The Power of Presence: A book review by Bob Morris

The Power of Presence: Unlock Your Potential to Influence and Engage Others
Kristi Hedges
AMACOM (2012)

How and why powerful intentional presence can be a “personal game changer”

As I began to read this book, I was reminded of one of my favorite songs in the musical and film, Chicago, sung by Amos Hart (played by John C. Reilly in the film version) who characterizes himself as Mister Cellophane:

“And even without clucking like a hen.
Everyone gets noticed now and then
Unless of course that person it should be
Invisible, inconsequential me….”

Most people in most situations lack the ability to attract favorable attention. They feel invisible. Worse yet, many feel they deserve to be ignored because they are “inconsequential.” Fortunately, Kristi Hedges has developed what she calls “I-Presence, a model I have found to be the `secret sauce’ of executive presence. It is equal parts communication aptitude, mental attitude, and authentic style. It combines a supportive inner mindset with the outer skills needed to create the natural, confident, consistent leadership presence.” Actually, the information, insights, and recommendations that Hedges provides (with appropriate modification) can help almost anyone, including but not limited to executives) to develop with she characterizes as “intentional presence.”

Specifically, “understanding how you want to be perceived and subsequently communicating in a manner so that you will be perceived the way you want. It means aligning your thoughts with your words and your actions. And it requires a keen understanding of your true, authentic self, as well as your impact on others.” In essence, Hedges offers to help her reader to complete a process by which to develop these separate but interdependent capabilities:

o 100% fulfillment of one’s potentialities
o 360º perspective on interaction between one’s self and one’s environment
o moral compass for what is right…and what is not
o sixth sense for what is appropriate…and what is not
o street smarts for what will work…and what won’t

She immediately establishes a direct, personal rapport with her reader and sustains it throughout the 14 chapters and six appendices. Also, she inserts dozens of diagnostic exercises throughout the narrative that can help her reader to identify and then address specific areas of personal growth and professional development on which to concentrate.

Henry Ford and Pogo offer observations that suggest why this book can indeed be come a “game changer” for many of those who read it and then (key point) patiently but persistently apply what they have learned from Hedges. According to Ford, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you`re probably right.” Now Pogo: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Everything any reader needs to derive maximum benefit from the material in this book is located between their ears and in their heart. I agree with Darrell Royal that “potential” means “you ain’t done it yet.” If yours is locked, this book could be your key. Now what? That’s up to you.

The Power of Presence: A book review by Bob Morris

The Power of Presence: Unlock Your Potential to Influence and Engage Others
Kristi Hedges
AMACOM (2012)

How and why powerful intentional presence can be a “personal game changer”

As I began to read this book, I was reminded of one of my favorite songs in the musical and film, Chicago, sung by Amos Hart (played by John C. Reilly in the film version) who characterizes himself as Mister Cellophane:

“And even without clucking like a hen.
Everyone gets noticed now and then
Unless of course that person it should be
Invisible, inconsequential me….”

Most people in most situations lack the ability to attract favorable attention. They feel invisible. Worse yet, many feel they deserve to be ignored because they are “inconsequential.” Fortunately, Kristi Hedges has developed what she calls “I-Presence, a model I have found to be the `secret sauce’ of executive presence. It is equal parts communication aptitude, mental attitude, and authentic style. It combines a supportive inner mindset with the outer skills needed to create the natural, confident, consistent leadership presence.” Actually, the information, insights, and recommendations that Hedges provides (with appropriate modification) can help almost anyone, including but not limited to executives) to develop with she characterizes as “intentional presence.”

Specifically, “understanding how you want to be perceived and subsequently communicating in a manner so that you will be perceived the way you want. It means aligning your thoughts with your words and your actions. And it requires a keen understanding of your true, authentic self, as well as your impact on others.” In essence, Hedges offers to help her reader to complete a process by which to develop these separate but interdependent capabilities:

o 100% fulfillment of one’s potentialities
o 360º perspective on interaction between one’s self and one’s environment
o moral compass for what is right…and what is not
o sixth sense for what is appropriate…and what is not
o street smarts for what will work…and what won’t

She immediately establishes a direct, personal rapport with her reader and sustains it throughout the 14 chapters and six appendices. Also, she inserts dozens of diagnostic exercises throughout the narrative that can help her reader to identify and then address specific areas of personal growth and professional development on which to concentrate.

Henry Ford and Pogo offer observations that suggest why this book can indeed become a “game changer” for many of those who read it and then (key point) patiently but persistently apply what they have learned from Hedges. According to Ford, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you`re probably right.” Now Pogo: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Everything any reader needs to derive maximum benefit from the material in this book is located between their ears and in their heart. I agree with Darrell Royal that “potential” means “you ain’t done it yet.” If your potential is locked, this book can be a key. Now what? That’s up to you.

7 Deadly Web Design Sins

"This is so lame...."

Global competition in Business 2.0 requires an effective online presence, yet many (most?) organizations waste thousands of dollars on website design and administration.  What are among the worst decisions to be made? If webmastering (webmistressing?) is not among your areas of concern, please share this with someone else.

Here is an excerpt from an article co-authored by Christine Lagorio and Eric Markowitz for Inc. magazine. To read the complete article and check out other valuable resources, please click here.

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Designers, are you guilty of creating information-overload homepages or building the “unwelcome screen?” The experts are here to save you.

Flash is cool, right? And that lovely welcome screen and information-rich homepage your client wanted are just perfect. Or are they? We talked to six top designers and creative directors about their Web design pet peeves. What makes these pros cringe might surprise you.

[Here are the first four of seven brief but insightful commentaries. To read the complete article and check out other valuable resources, please click here.]

1. Putting your brilliant design first.

“Whether or not the site is designed elegantly, what really matters to me is whether the navigation is intuitive, and whether the information is organized well. Design, for as much time as we spend on it, if it’s all about the visual elements, that can quickly get someone out of that site. I always try to focus on making sure the information makes sense before putting mouse on screen. Plan ahead. Get the answers before laying anything down. Get together with your project manager and design team, and get all the info from the client before start designing. It’s also important to get the navigation in front of people to make sure everyone can get that information quickly. Be constantly testing. Only then should you build the beautiful elements, the design of the site, around that. If that’s not there the site can be considered a failure. “ 

Andres Orrego, associate creative director of Chowder Inc. in New York

2. Going overboard with Flash.
“Flash is certainly a pet peeve. It has its place, for sure, but since the dot.com bust we’ve come a long way. Today our customers want to be found – they expect to be found – but what does that mean for us? We need to set the stage for search engine optimization, so we need to stay away from Flash. When I see a site overly done, you ask yourself, does it really make sense for you to do that in Flash? No.”

Antonio Navarrete, president and creative director of SilentBlast in Toronto

3. The unwelcoming welcome screen.

“I hate everything about welcome screens. By clicking a link, I’ve already said that I want to go to visit your site, so there is no need to show me a ‘welcome’ screen with a quote. In fact, it is almost insulting to call it a ‘welcome screen’ – I’d almost respect it more if it was called a here-is-an-ad-so-we-can-make-money screen.  As it is, this intermediate screen just delays users from accessing your content and gives them an opportunity to leave before they ever arrive.”

Andrew Cafourek, co-founder and digital lead of A022 Digital in New York

4. The boggling homepage.

“People who are using your site, buying from your site, are not going to stay there or buy from you due to your awesome design. Most homepages are completely overwhelming. There is so much there – people try to communicate everything to everyone, and the real content gets lost. That’s a design disaster. It should tell people in three to five seconds who you are and what you do. That’s it. We have a design philosophy that we take from architecture: form follows function. When you are building a building, you want right angles and perfectly usable space. If you go to our homepage, you will see cleanliness and simplicity. I say this left and right, and my designers say it left and right: Websites have to breathe.”

Marvin Russell, creative director of The Ocean Agency in Chicago

The Way I Work: Jason Fried of 37Signals

BOOK BREAK Jason Fried, who sometimes works from his house in Chicago, likes to read in the afternoon. But only nonfiction.

Here is an excerpt from an article about Jason Fried as told to Liz Welch. It appeared in Inc. magazine. To read the3 complete article, check out other resources, please click here.
*     *     *

Jason Fried hates lame meetings, tech companies that don’t generate revenue, and companies that treat their employees like children. A peek inside his typical workday.

You could sum up Jason Fried’s philosophy as “less is more.” Except that he hates that expression, because, he says, it still “implies that more is better.” Fried prefers “less is less.” It’s a core principle of 37Signals, the Chicago-based company he launched in 1999 with Ernest Kim and Carlos Segura. The company started as a Web design firm. Then, in 2003, Fried hired David Heinemeier Hansson, a Danish programmer, to write software to keep the company’s design projects organized. Soon, clients began requesting the program, and by 2005, software development eclipsed design in both revenue and focus. Today, 37Signals, which is run by Fried and Hansson, has a staff of 16 and more than three million customers who use the company’s Web-based applications, such as Basecamp and Campfire, to collaborate and manage projects. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, is the company’s only investor. Fried, 35, isn’t afraid to do things differently or to express his opinions. He condemns traditional corporate office culture, with its 40-hour workweeks and constant meetings, and shoots down many of his customers’ suggestions. And he’s not opposed to a little goofing off in the afternoon.

*     *     *

I don’t use an alarm clock. Lately, I’ve been naturally waking up at 6:38 every morning. I used to wake up at 7:31 every morning, which is actually when I was born. So that was kind of creepy.

I try not to grab my phone and check e-mails first thing. I used to do that, and it’s just not good for you. Instead, I’ll go and brew some tea and try and relax a little bit. But the computer’s always kind of pulling me toward it, so I end up looking at e-mail sooner than I’d like to.

I love tea. I drink green tea and white tea mostly. I play with different varieties depending on my mood. These days, I’m really into matcha, which is a powdered tea. You add hot water and use a bamboo whisk to make a frothy liquid. You actually consume the tea leaves. I get it online, because there’s better selection, and I’m lazy.

For breakfast, I usually eat a couple of maple-infused Van’s waffles and a handful of pistachios. Unless it’s really cold — then I have oatmeal. Three mornings a week, I go to the gym for an hour. I’ve been going to a trainer for two years. Otherwise, I think I’d blow it off.

Then sometimes I head in to the office. I might work from home for a week and then get bored of that, so I will spend the next week at the office. I live about two miles from my office. I drive there most of the time. I should bike more, but I saw someone on a bike get hit two years ago, and it really freaked me out. I figure I’m better off driving.

I usually get to work between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. Of the 16 people at the company, eight of us live here in Chicago. Employees come to the office if and when they feel like it, or else they work from home. I don’t believe in the 40-hour workweek, so we cut all that BS about being somewhere for a certain number of hours. I have no idea how many hours my employees work — I just know they get the work done.

I spend most of my day writing. I write everything on our website. Communicating clearly is my top priority. Web writing is terrible, and corporate sites are the worst. You don’t know what they do, who they are, or what they stand for. I spend a lot of time taking a sentence and reworking it until it’s perfect. I love the editing process.

Our blog has more than 100,000 readers, but I don’t post every day. I write when I have something specific to say. I recently wrote a scathing piece on the tech media. It really bothers me that the definition of success has changed from profits to followers, friends, and feed count. This crap doesn’t mean anything. Kids are coming out of school thinking, I want to start the next YouTube or Facebook. If a restaurant served more food than everybody else but lost money on every diner, would it be successful? No. But on the Internet, for some reason, if you have more users than everyone else, you’re successful. No, you’re not.

I spend another good portion of my day thinking about how to make things less complicated. In the software world, the first, second, and third versions of any product are really pretty good, because everyone can use them. Then companies start adding more and more stuff to keep their existing customers happy. But you end up dying with your customer base, because the software is too complicated for a newcomer. We keep our products simple. I’d rather have people grow out of our products, as long as more people are growing into them.

I used to handle all the customer service e-mails, but now we have two people dedicated to that. I still get involved, and so does my partner, David [Heinemeier Hansson], if something has escalated and the standard operating procedure doesn’t apply. If anyone ever writes us with a complaint, our stance is it’s our fault — for not being clear enough or not making something work the way it should. I’m constantly keeping an eye on the problems that keep arising, and then we address them. But I don’t keep a list of all the complaints, because that’s too time-consuming. We also get thousands of suggestions. The default answer is always no. A lot of companies lie and say, “Sure, we’ll do that.” We never make promises that we can’t keep, so we say, “We’ll keep that in mind.” Some customers don’t like that.

We first designed Basecamp for our own needs, to help better organize our projects. That’s our philosophy: Build what we like, and other people will like it, too. Ta-Da was built to make simple to-do lists. Backpack is a digital version of a filing cabinet. We created Writeboard when we were collaborating on Getting Real, our first self-published business book, to track all of the back-and-forth drafts and keep us from going insane. Even though there are better products out there, I still use Writeboard, because it’s dead simple. In fact, we just wrote our second book, Rework, using that program.

These books are our cookbooks. I look to chefs for inspiration. Mario Batali is a great chef who invites a camera into his kitchen and shares his recipes. It’s a great business model. In the business world, people are proprietary — they’re afraid to share. Rework is our recipe for doing business.

We rarely have meetings. I hate them. They’re a huge waste of time, and they’re costly. It’s not one hour; it’s 10, because you pulled 10 people away from their real work. Plus, they chop your day into small bits, so you have only 20 minutes of free time here or 45 minutes there. Creative people need unstructured time to get in the zone. You can’t do that in 20 minutes.

Instead, we use Campfire, our group chat tool. We built it when we started getting bigger — with employees in different cities. We wanted to be able to communicate as a group easily. Campfire is like an all-day voluntary meeting. If I’m busy, I can close the window. And when I’m free, I can check it and chime in. If people have questions for me, they will post them, and I will answer when I can. Very rarely is a question important enough to stop people from doing what they’re doing. Everything can wait a couple of hours, unless it is a true emergency. We want to get rid of interruption as much as we possibly can, because that’s the real enemy of productivity.

*     *     *

Jason Fried is co-founder of 37signals, a Chicago-based software firm, and co-author with Hansson of the book Rework, which was published in March.

Michael Arkes on “The Rules of Engagement”

Michael Arkes

Here is an excerpt from an article that appears in the August issue of Talent Management magazine. To read the complete article and obtain a free online and/or print subscription, please click here.

Most of us recognize that employee engagement is not an option; it’s a business imperative that can be traced directly to the bottom line. Top employee engagement levels correlate to better performance, and the payoff in revenue, earnings, productivity and other key business metrics is substantial.

While the connection between an engaged workforce and positive corporate performance has been demonstrated many times, what is only now being widely acknowledged is the vital role corporate social responsibility (CSR) can play in building and enhancing employee engagement.

Recent reports from the Hidden Brain Drain Task Force, an initiative funded by a group of 50 multinational companies committed to global talent innovation, reveal that the majority of today’s employees overwhelmingly require the same things to fully commit to their employers’ goals. In surveys conducted in 2008 and 2009, 85 percent of respondents indicated that “meaningful work that contributes to a better society and healthier environment” is the biggest driver of engagement. Towers Perrin’s 2008 Global Workforce Study echoed the finding, revealing CSR is the third most important driver of employee engagement worldwide.

The opportunity to give back to society can even trump compensation. In a 2009 poll by staffing company Kelly Services in Canada, a company’s ethical behavior was cited as an important factor in deciding where to work by 97 percent of 7,000 people surveyed. Fifty-three percent said they would take a pay cut to work for an employer with a reputation for caring about employees and the community.

Making the connection between CSR and employee engagement means different things to different companies, but the basic premise is the same. Employees are people, and people want to make a difference. They want to work for companies that care about them, their families, their communities and the causes that are important to them.

Socially responsible behavior to engage employees is not just for big corporations with deep philanthropic pockets or enterprisewide community service initiatives. There are many ways small and medium-sized companies can demonstrate CSR without huge financial investments.

Aligning employee recognition, incentive and gift programs with the organization’s values and mission as well as corporate responsibility and sustainability initiatives is an obvious opportunity. In tight financial times, ongoing, meaningful rewards and recognition provide a low-cost way to raise morale and encourage higher performance because these small actions are visible and tangible.

[Arkes offers several tips to make CSR-based recognition work. Here are two.]

Make conscious choices. Consider the impact of the gifts, rewards and incentives. Be sure they support your company’s continuing commitment to behave ethically and contribute to the quality of life for the community and society at large. There are hundreds of social enterprises and fair trade organizations that manufacture high-quality goods with the sole mission of helping people earn a living and feed their families. The true value-add comes from what purchasing the item can do for others. Share the inspiring stories of the people behind the products with employees.

Make it creative. Be innovative in finding new ways to make a difference and differentiate your company from the competition. Think beyond typical rewards and incentives such as electronics and travel. To celebrate the launch of an innovative online marketplace offering socially and environmentally sustainable gifts, eBay gave unique, globally inspired desk sets to 15,000 employees. The sets — handmade by artisan communities in 10 countries — featured leaf-paper journals crafted in Thailand and a hand-carved soapstone pencil cup from cooperatives in Kenya. Each set arrived with a printed brochure that told the story of the nearly 500 families who were able to improve their livelihoods by making and selling these fair trade gifts.

All of us want to make a difference. We want a sense of purpose and to do meaningful work for an employer whose values and integrity match our own. Integrating corporate social responsibility into employee motivation and engagement efforts helps employees develop a sense of importance and well-being about their work and their workplace that can extend beyond the job they do.

*     *     *

To read the complete article and obtain a free online and/or print subscription, please click here.

Michael Arkes is the owner, president, and CEO of Hinda Incentives, Inc. in Chicago.

Quintin E. Primo III in “The Corner Office”

Quintin E. Primo III

Adam Bryant conducts interviews of senior-level executives that appear in his “Corner Office” column each week in the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times. Here are a few insights provided during an interview of Quintin E. Primo III, co-founder and chief executive of Capri Capital Partners. Capri is a real estate investment and development firm based in Chicago.

To read the complete interview and the interviews of other executives, please click here.

*     *     *

Bryant: What were the most important leadership lessons for you?

Primo: Leadership, in my opinion, is best learned, or honed, through adversity. And it’s in times of adversity that one must step up to the plate and do something. You have to do this, or do that, but you just can’t stand still. You have to take action in adversity.

And for me, probably the most poignant moment in my career as a leader was when my first business failed miserably. We were crushed by the real estate markets of the early ’90s. We went into a head wind, a very stiff head wind.

Back then we were a very young, emerging organization with no real business, and just simply got crushed. It was a boutique investment brokerage company that focused on international investors and their investments in the United States. So we entered into a death spiral, roughly two years after I started the firm in ’88. And managing down, as the Titanic is sinking, you’re not even worried about the deck chairs.

It taught me a lot about who I was. It taught me a great deal about the folks I had selected to work with me on this sinking ship.

It was a very frightening period for me, but what I’ve learned is that one must have faith, faith in something larger than yourself, or you truly will be sunk. Whether that faith is faith in the common good of man, whether it’s in universal rhythm or karma, or whether it be simply in God, there has to be something larger than you.

Existentialists don’t do well in adversity. So it was the faith that I had in myself, faith that I had in others around me, the faith that I knew that I was not defined by this company, or what I did. But if the company fails, if it failed, no one died. Life moves on.

You walk through the gates of hell, and realize that you can emerge, you’re still alive, you’re intact. And if you’re an entrepreneur, you’ve learned a lesson. And that lesson has now made you a better entrepreneur, and you can move on to bigger, hopefully better situations. But you have to be able to perceive clearly that this moment in time does not define your career, does not define you. It’s simply a moment in time, and time is endless.

In that period of adversity for me, I discovered that my employees, as such, were really part of my family. And you will sacrifice, you will do extraordinary things to protect your family, and feed them, and clothe them. You will sacrifice greatly. And so, in this period of adversity, I had to move outside of me. It no longer was all about me, but about making sure that the hardship on those who worked with me was as modest, as low, as possible. It just shifted priorities.

After graduating from Harvard Business School, and having success for eight golden years in real estate, I thought I was the next great thing since sliced bread. In abundance, it’s very easy to lose focus. But in adversity, one must have extreme focus.

*     *     *

Bryant: Who were big influences on your leadership style?

Primo: I’m Quintin the Third, right? Quintin Sr. was a priest. He originally immigrated from British Guiana. Initially, he had no choice but to go into the Baptist church. He was Anglican. But the Episcopal church in the United States, the Protestant Episcopal Church of the U.S.A., would not have him. So he became a Baptist minister in the South, and ultimately, was accepted into his religion years later.

Quintin Jr. was also a priest, and ultimately became suffragan bishop of the Episcopal Diocese in Chicago. He passed away in 1998.

Being raised in such a spiritual household allowed me to incorporate, by osmosis, a lot of values. But seeing my father lead a church really prepared me, more than anything that I know, to be a leader in business. When you think about it, to be a pastor, to be a pastoral leader of a church or synagogue or mosque, you have to have a very clear vision. You have to be able to sell something to your constituents that they cannot see, since there’s no hard evidence of this vision.

As a leader, he had to have a clear vision, and had to be able to communicate that vision, and had to get individuals to execute on that vision.

Secondly, he had financial responsibilities. He had to raise enough money on an annual basis to run the shop. Third, he had operational responsibilities. He had to run the place, literally, and oftentimes with no safety net.

When he became a bishop of a diocese, his role significantly changed. He merged churches in Detroit — he did M&A. He took one of the most prominent black Episcopalian churches, St. Matthew’s, right near the Stroh’s brewery in Detroit, and he merged it with a predominantly white church, an old, dying church that had a nice, big, fat endowment. And he created St. Matthew’s & St. Joseph’s on Woodward Avenue.

I can’t even imagine the types of interpersonal and organizational issues he had to deal with. But one of his favorite phrases was, “Disagreement, but with respect.” And my father never raised his voice. He was a tremendous role model.

*     *     *

To read several of Bryant’s more recent interviews of other executives, please click here.

Interview: Maribeth Kuzmeski

Maribeth Kuzmeski

Kuzmeski is the author of The Connectors: How the World’s Most Successful Businesspeople Build Relationships and Win Clients for Life (Wiley, September 2009). Creating strong business relationships has been the focus of Kuzmeski’s business and career. The Connectors is packed full of tools and techniques aimed at helping her reader develop better, more profitable connections—tools and techniques proven effective by some of the world’s most successful professionals. She is the founder of Red Zone Marketing, LLC, which consults to Fortune 500 firms on strategic marketing planning and business growth. Kuzmeski has personally consulted with some of the world’s most successful CEO’s, entrepreneurs, and professionals.

An internationally recognized speaker, she shares the tactics that businesspeople use today to create more sustainable business relationships and sales and marketing successes. She is a regular media contributor appearing on FoxNews, ABC News, WGN-TV, The New York Times, BusinessWeek, Entrepreneur, and Forbes. She graduated with a degree in journalism from Syracuse University and an MBA from The George Washington University. Kuzmeski lives in the Chicago area with her husband Rich and two teenagers.

Here is an excerpt from my interview of Kuzmeski. The complete interview is also available.

Morris: For those who have not as yet read The Connectors, what are the most effective strategies for building relationships, especially with one’s workplace associates and clients?

Kuzmeski: Being a great connector is really all about having focused attention on the other person. If you are obviously focused on yourself first and do a lot of talking, you are probably not endearing yourself to others. And, likely you are not connecting with them. The five main principles in the book revolve around that premise. They are (1) Develop a true “What’s In It For Them” mentality, (2) Listen, curiously and intently, (3) Ask others important questions that encourage and support connections, (4) Manage the selling process so that the sale closes itself – that is, use creative strategies “to sell without selling,” and finally, (5) Create a memorable multi-sensory experience so that you differentiate yourself by the enduring impact you have on others.

And probably the most important of these five principles is listening. We know we should do it better, but most often fall short. It is HARD to listen, but the benefits are overwhelmingly positive in terms of the connections that can be forged with others. If you are really listening and listening intently, people will know you care and will like you more than if you did the talking.

Morris: How can these same strategies also be effective in one’s personal life?

Kuzmeski: The same strategies for relationships and connecting that work in business work the same, in fact even better, with our personal relationships. Focusing intently on the other person (instead of thinking about what you are going to say next) is a great way to endear yourself to someone. If others know they have your undivided attention and that you are truly listening and care about what they are saying – it can change the way that they feel about you.

Morris: You devote an entire chapter (Chapter 18) to discussing the ten most popular social media Web sites. What advice do you have for those who wish to derive the greatest benefit from them?

Kuzmeski: The key with social media is to get started and stay focused. There are so many different activities you could take on and much of it may take up a lot of time without much return. Find out what types of social media your target marketing is using and get focused in those areas. For instance, financial advisors can’t use most social media because of their strict compliance but they can use LinkedIn. So, I have focused much of my efforts on LinkedIn. Begin my carving out 30 minutes a day to stay active with your connections.

Morris: You seem to think that almost anyone can become an effective “Connector.” Is that a fair assessment?

Kuzmeski: Well of course I think it is! The whole reason I wrote the book was to detail the tactics of the great connectors for those who want to learn and become better connectors. Whether you are already a great connector or you want to become a much better connector – it is possible! Simple strategies like placing a conscious focus on the other person can transform someone into a better connector very quickly. The book is filled with hundreds of tactics that anyone can use to connect while speaking, on a job interview, with colleagues, your boss, clients and friends and family.

Morris: Near the conclusion of your book, you assert “Your online presence defines you.” Please explain.

Kuzmeski: Today, if someone wants more information, they will look online. What is online about you and your firm becomes the reality of who you are. Your exposure online does define who you are. Does your website present you and your company in the exact way you want others to perceive you? Does it capture the personality and unique aspects? Also, Google yourself, your business name, and even your competitors. Find out what’s out there. If it’s not what you want, you need to develop and release more content so you effectively control your top 10 Google search results. Write articles, blog, update your website often, have someone evaluate your website’s SEO. And, set a Google alert on yourself so if anything new appears online about you – you are aware of it. (www.Google.com/alerts).

Morris: How is The Connectors book selling?

Kuzmeski: We have had very strong sales coming from Amazon.com, airport bookstores as well as regular bookstores. Wiley, my publisher, asked me to write another book after seeing the strong start of The Connectors. This book, …And the Clients Went Wild! How Savvy Professionals Win All The Business They Want will be released in September 2010!

* * *

Kuzmeski invites you to sign up for her free weekly email newsletter, Marketing Audibles.

Check out the resources, free tools and free downloads at:

www.RedZoneMarketing.com

www.TheConnectorsBook.com

Blog: http://redzonemarketing.typepad.com

Ethics and integrity at Johnson & Johnson

Many people could not believe it when, in 1982, Johnson & Johnson’s then CEO, James Burke, ordered that all of the company’s Tylenol products be immediately removed from all retail stores throughout the United States after a few poisonings occurred in Chicago. Several people had ingested Tylenol capsules and died. Burke’s decision was wholly consistent with J&J’s values. How so?

In his article, “The Age of Consumer Capitalism,” that appeared in the January/February (2009) issue of Harvard Business Review, Roger Martin explains that J&J has “the corporate world’s most eloquent statement of purpose — its ‘credo,’ which hasn’t changed since J&J’s legendary chairman Robert Wood Johnson created it in 1943,” 39 years before a person or persons tampered with Tylenol capsules and inserted poison. Here is the statement in abbreviated form:

“We believe our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses and patients, to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services…We are responsible to our employees, the men and women who work with us throughout the world…We are responsible to the communities in which we live and work and to the world community as well…Our final responsibility is to our stockholders…When we operate according to these principles, the stockholders should realize a fair return.”

It is worth noting that Burke ordered the recall voluntarily; the government had not demanded it. At that time, Tylenol sales represented about 20% of the company’s profits. Nonetheless, it was the right thing to do. Whenever Burke was praised, he patiently but firmly explained that his company’s values required the decision and he merely executed it.

According to Martin, “The credo bluntly spells out the pecking order: Customers come first, and shareholders last. However, J&J has confidence that when customer satisfaction is at the top of the list, shareholders will do just fine.”

Martin is the dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. His most recently published books are The Opposable Mind and The Design of Business, both published by Harvard Business Press.