November provided me with a great opportunity to work within all three of our business lines:

• Presentation:  I gave a preview launch of one of our 2008 new programs on the behavior patterns of elite sales performers.  The early test run enabled me to discover the key connection points to the audience, gauge the impact of the multimedia components, and discover the traction points. I can now take this information and make key presentation adjustments.   I also presented a preview of our 2008 program, Transformational Thinking.   The presentation received rave reviews and was rated as one of the best programs in the history of the organization.

• Education:  I taught in both of our key curriculum areas: communication, and thinking for over 100 people.  Providing information and watching it turn into knowledge through application opportunities is FANTASTIC.  In fact, one of these clients gave us the project of designing their entire training curriculum, based on our delivery model.

• Application:  We have finished a preliminary design on a rich media, internal communication model for a client that will revolutionize and simplify the way they deliver key information.  We also started a multimedia Traditions program for a client in the chemical business.

A fantastic month full of opportunity and impact!

We live in an unprecedented time of noise.  Our daily bombardment of information and communication has most organizations reeling, trying to uncover what’s important and impactful, as well as what to discard.  One of the most critical skill sets to possess during these turbulent times is the ability to simplify this avalanche of complexity, to be able to reduce this noise so that a meaningful melody can be heard.   This idea of simplification has its true value in its ability to discover the significant.  The reduction can not be random, it needs to be process driven, and it needs to be a “thoughtful reduction”.

The good news is when thoughtful reduction is applied, it sells - and when it misses the boat, well, it sits on the shelf.  Gadget guru Daniel Dilger recently reviewed the new Zune (Microsoft’s MP3 player) and said; “Microsoft does not understand the engineering art of leaving things out.  Instead of making tough, thoughtful choices, the company loads in apparent features that contribute very little.”

John Maeda, the author of The Laws of Simplicity, feels so strongly about this one action that it is the first of his ten laws. 

You are searching for a balance between “how simple can I make it?” and “how complex does it have to be?”  When in doubt remove, but remove with thinking.  Try this exercise:

Pick up your TV or DVD remote control.  Count the buttons.  Now decide which         buttons you would remove and which you would keep based on your regular usage.  Now go back and rethink the buttons you removed.  If you still agree their usage is not necessary you have completed a thoughtful reduction.

We have a number of clients who are in the process of surveying customers or employees.  They accumulate a ton of information and try to determine what is or is not important.  Here is a great opportunity to practice thoughtful reduction.  Did the process yield the desired information?  What is or is not important, in the stack of responses?  Can you “thoughtfully reduce” to find the answers you were looking for?  Can you develop a strategy that applies this desired information?

Simplification is one of the most valuable skills you can learn and its application will open the door to substantive impact!

A key aspect of any business culture is the way it communicates, both internally, to itself and externally to its world of existing and potential clients.  We spend a lot of time with clients looking for ways to improve this critical aspect of organizational culture.  The way we communicate is a world of shifts and changes.  Ten years ago email was a growing aspect of business communication and now it exceeds our rate of voice phone calls.  But, as with all aspects of business, even the dependence on email is changing.

• The up and coming generation, lead by the best and the brightest, shun email in favor of text messaging or instant messaging.
• The use of email by teenagers has dropped the past three years as much as 8% compared to an increase of email by older users of 6%.
• More cell phones offer different types of full QWERTY keyboards allowing quick typing building the growth and popularity of text messaging. 
• The final proof of a communication shift – The number of text messages sent daily exceeds the population of the planet itself!

Why the move away from the one of the key driving forces that build the internet?  Email is like letter writing and the next generation of leaders prefers to communicate in a form closer to conversation. Text messaging is more like talking than writing.  They want to communicate to their entire base of friends -  and Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter make this increasingly easy in a teen’s choice of communication modes.

Access to the internet is virtually seamless, DSL, Cable, WiFi and now BPL (broadband over power lines, allowing internet access from any plug in the wall) will increase access to communication modes opening ways to communicate that we can’t even imagine.

One of the core principles of companies in a constant state of transformation, is to PAY ATTENTION to the world around them.  Get your leadership team together and take a hard, strategic look at the way you communicate and discover that this key cultural aspect of your business is the foundation for your success.