SPRING 2008
Shift Happens
This video came to me via email and I was so bowled over by its content, a remix of David Warlick, Thomas Friedman, Ian Jukes, and Ray Kurzweil’s economic and technological forecasting for the 21st century, that I wanted to learn more about the video’s creator, Karl Fisch. Turns out he is a high school teacher. On his blog, The Fischbowl, Fisch says “my administration asked me if I wanted to speak at one of our faculty meetings. I often provide updates on what's new with technology. But this year I'm focused on staff development and the "vision" of where we should be headed, so I wanted to do something different…. I put together a PowerPoint presentation with some (hopefully) thought-provoking ideas. I was hoping by telling some of these "stories" to our faculty, I could get them thinking about - and discussing with each other - the world our students are entering. To get them to really think about what our students are going to need to be successful in the 21st century, and then how that might impact what they do in their classrooms.” Check this out : Shifthappens. Think about bringing along these facts to your company’s next strategic meeting to start some shift happening within your own corporate culture.

WINTER 2008
One of the best things about my job is how much I Iearn from my clients. The folks I get to connect with have tremendous experience, humor, and wisdom to share. What I find most remarkable about these exchanges is how difficult it is for some of us to describe our strengths. It’s far easier for people to come in reciting a list of perceived “faults” or “weaknesses” —disparaging labels that have been scolded into us over the years. “I’m scattered” “I’m irresponsible with money” “I’m always late” “I get bored too easily” and other falsehoods, drilled in over the years, simply because we have not performed up to the snuff of someone else’s standard or style. I say “Poppycock!” to that.

Part of my job is to identify and access the rich store of treasures within our three brains— the heart, the mind, and the gut— and to translate these gifts into a high performance skill set. What I like do is focus on the ways we are uniquely hard wired to perform tasks— our modis operandi (MO). I hold up the proverbial mirror and show people how to reinterpret behavior patterns or styles and to see them as the strengths they were meant to be. I have a lot of favorite sayings, but the truest one I know is “Everything you need is right around you.” Start listening to your 3 brains, observe your day—to—day patterns and preferences, and most importantly— trust your instincts! Everything you need to succeed IS right around you.

Lately I’ve been devouring the work of Kathy Kolbe the world’s leading authority on human instincts. Her most recent book, Powered by Instinct is a fascinating and fast read that teaches a language around the science of hard wired instinct and how we use it to align our behavior and choices with our natural MO. Would you like to learn more about your hard—wired instincts? Read my February 2008 BrainStorm and then visit Kolbe.com to learn more about your unique hard wired instincts.

(If you are dying to know more take the simple inventory for $50 bucks that will give you an instant 14 page custom summary and audio review. Find out what your numbers are— mine are 5383.)

Read an excellent article about the Kolbe method written by Dr. Martha Beck, one of my favorite writers, for Oprah magazine.

WINTER 2007
Compiled and edited by Kim Dannies
Business Trends for 2007
What are the top trends for Entrepreneurs, Investors, Techies and Lifestyle Mavens in 2007?

Green products, chocolate, and kids' education and tutoring were among the many business trends that made it to Entrepreneur magazine's 2007 Hot List, as revealed in the December issue of the magazine. The annual Hot List spotlights businesses, markets and ideas prime for entrepreneurial development. Rieva Lesonsky, senior vice president/editorial director at Entrepreneur magazine, says, "We cover some of the top markets and businesses that really have what it takes to hit it big. With the Hot List, readers get an indispensable look at these trends to help them discover another opportunity or spark a new business idea."

One big trend on the list is green products, which form a newly highlighted opportunity this year thanks to the heightened demand for environmentally friendly or organic supplements, personal care and household items. While even Wal-Mart sells organic cotton T-shirts these days, this direction holds great potential for entrepreneurs that have a real passion for going green.

Back for the second time on the list is chocolate, which is fast becoming "the new coffee." Also, with colleges getting increasingly competitive, education and tutoring is still hot among parents looking to give their kids the extra edge.

Entrepreneurs use the annual Hot List to determine what the next viable business trend is, whether it's right personally and professionally, and whether it can create sizeable success for them. Other hot businesses and markets for 2007 include wine, healthy food, nanotechnology and virtual economies. www.entrepreneur.com/hotcenter.

Vistage Reveals Top Business Trends for 2007
By Tony Vignieri

Increased globalization, heightened merger and acquisition activity and an increasing divide between Baby Boomer and Generation Y workers are three key trends for small businesses in the coming year, according to Vistage, the world’s largest CEO membership organization. These trends are based on feedback and issues raised by Vistage members. Vistage International has more than 13,000 members worldwide who meet regularly to discuss their most pressing business issues and opportunities.

Biz turns to global markets
“The global economy is increasingly being fueled by small businesses,” said Rafael Pastor, Vistage CEO and Chairman of the Board. “In 2007, more small businesses will not only experiment with global opportunities, but significant percentages of their growth and ability to compete will depend upon it.”

In 2006, two-thirds of Vistage members polled were conducting some business outside of the U.S., with Canada, Europe, Mexico and China registering as the most popular markets. Vistage member company PLAYTIME, a manufacturer of children’s playgrounds based in Denver, Colorado, anticipates that eight percent of its total revenue in 2007 will be from international sales, an increase from two percent in 2006. Six of 10 qualified leads from the company’s Web site come from overseas. The firm was recently awarded a contract to complete a project in Slovakia. “We see international markets as a real growth opportunity for us,” said Mike Evans, President and CEO of PLAYTIME. “We’re focused on establishing strong networks of representatives in key markets, as well as understanding the logistical and cultural differences of doing business overseas.”

New technologies are driving down costs of doing business overseas. Voice-over Internet protocol (VoIP) calling has significantly reduced telecommunications costs, while Web-hosted software applications eliminate the need to establish consistent operating systems in multiple locations.

Mergers and acquisitions not just for big players
Once thought to be limited to larger businesses, more and more small businesses are becoming targets of mergers and acquisitions. Vistage sees many of its members in the $50 - $100 million range either recently having gone through a merger or acquisition, or are anticipating one. In fact, a recent poll of Vistage members revealed that more than 50 percent are considering a merger, acquisition or both in 2007 as a way to help their businesses grow. “This used to be the exclusive domain of $100 million-plus companies, but no longer,” said Pastor. “Either from the necessity to grow, or since many Boomer-aged business owners will be looking to transfer their businesses upon retirement, this trend will escalate in 2007.”

Workplace culture clash between Boomers and Gen Y
With staffing the No. 1 concern of small and medium-sized businesses executives, a new challenge will impact their ability to hire and retain skilled employees in 2007: a clash between work styles and expectations of Boomers vs. Gen Y. In many cases, Boomer executives are not creating work environments that fit the Gen Y mindset. Other Boomers are actively seeking out and catering to younger, less experienced employees because of their creativity, knowledge of new technologies and different viewpoints on business.

Erich Hanson, Chief Executive of August Ash, Inc., an Internet marketing and Web development firm in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has eight employees under the age of 25. “They’re ambitious, creative and tech-savvy, but they also have a different work style and are less refined than more mature employees,” said Hanson. He utilizes group team development meetings to provide structure and guidance, and an open “cube-free” workplace that encourages interaction and creativity.

WINTER 2007
Cold Weather Reading for Business Bookworms
by Kim Dannies
The Power Of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World With Kindness by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval. Authors Thaler & Koval are living proof of their own niceness success in the cutthroat world of advertising – they’ve copped multiple Clio awards during the course of their careers. A hip How to Win Friends and Influence People for the 21st century, their book should be required reading once a year. Thaler & Koval say being genuine produces much better results than the traditional false game–face. With practical credibility they build a case for using small gestures to create positive and successful outcomes. The book is well written, practical, and a quick read offering key principles, case studies and exercises to help make niceness habitual.

A new kind of business genre, the business novel as a leadership fable, is well presented in the third of Patrick Lencioni’s corporate trilogy The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Astutely written fiction, the author clearly and painlessly revels hard truths about critical business procedures. The instructive story is about a troubled Silicon Valley firm and its unexpected choice for a new CEO. (Previous books in the series include The Five Temptations of a CEO and Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive).

Success Built to Last: Creating a Life that Matters by Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery, Mark Thompson. Jerry Porras co-wrote the original Built to Last. Here he joins forces with life coach Stewart Emery and executive coach Mark Thompson to interview 300 successful people– ‘the builders’– to reveal the secrets of their winning life ways. Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, Maya Angelou, Jack Welch, Stephen Jobs and a host of other celebrity biz and other alpha achievers makes this book, published by Wharton School, an easy read in short sessions.

And yet to be read on my list is Tough Choices: A Memoir by Carly Fiorina. Arguably the most talented woman CEO in America, she writes about leadership, fear, choices and her recent debacle with Hewlett–Packard. I can’t wait!
Watch Carly Fiorina talk about Tough Choices on Google.

SUMMER 2006
Summer Reading for Business Bookworms
by Kim Dannies
The Renaissance Soul by Margaret Lobenstine is a book about life design for people who have too many passions to pick just one. Until recently, accepted business protocol has been to choose one area of expertise and master it until the bitter end. My fatherñinñlaw's generation traditionally worked for the same corporation for 40 years and then retired. He almost had a heart attack when his son wanted to take a semester off from college to travel. The GI generation was not one that that encouraged variety and change. Boomer offspring grew up feeling embarrassed or social outcasts if they did not choose to trek the trail of tradition. "Jack of all trades, master of none" was the disparaging message used to shame people into a career of respectability. Today's business climate has changed dramatically. Seismic growth in technology and the globalization of markets demands a new kind of thinking about passions and flexibility. Today's progressive companies are seeking out individuals who have a wide variety of experience and adaptability: welcome Renaissance Souls, you may now come out of the closet! Excerpt: "Carole Brown is the managing director of the Thinking Team, a consulting firm whose clients include Citibank, Shell, and Deutsche Bank. She says: 'to put it bluntly: in today's business world, adaptation is the name of the game. In order to succeed, organizations have to realize that. Once they do, they recognize the need for employees who adapt quickly and easily. And who are these people? They're the ones with the broadest range of skills and employment experiences. People who are not limited to working in only one corporate culture." Companies are finding that it is easier to teach the technical or other needed skills to applicants who are naturally curious and flexible and are able to work in a chaotic culture or market. (See BrainStorms "Skills for Winners in the 21st Century" (PDF) December 2005 for more detail.) So what is the new "right attitude" for today's hot prospects? "A lot of agility, adaptability, a natural propensity toward curiosity, an insatiable appetite for that and this and this and that!" according to Bernie Saunders author of Ten Steps to a Learning Organization. For an up close and personal look at how some of these Renaissance Souls have translated their personalities into successful entrepreneurial business practices read Starting From Scratch by Wes Moss. The author interviewed entrepreneurs from 21 different industries to reveal the elements of success they followed on the path to independence. It is loaded with fascinating stories and realñworld advice that everyone can use.

WINTER 2005/2006
Kim’s Insights:
Don’t be trampled in the New World!  It’s not too late for 2005’s best business book…If you haven’t read The World is Flat yet, RUN, don’t walk, to get a copy of the book or audio CD.

Review from Amazon.com
”Thomas L. Friedman is not so much a futurist, which he is sometimes called, as a presentist. His aim, in his new book, The World Is Flat, as in his earlier, influential Lexus and the Olive Tree, is not to give you a speculative preview of the wonders that are sure to come in your lifetime, but rather to get you caught up on the wonders that are already here. The world isn't going to be flat, it is flat, which gives Friedman's breathless narrative much of its urgency, and which also saves it from the Epcot-style polyester sheen that futurists—the optimistic ones at least—are inevitably prey to.

What Friedman means by "flat" is "connected": the lowering of trade and political barriers and the exponential technical advances of the digital revolution have made it possible to do business, or almost anything else, instantaneously with billions of other people across the planet. This in itself should not be news to anyone. But the news that Friedman has to deliver is that just when we stopped paying attention to these developments—when the dot-com bust turned interest away from the business and technology pages and when 9/11 and the Iraq War turned all eyes toward the Middle East—is when they actually began to accelerate. Globalization 3.0, as he calls it, is driven not by major corporations or giant trade organizations like the World Bank, but by individuals: desktop freelancers and innovative startups all over the world (but especially in India and China) who can compete—and win—not just for low-wage manufacturing and information labor but, increasingly, for the highest-end research and design work as well. (He doesn't forget the "mutant supply chains" like Al-Qaeda that let the small act big in more destructive ways.) Friedman tells his eye-opening story with the catchy slogans and globe-hopping anecdotes that readers of his earlier books and his New York Times columns will know well, and also with a stern sort of optimism. He wants to tell you how exciting this new world is, but he also wants you to know you're going to be trampled if you don't keep up with it. His book is an excellent place to begin. —Tom Nissley