalled, he said, then it was a devil who had visited you. If you feel lightened, it was an angel."

Campaigns That Inspire: Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty

Update on Tuesday, August 18, 2009 by Renee

TRUE BEAUTY:

"Beauty comes from a life well lived. If you've lived well, your smile lines are in the right places, and your frown lines aren't too bad." ~ Jennifer Garner

"The kind of beauty I want is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within-- strength, courage, dignity." ~Ruby Dee

Gratitude

"Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude." ~Dennis Waitley

"Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough." ~Oprah Winfrey

Four Great Qualities of a Leader

We all know that leaders need vision and energy, but after an exhaustive review of the most influential theories on leadership--it was found that great leaders also share four unexpected qualities:

1) They selectively reveal their weaknesses
2) They rely heavily on intuition to gauge the appropriate timing and course of action
3) They manage employees with "tough empathy"
4) They capitalize on their differences.

All four qualities are necessary for inspirational leadership, but they cannot be used mechanically; they must be mixed and matched to meet the demands of particular situations. Most important, however, is that the qualities encourage authenticity among leaders. To be a true leader, the authors advise, "Be yourself--more--with skill."

~Harvard Business Publishing Online, by Rob Goffee, Gareth Jonesu

How can you be a better leader?