Ideas@Work! - Strategies for Success

January 2, 2008

In this issue...
• Point to Ponder
• Give the gift of inspiration
• Create the future you want - acting on one idea at a time
• Last minute news and views
• Thanks for reading

Point to Ponder

"Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction." John F. Kennedy

Reflect, Refocus, and Re-commit

2007 is just completed and, as they say, in the record books. Whew!  Congratulations!

You've just finished a very hectic and productive holiday season with work and family activities. Take a deep breath... relax. You worked hard this year and you've dug deep into your courage in tackling challenging problems and opportunities that crossed your path. But, how did you do in living up to your life purpose and in moving in the direction of your dreams?

Reflect! This is a great time to pause and reflect on what you accomplished last year.  Are you happy? Are you sad? Are you amazed?

• What could you have done better?
• Ask yourself, "What you learned this past year that has made you a better leader, a better selling professional, or better in your current role?"
• Ask yourself, "What you learned or applied that helped make your community or company a better place?"
• Ask yourself, "What you learned or applied that made your family and relationships stronger, more loving, and more fulfilling?" 

Refocus! Set some challenging goals for this year.

What are your goals for this year?

• What is your BIG, visionary goal for 2008?
• What are your personal goals that impact or enhance your professional ones?
• What are your goals as a family and how will you work as a team to succeed? 

Once you've reflected on last year's achievements and given some serious thought to what you would like to focus on for 2008, take the third step.

Re-commit! Make a personal commitment setting, reaching, and supassing your goals.

Write your goals down and put that information where you see it on a regular basis. Share them with your fellow professionals, close friends, family, and, of course, your management team. Ask them to commit to helping you stay focused and positive so you can reach and surpass your goals.

All the best in 2008! Make this your best year ever.

Visualize it! Write it! Achieve it!

PS: One of my goals for 2008 is to get out sailing more often. Perhaps you'd like to join me on one of my little cruises this year. Make it a sea based seminar... smile!

Give the gift of inspiration

Ever thought, "I'd love to be able to be an inspiration, but I'm just a _____"?

This little movie will warm your hearts and give you something to think about as you begin your year. How can you make the lives of those you serve, work with, live with, or come in contact on a regular basis, better, more fun, and perhaps even changed?

My friend Barbara Glanz is like that for me. We've been friends and colleagues now for close to 10 years. I don't see her that often, usually at an NSA event. But she makes me feel special and I love her for that.

• Who do you make feel special? 
• Who makes you feel special?
• Have you told them thanks?

Watch this little 3 minute movie and think about how you can leverage its simple message this year. http://www.stservicemovie.com/

This is, in part, what I attempt to create in my ezine, presentations and publications.

PS: Barbara Glanz was one of our Quantum Success team of authors. If you've never taken us up on the offer of our 3 Volume Quantum Success Series, I'd invite you to do so today. Use the above link to allow you to directly download your complimentary copies. Tell your friends to visit: www.QuantumSuccess.biz to get their own personal copy.

One of my ideas for 2008 is to create additional volumes for this series. Stay tuned for more information.

Create the future you want - acting on one idea at a time

It may come as no surprise to most of you, that we are in a very volatile and competitive time in our careers and companies. Competition is fierce and not located just down the street any more. People you don't even know are plotting to take your customers, recruit your staff, and help you move into a forced retirement from your career. Happy New Year!

I don't believe in the traditional myth of evolution. That being said, I do believe in the growth concept of business, leadership, and career evolution. If we are not evolving, getting better, and learning to leverage our skills, technology, resources, and teams, we are soon left in the dust by those who are willing to invest in that process.

To survive, to be successful, to grow, we must be looking for ideas and techniques which will help us continue to move to the next level. We must innovate or die!

Two Different kinds of innovation

Innovation can be broadly divided into two basic areas:

• Incremental innovation: smaller ideas and innovations which are improvements on existing products, services and processes. One of my clients has taken CANI (constant and never ending improvement) to heart and has incorporated it throughout their culture. I use this concept on an ongoing basis with my marketing, websites, and other promotional tools. I apply this each time I work on a project or presentation. "How can I make this more valuable, more interesting, and more engaging?" For example, investing in the Applied Improv Network gathering in Banff pushed me in my skills and added some new skills to my tool kit.
• Transformational innovation: massive innovations that impact or transform a product, service, or process. This can be called disruptive innovation. But, disruptive innovation should, in fact, be considered a high-end transformational innovation. This is the 'Fix it, even though it is not broken' application. You need to apply personal and professional leadership in looking at what you are doing, looking at what is happening and making changes to prepare to move toward what will happen, if you are to succeed. For example, we created and launched Secret Selling Tips  last year, in both English and French versions.

That being said, an astounding number of companies invest in creative and innovative idea generation tools and activities in order to generate excellent ideas - only to have management lack the will to act on or implement those ideas. The result is a lot of money is invested in innovation - but virtually no ideas are implemented! This is a sad  commentary on the value of the work and ideas generated by their teams. I have seen this all to often.

So, prior to investing in any idea generation or innovation initiative, management must be prepared to invest in the results of that initiative! Your teams are smart and see what you do, or don't do, with their ideas. Don't devalue their insight and genius.

This applies personally and professionally. Having an idea is easy - acting on that idea is what creates the success and future you want.

Ideas At Work! - Strategies for Success™ is more than just our company name - it is our standard of action and innovation.  Just so you know, it is not as easy to live up to as you would think. We are often challenged to stretch and grow in this regard. We started with 'Ideas that work' as a goal; ie, making sure what we created we could make work and expanded it to a larger, more challenging focus.

Make 2008 your best year ever! It is a choice you make and a path you create; one idea, one innovation at a time.

© 2008 Bob 'Idea Man' Hooey

www.SecretSellingTips.com 

PS: Picture in Denver last October with the Canadian Trade Mission to CISA technology show.

Last minute news and views

December was decisive and fun filled too.

December was an amazing month starting with our CAPS National convention in Halifax. CAPS Halifax hosted us and set the bar for conventions to come. They did an amazing job and I came away inspired, tired, and with some new ideas to apply.

Check out www.SpeakerTherapy.com, for one I'm creating with my friend and colleague Michel Neray. I am learning how to create little movies and this 'insight idea' gave me an opportunity to apply that new found skill.

Went into the studio to record 28 additional clips for our series of Secret Selling Tips videos. Each is 20-40 seconds long. Great team helping me with this project! We will be adding them to our ongoing Secret Selling Tips series this year to make it more interactive, more interesting, and, we hope engaging. We currently have them on the main page. We will embedding them as flash video in each issue that goes out biweekly to several thousand paid subscribers across Canada and the US.

I also had the privilege of investing time with my Wild Rose Toastmaster family, who've started building a club Website with member profiles. Cool! My friend Edna J. even baked me shortbread cookies. That, and standing applause before I started speaking, blew me away. We had fun and creatively collected lots of toys for Santa's Anonymous.

The next day, had an wonderful evening at home with one of my friends and two of his VPs and their wives. What a delightful time having fun, putting work aside to enjoy their fellowship... and to explore some new red wines too. Part of my education in the finer things in life, smile. Followed that by visiting with a speaker colleague who opens his home each year to neighbors, friends and customers. Whew!

Then... shopping, wrapping, mailing... you know the drill, lol. Quality family and friends time over turkey, stuffing (ourselves) and good stories. I am blessed indeed by the people in my life. Thanks!

January will be a time to move ahead on foundational projects.

Great way to start the year. We've had snow, lots of snow. So, was expecting to have to dig out the drive way when I came home on NY's day. Surprise; my next door neighbor Steve's grandson, Kelly had taken the snowblower and cleaned it up already. What a nice surprise. What a great friend. I am so blessed and wealthy in this area.

PS: Happy birthday to my friend KY. Hope 2008 is way beyond your hopes and dreams.

Not traveling as much this month, (as yet). Might head to Phoenix later this month or early Feb. to visit my NSA-Arizona chapter and colleagues, and do some writing. Will make that decision in next couple of weeks depending on schedule. Potential sales rally in Maryland area - waiting for client to get back to me. Just finished (Jan 2nd) the redesign and refined focus for ongoing version of Secret Selling Tips for The Brick sales teams. We've also been able to synchronize our French versions, so they will now go out on the same day as our English ones. That is cool.

Jan. 24th: Hosting the 3rd annual business awards event for Growth Alberta. Details being worked out.

Continuation on our goals and on-going projects: 

• Working on additional cooperative websites with speaker colleagues, as well as adding new speakers to current ones. Am having fun with this creative leverage and promotional idea.
• Brainstrorming some new websites and articles for this year.
• Working on Secret Leadership Tips concept and roll out for next month. Lots of tweaks and writing to get done. That never ends, but I love it.
• Working on tweaking current sites and creating sites for some of the domain names we have registered. Added a new opening video to www.ideaman.net
• Working on simple merchant site to allow folks to sign up for Secret Tips (Sales and Leadership) on-line, as well as purchase our various publications. Then promote like crazy for subscibers who want to enhance their ability to lead their teams or lead in their sales.
• Exploring concept and working on a system and process, so we can hire sales folks to sell Secret Selling Tips to other industries and to larger sales teams across North America.  
• Set up account on You Tube and upload some of the movies we have been working on as promotional tools, smile. Also looking into Facebook and MySpace for the same reason. "They won't hire you, if they've never heard of you."
• Continued efforts to strategically place articles where we can share our Ideas At Work! This has been very helpful over the past few years.

PS: Snap on the wharf in Halifax. Amazing how many thousands of hopeful immigrants found their first view of their new home and future dreams approaching Halifax.

Dreams can be a powerful force in our lives when we forge solid foundations upon which to build them.  What are you building this year?

Thanks for reading

Bob 'Idea Man' Hooey would be pleased to be a part of your success team and to work with you to help make your conference, meeting or training event a success. For more information about customized keynotes, professional/personal leadership training and coaching, seminars/retreats, please visit www.ideaman.net or call our Creative Office at: (780) 736-0009

Ask about a customized conference, coaching or training package to suit your specific career, company, or organizational needs.

Ask about our innovative leadership and/or sales leaders' motivational training programs.

• www.SecretSellingTips.com
• www.SecretLeadershipTips.com  

PS: Me reading a non-business, leadership, or career success book. Nice to have the luxury of just enjoying a good read over the holidays.

*****

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