The drive to fight and win against an enemy will stir passion in your employees and your customers.

Having an Enemy to Overcome is a Powerful Motivator

Your enemy doesn’t have to be your competition. Your enemy doesn’t have to be your competition. Your fight can be a cause such as “ridding the world of bad software.”

Having a clear flag for people to get behind will attract people to your cause.

Society has gone full circle. No matter how fast technology transforms the world around us, human needs don’t change. The Internet is enabling a return of the best qualities of the way life used to be.

Social Media Has Made the World One Big Small Town.

The things that once mattered most in small town life are important again, but on a global scale: reputation, word of mouth, and one-on-one personal relationships
– From The Startup Daily

US “adspend” in the first quarter of 2011 grew by 4.4pc over the same period in 2010 to reach US$32.5bn, new data from Kantar Media reveals.

The media research and insights company said that first quarter performance fell below 2010 levels, but that the ad market has now achieved five consecutive quarters of year-on-year growth.
“With the advertising recovery in its second year, 2011 gets benchmarked against the elevated spending levels of last year and that makes for tougher comparisons,” said Jon Swallen, SVP research Kantar Media Intelligence NA. “Despite slowing growth, there are positive signs. The market expanded by US$1.4bn during the first quarter which nearly equals the amount of gain at the start of 2010 when the recovery began. In addition, a rising proportion of advertisers are increasing their ad budgets and this indicates spending growth is still rippling outward through the market.”
According to the research, TV expenditure rose by 5.3pc, internet display advertising was up 14.6pc, radio grew by 1.3pc, magazines increased by 4.5pc, while outdoor surged 12.5pc. Spend on newspapers, however, declined by 2.1pc, with local newspapers down 1.1pc, national newspapers down 7.5pc and Spanish language newspapers falling 7.4pc.
The research also reveals that spending among the 10 largest advertisers in the opening quarter of 2011 was US$4,279.6m, up 6.7pc on the first quarter of 2010. Among the top 100 marketers, a diversified group that accounts for nearly half of all measured ad expenditures, budgets climbed 4.8pc.
Procter & Gamble topped the spending league with an outlay of US$719.8 million, down 5.9pc.
Four automotive advertisers were in the top 10, for the first time since Q1 2004. Chrysler Group boosted ad budgets by 58.6pc to US$319.7m. The company used Super Bowl XLV to launch a new brand positioning advertising campaign with a two-minute commercial featuring Detroit rapper Eminem.The spot, which showcased the new Chrysler 200 and the tagline ‘Imported from Detroit’, was voted ‘Best Super Bowl Ad’ by YouTube’s Ad Blitz.

Everyone knows that listening to your customers is good, but don’t let your existing customers be the only voice you hear.

Listen to Your Potential Customers, Not Just Your Existing Customers

A larger opportunity often exists with a whole new population of customers with simpler needs at a lower price point. Letting your existing customers define your product means you will exceed the needs and cost requirements of those potential customers, leaving an opening for your competition.

U.S. Automakers learned the hard way that you don’t effectively solve quality problems by adding more inspectors at the end of the assembly line.

Focus on Prevention, Not Solutions

More dramatic results will be found by improving the system that allowed the problem to happen in the first place.

Next time you are solving a problem in your business, look for solutions further upstream.

People feel compelled to act in ways that are consistent with how others see them.

You Can Encourage a Desired Behavior by Giving Feedback as if They Were Already Behaving that Way.

Providing feedback—even false feedback—modifies someone’s self-image, making them more likely to confirm the perception they believe other people already have of them.

– From The Starup Daily

To survive in an era of constant change, stay focused on the core of your business; the one problem you solve for your customers.
Stick to What You Do, but Reinvent How You Do It
Remember that your customer’s world is being disrupted too. How can you make it easier for them to take advantage of the new world?

Praising the talent or intelligence of your employees can backfire. If their brilliance is continually reinforced they may put less effort into their work and take fewer risks. Or worse, when they fail they may attribute the failure to others.

Praise Effort, Not Brilliance

Encourage the behavior and processes that led to the brilliant results.
– With thanks to The Starup Daily

When launching a new business, project, or initiative, be careful about spending too much time preparing. Don’t fall into the trap of analysis paralysis.

Start Before You’re Ready

The hard part of creating something new is not getting adequately prepared, the hardest part is getting started.
When launching a new business, project, or initiative, be careful about spending too much time preparing. Don’t fall into the trap of analysis paralysis.

I’ve struggled with controlling how much I eat ever since I was a kid. Friends will tell you I also have trouble limiting how much I talk. Nothing succeeds like excess, it seems.

Except with writing. I’ve rarely had trouble staying trim, a great asset at a time when people snack on information, feasting only on subjects of intense interest.

Here are 10 tips:

1. Know exactly what you want to say before you start to write. Just as a diet involves meal planning and shopping, lean writing requires advance thinking about what you want to say and how to say it. Don’t risk rambling down long roads that won’t take you directly to your destination.

2. When you revise, delete any words that are redundant or not vital to your mission, especially jargon. Watch for fatty adverbs and adjectives. Replace fuzzy descriptions with one precise word. Keep the best; ditch the rest.

3. Reorganize words more logically, and you’ll reveal redundancies to chop.

4. Don’t try to force food, or words, down people’s throats. Entice them to follow the links, rather than making them struggle through nonessential information first.

5. Embed your links into your copy, rather than frittering away words that add no value, such as Click here.

6. Pretend you have to pay for each word you use. Or choose them as carefully as you would the food for your Weight Watchers points.

7. Keep practicing. Summarizing is a brain function that can improve.

8. If you have trouble letting go of a word or section, cut and then paste it on the end of your document. You can snatch it back if you absolutely need it, but you’ll probably end up deleting it.

9. Assume your readers have too much to read. They will appreciate your brevity. And they’re more likely to understand and remember you if your writing is lean and focused.

10. Remember, it’s not about you. It’s about your readers—and showing off your buff writing to them.

Barb Sawyers combines her love of writing and talking in her ebook Write like you talk—only better, and in her blog, workshops and communication services for business and nonprofit clients.
– With thanks to Barb Sawyers