Tag: coaching

  • People Buy Stories Before They Buy Stuff

    I’ve been writing about the use of story in marketing for years. I remember when I first started telling people over a decade ago to make their clients the hero of their stories and to use their personal stories as foundational marketing elements they were dubious at best.

    Today, every marketer understands the value of story as a way to sell just about anything. But, still, few understand the right way to use story and narrative as a way to guide people on the perfect journey.

    This is due in large part to the fact that it takes some skill, a bit of hard work and perhaps, more importantly, patience. A great story has many significant elements and to have the greatest impact each element must be built in a certain order – much like the foundation of a house must be laid before the walls and roof have a place to stand.

    The good news is that I believe there’s a framework that any business can adopt and that framework is evident in just about every great story told throughout time.

    Any screenwriter making a living today uses this same framework to draw us in and take us along with them on a journey.

    After you read this post, you’ll also have the tools to build this same framework for your business and use it as the basis for just about every marketing decision you make.

    Your core story and the narrative technique described below will work to help cement your brand in the mind of your ideal client, but it is equally effective as a framework for a product launch or email autoresponder campaign.

    The framework relies on the three key elements: The ideal client persona, the core story and the journey goal map (based on the Marketing Hourglass.)

    The ideal client persona

    The term persona is borrowed from the theater. An actor may receive a script, and the persona is the description of the character played by the part. If an actor is to understand the character they must know a little about what drives them, what they believe, what they fear, and what they desire.

    Audience Audit, Inc did research on small business personas for Infusionsoft and created some great examples of how you might describe a segment of your marketing.

    They give the segment a name and then describe them with a handful of core words as well as some background on what they believe.

    “Passionate creators – Creativity, optimism, service

    This segment believes that passion is one of the most important qualities of a small business owner. They are proud of the job-creation engine that small businesses represent, and value having the ability to serve a customer well.

    Passionate Creators are interested in creating something unique, making a difference in the world, and driving economic growth. They are dramatically more optimistic than other segments, and the most likely to report that small business ownership has contributed to improvements in their overall attitude, time availability and financial security (versus if they had a corporate job).”

    You can read the entire small business market survey here

    Another resource I often point to when discussing the topic of personas is Adele Revella’s Buyer Persona Institute. http://www.buyerpersona.com/ Revella is a past guest on the Duct Tape Marketing podcast – you can listen to that episode here. https://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/customer-personas/

    How to craft the right story

    As stated above, there are elements that make a story both a good story and the right story. For most businesses this isn’t about telling some riveting tale that makes for good entertainment, it’s about demonstrating you are the right person to help the reader achieve what they want to achieve.

    Make them the hero

    First and foremost, if you intend to create a story that your prospects care about you must position them as the hero of the story. Most businesses go on and on about how great their business, product or service is, and frankly, that’s the last thing a customer cares about.

    Think about every great story you’ve read, you love the story because you connect with the story’s main character. For your story, the main character must be your ideal customer persona and not your business.

    Your customer or prospect has problems, and it’s your job to guide them on a journey to solve that problem and achieve their ultimate destiny.

    I know that may sound a bit dramatic, but doesn’t that sound a lot nobler than just selling them stuff?

    I work with small business owners, and I can tell you that no one wants the world’s greatest marketing consulting – the hero of our story wants freedom, control, growth, and creativity and it’s our job to guide them down the path to leads to just that.

    Help them understand their problem

    One of the first tasks is to help the hero understand the real problem they face as it’s often not what they think it is.

    Now, sometimes this can pose a real challenge as selling a solution to a problem people don’t even know they have is a tough path to trod.

    The real key lies in the persona. So often what people want in life can be achieved once they let go of many of the symptoms of what’s holding them back.

    Often we have to show prospects what letting go and refocusing on what matters looks like before they start to see that as the answer.

    Our story must both reveal the real enemy and prove that we know who and what it is. You build a great deal of trust through empathy.

    In our case, the real enemy is time, focus and fear. When we address these elements, we can start to reveal what a solution could look like in the context of the real problem.

    Reveal the authority to guide them

    Of course, once your story connects with their real problem you must be able to reveal you and your business as the one who can guide them to where they want to go.

    Every great hero meets a mentor or guide along the journey that gives them the knowledge, tools and confidence to take up the journey.

    Think

    • Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber
    • Gandalf and Mithril armor
    • Dumbledore and Harry Potter’s wand

    Admit it, the idea of playing the role of Obi-Wan for your prospects has to be a lot more fun that just being the head of marketing.

    Paint a better picture

    One of the keys to moving your prospects down the path is to inspire them by painting a picture of what it could look like if they had the real problem handled.

    A vivid picture of what a small business owner’s day could look like if they installed a marketing system – right down to how they would feel on that day is a great way to lead your prospects to make a change.

    Challenge them to succeed

    Finally, you must be able to challenge them to take action. This part of the story might be referred to by marketers as the call to action, but for it to be powerful, you must also help them understand the cost of not taking action.

    Generally, people are more motivated by what they might lose than what they might gain and when you can help them see the true cost of not acting as well as the value of succeeding when they do act, you can start to position what you do as an investment rather than a cost.

    Marketing is almost always seen as a cost – when it’s seen as an investment the dynamic of the sales conversation changes dramatically.

    How to craft the right journey

    Once you understand the hero of your story and the challenge you can help them solve you have to move to understanding the journey itself.

    As a prospect searches for solutions to questions, problems and challenges known and yet unidentified you have to use your marketing to address the questions and goals they are bound to have during each stage of the journey.

    You must get involved in their journey as early as possible, and you can only do this by addressing them where they are. If you simply jump to promoting what you sell before they’ve even concluded that you address their challenges, you’ll be forced to hard sell.

    But, if you wait until they’ve concluded on their own that your category of solution is that answer to their prayers, you’ll be forced to compete against everyone else who says they do what you do.

    When you understand the goals and questions your prospects are facing during each phase of their buying journey you can create content and campaigns aimed at these specific desires.

    For example, here’s what the journey goals for a small business looking to grow more profit by working with a tax advisor might look like.

    • Know – To learn the best, most profitable ways to run and grow their business
    • Like – To better understand what other people are doing to lower expenses
    • Trust – To understand what’s possible and legal
    • Try – To see if any of the proposed savings apply to their situation
    • Buy – To experience a process that feels very professional and give hope of substantial savings
    • Repeat – Understand other ways they can gain wealth and possibly set up business to sell
    • Refer – To feel proud telling another business owner about a very smart decision they made

    As you can plainly see the idea of cutting taxes doesn’t even appear until about midway through this journey. The consultant selling tax consulting, however, must look to become the guide first by building trust teaching ways to run and grow a business.

    Understand your customers, make your prospects the hero of your marketing story and then guide them to success. That’s how you build a business that both succeeds and matters.

    If you’re an overachiever I also suggest that you read the following:

    • Save the Cat – Blake Snyder (Storytelling from a screenwriting perspective)
    • The Hero with a Thousand Faces – Joseph Campbell (The classic academic tomb that reveals why we like Star Wars so much)
    • The Writer’s Journey – Christopher Vogler (A very practical text for understanding the role of mythology in story)
    • resonate – Nancy Duarte (A presentation framework based on the hero’s journey)
    • Storytelling with Data – Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic (Sometimes you must use numbers to tell a story! – Edward Tufte for the Internet age)

    Content Originally Created by Duct Tape Marketing

    Author:  John Jantsch

  • 7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success

    Practiced effectively, marketing is simply a system. While this may be hard for some business owners to come grips with, like those who feel that “marketing is a strange form of creative voodoo thinking,” marketing is not only a system—it may be the most important system in any business.

    To understand how to approach marketing for a business, it may be helpful to understand the Duct Tape Marketing System definition of marketing. Marketing is getting someone who has a need to know, like and trust you.

    One could argue about what “like” or “trust” is in any given industry, but now more than ever, this definition gets at the heart of the game. Here are the 7 core steps that make up the simple, effective, and affordable Duct Tape Marketing System. Businesses that appreciate and implement this approach to marketing grow in a consistent and predictable
    manner.

    To read the entire ebook written by John Jantsch, click HERE

  • Content is No Longer King – It’s Air

    No matter how you plan to grow your business content has become the entry point and catalyst for effective growth in most every channel. No, content is no longer king – that’s so last decade, but more on that in a bit.

    I’ve been writing a great deal about growth of late because I’ve become fascinated with the struggle it presents.

    One of my core beliefs about growth is that it comes from doing less instead of more.

    While that may sound a bit counterintuitive it springs from the fact that marketers today have something like sixteen channels to choose from in order to create awareness and ultimately grow their businesses. (I outline all channels in this Lead Generation System post)

    Terms like social media marketing, influencer marketing, content marketing and search engine marketing entered the marketing conversation in the last decade.

    While this may seem to present a golden opportunity for some businesses, it has created frustration for others. It is simply impossible to effectively create a meaningful presence everywhere and attempting to do so creates so much fragmentation that the message is often lost completely.

    The key to succeeding in the current environment is to master two or three channels at the most and commit to going deeply there. In my experience, most businesses already have one or two channels that produce the bulk of their business, yet they do little to amplify that effort. (I’ve written more on this idea of Channel Leverage here)

    For example, many businesses derive a significant percentage of their business through referrals and word of mouth recommendation but have no formal referral program in place.

    My contention is that business should focus on building multiple referral programs and explore ways to use advertising, strategic partnering and even content to amplify their referral channel – less is more!

    And now to the real point of this post (Sorry I had as one of my editors called it a lot throat clearing to do to get to the point.)

    No matter what growth channels you decide to pursue, content is your ticket to entry. Now, before I go much further let me say that by content I mean, long, deep, dramatic, useful, dare I say epic, educational content.

    Again, in this regard – less is more.

    The days of writing 500-word wispy blog posts three times a week are over. They certainly served a purpose four or five years ago (hello SEO) but no longer.

    Today you are better off writing one or two epic posts a month and using them as a tool to power every channel. (That’s good news, right?)

    Your approach to content as an asset still needs to be based on an editorial calendar that serves your business, but creating that plan is even easier if you start to think about ways to use your content for multiple channels.

    When we work with businesses today content development is the place we must start. There’s little hope in expanding the reach of a business without a substantial content asset to draw from. There are few channels that don’t run on content.

    Let me give you an example of how this could play out.

    Let’s say you commit to 12 epic blog posts per year – something in the 1500-2000 word range with lots of deep useful advice, some nice design elements, maybe a dash of data and even a bit of drama.

    If you’ve done your keyword research and spent a little time using a tool like BuzzSumo to drill down into specific post ideas you have the makings of an annual editorial calendar. (Here’s a post on how I use BuzzSumo)

    Now, let’s make this content pay.

    In one sense you already have. Your post will most certainly help your SEO efforts the chosen topic and set the table for shares and links. (By far my most shared content is over 1,500 words)

    Let’s say one of your posts describes the sixteen most awesome ways to do X. It’s long and it’s meaty and people devour it, but you know what would be cool – if you added a one-page checklist with all sixteen points.

    And what the heck, let’s use a tool like Thrive Leads to create a two-step opt-in box for people who want that checklist. (There’s an example of a content upgrade in this post)

    Wow, people are actually opting-in at a pretty high rate, why don’t we see what happens if we buy some targeted Facebook ads to drive some cold traffic to the post. All of a sudden content is making our advertising pay off.

    If all these new people are going to opt-in we should make sure that our email follow-up directs them to last month’s epic post so they begin to realize how glad they are that they know us.

    Now, let’s amp things up a bit.

    Our blog post on the sixteen most awesome ways to do X would actually make a nice presentation. We could simply promote it to our audience and hold a webinar, but why not reach out to some potential strategic partners and offer to do it free of charge for their audience instead.

    This is a great way to extend the reach of your content, but more than that it’s a great way to get referred by a trusted source and potentially meet some very qualified prospects.
    The key to making channels pay is a commitment to producing the most useful content possible.

    • Content makes your advertising more effective
    • Content makes your selling efforts more effective
    • Content makes your referral outreach more effective
    • Content makes your SEO efforts more effective
    • Content makes your influencer outreach more effective
    • Content makes your email marketing efforts more effective
    • Content makes your social media efforts more effective
    • Content makes your PR efforts more effective

    Much has been written about the need for great content, but I believe it’s more than king or queen, it’s more than a channel, it’s air – we need it survive. It is the catalyst and enabler for every other channel we use for growth.

    This isn’t a call to write more, better content – it’s a suggestion that you must change your view of what content has become and what it must mean to your ability to grow.

    Put epic content at the center of your marketing efforts – do less, but do better – and you’ll find that you have far greater opportunities to expand in every direction.

    Article Originally Created by Duct Tape Marketing

    Author: John Jantsch

  • Becoming a Recognized Expert

    Nowadays, it’s possible for virtually anyone to get their message out into the world. As a result, we’re often overwhelmed with an endless stream of information and noise.

    So if you’re a professional who wants to become known for your expertise, how do you stand out from the crowd?

    Ron Carucci is a fellow Harvard Business Review author and member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches, a partner in the consulting company Navalent, and a member of my Recognized Expert course and community. In a recent #LinkedInLive session that I had with Ron, we discussed what it really means to be a recognized expert in business today.

    To ensure you can join me for my next LinkedIn Live interview, follow me on LinkedIn. Click this link to my profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/doriec/ – and then click “follow.”

    Here are five pieces of advice from Ron about how you can start your journey as a recognized expert:

    Expand your audience. A few years ago, at the start of his journey, Ron realized he needed to grow his network – because as it stood, he was mostly in dialogue with people who already knew him, and he needed to get known by new audiences. He therefore doubled down on content creation, and actively began writing for Forbes and the Harvard Business Review.

    Create content to attract your ideal clients. One can’t simply create content and expect to go viral or suddenly gain a massive following. Ron says, “It’s not enough to write or put ideas out there, even if they’re brilliant. They have to be the brilliant ideas you want to represent you. That’s how you invite the kind of people into your life whom you want in your life.”

    Swim against the stream. Right now, consider what everyone in the news is writing about. Sometimes, it pays to do the opposite, such as Ron’s successful recent piece in the Harvard Business Review talking about ambition (at a time when almost everyone else was focused on writing about the pandemic).

    Get proactive with your social media engagement. We all appreciate the fanfare of a well-liked post, picture, or article, but every single reaction to your content is a potential opportunity, as Ron suggests. “Every one of those reactions, tweets, LinkedIn follows, the comments on the article, is a new relationship,” he says. “Just responding something like, ‘Hey, thanks for your engagement’ or ‘Hey, interesting question- what do you think?’ grows both your recognition and potential business down the road. I would leverage every one of those interactions far more aggressively. In terms of just being diligent and engaging, try to start a conversation with them.“

    Play the long game. Everyone envisions a “break-out” moment on their journey to success. The truth is, you don’t reach your goal by taking just one really good step. As Ron says, “We all think that maybe this article, maybe this video, maybe this TED talk, maybe this podcast will be the one – that breakout moment. There’s no such thing. Each of those moments becomes a diligent step on the journey to advance the cause. Be diligent in your content idea sharing, in your strategies, how you create content, whom you talk to, and what you talk about. That’s all really important. But prepare yourself for the psychological and emotional journey of resilience. This is a long game. The recognition part of the recognized expert is a long game. Don’t keep looking to your left and right and getting into the ‘Well, how come them and not me?’ It’s not about meritocracy. Don’t be looking for the merits of your ideas to stand above somebody else’s or not. That’s not what this is about. It’s about people getting to know you better.”

    By following the steps Ron suggests above, you can advance much further on the journey to becoming a Recognized Expert.

    To watch the video replay of my interview with Ron, click this link here.

    And if you’d like to see how far along you are in the recognized expert journey, sign up to receive a free PDF download of my Recognized Expert Self-Evaluation Toolkit.

    Thank you for reading this week’s newsletter! Make sure to comment below, share your questions and ideas, and click “share” so your colleagues can join in on the discussion, as well.

    Author: Dorie Clark

  • Your Leadership Legacy Is Now

    How will you be remembered for leading through these times? What will people say about the way you showed up? What will be your legacy?

    Today and tomorrow – into the foreseeable future – will be painful and destabilizing as we manage through this pandemic. Our days will also bring new ideas and plans, and the chance to relate differently to others and to the world. Everything has changed and is changing every day.

    Will they say you were centered, calm and present in an environment of fear and uncertainty? Will they recall how you focused everyone on what was most important? Will they think back and remember how you communicated every day about what you knew, didn’t know and couldn’t know about the Covid crisis and its impact?

    Will others look back at how you took charge of details to solve urgent problems and then included others in the plan for getting through the worst days? Will they say how inspired they were by your vision for what your organization could be post-pandemic, a vision that was realistic and bold and challenged them to bring their best?

    Will they recall feeling connected to you and cared about? Will they talk about how you checked in often to ask about their families’ safety and how they were handling the stress of working from home? Will they hold in their minds the thought, “he was going through this with us?” Will they talk about how you were present and grieved with a team member who lost her mother?

    Will they say you showed your humanity, your fear for your own family’s safety and your own concerns about the future of the organization and business. Will they remember you saying, “I don’t know?”

    The future is not some far-off time when others will settle back in their chairs to review how you showed up as a leader when the world changed. Your leadership today will be talked about tomorrow and for days to come, and it will carry more significance, or not.

    So, don’t wait for history to remember you. Your leadership legacy is now.

    Author: Ken Giglio

    Ken Giglio is a highly experienced Executive Coach, Consultant, and Coach Supervisor focused on Mindful Leadership, the courage to confront and shift the self-limiting mindsets and behaviors that undermine personal, team, and organizational effectiveness. As Principal, he leads a global team of highly experienced executive coaches and supervisors who link leadership to an organization’s strategic business objectives. www.mindful-leaders.com

  • Protecting Your Spirit During This Time

    Humans are naturally meaning-seeking, purpose-driven creatures — and these traits can help us stay resilient during challenging times.

    This marks the end of our three-part series on optimizing our mind, body and spirit during COVID. Today, we’ve delving into building resilience in the spirit. When we talk about spirit in this context, it’s totally secular and non-religious. What we’re talking about is at the heart of what resilience really is: fortitude, courage, and power. How can we spark these things within us in the midst of the pandemic? The answer lies in the wise Eastern saying: No mud, no lotus. Meaning, the challenge to cultivate these inner attributes is brought on by the challenge itself. 

    Humans are by definition meaning-seeking, purpose-driven creatures. 

    We thrive when we are leading purposeful, meaningful lives. And resiliency feeds off this energy. So to build a resilient spirit, we need to a find ways to create meaning and purpose during this pandemic. There have been so many examples of resiliency in spirit all around the world: on the balconies in Italy, the press briefings of New York’s Governor Cuomo, and in the relief efforts to get PPE to healthcare workers worldwide. The human spirit is the most resilient force on the planet!

    So today, I want to focus on three specific ways you can start building a resilient spirit by creating a sense of meaning and purpose in your own lives during this time:

    1. Step into a growth mindset, not a scarcity mindset.

    The stress caused by a pandemic creates a scarcity mindset. It’s our self-preservation mechanism in overdrive. Pandemics on the whole breed the scarcity mindset because it’s a survival tactic we as humans have evolutionarily developed. We are biologically primed to scan our environment for danger and act accordingly. It is inherently protective because it keeps us safe. But at the individual level, we have great power in outsmarting our biology to turn off our scarcity mindset and turn on our growth mindset. 

    At the core of the growth mindset is the belief that challenges can make us stronger, wiser and more able than we were before. The mere fact that you are reading this is proof that you are stepping into your growth mindset, because you believe you have the power to change and grow. 

    We can take concrete steps to cultivate a growth mindset by first managing our stress response using many of the tools we learned in prior weeks.  When we build resilience in our mind and body through the ways we’ve talked about before, we can step out of the fear zone and into the growth zone even in the midst of a pandemic (see below).  

    2. Watch the movie of your life

    Another way to build our spirit during this crisis is to become the observer.  Mindfulness experts talk a lot about this concept, but let me break it down into very Hollywood terms: Start watching the movie of your life. We’re not talking about an action-packed blockbuster here, we’re talking about our quiet inner ability to watch ourselves and really pay attention to how we’re living in the day to day during this pandemic. 

    Think of your life right now as a movie and you as the hero or heroine of this tale. Are you the lead character you want to be? Are you stepping into your power and intentionally working on your potential for calmness, peace of mind and inner strength? Are you making intentional choices to read and watch uplifting things, to spend time (virtually, of course) with people who make you laugh and bring you joy? Are you working on creating a calm, safe haven within yourself amidst the chaos of the outside world?

    We’ve talked a lot in the past two modules of how when we do better, we feel better. And with this doing, resilience has a chance to grow. It’s time to channel your Hollywood starlet and cultivate that Oscar-worthy, resilient performance. 

    3. Live a lifetime in a day

    As an integrative medicine doctor, living a lifetime in a day is a mantra I repeat often to patients. It’s a way to incorporate all the elements that make up an arc of a long, purposeful and meaningful life — work, family, solitude, vacation, and retirement — and building each of those into one single day. 

    For example, engaging in work could mean any project that brings you a feeling of productivity or achievement. Spending time in family life (whether you have a family or not) could mean connecting virtually with your tribe to feel a sense of belonging. Taking a vacation could mean doing something that brings you joy and levity and gets you into a state of flow.  And retirement could mean taking a pause in the day to reflect and take stock of your blessings. 

    By living a lifetime in a day, we learn to take the long view and zoom out.  And when we zoom out, we can paradoxically learn to zoom in on what matters most: people, love, connection, health and ultimately happiness, the most universally resilient life force of all.

    The spirit of resilience in a poem

    Here’s one of my most favorite poems about the spirit of resilience. Charles Bukowski wrote this in 1993, long before the COVID pandemic. If there’s one piece of literary genius that summarizes the resiliency of the human spirit, I think this might be it:

    Author: Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, Mind-Body Medicine Doctor at Harvard Medical School

  • Four Strategic Priorities for the Post-COVID-19 World

    To build resilience going forward, the first question to answer is not, “What’s in it for me?” but “What if?”

    By now, everyone knows that the shattering impact of COVID-19 has brought on a business crisis without precedent in recent memory. On one level, though, the pandemic represents nothing new. For years, we have been hearing and talking about the impending “VUCA” (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) world. Over and over again, we were told to prepare for seismic change that was sure to arrive, to boost agility in anticipation of abrupt, profound disruption. COVID-19 was a misfortune long foreseen; only the dates and other specific details were missing.

    Regardless, the pandemic will fundamentally reshape how we do business from now on. Even if lockdowns end soon and the virus is staunchly suppressed never to return, its effect will linger. Now that the whole world has experienced the VUCA that only emerging markets used to face, it can never again be treated as an abstraction.

    So when business leaders share with me how their business strategies will likely change in the post-virus period, many say they’ll continue with initiatives they’ve already started, such as digitalisation or social responsibility, but faster and with higher intensity. I have to point out to them that this might not be enough. Some of their key strategic priorities will have to be modified in a radical way.

    To start, the basic purpose of business strategy is to steer companies towards sustainable sources of growth and profit. There are many tried-and-true frameworks for guiding strategy, e.g. Michael Porter’s five forces, which allows firms to orient their competitive position according to coordinates of threat and power. For decades, this classic way of thinking has provided a useful lens for analysing strategic moves of players within an industry. It no doubt remains relevant today. However, Porter’s neat chessboard does not account for whipping winds (think pandemics, political revolutions, climate change events such as the Australian bushfires) that may kick up suddenly and blow away the pieces. Anticipating the disruptive events that live outside Porter’s framework will be a major part of business strategy going forward.

    I see four new priorities that strategists will need to put on their radar for the years to come.

    1. Aim for survivability and resilience before economic efficiency

    It would seem meaningless to talk about an efficient dead organisation. In the post-COVID-19 world, contingency planning should be built into every link of the value chain to ensure survival. Instead of structuring partnerships on the basis of leverage and getting the better end of the deal whenever possible, firms will have to be much more strategic in choosing which alliances are essential, and which are transactional. Rather than “What’s in it for me?”, the first question ought to be “What if?” It may be necessary to forego some of the most lucrative partnerships in favour of those that can withstand a missed shipment or delayed payment here or there when fate intervenes.

    To increase reliability, therefore, redundancy will trump efficiency with regard to critical resources. Investing too much in one partner, supplier or market can be as bad an idea as betting your life savings on one horse. For example, many major multinationals may be regretting their decision to rely so heavily on China as the pandemic exposes fissures in the nation’s prosperous façade. Apple and Foxconn’s joined-at-the-hip relationship is causing trouble for both companies, amid a vicious cycle of COVID-19 factory shutdowns and declining demand for premium smartphones. The uncertainty will only intensify as the rivalry between the US and China continues to escalate. (More about politics below.)

    IKEA is an example of how a major company can balance long-term loyalty with diversification in the supply chain. The company deliberately maintains a large number of moderate-size suppliers worldwide, helping them improve production quality. It engages in nurturing, long-term relationships rather than squeezing every last cent.

    2. Quantify and plan for ecological and environmental threats rather than just describe them

    Today, many executives and analysts talk about various types of threats in a descriptive way, with very little in-depth forethought about how to deal with them should they arise. The good old concept of scenario planning is still with us, but very few businesses seem to practise it in a systematic and thorough way. Moreover, conventional risk assessment typically omits threats with no known probability distribution function, such as environmental devastation and sudden increases in refugee flows. And today’s businesses, already overwhelmed with “clear and present” business challenges, are hard-pressed to devote attention to what they consider low-probability events.

    But recent history shows that extreme upheavals are far from rare. In the last century, the world has experienced at least five dangerous virus attacks, from the pandemic of 1918 that infected about one-third of the global population to COVID-19 in the present. There were also at least two devastating nuclear reactor meltdowns, two world wars and several near-misses, numerous earthquakes and tsunamis, countless regional armed conflicts that threatened supply of essential goods. Climate change, overpopulation and rising worldwide inequality have only increased the likelihood of these threats occurring again in the future.

    Businesses should thus dedicate more resources to quantify various types of threats although there is no broad consensus on the best way to do this. The main goal is not to be accurate, but to train the organisation to plan for various “unimaginable” events. What does not get measured does not get done, as many business executives often claim. Thus, deep qualitative analysis and scenario planning should be complemented with a number of computer-assisted algorithms providing data and various simulation models. Leaders will have to learn their way around AI and machine-learning tools – such as heat mapping algorithms that can quantify political risks based on social-media sentiment analysis – in the course of strategic decision making.

    3. Build a strong organisational immune system rather than maximise short-term profits

    When it comes to measuring and anticipating threats, technology is an important part of the package, but it can’t overcome a deep-seated antipathy to hard truths. In the business world to come, advantage will belong to firms that convey bad news upwards quickly rather than flinching from it.

    Companies that can spot problems when they look small, learn from them and build preventive measures rapidly possess what I would call a strong organisational immune system. Just as our white blood cells identify and destroy invader cells early before they wreak havoc in our bodies, companies need long, sensitive feelers and hyper-responsive capability at all levels of the organisation to stay in the pink of health.

    The downfall of Nokia’s smartphone business is a perfect example of how immune-compromised organisations collapse from within. Well before the iPhone came along, a “culture of fear” had set in at the Finnish firm. Senior and middle managers had developed a poisonous habit of sugarcoating and avoiding the serious problems with their devices and proprietary OS. Nokia had ample time and resources to develop a competitive response to the iPhone, but those advantages were squandered as toxic internal politics left management spinning its wheels.

    It should be said that some top managers believe that using fear will lead to higher economic performance by reducing organisational complacency and inertia. This might have worked reasonably well in a fully controllable and predictable environment in which it is impossible for people to report good news only and hide bad news as long as they can. In today’s volatile context, however, it will result in priceless early warning signs going unheeded.

    According to some observers, a Nokia-like scenario may have been behind China’s delayed response to COVID-19, stemming from long-standing misalignment between the central Communist Party authorities in Beijing and local officials, who knew of the virus in its early stages but lacked incentive to report it quickly. The result – massive human and economic harm – speaks to the high costs of complacency in this new world. Under the revived Nokia, the new board sought to build an organisational culture based on the following motto: “No news is bad news; bad news is good news; good news is no news.”

    4. Integrate government politics rather than focusing only on business economics

    Globalisation had a good run. The notion that the world is flat – unencumbered travels, international business deals, outsourcing to the lowest-cost countries, trade deals, etc. – had few high-powered detractors for several decades leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. Ever since the advent of Brexit and the Trump presidency, however, the idea of business without borders has been on the retreat. As I write this, international air travel is all but frozen entirely, and global supply chains have been chopped to bits. Nation-states, already making a comeback before COVID-19, will likely increase their leverage over multinational businesses in the months and years to come.

    Beyond national security, firms in sectors deemed “essential” to national public welfare – covering a wide range of sectors from food to medical supply, machinery and electronics equipment, transportation and energy – will be the first to feel the pressure to localise. Governments have learned the hard way that it can be dangerous to depend on foreign trade for items that make or break crisis response, such as the reactive agents that are key to COVID-19 testing or even low-tech medical gowns and face masks. They will be keen to maintain or rebuild these precious supply chains on their own soil. This could carry significant implications for businesses that seek overseas expansion. Firms should expect even more severe and close governmental scrutiny and rejection of their proposed joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions, R&D collaborations, even in non-defence related sectors.

    This seeming adversity could create big opportunity for some firms that integrate government politics into their business strategies. For one, homegrown innovation capability will be valued by national governments and benefit from higher economic and regulatory support. Additionally, rising patriotism – creating “good” jobs for your own people – could benefit these firms in their own countries, much like Alibaba and Tencent and Baidu have profited in part from relatively low foreign competition in China.

    What’s bigger than Big Business?

    You may have already noticed some interrelationships between these four priorities. Indeed, in the post-COVID-19 world, these four levers typically operate in combination, rather than in isolation.

    Broadly speaking, strategy after COVID-19 will be less about beating your economic competitors, and more about how businesses can contribute to combating a larger, shared enemy, like climate change, pandemics or perhaps socio-political woes such as inequality. There’s nothing new about this. The US in World War II, for example, saw tremendous cooperative effort between businesses, as well as between the private and public sectors. The COVID-19 “new normal” may actually be a return to an older equilibrium between business and society, and wide stakeholder collaboration.

    It will hopefully serve as a meaningful wake-up call for societies and businesses to take bold, radical actions that could propel humanity to a superior quality of life.

    Author: Quy Nguyen Huy is the Solvay Chaired Professor of Technological Innovation and a Professor of Strategic Management at INSEAD. He is also a director of the Strategy Execution Programme, part of INSEAD’s suite of Executive Education programmes.

    Acknowledgment: I am grateful for feedback from INSEAD Knowledge managing editor Benjamin Kessler, as well as strategy professors Guoli Chen, Felipe Monteiro, Daniel Simonovich, Phebo Wibbens and Christoph Zott.

  • Do Great Leaders Work Hard or Work Smart?

    The answer is – Yes.

    As leaders we invest a tremendous amount in our work, and there are two ways that we can approach it. We can work harder than everyone else, and we can work just as smart as we work hard. Both are equally important. 

    Those who are in a position to assess other leaders will usually take note of a leader who is putting in 30% or 40% more hours than their colleagues, while showing the same results.  These leaders are typically the subject of conversations that call into question exactly what they are doing with all those hours.  

    Working hard without working smart does you no favors.  So, do both.      

    Let’s examine what it looks like to work smart.  When you work smart you are continually looking for efficiencies and the kind of simplicities that help you get things done effectively and efficiently.  It means you are building a vast and varied network of resources and people that you can call on to help you accomplish the three or four dozen things you need to achieve each day.  And to reciprocate as you find as many ways as you can to help these good people accomplish what they need to in return. 

    Smart means understanding the nuances that help leaders in your organization and your industry be successful.  The leadership competencies that we call organizational savvy and leadership agility go a long way toward describing this leadership quality.  I lean on these two competencies most often, as I coach leaders to be their most productive.  Within our organizations, we spend our time determining which levers to pull, who we can lean on, which approach works best in the culture, and those that don’t.  

    How We Achieve is as Important as What We Achieve  

    When we’re presented with challenges to resolve, we have two things that we need to focus on.  We are expected to deliver on what it is we need to deliver.  And, just as important, we are responsible for cultivating relationships with those we partner with along the way.  The reason the relationships are so meaningful is that the people we get to work with are the ones that help us get things done. Pretty simple.  The other reason they’re important is that we are going to be working with those same people tomorrow, and next week and next year.  It helps if we enjoy working with each other.   

    So the relationships we establish and enhance are as much of a commodity as the deliverables we achieve.  As we go about delivering on our goals, it’s vital to demonstrate our organizational savvy and focus on both what we deliver and how we deliver.  We need to be constantly aware of how we build relationships, sharpen our leadership intelligence, and cultivate our leadership brand.

    John Wooden
    “It isn’t what you do, but how you do it.”

    Author: Scott F. Burns

    Visit his website:  leadership-scottfburns.com

  • Parents Who Lead in Pandemic Times

    As April, the cruelest month, comes to a close in this terribly disruptive pandemic time, I want to express my heartfelt appreciation for all the support given to me and my co-author Alyssa Westring in last month’s launch of our book, Parents Who Lead.  

    We are deeply gratified to see how this book has been of use to so many working families at a time when they urgently need the help it offers. We never imagined the book would arrive at a moment when the physical boundaries that used to separate work and family life have been obliterated, when working parents are struggling to guide their children’s schooling at home, and when everyone is anxious about the profound uncertainties of our new world order. 

    Parents Who Lead has relevance these days in ways we could not foresee. Our evidence-based guidance – for how to take practical steps to focus on what matters most, on who matters most, and on experimenting with new ways to live and work that are sustainable because they serve both personal and collective interests – is resonating with working parents and their employers in this strange episode of our history.

    There are lots of practical articles, fascinating podcasts, and media coverage about the book here. One of my favorites is this special edition of my SiriusXM Wharton Business Radio show, featuring the Wharton alumni who were subjects for the book. Below are a few of the pieces that draw on Parents Who Lead and directly address our newly-upended world:

    Read

    • Harvard Business Review– How Working Parents Can Support One Another.
    • Bloomberg – Be the Coronavirus Boss Working Parents Need.
    • Business Insider – To Raise Children Who Are Resilient and Optimistic, Parents Can Use Discussing Coronavirus as an Opportunity. Here’s How to Get Started.

    Listen

    More Free Resources

    Our book helps people gain a greater sense of purpose, control, and connection. Here’s the first chapter, a study guide to ignite conversation about the big ideas, and a 1-pager composed in response to inquiries about how to use the book for teams and organizations.

    Since the pandemic, my Wharton classes, book talks, and speaking engagements have migrated to the virtual realm, making it in some ways easier for people to be part of the conversation. My online courses on Coursera and LinkedIn Learning (free for premium subscribers) are more popular now because of a newly-urgent interest in leading with values. While our SiriusXM studio on the Penn campus has been shuttered, my weekly show, Work and Life, on air since 2014, had been on hiatus, but we’re back now, recording from home, with fresh episodes that bring expertise to help us face the work and life challenges of a changed world. Free podcast versions are here.

    Question Everything

    I’m exploring potential research avenues on creating harmony between work and the rest of life as we move toward recovery from the pandemic and want to know what’s on your mind. So, what’s the most important question you would want me to address? Write to me with your ideas: friedman@wharton.upenn.edu

    Let’s stay socially connected, while we ache for the end of physical separation, 

    Written By:
    Stew Friedman
    TotalLeadership.org

  • “Moment of Grace: Resiliency” Video by John Baldoni

    The Association of Corporate Executive Coaches (ACEC) have always remained focused on supporting their members and their endeavors. Especially if a member has an important message to pass on or teach, just as John Baldoni decides to share in this video.

    By promoting the inspirational work by their members all while providing a professionally exclusive platform for Corporate Coaches to grow a network for expanding clientele. Considering this, ACEC member John Baldoni applies his experience as a Coach to share a brief message about strength and overcoming adversity.

    Altogether, Baldoni quickly explains the meaning behind a well-respected Japanese Saying, “Fall down 7 times get up 8 times” in order to illustrate for his viewers how this thought dives deep into a concept called Resiliency. John is ultimately reminding everyone that it is the toughest of times that determine who we truly are.

    The most inspiring takeaway from John’s brief time actually speaking is the number of high level concepts being introduced. The most unforgettable expressions, timeless quotes or even ancient proverbs often reveal similar advice. For instance, “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.”

    In addition, Teddy Roosevelt has a much lengthier explanation surrounding this concept where he concludes that “a man should not be judged by his victories, but people should ask themselves what can be learned from how he carried himself after suffering the worst defeat.” This is merely a summarized interpretation of the lesson to be learned.

    John Baldoni is a certified ACEC Member for his many skill-sets and career achievements, among many other reasons. Perhaps, some of the most actionable advice John can provide his clients consists of effectively communicating powerful messages that can energize others to recognize just how many more lessons can be learned from him speaking for less than a minute. It is often agreed upon that those who speak the most have the least to say. Baldoni calmly expresses his point, then allows for it to sink in on us and upon deeper reflection, we have all already learned more about ourselves and the world around us.

    This is exactly why the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches (ACEC) has become such a valuable group to partner with. The level of quality you have the potential to align with is extraordinary. Not only will the genuine support you receive from fellow Coaches inspire you to focus more than you already had before on the continued growth for your clients, but it will also leave you feeling satisfaction from all the amazing people you have become an extension of and vice versa.

    Thanks to John Baldoni for this inspirational reminder!

    John Baldoni
    john@johnbaldoni.com
    734.995.9992
    www.johnbaldoni.com

    • 2018 Trust Across America Lifetime Achievement Honoree
    • 2020 Global Gurus Top 30 
    • Member of Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches
    • Inc.com Top 50 Leadership Expert
    • Inc.com Top 100 Leadership Speaker
    • Author of 14 books published in 10 languages