ACT LIKE A HOST Not Like a Guest

Dr. Adele Scheele

 wrote a best selling book a couple decades back that has been inspiring and helping high achievers for years now.    Her first book, done as a result of the PhD studies in Organizational Development and Change Management,  is called Skills For Success.    

There were many tips and resources plus stories of successful leaders and even new college grads, but the one piece of advice that I have always remembered was her encouraging people to "Act like a host, NOT like a guest" if you want to get ahead in your career.  

Here is a link to amazon and the book      http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345410440/ref=cm_cr_mts_prod_img

Skills for Success by Dr. Adele Scheele, click to purchase on Amazon

Build a Business, Not Just a Job! DeDominic & Finkel

The 2 Layers to Every Successful Business System

Are you working in your business or is your business Working You Over?

I've become associated with David Finkel and the Maui Mastermind teams and am just loving the practical common sense business training that David and his team have developed over the past 20 years!   I've seen these tactics and systems, when clients have hired McKinsey or other of the world's most prestigious business consulting firms.  Rarely have I seen the delivery and execution of common business sense done so well.

Here is an excerpt from his book    BUILD A BUSINESS, NOT A JOB by

Stefanie Harkness and David Finkel.

Every successful business system has two layers: the process layer and

the format layer. The process layer consists of the step-by-step process or

procedure you’ve created. Does your system accurately capture the steps

of the process so that when you follow it, you consistently get the desired

The Traditional Way of Building a Business versus the Level Three Road Map 19

result? It does you no good to formalize poor processes.

 You want your systems to capture your best practices and winning moves, making it easier for your company to replicate and scale those successes.

The format layer deals with how you package and present your system

to your team. Is your system easy to use? Is it transparent so team members

intuitively understand how to use it? Can it be automated so much of

the work happens via technology instead of manual work? For example,

this could be automated reporting built into your database to track sales

or monitor client orders. It could also be enterprise software that your

team uses to run the entire flow of your business, featuring key systems

built directly into the software. Or it could be simple, low-tech tools like

a script for your scheduling assistant to use when he or she leaves a message

for people, or a standardized form that your receptionist gives each

new client to fill out upon arriving for an appointment. 

Done right, systems make life easier for your team and success more predictable for your business.

A Simple Test to Know If You Got Your System’s Format Correct

Having a solid process isn’t enough. You have to package that process in

ways that your team will actually use.

How do you know if your system has a good, useable format?

Ask one simple, unambiguous, incontrovertible question:

Is your team using it?

The real test is whether your team embraces it, ignores it, or

even worse, creates a shortcut system for the task.

Your team members want to do a good job. If your business systems

are simple, intuitive, and effective, they will use them. If they’re confusing,

complicated, bloated, or cumbersome, they’ll ignore these systems

and even create their own “cheat sheet” hybrid versions instead.

But these homespun, individual hybrids normally aren’t scalable. In

fact, they usually only work for that one team member and only as long

as the volume of your business stays relatively level. Plus, even if this

private shortcut works, rarely is it ever captured in a way that the rest of

your business can use it. And when that team member goes, so does that

know-how.

To get the format layer right, watch the way your team members use,

or don’t use, your systems. Don’t argue, don’t preach, don’t cajole—

simply observe. Take their behavior as critical feedback to refine and

improve your systems. Remember, they’re meant to leverage, empower,

and simplify the lives of your employees, so don’t fall in love

with any specific system. Rather, fall in love with the result it’s intended

to generate.

20 BUILD A BUSINESS, NOT A JOB!

The Traditional Way of Building a Business versus the Level Three Road Map 

25 Effective Formats to Package Your Systems

Here is a quick list of 25 potential formats for you to package your systems

to make them easier and more effective for team members to use.

1. Checklists

2. Scripts

3. Worksheets

4. Step-by-step instructions

5. Software that automates a process

6. Databases of key information

7. Pricing lists

8. Templates and samples

9. Common Q & A sheets

10. Written “warnings” for an area, providing how to deal with predictable

problems

11. Spreadsheets with built-in formulas

12. Camera-ready artwork

13. Filing system (paper or electronic)

14. Preapproved vendors lists

15. Standardized equipment and parts

16. Online communication tools for effectively sharing information

(discussion forums, wikis, whiteboards, social networks, etc.)

17. Delivery timetables

18. Job descriptions

19. Instructional videos

20. Project management software with reusable project pathways

21. Reporting templates

22. Organizational charts

23. Pre-approved forms and contracts

24. A timeline or Master Calendar

25. Complete enterprise management software

Would you like a free copy of David Finkel's book excerpted above?  Or a free consultation to see if you are right for the Maui Mastermind Coaching and business network program?  If so, write me at  coach@dedominic.com     

Learn by Doing...The Mutual Benefit of Sharing Your Skills... Geraldine Baum LA Times.....

Lois Draegin, 55, lost a six-figure editing job. She now works unpaid for a start-up website, trading her knowledge for new online skills.

By Geraldine Baum March 6, 2009

Reporting from New York -- Sitting in a bare cubicle, with her reading glasses perched halfway down her nose and typing away on a laptop she'd brought from home, Lois Draegin looked a bit like the extra adult wedged in at the kids' table at Thanksgiving.This accomplished magazine editor lost her six-figure job at TV Guide last spring and is now, at 55, an unpaid intern at wowOwow.com, a fledgling website with columns and stories that target accomplished women older than 40.

"The Women on the Web," or WOW, needed Draegin's magazine-world wisdom, and she needed their guidance through a maze of technology that was as baffling to her as hieroglyphics. In a search for a new job in the media, she had suddenly found herself techno-challenged. She didn't know a URL from SEO.It wasn't until she was teamed up with Randi Bernfeld at WOW that she understood the obsession with terms such as search engine optimization (a method to increase traffic to a website) or used Google Trends to pick story topics and write a uniform resource locater (Web address)."She's my mentor," Draegin said of 24-year-old Bernfeld.

"No, she's my mentor," Bernfeld replied.They were working at adjacent desks, and most often it was Draegin who was asking Bernfeld questions across the barrier.Joni Evans, former president of Simon & Schuster and chief executive of WOW, has recruited several other victims of the downsizing in publishing as interns -- her site's way of doing good in a bad economy."I think of this as a very WOW model -- women helping women, bringing us all back to our true ethic of empowering each other," Evans said. She is one of five founders of the site; the others are columnist Peggy Noonan, "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl, advertising executive Mary Wells and gossip columnist Liz Smith.

Draegin took the internship at WOW as a creative way to fill out her resume while waiting out a collision of bad events that has stalled her career: She is in a media industry that was in a free-fall even before the recession took hold.Other laid-off workers are attempting to be inventive by using newer social networking tools like LinkedIn and Twitter to find jobs. Some are even employing what Betsy Werley of the Transition Network calls the "extreme consulting model.""These are people who have defined a great set of skills and said, 'Since everybody is stretched and needs some of what I can provide, I'm going to work as many different jobs as I can.'

Employers are more flexible about how they think of workers, and employees are more accepting of what's acceptable to me."Werley cited the example of a lawyer who is training as a mediator while getting paid to be a career coach, a public school advocate and a lawyer."She's using every skill she has," Werley said.Still others are more like Draegin, delaying what could be a futile job search by trying to learn something new.

A group that focuses on sabbaticals, yoursabbatical.com, reported that an out-of-work consultant who recognized early on that it was a terrible time to job-hunt decided to do a Spanish immersion in Peru for three months, giving the economy a little time to strengthen, and allowing him to return with "fluent in Spanish" on his resume.After Draegin started at WOW's unglamorous offices in Midtown Manhattan, no one knew quite how to describe her position.Was she a "senior" intern, an "executive" intern, a "midcareer" intern -- or, as she prefers, an apprentice?"We're just glad to have her," said Deborah Barrow, WOW's editor in chief, who knew Draegin from the magazine network and dreamed up this scheme to give her a two-month, three-mornings-a-week internship.

Draegin has been getting a lot out of the experience because this has not been a business-as-usual internship. As in: Get me my coffee, pick up my dry cleaning, and if you're lucky, by the end of the summer we'll let you write a caption.


Draegin has been learning by doing and watching and asking for help. Arriving before 8 one day, her immediate task was to look for story ideas and mash together information from other websites into a brief news item for the "Wow Watch" column. Finding topics was easy enough -- Draegin fits WOW's demographic and instinctively understands the interests of its savvy readers.

But she repeatedly had to check her gut instincts against that all-important tool -- Google Trends -- to make sure her ideas would attract readers to the website.

That morning, she chose to put yet another angle on a story about the California mother of octuplets who has been omnipresent on the Web.Draegin quickly cranked out four paragraphs emphasizing that the "octomom" had decided to give all eight babies the same middle name -- Angel.But everything else Draegin did that morning was more complicated.

In the past, she hadn't bothered to learn such skills as writing tags and URLs because she was paid to think globally about the direction of her magazine. Now she had to think globally not only about each topic but about every word she wrote in the URL, headline, subhead, tag and links in the story.Everything had to be crafted to draw readers."It's really a challenge to do all of that at once," Draegin said.

Leaning back and crossing her arms thoughtfully during a break, she admitted that her mind sometimes wandered. "I find myself wanting to turn my head to what would be good for the website overall -- what kind of writers, kinds of new columns. That's just what I'm used to."But a daunting task that lay ahead snapped her back to the keyboard: She had to transfer eight babies' mug shots from an NBC video to her story. She still hadn't successfully done a screen grab (saving a Web page as an image). After several attempts, she splayed her fingers, the nails unpolished, flat on the keys in frustration: "Hey Randi, I have no idea how to get these pictures onto my story."

Draegin's lean frame slumped back from the computer.She and her younger mentor were a study in contrasts. Draegin, who lives on Manhattan's Upper West Side and summers in one of Long Island's vacation colonies, was dressed simply, wearing no makeup, short brown hair, a lavender suede shirt and black pants. Bernfeld, who commutes to work from Long Island, where she grew up, wore thick black eyeliner, long blond hair with dark roots and a stylish short dress that looked like an oversized gray sweater.Seconds after Draegin's cry for help, Bernfeld's fingers, the nails sparkling with polish, were flying across the intern's laptop, and eight pinched little faces appeared on the page next to the story.

The 2007 University of Florida graduate also had to remind the 1975 Washington University graduate to scroll through Google Trends before she wrote the tag and headline."She took a whole course in this in college," Draegin said with a deep sigh. "And to think, I took European intellectual history."At one point, Evans stopped by Draegin's desk and asked: "How's our intern?"Draegin plucked off her glasses and said with a smile, "Surviving!"Later, Evans boasted that Draegin was, not surprisingly, a fast learner."She was so excited that by her second day she wrote a news story that was a big hit," said Evans, explaining that Draegin's first story received 200 clicks by viewers, whereas her second drew 5,000.


As for what Draegin has done for the site beyond writing a few briefs every morning, well, perhaps that's not as obvious. But there are moments. Like during a discussion of the Israeli elections, Draegin discreetly corrected the pronunciation of a younger staffer who referred to the current foreign minister as "Tipsy Livni.""Yeah, we really should do a story on Tzipi," Draegin said pointedly. "She's really a wowOwow woman!"

Draegin has definitely found her internship beneficial in ways she hadn't expected. While she has long been proficient on Facebook and LinkedIn and has owned a Kindle for more than a year, working at WOW has revved up her interests in the online world. She now tags and pokes and occasionally writes on somebody's wall. She is considering Twittering -- just for the fun of it.Draegin also corresponds regularly on Facebook with her 20-year-old niece, who is still in college and preparing to launch her own career. Shortly after Draegin landed the WOW gig, she used Facebook to tell her the good news. Her niece responded with a message that made her overqualified aunt giggle:Now they both had internships.