Key Speaker for Government’s “Women in Global Business” Conference

Emma is invited to speak and present a case study as to the key ingredients to achieving global success at the July

Women in Global Business Speaker Series.

Here are some of the details being shared to promote the event:

Australian women will have the opportunity to hear from prominent women who have succeeded internationally at the Women in Global Business Speaker Series in July and August.The annual event held in states and territories across the country will feature speakers from a variety of industry sectors, providing businesswomen with practical advice on venturing overseas.

Women in Global Business national program manager, Cynthia Balogh, believe the event is beneficial in helping women overcome international barriers, particularly those in the Middle East.

“The Middle East presents quite specific barriers for women; some of the Asian and South American markets can do the same,” she said.

Balogh told Dynamic Export the event offers business owners the opportunity to learn and network with like-minded people.

“It’s an opportunity to see their role models, who have often had quite tough journeys to expand their businesses into those market places, women often learn from seeing role models. It helps them overcome some confidence issues, whether it’s personal confidence or confidence in business,” Balogh said.

Digivizer CEO, Emma Lo Russo, who will be speaking at the Sydney event can relate to the personal challenges women face when growing their business.

Lo Russo believes the event will provide shared mentorship and allow women to learn from real-life experiences.  “Having real honest examples of what works, is quite empowering. Instead of feeling like you have to navigate the unknown or have a goal and do it alone”.

Details & registration for the event can be found here :

Thursday 26th July 2012

8.30am – 12.30pm

NSW Trade and Investment Centre, Level 47, MLC Centre, 19 Martin Place, Sydney

I’ll post more about my key points to achieving international success here soon.

Choosing the right mentor

carriergoodwill1

I was recently asked what someone should look for in a good mentor.

The first thing to do is to recognize the value in engaging a good mentor or coach to help you hold yourself accountable for developing yourself and taking your career to the next level.

The value of seeking a career mentor is in how they can help you bring clarity to your career goals over the near, medium and long term, to help you prioritize your next steps towards your goals, how to strategize and evaluate options in light of your goals and values, and to help you stay accountable to the path you wish to take.  Through formalizing this relationship with someone, it provides a regular, safe and confidential sounding board to bounce your fears, aspirations and future challenges.

Finding the right mentor is based on how inspirational they are to you, how experienced, how insightful and how good they are in facilitating the right discussions. High Emotional Intelligence would rate as the key characteristic of a great mentor and just as you would look for a great employee, you want in a great mentor someone who has demonstrated that they are smart, talented, have a history of delivering great results and have built many great relationships and people through their leadership and association.

Finding the right mentor is based on how inspirational they are to you, how experienced, how insightful and how good they are in facilitating the right discussions. High Emotional Intelligence would rate as the key characteristic of a great mentor and just as you would look for a great employee, you want in a great mentor someone who has demonstrated that they are smart, talented, have a history of delivering great results and have built many great relationships and people through their leadership and association.

In a busy working world, it is too easy to rationalize to ourselves what we do and why we do it.  Much harder to rationalize to someone else. Particularly if they are asking you the right questions and you are looking inside yourself to provide the right answers.

Both you and they will know when you are making excuses or seeing things through a narrow field of vision.

If you want to take your personal life or career to the next level, it may be time to engage a mentor. The benefits of having someone else push, question, strategize with you through mentoring can only lead to greater success.

Tips for leading successful negotiations

Make_me_an_offerOften in business or when supporting coaching clients, I am asked to prepare or help someone to lead a successful negotiation. Here I share my key tips for leading successful individual negotiations:

  1. Prepare in advance – understand the principles of bracketing. Plan for, and clearly know your high point, your low point and your mid point.  Your midpoint should be what you are happy to be paid, your low point is your walk away, and anything upside of your midpoint you should be delighted.  Think about your strategy in how you could move your first asking point greater then where it would otherwise be to help raise the midpoint.
  2. Try to avoid putting your price down first – no matter what.   Look to get the person you are negotiating with to state their position, their thinking, their decision-making criteria. You can look to set the agenda and ideal outcomes based on principles before a number or the details of the introduction gets introduced.
  3. Keep your cards close to you and actively listen to the other party to help you determine your approach and negotiation tactics.  To get the other person to state his or her position first assuming the status quo is fine with you and there is no pressure on you to make a move, be bold enough to say to the other side, “You approached me. The way things are, satisfies me. If you want to do this, you’ll have to make a proposal to me.”
  4. Hold to your position for as long as you can – see how far they will come to your point first without you budging or without you budging far.  Communicate all the time that you are prepared and ready to make the deal and find something that works for everyone.
  5. Understand all the influencers and decision makers – you must know  and work with the person authorized to make the deal.  Talk to the key decision maker. Spend time in researching, listening and understanding their drivers and frame of reference.
  6. Discussions should always begin with a clear understanding of the win-win-win.  How do they win, how do you win, how do you win together?  Much research has been done to support the approach of winning for everyone is a much better outcome and brings greater results (financial & emotional) then if you have win by screwing down the other party.  Negotiation is based on the foundations of inspiration and persuasion.  How can you make the other party see your point of view or vision for the future?
  7. Negotiation is not always about money – negotiation can be based on a number of factors. Think creatively and really understand your own drivers.  For instance, in salary negotiations you may be looking at any one of the following elements:  Base Salary, Added Benefits, Profit Share & other short &/or long term incentives, Working environment & flexibility in hours, Additional holiday periods, Job enrichment & satisfaction based on doing more of what you love.
  8. Avoid being the first to double bracket or to negotiate against yourself (you would be surprised at how many people do this – make an offer, then jump in with another based on the other person’s non-response).  Hold and wait until the other person makes their offer known.  Hold too on your final position and get them to talk about what they are thinking and what you can do to help them.  Reinforce their and the combined win in the win-win-win situation. Identify any potential barriers to bringing closure to the negotiations.  Think about how you can remove them or how else they could be viewed and change your tactics accordingly.
  9. There may be variables in a negotiation, understand what they are and be clear (first be clear to yourself) as to what is important to you – eg timing, breakdown, flexibility etc
  10. Consider the power of using time as a variable – what needs to be done by when and how flexible can you or the negotiating party be around that (and what is the value to you around that variability).  Gain a sense of urgency – if the other party is keen to bring closure to the negotiations you may in fact be able to use that urgency to your advantage by moving slowly and looking like you don’t care how long it takes.  However look to ensure the principles of having something that works for everyone remains a priority.
  11. Never negotiate when you are feeling emotional.  Try to keep a level head at all times.  If you need a break, request time to think about the offer until you can think straight again.  Talk out loud to someone else if you need some help in unraveling your emotions and to help reform the confidence and rationale in your approach and  position.
  12. Remember to celebrate the final result of your negotiations. It is important to ensure all parties feel good about the deal that was done.
  13. Once concluded, spend some time reflecting – could you have done things differently for next time? Any lessons learned?
  14. Finally, never let the other party know you were prepared to accept less or pay more in the negotiations.  They will feel bad, and you will lose any goodwill created by the win-win-win principle.

Each of us negotiates many things and many times in daily life and in business. By considering these simple strategies, you should obtain an outcome you are happy with.

For leading more complex negotiations, there are many resources available.  One book that I recommend reading is “Negotiation Genius – how to overcome obstacles and achieve brilliant results at the bargaining table and beyond” by Deepak Malhotra & Max H. Bazerman, Harvard Business School 2007

What have you found works for you?  Do you recommend any strategies or resources that have helped you?  What tips would you offer others who want to lead successful negotiations?

Growth in a connected world

Emma will be the key-note speaker at next week’s business conference “Growth in a connected world” where she will explore in greater detail the forces of change impacting your business, customer relationships and infrastructure.

Understand, Grow and Lead by embracing these changes.

Read Emma’s related post on Driving your own upturn

DETAILS OF CONFERENCE:

GROWTH IN A CONNECTED WORLD

Date:  Wednesday 23 March 2011

Time:  7.30am for an 8.00am start

Location:  Sydney Masonic Centre, Corner of Goulburn and Castlereagh Streets.

NB: Ample parking available close by.

RSVP:

Register your interest by emailing ned@greengoldit.com.au Or

Register online at www.ontrackaus.com Events Or

Call (02) 9261 5111 / (02) 9248 0162

Who Should Attend:

Business Owners, CEO’s, CFO’s, CIO’s and Senior Managers.

Event hosted by:

Green and Gold People to People & Ontrack Systems (AUS) Pty Ltd.

Supported by SAP and NETFIRA.

SAP Business One, is an affordable integrated business management solution for Small and mid-size businesses, turns your existing business assets into thriving resources.

NETFIRA is a B2B supply chain software solution for small and medium businesses, allowing them to buy and sell online without a need for the website or EDI.

Working for pressure or pleasure?

Piggy BankSocrates said “The Life which is unexamined is not worth living”.  Just as you empty your piggy bank to count the coins to determine how much value you have created, it is a good thing to tip your life upside down and shake it around to allow you to view it from a few more angles and evaluate the sum of your life value.

However unlike the coins that have a predetermined value, the value we place on all the individual and collective “life” experiences can be viewed very differently and uniquely by each person.  The most important evaluation is the one you place on it.  How do you measure the value of your total life experiences against all aspects of your life:  Family, Professional, Health, Financial, Spiritual, Social, Intimacy and Community?

The sum of where you are today, and how you got here, is not measured by time and does not predetermine the course of the total life balance and value.  What got you here, might not get you to where you would like to end up. Time is not measured in minutes, hours and days in a life value, but rather by what you do with your time.

Which comes to the question, what are we working to generate?  Are we working with clear purpose?  Towards something that will give us a great sense of peace, happiness and satisfaction?  Have we truly evaluated the value we are looking to generate? The legacy we would like to leave? And importantly, how to get there?

Many executives and people I know talk of the “treadmill” they are on.  Even more so at the start of a calendar year when there seems to be a lot more “getting started” meetings, new activities, education and sporting schedules to be slotted in.  People feel just as they are getting into the swing of things, planning for the new financial year begins, and before you know it you are working hard to deliver a number of things with hard deadlines and pressure to deliver on multiple goals, commitments and resolutions.

Since I often feel the weight of the number of balls I choose to juggle, I recently asked myself this question “am I working for pressure or pleasure”?  This shifted things for me.  Although I set out (in a pretty determined way) to work for pleasure both personally and professionally, doing what I love, with people I love, for people I love; I can get hooked on the pressure and use that to drive outcomes.  Before I know it I realize I am working to the rhythm of pressure, and forget that I want to work for pleasure.  My experience tells me I can achieve far more and enjoy it far more along the way, when I work for pleasure.

There is no right or wrong answers or evaluations when examining your own life.  The key is to evaluate it regularly and to make it meaningful to you.  To consciously maximize the value you are looking to generate.  To gain pleasure in what you do so that you can achieve more of what it is you want to do.

If you see your life as a piggy bank made up of multiple experiences, against each aspect of your life, with each holding a personalized value, how are you going against the total value you are looking to generate?  What will you change?

When One Business Just Isn’t Enough: How to run a portfolio Business

Emma was recently interviewed by Suzi Dafnis of Australian Businesswomen’s Network.  Here she introduces Emma to her network as:

“For many of us, running one business is more than enough. My guest today runs two businesses. Emma Lo Russo is an experienced innovator, organisation leader and marketer. She has brought together her experience gained from leadership positions across a broad spectrum of industries to two businesses.

Digivizer, a business that delivers the digital footprint of the people you know (i.e. your clients) and the people you should know. Digivizer looks at who you should connect to through social media and Validity Coaching, a collective of experienced executive coaches.

Emma joins me to talk about the pros and cons of running a portfolio business, that is, a collection of businesses. We look at:

  • Does running two businesses impact the effectiveness of one or more of the business?
  • How can a split focus help you get better business results?
  • What are the challenges of running more than one business, and how do you overcome them?

Enjoy this interview with Emma Lo Russo.”

http://www.abn.org.au/site/article/Video-When-One-Business-Just-Isnt-Enough-How-to-run-a-portfolio-business-Emma-Lo-Russo-interview

Be the change you want to see in the world…

"We are all connected" by Erica Marshall of muddyboots.org   I love this quote by Mahatma Gandhi.  And I try to live by this mantra.

Having lead an ASX-listed technology company as President & COO for 5 years, and after working 20 years in leadership positions for a range of corporates and agencies( working full time whilst raising my 3 kids), I took the big scary decision to step out last year and take a more entrepreneurial/self-starting career change.

After taking some time out to contemplate what next (travelling around Australia in a Winnebago with kids and husband), I decided to take my future into my own hands and do a number of things:

1)  Stay focussed on doing what I love and feel passionate about “helping people and businesses grow”, and to

2)  Find a new and different way to leverage my experience by playing to my strengths and passions

I now focus my time on sharing my experience and developing people through coaching, leadership development, workshops, speaking, writing and am now working to help businesses grow through harnessing the power and value of the web.

What drives me is my excitement about the increasing ubiquity of the web, faster processing and download power, interconnectivty and mobility through an ever-increasing range of electronic products and platforms, and how this has opened up the global market. 

The model introduced by Apple with the ipod and itunes was a real paradigm changer for all businesses. Now all companies are looking at how to take advantage of technology and how they can connect, interact, create lock-ins with their customers through more personalised, targeted products, services and support – all delivered through the web.

The web is undeniably becoming more social. Right now, people are meeting, finding, sharing, and connecting with one another through the social web – leaving behind digital footprints that are as unique as they are. As an example, a recent Nielsen study found that 75% of global consumers who go online access Social Networks and Blogs, and that there was a 66% increase in time spent on Social Networks/Blogs compared to last year. 

Australia’s social media audience is estimated at 9.9 million and 40% of online Australians are now interacting with companies via social networking sites, reinforcing notions that Australians are open to engaging with brands and companies online. And this type of penetration is typical of western countries and increasing at a rapid rate in the developing countries.

It is through this changing world and the increasing take up of what has become the social web that I co-founded DIGIVIZER together with my (very smart) partner Clinton Larson to help businesses bring sense to the billions of connections and conversations that are happening on the web each day.  To help them find what matters to them and to help them use it in ways that they can extract value and a return to their bottom line.

And so I now introduce DIGIVIZER to you… 

DIGIVIZER delivers to businesses the digital footprints of people you know and people you would like to know, providing insights into who and what people are saying and about things that matter to you. All presented in meaningful, people-centric, easy-to-understand and easy-to-access sets of data.

When integrated with your customer relationship, sales and marketing platforms and programs, DIGIVIZER gives you a new edge to enable more powerful personalization and targeting through all customer interactions – significantly increasing the return on your marketing and sales investment.

We are in the early stages of growing, balancing client requirements with the development of the base platform.  It is exciting, it is challenging, and it is unlocking some powerful results.

I truly believe this Social CRM is the future for businesses and as a very wise person said, that the personalization of our experience on the web will no doubt be viewed as the characterizing aspect of the current phase in the evolution of the web and the way we will do business.

And so, the journey continues.  And it all starts with making the changes you want to see in the world – starting with yourself and your world, then looking beyond. 

Exciting times for us all ahead!

Compliance vs Engagement

goldfish-taking-actionDoing the basic job required of us, in most cases, is easy to do.  In fact we can often do much of what we do without having to really engage, invest and stretch ourselves. 

We learn from an early age to follow instructions. To have our creative thinking ordered with a set of pre-determined decisions to create structure, harmony and order. 

Certainly it helps to learn the consequences of taking actions that are outside of what is expected of us. However do we consider the dangers to progress if we merely look and teach others to comply?

How often do you hear “I do this because that is what is asked of me.”  Or “I don’t do this, because the rules say not to.”  In business we can often provide more processes, instructions and parameters to reduce risk and error margins, but what happens when it stops people from thinking or taking ownership all together?

In this past week, I saw two separate cases where perfectly intelligent and capable people were discussing a problem within their working environments.  In being challenged as to why they did not see those problems as ones they could solve, the dutiful responses were offered around it not being their job, it wasn’t done that way, there was red tape, a usual way to solve this etc.

In reality, they had become compliant.  Stopped thinking, stopped ownership, stopped engaging with the broader objectives and motivations for their companies and themselves.

It didn’t take long to unlock their thinking and to see alternate ways to own and solve the problems they were facing. 

Unfortunately once I started looking for examples of compliance over engagement elsewhere, I started to see it everywhere – in customer service across multiple businesses, in my children, and in me.  It has made for an interesting point for reflection.

Key to solving passive compliance is engagement ourselves and encouraging engagement in others.  It is not enough to just observe or be present.  Not enough to comply even if it gets you over the line and off the hook.  What is required of us is to really engage with a problem you see and view it as something you can own, influence and drive towards a solution. 

In these cases I refer to this week, by engaging with the problem didn’t mean these clients had to make the problem their own completely and feel the pressure to solve it on their own. 

In both cases it was enough to shift the thinking from it being someone else’s problem to being “our problem” to solve.  And to get them thinking about how they could lead and influence change.  To think about possible options and opportunities.  

Seeing the bigger picture and not being hamstrung by barriers – perceived or real, allows for progress. 

By engaging fully with what you are hoping to achieve and not the process of getting there, promotes critical thinking and creativity. It brings action and results.

Where do you need to switch gears and move from compliance to engagement to really generate progress?

The Try> Apply> Fly Approach

Man flying over sleepers.  Photo by Lois Greenfield.A key part of mastering something is practice.

As children we understand this concept as we try time and time again to do the perfect cartwheel, learn to ride a bike, catch a ball or master a popular dance move.

As we get older, we recognize and appreciate mastery in others, and will often choose to step aside to allow other experts to show the way.

Although I am a big believer in recognizing and playing to people’s strengths and working to your own, it worries me to see so many adults defer or give up before they have given something new their best shot.  A best shot can mean quality of preparation and at least a solid period of dedication in learning and putting into practice.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book “The Outliers – The Story of Success”, he introduces the 10,000 hour rule. 

The basic premise is that it takes 10,000 hours of dedication to your craft or skill before you are likely to really master or become a “superstar” at it.  He also adds, to be a true Outlier, it probably takes 10,000 hours plus talent and a timing opportunity before you really make it into the Outlier league (those that truly stand apart from the rest of the high achievers).

The more involved I am in successful businesses or with people who have achieved success, the more the pattern for success and mastery of something is evident.  And it is not just spending time (or 10,000 hours) working on something.  It is more their approach.  An approach based on continuous feedback, learning, finessing, trying and applying.

Stories shared by successful people often have the same theme: they tried, they learned, they applied their new skills, they tried again, and applied their learnings, until eventually they mastered what they set out to do. 

Even when they achieved what they first set out to do, they went back to the same cycle of try>apply>fly to reach new heights.

Yes, they experienced fear.  Yes, they experienced failure (often many times), but they all had the approach of continuing to try and not giving up until they succeeded.

Seems like an easy lesson for each of us. 

You need to be happy to continuously Try and Apply to really Fly!

Excuses! Excuses! Excuses!

Is Time linear by Philipp KlingerIs it this time of year? Are people so busy that the topic becomes such a key one to cover and to revisit? 

I ask these questions because I note over the past fortnight there has been a marked increase in the number of articles around time and priority management. It feels like every business and management article or blog is covering this theme. No real new stuff, some very good stuff, but still there are a whole lot of words and opinions around what you need to do, how you need to think, what steps you need to take.

My preference is not to add much to this well covered theme… I have too much else I have prioritized to do first….but I can tell you simply the answer is in the following:

  1. YOU OWN YOUR TIME. 
  2. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR MANAGING YOUR TIME.
  3. ONLY YOU CAN KNOW HOW BEST TO MANAGE AND USE YOUR TIME.
  4. DON’T LET OTHERS TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR TIME
  5. WHEN YOU REALIZE YOU ARE OFF-TRACK, REVISIT THESE AFFIRMATIONS.

There is one more thing to remember – you always have a choice – so please, no more time-wasting or excuses. 

Plan for what you want to do and just do it!