...not gold. That's right, is not gold!

Glitter is a distraction and mental occupier, it is rarely reality. I have found over the years that the more the lights blink, the more noise it makes, the more buzz and glitz produced...the less the profits and potential really exist. By the time the lights are on you are late to the party.

We are creatures whose brains are based on the attention to change. For the couple of million years we evolved in being attentive to the snap of a twig or the flicker of a color in the tall grass was all that kept us alive. Fight or Flee is a core operating paradigm still in our brains. Ever wake up in the middle of the night because of a sound? Did you happen notice that your adrenaline was already flowing, the cognitive part of your brain, the consciousness, was the last part to come on line, you were already to take action when your eyes opened. You hear 300 to 3000 Hertz best because that is the frequency range of the sound braking twigs and rustling grass. You see more shades of yellow because living in tall yellow grass you had to see tiger stripes from dried grass in an instant. You are sensitive to change, it is the basis of our brains, all this thought stuff we do came much later in the brain's development, in the last 1% of our evolution. Change is what our brains are all about.

Ever notice that one of the first questions out of most people's mouths is "what’s new?"

We are driven by fads, the presentation of newness. We love it! Look at our response to hype. How about movies and music, the delivered product is typically a let down compared the promise of something new. What is greater than a new love?

I am not saying you should be cynical (which you should) but that this is the pattern of life, newness and change is attractive because we are wired for it (I am old enough to have seen bell-bottom become popular for the third time that I know of so I have to assume it happened many times before I became aware of them in the sixties). Virtually everything has happened before but it is new to us the first time we experience it, thus it is exciting, it makes our brains perk up and focus, dream, and for a moment we are more alive than we have been in a while. The habituation sets in, we get used to it, it become normal and dull. Thus are we wired to think.

So what is the point for an entrepreneur you ask?

Simple, don't fall for newness but use it to your advantage, and do so without shame. After all, it is life's only consistent pattern besides death and taxes.

Barry Thornton is a Technology and Marketing Guy

Labels: change, dreams, Entrepreneur, excitation, fads, life, newness

• starts saying "no" to business
• is more concerned about marketing and less about sales
• begins leveraging people and resources
  

• make decisions quickly and listen to your gut
• employ stages and gates to protect the business
• limit the amount of time researching and deliberating

In these strategies, we keep the business swiftly moving and keep the momentum of growth, take advantage of opportunities that can generate greater success and take small risks toward that success without sinking too many resources into the unproven.

A mind shift necessarily occurs for the leader when the company is in growth. As our focus shifts to building the company, there is a "letting go" of some old strategies and practices that must occur. However, as we go forward, we need to keep some of what we were doing because these are the features that indeed brought us to our success. The process is akin to adding a new ingredient to the mix rather than discarding old ones.

The kernels of wisdom shared at this meeting were vast, but all generally held the themes that there is a right action for the right time. Additionally, what we learn from the experiences we gain taking our business through Ideation, Valley of Death, and Growth can teach and prepare us to make bigger, better, and more efficient decisions leading to greater success for ourselves and our business.

Nancy Schill is the founder of Executive Intelligent Coaching, a company that works alongside business leaders and their teams in the growth stage of business to achieve the vision, strengthen influence and employ an inspiring culture. She can be reached at nschill AT executiveintelligentcoaching DOT com

Labels: change, decision-making, Executive Intelligent Coaching, growth, ideation, Nancy Schill, startup, strategies, valley of death

There is an old story that goes: sit down and don't rock the boat, I'm trying to drill a hole in the bottom. Trying to scuttle the boat, or business, may not be intentional, but the action or conduct that does that may be all that people can figure out to do. This is part of the problem of the Entrepreneur inside a company has to face. Businesses die today because, in the now common business vernacular, the DNA is wrong (we know it really is the MEMEs (1) that are wrong but the folks with bad Memes think of it as DNA, how foolish, everyone knows you can't change DNA, Memes on the other hand are fluid and can morph with degree of ease).

The internal entrepreneur's problem is changing the way the business thinks and acts. Like different DNA in a body, he (or she) is attacked as a fatal threat by the rest of the business unless he is shielded or camouflaged.

Protection or shielding does not work that well because it permits all the 'antibodies' to focus on a clear target. An example would be a CEO deciding that he needs to change the course of the business to grow, so he puts a spotlight on the group trying to change the way people think. Targeting, simple targeting. That spotlight makes it clear to all just who has to be wiped out to maintain the status quo. It is the guy rocking the boat that everyone can hate.

Camouflage on the other hand is surreptitious and a bit sneaky, doesn't attract a lot of attention and in the internal entrepreneur's case, lets him win converts, even gets the sympathy vote by the very people who will eventually be changed. By not putting the change mechanism in people's faces you offer a way to adapt that is not confrontational.

Traditionally new ways were developed in a skunk works, a place that was simply not visible where the Standard Operating Procedures could be tossed out and newness could happen. Problem is that skunkworking doesn't allow the newness to infect and drive the oldness to change, It leaves the oldness in isolation. You may get a neat new product but you don't necessarily get a new way of doing things.

The point is that the internal entrepreneur's job is really to adapt the organization to treat the customer in new ways. To do that his act must be visible and infectious to all but not threatening. Quite a trick, takes special guts, and in the end a love for both the business and customers. Because in today's marketplace this has to be a continuous process. Too bad GM can't figure this out.

Question is, can your company figure it out?

(1) DNA are the units of biological knowledge that set the pattern for the entity containing them, Memes are units of cultural knowledge the set the pattern for the way the entity thinks

Barry W Thornton is technologist, who organizes, manages and explains knowledge. Copyright Barry W Thornton 2008 all rights reserved

Labels: change, Entrepreneur, fear, GM, skunkworks, survival, the new marketplace, your company