In the News: Quick Takes

Here’s a roundup of news items, trends, and market data that I’ve come across recently.

Tim Berry, business planning specialist, gives us The Top Ten Business Plan Mistakes. You can also read an interesting article he wrote for us about business planning for consultants.

Over the past 30 years, Tom Peters has given more than 2,500 presentations. That’s a lot of time on the stage (and in airports). Peters now plans to publish a 23-part “mega-presentation” called “Excellence Now.” Every two weeks in 2012, he will release one section of the presentation materials in PowerPoint format. You can see Peters in a short video giving you a preview of what’s to come.

Facebook has become a target for cyber crime. You might want to consider these tips to keep your account safe.

Here are Gartner’s predictions for the IT sector in 2012 and beyond.

Want to be more organized? Try cutting in half the time you spend organizing yourself.

“No” is the new “yes.” Here are four practices to re-prioritize the things in your life.

What are the best US airports for business travelers?

Harvard’s Michael Porter and Jan Rivkin released the findings of their study on US competitiveness, Prosperity at Risk.

The unintended consequence of open office concepts, project teams, and group learning: Reduced creativity. Some privacy in the workplace makes us far more productive.

Checking the Foundation

If you’ve ever bought or sold a house, you know that, as part of the deal, a home inspection will have to be done so buyers know what they’re getting into.

The inspector assesses the foundation of the house, the walls, floors, plumbing, and so on. Then, you get a report on ways to shore up the place.

As you kick off the New Year, take some time for a structural inspection of your business. In many cases, you’ll find that the key to better performance is in making small changes to how you do business, not in implementing some grand new strategy.

To find those opportunities, turn your attention to three parts of your business: your intellectual property (or content), your marketing approach, and your service offer.

Read the rest of the article in this month’s issue of The Guerrilla Consultant.

Daniel Goleman: Leading with Emotional Intelligence

Daniel Goleman is the bestselling author of Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence, and the co-author of Primal Leadership: Learning to Lead with Emotional Intelligence. Twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, Goleman was a science reporter for the New York Times, and received the American Psychological Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award for his media writing. His latest [...]

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News You Can Use – January 2012

Atos, the French IT company, has banned the use of email within the company. It’s just too much time-wasting noise, they concluded. Looking for a searchable list of consulting firms? Recruiters at The Consulting Bench put together a comprehensive, indexed directory for US firms. Wonder what’s next for the consulting industry? Fiona Czerniawska, of SourceforConsulting.com, offers a 12-minute [...]

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Dan Roam: The Antidote to Blah, Blah, Blah

“We have become so enamoured of our ability to talk that we often delude ourselves into thinking that, if we can talk about an idea, we understand it well.” In this podcast, I talk with Dan Roam, author of BLAH, BLAH, BLAH: What To Do When Words Don’t Work. Roam’s mission is to help us solve [...]

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Top Tools for Content Marketing

Anyone in a professional service business knows that content marketing has exploded in recent years, and the trend shows no sign of slowing. But which content marketing tactics work most effectively? How are organizations investing their time and money in content marketing? To address these questions, the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs surveyed more than 1,000 people and published [...]

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Under Construction

We’re making big changes to the site, its content, and even converting it to a blog platform. For the next couple of days, we’ll be making the conversion. You’ll find that most things work just as you’d expect, but some may not–at least not yet. Thanks for your patience! Mike  

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Matt Dixon and Brent Adamson: Why Top Performing Salespeople Succeed

In this podcast, I talk with Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson, co-authors of The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation. Based on their extensive survey of more than 6,000 salespeople, Dixon and Adamson have identified the profile of a seller who is four times more likely than others to be a top performer. [...]

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