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Keeping Your Act Together

jim | January 6, 2010 | Performance Management

It’s so easy in this fast-paced got-to-do-everything-now world to get off center–to lose focus of what’s important and what’s not.  A friend and client shared the following exercise with me a few years ago. I use it regularly as a personal compass.  And just as I’d use a compass on a sailboat to correct my course form time to time, I use it to make sure I’m not veering away from what’s important to me. Let me know what you think about it.  Try it for a week or so and let me hear from you.  

Create three circles.

In one circle list what you’re deeply passionate about in terms of your life’s purpose.  In the second circle list what you’re very good at doing–the talent that seems to be genetically encoded.  In the third circle list what you can make a living doing—what makes sense for you economically.

Now, where do these circles intersect?  The foundation for a great work life is represented where there is a practical intersection of the three.  What I love.  What I’m good at.  Where others think I add value.

These three circles become your compass.  Am I centered where I need to be? Do I need to move up or over?

As you think about what you do these days, how much is outside those three circles?  How much can you stop doing?

The Business Case for Social Media?

jim | December 9, 2009 | Performance Management

I haven’t seen one yet, but it’s coming, no doubt.

A business case for social media, or anything else, can be made when something (like social media) creates a gain in operating or financial performance/business measures that is greater than the investment made to generate the gain. While there are certainly isolated examples where elements of social media have improved information exchange and produced good business outcomes, it’s a huge stretch to say they’ve had a major impact on revenues, product or service quality, costs, cycle time or productivity, which are the measures used in determining a business case.

Recently I heard a couple of social media “experts” speak at a conference. They spent more than an hour gushing about activity—all the social media things companies were doing. But my mother’s voice kept filling my head as these guys spoke. I think all mothers read the same book that said: When your son or daughter says everyone is doing something, here’s the right way to respond: “Just because everybody’s doing something doesn’t necessarily make it right. If everyone were jumping off a thousand foot cliff, should you jump off the cliff?”

So I asked the guys if the companies they were talking about had experienced better business performance after all their investments in social media activity.

“Oh, I’m sure they have,” the lead expert answered.

“Do you have any examples,” I asked.

“Well, no, but I’m sure they have or they wouldn’t be doing it.”

Yeah, right.