How to nurture relationships without being a pest

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How to Write An Irresistible C-level Executive Resume in 10 Steps

How to Write An Irresistible C-level Executive Resume in 10 Steps
by MEG GUISEPPI on APRIL 27, 2010 · 4 COMMENTS






When was the last time you used your executive resume? When was the last time you even thought about it or looked at it?

If you’re like many of the senior-level executives I work with you’ve either never needed a resume to get noticed and land a job, or it’s been many years since you’ve needed one.

You may be unaware of how much resumes have changed in just the past few years.

Your resume may be dangerously old-fashioned.

Before dusting off your old resume (if you have one), merely updating it with your latest contributions and career history, and expecting that, when you put it out there they will come, you need to get a handle on today’s resume 2.0 and what part it plays in the new world of executive job search.

And guess what? A great resume alone probably won’t get you into your next great gig. Your paper/digital resume will probably NOT be your first introduction to recruiters and hiring decision makers. Numerous recent studies show that the vast majority of them source and assess candidates through Google search, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media.

If you don’t have a strong online footprint providing them with plenty of on-brand information supporting your value proposition, you’re likely facing a prolonged job search.

All things being equal – skill sets, qualifications, relevant experience, education, etc. – job seekers with stronger web presence are the ones who are noticed and chosen over those who have little or no presence online.

Traditional personal marketing communications like resumes have shifted to short-form brand-supporting, value-driven writing, to accommodate hiring professionals’ use of PDAs to review materials and social media to source candidates, and their lack of time.

Then why bother with a resume at all? Why not go straight to your online personal and career marketing? Three good reasons:

1. You need to get your brand and value proposition together before moving them online, so that you send a clear consistent message across all channels. Slapping up online profiles (LinkedIn, Google Profile, ZoomInfo Profile, etc.), a VisualCV, websites, or web portfolios before doing the back end work is a mistake.

2. You’ll still need a paper/digital resume at some point in the hiring process – it’s still recognized job search currency. So make sure it’s a knockout.

3. The work you do defining your personal brand and developing your resume (and bio and other career documents) forms the foundation for all your personal marketing materials, online and offline, and offers many benefits:
Helps you develop messaging designed to resonate with your target audience.
Energizes you with what differentiates your unique promise of value from your competitors.
Prepares you to speak confidently and knowledgeably about the value you offer.
Provides a wealth of on-brand information to repurpose for each of your online profiles and any web pages you create.
Prepares you to interview well.

Understand that before you can write a great resume, you need to lay the groundwork with two critical first-steps – targeting and personal branding.

Here’s your 10-step executive resume worksheet. Remember, I’m using the word “resume” but, along with creating a paper/digital resume, what we’re doing here is developing your personal marketing messaging for all your brand communications, offline and online:
Information-mining and development.

1. Targeting

A generic resume that tries to cover too many bases will probably fall flat. If you don’t write to a specific target audience, your resume won’t speak to the recruiters and hiring decision makers reading it or help them connect you to the job they’re trying to fill. They don’t have the time or inclination to sift through irrelevant information to see if you warrant interviewing.

Everything in your resume has to align with what they’ll be looking for in candidates. Find several job descriptions that look like a mutual good fit to work from when writing your resume. Indeed.com is a good resource.

2. Personal Branding and Value Proposition

Branding is not optional anymore. Especially in a bad job market, personal branding is more critical than ever. In a nutshell, branding links your passions, key personal attributes, and strengths with your value proposition, in a crystal clear message that differentiates you from your competition and resonates with your target audience. What differentiates your unique promise of value from your job seeking competitors is what will sell you.

Companies are looking for vitality, good fit, and personal chemistry in executive candidates. Branding generates chemistry and makes you come alive on the paper, digital, and web page. To learn how to bring it all together, see my post, 10 Steps to an Authentic, Magnetic Personal Brand.

As you’re building your brand, create your brand positioning statement and a tagline to lead your resume and use elsewhere. An encapsulated version serves as your LinkedIn professional headline and can be used for Twitter and other social media bios.

3. Career Success Stories

When you explain how you make things happen – how you were able to capture profitable advances – you help your target audience zero in on what you’ll do for their organization. They can begin to picture you doing the same things for them. Follow a “Challenge – Actions – Results” framework to illuminate your critical contributions to employers. Concise C-A-Rs stories are especially helpful in preparing for interviewing. See my post, Storytelling Propels Executive Branding and Job Search.

Use your C-A-Rs stories to help you develop value proposition messaging that is monetized and linked to your personal brand. SHOW THEM THE NUMBERS! And show them how you accomplished those advances with specific examples.
Writing your executive resume.

4. Forget the Objective Statement

Employers don’t care that you want a “growth position that will utilize my expertise in XYZ”. They want to know what you’ll do for them. Objective statements waste valuable space and prime real estate, and don’t capture attention.

5. Real Estate and Strategic Positioning

Brand yourself above the fold – the top third or quarter of page one. Busy decision makers generally allow only 10 seconds or so for a resume to draw them in. They may go no further than that initial page view when screening web pages or digital documents. As much as possible, make this section stand on its own as your calling card. Search engines pay more attention to relevant keywords at the top of online profiles or web pages and rank web pages with better keyword density higher.

Some suggestions for above the fold branding:
Lead with your personal brand statement which should be loaded with your relevant keywords.
Add a powerful quote from a recent performance review or someone you work with.
Include 3 or 4 value-driven bulleted statements with numbers.
Put together your relevant keyword list of areas of expertise in an attractive graphic box.

6. Readability

Consider the Blackberry effect. More and more hiring decision makers review resumes on their PDAs. When they open a document or web page, it’s more likely to capture and hold their attention with concise on-brand, value-driven statements surrounded by plenty of white space. Avoid densely packed, hard-to-read information. Shorter chunks of information are easier to read and will draw the reader’s eye to continue down the page.

Keep it as close to 2 pages as you can. Obviously, a web page doesn’t have page breaks like a paper/digital document, but the idea is the same. Remember that this is a career marketing communication, not a career history. It needs to incorporate just enough compelling information to generate interest in you. Everything in your resume must be there for a reason. Nothing should be arbitrary.

7. Typos and Grammar

Doesn’t it go without saying that typos and errors in grammar are the kiss of death? They may also convey misinformation. Proofread several times and have someone else do it, too. Don’t rely on spellcheck. Make sure your contact information is correct.

8. Formatting

Keep the formatting attractive, consistent, and clean. Don’t use more than 2 different fonts (one for headings, another for content), and don’t choose frilly, unprofessional fonts. Use graphic lines sparingly, and avoid underlining text alltogether.

9. Blah Resume-speak.

Write your resume from your own voice. You’re not like everyone else. Find the precise words that describe what makes you unique and valuable. Keep the content interesting and don’t fall back on dull phrases that don’t differentiate you, such as results-oriented, visionary leader, excellent communication skills, proven track record of success, etc.

10. Passive Verbs and Repetitive Job Descriptions.

Avoid the over-used, boring phrase “responsible for”. Show your vitality with robust action verbs and explain your niche expertise with relevant key words. Use strong words like pioneered, envisioned, accelerated, benchmarked, incentivized, leveraged, etc. See my post at the Brand-yourself blog, 65 Power Personal Branding Verbs to Nail Your Executive Value Proposition.

Don’t waste precious space in the “Professional Experience” section reiterating obvious responsibilities. Readers will already know the basic duties for your jobs.

Bottom Line

Always keep in mind that real people with particular sets of criteria are reading your resume. Put yourself in their shoes and give them the information they’re looking for in a document or web page that’s easy to read and digest. Make it easy for them to assess your “fit” for the position and corporate culture. Make it easy for them to hire you.

To see how it all comes together, take a look at a sample executive resume I created for a Senior Acquisitions and Business Development Executive.

Related posts:

How to Write a C-level Executive Career Brand Biography

Does Your Online Identity Scream “Hire Me”?

2010 Top 10 Executive Personal Branding and Job Search Trends


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I LOVE my work partnering with c-suite and senior-level executives in job search or contemplating one.

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THE PROBLEM ISN'T JUST ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, IT'S LEGAL IMMIGRATION, TOO

Ann Coulter - April 24, 2013 - THE PROBLEM ISN'T JUST ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, IT'S LEGAL IMMIGRATION, TOOHomeMy LifeBook a SpeechLinksForumFollow Me on TwitterArchives 
THE PROBLEM ISN'T JUST ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, IT'S LEGAL IMMIGRATION, TOO
April 24, 2013

The people of Boston are no longer being terrorized by the Marathon bombers, but amnesty supporters sure are.

On CNN's "State of the Union" last weekend, Sen. Lindsey Graham's response to the Boston Marathon bombers being worthless immigrants who hate America -- one of whom the FBI cleared even after being tipped off by Russia -- was to announce: "The fact that we could not track him has to be fixed."

Track him? How about not admitting him as an immigrant?

As if it's a defense, we're told Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (of the Back Bay Tsarnaevs) were disaffected "losers" -- the word used by their own uncle -- who couldn't make it in America. Their father had already returned to Russia. Tamerlan had dropped out of college, been arrested for domestic violence and said he had no American friends. Dzhokhar was failing most of his college courses. All of them were on welfare.

(Dzhokhar was given everything America had to offer, and now he only has one thing in his future to look forward to ... a tenured professorship.)

My thought is, maybe we should consider admitting immigrants who can succeed in America, rather than deadbeats.

But we're not allowed to "discriminate" in favor of immigrants who would be good for America. Instead of helping America, our immigration policies are designed to help other countries solve their internal problems by shipping their losers to us.

The problem isn't just illegal immigration. I would rather have doctors and engineers sneaking into the country than legally arriving ditch-diggers.

Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration act so dramatically altered the kinds of immigrants America admits that, since 1969, about 85 percent of legal immigrants have come from the Third World. They bring Third World levels of poverty, fertility, illegitimacy and domestic violence with them. When they can't make it in America, they simply go on welfare and sometimes strike out at Americans.


In addition to the four dead and more than 100 badly wounded victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, let's consider a few of the many other people who would be alive, but for Kennedy's immigration law:

-- The six Long Island railroad passengers murdered in 1993 by Jamaican immigrant Colin Ferguson. Before the shooting, Ferguson was unemployed, harassing women on subways, repeatedly bringing lawsuits against police and former employers, applying for workman's compensation for fake injuries and blaming all his problems on white people. Whom he then decided to murder.

-- The two people killed outside CIA headquarters in 1993 by Pakistani illegal immigrant Mir Qazi. He had been working as a driver for a courier company. (It's nearly impossible to find an American who can drive.)

-- Christoffer Burmeister, a 27 year-old musician killed in a mass shooting by Palestinian immigrant Ali Hassan Abu Kamal in 1997 at the Empire State Building. Hassan had immigrated to America with his family two months earlier at age 68. (It's a smart move to bring in immigrants just in time to pay them Social Security benefits!)

-- Bill Cosby's son, Ennis, killed in 1997 by 18-year-old Ukrainian immigrant Mikhail Markhasev, who had come to this country with his single mother eight years earlier -- because we were running short on single mothers.

Markhasev, who had a juvenile record, shot Cosby point-blank for taking too long to produce his wallet. He later bragged about killing a "n*gger."

-- The three people murdered at the Appalachian School of Law in 2002 by Nigerian immigrant Peter Odighizuwa, angry at America because he had failed out of law school. At least it's understandable why our immigration policies would favor a 43-year-old law student. It's so hard to get Americans to go to law school these days!

-- The stewardess and passenger murdered by Egyptian immigrant Hesham Mohamed Hadayet when he shot up the El Al ticket counter at the Los Angeles airport in 2002. Hesham, a desperately needed limousine driver, received refugee status in the U.S. because he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Apparently, that's a selling point if you want to immigrate to America.

-- The six men murdered by Mexican immigrant Salvador Tapia at the Windy City Core Supply warehouse in Chicago in 2003, from which he had been fired six months earlier. Tapia was still in this country despite having been arrested at least a dozen times on weapons and assault charges. Only foreign newspapers mentioned that Tapia was an immigrant. American newspapers blamed the gun.

-- The six people killed in northern Wisconsin in 2004 by Hmong immigrant Chai Soua Vang, who shot his victims in the back after being caught trespassing on their property. Minnesota Public Radio later explained that Hmong hunters don't understand American laws about private property, endangered species, or really any laws written in English. It was an unusual offense for a Hmong, whose preferred crime is raping 12- to 14-year-old girls -- as extensively covered in the Fresno Bee and Minneapolis Star Tribune.

-- The five people murdered at the Trolley Square Shopping Mall in Salt Lake City by Bosnian immigrant Sulejman Talovic in 2007. Talovic was a Muslim high school dropout with a juvenile record. No room for you, Swedish doctor. We need resentful Muslims!

-- The 32 people murdered at Virginia Tech in 2007 by Seung-Hui Cho, a South Korean immigrant.

-- The 13 soldiers murdered at Fort Hood in 2009 by "accused" shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, son of Palestinian immigrants. Hasan's parents had operated a restaurant in Roanoke, Va., because where are we going to find Americans to do that?

-- The 13 people killed at the American Civic Association in Binghamton, N.Y., by Vietnamese immigrant Jiverly Wong, who became a naturalized citizen two years after being convicted of fraud and forgery in California. Wong was angry that people disrespected him for his poor English skills.

-- Florence Donovan-Gunderson, who was shot along with her husband, and three National Guardsmen in a Carson City IHOP gunned down by Mexican immigrant Eduardo Sencion in 2011.

-- The three people, including a 15-year-old girl, murdered in their home in North Miami by Kesler Dufrene, a Haitian immigrant and convicted felon who had been arrested nine times, but was released when Obama halted deportations to Haiti after the earthquake. Dufrene chose the house at random.

-- The many African-Americans murdered by Hispanic gangs in Los Angeles in the last few years, including Jamiel Shaw Jr., a star football player being recruited by Stanford; Cheryl Green, a 14-year-old eighth-grade student chosen for murder solely because she was black; and Christopher Ash, who witnessed Green's murder.

During the three years from 2010 through 2012, immigrants have committed about a dozen mass murders in this country, not including the 9/11 attack.

The mass murderers were from Afghanistan, South Korea, Vietnam, Haiti, South Africa, Ethiopia and Mexico. None were from Canada or Western Europe.

I don't want to hear about the black crime rate or the Columbine killers. We're talking about immigrants here! There should be ZERO immigrants committing crimes.There should be ZERO immigrants accepting government assistance. There should be ZERO immigrants demanding that we speak their language.

We have no choice about native-born losers. We ought to be able to do something about the people we chose to bring here.

Meanwhile, our government officials just keep singing the praises of "diversity," while expressly excluding skilled immigrants who might be less inclined to become "disaffected" and lash out by killing Americans.

In response to the shooting at Fort Hood, Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. said: "As horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that's worse."

On "Fox News Sunday" this week, former CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden said of the Boston bombing suspects, "We welcome these kinds of folks coming to the United States who want to be contributing American citizens."

Unless, that is, they have a college degree and bright prospects. Those immigrants are prohibited.

COPYRIGHT 2013 ANN COULTER
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Worst Job In America Is ...

Worst Job In America Is ...
By Dan Fastenberg
Posted Apr 23rd 2013 @ 8:28AM
Filed under: Top 10 Lists, Employment News & Trends


What is the worst job in America? In a troubled economy, where unemployment is high and the employed are overworked and underpaid, the competition is surely stiff. But each year CareerCast.com, the employment website, ranks 200 professions in America to come up with the answer.

The list is based on five factors: physical demands, work environment, income, stress and hiring outlook. This year, the 25th year of the CareerCast list, technological advancements appear to have complicated -- if not threatened -- several once-comfortable and sought-after American professions.

Not all jobs at the bottom of the list pay badly. One even pays an average salary of $60,750, while the average salary for a full-time worker in the U.S is around $41,000. In fact, the list of the worst jobs includes gigs that might always be considered desirable -- that is, once you reach the top of the field. Below are the bottom 10 on the list of 200 jobs, along with average salary information -- with No. 1 on the ranking being considered the least desirable. But tell us, what do YOU think is the worst job in America?

The Worst Jobs of 2013:

10. Flight Attendant -- Average income: $37,740.

9. Roofer -- Average income: $34,220.

8. Mail Carrier -- Average income: $53,090.

7. Meter Reader -- Average income: $36,400.

6. Dairy Farmer -- Average income: $60,750.

5. Oil Rig Worker -- Average income: $37,640.

4. Actor -- Average income: $17.44/hour.

3. Enlisted Military Personnel -- Average income:$41,998.
​
2. Lumberjack -- Average income: $32,870.

1. Newspaper Reporter -- Average income: $36,000.

Do you agree ? What do you think is the worst job in America? Share your comments below.

See the 10 best jobs.

12 Most Underrated Jobs In America

Civil Engineer
Computer Analyst
Automobile Mechanic
Electrician
Plumber
School Principal
Economist
Legal Assistant
Accountant
Market Research Analyst
Biologist (Biochemist or Biophysicist)
Veterinarian

Automobile Mechanic

Median Annual Salary: $36,200

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STRESSED & DEPRESSED AMERICANS 'SNAPPING' BY THE MILLIONS

STRESSED & DEPRESSED
AMERICANS 'SNAPPING' BY THE MILLIONS
Exclusive: David Kupelian reveals record fear, stress, suicide – and inspired way outPublished: 22 hours ago
DAVID KUPELIAN About | Email | Archive

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Terrorism. Chaos. Fear of the future. In the age of Obama, America is undergoing a “fundamental transformation” – that much everyone knows.

But what few seem to realize about this transformation is that the sheer stress of living in today’s America is driving tens of millions to the point of illness, depression and self-destruction. Consider the following trends:

Suicide has surpassed car crashes as the leading cause of injury death for Americans. Even more disturbing, in the world’s greatest military, more U.S. soldiers died last year by suicide than in combat;
Fully one-third of the nation’s employees suffer chronic debilitating stress, and more than half of all “millennials” (18 to 33 year olds) experience a level of stress that keeps them awake at night, including large numbers diagnosed with depression or anxiety disorder.
Shocking new research from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that one in five of all high-school-aged children in the United States has been diagnosed with ADHD, and likewise a large new study of New York City residents shows, sadly, that one in five preteens – children aged six to 12 – have been medically diagnosed with either ADHD, anxiety, depression or bipolar disorder;
New research concludes that stress renders people susceptible to serious illness, and a growing number of studies now confirm that chronic stress plays a major role in the progression of cancer, the nation’s second-biggest killer. The biggest killer of all, heart disease, which causes one in four deaths in the U.S., is also known to have a huge stress component;
Incredibly, 11 percent of all Americans aged 12 and older are currently taking SSRI antidepressants – those highly controversial, mood-altering psychiatric drugs with the FDA’s “suicidality” warning label and alarming correlation with school shooters. Women are especially prone to depression, with a stunning 23 percent of all American women in their 40s and 50s – almost one in four – now taking antidepressants, according to a major study by the CDC;
Add to that the tens of millions of users of all other types of psychiatric drugs, including (just to pick one) the 6.4 million American children between 4 and 17 diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed Ritalin or similar psycho-stimulants. Throw in the 28 percent of American adults with a drinking problem, that’s more than 60 million, plus the 22 million using illegal drugs like marijuana, cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens and inhalants,and pretty soon a picture emerges of a nation of drug-takers, with hundreds of millions dependent on one toxic substance or another – legal or illegal – to “help” them deal with the stresses and problems of life.

By the way, things are no better over the pond – and may be worse, according to one major study that concluded almost 40 percent of Europeans are plagued by mental illness.

Note: This report is is excerpted from the April 2013 issue of WND’s acclaimed Whistleblower magazine, “STRESSED AND DEPRESSED: The unreported health crisis of the Obama era.”

What on earth is going on? Why isn’t medical science – and for that matter all of our incredible scientific and technological innovations in every area of life – reducing our stress and lightening our load? Why doesn’t the almost-magical availability of the world’s accumulated knowledge, thanks to the Internet, make us more enlightened and happy? Why is it that, instead, more and more of us are so stressed out as to be on a collision course with illness, misery, tragedy and death?

Most important, what can we do to reverse course? Fortunately, amazingly effective help is available – but more on that later.

‘He wants people to snap’

“Life is difficult,” wrote psychiatrist M. Scott Peck at the outset of his international best-seller, “The Road Less Traveled.” Stress, difficulties, disappointments, accidents, disease, misfortune, cruelty, betrayal – they’re unavoidable in this life.

Yet, during eras when society and families are stable, unified and fundamentally decent and moral – as, say, America during the 1950s – the stress level for each person is minimized, or at least not compounded by a perverse society. Conversely, when – as is the case today – we have widespread family breakdown, a depraved culture that mocks traditional moral values, a chaotic economy and disintegrating monetary system and a power-mad government dominated by demagogues and sociopaths, the normal stresses of life are greatly multiplied.

Thus it has come to pass that America, long the hope of the world, has grown increasingly dispirited and angry, which in turn breeds anxiety, fear, confusion, hopelessness and depression.

After all, let’s face the hard facts: We just re-elected perhaps the worst president in history, someone manifestly obsessed with dismantling traditional, free-market capitalist America and transforming it into a socialist nanny state. That in itself is highly stressful – at least for the roughly half the population that still understands socialism always leads to a profound loss of freedom and prosperity.

Then there’s today’s relentless economic pressures: high unemployment (the actual rate is at least double that of the “official” government rate), foreclosures and bankruptcies, a stagnant growth rate, 11,000 new people signing up for food stamps every single day, rising taxes for the entire middle class whose net worth is simultaneously shrinking, ever-higher prices for food, gas and other essentials – and overshadowing it all, a galactic national debt burden, courtesy of a wildly out-of-control government unrestrained by either the Constitution or common sense.

That, too, is very stressful. Top it all off with an administration continually abusing the public for the sake of enlarging and consolidating its political power – for instance, by purposely making the “sequester” cuts hurt Americans, even our active-duty soldiers, as much as possible.

Make no mistake: This sort of stress on Americans is not only intentional on the part of Team Obama – it is strategic. Remember, these people are revolutionaries (that is, engaged in “bringing about a major or fundamental change,” as Merriam-Webster puts it) and utterly committed to replacing one societal structure – America’s constitutional, limited-government, free-enterprise system – with another – a socialist, wealth-redistributionist system run by an all-powerful government.

Such a radical change cannot be accomplished while Americans are calm, happy, content and grateful for their blessings. Citizens must be unhappy and stressed out. Indeed, widespread popular discontent has always been the required fuel for leftist transformation.

Just reading a few pages into Saul Alinsky’s notorious “Rules for Radicals,” one encounters repeated confirmation that the very key to radical “change” is keeping the populace angry, encouraging their grievances, stoking their resentments and making sure they are continually upset. That is the primary psychological dynamic of “community organizing” – and America today is led by community-organizer-in-chief Barack Obama, a long-time master practitioner and instructor in Alinsky’s neo-Marxist agitation methods.

Top radio talker Rush Limbaugh recently picked up on this normally unspoken aspect of Obama’s modus operandi: “I think he wants people to snap,” opined Rush. “I think Obama is challenging everybody’s sanity. Obama [is] literally pushing people to snap, attacking the very sanity of the country.”

Commenting on Obama’s sudden obsession with employing every means possible to deny law-abiding Americans their constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms, Limbaugh exclaimed: “All of this is so in our face. Everything that people hold dear is under assault. Deliberately making people upset! This is not what presidents do.”


It’s not what presidents do – unless they happen to be leftist revolutionaries, in which case “deliberately making people upset” is precisely what they do to accomplish their intended “fundamental transformation.”

We need to realize that Americans could not have twice elected a leader as transcendentally unworthy of the presidency as Barack Obama without first having had their minds and hearts captured. Through constant leftist indoctrination, emotional manipulation, ruthless intimidation – and then being rewarded once they have “converted” – perhaps half of the American electorate has been programmed over the course of decades by a subversive school system and equally perverse “news” establishment. Truth be told, both institutions have become full-blown abominations, occupying as they do near-sacred stations of public trust in American civilization.

Of course, at the nuclear core of the myriad assaults on traditional America is the rejection (at least by society’s elites) of God and repudiation of the Judeo-Christian values that underpin Western civilization. This in turn has led to pervasive societal disintegration and a Pandora’s Box of almost unimaginable problems.

Unfortunately, despite our nation’s growing number of seriously troubled people, psychiatry provides little help. It has evolved in our secular, mechanistic culture to see virtually all mental, emotional and spiritual problems as genetic or physiological in origin. No longer is there any such thing as sin. Nothing is moral or spiritual. Good character, introspection, understanding, repentance and forgiveness, so vital to genuine healing, are now irrelevant. Just write a prescription.

Since the current research fad is to conclude (as the National Institute of Mental Health puts it) that “depressive illnesses are disorders of the brain,” psychiatry has come to rely heavily on altering our brain chemistry by (in the case of depression) tricking it into producing higher levels of neurotransmitters like serotonin and norepinephrine. But this forces us to ask an obvious question: What are you talking about? Do you really believe that the 23 percent of American women ages 40 through 59 currently on antidepressants ALL have defective or diseased brains?

Or, is it just possible that, rather than tens of millions of inexplicably damaged brains, much of today’s epidemic of “depression” and other “disorders” has a lot more to do with the prevalence of stress, pressure, confusion, cruelty, anger, injustice, temptation and corruption all around us – and our inability to deal with it without being infected and hurt by it?

Finding the way out

There are, of course, proven commonsense steps each individual can take to minimize the effects of stress. Chuck Norris’ personal list of “12 ways to avoid depression” is as good as any available online, and encompasses everything from diet and exercise to meditation and gratitude to God.

But boiling the matter down to core essentials, there are really three time-tested elements required for staying healthy physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. They are:

1) A genuinely healthful diet: Newsflash – eating the wrong foods (or eating too much) causes huge problems. Obesity is not only stressful, but has myriad adverse health effects, including depression. Likewise, eating foods that are heavily processed, high-sugar, adulterated, chemicalized, processed, artificially flavored, colored, sweetened and preserved stresses both body and mind. As WND columnist and orthopedic surgeon Lee Hieb, M.D., puts it, “If my great-grandmother would not have recognized something as food … I don’t eat it.”

Mountains of research and dietary wisdom can be boiled down to this: Eat a variety of fresh, natural foods, especially vegetables and fruits and particularly lots of enzyme-rich raw foods. Fish and chicken are fine, so is red meat in moderation, same with dairy (eggs, milk and butter – not margarine), but buy natural/organic whenever possible.

2) Regular exercise: A good exercise regimen not only helps keep our heart (and the rest of us) healthy, it confers untold benefits, tangible and intangible – plus it is, all by itself, a major de-stressor! Again, WND columnist Chuck Norris, who as a six-time undefeated world karate champion (and reputedly the world’s toughest man) knows a little about exercise, says this: “Exercise is a cure for so many ills; depression is one of many. Exercise is so powerful on our mind that Men’s Health calls it the drug-free depression cure.” Enough said. Just do it.

3) Personal quiet time for prayer and reflection, allowing us the opportunity to seek the Creator’s will while letting go of accumulated anger, frustration and resentment toward others. (In other words, renewing our love for God and our neighbor.) Anger in all its forms has long been shown to be at the very root of many serious problems and illnesses, both physical and mental.

Pause button. One all-important point needs to be made here: It is not the stress itself that harms us, but rather, the way we overreact emotionally to it. And primarily, that reaction is one of resentment, either overt or subtle.

Grasping this often-overlooked fact leads directly to the bottom-line principle for successfully coping with stress, whether it’s related to money, work, health, relationships or trauma: Learn to calmly endure the stress (or as the Bible expresses it, “trials and tribulations”) with genuine patience and faith instead of anger and frustration, and an amazing thing happens: The stress, rather than making us sick and debilitated, actually serves to make us stronger, more at peace and more whole.

Help with this all-important facet of stress management comes, ironically, from the occupation Forbes calls the “most stressful job” in America – namely, the U.S. military.

Despite the tremendous ravages of war stress – 22 suicides per day among U.S. military veterans (on average) and an epidemic of post-traumatic stress disorder and other war-trauma conditions streaming out of Iraq and Afghanistan – a quiet revolution in overcoming stress is nevertheless unfolding within the military.

Like the constantly inculcated attribute of “resilience,” the military has also found the practice of “mindfulness” to be extremely helpful in overcoming stress. And the gold standard in this growing field is “Be Still and Know,” a simple and time-tested awareness exercise that been used in all five armed service branches for many years.

Currently relied on by tens of thousands of soldiers and veterans, “Be Still and Know” is the key ingredient included in a compact disc titled “Coping Strategies.” In essence, the 30-minute exercise helps users discover genuine patience, mental clarity and (a word the Founding Fathers used a lot) equanimity. It has been highly endorsed by both the U.S. Army’s chief of chaplains, Maj. Gen. Douglas L. Carter, who calls it a “great resource for our Soldiers,” and Col. John Bradley, M.D., long the chief of psychiatry at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

“Coping Strategies’” distributing organization, the nonprofit Patriot Outreach founded by U.S. Army Col. Antonio P. Monaco, offers the CD (or Internet download) free to all U.S. military personnel, veterans and family members upon request. It is also readily available to civilians, at a nominal charge to support the free grants to the military. Patriot Outreach’s program has been publicly praised by Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad as well as former GOP presidential candidate Sen. Rick Santorum.

Having written about “Coping Strategies” and the “Be Still and Know” exercise a couple of years ago, I recently checked in with a member of the Patriot Outreach team, Navy Special Ops veteran Lee Booton, for an update.

Booton, who experienced a lot of hand-to-hand combat, came home from Vietnam with a nice big fat case of post-traumatic stress disorder. (“In the middle of the night I was pounding on my wife, thinking I was still fighting the North Vietnamese,” he told me. “I felt horrible.”) Yet years later, when he was introduced to “Be Still and Know,” Booton knew it provided the answer he and other stressed-out soldiers were desperately seeking. Over the past five years, volunteering with Patriot Outreach, Booton has “met face to face with returning troops” and personally “handed out between 5,000 and 6,000″ of the “Coping Strategies” CDs to vets and encouraged others to download the exercises for free. (There are actually four exercises included in “Coping Strategies” – the main one, “Be Still and Know,” plus three others that focus specifically on “Overcoming Pain,” “Overcoming Fear” and “Overcoming Stress.”)

Does he ever hear back from the soldiers he helps? “Yes!” says Booton enthusiastically. “Sometimes they give me a big hug and say, ‘Boy, does that work,’ or ‘You helped save my life – this made it so much easier for me to deal day-to-day with all of my issues.’”

‘Cure stress’

“Be Still and Know” was developed by Roy Masters, who at 85 is the patriarch of stress experts, having taught this method since 1960 to millions, his fans including everyone from movie star John Wayne to Internet journalist Matt Drudge. He also hosts talk radio’s longest-running counseling show, “Advice Line,” on Talk Radio Network. The author of 18 books, Masters was featured on the Sean Hannity Show to discuss his newest book, “Hypnotic States of Americans.”


Recently, all four of the audio exercises on the “Coping Strategies” CD have been released in a new civilian version on a dedicated MP3 player called, “The Cure Stress Device.”

“In today’s high-tech, wireless world,” said Masters, “a little, self-contained audio device the size of a credit card seemed like the best delivery system possible.”


In a recent message he tweeted, Masters summed up more than 60 years of work in just 140 characters: “Learn to endure cruelty and injustice without resentment and after the stress has passed you will find the fulfillment you have been seeking.”

“Most stress,” explains Masters, “is simply cruelty, in one form or another, directed at us by other stressed-out human beings, who themselves have been victimized by cruelty and stress in their own pasts.

“Imagine, however, that someone said or did something cruel to you, but that you did not react in any way whatsoever – you did not become upset, resentful or even ruffled. You simply observed that this person was saying or doing something cruel, as though you were calmly observing the scene in a movie. You simply would not be stressed by what would appear to others to be a highly stressful encounter. Stress and cruelty affect us as profoundly as they do only because we react to them resentfully.”

The exercise works so well, he adds, because “it enables you to become objective, a little bit separate, detached and disentangled from all your troublesome thoughts, emotions, heartaches, fears and traumatic memories – and that, all by itself, is extremely helpful, and actually healing.”

‘You just be cool and calm’

“Stress” – our modern name for all the trials and tribulations the Good Lord in His wisdom deems necessary for us to grow in character and faith – is not the enemy. It is, however, the difficult but necessary part of life that tests us, proves us, and ultimately makes us better – or kills us.

Fortunately, in the loving sacrifice of his Son, not only did God make provision for the forgiveness of mankind’s sins, but He also gave us another priceless gift – the perfect example of how to deal with stress. Even while hanging on the cross in agony, Jesus did not resent his tormentors and even asked God to forgive them. That’s the essence of what we need to find.

In one sense, our task is simple: Since our past sins have been forgiven, and since the future is in God’s care alone, we just need to focus on discovering how to live right now, in this present moment, with faith, patient endurance and perfect integrity.

Now more than ever, it is essential that Americans get a handle on stress. The pressures of modern life are being greatly multiplied by the ever-present threat of terrorism and a socialist government that thrives on promoting everything dark, perverse and angry (and therefore stress-producing) in human nature. Remember, Winston Churchill called socialism “the gospel of envy.”

After Rush Limbaugh warned his listeners that Obama wants good Americans “to snap,” he added, good-naturedly: “You just be cool and calm. Everything’s going to be fine. I’ll tell you when it’s not.”

Indeed, to prevent Obama and company from completing their “fundamental transformation” of America, we are going to have to learn to stay cool, calm and collected – and not just on the surface, but deep down in our souls.

Know this: If you are upset at Obama and the maniacal left – if you’re angry, full of rage, feeling hopeless, frustrated, wanting to drop out, or wanting to lash out and act violently – believe me, that’s precisely what your adversary wants. Not only that, that’s how he wins, because when you’re upset and angry and overreacting – pardon me for putting it this way – you become stupid. That’s what’s wrong with the Republican Party. Its principles are magnificent (read the 2012 platform), but most of its leaders are intimidated by the ruthless Obama administration and the blatantly biased and abusive “mainstream media.” Thus, in their reactive, intimidated state of mind, they become ineffective, cowardly and contemptible (with a few notable exceptions, for which we are very grateful).

This is true not just of politicians, but all of us: No matter how smart, moral and right-thinking we might otherwise be, when we’re angry and upset we do not possess God’s grace, wisdom, courage and creative genius guiding our steps, and thus we are no match for the evil rising in America.

But if Americans would discover grace under pressure – hey, Ronald Reagan had it, why can’t we? – if enough of us found strength and resolve that were rooted, not in rage, but in righteousness and love of God and our neighbor, then nothing, and I do mean nothing, could stop us. Having regained our lost innocence, we would likewise see our beloved country restored to the noble land it once was.

“My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing,” James 1: 2-4 KJV.

The preceding is excerpted from the April 2013 issue of WND’s acclaimed Whistleblower magazine, “STRESSED AND DEPRESSED: The unreported health crisis of the Obama era.”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/americans-snapping-by-the-millions/#rwYYAdjg8TUjf6EQ.99

The Power of the Powers of Ten

The Power of the Powers of Ten
April 18, 2013





One of my all time favorite design films is Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames. Apart from being beautiful and technically ingenious, it is a wonderful reminder of one of the most important principles in design—reframing the question. Often the quickest route to new insight is to take a step back and look at the problem from a broader context, or to take a step closer and look at it in more detail. If I am struggling in a project I push myself to explore the system that surrounds the product or service I might be interested in. Or I might dive into one detail of the experience and see where that takes me.

One place I wish designers would do this more often is in the design of mobile apps. In myMarch 21 post, I commented on the sheer number of apps available today. Many, if not most, of these apps are quite well designed—at the level of the application. But all too often, the designers have not applied the principle of the Powers of Ten. I want apps that make my life simpler—not apps that are just simple to use themselves. I wish designers spent more time thinking about how the app fits into a person’s life as a whole, or how it fits into the ecosystem of apps someone might already be using.

This principle can also be applied in the struggle to decide what to do about your career. If you are considering looking for a new job, or redesigning a role you already have, then think about stepping back or diving in. Step back and think about how you want your job to fit into your life as a whole. Look for the interrelationships that may reduce conflict or increase purpose. Similarly, dive into the experiences you have had at work and seek out the places where you have experienced ‘flow’, that amazing sense of engagement and achievement that many people find to be one of the most rewarding aspects of work. Imagine how a newly designed role might result in more of those moments. Apply the Powers of Ten to your own life.

Can you recall moments when stepping back—or diving in—helped you look at a problem differently?

(Powers of Ten image under Creative Commons license via Carolyn Williams.)

How High Standards Can Hurt Your Business April 19, 2013

How High Standards Can Hurt Your Business
April 19, 2013




I was sitting in the reception area of a new client the other day and I always take the time to look around, as reception areas start to tell you what the organization is like. I noticed on the wall there was a big sign that extolled the vision of the organization. It said; ‘We will exceed our Customer expectations at all points of contact’. I knew then that I was in for an interesting debate with this organization. This may sound odd coming from a Customer Experience person but the reality is that it is totally unrealistic to exceed Customers expectations at allmoments of contact. No organization can afford that. As I sat there I reflected on why companies set these unachievable goals.

In a world where global competition is forcing businesses to work harder, it's understandable that high level management find it appropriate to set lofty goals to help drive customer experience, sales and - ultimately - profits. The problem, though, is that too many organizations set goals for their employees that aren't just lofty, but are actually entirely unrealistic. These goals might be admirable in nature, and they might sound great on a piece of paper or as a vision/mission statement on the wall, but they can actually do far more harm than good over the longer term.

A Fresh Perspective: It's true that "almost" doesn't count

There's a well-known saying, or acknowledgement, that "almost doesn't count." Regardless of its origins, the phrase is supposed to be both motivational and competitive. If almost doesn't count, then people need to try harder, play harder, and reach their goals more successfully - essentially, it's a nice way of telling people to do better next time around. That's fine, and a great ethos to have, but what if almost achieving the impossible goal still doesn't count?

Another great example I've come across is when people tell me ‘we want to ‘wow’ our Customers’. Firstly, what does "wow" even mean, and secondly how can you ever hope to achieve that while remaining profitable? This shows me that people haven’t thought through the implications of this.

When senior teams proudly share this vision/mission with everyone, one of two things is bound to happen. Either employees are going to be completely demoralised due to their perceived poor performance as only a certain percentage of customers are "wowed", or they're going to understand that the goal is impossible, meaningless, and not worth trying for. In either case the end result is likely to be either nothing at all or even a decrease in morale.

The solution? Be aspirational if you are actually going to follow through with the actions to support it. If not, aim for something you are willing to support.

If you can see your mission statement still being on the wall in 5 years time, with little or no progress towards achieving it being made, it's probably time to come up with something new. Think about your customers and how they interact with your business. Look at where you excel and the areas that you're weak; identify opportunities; really think about whether you could achieve what you want to, and then come up with a plan to do it.

Having a vision is one thing - knowing that you can get there is an entirely different animal.

Consult employees about their own goals and expectations

Part of being realistic is to understand that numbers and objectives are not human, but employees are. At the end of the day, any new corporate goal will have to be carried out by the employees on the front lines. Do they think it's achievable? Get them to articulate to you what it will take to get there. In my experience it is the management who do not support the vision/mission with actions, not employees. Will employees be driven to reach a new goal or simply intimidated by how high that goal is? Does a goal line up with the first hand knowledge of their department, their customers, or their past experience?

Goal-setting and defining a corporate vision should both be collaborative, community-based activities that get everyone involved. This exchange of ideas will not only allow the business to set new benchmarks and metrics for itself, but it will also give employees a time to offer their input and advice to more senior levels of management. This two-way exchange breeds success and confidence. It leads to realistic planning that is as human as the company's own workforce.

Be ambitious but realistic, aspirational but approachable

There's nothing wrong with setting high standards and lofty goals, and then putting in place the pieces needed to achieve those things. New strategies, though, should be realistic in nature and in line with what an employee feels they can achieve. By working collaboratively and with realistic expectations grounded in prior goals and growth, businesses will experience better employee morale, higher levels of productivity, and a feeling that everyone is going to make this new benchmark happen together. It's a winning strategy with real, long-term value.

To read further blogs on Customer Experience written by the experts at Beyond Philosophy, please click here.

FBI’s UFO Memo Is Most Read Online To Date

FBI’s UFO Memo Is Most Read Online To Date
March 29, 2013



Image Credit: Vladimir Zadvinskii / Shutterstock

Michael Harper for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

The cat-and-mouse game between conspiracy theorists and the FBI has just picked up once more.

In a memo entitled “UFOs or NO? The Guy Hottel Memo,” the FBI calls attention to their online repository of publicly available documents known as the “Vault.”

The FBI is now claiming that in the more than two years since the Vault was launched, the most read memo is one which discusses UFOs. It’s more than 63 years old and tells a third hand account of an Air Force Investigator who allegedly discovered three “so-called flying saucers.”

The FBI further taunts conspiracy theorists, saying the only reason this document is the most visited in the Vault is because some overzealous members of the media falsely reported that the FBI had solid proof of the Roswell incident, thus sending millions to view it.

The memo itself is quite short and doesn’t describe the famous Roswell crash landings. In fact, it’s been proven before that this memo describes a completely separate event three years after the events of Roswell. The subject reads: Flying Saucers Information Concerning,” and is dated on March 22, 1950.

Guy Hottel is the author of this memo and tells a story about an Air Force Investigator who had been told by another unnamed informant about a crash landing which was discovered somewhere near the Arizona-New Mexico border.

Mr. Hottel, the acting head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office at the time, doesn’t skimp on the details, describing a scene which closely resembles the familiar urban legend.

“They [the saucers] were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only three feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed fliers and test pilots.”

The unnamed informant said the high-powered government radars on site had interfered with the “controlling mechanics’ of the saucers, thus bringing them crashing to the ground.

The memo ends coldly with the words: “No further evaluation was attempted” by the FBI agent concerning the matter.

In their memo from this week, the FBI points out that the Guy Hottel memo had been publicly available for decades before the Vault was released. This memo was first made publicly available in the late 1970s and even landed on the Internet before the Vault launched in 2011.

The new memo even suggests that some may claim the Guy Hottel memo describes the events of an elaborate hoax set up by a man called Silas Newton. In 1950, Newton began telling tales about crashed UFOs near a New Mexico radar station. He was later convicted of fraud.

Mark Allin, the chief operation officer for The Above Network told NBC News in an email that this memo does in fact refer to the hoax and doesn’t deal with the happenings of Roswell at all. “The short story is, without a doubt, ‘Case Closed,’” said Allin.

“The memo is based on a hoax that was carried out by a convicted con man named Silas Newton, and it was debunked years ago. It’s a pretty good and interesting hoax story, to be certain, but there is no value in it beyond that.”

7 Simple Steps to Reinventing You

7 Simple Steps to Reinventing You
April 18, 2013





16 years ago, I was a ballpark vendor. 12 years ago, I was a radio salesperson. 10 years ago, I was a reality TV contestant. 8 years ago, I was a middle school math teacher. 2 years ago, I was a social agency CEO. Today, I’m a software startup CEO.

I’ve reinvented myself professionally at least five times over the past 15 years – some more dramatic reinventions than others. Perhaps I get bored easily – or perhaps I’m just passionately curious about a lot of things. Whatever the reason, I’ve been fortunate to have a wide variety of stimulating opportunities in my career so far.

People used to work for 40 years at the same company, and then retire. Those days are almost entirely over, and more and more people today by choice or by necessity are pursuing multiple jobs, careers, and industries throughout their lives.

Whether you are bored or curious, a victim of layoffs or the economy, or just looking for something new and exciting, the opportunities are limitless today in the global economy. But in order to make that career change, you’ll have to embrace the concept of reinvention. I sat down with Dorie Clark, one of the country’s leading experts on branding and reinvention and the author of Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future. I asked Dorie for seven tips.

Here are seven simple steps in order to reinvent yourself professionally:

1. Understand how you’re currently perceived. Many of us think we have this down – but it’s easy to miss something. Google yourself and specifically ask: if this were the only information someone had about me, what impression would she get? It can also be helpful to do your own “360 interviews,” where you specifically ask your boss, trusted co-workers, and colleagues where you’re strong and where you should be focusing more. No, they may not be transparent, but it’s a lot better feedback than you’re likely to get without asking at all.

2. Test-drive your path. Don’t jump right into a reinvention. If you’re thinking of trying a new career or job, take small steps to see if it’s a good fit. You can join a nonprofit board to learn new skills (like finance or marketing), or shadow a professional for a day to see what her job is like.

3. Look for mentors. Many people look for the classic mentor archetype – an older professional sagely guiding you – and get disappointed when they don’t find one. Instead, broaden your viewpoint and develop a group of mentors. They don’t have to be older; it can be anyone you admire and would like to learn from. I formed an Advisory Board of 11 mentors a year ago – and it’s been hugely successful.

4. Don’t be afraid to go backwards temporarily. When you reinvent yourself, you may have to downshift in the short term – maybe taking a pay cut in a new field, or having to take on additional projects to prove yourself. Don’t stress out: if you’re moving in the direction you want to go, it’ll pay off in the long term.

5. Use social media to build connections. Social media is the great equalizer- you can send anyone a tweet or comment on their blog, and they’re likely to respond back. When you’re entering a new field (or a higher echelon of your current one), relationships are everything, and social media can help you develop them rapidly.

6. Show what you know. As “knowledge workers,” it can sometimes be hard to demonstrate what we’re really capable of. So act like an artist and develop your own portfolio. Start a blog or find other ways to create content (white papers, podcasts, a great Twitter feed) and let the world see what you care about, what you know about and what your perspective is.

7. Get a wingman. Psychology research shows (no surprise) that people who talk about their own accomplishments are viewed unfavorably; no one likes a braggart. But if someone else touts your accomplishments, you’re golden. So find a like-minded friend or colleague and make a pact to talk each other up. You’re likely to notice an immediate difference, as more people become aware of your skills, abilities, and accomplishments.

Reinventing you might not be easy – but in the end, it will be well worth it to move on in your career to something you’re more passionate about. And thanks to the internet and social media, it’s easier than ever to get started on the reinvention process. Start with these seven steps – and here’s to the new you!

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Now it’s your turn. Have you ever reinvented yourself in your career? How did you do it? Which of the above steps will you consider? And what other tips do you have for people to reinvent themselves in today’s social-media driven world? Let me know in the Comments section below!



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Dorie Clark is the author of the newly-releasedReinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future. A former presidential campaign spokeswoman, she is also a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review and Forbes.

After several reinventions, Dave Kerpen is currently the founder and CEO of Likeable Local, the cofounder and Chairman of Likeable Media, and the New York Times bestselling author of Likeable Social Media and Likeable Business. To read more from Dave on LinkedIn, click the follow button below.

5 Types of Directors Who Don't Deliver

5 Types of Directors Who Don't Deliver
April 08, 2013



By Jack and Suzy Welch

If you've ever sat on a board, chances are you've had to endure an ineffective or otherwise dysfunctional peer at one point or another.

Not to slam boards; on the whole, they add real value. But boards frequently tolerate troublesome performance from one or two of their own. It's simply too time-consuming or impolitic to eradicate them. And that is why too many boards, in both the public and private sectors, don't make the contribution they should.

To be clear, we're not talking about board behavior that is criminal. With a few famous exceptions, boards will remove anyone who breaks the law. No, we're referring to boardroom behaviors that are perfectly legal but perfectly destructive as well. There are at least five types of dysfunctional board members that "serve" at many companies by our count:

THE DO-NOTHING.

Some of these seat-warmers are too busy with their own companies, other directorships, or their personal lives to care about your board. Some don't have enough skin in the game to work up a real interest. Others lie low for job security. At $25,000 to $100,000 a pop, corporate directors get paid good money. In the private sector, prestige is often the reward. So Do-Nothings rarely challenge or probe. Nor do they venture into the field to make sure what they hear in the boardroom about values and strategy matches what employees feel.

THE WHITE FLAG.

Do-Nothings are awful but not nearly as dangerous as type two in our taxonomy. These individuals live in fear of being personally tainted by any kind of controversy, such as a class action or activist protest. They lack a key characteristic of any good board member—courage. With every public or private challenge, they pollute the boardroom by hyperventilating for a settlement, even if it means selling out on principle just to get out of the crosshairs. Sure, a board must settle on occasion, but never before seeing the organization through a discovery of the facts. Such a process creates a culture of trust between management and the board, and it is only in such an environment that risks can and will be taken.

THE CABALIST.

The third type of bad board member is the director who sits quietly in meetings, often going along with the prevailing side, before taking up his cause behind the scenes and building constituencies to achieve another agenda, his own. In many cases, good board members shut down such practitioners of palace intrigue. But sometimes a board's cabal is its own executive committee, and the result is a controlling, secretive board-within-a-board that turns other directors into second-class citizens. Such a dynamic decommissions the majority of the board's brains—and what a waste that is—but it also undermines the board's relationship with management. Executives can't tell if a director is speaking for himself, the board, or the cabal.

THE MEDDLER.

Good directors focus on big-picture issues such as succession and strategy. By contrast, our fourth "offender" likes to butt into management. Instead of meeting with high-potential talent and discussing industry dynamics, meddlers get all mucked up in operational details. They seem oblivious to the fact that board members are there for their wisdom, sound counsel, and judgment, not the day-to-day running of the business.

THE PONTIFICATOR.

And finally, there is the self-important bloviator who cannot get enough of his own voice, especially when it is opining on "matters of state," such as world events, social trends, the company's history, or his own area of expertise. Like Meddlers, Pontificators distract boards from the business before them and enervate their colleagues in the process.

As a board member, it is easier to let a couple of Do-Nothings hang on till retirement or tolerate a few cowering White Flags as other directors handle each crisis. Or to try to isolate or work around Cabalists and ignore Meddlers and Pontificators. But imagine how much better it would be if nominating committees, usually just focused on vetting potential members, dealt with the hard cases right in front of them. After all, nothing can keep a board on its best behavior but itself.


Jack Welch is Founder and Distinguished Professor at the Jack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University. Through its executive education and Welch Way management training programs, the Jack Welch Management Institute provides students and organizations with the proven methodologies, immediately actionable practices, and respected credentials needed to win in the most demanding global business environments.

Top 10 Reasons Why Your Small Business is Failing

Top 10 Reasons Why Your Small Business is Failing—FYI, They’re All About You



Let me guess. You began your small business with a bottomless pit of hope, enthusiasm, and energy, right? You were downright unstoppable. Then, one day you woke up and realized that “it” should have happened already. You and your business should have already “made it.” Perhaps you’re running out of capital or maybe your passion for your business is fizzling fast. Whatever the circumstance, it’s time to pull yourself up by the bootstraps if you want your business to have an iota of a chance of taking off in spite of your utter faithlessness and negativity. That’s right; it’s time for some tough love. Brace yourself because with all due respect, here are the top 10 reasons why your small business is failing, and they’re all about you:
1. You Blame the Economy.

So the economy has seen its better days, it’s true. But, guess what? You don’t have the power to single-handedly change that. The only choice you have is to accept it. That means one of two things—you can roll over and take the beating or stand up and fight back. You may not be able to save the world, but you can save your own business. It just means you have to work harder and smarter than ever before. Tall order? Yes, but that’s the price of success these days. Deal with it.
2. You Blame Other People

There’s nothing worse than a leader who can’t take responsibility. That’s sort of the definition of being a leader after all. If the people on your team aren’t doing things to your liking, then it means you either hired the wrong people or you didn’t train them properly. The key word there is “you.” Stop blaming others, and focus on righting the ship.
3. You Can’t See the Forest

Business owners who can’t see the forest for the trees are so busy working on the small details within their business that they have little time or energy left to work on the business. Take “detail-oriented” off your resume and start delegating the small stuff so that you can focus on the visionary aspects of your business, like where you want to be in 5 years, 10 years, etc.
4. You Can’t See the Trees

If #3 doesn’t describe you, that doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods entirely. Oh, no. Big-picture people like you often go overboard. If your head is in the clouds all of the time, or if you’ve failed to properly delegate the “menial” tasks of managing day-to-day operations of your business, then you’re still missing the mark, and believe me, your business is suffering for it.
5. You’re a Control Freak

Entrepreneurs tend to think they’re right a lot. They also tend to be real go-getters. Often their motto is “If you want something done right, you’d better do it yourself.” Not so fast, though. You may be a business owner, but you’re not a super hero, and you can’t do everything it takes to run a successful business on your own. Even you have limitations, so stop trying to do it all and learn how to lead others.
6. You Do What You Want

You finally have your own business. No more working for others, so you can do what you want now, right? Sure, if you want to fall flat on your face. Even if your business is based on your passion (and let’s hope it is), there will still be things—and lots of them—that you have to do to run your business that you won’t really enjoy doing. In fact, these things will be mind-numbing, anxiety-provoking, and torturous. Do them anyway, or accept your inevitable failure.
7. You Waste Time

Oh sure, you stay at the office all day and work tirelessly through evenings and weekends on your business. You pride yourself on being a workaholic. But, let’s be honest. How productive are you, really? Rationalizing 8 hours a day on Twitter in the name of networking isn’t going to cut it anymore. Let’s just leave it at that and focus on finding a time management tool to help you prioritise the really important tasks you’re responsible for carrying out each day, week, month, etc.
8. You’re Arrogant

You feel self-entitled, and you think you deserve success. Even worse, you don’t listen to your team because you think your ideas are the only good ones. It’s time to open your ears and roll up your sleeves. You won’t make it alone, and you won’t make it without working your ass off. Period.
9. You’re Insecure

Think you can’t be arrogant and insecure at the same time? Think again. Underneath that big head of yours is a tiny little voice that’s constantly telling you that you’ll never make it. To combat that gnawing feeling of impending failure, you overcompensate with pseudo confidence. Instead of talking a big game to everyone around you, start talking yourself up in your own head. Your team and your ego will thank you for it.
10. You Can’t Make Decisions

You’re super smart, which has a lot to do with #8 by the way, but your thoughts swirl through your head at lightning speed. Instead of flowing in a logical pattern, they spin into chaos, making every decision excruciating. You can see the pros and cons of every choice so clearly, and you spend precious time arguing with yourself over trifles. Get yourself a team of consultants and learn how to call the shots. You’re in charge, remember?

As you can see, you have a lot of faults as a small business owner. It’s because you suffer from the incurable and terminal condition called being human. There are treatments available, of course. The question is—will you make good use of them and climb the ladder of success in spite of yourself, or will you wallow in self-pity all the way to the poor house? The choice is yours.


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Why Everything You Learned About Interviewing Is Worthless

Why Everything You Learned About Interviewing Is Worthless
By Young Entrepreneur Council

Everything that I learned in college aboutinterviewing is essentially worthless. After speaking to those that are close to me who will soon be graduating, I decided to jot some pointers down.

Most pertinent to astartup or early-stage environment, the following points stem from hundreds of hours of actual interviewing experience. Tech interviews will be more tech-centric and sales interviews will be more dollar-centric, but all interviews with an entrepreneur will require an entrepreneurial approach. 

1. The person interviewing you would rather be doing something else.

Don't kid yourself. Very few entrepreneurial hiring managers look forward to spending hours of their day interviewing candidates. There is always a critical problem to solve, email to be answered or money to be made buried in their hectic schedule. Interviewing candidates is a need and not a want.

Make the experience as memorable as possible for them and capitalize on their limited attention span. Use the first 15 critical minutes of pitch time to communicate your personal executive summary. Succinctly highlight how you make a difference, how you help the bottom line, how you deal with problems, why you can be player and coach, what motivates you and why you're there for that opportunity.

2. The person interviewing you will speak to dozens more like you.

You likely have been "chosen" to interview less than you think. With stacks of resumes piling up and a never ending to-do list, the entrepreneurial hiring manager has made a quick, educated guess to speak to you based on the need to solve an immediate problem. Something in your resume, LinkedIn profile or referral has gotten you in front of them.

Make it worthwhile. Be the first appointment on their schedule or the last appointment that day. Give them a reason to remember you throughout the day or during their evening commute. Connect on a personal level and appeal to their emotions. Workdays will be stressful, highly charged, energetic and sometimes painful. Give the hiring manager a sense of comfort that when difficult situations and long hours arise, you can be the professional family member that they can count on.
More: Best Reasons To Work For A Startup
3. The person interviewing you knows the textbook garbage.
Just like you already know how to respond to textbook interview questions, assume that the entrepreneurial hiring manager knows when they are asked by a candidate. Further, if you get the textbook interview questions, run away ... run far, far away. It's a sure sign of things to come, but that's a different topic. Instead, craft questions that are intelligent, pertinent, thought-provoking and challenge the hiring manager.

Likely, you will come up with something that's already been thought of. The key is to find the sweet spot where the question/thought was previously their own or introduced by someone that they respect. This is impressive and says a lot about your ability with creative problem solving. Understand the business and craft questions related to expanding the business rather than defining it. Repeating facts from a Google search or simply perusing the website is classic, textbook mediocrity.

4. The person interviewing you is not mediocre.

Startups and early stage companies have little time, money, patience and tolerance for layers of mediocrity. You are likely interviewing with someone who is either the direct decision-maker or a trusted previous hire. This means that they have either developed their own tests or already have passed the tests so never assume that a half-a**ed approach will fool anyone.

No organization needs mediocrity. Startups and early stage companies especially are not looking for the typical nine-to-fiver looking for defined vacation schedules. Set yourself apart by highlighting flexibility, adaptability, comfort with uncertainty, and a general can-do attitude. There's nothing wrong with living for work in the entrepreneurial hiring manager's eyes.

5. The person interviewing you is a salesperson.
They have no choice in the matter. Every day they are either selling a product, a service, a solution, an idea or themselves to someone internally or externally. You need to have the same exact mentality in the "everyone sells" model. With limited experience, highlight entrepreneurial endeavors that you started in school.

For pros, highlight bottom-line milestones from previous engagements. Talk facts and figures and make it all relative. Focus on your personal brand and use your reputation as your strongest asset. This reputation can come from your studies, collegiate organizations, co-ops, internships, professional organizations or employer experiences. No matter what the examples are, show that you identified an opportunity and capitalized on it. Be prepared to sell yourself or don't bother at all.

There's more, of course, but these five points should get you started. There's no substitute for practice, practice, practice, so if you are fortunate enough to have a trusted mock-interview resource, use them. The worst interviews in the world are the ones where both parties walk away feeling like the hours were completely wasted. No one has the spare time for that.