How Bad do you want it?

You don't have to be into football, or weight training, or anything physical to understand the theme of this video clip.  The message applies to writing code, or building a company, or just about anything else you can imagine.  The bottom line is the same.  When you ask yourself "How bad do you want it?" the answer has to be so powerful that you can not fail.  I remember feeling this way...



Wishing you every success!  Now get back to work.

The Fall of Facebook, When, Why, How

I'm thinking about the Fall of Facebook, when, why, and how it will happen, and how soon it will be simply a worn out punchline in trivia quizzes, a pop culture flashpoint in the early 21st century that lasted for a few years and was gone just as fast.  I think it would be worth writing a series on the Fall of Facebook.

Other title concepts: 

The Great Facebook Implosion of 201x.

The Facebook Disappearing Act

Facebook Evaporation Day

Facebook Face-plant

Billionaire today, punch line tomorrow.

Facebook Emigration Day

Facebook Independence Day

The Rolling Facebook Evacuation Plan

People in each time zone transfer to new service at certain hours of the day to balance the load on the servers.  It is estimated that Facebook could be a ghost town in 24 hours or less.

Here's an interesting teaser by Cringely.  Link.

Motivation

"Motivate" is Principle #6, but knowing and doing are a long way apart.  

A highlight of today was receiving another of the excellent posts from Stephen Lynch, COO of Results.com on this very topic of motivation.   The book he recommends sounds interesting.  Here's his latest:

Good news. The key to motivating your people turns out to be largely within your control. It has nothing to do with money or incentive systems, or even recognizing your people. The top motivator of employee performance is in fact - "progress".

What does a good day at work look like?

On days when employees can see they’re making headway in their jobs, or when they receive support from their manager that helps them overcome obstacles - their motivation and their drive to succeed is at its peak.

On days when they feel like they are spinning their wheels, or encountering roadblocks - their moods and motivation are lowest.

Research documented in the book The Progress Principle shows that:

Management behaviors that INCREASE employee motivation:

• Set clear and meaningful SMART goals
• Provide the necessary resources, support and encouragement
• Protect your people from irrelevant demands and distractions
• Roll your sleeves up and help them out
• Make progress visible
• Recognize and acknowledge people who make incremental progress toward their goals every week

Management behaviors that DECREASE employee motivation:

• Change the goals
• Be indecisive
• Withhold the resources they need to be successful
• Cause setbacks or create roadblocks to impede their progress
• Create intense time pressure
• Keep your people in a state of constant crisis
• Not let people see that they are making measurable progress every week

Eliminate the barriers to execution.

Note – these negative management behaviors have a greater effect on people’s motivation than the positive ones, so you need to pay close attention to this list. Work to eliminate the negative first.

What sort of management behaviors are exhibited in your company?

How well are you tracking the progress of your people, and making their performance visible every week?

Habits! Start good ones, end bad ones...

Right about now is when a lot of New Year's resolutions are starting to be forgotten.  Bad habits are hard to break and good habits are hard to start.  That's why I am working with an iPhone app called Lift to help me be a better me.  Here are a few things they have learned by analyzing a few thousand users' habit forming activities:

Appreciation goes a long way

It has been demonstrated that people are more motivated by appreciation/recognition than money, even me!  So it's nice to hear some good words every once in a while, isn't it?  Well then, why not spread the love around and tell a few of the important people in your life how you really feel?  Not just your employees, but what about your accountant, attorney, IT guy, wife/girlfriend?

For example, here's an email I received from one of my Protégés late last week:

Thank you for everything you do, I feel like there isn't another person on earth as qualified as you which is why I don't have an advisory board yet :) I think you have moved my standards too high!  (ND)

And here's a message that came in this morning:

FastMikie, remember our brief call last Sept/Oct/whenever? Following your funding advice, I was able to raise over $100K in less than 5 weeks through non-traditional channels, 5 personal investors out of 8 attempts at an overall APR of roughly 4.9%. Not too bad, huh? Now I can launch both ventures... We already have 5 sponsors (my IT guy is having trouble keeping up) and things are looking good. Thanks for the advice! (RM)

I think you can guess how good that makes me feel.  Now it's your turn to see how good you can make someone else feel.  Go for it!  

I'll bet even YOU will feel better for it!

15 Basic Rules for Startup Business Development

My favorite VC blog features a guest (Foursquare BD guy) post on "Startup Business Development 101" and lists the 15 Basic Rules you need to know.  Too long to summarize in this space, so click here to read it all. 

Sharpening the saw

In his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey discusses habit #7: Sharpening the Saw, regarding self-rejuvenation. The advice is to balance and renew your resources, energy, and health to create a sustainable, long-term, effective lifestyle. It primarily emphasizes exercise for physical renewal, meditation, yoga, and good reading for mental renewal. It also mentions service to society for spiritual renewal.

In this spirit of renewal, and in alignment with the New Year and the resolutions traditional at this time, I got to thinking how I could improve my own life, especially as it relates to my coaching/mentoring of entrepreneurs.

The books shown in the photo above are a few of my planned short term reading materials.  If you know of others, please let me know.

Additionally, I will be working toward a certification program for coaching, because, well, because I can.  Some of my mother's best advice was to aim to be the best at anything I chose to do.

What are your plans to Sharpen the Saw?