Is Your Business Writing Holding You Back?

"I'm talking to you instead of drowning my sorrows in a pint of Chunky Monkey ice cream," said Tanya on the phone.

"That's a great flavor!" I said. "Which sorrows are you trying to drown?”

"I was so close on a great job," Tanya groaned. "I had two interviews. After the second one the recruiter said 'They love you! You're a finalist.' She said they’d want a writing sample. Someone in HR sent me an email message with the writing sample requirements in it

I wrote the sample last night and sent it back to them. I thought it would be fine. Then I got a no-thank-you letter this morning. The headhunter just called me and said 'They said they loved you, but it's a position with a lot of writing in it.' I'm devastated."

"I'm so sorry, Tanya!" I said. "Do you want a job with lots of writing in it?"

"I'd kill for one," she replied. "I'm sure I didn't make any spelling or grammatical errors in my sample. What else could they have been looking for?"

Business is changing fast -- faster than I've seen it change in thirty years. Business writing is changing, too.

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Stuck for words: 5 things not to say when a person is grieving.

Grief can happen at the least expected moments, it might be a teenager who has had his or her young heart broken, it might be someone who has just been diagnosed with a life threatening illness, someone who has lost an animal companion, someone going through a divorce – or who is grieving the death of a loved one.

Grief can take place anywhere, anytime and suddenly. We can be going along our merry way then suddenly something happens and our world is taken from us. Most people have no idea what to say or how to support someone in grief. We slip into general statements such as “Time will heal,” when right in that moment time may seem like a strange notion for the person grieving.

When my sisters’ husband died suddenly at the age of 38, and she was left to raise her 2, 4, 6 and 8 year old children on her own; she confided in me a few weeks after his passing “People miss him terribly and they try to say the right thing – but actually all they talk about is how sad they are – I find myself supporting them in
their grief rather than the other way around.”

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How To make Email Newsletters Awesome

Just recently, I have received some really bad and I mean really bad email newsletters from people and companies that I subscribe to and because some have been shockingly bad, I thought it would be a good time to give some pointers if you are not absolutely happy with your own.

We all work very hard creating email lists because as a marketing tool, they still really work and as long as you have the subscribers' permission, you own the list. Compare that to gaining huge amounts of fans and followers that you really don’t own if the platforms ever died, so always grow the two together

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WEBSITE BUILDING HOW TO

The Three Ds That Can Save Your Business

Where can I find organic growth and beat my competitors? At its essence, that’s the question that drives every business. It’s not an easy question to answer, especially given how complicated things are (Big Data, large global organizations, fast-changing customer behaviors, disruptive technologies). And throw into the mix the anemic growth plaguing many economies in the world today.

Obtaining Your Unlimited Freedom

We have a point of view on this (you can read the full white paper I co-authored: Discover, Design, Deliver: 3D Marketing & Sales for Above-Market Growth) and it comes down to building and linking up your three “Ds”:

1. Discovery: Building a data advantage by pulling in relevant data sets, analyzing the data at high speed, turning it into relevant business insights, and then delivering those insights to the decision makers so they can take meaningful action. The discovery needs to be based on a thorough understanding of today’s customer decision journey, and uncover segments whose journey you can reshape. Only 30 percent of companies believe they understand their customers’ needs and have a clear sense of where growth will come from.

2. Design: Creating business strategies, processes, pricing programs, products, and experiences that the brand delivers to customers. Design strategists start with learning what customers care about, how they truly behave, what their needs are, and what influences them. Fed by a continuing stream of insights, strategists in business units rapidly learn what is and is not working, innovate new solutions, assess their economics and feasibility, and then work with the frontline on implementation.

3. Delivery: Getting the right offering to each customer across a complex range of online and offline channels. Orchestrating the tailored delivery of products and offers across marketing and sales channels requires operational excellence and organizational agility

Linking them together is the critical component here. It’s not enough to have a great analytics team if their insights never make it to the front lines. And it doesn’t matter if your sales organization is out of this world if they trying to sell products that customers just don’t want. That breakdown was obvious in a survey we did recently. Almost 50 percent of companies said their customer database doesn’t help them make decisions. In addition, fewer than 20 percent said that the way they capture insights contributes directly to sales effectiveness.

As companies build capabilities in specific areas, they also need to have an eye towards how to fine-tune the entire organization to take advantage of those capabilities. It’s a little like when coach Herb Brooks chose the US ice hockey team for the 1980 Olympics. He didn’t select the best players; he chose the best players who played best together. The result was the “Miracle on Ice,” when the US team beat its Soviet archrivals and went on to win the gold medal.

This 3D model places equal emphasis on individual and team excellence. Companies need that kind of double strength if they want to beat their competitors.

So, what is holding back your organization from being 3D?

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Author / INFLUENCER: David Edelman

Revealed: The World's Most & Least Advanced Countries

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UNTIL recently, the popular way to compare the progress of one country relative to another was to use the size of their economies. America had the biggest GDP (and almost the biggest per capita GDP), so it stood to reason it was the most advanced country in the world.

Nowadays, we all know that GDP is a flawed measure of how well a country is doing. Because it only adds up the activity that involves money changing hands, it ignores all sorts of things that matter to a country's well-being.

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After the financial crash of 2008 revealed that the world had been fooled by strong GDP growth into thinking all was well, there was general agreement among policymakers that we needed better measures to judge how individual countries, and the world as a whole, are doing. I chaired a Global Agenda Council at the World Economic Forum that decided to create* what has become the "Social Progress Index", which has just been published, comparing some 132 countries. You can see the full results here.
The SPI uses 54 different measures of social and environmental progress, grouped into three categories, to answer the following questions:

• Does a country provide for its people's most essential needs?
• Are the building blocks in place for individuals and communities to enhance and sustain well-being?
• Is there opportunity for all individuals to reach their full potential?

So, which country comes out as the best in the world by this measure. As Nick Kristof pointed out in his column in the New York Times this morning, it is not America, as "we underperform because our economic and military strengths don’t translate into well-being for the average citizen." True, as Kristof notes, the US "excels in access to advanced education but ranks 70th in health, 69th in ecosystem sustainability, 39th in basic education, 34th in access to water and sanitation and 31st in personal safety. Even in access to cellphones and the Internet, the United States ranks a disappointing 23rd, partly because one American in five lacks internet access."

 
The most advanced country in fact is New Zealand, living proof that small is beautiful (and that isn't a reference to all the hobbits living there). According to the SPI, New Zealand is truly the land of opportunity, showing strongest on indicators of the chances it gives its citizens to reach their full potential. Two other smallish countries rank second and third, Switzerland and Iceland, whilst the highest ranking member of the big economy G8 is Canada, in seventh place. (Canada ranks second on "opportunity", ahead of the fifth-ranked US.)
Poorer countries are often compared using to the UN's Human Development Index, though this tends to be highly-correlated with GDP, with all the limitations that implies. One of the strengths of the SPI is that, by only using social and environmental indicators and excluding all economic measures, it is easier to compare how countries with similar GDP are doing relative to each other. According to SPI, eight of the ten least advanced countries are in Africa, including relatively wealthy Nigeria in 123rd place. Bottom of the ranking is Chad. Yet some African countries rank fairly highly, such as Botswana in 57th place, above South Africa (69th), Turkey (64th), Saudi Arabia (65th), Russia (80th) and China (90th), among others.


One lesson from the SPI is that the economy is not destiny when it comes to building a better country. Some countries do considerably better by their citizens than others with similar levels of GDP. One goal of publishing the SPI is to encourage proper study of why some countries do better than others, so that the laggards can learn to do better. One striking finding is that three countries in sub-Saharan Africa far outperformed on social progress compared to other countries with a similar GDP, Ghana, Malawi and Liberia. Could it be that there is an emerging sub-Saharan model that other countries in the region can copy?
For businesses, the SPI may also be a useful leading indicator of social and political risk. For instance, the Middle East countries in which there was political upheaval during the Arab Spring all under-performed versus countries with a similar GDP on the measure of "opportunity".

Explore the SPI and you may learn something valuable!


* The original idea was transformed into the SPI under the brilliant academic leadership of Michael Porter, an influential Harvard professor, working with the staff at the Social Progress Imperative, lead by my frequent co-author, Michael Green. I am a member of the Social Progress Imperative's advisory board.

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Author / INfluencer: MATTHEW BISHOP     

My Formula for Handling the Daily Email Barrage: Delegate, Defer, Decide

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None of my nearly 200 columns here to date has been of the obviously popular ‘tips for better business’ variety, and with good reason. My business is public health, and my primary effort here is to make sure you hear about the studies you should, that the science is interpreted appropriately, and that an allowance is made for an application of sense. That’s my primary gig, and it’s a good one. In addition, I do occasionally indulge other inclinations- in the form poems, or philosophical essays. I think science and art help illuminate one another.

But I haven’t offered daily business or efficiency tips, leaving that to the many others here who write solely or preferentially on that very topic. But it occurs to me that we all share the business of information exchange, and in that area, I think I have something to offer.
The immediate prompt for this column was an email from somebody I don’t know expressing surprised delight that I had answered them. For the most part, despite a daily barrage of hundreds of emails, I always do. I get those gratifying replies fairly often from people who presumably had little hope of hearing back.

I have a formula for handling the daily email barrage that might work for you as well. The formula is: delegate, defer, decide.


1) Delegate: good and capable people work with and for me. I rely on them confidently. Whenever someone else has more time and/or more targeted interest or expertise to address a given email, I pass it along, letting the sender know. The key here is never to abuse this opportunity. Sometimes, I am very tempted to pass along an email just to lighten the load, but I really am the best one to deal with it. I grit my teeth, and deal with it on those occasions. When my colleagues and staff can rely on only appropriate messages reaching them, they remain committed to addressing them efficiently- and making us both look good in the process.


2) Defer: some messages simply can’t be addressed right away. They may involve a complex decision, a sequence of steps, or a document requiring detailed review. I have several dedicated folders to catalogue such missives, so I can move them out of my inbox and spare myself that intimidating clutter when I access my email. I generally send a quick ‘got it’ reply as well, to spare myself a subsequent “did you get it?” email, and spare the sender the worry that their effort went awry. I then set aside blocks of time to work on these projects, as I would any other. It’s worth noting that occasionally, a deferred message is neglected long enough to fade from memory. I tend to find that if both sender and receiver are willing to let this happen, the matter needed to die anyway, at least in the short term. Sometimes they are resurrected later when they make more sense and come with clearer marching orders.


3) Decide: this is the largest category for me. When I plow through messages, it’s always tempting to let many of them wait. But of course, while this batch is waiting, the next batch comes in. We might all long for the simpler, if less efficient, days pre-email, but this is our world now; the flow of information never stops. So fail to keep up, and your inbox will overwhelm you. I have colleagues who routinely fail to answer, because messages get lost in a huge backlog. To avoid this, I apply the discipline of prompt decisions. If the message is too vague to allow for a specific response, then that’s my reply: I need more detailed information to process this constructively. If it’s inappropriate, or I lack the bandwidth to help- I say that, and move on. Quick decisions are much like use of a muscle; they are conditioned with practice. Whenever you answer your emails-whether throughout the day, as I tend to do, or in dedicated bocks of time- you can cultivate a disciplined “read, decide, respond” approach to stay caught up. The benefits are that important messages always get a prompt response, nothing gets lost in the sauce, and you spare yourself the distraction of clutter.

The one other element in my formula is to think twice before sending an email. Emails beget emails, so every message sent means more time allocated at both ends. The fact that we can all but effortlessly shoot off a message doesn’t mean we should. read  More>>>>>>>>>

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Author:DAVID L.KATZ MD,MPH, INFluencer  

 

Don't Just Be an Entrepreneur - Be a Market Maker

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What do Tesla, Whole Foods Market and Taproot Foundation have in common? They are market movers. They didn't just set up to build a product or service. They set out to build or disrupt a market.

Wildly successful companies and nonprofits don't just focus on building a product or service. They look at the market outside their organizations and actively invest in changing the market so that their products and services have substantially greater opportunities to generate revenue and make an impact in the world.

Tesla Drives the Electric Car Market

Elon Musk didn't set out to build an electric car, he wanted to build a market for electric cars, beginning with luxuryars, and then expanding over time to reach a broader consumer base. This was a rather specific vision; that is, it wasn’t simply about building an amazing electric car, it was also about creating an environment in which it could be successful.

Tesla identified their innovator customer segment and focused their energies on selling and servicing them in unique ways. Five years after the introduction of its Model S car, Tesla was reporting a profit, and the Model S had become the third best-selling luxury car in California, behind only the Mercedes E Class and BMW 5 Series. 
To grow beyond luxury cars and California, however, they need to remove barriers for their competitors so they can join them in moving away from gas-fueled cars. To this end, Tesla now sells their patented powertrain components to competitors. They are less concerned about the competition taking up market share than building the market and creating scale that will bring the prices down enough to be viable options for the average car buyer. Learn More.
 
Whole Foods Takes Healthy to Mainstream


It wasn't long ago that the sustainable consumer products market was mostly operating on the fringes of society. In those early days, the market was more a movement supported by a tiny portion of the population — innovators shopping at and running small health food stores. These stores smelled like vitamins, and the organic produce sold on their shelves looked sickly. It required dedication to shop in them.



By 2012, Whole Foods Markets had 340 stores and 2,400 natural and organic products on their shelves, selling over $12 billion and employing nearly 75,000 people. They had come a long way from the health food stores before them.
The impact of Whole Foods Market, however, is much greater. Similar to Tesla, despite a small market share, it has changed the overall market. It has cultivated the early adopters and turned them into tastemakers that are making the early majority pay attention. As of 2013, 63 percent of Americans reported buying organic foods, and 40 percent planned to increase their purchases of organic in the coming year. Learn more.



Taproot Foundation Catalyzes Pro Bono Marketplace

Despite the incredible need for marketing, technology, management and strategic consulting services most nonprofits in 2001 didn't trust using pro bono services. They had been burned too many times by well-intentioned volunteers. “You get what you pay for,” they shared over and over again. To them, they smelled as bad as a 1975 health food store (well intentioned but undesirable).

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Author: AARON HURST

Thinking Like A CEO And A Founder Can Help You Be Better At Your Job

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I’m in the fortunate position of being both a founder involved in the day-to-day operations at Trulia, and the CEO. There’s nothing else I’d rather be doing, and I realize that my work provides me with a relatively unique perspective. Some situations require me to think more like a CEO, while other situations call for the passion of a company founder. But I think appreciating both perspectives can help you in your career.

As Trulia grew rapidly over the years, and we began to seriously think about a public offering to address the large opportunity, I began to seek out the advice of various mentors, including people on our board and other trusted, experienced executives. I wanted to know if I should look at my job differently, as we approached such an important juncture.

One piece of advice that stuck with me was that once Trulia went public I would have to be able to think more like the CEO of an established company in addition to the approach I learned as company founder. As founder, I had been keenly interested in the culture of Trulia and its products since the beginning, and I remain so today, but the transition of the company involved new demands in my role. Growing to meet the new challenges of the job is something that almost every founder will meet. And because of it, as startups grow it’s not uncommon for companies to hire a CEO from outside the company who has a proven track record leading public companies or is especially adept at specific things the company needs, such as securing funding.

My mentors and others have helped me immensely in learning how a CEO manages a company versus how a founder might typically lead a startup. Ultimately there are pros and cons to each approach.

As I’ve gone through this process, it has made me think about the two skill sets, which aren’t mutually exclusive, but are certainly distinct. Each approach contains important perspective that any employee can incorporate into how they look at their job and career, especially in the larger context.

I generally associate the following attributes to successful company founders, but I realize that there is variation based on the individual.

• An overriding obsession for the product: This is something that can drive many product managers and engineers wild, but founders are often heavily invested in the product. Steve Jobs probably best exemplifies this.
• Deep understanding on and influence of company culture: Founders have been in the trenches since the beginning, so they have unique insight on the culture as well as the company’s challenges, its employees, and its relationships with partners and customers. The founder can apply deep contextual understanding and cultural knowledge to situations and decisions.
• Emotional commitment: This attribute can frankly cut both ways. Sometimes it’s best for an executive to let go, and sometimes extra determination is needed to get things done. You can count on getting this from founders.

I generally associate the following attributes to successful CEOs.

• Willingness to make hard decisions: Successful CEOs need to be able to quickly make hard decisions. These can make or break a company.
• More logical than emotional: CEOs need to have a heart, but they have to stay focused on the facts, and make decisions accordingly.
• Ability to prioritize and focus: As a company grows, opportunities and challenges expand exponentially. Successful CEOs understand where to focus their attention and how to leverage their teams to move the business forward.

Unfortunately, there’s usually not one answer for the lens you should be using to address a work challenge. I’ve found that it’s useful to think from both perspectives during the same day or even the same meeting. But the exercise of thinking in this manner in itself should help you as you take on the daily challenges of your job.

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The Importance of Strong Partnerships BY: Meg Whitman

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Relationships with customers and employees are at the core of any successful business. But in today’s evolving landscape, strategic alliances, joint ventures and creative collaborations can be just as critical to success. At HP, we’re especially focused on the relationship with our channel partners – the distributors and resellers who bring our products and services to the marketplace every day.

In many cases, these partners are the face of HP, the team on the front lines helping us serve our customers. Many have been with us for decades, and today they contribute up to 70 percent of HP’s revenue. For those reasons, maintaining and developing strong partner relationships is one of HP’s top priorities.

Global Partner Conference

This week, we are bringing together more than 2,000 of HP’s partners from around the world for our annual Global Partner Conference (GPC) in Las Vegas. The event provides our partners with the opportunity to share their goals for the year ahead, preview new products and solutions, and align on our respective strategies.

Keeping these relationships strong and mutually beneficial is absolutely critical to our ecosystem and success. Look around your organization’s ecosystem. Beyond your customers and employees, who are your essential partners? Whether it’s your sales channel or collaborations with other organizations, the following principles are key to maintaining healthy business partnerships.

1. Start with Stability

Stability forms the foundation of any successful partnership. At HP, years of uncertainty – from inconsistent strategy to a revolving door of leadership – were beginning to wear down our partners. As a result, we made restoring stability the first step toward rebuilding our relationships. This included articulating a clear strategy and taking immediate actions to stabilize the business. We repaired our balance sheet, reduced operating company net debt to zero, and put in place a solid leadership team that understood the value of our partners.

2. Play Away Games

When it comes to building strong relationships, there’s no substitute for meeting people on their home turf. Over the past year, I’ve met with more than 1,000 customers and partners and the bulk of these meetings have been outside the walls of HP. Traveling can be time-consuming and expensive, but it can also be a strong signal of your commitment to a relationship.

3. Listen and Translate Words into Action

Establishing two-way communications is just one part of strengthening relationships. Words are great, but action is what matters. When I meet with partners, I always try to make our conversations about what we can be doing better for them, not the other way around, and then act quickly to address their needs.

4. Make It Profitable

When I first joined HP, I kept hearing from partners that our organization was too complex. Outdated tools, hard-to-navigate processes, and too many programs were making it challenging to work with HP.

To fix these problems, we rolled out new tools and removed bureaucracy to make it easier and faster to close deals. We cut in half the number of technical certifications and created role-based certifications that require significantly less time out of office. We removed gates and caps, enabling partners to begin earning rebates from their first sale and giving them access to unlimited earning potential. Meaningful incentives and a streamlined compensation structure are not only driving our business forward, they are making doing business with HP more rewarding.

Building strong relationships with our partners based on mutual respect and profitability doesn’t just benefit HP and our partners. It also puts us in a better position to help our customers win.

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Key Truths For Being An Outstanding Manager

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While there are numerous books, courses, and online trainings for improving your managerial skills, seldom do they address the psychological underbelly of wise and wonderful management. That’s understandable since they aren’t created by people with a psychological background. 

But over the past many years we’ve seen how understanding and incorporating the following psychological truths have enabled good managers to become great: 

1 - Everyone Knows How To Follow 
Everyone was once a small child whose very existence depended on following their parents or other caretakers. So the act of following is built into each and every one of us. And while some chronological adults rebel against managerial leadership in an unconscious carryover from their youth, the vast majority of people welcome clear, supportive leadership they can readily follow. 

2 - Your Followers Want You To Exhibit Strong Leadership 
When a manager can be counted on to provide clear directions, clear expectations, clear rewards and clear critique in response to outcomes, s/he can provide a confident-making platform for everyone on the team. Being nice, wishy washy, or distracted by the company’s internal politics raises grave concerns for the future of the team’s project as well as anxiety about management’s missing guidance about current expectations.

3 - Your Team Wants You To Lead Not Rely On Their Opinion
While team input and collaboration are extremely important and invaluable, all too often managers abdicate their leadership role in favor of “consulting” with people on the team to try to handle dicey hiring problems, team restructuring, or other insecurities that are not the business of that manager’s team members. 

4 - Forget About Being A Buddy 
Some managers, uncomfortable with their senior status and leadership role, believe that becoming friends and buddies with their team members will empower those who report to them. Actually, nothing is further from the truth. Role confusion makes for team members’ job confusion which creates organizational confusion. 

5 - Trying Too Hard To Save An Employee Endangers Your Whole Team 
Well meaning managers can often get caught up in trying to rescue a team member whose behavior and/or output is insufficient, incorrect, or injurious to the well being of the team. They may have recruited and/or hired this individual. They may have had great hopes for this person’s career and it’s now a blow to their sense of competence to have to concede that the person needs to be let go. But letting go must become a must-do in order to protect the well being of the other team members and the team’s output. 

6 - Big Visions Do Not Make For Wise Guidance 
Your team needs wise and caring guidance for execution of your project vision, whatever it is. Merely providing a big vision leaves everyone scrambling to guess at what is expected, demoralizing and rendering insecure what might otherwise be an excellent team. Remember, everyone knows how to follow. Give them clear, empowering guidelines and most people will knock themselves out to produce what you want from them. 

While there are certainly many other psychological truths about excellent management, these six will get you started thinking about what’s most wanted and expected of you from your followers—who by and large want to please and impress you.

What other psychologically-oriented qualities do you think are essential?

(Photo: Business meetings eventspaceportland/Flickr)

Judith Sherven, PhD and her husband Jim Sniechowski, PhD http://JudithandJim.com have developed a penetrating perspective on people’s resistance to success, which they call The Fear of Being Fabuloustm. Recognizing the power of unconscious programming to always outweigh conscious desires, they assert that no one is ever failing—they are always succeeding. The question is, at what? To learn about how this played out in the life of Whitney Houston for example, and how it may be playing out in your own life, check out their 6th book: http://WhatReally KilledWhitneyHouston.com 

Currently consultants on retainer to LinkedIn providing executive coaching, leadership training and consulting as well as working with private clients around the world, they continually prove that when unconscious beliefs are brought to the surface, the barriers to greater success and leadership presence begin to fade away. You can learn about their core program “Overcoming the Fear of Being Fabulous” by going to http://OvercomingtheFearofBeingFabulous.com 

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Why We All Need Visionary Leaders

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I have always felt as leaders with global experiences and exceptional connections we have a responsibility to share our journey and energy to inspire future generations.

In recent years, I’ve focused my time and energy on sharing Burberry’s brand, culture and digital transformational lessons. Speaking to different sectors - from banking to insurance to educational institutions - I hope in some small way to have shed light on ideas that could greatly impact the companies and communities they serve.

Just under a year ago, I had coffee with someone I greatly admire - the visionary digital educator Sal Khan who is single handedly disrupting a sector desperate for revolution. Very few leaders have what author Jim Collins calls ‘big hairy audacious goals’ but with their simple mission to make education accessible to everyone, Sal and Khan Academy could change the world.

Not dissimilar to Bill and Melinda Gates who want to eradicate disease, Scott Harrison ofcharity: water who wants to provide everyone with clean drinking water or Mark Zuckerbergwho dreams of connecting the world, it is so rare to find a great leader with a gigantic global vision and such passion and clarity as to how to resolve it.

Hopefully, this is not the first time you're hearing about Sal or Khan Academy. Perhaps you’ve seen his TED talk, visited Khan Academy or read about it in various business publications. In short, Khan Academy is a not-for profit with the goal of providing free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. Through leveraging digital and great video content, they’ve created one of the most innovative companies in the world that will transform one of the most underinvested and fundamentally valuable foundation to our future generations’ growth and development.

I had the honour of speaking with Sal and his incredible team in San Francisco last spring, sharing lessons on brand, leadership and how to nurture a culture of creativity and innovation. I left that day with even greater respect for the clarity and intensity of their vision and the passion with which they execute it.

At Burberry, we have always said that our greater purpose is to create not just a great brand, but a great company. Through the Burberry Foundation, global teams unite to share key learnings with young people in communities where associates live and work to inspire, unlock and nurture their creative confidence. As the company prepares for tomorrow’s changes and challenges, one key measure of its success will be how many lives around the world are touched and transformed by the power of its performance. It is humbling to think our story could inspire the Khan Academy team to continue to do what they already do so brilliantly.

Education is a global issue for all of us. We need all companies to get behind Khan Academy and contribute to making sure every person on this planet has the opportunity of education.

Congratulations to Sal and the Khan Academy team!!!!!!

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I Am Leaving Social Media BY: JOEL COMM""

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What I’m about to say is not going to go down easy. It won’t be easy to digest. And I’ll probably lose a few fans by speaking my mind.

That’s okay. I’m not afraid of controversy. And frankly, someone needs to say it. I’ll be the one to say it, and I accept the consequences of whatever happens as a result.

When I survey the social media landscape, there are some alarming trends that have become increasingly disturbing.

I’ll explain my reasoning, but the end result is that I am leaving social media.

I know, it seems bizarre for a “social media expert” to make such a seemingly abrupt tactical move. It may appear that way, but let’s take a look at what is happening in the social space.

1) The social media space is controlled by a few major players who are after one thing… your data. Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn and Pinterest are all about numbers. How many people can they get to provide as much personal information as possible so they can sell you more stuff by releasing personal information to third party advertisers? We are all commodities to be marketed to. Facebook can put privacy controls on their site, but who are they kidding? They know way more about you than they would ever want to admit publicly.

2) While some conversation takes place on the social sites, there is more noise than ever before. Twitter is littered with fake accounts and bots. LinkedIn users who you never met plead for endorsements of their products or services which you never heard about previously. Facebook is an endless parade of feel-good sayings and photos of cats. Millions of posts, shares and tweets go out each hour, but the ratio of posting to listening continues to broaden. In the words of Pink Floyd, “Is there anybody out there?”

3) Social media has made it incredibly easy to be rude to other people. Insults, put-downs, and outright meanness has become a staple of the social culture. Whether the discussion centers around politics, religion, sports, entertainment, lifestyle or any other subject, people have been desensitized to basic human kindness just because they can’t see or hear the people at their keyboards on the other end of the fiber cable.

4) Other people have endangered their future careers or relationships by playing out their personal drama on social sites. Are we so far gone that there is no thought of the kind of information we share publicly without concern for how that information may come back to haunt us in the future? It seems to me that discernment is a quality severely lacking in the social space.

5) From a business perspective, everyone, their grandmother and their dog is now a “social media expert.” There is NO value in the label any longer. It is now synonymous with “I haz a twitter account.” I use the phrase on some of my pages just because I know that people will search for the term. But I choose to refer to myself as a “New Media Marketing Strategist.”

6) Spam spam spam spam spam. So many are using social sites as little more than billboards to sell their products or services. This has become so prevalent that the majority of us have become blind to all streams of data, assuming that we are going to be bombarded with advertisements.

Am I culpable in this charade? Yes. After all, I wrote the world’s most popular book on using Twitter for Business. But that was several years ago.

That’s why I must leave social media.

Now don’t get me wrong. Social sites have some great benefits.

I enjoy connecting with family and friends.

I enjoy making new friends and sharing content with them.

I enjoy posting photos of my own life, especially when I encounter a tasty meal or catch my cat doing something cute.

I confess that I enjoy feel-good quotes and infographics.

I know I am giving up a great deal of privacy, yet I continue to post, like, tweet and share.

It’s a daily obsession. I’m connected at my computer and on my mobile devices. I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t updating my status or commenting on someone else’s.

That’s why I’m thinking of leaving social media.

Of course, social sites have become a primary source of news for me. After all, I don’t believe any of the mainstream media are the least bit trustworthy. Their whole purpose is to sell toothpaste.

So while accuracy on social sites can be a stumbling block, at least I can be relatively certain that while what I am reading may not be factual, it’s at least not being propagated by Proctor & Gamble.

Citizen journalists are slowly transforming the way we receive and interpret current events. But who directs the conversation? Millions of people all striving to have their voice heard? Is this what freedom of speech has come to? Let’s face it. It’s a beautiful mess.

That’s why I wonder if I can get away from social media.

But up pops a “like” from something I just posted. It’s followed by an encouraging comment. Then comes the holy grail of social approval, the “share.”

Do I live for the approval of others? Is my ego so fragile that I crave the pavlovian response of warm fuzzy feelings that result from a like, comment, share, favorite or retweet?

Do you?

What if Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus ceased to exist? Would the human race survive without the habitual behavior we have become accustomed and addicted to in just a few short years?

It’s for this reason that I must leave social media…. even if for just a few hours.

But I just saw a new “Walk off the Earth” video on YouTube. It’s very entertaining and I want to share it with you.

And I just happened to catch my cat in the cutest pose. I’ll want to post that. Perhaps I’ll instagram it at the same time that I pin the picture of the bacon purse I saw on that humor site. I’m sure you’ll all want to see it.

And someone posted an article that I have a very strong opinion about, so I guess I’ll engage and leave a comment.

To make matters worse, the people that I know, like and care about won’t stop posting. It wouldn’t be right for me to ignore them, would it?

In the time that I’ve written this post, I’ve left social media. But now that this article is over, I think I’m ready to jump back in. I’m over it.

Nobody really escapes social media.

The online world has become a meaningful, yet flawed, method for interacting, dialoguing, engaging, debating, sharing and experiencing our world and our relationships with others in real time.

It’s not perfect, but it’s the world we live in. I believe it is possible to disconnect, and the day may come where the negatives of social media truly do outweigh the benefits.

But for now, I feel no different than the five-year old who threatens to “run away from home” and doesn’t get any further than three houses down the street. I’m back. And I’m not going anywhere.

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The Power Of Being A 'Nobody' by: John Hope Bryant Influencer

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Being born into this world a nobody just might be the best thing that ever happened to me.


The world undervalues the economic nobody, and grossly over-values the wealthy somebody. On this point the world is wrong.

You have nothing to lose when you are a nobody. And because you realize that 'you can’t fall from the floor,’ you’re not all stressed out about whether you are going to actually fail at something or not. Everyone born as a 'societal nobody’ has the exact same middle name, inserted sometime after birth, which translates roughly: DO SOMETHING.


I had lunch today with the CEO of Sapient, a $1 billion plus company that was started by two young guys with a few thousand dollars on their credit cards. Now they employ 12,000 people worldwide and the company is publicly traded.

A nobody is often under estimated, until they aren’t. Below is my update on a 20th century standard.

First they will ignore you. Then they will criticize you. Then they will try to copy you. And then you will win.

When a self-knowing economic nobody wins at life, they almost never forget where they came from. They are often the kindest, philanthropic, most positive, confident (yet understated) people you will ever meet.

Crazy as it sounds, it is often the off-spring of the one who created from nothing that then somehow gets it in their heads that they’re some kind of a big deal. And it is this other thing -- of becoming ‘important,’ or seeing oneself as a ‘so-called somebody,’ that is a really dangerous thing. It can ruin you in ways that poverty never could.

Here are some recent examples of wealth that came from near nothing:

Jan Koum, the CEO and co-founder of WhatsApp, once lived on food stamps before Facebook made him a billionaire. 

Starbucks' Howard Schultz grew up in a housing complex for the poor. 

Born into poverty, Oprah Winfrey became the first African American TV correspondent in Nashville. 

Luxury goods mogul Francois Pinault (think Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent) quit high school in 1974 after being bullied for being poor.

Oracle's Larry Ellison dropped out of college after his adoptive mother died and held odd jobs for eight years.

These brilliant and hard working folks were not sitting around thinking deeply about how great and noble they were. That had no time for any if that nonsense. And they weren’t publicly profiling either; trying desperately to look a certain way before a bunch of strangers. They weren’t sitting around, endlessly choreographing their every next big move in life. They just moved. 

They worked, hustled, did what it took to win. They were focused on getting the job in front of them done, rather than simply looking good for those standing in front of them.

But most of all — they just never took themselves seriously. Never. To quote my friend Quincy Jones, “people should never come down with a case of seriousness.” Take life seriously, but never take yourself too seriously. Taking yourself seriously is the kiss of death. My mentor Ambassador Andrew Young once told me that “men fail for three reasons: arrogance, pride and greed.” Enough said.

I have a lot of experience with people who really believe that they’re a somebody, and they’re really exhausting to deal with. It’s a lot of work dealing with someone who takes themselves so seriously. And if they don't change, their doomed. As the age old saying goes, "the first generation makes the money. The second generation spends the money, and the third generation often loses the money."

People tend to feel sorry for the poor, but I actually feel sorry for my rich friends' children. I wouldn’t exchange my life, growing up struggling in South Central Los Angeles and Compton, California, for the privileged lives of my wealthy friend’s kids for all the tea in China. 

Young people who grew up believing that they were ‘somebody’ are suffering from at least four distinct disadvantages in life. 

(1) They never learned how to ‘suffer for the good.’

(2) They were more often than not spoiled rotten, which makes it harder to value a dollar, or even hard work and sustained struggle.

(3) The ‘entitlement’ problem. This is a misguided sense that success is somehow owed to some, which in turn causes you to take your foot off the gas in life and just coast. A perfect work day is then defined as in late, long lunch, and leave early. I always wanted just the opposite of this. Still do. I love to work and to make my own way. Every single day.

(4) Too much private school-only air. Private schools have their value, but if you never went to at least a few years of public school then in my opinion you are really in trouble. Public school is where you learn how to deal with difficult people, diverse environments, and challenging situations. Just like life itself. 

People who believe they are ‘somebody’ are doomed, precisely because they believe they are somebody. A so-called nobody has none of this needless baggage.

Those who have a nobody’s mentality actually have what they need to win, right from the start.

I remember asking Ambassador Andrew Young’s gardener back in 2009, how the global economic crisis was impacting him. He said in response, “I was poor before the crisis, and I’ll be poor after it’s over. It's my depressed rich friends who have all the problems. I feel just fine.”

Or when I went to see my mentor, Dr. Cecil “Chip" Murray, as a young man starting out in business in Los Angeles. I wanted to know ‘why folks were following me,’ and I wanted to know how I could manufacture and replicate even more of this feeling people were getting, so I could get even more attention. His response as usual was brilliant. “If you got it you John, you wouldn’t have it.” 

Murray continued, “…if you got a thing, you would then be conscious of a thing. If you were conscious of a thing, you would be self-conscious of a thing. And if you were self-conscious of a thing, it would be an act, a put on. Not real." He concluded by saying, “John, you’re not suppose to get it. People are following you because you’re real. Because they believe you’re authentic. The minute you get it, you also lose it. Just keep doing you John. Keep being you.” DO SOMETHING.

The power of being a nobody is an asset everyone on the planet owns from birth. It’s your birthright, to fulfill your God given destiny. It’s the new definition of freedom, called self-determination.

And you thought someone calling you a ’nobody’ was an insult.

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