via dklimke on flickr

Whether your community is your co-workers, employees, or the group of people you interact with online, success is directly correlated to the strategy in place to achieve engagement.

At school teachers give you a syllabus.  They provide the “what to do” to learn what you need to.  In the real world, we must create our own syllabuses to drive results.  Here is the syllabus I follow to get results with my communities:

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1. Have a Plan – Put the Who, What, Where, When, Why and How on paper.  Make the Why answer drive the other answers.  The Why is the keystone for the entire plan.  Crafting a great How based on a community focused why is what makes marketing authentic.
2. Execute/Engage – Don’t just talk about it!  Go do it!
3. Listen – Put your ear to the router.  Put yourself in the feedback loop so you can actually hear the positive and negative conversations about your engagement. And don’t forget to ask for feedback as well!  People want you to improve!
4. Adjust – Take the feedback seriously.  Go back to your plan and make changes to ensure your plan aligns to your goals and the feedback you received.  Communicate this feedback loop to the community.  Create a conversation about the feedback and start the changes to the plan, accept your shortcomings publicly: truth and understanding is the foundation of healthy relationships.
5. Execute/Engage – When we adjust our actions, it is easy to feel like efforts to engage the community have failed.  Feelings of failure often lead to quitting.  DON’T DO IT! If we listen and care about our new relationships, we can care enough to improve.

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

Strategy to Engage a Community

At the end of the covey training, you set goals in four dimensions as a way to achieve Habit Seven, Sharpen the Saw.

• Physical
• Social/Emotional
• Mental
• Spiritual

I’ll take you through my Mental and Social/Emotional areas of my goals.

Mental

Mentally, Covey pushed us to renew ourselves mentally by encouraging writing, reading, collecting quotes, and developing a hobby.  My goal was to further purge my daily reading to expand/widen the scope of what I read online.   The first thing I did was to remove the standard social media and tech guard out of my feed reader.  I was sick of reading the same piece of news from 4 blogs.  I picked one and am going to stick to it.  I also subscribed to other blogs.  Oh and my wife and I started laughing our bottoms off while reading “Me Talk Pretty One Day” by David Sedaris.  Its outside of my comfort zone and its an absolute riot and well written book.

Social/Emotional

In this area I wanted to focus on three of the suggestions from the covey training in this area.

1. Widen your circle of friends.
2. Let go of the damaging competitive feelings you may have towards others.
   
3. Practice Empathic Listening regularly with the people who are important to you.

My execution plan on this goal was to invite folks over for dinner – simple yet revolutionary.  With just two of us, its easy to have leftovers – but investing those leftovers in relationships is a revolution.   Now that we are moving into a new neighborhood, my wife and I have started to plan a block party.  Its important that we spend time developing those friends and actively being interested in them and their stories.  I plan to work hard to make my home a open place where people feel free to be themselves and free to be loved.

Next week I will outline a few things that the Stephen Covey training walked us through so that by my listing them here, you might be propelled to think a new thought.  We all know it is a challenge to implement change as we learn new things.  I use this blog as a real way to mark my progress and hopefully we can implement together as we learn together.

Best Quote from this topic:  “Sharpening the Saw actually saves time.”

How have you saved time by reviewing your goals and implementing change in your life?

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

Sharpen the Saw – A Challenge to Implement Change

For Reasons Gen-Y is Irresponsible

1. Gen-Y (or their parents on their behalf) talks its way out of bad behavior.

The 7 Habits course had a great quote that was a great explanation of one of the top struggles of us Gen-Y’ers:

“You can’t talk yourself out of problems you behave your self into.”

How many times have you seen Gen Y’ers get themselves in a pickle only to talk themselves right out of a consequence?  Granted there are good ways to talk your way out of bad news.  But owning our actions and the associated consequences enable us to deepen and build lasting relationships.

2. Gen-Y spends time only on what they enjoy, not what is important.

One of the videos we watched in the Covey class said something to the effect that unsuccessful people only spend time on what they enjoy, not what is important.  Gen-Y, the generation full of passion and the ability to choose to work on or for something they are passionate about sometimes confuses passion with enjoyment.  Passion leads you to work towards something.  And sometimes the work on the path towards that goal is not enjoyable.  Most Gen-Y’ers find themselves in the struggle define their personal boundary between enjoyment and passion.

3. Gen-Y was taught to treat others as you want to be treated.

This is great advice if we lived alone on our own individual Walden Ponds.  Too bad we dont.  How I want to be treated doesn’t mean that someone else wants to be treated that same way.  If I enjoy direct feedback no matter what(my friends and I call it (No Grace Period), that doesn’t mean your coworker wants to be told that he comes to work in dress that is only appropriate for a picnic.  We really should be saying treat others as they want to be treated since relationships are about empathizing.

So, these are three areas where Gen-Y fails the responsible generation test as defined by the 7 habits of highly effective people.  Gen-Y has an awesome chance to act on our ideals and achieve supreme success, but not without tackling these responsiblity issues first.

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

Gen Y is Irresponsible

Below you’ll find a selection of the quotes that made my all star quote team.  After you read them all, I am sure you’ll have a favorite.  So when you pick your favorite quote, leave a comment so we can chat about it in the comments!

“I am free to choose and am responsible for my choices.”  – Covey

“Right to pause and own [the space where you choose your response to a situation].”  – The Presenter

“See every problem as an opportunity to exersize creative energy.” – Covey

“We detect rather than invent our missions in life.” – Viktor Frankl

“Urgent things have the appearance of importance.” – Covey

“Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you are saying.”  – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The key to the family culture is how you treat the child that tests you the most.” – A video we watched

“You cant talk yourself out of problems you behave yourself into.” – Covey

The quote that best sums up the program:

“Your life is a result of your own decisions – not your conditions.” – Covey

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

Awesome Quotes from 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Training

So leaving the global company behind, I began a new phase at a Non-Profit.  It has been amazing to move from having 30,000 co-workers to just 30.  In my first few weeks at Beta, one of my new coworkers facilitated Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Signature Program for a group of the newest employees.  It was a great program and enabled me to spend some time thinking about how to define success and plan to achieve it.

So in the spirit of sharing, I am starting a series of posts about some of the concepts taught in the seven habits program.

As a start, check out the seven habits diagram, and lets begin our journey from dependence to interdependence!

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Program

But wait there might be!  The first ever JoeBuddeJr.com video post!  But wait!  Just like shamwow, THERE IS MORE!

You’ve gotta be kidding, you are saying?  Nope, no jokes from me today.

So what is the more?  Well, the first ever video post is my first take ever, and its all the way from the Champs de Elysee in Paris!  Where you ask?  Well right here a gentlemen was selling his skill.  He would free hand cut out a profile picture of a person.  Sure he could spend 10 minutes drawing it out and then cutting it, but when he can free hand it, it’s amazing.  Why is that a big deal?  Because this guy’s effort could have been to just to finish a neat cut out profile in 30 minutes time, but he took it one step further and left us in awe by doing it in two.

Check it out:

Giving 100% is not Enough 

Rebecca happened to be a bit late with her video blog advice so the video is not great by her standards (or mine), but its fun none the less.

What do you think of this artist and his skills? and… What do you think of the video post?   Do you think video blogging is my new blogging identity?

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

Giving 100% is Not Enough: A Video Post

We could all go out and follow some generic advice (generic = terrible) about how to throw a birthday party for a co-worker.  Or we could break every etiquette rule about how to buy a gift for a co-worker.  But I am not into that.

I want to help you make the most of your office birthday party, because if yours are like mine have been, they really need some work.  And for something that happens at least once a month like in my office, its just too often to ignore.

How Do I fix an Office Birthday Party Fiasco?

1. It’s only awkward if you make it awkward:  If you are in a situation, or approach one thinking it will be awkward then it will be.  Its time to change your attitude.
2. In lieu of standing around waiting for someone to be the first one to go pick a cookie or a piece of cake off the table, pick up the cookies/cake and pass them out.  It’ll help change everyone else’s attitude since I have changed mine after step number one!
3. Have an action plan for the dreaded song:  I look at people in the eyes when singing happy birthday – even if  I’m the birthday boy.  It lets everyone know that I am appreciative of their less than stellar vocal abilities.

So those are a few things I do to end the terribleness that is an office birthday party.  If you are still a debbie downer on office birthdays I suggest that you celebrate all your office birthdays on one day a year.  Think about it. Way less calories, and way less of the awkward effort you put towards choosing what to do while people sing happy birthday to you.

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

How to Improve your Office Birthday Party

Its only awkward if you make it awkward.

Yes, its not the situation, moment or silence.  Its you.  You make that office party, networking event, church service, party, meeting, luncheon or comment awkward and uncomfortable.  Its time we all quit blaming the situation and owned it.  We make ourselves feel uncomfortable.

So lets work together to eliminate the awkward moment.  Lets approach situations with a clean slate.  Lets let the situation dictate the feel of the event, not your awkward magnet attitude you carry around like a merit badge.  Leave your sash or whatever at home and be prepared with a clean slate attitude.

It took me a long time to own my little saying, but I’ve found it turns potentially awkward situations into amazing opportunities.

Now I just need to remind myself of it when someone sings the happy birthday song to me.

Post from: Joe Budde Jr. More about business operations and Joe can be found at his blog.

Awkward is as Awkward Does: Battling The Awkward Turtle