Get your self some cloud motivation for 2011!

A new year ahead. The first Christmas shopping ideas come bouncing along, the good intentions start taking form.
But what if you do not have any good intentions?

What get’s you motivated? What idea makes you want to get up early, to bring out the best in that brainstorm, to ship this new product?

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a box full of creative starters, just like the box of chocolates?

The idea is to create a box of 100 MOO Cards with 100 different creative boosting motivational cards.

They can be quotes, ideas, brainstorm starters, just some crazy thing to do the day you pick up the card.

Here is the deal:

You choose one or both of the following:

You create a design that can easily be printed on MOO cards (details: see below) and mail the result to motivationalwave@joined.be. Anything goes, just keep it clean and simple.
You spread the word to friends, colleagues, exes,… that might be interested in designing one.

If we get to 100 cards, we do a collective wave and I put everything available in one .zip file so anyone can use MOO or any other service to print the cards.

We all enjoy living in a more creative 2011!

The rules:

Full bleed size (recommended for creating finished artwork)
874 x 378 pixels (300dpi)
74mm x 32mm (300dpi)
2.9″ x 1.26″ (300dpi)

You agree to keep your design open for everyone to print. Off course, you get full credit for your work.

Let’s keep it available to anyone: No extreme stuff.

We close when we are at 100 or at 20/12/2010, so spread the word!

Wrap up:

Get creative!
Send to motivationalwave@joined.be

A new day, so a new theme…

As for external forces forcing you to do some work: Did an un-backuped update which messed up all layout. Instead of trying to fix it, took the opportunity to go for another theme that should be more readable.

Using a setback to move forward sort of speak 🙂

If your business is knowledge: do you value knowledge creation and sharing?

If your business is about knowledge (reminder: knowledge is not information), how do you motivate people to create and share your most valuable asset?

Let’s have a look at the typically ‘knowledge’ company: A strategic consultancy firm. Their main asset is the knowledge and experience that their consultants possess (of course along with the capacities to translate these to a specific business or case,…).

If you work in such a firm, you no doubt receive a bonus when the companies numbers go up, you definitely receive a surplus when you bring in a new client and you even get an extra paycheck when you bring in a new recruit (hey, that is knowledge also).

The question is: do you get an incentive to create or share knowledge?

Do you receive recognition when creating a white paper, host a knowledge session during lunch for the new arrivals on the project, share the status of the project, give everybody a heads up on the added value you bring to a specific customer,…?

There are plenty of tools out there to share the knowledge, but few organization value the importance of knowledge sharing and the effort that goes into creating and sharing it.

If knowledge is your main asset, you should make sure your employees go beyond limits in creating, sharing and defending that asset!

(Full disclosure: Filip is working for Sodexo Web Motivation center and provides solutions for companies that want to work around motivation / incentive / recognition).

Digital marketing: stop trying.

The times when you should ‘do some tests’ with digital marketing are over. I would not be surprised if a lot of old-school marketing managers do think: ‘yeah-yeah, let those young people believe that it will work, we know better’.
But now, also McKinsey is saying so: in an easy readable article, they guide you through four ways to get more value from digital marketing.

“To talk directly to the ones in charge: Companies that make the deep strategic, organizational, and operational shifts required to become effective digital marketers can become more agile, more productive, and accelerate revenue growth.”

Auch!

Click here to read the full article (login required).

Change your management.

Change management is a relevant field of expertise for every professional, be it as a self-employed entrepreneur or as a CEO of a large company. Whatever your personal field of knowledge, learning the basic of change is learning how to cope with people (as employee, as co-worker, as customer,…).

Luc Galoppin put together this e-book that gives you a quick introduction and makes you want to digg in deeper.

20 Shortcuts On Organizational Change Management

View more documents from Luc Galoppin.

Team work

Teams today should be fast paced (even if they are not on the same location), your team members get an e-mail overload, you need to keep track of the overall progress. With old tools and way of working, you are bound to have no time left to actually get the job done. New tools and ways of working can help you and your team in saving a lot of time.

Challenge:

Declutter your inbox.
Define, follow up (and change) on priorities becomes virtually impossible.
Exchange information takes a lot of time, information gets scattered.
Teams get frustrated because they do double work, don’t find the information they need,…

Value:

Work social = in parallel.
Streamline processes based on best practices and simple tools.
Get your project/product/… out much quicker and reduce drastically your time to market.

Business casing & piloting.

Resources are becoming more scarce every day. The art of business casing helps you in convincing yourself and your boss that you will invest in the right things. At JOINED!, we see business casing as a first step in a 2-step process. We are truly convinced that a business case is a gatekeeper, and should always be followed by a pilot = actually do / test / ship something.

Challenge:

Cloud of ideas: which one to choose?
How to actually demonstrate the value of an idea/solution/concept/product?
Company not used to agile way of working.

Value:

Business case framework.
Methodology for rapid development.
Agile ideas & tools to help teams to get things done.

Marketing/Strategic Plan

Helping you in doing the right things is about planning. At JOINED!, we don’t believe in 3 years plan’s. They are for accountants and people who believe the world does not change. With markets, employees,… changing continuously and new and innovative solutions every day, planning is more effective on the medium term (6-12 months). But we know the drill: you are stuck in the day to day urgencies.

Challenge:

Set a framework for all your day to day decisions (make sure you keep doing the right things).
Enable sharing of this framework to the rest of the organisation.
Identify and select the best market opportunities.
Plan your approach and go to market.

Value:

Get your team in the strategic mindset.
Align them for quick goal-setting.
Development of the marketing plan.
Define go-to-market framework.

Leverage team knowledge

There is a lot of knowledge in your sales team. The issue most of the time is that it is in the individual heads of the sales persons. With social tools, the right mindset and good community management, you can unlock the real value of this information.

Challenge:

Find a way to share the information that individual sales people have.
Enable marketing to quickly share market and competition information.
Leverage the wisdom of the internal crowd to come up with solutions for new challenges in the market, best practices,…

Value:

Selection and setup of internal social communication tool (Yammer in this case).
Roll out plan
Animation