Do you need a digital presence as a solo consultant?

I think you do, but there are at least two other clear options which have a better ROI then the $5-$10K a full blown website will cost you.

The first option is the simplest and least expensive – develop a great LinkedIn profile. It offers you all the critical pieces of a website and more. Your LinkedIn profile summary is your ‘about’ page. References are easily captured and more ‘real’ then any ‘testimony’ page you might create. You can create ‘positions’ for your client engagements which represent great ‘client’ and ’services’ examples. There are all manner of complimentary applications which can make the profile even more useful as a website. For example, you can use SlideShare to post a PowerPoint presentation about your services. You can post a picture. You have your own vanity URL to use on your business card. Mine is www.linkedin.com/in/edcallahansprofile. And all the items I have mentioned are free. You can upgrade for additional services but you can start for free and find it very valuable. Can you think of anything else you need to get started that a website would provide?

The other inexpensive option is a blog. Wordpress offers hosting and tools for free as well. And for a small investment, you can purchase a URL and have a professional WordPress consultant put a site together that most people wouldn’t recognize as merely a WordPress blog. If you read this blogpost at www.edcallahan.info you already know that is what I did. In case you read this post  in an RSS reader, the image in this post is a screen shot of my site.

So there you have one man’s opinion. Save your money and don’t build a website unless you need more then one of these options offer you.

For more advice on how to launch your consulting career you might want to visit my my friend Peter Osborne’s website, Consultant Launch Pad.

Venezuelan President Chavez vs Spanish President Zapatero

Tim Walsh blogged on June 5th, 2010 about The (Un)Perfect Game and Stand-Up Guys. You can read the whole post here. It is the story of the terrible call made by major league umpire Jim Joyce and the pitcher whose perfect game he ruined, Armando Galarraga.

Tim correctly points out that there are lots of lessons to be learned here, but chief among them is the need for us all to be able admit our mistakes.

I couldn’t agree more. A basic plea we EOS implementers make to all the owners and leadership teams we collaborate with is to be open & honest.

Constructive conflict among professionals who respect each other assure that all points of view are heard when there is disagreement. This works very well in an organization where there is an ultimate leader who will insure that there is not just politicking but valuable discussion. He or she eventually summarizes what has been said and leads the group to solve the problem once and for all. This includes making the choice when the team cannot do so.

I am not advocating management by committee. Far from it. But unless you have hired a team you don’t trust and respect, many of the best ideas will come from them, not you.

What level of trust and respect exist among all the leaders in your company?

Photo: quapan

When is a baseball franchise like a small business?

When you are the 2000 Minnesota Twins and among the worst teams in baseball. Bruce Schoenfeld describes the transformation of the Twins over the past ten years in a blog post for Entrepreneur Magazine, entitled The Turnaround Artist. You can read the whole post here.

In the article Schoenfeld describes how Twins’ owner, Jim Pohland, the son of billionaire former owner Carl Pohland, applied basic management principles to the remaking of the Twins, who he describes as a small business in contrast to the giants of big business in baseball, like the New York Yankees.

Schoenfeld provides the details behind this list of five management principles:

1. Identify your strengths.

2. Offer a unique experience.

3. Connect with your customers.

4. Remain loyal to your employees.

5. Know when to act like a big business.

Who can argue with any of these as it applies to your business, except perhaps #5?

I am a big fan of #1. As part of helping our clients implement EOS, we help them describe their Three Uniques. We define Three Uniques as that combination of value that taken together is found in no other competitors’ offering. Every competitor may have one or two of these value propositions, but ideally not all three. The three become your USP, or unique selling proposition.

The benefits of doing this exercise are many, but key is that the Three Uniques become a  guidepost to you, your leadership team and your employees, particularly your sales team. It provides for a consistent message from marketing and sales. Assuming it is the right one, it also helps you resist straying into perceived greener pastures. If you know what I mean?

Have you documented your Three Uniques?

If not, you might want to read pages 54-58 in Gino Wickman’s Traction – Get A Grip On Your Business. You can buy it here and and you can download the first chapter for free here.

Photo: Cheerful-Givers

In September of 2009,  Rene Boer, a colleague of mine in Chicago, wrote a post entitled Good Housekeeping. You can read the entire post here.

The blog got its title from a news story concerning the way three Hyatt Hotels in the Boston area laid off 100 housekeepers to deal with poor financial results. It was a very negative example. Rene followed it up with two examples of companies which faced their problems squarely and were open and honest with their employees. Contrary to those Hyatt Hotels, these two examples were about good housekeeping.

In one case, after its initial efforts to do cost reductions without affecting the field operations, the company actually asked their some of their employees who were General Managers to become part of the solution and find savings in their own operations. The GMs did so and the company began to turn the corner and grow there after. The real plus was that their employees gave the company its highest rated employee satisfaction survey the next year.

Taking actions which negatively impact your employees is very difficult. No one wants to do so, but sometimes there is no choice. To be best prepared for such an eventuality, a company would do well do create and maintain a transparent culture where everybody is expected to be open and honest, even with difficulties. In such an environment, even the individual contributors of the company will believe the company is acting in the best interest of the greatest number of employees.

Does that resonate with you and your company?

Photo: U-g-g-B-o-y-(-Photograp h-World-Sense-)

Mark Tutton wrote an interesting article on March 12, 2010 for CCN recently entitled Why being a CEO should come wiht a health warning. You can read the whole article here.

The challenges he refers to which are faced by CEO’s are discussed in a book by Steve Tappin entitled The Secrets of CEOs.

In private, CEO’s admit to frustration, disappointment, irritation and being overwhelmed a significant part of the time. Much of this comes from the fact there is no training for 1st time CEOs; there is a big travel demand; and no CEO has peers in the company.

The no-peers problem has led to the creation of the CEO Peer Group industry. Major players in this area include Vistage (formerly known as TEC) and TAB (The Alternate Board). There are others like Inner Circle and Renaissance Executive Forums. These are very useful.

The other major issues is work-life balance. “About 90 percent struggle with work-life balance, when they talk off the record,” said Tappin. “Jobs are exhausting and emotional.”

For this challenge a CEO needs to harness the power of his or her leadership team. By building an accountable,  cohesive, open and honest leadership team, an owner can spend less time in the business and more time on the business.

Implementing a single operating system, or framework, for running a business which can harness all the moving parts of the business and ensure that everyone is rowing in the same direction can do much to help an owner get more of what he or she wants from their business.

CEO peer groups and business frameworks, like the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), are not mutually exclusive. Both have their benefits.

CEOs and owners need all the help they can get. Don’t you agree?

Photo: David Hernandez

Professor Ron Riggio writes a blog called Cutting Edge Leadership. His June 5th, 2010 post was titled The Leadership of John Wooden. John Wooden died on June 4th, 2010. You can read the whole post here.

John Wooden was a legendary college basketball coach at UCLA. You can read all about his amazing career in his wikipedia entry. His ten NCAA championships are unmatched by any other Divsion I coach.

The four leadership lessons?

1. Be humble. The very best leaders are confident but display great humility.

2. Be transparent.  Leaders should be both teachers and positive role models.

3. Present your true self to others.

4. Focus on your people. It’s about them, not you.

Lofty goals for mere average human beings like ourselves, but very worthy ones. Don’t you think?

Photo: JMRosenfeld

Robert Sutton writes a blog for the Harvard Business Review called The Conversation. On June 2nd, 2010, he published an article  entitled 12 Things Good Bosses Believe . You can read the whole article here. Robert is describing the mindset and behaviors of a good boss.

I agree with them all with a small reservation about #3 where he suggests that having ambitious and well defined goals is important but that it is useless to think about them too much. Without knowing his exact definition of too much I left  it at that – a small reservation.

With all the companies I am helping implement EOS, we review the specifics of the ambitious goals specifically, and the company progress towards them, every 90 days.

Robert clarified what he meant with a subsequent post entitled, Hey Boss – Enough with the Big, Hairy Goals, which you can read here. I was pleased to see that we are on the same page. In his book, Good Boss, Bad Boss, Robert tempers what he says with a story about a CEO who helped his team accomplish an audacious sales goal for the year by employing a small wins strategy.

Our EOS clients do this very thing by taking their 10-year target and breaking it down first into a 3-year picture and then a 1-year plan, with the 3-7 most important goals for the year itemized, and finally 90-day rocks. These 90-day Rocks are the most important things that have to get done during the quarter in order to accomplish the 1-year plan. Each set of goals fits within the context of the next larger goal, like Russian stacking dolls.

You can see the relationships of these stages, if you’d like, by downloading a free copy of the EOS 2-page entrepreneurial planning document called the Vision/Traction Organizer (V/TO) here.

I think  Robert would approve. Don’t you?

Photo credit: on1stsite

I am pretty sure I  first heard about the Bolt Bus in a post from Seth Godin. Sorry Seth. I can’t remember which one or I’d link to it.

I took this picture through the front windshield of my car when I was driving around University City in Philadelphia recently.

Seth is a prolific author about all things marketing.  Probably his most famous book is Purple Cow. The simple premise of Purple Cow is that no one notices a brown cow, but everyone would remember if they saw a purple cow.

The Bolt Bus people have not only created a Purple Cow – you wouldn’t miss seeing that bus would you – but they have also followed Seth Godin’s other mantra given to us in another of his books, Tribes. Build a loyal following who tell others about you.

You can find all of Seth’s books here.

The Bolt Bus isn’t for everyone. They have targeted a very specific audience of folks who don’t have a lot of disposable income, have fairly flexible schedules and value conveniences like Internet access. College students and 20-somethings are a pretty large cohort. But with airline travel such a hassle now and gasoline so expensive, the appeal goes beyond that group.

Look at the back of the bus in the picture. BOLT FOR A BUCK. Pretty clear what they are selling, right? Right beneath it says, Boston – New York – Philadelphia – DC. Now you know where you can go. How much? There is at least one $1 seat on every bus. Wi-Fi & outlets aplenty. They have removed seats for extra legroom. Bathrooms. Air-Conditioning. A new fleet. Buy tickets online and you are guaranteed a seat. Pretty cool, right? Go to BoltBus.com for more information

This is not your grandmother’s bus company. Travel by bus redefined and appealing!

What could you do in your business to make your product or service a Purple Cow and make it so appealing that your Tribe started selling it for you through referrals?

In the first week in July LinkedIn rolled out many new features for the professional groups you belong to in LinkedIn, making them even more useful than before.

Professional Groups were valuable to begin with for two reasons. 1st: They automatically give you the right to send free direct messages, not InMails, to any group member. 2nd: All group members are automatically included as input to any search you make of your own network in LinkedIn. In my humble opinion, this is a far better way to extend your LinkedIn reach compared to becoming a link monger and connecting with anyone who will have you. LinkedIn advocates against the latter method since it is anathema to the trust factor which makes LinkedIn so important to business networking. I’ll get off my soap box now:)

Key new features include great, non-sequential, navigation tools for the discussions in the group. This is very valuable in large, active groups.

Are you using Groups in LinkedIn? Have you discovered any creative ways you’d care to share in a comment?

If you can’t see the video below, you can find it here on YouTube.

On May 10, 2010, an interview with Sharon Napier, chief executive of Partners + Napier, an ad agency based in Rochester, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant. The title of the article is On Her Team, It’s All About Bench Strength. Read the whole interview here.

This is the second post based on this article. See the first one here.

Sharon talks about many of the key concepts with which she manages her company. One of those concepts is time management. Sharon says that she often has 100 things going at the same time and believes that she is reasonably adept, but a long way from perfect, at multi-tasking. So she has learned to examine how her role has evolved over the prior year and then to pick two or three things she is going to dedicate herself to accomplishing by the end of the current year.

That certainly resonates with anyone who is implementing EOS at their company. Every company implementing EOS uses our V/TO (Vision/Traction Organizer) to create a entrepreneurial strategic plan for their company. By entrepreneurial strategic plan I mean a simple, effective two sheet plan which you will actually refer to and use regularly.

In the V/TO there are eight sections – the one which Sharon Napier could use is the 1-Year Plan. In the 1-Year Plan section, each leadership team documents the 3 to 7 key goals for the year, which they commit themselves to accomplishing no matter what. Closer to 3 is better, but whatever the number, the goals are specific, measurable and achievable.

If you are interested in seeing what the other 7 sections are in the V/TO, you can download a free copy here.

Photo: John-Morgan