Seis tips de hiperproductividad

Seis pasos para convertirse en hiper-eficiente
Empresario GWEN MORAN, EMPRESARIO



El estar en la ruta durante más de 150 días al año ha hecho que Joseph Grenny un experto en ser eficiente sobre la marcha. Un popular orador, autor y coach empresarial y de liderazgo, ha desarrollado una serie de maneras de hacer a sí mismo más eficaz si está en su Salt Lake City, Utah, oficina operando Vital Smarts, la compañía de entrenamiento que él co-fundó, o en la carretera. Aquí, nos comparte seis estrategias que pueden hacer que cualquier persona hiper-eficiente.

Mire hacia adelante para las ventanas de tiempo libre. Toma cinco minutos en la mañana para observar su día. Usted puede tener bolsillos de tiempo que lo harán esperar un avión o una cita, desplazarse, o por algún otro patrón de espera. Si usted tiene cinco minutos o dos horas, se puede encontrar algo que vale la pena para llenar su tiempo, dice Grenny. Con la debida anticipación para maximizar el tiempo lo hizo, usted puede caber más en esos minutos y horas "perdidas".

Prepárese. Grenny dice que la clave para ser eficaz cuando se tiene los bolsillos de tiempo es estar bien preparado. Saber lo que hay que hacer y la prioridad de la tarea, y asegúrese de tener los recursos disponibles para completar la tarea. El uso de dispositivos móviles y aplicaciones basadas en la nube le permite acceder a los datos, aplicaciones y documentos que necesita, en cualquier lugar.

Considere el costo de oportunidad de decir "sí". Antes de que se acepta ningún tipo de compromiso, Grenny toma un momento para pensar acerca de lo que va a estar renunciando a hacer. Si acepta un compromiso de discurso, él podría estar perdiendo algún tiempo de planificación importante para su negocio. ¿Vale la pena ?

"Usted debe asegurarse de que está gastando su tiempo lo hizo en las cosas no son realmente lo más importante y no quedar atrapado en decir" sí " cada vez que se le pide que haga algo", dice.

Haga una lista. Grenny es un hacedor de listas. Piensa en ello como una forma de fijación de objetivos. Incluso cuando tiene tan sólo una hora, se toma un momento para hacer una lista de las cosas que quiere lograr que cae en el tiempo lo hizo. Esto le ayuda a priorizar las tareas y, por tanto, añade un sentido de urgencia para que no quede empantanado en hacer una sola cosa.

Prémiese. Una de las razones que las personas pierden su entusiasmo por ser eficiente y productivo es no se puede sentir como una rutina implacable - siempre hay más por hacer, dice. Por lo tanto, es importante premiarse por pegarse con él. En un viaje reciente, Grenny entregó ocho tareas para terminar cayendo en dos ventanas de tiempo. Una vez que completó cuatro, recompensó a sí mismo con un viaje al otro lado de la calle para encontrar un regalo para su esposa y disfrutar de un paseo. Ese tipo de pick- me-up puede seguir jugando, incluso cuando usted no tiene ganas de ser eficiente.

Delegue. Es difícil de hacer y los empresarios suelen pensar que es más fácil hacer todo por sí mismos, pero Grenny hace hincapié, la importancia de la formación de sus empleados a manejar más y más responsabilidad. Usted simplemente no puede hacerlo todo usted mismo, dice.

"Si usted no está delegando todo lo que puedas qué no haga el mejor y más alto uso de su tiempo, le está costando dinero a su compañía de hecho", dice. "Eso va para usted y para sus empleados."


Entrepreneur

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Las peores entrevistas de trabajo registradas

Los peores errores de entrevista de todos los tiempos 




Casi la mitad de los directores de recursos humanos (48 %) dicen que saben dentro de los primeros cinco minutos de una entrevista si el candidato sería un buen ajuste para la posición, encuentra una nueva encuesta del sitio de trabajo CareerBuilder.

Y casi todos los empleadores (87 %) dicen que lo saben que dentro de los primeros 15 minutos.

A veces, los gerentes de contratación puede eliminar a un candidato de inmediato, ya que han cruzado la línea y hacen algo completamente inapropiado.

En su encuesta, que incluyó 2.201 encuestados, CareerBuilder preguntó gerentes de contratación y profesionales de recursos humanos acerca de los errores más escandalosas que nunca han visto los candidatos hacen en las entrevistas de trabajo.

A continuación , se muestran los peores equivocaciones entrevista de trabajo de todos los tiempos:

• El solicitante advirtió al entrevistador que había "tomado demasiado Valium " y que no creía que la entrevista fuera un indicativo de su personalidad.
• El solicitante actuó un papel de "Star Trek".
• El solicitante actuó como si estuviera respondiendo a una llamada de teléfono para una entrevista con un competidor.
• El solicitante llegó en un equipo de gimnasia porque iba a salir a correr tras la entrevista.
• El solicitante pidió un abrazo.
• El solicitante intentó grabar en secreto la entrevista.
• El solicitante interpuso álbumes de fotos personales.
• El solicitante se llamó a sí mismo su propio héroe personal.
• El solicitante verificó Facebook durante la entrevista.
• El solicitante estrelló su coche en el edificio.
• El solicitante expuso sus dientes cuando se habló de los beneficios dentales.
• El solicitante mantuvo los auriculares del iPod durante la entrevista.
• El solicitante prendió fuego al periódico del entrevistador durante la entrevista cuando el entrevistador dijo "¡impresioname!."
• El solicitante dijo que puso en duda la paternidad de su hija.
• El solicitante quería saber el número de la recepcionista porque realmente le gustaba.

La entrevista de trabajo no es sólo una oportunidad para demostrar que usted está calificado para realizar el trabajo disponible, pero también para demostrar que usted es el tipo de persona que otros querrán trabajar. Si usted tiene alguna duda acerca de lo que vas a decir , hacer o usar en una entrevista, así , es probablemente la mejor manera de evitarlo.

Business Insider

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¿Por qué los adolescentes se van de Facebook?

Why 'Teenage Flight' From Facebook is Good for B2B

There has been much talk recently about the wholesale abandonment of Facebook by its initial core user base, teenagers and early 20s. While the internet is abuzz with this phenomenon, and the potential it has to lead to Facebook’s downfall, we in the B2B community should be excited; this is the best thing that could have happened!

It has been reported that, since 2011, millions of teens have left Facebook. The reasoning behind this mass exodus is that Facebook is not “cool” anymore. Facebook was once a refuge for young people to express themselves outside the prying eyes of their parents, but has now become something totally different.

Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest, WhatsApp and other “niche” social networks seem to be the new home for many teenagers. While daily use of Facebook has slightly diminished as a result of this development, older more professional types of users are filling the gap left by the exit of the younger demographic.

For years, B2B marketers have shied away from social media altogether for many reasons, including its demographic. We are seeing more and more professionals becoming active on Facebook. As a result, Facebook has become fertile ground for B2B marketers to generate leads, and establish potentially beneficial professional relationships.

What may be surprising to many B2B marketers is that the older demographic using Facebook has exploded during the same exact time period that teenage usage has declined:

• 55+: 80% increase
• 35-54: 41% increase
• 25-34: 33% increase

Source: http://business.time.com/2014/01/15/more-than-11-million-young-people-have-fled-facebook-since-2011/

So what kind of opportunities does this create for B2B marketers?

Content Distribution

Updating your status, both on company pages and personal profiles, is the tried and true way to build an online community. As with other social networks, utilizing Facebook to distribute quality content is a must for any content marketing strategy.

For a large marketing team, going into each social profile and posting a piece of content can be tedious at best. Using a social media platform, particularly one that is geared towards B2B like Oktopost, is a great way to save time and reach a larger audience.

Networking

Facebook provides an excellent opportunity for professional networking. However, the networking on Facebook, as opposed to LinkedIn, straddles the line between social and professional. There are great benefits to this. Creating personal relationships with potential business connections can give you leverage beyond that of standard business relationships.

Platforms like Nimble are a great way to help find connections that are relevant to your business. As they say, “it’s all about who you know,” and now it’s easier than ever to network with the right people.

Paid Ads

Only in the last few years has Facebook become a vehicle for paid advertising. While initially met with resistance from long-time users, paid ads have been accepted as an integral part of the Facebook experience. The reason that ads haven’t been shunned is that they can be very well targeted. Tapping the power of targeted advertising on Facebook can be an important addition to your B2B marketing mix.

Groups

We all know the importance of being active on LinkedIn d=Discussion Groups, but Facebook Groups also provide a great forum for both networking and lead generation. Similar to LinkedIn, Facebook Groups represent are a collection of like-minded individuals discussing and sharing content relevant to a specific industry or topic. Although most groups are not B2B related, finding the right Facebook Groups can substantially increase socially generated leads.

The question remains: will this seismic shift in the Facebook demographic cause its ultimate downfall, or will it be a catalyst for new opportunities and business development?

Only time will tell.

Social Media Today

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19 cosas para hacer para tener éxito

19 cosas duras que usted necesita hacer para tener éxito

• Tienes que hacer las cosas difíciles.
• Usted tiene que hacer la llamada que tienes miedo de hacer.
• Usted tiene que levantarse más temprano de lo que usted quiere levantarse.
• Usted tiene que dar más de lo que obtiene a cambio de inmediato.
• Usted tiene que preocuparse más por los demás que se preocupan por ti.
• Tienes que luchar cuando ya se lesiona , con sangre y dolor.
• Usted tiene que sentirse seguro e inseguro cuando se juega a lo seguro parece más inteligente.
• Tienes que conducir cuando nadie más lo está siguiendo todavía.
• Hay que invertir en ti mismo a pesar de que no hay nadie más.
• Usted tiene que mirar como un tonto mientras que usted está buscando respuestas que no tienen.
• Usted tiene que moler a cabo los detalles cuando es más fácil encogerse de hombros.
• Usted tiene que entregar resultados al hacer excusas es una opción.
• Usted tiene que buscar sus propias explicaciones , incluso cuando te dicen que aceptar los "hechos".
• Usted tiene que cometer errores y quedar como un idiota.
• Usted tiene que probar y fallar y vuelva a intentarlo.
• Usted tiene que correr más rápido a pesar de que usted está fuera de la respiración.
• Hay que ser amable con la gente que ha sido cruel con usted.
• Usted tiene que cumplir con los plazos que sean razonables y ofrecer resultados que no tienen paralelo.
• Hay que ser responsable de sus acciones, incluso cuando las cosas van mal.
• Usted tiene que seguir moviéndose hacia donde quieres estar, no importa lo que está delante de ti.

Tienes que hacer las cosas difíciles. Las cosas que nadie más está haciendo. Las cosas que te asustan. Las cosas que hacen que uno se pregunta cuánto tiempo más podrá aguantar.

Esas son las cosas que te definen. Esas son las cosas que hacen la diferencia entre vivir una vida de mediocridad o el éxito escandaloso.

Las cosas difíciles son las cosas más fáciles de evitar . Para excusar distancia. Para fingir que no se aplican a usted.

La simple verdad acerca de cómo las personas comunes logran hazañas indignantes de éxito es que ellos hacen las cosas duras que los más inteligentes, los más cualificados , más ricos no tienen el valor - o la desesperación - que hacer .

Hacer las cosas difíciles. Usted puede ser sorprendido por lo increíble que eres en realidad.

Business Insider

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Las oficinas más increíbles del futuro

World's Coolest Offices of the Future 

BY CHRISTINE LAGORIO-CHAFKIN AND CAROLYN CUTRONE

You've never seen company headquarters like these. That's because they don't exist (yet). Here's a glimpse at the most amazing offices that will go up next year--and after.

Inc.com


In 2012, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg began meeting with internationally-renowned architect Frank Gerhy. Welcome to the future, in which a 28-year-old start-up founder can call on a starchitect.

Indeed, two years later, Gerhy has designed a sprawling new Facebook campus in Menlo Park, California, across the street from its previous 1 Hacker Way. The new building will be the largest open-floor-plan office in the world, and is rumored to be connected to the old office by an underground tunnel.

Facebook's forthcoming headquarters campus is one of the five coolest offices of the future Inc. has chosen to feature this year. And it embodies some of the characteristics common to all of the remarkable offices we've chosen, including open spaces to encourage collaboration, extreme environmental friendliness, and truly innovative design. Without further ado, here's a glimpse into the future.

Apple Campus 2

Cuptertino, California
Project by: Anton Menlo
Designer: Foster + Partners
Year to be completed: 2016

Apple’s forthcoming spaceship-shaped building might look extraterrestrial, but the goal for the company's massive new campus is to be as integrated with nature as possible. The disc-like structure is nestled into a prairie landscape. Through the fields, a winding road leads to an underground parking lot--placed there to help make the site look naturally beautiful, with no concrete in view.



Apple Campus 2

(Continued)
It's Green Inside, Too
While 80 percent of this redeveloped site will be greenery, sustainability is incorporated into the 20 percent that's the headquarters, as well. Its roof is covered in black solar panels, and the 2.8 million square-foot building will not need heating or cooling for 75 percent of the year, due to the use of natural ventilation. How's that for green?



Apple Campus 2

(Continued)
Coming Together, Finally
This main building, illustrated in an architectural blueprint, will accommodate up to 13,000 Apple employees, and includes a 100,000 square foot fitness center, and 3,000-seat cafe. Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said the concepts behind the design are collaboration and fluidity. Completing the Campus 2 will be a giant feat in bringing together employees, who are currently spread around 57 buildings in the Cupertino area.



Facebook

Menlo Park, California
Project by: Frank Gehry
Year to be completed: 2015
Welcome to the future of Facebook, envisioned by architect Frank Gehry (pictured here)--with a lot of input from Mark Zuckerberg. The Facebook founder requested the new campus centerpiece be one big, sprawling, open-plan building. Gehry infused warmth into that idea, creating a structure with angled walls and interior curved lines of desks and work-stations, as well as clusters of meeting rooms. But the floor-plan isn't interrupted: Employees will be able to walk straight from one end of the building to the other without passing through a single door.


Facebook

(Continued)
A Live/Work Mecca
This one-million-square-foot campus will be a place where Facebook engineers can eat, sleep, and work. In addition to the main building, which is the largest open-floor plan in the world, engineers can use the rooftop park, which is scattered with trails and courts for sports. There's a veritable mini-forest on this extreme-green roof, and also a full vegetable garden.



Facebook

(Continued)
New-Wave Talent Attraction
The building is designed to accommodate about 3,400 engineers and will take on the company's existing address of 1 Hacker Way. There are plenty of perks to attract new--and entertain old--in-demand technical talent: The company is providing transportation for all employees, and providing some on-campus housing as well, shown in the artist's rendering here. For playtime, the quad is the place to be, sporting bocce ball, a pool, cabanas, and BBQ pits. There's even an area designated for playing with dogs.



New Lab

Brooklyn, New York
Project by: Macro Sea
Year to be completed: 2014
The historic industrial park known as the Brooklyn Navy Yard is experiencing a manufacturing renaissance, and an anchor of that growth is the Green Manufacturing Center--of which New Lab, a manufacturer of 3-D printers, is building out about 160,000 square feet.



New Lab

(Continued)
New Vision; Old Bones
New Lab is on board with the Navy Yard's goal of becoming a national model for sustainable industrial parks. But it's doing so by keeping the bones of the original ship-building facility it's housed in. Just check out the ceiling of this architectural illustration of the forthcoming auditorium. And it's transforming the massive empty facility into a modern-day manufacturing facility, along with additional offices for small businesses and freelance collaborators.



New Lab

(Continued)
Creatives, Rejoice
Entrepreneurs, educators, craftspeople, and freelancers across many disciplines ranging from robotics to carpentry to biotech, will work side-by-side. Artists and designers are already in place in studios in portions of the New Lab, while the rest of the space is being built out for likely mid-2014 opening.



Green Office

The Netherlands

Project by: RAU Architects
Year to be completed: 2015
Is this the future? What's dubbed "The Green Office," is a hypothetical plan for a sprawling, massive, multi-use building (it would actually house several companies; not just one) integrated with transportation and its surrounding outdoor environment. And it sure is green: The structure is an "energy-generating biotope," harnessing kinetic energy of people moving inside, recycling everything from paper to sewage water for reuse, and using small wind turbines, solar cells and algae to harness natural energy.



Green Office

(Continued)
Flexible Plan
The plan is a loose one: It's meant as an adaptable solution for efficiently greening dense urban spaces. And three variations of it are planned in different locations, according to RAU Architects. The building not only has a verdant roof and lush central courtyard, but also is designed to generate more sustainable energy than it consumes--and still be a comfortable, spacious, place to be: Flexible offices will be placed throughout the buildings, intermixed with restaurants, cafes, day care, and workout facilities.



Nvidia HQ

Santa Clara, California
Project by: Gensler
Year to be completed: 2015
Over the past 20 years, computer-graphics and processing company Nvidia has grown from three people to 8,000 employees across 40 locations. Now, it's determined to bring everyone together in a collaborative environment. Gensler’s Lisa Bottom, a consultant on the project, says the new office plans take that to heart: The entire office is sprawling, but it's height is being limited to just one or two floors. That's because separating people by floor is known to dramatically reduce their chances of having spontaneous interactions.



Nvidia HQ

(Continued)
Super-Sized Building-Blocks
The company, which specializes in computer graphics, created the above rendering of its future home, using its own technology. Open floor plans are aimed at encouraging collaboration, and even the shape of the exterior of the two buildings is meant to inspire employees: The triangle is the fundamental building block of many computer graphics.

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9 posturas de lenguaje corporal que pueden perjudicar tu entrevista

Las 9 peores errores de lenguaje corporal que usted podría hacer en una entrevista



Tan pronto como entras en una habitación, antes de decir nada, la gente está ya tratando de averiguar quién eres. ¿Qué señales y mensajes estamos enviando con su postura y expresiones faciales?
En una entrevista de trabajo, su lenguaje corporal es especialmente importante, ya que sus hábitos de comportamiento comunican ciertos mensajes a los responsables de contratación.

En una encuesta publicada por el sitio de trabajo CareerBuilder el jueves , el 48% de los directores de recursos humanos, dijeron que en los primeros cinco minutos de una entrevista si un candidato es un buen candidato para el trabajo. Y el lenguaje corporal del candidato es un factor de alto en sus decisiones.

CareerBuilder pidió 2.201 directores de recursos humanos acerca de los peores errores de lenguaje corporal que han visto en una entrevista. Aquí es lo que dijeron :

1 . El no hacer contacto visual
Los gerentes que lo vieron : 70%

2 . La falta de sonreír -
Los gerentes que lo vieron : 44%

3 . La mala postura
Los gerentes que lo vieron : 35%

4 . Demasiada inquietud
Los gerentes que lo vieron : 35%

5 . Jugando con algo en la mesa -
Los gerentes que lo vieron : 29%

6 . Apretón de manos que es demasiado débil -
Los gerentes que lo vieron : 27%

7 . Cruzar sus brazos sobre su pecho
Los gerentes que lo vieron : 24%

8 . Jugar con su pelo o tocarse la cara -
Los gerentes que lo vieron : 24%

9 . Usar demasiados gestos con las manos
Los gerentes que lo vieron : 10%

Al entrevistar , recordar que es normal estar nervioso, pero usted debe aprender a controlar su cuerpo y rostro para que los nervios no se muestran. Si su lenguaje corporal dice que está ansioso, los directores de recursos humanos pueden pensar que no eres capaz o lo suficientemente seguras como para hacer el trabajo requerido.

Business Insider

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Lean Startup: ¿Importan los pivotes?

Do Pivots Matter? 

BY STEVE BLANK

What really defines a pivot and how they can impact your business model.

In late 2013 Cowboy Ventures did an analysis of U.S.-based tech companies started in the last 10 years and now valued at $1 billion. They found 39 of these companies. They called them the Unicorn Club.

The article summarized 10 key "learnings" from the Unicorn Club. Surprisingly, one of them said that "…the 'big pivot' after starting with a different initial product is an outlier. Nearly 90 percent of companies are working on their original product vision. The four 'pivots' after a different initial product were all in consumer companies (Groupon, Instagram, Pinterest, and Fab)."

One of my students sent me the article and asked, "What does this mean?"  Good question.

Since the pivot is one of the core concepts of the Lean Startup, I was puzzled. Could I be wrong? Is it possible pivots really don’t matter if you want to be a unicorn?

Short answer: Almost all the unicorns pivoted. The authors of the article didn’t understand what a pivot was.

What’s a Pivot?

A pivot is a fundamental insight of the Lean Startup. It says on day one, all you have in your new venture is a series of untested hypotheses. Therefore you need to get outside of your building and rapidly test all your assumptions. The odds are that one or more of your hypotheses will be wrong. When you discover your error, rather than firing executives and/or creating a crisis, you simply change the hypotheses.

What was lacking in the article was a clear definition of a pivot. A pivot is not just changing the product. A pivot can change any of nine different things in your business model. A pivot may mean you changed your customer segment, your channel, revenue model/pricing, resources, activities, costs, partners, or customer acquisition--lots of things other than just the product.

Definition: A pivot is a substantive change to one or more of the nine business model canvas components.

Business Model

OK, but what is a business model?

Think of a business model as a drawing that shows all the flows between the different parts of your company’s strategy. Unlike an org chart, which is a diagram of how job positions and  functions of a company are related, a business model diagrams how a company makes money--without having to go into the complex details of all its strategy, processes, units, rules, hierarchies, workflows, and systems.

Alexander Osterwalder’s Business Model canvas puts all the complicated strategies of your business in one simple diagram. Each of the nine boxes in the canvas specifies details of your company’s strategy. (The Business Model canvas is one of the three components of the Lean Startup. See the HBR article here.)

So to answer to my student's question, I pointed out that the author of the article had too narrow a definition of what a pivot meant. If you went back and analyzed how many unicorns pivoted on any of the nine business model components, you’d likely find that the majority did so.

Take a look at the unicorn club and think about the changes in customer segments, revenue, pricing, and channels all those companies have made since they began. 

Facebook and LinkedIn--new customer segments. Meraki--new revenue models, new customer segments. Yelp--product pivot. Then you’ll understand the power of the pivot.

Lessons Learned

• A pivot is not just when you change the product
• A pivot is a substantive change to one or more of the nine business model canvas components
• Almost all startups pivot on some part of their business model after founding
• Startups focused on just product pivots will limited their strategic choices--it’s like bringing a knife to a gunfight

Inc 

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Aplanando jerarquías en el mundo corporativo

The story of the man who’s flattening the world of corporate hierarchies

By Aimee Groth - QZ

Brian Robertson comparing a multi-celled organism to the organization of a company. Aimee Groth

At age six, Brian Robertson taught himself to code. Throughout his childhood, he devoted the equivalent of a full-time job to coding. By age 13, he started a small business teaching programming on an early online network.

“Eventually the network staff found out their customers really liked the online course offering, and they created a formal program and hired me to teach programming in it a few hours per week,” he says. “They never found out I was 13.”

Now, as the co-founder of management consultancy HolacracyOne, Robertson, 35, advises companies on how to integrate Holacracy, a “self-governing” operating system without managers, job titles, and traditional hierarchy.

At a recent training session in downtown Las Vegas, he told Zappos: “Most of what I’m experiencing happens in a state of anarchy. The Greek root word [anarkhos] means without rulers. Holacracy is a rule system for anarchy.”

He held up a small blue spiral notebook titled the Holacracy Constitution. “This is the constitution for organizations. Think about it this way: What are your favorite board games?”

“Monopoly, Risk,” said Fred Mossler, whose longtime title at Zappos is “No Title,” so he can work across a variety of departments. He was sitting at one of the circular tables at the back of the room.

Robertson nodded. “When the rules make sense, you can enjoy the game.” When they don’t, as with traditional corporate bureaucracy, it’s time to knock the pieces off the board and re-write the rules.

And that’s exactly what Robertson did.

After dropping out of a magnet high school for science and engineering, Robertson talked his way into the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, but he didn’t last long there, either. At 18, he joined aerospace company Analytical Graphics and quickly worked his way up to lead the core architecture team. Even though it was a great company to work for, he still felt stifled by the system.

“I was often frustrated when I sensed something that wasn’t working or could be improved, only to find there wasn’t much I could do with that awareness,” he writes in his forthcoming book, currently titled HOLACRACY: Evolution for Organizations, to be released in a few months. “I wanted to process that sense I had into meaningful change. Yet I routinely encountered big obstacles to doing so.”

He briefly took a CTO position with a dot com startup, ReviewNet, before going out on his own in 2001. He founded Ternary Software with the sole purpose of finding a better way to run a company. “It was a laboratory,” he says. “I set out to solve the question, ‘What gets in the way of someone implementing an idea?’ And more broadly, processing whatever someone senses that could be better.”

Robertson was attracted to agile software development, a system that responds to feedback from customers, developers and other stakeholders, and hinges on the concept of self-organizing teams. He also experimented with sociocracy and its system for setting policy through structured consensus, which he later moved away from. But it was the work of philosopher Ken Wilber, who wrote about holarchies, the term used to describe overarching systems that are made up of other self-organizing systems or entities (“holons”) that he was eventually drawn to.

“Holarchies are a different way of structuring an entity,” says Robertson. “They’re the fundamental building block of reality. Holacracy is capturing a broader pattern. There’s nothing sacred about what we’re doing. I don’t feel like we’re inventing Holacracy. We’re capturing it concretely in a set of rules. Self-governance is how nature scales.”

Although he distances himself from Wilber’s spiritual devotees, he spent time with people who worked for the philosopher’s non-profit, the Integral Institute. In fact, Robertson met serial entrepreneur Tom Thomison at an integral theory gathering in 2006, and together they crystalized the idea for what is now Holacracy.

Ternary didn’t weather the recession, but Robertson said the company accomplished what it set out to do: develop a new system for running a company. In its last few months, Ternary operated on Holacracy 1.0; now it’s in version 4.0.

One of the biggest differences between Holacracy and other flat management styles is that there’s a constitution and a governance process that determines how meetings are run, and ultimately, defines how power is allocated through roles. Here’s the article on processing tensions from the Holacracy Constitution, with plain English to the right:

“Tom was getting frustrated with me just making up new and clarified rules whenever I didn’t like something he was doing and just declaring, ‘that’s Holacracy!’” says Robertson. “He helped me see that when the rules were just held in my head and I was the only authority on them, it wasn’t really different from me being the heroic empowering leader.”

One of Holacracy’s core principles is moving past the “heroic leader,” says Thomison. “It’s about eliminating the ego.”

In the second chapter of his upcoming book, titled “A Shift Of Power,” Robertson writes about what it’s like to operate within a different type of hierarchy:

It comes as a revelation and a challenge for everyone involved. The workers realize that they are no longer just employees following orders. They have real power and authority—and with that comes responsibility. They no longer have a parent-like manager to solve their problems.

“The biggest change is shifting behavior,” he explains. “People are used to playing politics. It’s painful, it’s hard. Holacracy is a hard shift.”

On his website, Holacracy.org, Robertson describes himself as “a recovering CEO—a job he now helps free others from with Holacracy.” He and Thomison have seven additional employees (called “partners” under Holacracy), and bring in most of their revenue through consulting and training. They also have a licensing business and sell support tools online. But most of their growth has been through word of mouth.

A wide range of companies have adopted Holacracy, but the common thread is leaders who are all systems thinkers. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh began his career as a computer programmer; Twitter Co-Founder Evan Williams, who now uses Holacracy to run Medium, also started out coding.

And Hsieh, whose company will be the largest yet to implement the system, has been speaking in similar terms as Robertson for a while now. “I believe that there are emergent properties that come out of things such as a flock of birds,” he said in a 2012 interview with Business Insider. “From a distance it seems like it’s a single organism instead of a lot of individual birds, so the same type of thing probably happens amongst humans or the entire planet that we as humans can’t perceive, just like the cell in the human body doesn’t necessarily perceive the entire human.”

And like other natural systems, Holacracy itself will continue to evolve. “Evolution requires a code, a DNA, that can be varied in search of a better code,” Robertson says. “The constitution serves as that DNA, and until it was encoded that way, it couldn’t truly be evolved through an evolutionary design process.”

Engineers are often stereotyped as introverts who don’t know how to manage a team, but perhaps they just look at human systems in an entirely different way.

You can follow Aimee on Twitter at @AimeeGroth. We welcome your comments atideas@qz.com. 

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Cómo tomar buenas decisiones como un equipo

How to Make Good Decisions as a Team 

BY LES MCKEOWN

There's something about putting a bunch of people together -- however competent they may be individually -- that generates redundancy, friction and confusion.

Inc

I spend the majority of my time with groups and teams, helping them make high-quality decisions. You'd be surprised (or perhaps you wouldn't) at the degree to which even highly effective individuals can become paralyzed--or at the very least, dramatically slowed down--in their decision-making capabilities once they're placed in a team environment.

Let's face it, most groups and teams are highly ineffective at making good quality decisions consistently, repeatedly, and without stress. There's something about putting a bunch of people together--however competent they may be individually--that generates redundancy, friction and confusion.

There are teams that consistently operate at a high level, however, and although they're hard to find, I've had the pleasure of working with many. In every case, one thing stands out above all, and that's the rhythm of their discussions.

This may seem somewhat arcane: surely it's the brilliance of their ideas, or the courage of their decisions that set high-performing teams apart? Nope. Success in team-based decision-making is built on the mundane (as with so much else in leadership).

Just how mundane? Mundane like this: Data; debate; decide or defer.

That's it. That's the rhythm of successful team-based decision-making. Data; debate; decide or defer. Data; debate; decide or defer. Say it over a few times and it starts to sound like a drumbeat--and that's just what it is, the underlying drumbeat to the decision-making discussions of a high-performing team:

Data

High-performing teams start with data. Not anecdote, not pain points, not speculation, not opinion--data. That's not to say that the alternatives are valueless--anecdote, pain points, speculation and opinion are all valid ways to uncover candidates for discussion--but once something gets on the agenda, the only place to start is with consideration of hard data.

No hard data, no discussion. How much would that principle shorten most of your team meetings...?

Debate

Debate is at the heart of high-quality team-based decision-making--but not just any sort of free-for-all debate. High-performing teams first of all only debate the underlying data (as we've already seen), but most importantly, they do so dispassionately, objectively, and with only the good of the enterprise at heart.

Think this sounds a little too altruistic, a trifle unrealistic to expect from your hard-charging, passionate team members? Try using the 20 most powerful words in business as a starting point.

Decide or defer

It's time to fish, or cut bait--you've assembled the data, debated it, and now it's time to make a decision. Sounds easy, but most teams and groups flunk this part of the process. Why? Simply by letting the debate stage rumble on for so long that when the time comes to make a decision, everyone in the room is tired, confused, or both--or worse, the debate goes on for so long that there is no time to make a decision.

Here's a simple tip from high-performing teams: agree in advance on the precise time at which the decision will be made. If you're starting the discussion at 10am, agree in advance to move to a decision at 10:45am (or 1pm, or 5pm--whenever is appropriate for the matter under discussion)--and stick to it. If for some reason you can't make a decision then, it's almost certainly because some key data is missing. In which case, defer the issue until the needed information is available.

Say it with me one more time: Data; debate; decide or defer. If you need to make decisions in a group or team, it's the rhythm of success.

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Como promocionar venta con marketing de contenido

How to Drive Sales With Content Marketing 
by AARON ADERS - Inc
How brand propinquity can drive leads and sales online through content marketing and digital PR.

Sociologists define propinquity as the human phenomenon that close proximity (physical or psychological) will greatly increase the likelihood of developing friendships. Friendships are crucial to sales, since we must earn our prospect's trust to move forward with a partnership.

Tom Martin, author of The Invisible Sale, recently gave a presentation that explains how organizations can use propinquity in content marketing to drive more sales. Businesses that do this effectively are able to place a high volume of branded content in strategic positions that develop brand propinquity in your marketplace. In other words, your prospects run into your branded content more often than your competitors.

This increased proximity of branded content increases the probability that your brand will gain favor with your target audience. However, there is one caveat--this brand preference only applies to high quality and helpful content. Bad content in close proximity to your target audience can have the reverse effect.

If your organization is willing to develop high quality content and build strategic PR relationships, then your brand can develop propinquity in your marketplace that will develop lead generation and sales online. Here's how to do it:

Define Your Propinquity (P) Points

The first step to developing propinquity in your marketplace is to define your propinquity points. These can be media outlets, blogs, news aggregators and social networks that are core to your industry. It is also worthwhile to dig deep into your buyer personae and target niche communities or groups of buyers. Tying niche interests together in ways that your competition has not yet discovered can uncover fresh sales opportunities. These niche interests can be discovered through a process called Keyword Mapping.

Keyword Mapping

Discovery requires the ability to truly listen and 'learn your prospect's language' to find keywords that lead to P-points. Dig deep into conversations happening on blogs, forums and social networks. Tools like Experian Hitwise, Compete.com and others can give great data and insight to help keyword mapping, but the qualitative aspects of the online conversations must be understood to communicate in a way that will be receptive among your target audience. Use these keywords to discover the best P-point opportunities.

Social Listening

Social listening tools give insight into historical and real-time conversations that are happening in your marketplace, and are another great way to discover P-points. Use one of the many free social listening tools to understand the topics and influencers in your industry. Build lists on Twitter to follow these influencers and understand what is important to them. Research the most shared URLs to understand what content is 'sticky' with your target audience. All of these are great ways to discover P-points.

Classify Your P-Points

Divide your P-points into one of two categories: Embassies and Outposts.

Embassies are the high quality niche communities that might not have the largest audience, but most likely have the highest concentration of your buyer personae. This is the best place to drive referral traffic, authoritative branded content endorsements and really increase brand propinquity among your target audience. Put your efforts here first.

The second category is outposts. These are more broad audiences, such as a general news website or social network. These broad audiences are not as targeted as embassies and the lead generation and referral traffic will not be as rich. However, outposts are very effective in scaling digital brand endorsements via audience syndication, which is extremely valuable to SEO objectives. Be sure to mix in a few outposts when placing content on P-points.

Develop Brand Propinquity in Your Marketplace

Content marketing and digital PR is an effective way to drive genuine trust in your marketplace through higher brand propinquity. High quality content on relevant embassies and outposts will drive trust among visitors and search engines alike, which ultimately turn into sales for your business. If you are new to content marketing, then kick-off 2014 with a robust content marketing campaign to develop online leads & sales through high quality brand propinquity.

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