Chuck talks Business

I received these from a friend of mine years ago.  I keep a copy at my desk.

These are meant for the folks who need to create change.  You may not have the authority you need, but you have the influence.  You may not be steering the ship, but you know who is gonna catch hell if it starts to sink.

1.  If your project has zero chance of failure, it’s not worth doing.

2.  Circumvent orders aimed at stopping your project.

3.  Do any job needed to make your project work.

4.  Find good people to help you.

5.  Do it the way it will work or do not do it at all.

6.  Work underground as long as possible.

7.  Never bet on a race unless you are in it.

8.  It is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

9.  Be true to your own goals.

10.  Honor your sponsors.

I want to know what you think. Leave a comment and let’s have a discussion.

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Chuck Smith Leadership ideas, Leadership

Now that Thanksgiving is over, I can share this.

It happened again the other day.  I got a call from a friend who had been laid off.  I know what you are thinking, Chuck you live in Detroit, surprise!  Well, actually this makes 5 friends in as many weeks and they all had two things in common.

1.  They did not live in the Midwest.

2.  They all have advanced degrees.

These folks all have great knowledge.  Stuff that would be useful to way more than just one company.  We are going to be taking advantage of that in the weeks and months ahead and forging some new paths.  It got me thinking about ruts and moving ahead, so I wanted to share a few things that I ran across.  Maybe a few minutes checking this stuff out will be the boost you need going into 2010.  I know I am excited about the abundance that is starting to unfold in the new year and I hope that if you are not, you soon will be.

The first is an interview that Dan Schawbel did with Libby Gill.

If your not familiar with Libby, here website is here.  Dan was good enough to put a short video of another interview with Libby in the piece and it is well worth the few minutes to view.

You can access Dan’s interview with Libby here.

The second resource is from Jim Kukral.  Jim is the Biz Web Coach and provides tons of great information.  You can check out his personal site here.

The specific post that I want to direct you to though is called How do you know when it’s time to change gears?

Let me know what you think.  Are you gearing up for a great 2010?

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Chuck Smith Leadership, LinkedIn, Pay it forward abundance, beginning, change

Operation Kid Equip

OK, Let’s help some kids!

The mission of Operation: Kid Equip is to serve the educational needs of children by providing free school supply kits to students from low-income families.

First a couple of facts:

• There are more than  51,000 underprivileged children in Oakland County MI alone.  (nccp.org)
• Every school system in Oakland County MI has at least one homeless student. (Mike McFall)
• Parents spend $98 per child on supplies alone for back to school. (National Retailers Foundation)

I had a chance to sit down with Mike McFall of Operation Kid Equip (OKE) on the kickoff meeting for Blood, Sweat and Gear.  Operation Kid Equip is the Gear.  Here are a couple of videos of Mike talking about OKE.

What they need and how you can help.

1.  Help spread the word. Menachem Kniespeck is one of the co-founders and you can follow him on twitter. @OKE_Menachim.

Another way to spread the word.  Go to the Operation Kid Equip page on Facebook.  While you are there, scroll down and on the lower left of the page is a share button.  Please click it and share OKE with your friends.

A third place to spread the word.  Go to the Operation Kid Equip group on LinkedIn.

2.  Go to the Operation Kid Equip causes page on Facebook and donate some money to the cause.  If you are a business and you or your employees are donating $250 dollars or more, please contact me and I will set up an interview on my blog talk radio show and do a video interview at your location that can be circulated by the folks working with Motor City Connect to make this happen.

Our goal for the Blood, Sweat and Gear effort is to raise $4,000 for Operation Kid Equip.  They also need 1700 spiral notebooks and packets of filler paper.  The price of paper is making those supplies the most limiting.  That means that they will also be the biggest burden on the folks that Operation Kid Equip serves.

Operation Kid Equip is one of the three charities that are being supported under Blood, Sweat and Gear through Motor City Connect.  I had a chance to talk to Terry Bean about the effort, here is the video.

If you have any questions, put them in the comments section and we can get them answered.

We are making things happen in Detroit.  Let’s help some kids!

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Chuck Smith Leadership, Pay it forward blood sweat and gear, Community, Detroit, MCC, Motor City Connect, operation kid equip

In Detroit we’re Kickin’ it 1-2-3

1 - Community

This is our house, “The D”, Hockeytown.  We are Southeast Michigan, we are Detroit and we are not rolling over and playing dead contrary to popular opinion in many media outlets.  You are gonna have to come bigger and harder if you expect a little recession to stop us in “The D.”  With Detroit, I am of course talking about Detroit city limits, the Suburbs, Ann Arbor and all of Southeast Michigan.

We have 5 major research Universities.  Some of the best Health Care Facilities in the World and too many artists and attractions to list in one blog post.

2 - Great Organizations

The first one is Social Media Club - Detroit and Ann Arbor

Thanks to @jesssoul and @davemurr for getting the group going!

The account is @SMCDA2 and the hashtag is #SMCDA2

The wiki is here.

We are changing the Facebook Group to a Facebook Page and I will update this post with links when it happens.

I did a little video essay from the first meeting.  We are asking the big questions and coming up with BIGGER Answers!

We talked about a number of issues in Social Media and Topics for our Program Committee to take on:

Detroit Awesome
Trends
Detroit Social Media Evangelism
Responsible Usage - particularly for younger users
The Business Case for Social Media
Common Challenges
Putting it all together
Presence Management
Showcasing Detroit Artists
Just a little video of folks Sharing It

The second great organization is Motor City Connect.

I grabbed @CharlieCurve to talk about it a little.

@MotorCity

The LinkedIn group is here.

As Charlie said, @TerryBean is the Chief “Ask” Officer.  If you have no idea what that means, get connected and ask him!

3 - Great Charities

Red, Green and Sledgehammer

Red - American Red Cross - Southeast Michigan

Green - Operation Kid Equip

Sledgehammer - Detroit Blightbusters

Again, I grabbed @CharlieCurve to talk a little about it:

I’m curious about what’s going on with building communities and strengthening relationships in other parts of the country world.  I know there are some folks out there talkin’ smack about the Motor City and us folks in the Midwest.

Just remember, we are giving blood and carrying Sledgehammers!

The first word in Social Media is Social, don’t keep it a Secret.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Chuck Smith Leadership, LinkedIn, Networking, Social Networking, Twitter Community, Detroit, Marketing, MCC, Motor City Connect, SMCDA2, Social Media, Social Media Club, Twitter

It doesn’t take a competitor to kill your business.  First in a series.

Business Lessons from the US Submarine Force.

As some of you know, I spent about a decade in the Navy.  I ran nuclear power plants on fast attack submarines.  If you’re into seriously cool, I highly recommend it.  One does have to be get used to 18 hour days, on watch for 6 hours, work for six hours, sleep for six hours, if you’re lucky.  That’s a story for another day, you just learn to tell time by whether the cooks are serving breakfast or not.

This series is a bit of a personal challenge.  I have been yak shaving on writing these into a book, since before I heard the term.  A couple of my friends from the Navy finally said, just do it.

Lesson One:  It doesn’t take a competitor to kill your business.

It was my first day at sea, we had just finished the “maneuvering watch.”  That’s submarine for everybody in place for going into and out of port.  We were on the surface for the next few hours as we moved to our dive point.  This was the perfect time to “field day.”  That’s Navy for clean.  Marketing at it’s finest, the phrase for a day of sports outside in grade school becomes cleaning - perfect!

Our theme for this field day was small valves.  It gets better!  We have themes for cleaning!  Anyway, the Chief pairs me up with a more experienced Electrician in our division and says “Don’t let Smith turn any valves that will kill us!”  Whoa, what?!?!?!  Kill us!

I get a short explanation that the area we are cleaning houses our air conditioning plants.  Air conditioning refrigerant and your lungs do not co-exist well.  Who knew?  I got the intel on a number of other things in my new home.

Sea pressure is 44 lbs per square inch for every 100 feet below sea level you are, that doesn’t sound pleasant.  We knew too well about our shipmates on eternal patrol.

Fire spreads incredibly well in a closed environment that is essentially round.

We had atmosphere control equipment that reduced CO and CO2, if they don’t work it’s a bad day.

There is an Oxygen Generator.  Nicknamed “The bomb,” because it “does God things,” takes water and makes one thing that likes to burn and one thing that likes to explode.  See above for fire and explosions being bad.

Who needed enemy submarines to kill us?  There were a number of ways for us to end up in Davey Jones locker on our own!  That’s the lesson here.

What are the things in your business that are as risky as your competitors?

Do you have systems that can fall apart?  Is customer service up to par?

Are you prepared for a market downturn?  Still trying to sell buggy whips?

Do you only have one revenue stream that could be several, to mitigate a loss of one?

The thing about being on a submarine is that you drill and drill and drill for situations that can happen.  What if?  What if plan A fails?  What if plan B isn’t effective?  That’s why every person on a submarine goes through a qualification process that is heavily geared towards knowledge of “the boat” (our business) and if you didn’t qualify, we canned you. We had a saying “Life is Simple,  …either you’re qualified or you’re Not!” - but that is Lesson Two…

Chuck Smith Leadership, Submarine business lesson Submarine business lesson