Skip the whole half-empty or half-full glass.  Economic news is so mixed that it is easy to paint everything with the same paintbrush. Depending on where you are, you could be optimistic that things are looking up or be convinced that the economy will never improve.

However, that’s unlikely to make your strategic plan useful. You can’t write, “It just all stinks” in big letters (even if it does). As you do a SWOT analysis, how can you get a grip on all of the factors that have an impact on your business?

Use a straightforward tool to take a snapshot of your world

That’s all a PESTEL analysis really is. You may already be familiar with this analysis as PEST, STEEP or STEP. Or maybe you do this informally within your SWOT analysis. Given all of the turbulence small to mid-sized businesses have encountered over the last 3 years, staying aware of your business environment can help you prepare for changes in regulations, respond to your customers more readily or identify emerging trends that your business is well suited to capitalize on. And like a lot of my recommendations, keeping it simple and straightforward is best.

What factors are identified in a PESTEL analysis?

Political- This is how the local and national government might intervene with tax policy, laws, trade policies, subsidies for certain industries, industry-specific regulations, infrastructure and political stability.

Economic- It’s a given that whatever economy (or economies) that you do business in is a factor. Other things to identify within the economic factor are interest rates, changes in taxation rates or policies, inflation and currency exchange rates.

Social- Spells out demographics (age, gender, race/ethnicity, location), employee/career expectations and tolerances, population growth and national cultural trends. Keeping track of these may point to customer wants/needs or finding potential markets.

Technological- This factor includes how quickly technology changes and how your customers use technology to buy from you, technological options (mobile device applications, cloud computing, collaborative tools) that make it easier for you to get the work done internally, social media, e-commerce, research and development and manufacturing practices.

Environmental- There is an increasing emphasis on using more environmentally friendly practices and products. It may be important to your business and your industry to keep track of weather or climate changes.

Legal- Awareness of consumer laws, health and safety regulations, employment law, competition laws, international law, electronic data laws and privacy laws among others may be necessary for your business.

Not all of the factors will apply to you

As you go through each area, you and your team will notice that not everything included in each factor is applicable to your business. This is to be expected but still well worth having a complete picture of the business environment in which you are involved.

Highlights questions you need to answer

 Reviewing each factor supports finding what you and your team don’t know. It’s not unusual for a new regulation to be put in place and questions about compliance and potential penalties to come up in discussions with your team. When it comes time to do your SWOT analysis, you will be able to just plug the information into the Opportunities and Threats categories. This snapshot of your world will remove the emotional overtones and make it easier to design your strategic plan and determine which goals to act on.

*If you would like to learn more about this analysis and the Ability Success Growth approach to strategic planning for your small to mid-sized business, please contact Elli by going to the Contact page or by telephone at +1.781.258.9952. Start your new year with growth in mind!

It is my pleasure to introduce you to guest blogger, Joe Sanchez. A great member of the Twitter chat community, #kaizenblog. Joe Sanchez has served as an Army officer and business and information technology consultant in the private, public, and non-profit sectors.  His interests are making a difference in organizations, communities, business, and government via leadership, strategy, communications, marketing, performance management and the effective application of technology to solve problems.

 Risk management is discipline that should be viewed as an enterprise core competency. This means that organizations should review how they manage risk at the project level.

Gartner Group stated @ http://ht.ly/5Ek30 that “a ‘new normal’ business environment is emerging, and most organizations are misaligned in some way.”  The key to succeeding in this new environment is to “balance IT cost, risk and innovation to drive business growth.”

Project risk management plans are developed to mitigate risks to projects.

Usually the risks are identified, assessed on their probability and impact, and mitigation actions identified.  At this level, it’s important to recognize that risk management is not a one-time identification of project risk.  Just as a project’s business case should be a life-cycle document that is regularly updated, the risk management plan should be updated on the same schedule.

Risk management plans should receive inputs from other sources as well like the project’s change management plan.

A change management plan addresses organizational structure, communication, training, and incentive actions, to name a few – all focused on addressing an organizational culture that will enable the achievement of the project’s goals.  Numerous studies have shown that projects often fail, not because of technology issues, but because of cultural ones.  Hence, what are the risks inherent in the change management plan that should be factored into the risk management plan?

Another source of risk management input should be an organization’s lessons learned. 

Ideally, these are in an information repository.  If not there, there may be people in the organization who have had experience with similar projects.  One of the first actions for any project should be to review these lessons learned – ideally for projects that have had a similar scope and scale.  That review may identify potential risks that that project should consider.   Two excellent articles that discuss this approach are “Strategies for Learning from Failure at http://ht.ly/4o6rt and “The Danger of Missed Warnings” at http://ht.ly/4o6ru.  A key point here is that if an organization has a knowledge management / sharing program in place, that project should support how the organization manages and mitigate project risks.

The increasing use of data and analytics is also resulting in management focusing on three categories of data projects:  Generate additional revenue, reduce costs, and mitigate risk.  As organizations develop their analytics capabilities, they should also focus on how to use data to mitigate risks at the project level.

Risk management also drives innovation. 

As Mark Johnson states in “Risk Management and Innovation” at http://ht.ly/36Xeg, “How an organization conceives of risk management will in large part determine how effectively innovation is pursued. … the core competency of the most effective and successful innovators is risk management. … They approach risk management not as a safety procedure but as a learning process.”

Adaptation and learning are the new business imperatives per  http://ht.ly/7MqWi  – more important today that ever before.  This applies to how organizations adapt to managing risk and learning from that adaption.

What are the most frequent risks to projects in the current biz environment?

How would you describe the connection between risk management and change management?

How do you use risk management as an opportunity to learn?How does your organization manage project risk that may be different than what is in today’s post?

What is the relationship between risk management and innovation?

Ready to close 2011 and prepare for 2012?

It’s likely that you’ve already started thinking about how your small to mid-sized business will perform in 2012. Planning is an act of imagining what could be and letting go of what is. Are you coming to the planning meetings full of confidence or dread? Or maybe somewhere in the middle?

Weirdly, any of these attitudes could create a rose-colored strategic plan.

You know this already but how you see the world influences how you act. That’s why a paradigm shift feels so powerful. The very essence is that you have to change how you act.  Our mindsets create expectations, blindspots and beliefs that color what information we absorb and which we ignore or downplay.

• Overconfidence leads to oversights or simply blindness to threats or opportunities. “We don’t have to worry about that”
• Dread leads to analysis paralysis, self-doubt and focus on possible threats. “This has got to work”
• The balancing act gets skewed by the day-to-day duties and not making time to maintain a global perspective. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”

See through a clear lens with these 5 tips

1. Business analysis. Schedule quarterly reviews including a SWOT analysis so you can take a step back and be more objective about how your business is performing.  With the new year almost upon us, you may have to comply with changes in regulations or other variables that require adaptations. To make this easier, use a PESTEL analysis to more clearly identify potential threats and opportunities. Another possible analysis that will illuminate how your business is functioning within economic turbulence is Ansoff’s Strategic Success Model (check out page 3 for chart).

2. Communicate clearly and often. Make time to speak with your team and/or business partner as a group. This avoids wasting time running from one person to another to give the same message. It means you stop and listen to what they are actually saying. This is  your opportunity to gauge the morale of your organization as well as getting information for the business analyses. Even a 5-15 minute group meeting can be very productive when you keep it focused on 1-2 topics and schedule follow ups when issues need more attention.

3. Mentors, coaches, mastermind groups and/or trusted confidant. No matter the size of your organization, it helps to keep your head clear. As a leader, it is important to have a safe place to sort out your thoughts and feelings. Mentors, coaches, mastermind groups and/or a trusted confidant gives you that space so you can interact with your employees, vendors and customers effectively.

4. Know the difference between “nice-to-have” and “must-haves”. Sometimes strategic plans become wish lists. While taking audacious ideas and setting them as targets is desirable, it is also crucial to keep your “bread-and-butter” targets active. You can use the things that produce a steady revenue stream as a means to invest in your next “nice-to-have”. The tried and true parts of your business are the foundation. Be aware of how much energy and resources are needed for your newest offering so you can plan for them appropriately.

5. Take care of yourself. Thinking and the ability to keep emotions in check deteriorate when we don’t eat healthy foods or get enough sleep. Lack of sleep alone can lower your cognitive abilities. When we feel run down, it’s tempting to go with what makes us feel good. Exercise or just simply moving more is a great way to clear your mind so you can cope better.

Avoid the rose-tinted strategic plan.

The willingness to seek accurate information and use it to create your strategic plan will pay off. It all starts with your desire and commitment to see your business as it truly is.

 What tips would you add?

Business owners and decision-makers are used to reading financial reports to analyze the performance of their businesses. So, with all of the advice that businesses should be involved with social media, it seems logical to want to measure how it works. But what do you measure? And do these measurements mean anything?

So, if social media is about relationships, then…

You can say you’re using social media for marketing, customer relations or what have you. But you are really having a lot of conversations with a variety of people. So you spend time blogging, chatting with people on Twitter, posting interesting things on Facebook or answering questions on LinkedIn. You build up relationships but there must be some sort of purpose.

Is it about influence or sales?

In a lot of ways, using social media is a big experiment. There are those who try to game social media by finding certain keywords that attract people. So people will write posts about, say, Steve Jobs so you look at them.  And others use lists that increase the numbers of followers. It doesn’t appear that this is truly about influence so it’s got to be about money.

For the rest of us, it becomes more of a question if you’re seeking to be a thought leader or an expert in your field who shares valuable information. Either way, you are building trust with your friends, followers and fans. The people who tweet or post for you communicate your brand and people make associations with this.

What kinds of tools show that people trust you?

There are loads of tools! It’s mind-boggling, to be honest. Here are 10 that are interesting:

• HootSuite
• Klout (check out this clear explanation from Amanda Webb)
• PeerIndex
• Awe.sm (hat tip to Ivan Walsh for sharing that one)
• Digg
• Bit.ly
• Hubspot
• Kontagent (one of their specialties is the mobile web)
• Trendrr
• Even Google Analytics has a tool for social media (thank you to Krishna De for the heads up)

And there are even more tools not even named here. But…

What’s the point?

There are more than enough tools to measure whatever you want. You could monitor:

• The frequency that your posts are shared
• The methods used to share your posts
• The number of friends, followers or fans
• Your ability to reach beyond just your friends, followers or fans
• All of the above

However, it all comes down to defining the purpose of your monitoring. The reasons you are using social media are your benchmarks for the  monitoring. It seems very clear that there is a lot to learn to make these tools useful to you. Identifying which tool (or tools) will serve your purpose triggers the question, “are these numbers meaningful?” Getting usable information that lead to goals in your business plan is paramount.

What are the most important things to look for when you’re monitoring social media?

Why is this information important?

When would you ignore data from your social media monitoring tool?

How would you describe the ROI of social media?

*Please join us on the Twitter chat on Friday, November 18th at 12pm ET/5pm GMT/9am PT to discuss “Social Media Analytics: Useless or Meaningful”

Twitter, cloud computing, virtual collaboration, telecommuting…what makes a social organization? It’s safe to skip that everyone is friendly or simply civil to one another. So that’s not it. According to Dan Schwabel, a social organization “applies social media and mass collaboration as strategic to new challenges and opportunities to rally communities of people and engage them to deliver business value.”

Tools, technology or something more?

With variable adoption of social media and technology that supports collaboration, creating a social business may be an anomaly rather than an emerging practice.   I was talking with someone at a networking event who works with businesses around the world who declared that nothing has changed and large corporations don’t consider the digital lifestyle to be significant.

So which is it?

In the Hay Group Leadership 2030 research, it is noted that “digital tools offer cheap, easy and fast communication, co-operation, organization and production, and workplaces are no longer tied to to bricks and mortar locations.” This seems to point to organizations having all the necessary ingredients to create a social business. But having the tools ready and waiting isn’t enough. As Anthony Bradley and Mark McDonald pointed out in their HBR post, All Organizations Are Social, But Few Are Social Organizations, the way the business is organized (hierarchies, business processes, management styles) illuminates how connections are fostered.  In a previous #kaizenblog chat (Collaboration in a Multi-Cultural Environment), Ritu Raj defined “Collaboration… includes working together, brain storming, creating a common vision, bringing people on the same page or coordinating with each other to fulfill an objective; a mission where tasks are interdependent, or…that they are all cooperating.”

What if we left out the large corporations?

A client of mine often talks about his business as primarily a social construct that sells stuff.  This is a very different business mindset. If the person I spoke with at that networking event is right about large corporations simply ignoring social media and other collaborative technology, this is an opening for smaller, more agile companies to take advantage of. I keep thinking of Stephen Denny’s book, Killing Giants in which he talks about strategies that smaller competitors can use to bypass or beat larger companies to gain new customers and market share. Couple this with employees desiring greater work-life integration, meaning and purpose in their work, a social organization could be a model that promotes a different way of responding to business challenges and opportunities.

Try this scenario-the business owner/management notices that revenues are trending downwards and are wondering what is creating this situation. By collaborating with the very people who are in the field doing business development, customer service, customers and the in-house widget maker/service provider, information could be shared in real-time via documents (Google docs, document-sharing cloud apps) and conversation (in-person, virtual meetings via Skype, intranet chat networks, social media) to pinpoint the disruption, identify possible solutions, create a plan, take action and follow up with scheduled reviews.

Maybe nobody will be left out?

With the recent economic upheaval, the environment has changed quite a bit. It is much easier to build a strong regional, national or global presence with social media and other technologies. You don’t even need to be in the same building anymore to get your work done. On top of that, most of us are knowledge workers in one form or another. An interesting observation was made by Taleo Research, “To attract the best knowledge workers and keep them engaged, companies must constantly and aggressively evolve how they engage them with mobile, social networks and other digital tools. In this atmosphere of individual empowerment, companies that embody ‘old school’ top-down corporate structures and communication methods will grow increasingly irrelevant to the knowledge workers they value most.”

Research is pointing the way…is this what’s happening?

When you’re already involved in social media and using the digital tools, it is easy to say that everyone is doing it. This may not be true in all sectors. However, the ways business was conducted in the past are changing. I hear a lot of experienced business owners and leaders trying to determine the “right” path for their organization. It is possible that whoever is leading your organization (this may be you) may find that he/she will find the “right” path by collaborating with all levels of his/her organization rather than in high level meetings.

How are social organizations making their presence known currently?

What would an organizational chart look like if the business is a social organization?

How does creating a social business affect leadership styles?

What types of business models could be created from a social organization?

How would you describe the relationship between healthy revenues/profit & a social business model?

What tools/technologies do you see gaining prominence as social organizations become the norm?

*Consider yourself invited to discuss this topic of “Creating Social Businesses – Business of Now Or Future” on the Twitter chat, #kaizenblog on Friday, November 11th at 12pm ET/5pm GMT/9am PT so I hope you can join us. If not, please add your thoughts below.

*Join us for this topic on the Twitter chat, #kaizenblog. We’ll start the discussion on Friday, October 28, 2011 at 5pm BST/12pm ET/9am PT or add your comment below.

Recently, I had the pleasure of presenting a business planning workshop to small business owners. While talking about  living business plans , I urged the participants to identify what needs to be eliminated. We don’t talk enough about how to let go of the parts of our businesses that are half-alive. And quitting? Forget about it!

For the sake of this conversation, I’m going to use the word, quitting. It’s a word with so many negative nuances. Without critical thinking, we accept these nuances without knowing if they are true to our experience.

What’s not working as well as you would like?

When you set your business goals for 2011, you had certain things you wanted to achieve by December 31, 2011. There were positive results to celebrate. But what produces lackluster results?

• Holding onto a product or a service that very few purchase
• The marketing plan didn’t produce the expected results
• People just didn’t want what we offered
• You fell in love with your product or service and didn’t allow for adaptation or iterations of your product or service

Could you let go of something you loved developing?

Some of what we offer to our customers means more to us than simply a revenue source. Maybe all is good for awhile and then you’re doing your quarterly review. You notice  it’s not moving the way you expected. After a couple more quarterly reviews, you’re seeing a downward trend.

By letting go, it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go.

But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning. -Lao Tzu

When letting go becomes quitting…

There’s an interesting behavior among entrepreneurial business owners. When someone decides to close their business and return to working for someone else, entrepreneurial colleagues often respond with suggestions to keep the business on the side or urge him/her simply to not quit. Failure still seems to be taboo, for all those who claim that this gives you some kind of street cred.

Imagine quitting isn’t failure.

Of science and the human heart

There is no limit.

There is no failure here, sweetheart

Just when you quit

-“Miracle Drug”, U2

That’s the premise of the Freakonomics podcast, “The Upside of Quitting”. They state that there is a fallacy of weighing sunk costs. This concept is that we’ve sunk too much of our time, money, and/or energy and we can’t leave without getting something back for our efforts. One of the people interviewed for this podcast is Justin Humphries, a former baseball player, who now assists baseball players outside of Major League Baseball decide when it’s time to quit playing. Many baseball players who are at the end of their career struggle with accepting that they aren’t good enough or too old. Part of this seems to stem from lacking a broader sense of identity. Instead of seeing how they might transfer their skills to another part of baseball or find another career entirely, many players keep playing baseball.

Knowing when to ” shut it down”.

Stephen Dubner captured underlying belief for these baseball players, “Wow, that’s particularly poignant in my view… because baseball’s one of those rare sports that because it doesn’t have a clock, no game is ever out of reach…You could be behind a thousand runs in the bottom of the ninth and theoretically you can still come back and win. So that’s part of the ethic of baseball is never, never, never, never quit. Quitting is  not an option.”

The dissonance between “science and the human heart”

Entrepreneurs and business owners are often like these baseball players. With the recent severe recession and snail-like recovery, many startups and businesses are at a decision point. There are glimmers that things are just beginning to ease up and it’s exhausting trying to keep things afloat. And yet, quitting may not be seen as one choice.

As entrepreneurs and business owners, we derive much of our identity and a sense of competency from our business. We see the financial reports spelling out the science of our business. But, in our hearts, the challenges evoke emotions of grief, helplessness and powerlessness. We’ve put too much in to close the doors. We’re given so many messages that shames us out of quitting. And yet, quitting may turn out to be the best decision we could ever make for ourselves and our businesses. As it is urged by the “The Upside of Quitting”, imagine “there is no failure here.”

Setting goals for 2012

No one would ever say that letting go or quitting are easy or even pleasant experiences. Nonetheless, it is essential to identify any deadweight or mediocre performers. These could be things (or, ouch, people) you are fond of or just have out of habit and these are compromising your business vision. There is an intersection between deciding to let go or quit and your business goals. Aligning your metrics and your heart is an essential task when setting business goals.

What messages do we hear when we’re at the decision point to let go/quit/continue?

How are these messages helpful or  harmful?

How do you let go of a product/service in your business that’s not performing well?

How can “science and the human heart” become resonant with choice to quit?

As you plan your business goals for 2012, how could letting go or quitting assist planning?

*Join us for this topic on the Twitter chat, #kaizenblog. We’ll start the discussion on Friday, October 28, 2011 at 5pm BST/12pm ET/9am PT or add your comment below.

Please meet my latest guest blogger, Joe Ruiz  of Strategic Marketing Solutions. It’s been my pleasure to get to know Joe through the Twitter chat, #UsGuysChat. He brings such warmth to that chat and recently joined the #kaizenblog community. His background includes, being an Epsilon alumnus and former Vice President of Strategic Services at Brann Worldwide. Throughout Joe’s 27 years in marketing, he has worked heavily in the pharmaceutical, healthcare and financial services industries.

Many things have been said about Steve Jobs the past few weeks.  He has been compared to Edison, Disney, Einstein and countless others for his creativity and innovation.  There is little doubt our lives are different today because of his insight, intuition and marketing acumen.

“Life Changing”

Recently my wife started using an iphone.  Prior to this she had no interest in anything other than a basic cell phone.  Lately she has discovered the world of apps and photos (to name a couple of obvious phone features).  She is constantly exclaiming “This is life changing!” She is not engaging in hyperbole, she means it!  For her, this is a new discovery of an expanding universe; a new world beyond itunes and ipod.

All of us have felt the impact of Steve Job’s innovative touch in some form or fashion.

As I was reviewing tributes for this post, I found many common descriptive characteristics.  Steve was a leader, salesman, artist, and an evangelist.  He was passionate and persistent.  He had an ability of turning imagination into reality. Steve had a completely different way of looking at the world.  He approached technology from the users’ perspective rather than the programmers’.  When responding to an interviewer’s question “Why would you rather spend time tutoring a 9-year-old boy on how to use a Mac than with two famous artists?” he replied, “Older people sit down (in front of a computer) and ask ‘What is it?’ but the boy asks ‘What can I do with it?’”.

Steve created more than products; he created great experiences, platforms, and even entire industries.  His disruptive innovations changed the way we buy and consume music and listen to talks (podcasts), to name a couple of the more significant innovations.

Although Jobs was a brilliant strategist, Apple’s culture is by most standards difficult.  Steve was demanding and difficult, over-berating colleagues publicly.  According to Guy Kawasaki, there was secrecy between Apple divisions.  Jobs had a reputation for being controlling and very detail-oriented.  When Steve was dismissed, the company floundered and it was only his return that set the company back on course.

Here is a summary of some of the lessons learned:

• Keep it simple and clean.
• Sweat the small stuff.
• Think ahead of your customers.
• Create engaging and creative interfaces with the technology.
• Design for lifestyle and application, not efficiency or functionality.

Finally, a quote from a 1985 interview best illustrates Steve’s ability to look ahead and see what few others could:

“The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it to a nationwide communications network. We’re just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people – as remarkable as the telephone.” Playboy, Feb 1, 1985

Questions for discussion:

Q1 – Is there a difference between a Visionary and a product innovator? If so what is it?

Q2 – What can we learn from visionaries?

Q3 – Are visionaries truly unique or is there element of “right time, right place” at work?

Q4 – How would you compare Jobs to Gates or Zuckerberg?

Q5 – Do you think Apple’s innovation will be sustainable in the future? Why?

*Consider yourself invited to discuss this topic of “Steve Jobs: Visionary or Product Innovator” on the Twitter chat, #kaizenblog on Friday, October 14th at 12pm ET/5pm BST/9am PT so I hope you can join us. If not, please add your thoughts below.

Not a money person? You’re not alone. Many small business owners are not money people. And there is nothing wrong with being a great idea person or adept at business development. However, thinking that just paying attention to your “cash in, cash out” is the only information you need means you are missing a great deal more information.

In previous posts about living business plans here , here and here, I’ve written about the importance of having a living document and designing it so you use it on a quarterly basis. It’s great to have well written goals that keep you in action and being clear about what you want to accomplish is crucial. But, at the end of the day, how do you know if what you’re doing is working? How do you know if you’re making money? It’s all in the financial reports.

The 3 most important reports

1. The Balance Sheet is like a snapshot of your small to mid-sized business (SME) for a given moment in time. It details the company’s assets, liabilities and net worth.

Now, before you let your eyes glaze over and shut off your brain, let’s take a closer look. It is highly recommended that you read more about   these definitions at AllBusiness.com (highly recommended site) as this post is using just the basic definitions for brevity.

Asset: an economic resource that is expected to provide benefits to a business. A few examples of this include real estate, cash, inventory, machinery or a patent. There are also sub-categories that may be important to understand if you are planning to speak with investors or a banker. In your living business plan, it is important to know what your business owns that carries a tangible or intangible value.

Liability: a debt or financial obligation. A few examples  of this are money owed to vendors, estimated tax payments or loan payments. For those of you who offer a money-back guarantee or warranty, this may also be a liability.

Net Worth: total assets less your total liabilities. This is also sometimes referred to as retained earnings. Imagine it like a simple math problem Assets – Liabilities = Net Worth

If you aren’t using accounting software or have an accountant creating this document for you, you can find a good template here to get you started. Seeing it all lined up in categories and numbers can help you see the overall picture of what your small business is doing right now.

2. The Profit and Loss Statement is another sort of picture of the health of your SME. Simply put, it lists how much revenue (money coming in) is being generated and your expenses (money going out) during a set period of time. This can be done monthly, quarterly, biannually or yearly. Other terms that mean the same thing are income statement or operating statement. This report cuts to the chase. Are you making a profit or posting loss after loss? If you find your business is consistently losing money, it may be time to revisit other parts of your business plan or consider an exit strategy (closing the business, selling it or hiring someone with better skills to run it).

3. The Cash Flow Statement reports revenue and income as well as expenses derived from selling services or products, investing in long term measures for the growth of the company and borrowing and/or selling common stock. This report really highlights the solvency of your business by showing how easily financial obligations can be met.

You can be a “money person” some of the time

You may not become totally enamoured with all kinds of financial reports but you can discover how useful they are as tools. There are moments that you will discover good or bad news. I remember one time in the early days of my business when I was sure things were going south. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the cash flow was healthy and trending upward. There is plenty to lose sleep over. Knowing what is going on financially will help you sleep better and make proactive decisions.

*Want to learn more about living business plans? Join me for a 2-hour interactive Business Planning Workshop on Monday, October 17, 2011 from 6:00pm to 8:00pm at the Lowell Small Business Assistance Center, 88 Middle Street, Room 202, Lowell

Participants will:

• Revisit their vision, core values, and core purpose to make sure they are on track
• Learn simple methods to analyze and measure how their business is progressing so you can make course corrections before it’s too late
• Fine tune their current goals and map out steps so they stay focused on what their customers really want and stop wasting time

During the workshop, there will be written exercises using information from case studies and the participants’ own businesses. At the end of the workshop, participants will leave with a written version of their living business plan. To learn more about the Lowell Small Business Assistance Center, you visit their website or call (978) 322-8400.

The recent economic turmoil has triggered a lot of change for many of us. Whether you are seeking the change or it has been imposed on you, it is important to know how to handle any fear that accompanies your change process.

Read more about Do What Scares You…

*This coming Monday, September 12th, I will guest moderating the Twitter chat, #UsGuysChat during which we will discuss culture, gender and leadership. The #UsGuysChat will start at 3pm ET/12pm PT/8pm BST. I hope you can join us and add your perspective to this conversation. This is part 2 of a discussion started in “Does Gender Matter In Business Leadership?”

If culture had nothing to do with gender and leadership, Lois Frankel wouldn’t have a job. Ms. Frankel is the author of the Nice Girls Don’t Get…” series.  Whether you agree or not with her recommendations about how women should act in the workplace, she highlights the cultural/gender tension embedded in the workplace. Let’s be very clear…there are expectations about men and women that are set in social norms exhibited in the workplace. In a recent meta-analysis from Northwestern University, it was noted that leadership is less tied to masculine qualities now but still women face two perceptual obstacles.

1. There is a prejudice that they are less able than their male leader counterparts.
2. The personality characteristics of leadership are masculine and therefore inappropriate for women to exhibit.

Alice Eagly is quoted in this article about the study as saying, “Cultural stereotypes can make it seem that women do not have what it takes for important leadership roles, thereby adding to the barriers that women encounter in attaining roles that yield substantial power and authority.” Given all this, it can be challenging to find an authentic  leadership style and make gender as unimportant as the color of our hair.

You may be harboring stereotypes learned in childhood

Take a moment to consider your childhood years. Where did you grow up? What did you do during your playtime? What were you “allowed” to do? How were you parented? While the messages are less delineated now than say 30 years ago, girls and boys are acculturated to accept stereotypes as facts. If you aren’t sure about this observation, try arguing with a 4 year old about how girls can have short hair and still be girls. Have you ever noticed which toys are designed for boys or girls? Notice which ones are active versus passive. What colors are used to decorate the toys? How are movies marketed to boys or girls? It’s even possible that your national educational system may be more geared to favor one gender over another.

This stuff seeps into our belief system and stays there until we flush it out.

As  C.S. King has noted in her research, “…sex roles and gendered roles are institutionalized as a part of a culture and reflect important aspects of the culture itself.” If you come from a society with clearly defined roles for men and women, you may have to accept or reject which behaviors fit your leadership style. Indeed, not paying attention to where you come from could be a blind spot.

And yet, are things changing?

Just this week was the news about Carol Bartz and how she was fired by Yahoo. This is a woman who doesn’t mince words at all. Although there are some people writing about how she is a powerful female leader, there is far more commentary on her job title, her performance at Yahoo and how she revealed the process of being fired. In reading the comments on various posts, there are themes about how she is admired and bitterness that resulted from some of her decisions at Yahoo. There are very few comments about her gender.

It’s interesting to note that there is far more explicit research on women, culture and leadership than there is about men. There are some that would say that this is because men are considered the default for most of what we know about culture and leadership. Given the changes exhibited by both genders across the globe, this may be in flux.

To encourage more thought and discussion, consider these questions:

1. How can we support each person to become an authentic leader and fit in an organization?
2. What are real examples of women hitting obstacles because of patterns they adopted or organizational expectations?
3. If women perceive “male” behaviors reflect poorly on them, how should they respond?
4. Are there times to openly recognize gender style differences?
   
5. Conversely, are there times to ignore gender style differences?
6. Does Carol Bartz’s famous strident style exemplify ideal leadership? Is it different because of gender?
   

Please consider yourself invited to join in this conversation on the Twitter chat, #UsGuysChat on Monday, September 12th at 3pm ET/12pm PT/8pm BST. We’d love  to have you share your thoughts on this topic.