1. Links are only valuable because people click on them. But they are valuable because people DO click on them.

   I would add to that. The value of a link that is not clicked on is a negative value. It takes space and is a missed opportunity for a link that might be useful to readers. A frivolous link also has negative value. Readers click and it wastes their time. So I recommend that you Think before you link.

2. Comment numbers are a more accurate measure of you success than the number of visitors you receive.

   I would add to that if you are engaging your readers to the point where they comment conversationally, i.e. interactively responding to what is said both in the post and within the comment box, then they are probably also talking about what they read after they leave your blog.

3. . . . there is such a thing as Blog Rage. . . . And the real villain is probably an overabundance of testosterone combined with too many hours of inactivity sitting in a chair blogging!

   One more case in which the solution is to breathe.

4. Finally, building relationships is about trust. So determine to become an expert on how trust works online. People will trust you when you are credible, consistent, considerate and cooperative. They will trust you when they see other people trusting you.

   I might add that people trust you when you’re willing to trust other people. Why not be first?

Relationships are the key to business and the business of blogging. They are the key to any social endeavor. Learning to communicate with fluency and comfort is as much a part of being comfortable with ourselves as it is with interacting with others — it’s from a base of self awareness that we know how to respond to the actions around with grace and respect.

Liz Strauss

Behind every Successful business is an Outstanding Manager. — PVM

See also Work with Liz! at Successful Blog

What seems to happen in most cases is that we get working so hard that we find ourselves entrenched in too much work and too much stress. Long before we realize,.we have started to work from one minute to the next. Forward thinking, planning into the future gives way to those critical tasks that must be accomplished each day.

We are in tactics mode. Strategy is gone completely by then. Our to-do lists are managing our time, not the other way around.

When someone says get some help, the reply often is “I don’t have time to teach a person what we’re doing.”

STOP! When you hear yourself say that, stop. Think. Will you have more time in three weeks to teach someone? If the answer is no, take the time to teach someone now. Then in the next two weeks after he or she knows what you’re doing, you’ll not only catch up, but you’ll have another trained person who can move the project along.

Seriously. Stop to do that now.

Behind every Successful business is an Outstanding Manager – Perfect Virtual Manager

Liz

In the largest sense, American society is breaking into two classes:

The first class are people who know how to think. These people realize that most problems are open to examination and creative solution. If a problem appears in the lives of these people, their intellectual training will quickly lead them to a solution or an alternative statement of the problem. These people are the source of the most important product in today’s economy – ideas.

The second class, the vast majority of Americans, are people who cannot think for themselves. I call these people “idea consumers” – metaphorically speaking, they wander around in a gigantic open-air mall of facts and ideas. The content of their experience is provided by television, the Internet and other shallow data pools. These people believe collecting images and facts makes them educated and competent, and all their experiences reinforce this belief. The central, organizing principle of this class is that ideas come from somewhere else, from magical persons, geniuses, “them.”

. . . My purpose in this article is to undermine that belief.

–Paul Lutus, Creative Problem Solving

Being at synthesis means having internalized ideas, having made them one’s own, being able to take them apart and put them together with ease and fluency and to evaluate the result. This ability is key to strategic thinking, without this ability what is happening isn’t stategy it is long-term planning based on information.

Strategy requires ideation, intellection, input, and vision. It can occur only at the highest level of Bloom’s taxonomy. It is not SWOT.

Strategy begins by fully evaluating where things are in the present. Moves forward by identifying goals for the future and seeking out ideas from which those goals might be realized. The ideas are seeds to a gardener. Seeds that might grow. Any gardener knows that the same seeds in the same yard five feet from each other can face different challenges, require different support strategies. That is why strategy has to be done by the highest level thinker with the deepest knowledge base.

Strategy is best performed by one or two people who are deep process thinkers who know the intricacies of the business they are working in. Then key stakeholders should be invited to question and critique the strategy. If too many people are part of the development, they already know the thought behind it and cannot serve as a thoughtful sounding board to find holes in the plan.

The reason most strategy fails is because

• too many people were involved in developing the strategy.
• the person or persons developing the strategy didn’t have the knowledge base, process skills, or vision to manage the task.
• the enterprise thwarted the strategy by continuously changing goals, making it impossible to set a strategy that would last.

A well-thought strategy is much like a garden, it is revisited with every new rainfall, sunrise, and heatwave. It changes and adapts with new information. Some seeds grow. Others do not.

In a knowledge enterprise, the strategy is under constant evaluation. The key shareholders can use the depth of their competencies to turn on a dime.

Moving with the life of the enterprise becomes worth going to work for. The new ideas take us back to the team blog to resketch new ideas. Bloom’s taxonomy begins again. The loop is closed and re-opened.

Liz Strauss

Want an hour of Liz’s personal consulting time? See the About Liz page.

In the new knowledge enterprises I’ve been describing since Strategic Thinking 1, this core group is larger, more heterogenous, and enjoys a deeper, common knowledge and base of understanding. So, when this group reaches synthesis and evaluation, their ability to strategize will have more,if not all, of the skills I describe in 10 Critical Skills for the Future.

What this means is that the group will be able to

• create a new product from an old one, adjusting to remove flaws.
• fluently describe and share a plan with specialists and non-specialists in their field.
• devise ways to use what they have to benefit others in unique and trying situations.
• evaluation of the plan or product success and that of competitng products or plans in great detail.
• synthesize their understanding of all of the above and report back in simple terms the main options for serving the production or plan in the context of serving the customer and the enterprise.

In other words, the initial team that was part of the development blog becomes a defacto in-house board of directors. They have by nature of their ability to think through issues regarding the plan or the product.

The knowledge enterprise loses the fear of territoriality and hidden agendas that come from the isolation of departments and the silo-ing of knowledge. Now all knowledge is in the same universe and all shareholders are working from the same experience.

How could this not bring a more productive, positive, and innovative outcome–for both the enterprise and the customers who rely on it?

Liz Strauss

In the imagined scenario, that I’ve been sketching out across the articles: Using Bloom’s Taxonomy to Teach Deep Thinking, Strategic 1, Strategic 2, and Strategic 3, the team has applied their shared base of knowledge and comprehension–of a product that has been developed, and discussed via team blogging–to the task of presenting what’s been made to the larger group of the enterprise, in a way that has provided deeper understanding for all members of both groups.

In order for the presentation to be made, the development group not only had to apply their shared knowledge and comprehension, but also had to analyze, consider, manage, construct, prepare, implement, rehearse, react, critique, teach, and role-play to varying degrees–all of which are analysis skills.

During the presentation, which is application, the development group will undoubtedly offer a question and answer session. That will provide the larger group an opportunity to gain deeper comprehension. It will give the development group a chance to analyze further how well they did and whether the larger group responds as the development group might have predicted they would.

With the development group, the difference here is not in what they are doing–making a presentation to launch a product or a plan. That occurs in every enterprise. The difference is that knowledge becomes the focus, and the larger group is allowed the chance to learn from people who actually can answer their questions with confidence and depth.

The questions will become higher level and call for longer and more detailed answers. Beyond that difference, no new task is asked of them–no noticeable difference shows from the traditional product introduction methods. It’s the same old way–only a slightly different flavor.

It’s a different flavor because the world view has changed.

The focus is on gaining a deeper, more thoughtful data set from those traditional events. The change is one of attitude. No longer do key shareholders care only that the larger group “get” the “three main selling points,” but rather the key shareholders have a vested interest in seeing that the enterprise fully understands how and why the product works as it does.

In small ways, the shareholders will be modeling how to share the the product wth customers.

The larger group–the audience–is allowed to become engaged and interactive in a new way as participants. With this new kind of presentation, they can quickly see how the product meets their needs and those of their customers, whether their customers be corporate CEOs, state legislators, school principals, office supply buyers, or people who buy books for folks in correctional institutions.

The new presentation form brings many benefits to the enterprise.

• The fact that the people in the larger group are now treated as if they might be able to understand and offered the full information by confident, well-informed presenters raises the level of participation and engagement. It also raises their ability to retain what they hear, because they know that it applies to them.
• The higher-level knowledge the larger group receives prompts higher-level questions from them. Discussions become more meaningful and learning across the organization moves more quickly and goes deeper than ever before, as questions prompt high-level answers and so on.
• The learning organization now begins as the dialogue goes two ways and continues long after the presentation ends.The core values of the product or plan have been established and discussed in such a way that there is plenty to dialogue about.
• All participants enjoy the job satisfaction of working for an organization that is using their skills and abilities to the best effect and in which they take on data and make meaning according to Bloom’s Taxonomy–a foundation for learning that is built on concrete, not on sand.
• The work becomes the most fulfilling thing to do.

How could the individuals, the organization, and the customers not benefit from a structure that is based in learning like that?

–Liz Strauss

]]> http://www.lizstrauss.com/2006/04/10/everyones-business/strategic-thinking-4-analysis/feed/ 0 http://www.lizstrauss.com/2006/04/05/everyones-business/strategic-thinking-2-understand/ http://www.lizstrauss.com/2006/04/05/everyones-business/strategic-thinking-2-understand/#comments Wed, 05 Apr 2006 18:23:55 +0000 Liz Strauss http://www.lizstrauss.com/2006/04/05/everyones-business/strategic-thinking-2-understand/ Imagine so many people knowing what is going on by reading the product development blog that I described in Strategic Thinking 1.

Keep in mind that this is Bloom’s definition of knowing, the actual acquisition of knowledge. This is knowledge that can be measured in recall and recognition of information, not the “knowing about” that is the usual passing on of broad brush sketches in a monthly run-down of what a department might be doing.

That key group of stakeholders invited to participate in the team development blog becomes a valuable asset to the product through their ability to provide unabashed feedback using their knowledge.

In their search to reach Bloom’s second level, Comprehension or Understanding, they’ll ask questions and interpret meaning. The critiques, summaries, and translations they offer will take their understanding deeper and at the same time challenge the developers to look more closely at what they are developing.

Deeper comprehension becomes contagious.

Higher-level questions bring higher-level answers, which cause higher level questions again. The entire enterprise becomes a thinking-through writing being.

This is not a far-fetched idea. People are doing it already.

Deep thinking is satisfying.

Liz Strauss

]]> http://www.lizstrauss.com/2006/04/05/everyones-business/strategic-thinking-2-understand/feed/ 0 http://www.lizstrauss.com/2006/04/04/strategic-thinking/strategic-thinking-1-knowlegdethink/ http://www.lizstrauss.com/2006/04/04/strategic-thinking/strategic-thinking-1-knowlegdethink/#comments Tue, 04 Apr 2006 15:43:08 +0000 Liz Strauss http://www.lizstrauss.com/2006/04/04/strategic-thinking/strategic-thinking-1-knowlegdethink/ So, still imagining with Bloom’s taxonomy . . . ways to achieve company wide understanding through blogging.

Imagine that you use a company blog to track the development of your next product, and that you open the blog for posting by the entire development team. Each part of the product could have it’s own category wiith subcategories. Those categories could carry what was once the emails, meeting notes, and file links for that project part. All developers could login and post as needed to move the project forward. All communication would be in one place for access.

Marketers, key members of the sales force, the warehouse and other stakeholders could have access to the blog address and the ability to comment as the project moves along.

Imagine the benefits of such a situation.

• A significant population has gained an understanding of the project at a deeper level than just “buzz words.”
• Interdepartmental teams begin to see the value and interconnectedness of their job roles in forwarding the vision of the enterprise.
• Communication improves in quality and quantity because information is centralized and not lost in verbal white noise.
• Personal investment in the product increases from all departments who have participated in the exercise.
• The wide pool of folks who truly understand the product, it’s purpose, and it’s key values are available to teach the rest of the enterprise what they know.

This same model can be used in business to teach process or in schools to teach process or skills that children or teachers are attempting to master–students learning from other students and teachers learning from other teachers.

Bloom’s taxonomy highlighted as an explicit goal–that we ensure a small group has complete understanding before moving forward to teach a larger group–can focus our work to bring all members to mastery.

We do that by writing the word understanding into our performance appraisals of each student, employee, teacher, and manager’s work.

Bloom’s taxonomy was meant to be used in this fashion. Folks weren’t meant to move to the next step until they had mastered the one before.

We know that is not what occurs.

We’ve never considered what the world might be like if we used Bloom’s Taxonomy as it was intended. Suppose we tried that now.

What if we showed our students and workforce why taking the time to understand is worth stopping to do. The foundation of such a business would be built on something stronger than concrete and more flexible than aluminum.

A new kind of communication would be the result. A new kind of thinker would be in our midst.

Liz Strauss

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