Here’s a quotation that’s a little too long for Twitter.
Make a gift of your life and lift all mankind by being kind, considerate, forgiving, and compassionate at all times, in all places, and under all conditions, with everyone as well as yourself. This is the greatest gift anyone can give.— Dr. David Hawkins
The tagline of this blog is practical overachievement. An overachiever is generally defined someone who performs better than their peers when compared for background, intelligence or talent. The practical side of overachievement is, in my opinion, work effort, or a relentless pursuit of well-defined goals. It doesn’t matter if the goal is business development, IT strategy, bowling, or overcoming fear. Here is a great article on managing overachievers.
Overachievers have the drive, determination, passion, and energy needed to move huge projects forward. But they’re not like other employees. You need to lead them differently if you want to take advantage of all they have to offer. You also need to watch out for characteristic quirks that can undermine their success: They sometimes set unrealistic expectations, work insane hours, and take risks to succeed at any cost. Without some savvy supervision, many can lose perspective and become obsessed, dysfunctional, and ultimately unable to perform.
In order to manage overachievers well, you need to understand their personality type and build a relationship on trust, so they know you have their best interest in mind. Here we’ll show you how to curb the destructive tendencies that can disrupt a star performer’s productivity and develop positive management skills to keep them — and you — happy.
* None. You can’t put a price on a well-managed relationship.
* Keeping a super-achiever on track demands constant communication. Schedule an hour or two per week for pep talks, dealing with obstacles, and discussing personal goals.
* Interpersonal Skills: You’ll need fundamental skills like listening, observing, and communicating to understand overachievers and the objectives they value most.
* Mentoring Program: Develop a mentoring program such as IBM’s (see “The Nitty Gritty,” below) to guide overachievers — and to let them provide insight and information to other employees.
* Patience: Overachievers demand a lot from their managers, but if you give them the time and attention they need, they can accomplish twice as much as other employees.
Identify the Overachiever
Goal: Recognize overachievers on your team and during job interviews.
more of the BNET article from Laurie Sullivan
Should flexibility be a primary IT strategy?
I define the strategy of IT flexibility as the consideration of future changes in business and the technologies that support it. A company’s ability to change is a keystone of success in today’s business environment.
The advent of virtualization in storage, servers, and other technologies has increased flexibility for the companies that choose to implement it. Companies can provision servers and storage in record time. Adding lines of business or migrating old applications to new platforms is easier than ever. The ability to spin up a new line of business quickly when an opportunity presents itself can be the difference between profitability and failure. When markets and technologies change, reprovisioning existing servers, network equipment and data centers can increase return on investment. Virtualization has in many ways changed Information Technology and helped savvy organizations better align IT with business needs.
Virtualization is just one way that organizations can achieve IT flexibility. Using cloud-based resources and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications to augment or replace existing hard infrastructure can reduce overhead and solve scalability problems. The flexibility to manage explosive growth can mean the difference between failure and success.
Outsource data centers can improve IT flexibility. In-house data centers have natural limits on power, cooling, floor space and connectivity. The use of wholesale colocation facilities and outsource data centers can eliminate the barriers for growth and change, while at the same time improving customer service by improving uptime and systems reliability.
Is your organization IT flexible? Do you consider the ability to change and reprovision resources as part of your IT decision making process ? I challenge your IT organization to adopt flexibility as a primary Information Technology strategy. Be light on your feet. Be agile. Be successful.
I’ve really enjoyed the warm weather and the South Florida breezes on my short business trip. Boca Raton’s stretch of A1A is lovely. The parks are beautiful and the city is quite bike and runner friendly.
I also had the chance to see an old friend from my college years. Although our lives are quite different, we share moments that I will always value. My friendships over the years have taught me a few things about myself, but I admit that I am still learning. I feel like friendships exist outside of time and distance, and there is great beauty in that.
I’m fortunate to be on the Marketing Tech Blog Radio show with Doug Karr, Bill Dawson, and a number of other local Indy folks. Today we are interviewing Steve Stratten of UnMarketing. Steve’s influence on Twitter is legendary. His practical approach and humor is awesome! One of Steve’s key points for sales professionals is:
Twitter is not a pitchfest.
Twitter is a virtual networking event, a conversation, and way to build a relationship. Lots of us business development professionals have had bouts with a “show up and throw up” mentality. Pitch or die. Death by Powerpoint. Steve’s point is that you build relationships first. Pitches on Twitter don’t work.
Some friends of mine in the music business recently released a Christmas album. They chose many uncommon carols, at least they are uncommon in the churches I have attended. One of the is songs on the album is Once in Royal David’s City, a song written Mrs. C.F. Alexander ( 1818 – 1895 ), according to Carols.org.
Carols.org says:
[Mrs Alexander] makes wonderful use of the English language to paint a picture of the events of the nativity. Mrs. Alexander wrote many poems for children, chiefly on religious subjects and was the wife of the Bishop of Derry. The music to Once in Royal Davids city was composed by H.J. Gauntlett. This carol is believed to have first been published in the early nineteenth century.
The lyrics are so vivid, so cinematic. A song written 200 years ago touches my soul.
You may know people who speak in pictures. They are the story tellers, the people that grab your attention and keep it.
Many sales training systems are again talking about speaking in pictures and telling stories as a way to communicate your message. Whether you’re selling something or not, what are your stories? What has happened to you to cause you to become better? How do you communicate your message?
This morning I attended a BNI meeting with Jamar Cobb-Denard of Reachmore. The BNI chapter was very engaged in helping each other. An impressive group. Jamar provided an educational spot during the meeting about telling stories in the selling process. He detailed five characteristics of good stories:
Keep it simple – don’t include too many details
Unexpected – what unexpected occurred? This is usually what the person remembers
Concrete – give specifics of how the story applies and relates to the clients
Credible – There has to be credibility to make it meaningful
Emotional – The listener must get emotionally involved
How do your stories stack up?
