The Leader as a Systems Strategist

In 1912 Theodore Roosevelt embarked on a whistle-stop tour to cap off a hard fought presidential election campaign.  At each stop Roosevelt planned to clinch people’s votes by distributing a state of the art pamphlet with a stern presidential portrait on the cover and a stirring speech inside.  Three million copies had been printed before an astute campaign worker noticed a small line at the bottom of the photograph which read “Moffett Studios, Chicago.”  Since Moffett held the copyright, the unauthorised use of the photo could cost the campaign one dollar per reproduction.  With no time to reprint the brochure, what was Roosevelt to do?

Not using the pamphlets at all would weaken Roosevelt’s election prospects.  If they went ahead, a scandal could easily erupt on the eve of the election with Roosevelt accused of breaching copyright and liable for substantial damages.  Clearly they had to negotiate with Moffett.  But research by their Chicago operatives turned up bad news.  Moffett was not a Roosevelt supporter, his business was struggling and he was approaching retirement.  

At this point George Perkins, the campaign manager, stopped worrying about the campaign and started thinking about what life might be like for Moffett.  What did the photographer need most?  He came up with an idea and then dispatched the following cable to Moffett Studios.  “We are planning to distribute millions of pamphlets with Roosevelt’s picture on the cover.  It will be great publicity for the studio whose photograph we use.  How much will you pay us if we use yours?  Respond immediately.”  Moffett replied the next day, “We’ve never done this before, but under the circumstances we’d be prepared to offer you $250.”  Perkins accepted – without asking for more.

Perkins’s misleading approach raises ethical yellow flags and is anything but a model negotiation on how to enhance working relationships. Yet this case raises a very interesting question: why did the campaign workers find the prospect of this negotiation so difficult? Their inability to see what Perkins immediately perceived flowed from their anxious obsession with their own side’s problem: their blunders so far, the high risk of losing the election, a potential $3 million exposure, an urgent deadline, and no cash to meet Moffett’s likely demands for something the campaign vitally needed. Had they avoided mistake 1 by pausing for a moment and thinking about how Moffett saw his problem, they would have realized that Moffett didn’t even know he had a problem. Perkins’s tactical genius was to recognize the essence of the negotiator’s central task: shape how your counterpart sees its problem such that it chooses what you want. 

What do you make of that story?  Did you like it?  What sort of man was the campaign manager George Perkins?   Was he a gifted systems strategist, a hard nosed negotiator, an unprincipled opportunist or all three?  … and as you take the time to consider these questions is your perception of this story changing? 

 

Internationalize the Amazonia? Insights from Cristovam Buarque

‘Brazil’s Amazon basin, some 360 million hectares cleaved by the world’s largest river, the Amazon, holds the planet’s greatest biodiversity reserve. This unique, complex, exceptional ecosystem is a colossal Patrimony of Humanity. Should it be internationalized?’

During a debate in a US university, a young US ecologist asked Cristóvão Buarque about his ideas on internationalizing the Amazonia.

The young man said he hoped Buarque, then the Workers Party governor of Brasilia and later Brazil’s minister of education, would respond as a humanist rather than as a Brazilian. 

What he got was a response that was extraordinarily both Brazilian and humanist and which highlighted in very simple terms the complexity of humanity’s struggle with its home, planet Earth.

 

“As a Brazilian I would always argue against internationalizing the Amazon Rain Forest. Even though our government has not given this patrimony the care that it deserves, it is still ours. As a humanist who fears the risks posed by the environmental degradation the Amazon is suffering, I could imagine its internationalization, just as I could imagine the internationalization of everything else of importance to humanity.”

If, from a humanist perspective, the Amazon must be internationalized, we should also internationalize the world’s petroleum reserves. Oil is as important for the well being of humanity as the Amazon is for our future. The owners of the reserves, however, feel that they have the right to increase or decrease the amount of oil production, as well as increase or lower the price per barrel. The wealthy of the world feel they have the right to burn up this immense patrimony of humanity.

In much the same way, the wealthy countries’ financial capital should be internationalized. Since the Amazon Rain Forest is a reserve for all human beings, no owner or country must be allowed to burn it up. The burning of the Amazon is as serious a problem as the unemployment caused by the arbitrary decisions made by global speculators. We cannot permit the use of financial reserves to burn entire countries in the frenzy of speculation.

Before we internationalize the Amazon, I would like to see the internationalization of all the world’s great museums. The Louvre should not belong merely to France. The world’s museums are guardians of the most beautiful pieces of art produced by the human genius. We cannot let this cultural patrimony, like the natural patrimony of the Amazon, be manipulated and destroyed by the whims of an owner or a country. 

A short time ago, a Japanese millionaire decided to be buried with a painting by a great artist. That painting should have been internationalized before this could happen.

The United Nations is holding the Millennium Summit parallel to this meeting, but some Presidents ohad difficulties attending due to U.S. border-crossing constraints. Because of this, I think that New York, as the headquarters of the United Nations, should be internationalized. At least Manhattan should belong to all humanity, as should Paris, Venice, Rome, London, Río de Janeiro, Brasilia, Recife… Each city, with its unique beauty and its history, should belong to the entire world, to all of humanity.

If the United States wants to internationalize the Amazon Rain Forest to minimize the risk of leaving it in the hands of Brazilians, we should internationalize its nuclear arsenals, if only because the country has already demonstrated it is capable of using these arms, causing destruction thousands of times greater than the deplorable burnings done in the forests of Brazil.

In their debates, the US presidential candidates have defended the idea of internationalizing the world’s forest reserves in exchange for debt relief. We should begin by using this debt to guarantee that each child in the world has the opportunity to go to school. We should internationalize the children, treating them, all of them, no matter their country of birth, as patrimony that deserves to be cared for by the entire world. Even more than the Amazon deserves to be cared for. When the world’s leaders begin to treat the poor children of the world as a patrimony of humanity, they will not let them work when they should be studying, die when they should be living.

As a humanist, I agree to defend the internationalization of the world. But, as long as the world treats me as a Brazilian, I will fight for the Amazonia to remain ours. Ours alone.”

You can watch an interview (in Portuguese) with Cristovam Buarque about the Internationalization of the Amazonia in CaddyDevelops channel in Youtube.

Here is a link to the video... http://youtu.be/NGETG7TK4GM

5 Tips for Being Naturally Good at SEO

Your customers are looking for you. Can they find you?

When potential customers have a problem and need somewhere to go, they search for it. They head to their favorite search engine, type what they want and are presented with a list of results Google promises can help them. If you don’t appear in those results, you don’t exist. You miss out on the sale, the branding opportunity and the ability to convert that targeted searcher into a lifelong customer. And that’s the value that search engine optimization (SEO) brings to small businesses. It puts you in your customers’ line of sight and establishes you as an expert.

A lot of small businesses don’t fully understand SEO. But for your business to reach its full Web potential, SEO is something you need to consider. Because SEO matters.

It matters a lot.

As a small business, there are plenty of easy things you can do, all by yourself, to set up your site to be naturally good at SEO. Get the basics down; then worry about the more difficult components.

Where should you start?

1. Build your site for users: Putting together a full website that represents you and tells the world what you’re all about can be paralyzing. Where do you start? What do you focus on? Who do you speak to? There’s so much to consider.

Your first step is to focus on your customers. And that means focusing on usability. Build a site that is intuitive and easy for people to digest. Sticking to best SEO practices like using breadcrumb navigational elements, creating easy-to-skim content, having a simple interface, selecting the right keywords, and organizing your content into topic silos can go a long way in helping customers understand your site better.

By making your site intuitive and easy for a user to parse, you also make it easier for the search engines to index and rank.  Remember, the search engines are using algorithm to “read” your website. That means the structure and organization of your content is paramount.

2. Become a subject matter-authority: Want to naturally attract SEO magic? Work toward asserting yourself as a subject matter authority in your niche by focusing on two things:

• Becoming a source of content: Adding unique, expert content to your website is a great way to set it up as a leader in its field and to build authority. For a SMB or consultant that may mean writing tutorials about your service or product, publishing opinion or thought-leader type pieces, writing e-books or whitepapers, creating videos, guest blogging on other authority sites, and using social media to share additional content. By making your site The Source for trusted information about a topic, you become a subject matter-authority in your customers’ eyes and build your expertness.
• Building your personal brand/reputation: By establishing yourself as a content hub, you’re already well on your way to building your personal brand and reputation. But don’t just stop on your own site! Start building your presence in your local community and your niche by speaking at events, participating in webinars, and being vocal about whatever it is you stand for. The more people see you participating in your online community, the more authoritative you become.

By making yourself an authority in your niche, it allows you to naturally attract the links, likes, mentions, and shares all the SEO experts will tell you that you need.

3. Do stuff to attract links: Any SEO worth his or her salt will tell you that you need to build links in order to increase your SEO efforts. But as a small business, how do you do that? And how do you do it in a non-spammy way that you’re comfortable with?

The easier answer is that to attract links you have to do stuff. You have to give people a reason to talk about you. And on the Web, talking about you means linking to you.

4. Increase social and be social: When you’re creating cool stuff, kill two birds with one stone by making that “stuff” inherently social. Add social calls to action, incorporate social share buttons, allows for user participation, etc.

Not only will adding and encouraging social activity help your content and ideas be seen by more eyeballs, it will give off important signals to the search engines that your brand and your content are things that consumers want. The search engines are looking at social signals to help them find the meat in the vast sea of content that is being produced. Likes, shares, mentions and comments help them to do that.

5. Think about performance: One thing many business owners don’t think about is the way their site performs, both on the Web and on mobile. They create sites in Flash not understanding the underlying SEO issues or they don’t worry too much if a page (or the whole website) takes too long to load. The result of this is a bad experience, both for users and the search engines.

Google has been very clear about the importance of a quick load time and how it plays into the Google algorithm. They’ve even developed a tool to help you analyze and optimize your page speed.

If performance is something you haven’t considered or thought about in terms of your site, you want to start thinking about it. Because when it’s between you and a competitor for the top sport in the search results, the little things can end up being big things.

"the best SEO means simply creating the most positive experience you can for visitors."

Creativity: Find How to Exit from the Black-and-White World

Brainstorming, ideation, thinking outside the box, disruption, creative thinking – whatever you want to call the process of developing successful new business approaches – is something that you must explore every day in your business.

It determines how successful a company can be as well as how to stand out from the crowd. But I wonder if being creative is a goal of many companies? 

Most aspiring entrepreneurs believe their initial idea and inspiration requires the most important creative thinking. Experienced entrepreneurs will tell you that the initial idea is the easy part, and it’s the later implementation, and the competitive business marketing that are the real creative challenges. If you succeed in this challenge, you will succeed as entrepreneur.

One of the biggest problems facing entrepreneurs and their employees is simply trying to copy everything around them.

Without innovation, without invention… Same black and white world. Everywhere!

Creativity can be there, but without innovation, creativity will not be worth for the small businesses.

When we are talking about innovation it doesn’t mean something big, huge or elusive. We want to talk about innovation that will simply reflect your business.

Best, unique, extra, great … But what?

If you succeed in designing your business before officially opening the doors, it should have incorporated competitive advantage in it. Then why you must look into the marketing materials of competition and make them similar? Why you need to have the same behavior of your employees as those of the competition? Because of the product? Wrong!

The customer will not even reach your product if your sales team fails to encourage them to view the products or your offer. How many times when you look that same approach of the sales person you feel uncomfortable? That means the end, finish or catastrophe for your business. Only coincidence can lead to the recovery of the potential buyer to the right path.

But if you have properly designed process how to approach to any potential customer not with the question of help, but with the offer, irresistible offer, your sales will be much bigger! You ask how much? It doesn’t matter! If your sales team succeed in one of 10 attempts it is still better than zero in ten attempts.

As an entrepreneur you are the creator of your business. You are the person which vision and goals was transformed into the business. Your business need to communicate that vision with your potential customers. If you don’t show how your vision is better than everyone else, what’s the difference if I buy from you or your competitors.

You cannot will a new idea. But you can train your imagination, like a muscle with regular exercise, to conceptually blend dissimilar concepts from different contexts, leading to original ideas and insights. How long has it been since you have conceived and implemented a really creative idea in your business? Its time to break out of the mold, do something different, maybe even a little radical and begin to bring colour and flair to your business.

Do Schools kill Creativity?

Sir Kenneth Robinson (Liverpool, 4 March 1950) is an English author, speaker, and international advisor on education in the arts to government, non-profits, education, and arts bodies. 

He studied English and drama (B.Ed.) at University of Leeds (1968–1972) and completed a PhD in 1981 at the University of London, researching drama and theatre in education.

Why don't we get the best out of people? Sir Ken Robinson argues that it's because we've been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. Students with restless minds and bodies -- far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity -- are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. 

"We are educating people out of their creativity," Robinson says. It's a message with deep resonance. 

1. Does a creative student need a creative/receptive teacher?
2. Does a creative/innovative teacher need creative/receptive students? 
3. When a teacher's creative efforts are not received, what happens to the teacher's motivation?
4. When a student's creative/innovative efforts are not realized by their teacher, what happens to the student's  motivation?
5. What is your favourite Ken Robinson quote? Ours “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” 

Imagine you attend to a TED Talk Event. After watching the conferences you recieve a Caddy Card with all the talks attached as a souvenir.     

6. Would it be a creative gift?

The Caddy Card

When it comes to your company a business card is often the first thing your client sees. A USB Business Card is a new type of business card that holds media for your client to view. That means you are now able to store logos, presentations, documents, PDFs, videos, brochures, user manuals… Basically any file that you can use on your computer straight to your USB Business Card! It works just like a flash, or external drive and fits into any USB port on any type of computer. Just plug it in, drag your files onto the card and it’s ready to use. Want to stand out against your competitors? Your USB Business Card will change the way you market your company forever.

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