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My monthly CIOUpdate column was published on Monday June 26, 2006. In this article, I talk about asking a few additinoal questions to your new or existing SI vendor to get to the bottom of their claims. When everyone says they are the best, you need to ask them different questions get the “real” picture. Here is the link:

Link: CIOUpdate - 8 Questions Your SI Vendor Needs to Answer

Thanks.

I love Deepak Chopra’s quote on the same topic. Deepak says

A simple approach for me would have been just to say “Be present.” If it was that easy, I think there would be fewer problems in this world. People are either analyzing the past or worrying about the future for most part of their waking time. Add to this, fortunately or unfortunately the technological revolution that has almost taken over our lives. Here are a few examples of that

Let’s take a simple scenario. You are talking to someone and you are also answering your cell phone and checking messages. Isn’t it obvious that you are not “fully present” for the other person? People can easily know whether you are “present” for them. They also know your “level of presence.” So rather than thinking about trying to just “sneak in” a few more things, you can start creating an environment where you can be “more” present. Here are some tips:

Think about the environment you work, you meet or you spend time alone. How many interruptions can you handle? Do you want to be reactive or proactive? Whater you do, please get off the JIMP syndrome. Overall, know that it is easy to be “more” present if you take time to create an environment where you CAN be “more” present.

Note: For other articles in the same series, please visit my Squidoo lens on the same topic.
Link: Squidoo Lens: Distinguish Yourself

In simple terms, escape velocity is defined as:

Wikipedia Link: Escape Velocity

Can you remember those days when you worked hard, gave it your best shot and got tired at the end of the day with all the activity that was happening. The sad part was that except your age nothing much had changed after a few years. You were back at the same place where you were. Very similar to a satellite revolving around the earth in some sense. The satellite is moving (so there is action) and since it is flying through different regions, there is change (gives a false sense of progress sometimes) but after a while (depending on the speed) the satellite finds itself in the same place where it started. The concept of “escape velocity” is applicable to our personal and professional lives. If your activity level (in the right direction) reaches that critical “velocity” you start to take off.

Jim Rohn said it right - success is measurable progress in reasonable time. If you are not making significant progress in your personal and professional life, one of the reasons may be that you are stuck in a “continuous spiral syndrome“  or you have not achieved escape velocity.

Here are a few symptoms:

Actually, those of you who have more than about eight years of working experience, you know the symptoms as they are very clear. When you are very young, you don’t notice them as everyone around you are going through the same drill. By seven or eight years into your working life, you see that some people have achieved “escape velocity” and some have not. If you are one who has achieved escape velocity, congratulations. If you are not one among them, you know that you can’t continue to do the same things or worse think that others just got lucky (they were at the right place at the right time.)

I think we are half way into the year and now may be a great time to review whether you are moving fast on all your initiatives and most important to check “is your fast - fast enough?”

Hat tip: Murali Gomatam of Global Equations

Note: For other articles in the same series, please visit my Squidoo lens on the same topic.
Link: Squidoo Lens: Distinguish Yourself

This month I was traveling a bit (an excuse, lack of discipline is the right excuse, though) and used up a bunch of cell phone minutes. I was over by a few hundred minutes (at $.40 per minute, it adds up quickly) above my 1400 minutes per month. I called the fine folks at Verizon Wireless three days ago. They gently reminded me to limit the use of cell phone on that day as that was the last day of the billing cycle. Of course, my friends don’t know that.

So when one of my friends called me later that day, I asked him to call me on my home number. We talked a bit and I told my story of the cell phone fiasco. He laughed and quipped - “Raj, you have to get a life. Do you know why Work Phone numbers have a “W” and mobile phone numbers have a “M” behind them? It’s mainly because when Work(”W”) gets upside-down, you start using your mobile phone (”M) like crazy..”

Enjoy!

Three months ago, I wrote about the need to understand the power of incentives. What I forgot to mention that all bets are off if you don’t know how to communicate those incentives to the right people.

Here is a recent request to participate in a survey. The target audience is people who are maintaining their own websites/blogs - basically knowledge workers.

As you can see, the participant has no idea what the incentive is but knows that he or she has to invest 30 minutes of time giving all sorts of information that will benefit the company that is conducting the survey. May be some people will fall for it and spend those precious 30 minutes. I talked to ten people and eight of them said they will pass this “opportunity” and the two of them said they want to participate. Probing further, I found that the two wanted to participate because they were curious to know what the company wanted to know.

Now, the key thing to remember is that the eight that don’t want to participate won’t tell the survey creator that they are not participating. They just move on.

What can we learn from this? Create the right incentives and communicate them if you want to use incentives to motivate people to act in a certain way. Otherwise, just make a request without an incentive. The results probably may be almost the same.

Here’s a call for reader participation:

Question:

What’s in it for you?

There is an old saying related on the topic of adversity called “When the going gets tough, the tough get going..” What is also true is that

   “When the going gets too easy, the easy get going..”

Today, think about how easy it is to setup a lot of things. Here are a few examples:

1. Want to setup a blog?

Takes only a few minutes.
Few resources: BlogHarbor | Wordpress | Typepad | Blogger | Expression Engine

2. Want to post your photos online?

Takes only a few minutes.
Few resources: Flickr | PhotoBucket | SmugMug

3. Want to post your videos online?

Takes only a few minutes.
Few resources: Google Video | YouTube

4. Want to host your own podcast show?

Takes only a few minutes.
Few resources: Odeo | AudioBlog | PodBazaar

5. Want to publish your own book?

Takes only a few days.
Few resources: Lulu | iUniverse | Blurb

I can go on with more examples, but you get the point. Precisely because it is easy to start something, many people start. What is easy to start is not easy to continue. There are exceptions, though - bad habits
The ease with which you can put information out there may prompt many people to start putting out information. Unfortunately, they don’t have a plan to sustain it. When I talk to some people, they say that they will cross that bridge when they get to it. This is a big trap. In fact, it may hurt more than help.

Have a bad blog and it is worse than not having one.

Have a bad video and it is worse than not having one.

Have a bad podcast and it is worse than not having one.

Have anything bad out there created by you and it may be worse than not having anything out there. Before you make that first move (which is very easy) think about whether you are willing to make that “long-term commitment to quality?”

On a lighter note:

Oops..the above looks like a negative post. I don’t normally write negative stuff. So here is the positive twist to it. There is hardly anyone who is reading the above who will believe it - meaning there will be lot more “noise” that will continue to be created. If you are smart and are willing to invest in giving the best out, it is actually VERY easy to get noticed. The “signal to noise” ratio is so small that all signals will be visible with some effort

I have said time and again that the best way to network is to stop networking…and start building (long-term) relationships. There are no cookie-cutter approaches to networking but there are many bad ones. In this article, I want to focus on what is NOT your networking score.

#1 Number of business cards you have

Everyone has lots of business cards. I have a few thousand of them and I am sure you do too. Half of the people in those business cards, you won’t remember and the other half won’t remember you

#2 Number of networking meetings you attend

#3 Your LinkedIn contact count

I like LinkedIn. There are a dozen ways of using it well and probably a hundred ways of using it badly. Of course, the easy option is to use it badly

#4 Number of Professional Networking organizations you are a member of

#5 Size of your alumni network

#6 Number of books you have read on this topic

#7 Number of companies you have worked

#8 Number of tools that you use to manage relationships

#9 Number of achievements (or feathers in your cap)

#10 Number of contact points with your relationships

There was this joke about a fitness video advertisement on TV.

There is no extra points for being authentic but lack of authenticity has a big price associated with it. When people observe that there is lack of authenticity, they run away. It will never turn into a customer service issue. They just won’t become your customers.

I was looking at shopping cart softwares. As you can imagine there are thousands of options. One of the popular ones out there is making an offer to give away $250 worth of goods FREE if you sign up NOW. Here’s what they claim to be the goods that are valued at $250.

Going through each one of them, you will see that they are either features of the shopping cart software or they are services (like customer support during support hours) that any customer should be entitled too. Authentic? I don’t think so. Now, I don’t have any incentive to go and tell them this because the choices are far too many. They are in a commodity business and not being authentic is VERY costly for them. There are so many people who will walk away from their offers that it’s not even funny.

So the point is..

How about in your business? Do you think your offers are authentic? One way to check it is to assume that you are your own customer and look at your offers and claims as an outsider. If you were a true customer of your own company, what would be your reactions to the claims that are being made?

Let us take a hypothetical scenario:

This looks unbelievable when it comes to money. You can’t get a deal better than that. It is too good to be true. However, there is a scenario where this theory will work - it is when you share your thoughts with the right set of people. Who are these set of people? These are thought amplifiers. You tell them an idea that is at 5 on a scale of 10 and these people can transform the idea to be at 9 on a scale of 10. All this in a matter of minutes. Sometimes you take an idea to them and when they transform the idea, you feel that it was not even close to your idea. They seem like catalysts but they are much more than that. In simple terms, they touch an idea and they make it more valuable than before. The best part - they make it look so easy and make you feel “Why didn’t I think of that?” Now, imagine sharing your idea with ten such thought amplifiers. You will open up a whole new set of possibilities.

Silicon Valley is one such place where there is a huge concentration of “Thought Amplifiers.” That makes it easy for young entrepreneurs to start their businesses. That is from my experience in the last ten years of living here. I am sure that wherever you are, you will find “thought amplifiers” around you. The point is - do you have the time to invest in building the relationships with these thought amplifiers to make it worth their while to lend their power to you?

They say that the biggest risk is to not take any risks. Typically (not always) rewards are directly proportional to the risks you take. Here is a gem that hits the nail on the head.