A good leader is a chameleon
My boss called and talked to me yesterday about several matters, but one topic we got on was leadership. He explained to me that good leadership is becoming a chameleon among your staff. I don't mean to hide from your staff or be difficult to find, but what he was describing was learning what makes your staff tick and enhancing those things for optimal results.
Does your CMS provide SEO tools?
I built a robust content management system (CMS) for Fusework Studios known as the Client Dashboard in 2006, and I have provided updates for it ever since. This CMS was built using ASP (Active Server Pages) and gave the client an ability to create real legitimate pages to be crawled by search engines to assist in search engine optimization (SEO).
Use your corporate blog as an extension of your business
I often get asked why would a business write a blog. I often reply "Why not?" Corporate blogging can give a business a new voice and way to communicate with its customers beyond the traditional norms that business was once operated under. The world has gone social with blogging, social media and everything in between.
HOW TO: Prioritize your work queue
Recent changes at work brought several new responsibilities and projects directly to my work queue. I struggled for about a week with the new influx of work as I had to determine priorities and where projects were in their progress. Here are some things I did to figure things out and prioritize my rapidly growing work queue:
What to do when you have no motivation
Today I woke up to a crying child. I got dressed and moved to the bedroom and took her out to play. My wife was making breakfast while my oldest child played in the toy room. I looked outside and saw the snow and found out we were at a Level 1 Snow Emergency. My arms were sore from helping a friend move last night (yes, during the snow storm). I realized quickly today was going to be a long day.
Streamlining communication
You often hear about companies or people that don't communicate enough. This is frustrating because not enough information is flowing back and forth between key roles, and when information is needed it simply is not there. There is a point in which too much communication can be just as costly or even more costly. The question is where do you draw the line to determine there is too much communication? Joe Spolsky from Inc. magazine asks how hard could it be to streamline communication?
When was the last time you scheduled a meeting and invited eight people instead of the three people who really needed to be there simply because you didn't want anyone to feel left out? When was the last time you got into a long discussion over the color palette for the new brochure with a programmer, who has nothing to do with the brochure but sure knows that he doesn't like orange?
Joe Spolsky believes these are symptoms of a common illness: too much communication.
Discipline follows leadership
In my effort to continue down the path of discipline I have been thinking about leadership. Leadership must be able to instill the discipline in the team to be able to achieve goals that could possibly be out of reach for others. A well-disciplined team can accomplish much more than a larger team that is disjointed and undisciplined.
Leadership must be disciplined as well. They are to set the goals and the direction for the team, and they are not only there to hold the team accountable for accomplishing these things but they're there to set the standard. If leadership is not disciplined then the path they set will be unclear and tough to travel.
Seth Godin: Modern Procrastination is right on
Seth Godin speaks to the staff and I at Fusework Studios in a lot of ways. He has made great points in marketing and how to design Web sites to maximize conversion. In my position as a programmer he hasn't spoken a great deal to me personally, but a friend of mine had posted a link to this article about modern procrastination that absolutely caught my attention.
I feel this article is right on about any modern workplace. It is so easy to feel overwhelmed and that you're always busy. Once you finish a project you're immediately on to the next task. Then add the distractions of social networking, and then you're doing all you can to keep your head above water.
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