Who's With You?

Today's markets are more competitive than ever. In many organizations, people wear many hats and are working on multiple projects at once. Every organization has to deal with the allocation of resources and determining which approaches to take to accomplish a goal or strategy.

Unless you live in a cave, you have to interact with people. Managing the galaxy of people necessary to accomplish your goals can be a daunting task.

I have a client who has developed a QUANTITATIVE way to measure the alignment of various groups and use that measure to predict the likelihood of success of various initiatives, goals and strategies. This can yield powerful and compelling results.

When charged with managing/leading a group to accomplish a goal, wouldn't you like to know who's WITH YOU and who's NOT?

I've seen it in action and find the results impressive and potentially very useful to any organization. Contact me and I'll tell you more.

Regards, GMS

Don't Put Things Off

My friend, Chris Loudon, our local Police Chief died unexpectedly Monday. He was 54. Chris was a good man; an asset to his community, to his organization, and to his family. He had just recently been made Chief, and he had begun to put his stamp on the police department. At 54 he had every reason to believe that he'd have the time to convert his vision into reality. Unfortunately, fate intervened.

Take a moment to think about your goals and visions. Focus on the imporant, discard the trivial, calm down, stay focused and savor the moments.

And when you get home tonight, hug your family.

Lessons from Katrina

My friend and colleague, Henry Osborne, CEO of online backup provider, DCSBackups (www.dcsbackups.com) and I were talking recently about how the Katrina disaster is still impacting people in the New Orleans area. The conversation came around to businesses and how they did or did NOT recover from the disaster. Henry's company does online backup for businesses. Not to sound too much like a commercial, but this is a service that EVERY BUSINESS MUST HAVE. We use it here.

It's easy to get distracted from important things like backing up your data. Every day brings a whole new list of fire drills and crises that take our time and attention. But, think about it. More and more of our businesses are founded on access to important information.

What are you doing about backing up your critical business information? Have you ever actually tested your data recovery procedures? If you had a fire, or your sprinkler system went off would you be out of business?

Make an appointment with yourself and get this taken care of. You have life insurance to protect your family. Get "life insurance" for your business.

Shoot for Sustainability

Professor David Rainey, the Dean at the Lally School of Business at Rensselaer Polytechnic in Hartford, CT is working on a book on sustainable business development. After a recent conversation with him, I got to thinking about sustainability as it pertains to managing a consulting business (or even a sales territory).

Many consultants, (and sales exectives) live in a world of "feast or famine" where they are either workign flat out to close sales/process transactions/deliver services OR they are in a slump where they are working hard to scratch out that next sale. This results in the sterotypical "roller coaster" of revenues or commissions that makes life frustrating, trying, painful and draining.

A professional is someone who recognizes this pattern and takes steps to at least lower the amplitude of the wave. One way to do this is to manage your time is such a way as to always leave some time for filling the hopper with new opportunities. I do that by scheduling time each week to new business development, regardless of how "busy" I am.

By booking time in Outlook, when someone calls, I can schedule around that critical time. My customers get time and I get time to make sure I keep having customers!

What are you doing to make sure your pipeline is always full?

CEO Confidence Reaches New High

Led by four consecutive bullish months, the Chief Executive CEO Confidence Index hit its highest level of all time in January. The leading economic indicator currently stands at 182.4, up 9.8 points this month and 31.5 points since October. The Employment, Investment, and Business Conditions indices also reached historical highs this month.

Chief Executive magazine has the ear of many executives nationwide. This news bodes well for those of us who sell our products and services to the business community. What are you going to do about it?

Now is the time to capitalize on this sentiment. Stretch yourself. Enter new markets. Try new approaches, new product offerings and make new connections. Spending the time now will pay big dividends NOW and in the future when the market inevitably softens.

The Art of the Start

Happy New Year! I hope 2005 finished strong for you and you're excited about the upcoming year. Here at Alternate Futures, we have been very busy and are trying to respond as rapidly as possible to our customers. We're also looking at new ways to bring value to our clients and customers. With that said, I want to strongly recommend several books I read over the holidays.

First, Steven Gary Blank's "Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win." It's a straight-forward hands-on approach to building a new product or new business. I cannot recommend it strongly enough.

The second is Guy Kawasaki's, "The Art of the Start: A Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything." Guy is clever, a bit tongue-in-cheek and right on the money. It's primarily for start-ups, but it will work for anything.

What new things are you planning in 2006?

Thoughts on the Close of the Year

It's been a while since we posted a new entry in the blog. That's both good and bad...Bad because we're not being as timely as we should be in communicating with our clients and prospects in this forum...Good, because the delay was caused by a very busy 4th quarter.

My anecdotal observations are that the economy is continuing to grow and position itself for a solid 2005. It's not the breathless explosion of frenetic activity we saw in the late '90s, but it sure feels more sustainable.

My clients are seeing steady business flow in their core businesses and much more interest in new projects and ideas for next year. Many organizations are coming to the realization that you cannot contract your way to success. No amount of cost cutting will grow your business in meaningful ways...that requires measured risk taking and a determination to move forward.

What are you planning on doing next quarter that will position your firm to win?

GMS

PS Best Wishes for peaceful and happy holidays and a prosperous 2005.