Up, Down or Sideways: How to Succeed When Times are Good, Bad or In Between (Tyndale 2011) is my latest book focusing on what we should always be doing to assure our success regardless of circumstances.

We can’t predict with accuracy what the economy will be doing next month or next year, but we can be clear about the things we should be doing now to prepare for and make the most of whatever comes. In the book I focus on the mindsets (how we should think) and the methods (the things we should do) to be successful always.

Here s the summary of the suggested the daily disciplines needed to succeed when times are good, bad, or in between:

The Scorekeeper’s System: Be intentional about choosing and evaluating your scoring system.

The Optimist’s Orientation: Start the day expecting the best of yourself and great outcomes from your work.

The Learner’s Leverage: Learn something each day, and read something each day.

Produce Value: Create a checklist of the things you provide that others value, as well as the people who value what you provide, and continually evaluate and improve it.

Create Connections: Make time each day to take care of important connections. As your day comes to a close, make some mental notes of the opportunities you embraced and those you ignored.

Continuously Innovate: Make a list of what could be your next practices. Look for ways each day to make your value more, better, faster, different, less, and more fun.

Build Reserves: Make it a priority to exercise your financial, physical, mental, and spiritual muscles every day.

Practice Gratitude: Give one heartfelt compliment or write one thank-you note each day.

What did you think were the biggest take-aways from my most recent book? Please feel free to share your thoughts with me on Facebook and Twitter as well as in the comment box below.

After 25 plus years of travel and roughly 3 million air miles, here are eight reminders I’ve found helpful:

1. Be kind. Fellow travelers and travel industry employees can be rude and unkind. Don’t fight jerk behavior with jerk behavior. I know how hard it is. I ashamedly have behaved poorly in the past and am doing better as I get older. I wish I had learned patience and long-suffering earlier in life.
2. Quit complaining. Can you think of a time when whining made you feel better? It isn’t catharsis. I have found that even other inconvenienced travelers aren’t sympathetic to anything vaguely resembling whining. You might think you’re commiserating with like-minded folks; they think you’re bitching and moaning.
3. Bring dead time back to life. I’ve learned that the quicker I get over being frustrated or upset, the quicker I can become engaged and productive. Time spent in a funk would be better spent reading, returning calls, writing reports, etc.
4. Have a plan. This seems like travel basics 101 but I’m surprised how many road warriors don’t have a plan for when travel goes bad. Keep needed travel numbers programmed in your phone, familiarize yourself with alternative flights or travel arrangement in advance and think ahead.
5. Pay attention. In the age of distraction, bad things can happen when you text and walk through airports. Being aware of your surroundings and those around you not only makes you a more considerate traveler, but it helps avoid run-ins and distractions.
6. Accept uncertainty. You can have the best plans, be extremely travel savvy and still get screwed up. Hope springs eternal in the road warrior and we sometimes mistake optimism for control over the situation. We don’t control the weather, equipment failure, happens but we interact with those circumstances and work hard to create the outcome we desire. Sometimes, however, the circumstances win.
7. Interact. Some travelers like to be left alone so they can think, read or whatever (and I am often in that category). But occasionally looking up and connecting with others can provide unexpected enjoyment and even business opportunities.
8. Travel with margins. With all the things that can go wrong in traffic, returning rental cars and clearing airport security, allowing a little extra time almost always decreases stress levels.

What travel tips do you have?  Please feel free to share your thoughts with me on Facebook and Twitter as well as in the comment box below.

Why get better? What are the compelling reasons to improve yourself, your life or your business? In this audio blog, I share my perspective on why we should choose to keep improving.

The world’s leading brands – Apple, Google, Coke, McDonald’s, Amazon – represent great companies and those companies are the product of great leadership.

Steve Jobs of Apple, Larry Page of Google, and Jeff Bezos of Amazon founded (or cofounded) companies that have changed our everyday lives. They all fostered a culture of innovation and they all prioritized their passion – for design, for excellence, for the customer experience – before their profits.

As Larry Page put it, “If we were motivated by money, we would have sold the company long ago and ended up on beach.” As Jobs put it “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.”

Their leadership in innovation stems from the fact that they don’t just focus on making the next great product, but on something even larger. Said Page, “Our goal is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible.” You may recall the story of when Steve Jobs was hiring a soda executive to work at Apple, he asked, “Do you want to spend your life selling sugared water or do you want to change the world?” (That hire, by the way, did not turn out well for Jobs proving that even the smartest leaders are fallible.)

Jobs created a culture of innovation at Apple by encouraging his colleagues to “think different” but also to think big. He convinced them that they were part of something “much bigger than any of us here” and that “the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

Bezos strikes similar chords, saying, “What we want to be is something completely new.” Then he looks even further, “Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.”

Even at a well-established brand like McDonald’s, innovation is a driver of success. When CEO James Skinner took over, profits were falling. In the past, the company’s attitude was “we’ll make it, they’ll buy it,” he said. The company’s only growth strategy had been to build more stores. Skinner’s “Plan to Win” strategy changed all that. It focused on improving the quality of the food and the ambience at existing stores and developing new products that matched consumer tastes and trends. McDonald’s profits improved by $30 billion in three years and Skinner was named 2009 Executive of the Year.

Under Muhtar Kent, Coca Cola is implementing the 2020 plan, which will transform its bottling and distribution system. It also maintains a multimillion-dollar Innovation Lab to create new products and designs. Recently, one of its innovations reduced water consumption by 4% – at a savings of $61 million!

Just as all businesses can benefit by focusing on innovation and the passion to do great things, a single-minded focus on the needs and wants of consumers has also been a hallmark of the best brands. And that’s another quality that Jobs, Page, and Bezos had in common. In fact, they were all influenced by the same customer experience “guru,” Donald Norman, who wrote the groundbreaking work on product design, The Design of Everyday Things. Jobs liked him so much he hired him to work at Apple.

What they all got from Norman was the notion that  “the user is always right.” If a customer expects a product or service to work a certain way, then that’s how it should be designed to work. Sounds basic, right? But in many cases products are designed for ease or cost of manufacture rather than ease of use. Jobs, Page, and Bezos knew to see through the customers’ eyes first, and then produce a product or service that met their expectations.

Jeff Bezos put it well: “There are two ways to extend a business. Take inventory of what you’re good at and extend out from your skills. Or determine what your customers need and work backward, even if it requires learning new skills.”

According to Larry Page, that’s what the famous Google corporate motto is all about, “We have a mantra: ‘don’t be evil,’ which is to do the best things we know how for our users, for our customers, for everyone.”

They put themselves in the position of their customers and designed products that would match consumers’ wants and needs, and that would be a pleasure to use. As Jobs once said of the Mac operating system, “We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.”

By following their passions and their visions, and by designing their businesses around their customers, the world’s leading brands all offer a model for leadership. In the words of Larry Page, “You don’t need a 100-person company to develop that idea.”

Just in case you missed it, Click Here for Part One.  OR Click Here for Part Two.

Are you able to help others grow and improve?

Do you coach a sports team, lead a business unit or manage sales professionals?  This short two minute video will explain the four things you can accomplish in any coaching situation and help you take your development skills to the next level.

The world’s best brands, companies like Apple, Google, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and Amazon, may seem like very diverse businesses but they have some common traits that factor in their success. They all pursue continuous innovation and they all have their finger on the pulse of the customer, the “user.”

There are lessons for leaders in those common traits. Not all businesses are destined to be leading brands, but every business should innovate and every business must strike an emotional chord with customers.

The Apple brand is synonymous with innovation. From the computer mouse 25 years ago to the iPad 2 years ago, Apple’s string of innovations has changed the way we work, communicate, and entertain ourselves. At first, everyone thought computers were for work. Apple made them for people. When everyone else fiercely guarded their software, Apple made theirs “open source” to attract new developers.

More recently, when the cell phone market was cluttered and cutthroat, Apple changed the game with the iPhone. When the netbook was hot and everyone else had given up on the tablet, Apple introduced the iPad. The list goes on but the theme doesn’t change: Apple looks forward resolutely. So, while we’re still waiting in line for the next iPad, they’re busy working on a revolutionary television.

Google continuously innovates, as well. The Google product line is like a brainstorming session: the ideas keep tumbling out. Google Plus, Gmail, Google Books, Google Scholar, Google Maps, etc. Some stick, some don’t, some become industry standards. They almost overshadow the original innovation, the search engine that mastered the web and made “Google” a verb. By the way, they’ve never stopped working on that either.

Amazon took E-commerce to Main Street when everyone thought it was a back alley. When the company introduced the Kindle, critics fretted it would kill Amazon’s book-selling business. Now Amazon dominates the eBook market and is a leader in streaming content.

Even well established brands like McDonald’s and Coke need to innovate to keep their brands fresh. McDonald’s is no longer the ketchup-red and mustard-yellow hamburger stand you remember. Almost every store has gotten a sleek redesign in recent years to look like a trendy café with “linger zones” and “grab-and-go” areas. The menu matches with gourmet coffees, salads, and healthy foods that correspond with consumer tastes. They are all Wi-Fi hotspots, too.

Coca-Cola is rolling out PlantBottle, environmentally friendly and recyclable bottles for its iconic products, as well as Freestyle, a complete redesign of the soda fountain concept that gives users more choice and freedom.

Coke’s innovations, like the other brands’, are focused on one thing: the customer experience. They know that consumers have many choices and so they shop with their hearts. Putting “passion before profits” touches customers’ emotions, whether it’s a fondness for sleek design, ease of use, or evidence of a corporate conscience. So they are always looking for new ways to make their customers a little happier.

The Google corporate biography, In the Plex, describes a key strategy meeting. In it, one manager asked, “We’ve seen the road map for products, but where’s the road map for revenues?” A Google exec corrected him, “That’s not the way to think. We are focused on our users. If we make them happy, we will have revenues.”

By focusing on their customers and their passions, instead of the bottom line, all of these companies have built brands worth billons. As the recently departed Steve Jobs put it, “My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. The products, not the profits, were the motivation.”

In Part Three, we’ll take a look at the leaders like Jobs who have made these brands the leaders of the pack.

I’ve known Jeff Hayzlett for many years because of our association in the National Speakers Association and Sales and Marketing Executives International. A former Fortune 100 Chief Marketing Officer and global business celebrity, you’ve probably seen him on programs like Fox Business News, MSNBC’s Your Business and NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice with Donald Trump. Today he uses his creativity and extraordinary entrepreneurial skills to launch ventures blending his leadership perspectives, insights into professional development, mass marketing prowess and affinity for social media. The author of The Mirror Test, his latest book is Running the Gauntlet: Essential Business Lessons to Lead, Drive Change and Grow Profits.

I asked him to share his insights on being a change agent from his new book in this guest blog:

The gauntlet of change is cruel and change agents are exposed to all of its dastardly personnel: naysayers, obstructionists, backstabbers, and opportunists who use the messiness of change to stand in the way or shoot down new ideas. People at Kodak (read: naysayers, obstructionists, backstabbers, opportunists) liked to gossip about how I changed everything at Kodak — including, well, people.

Change agents know gossip is part of the gauntlet they must run, and Kodak was no exception. Firings that were part of layoffs planned long before I became CMO? My fault. Obsolete divisions axed as part of the digital reinvention that started before I was on board? My fault. And “they” certainly noted that my new teams in marketing proved I was changing everything. Only this time, they were right. But just like the story about the badges, perception was not reality. You know how many new people I brought in at Kodak? One. I absolutely got rid of the wrong people and kept the winners. But then I looked at where the holes were skill-wise started to fill those holes by looking at the existing talent companywide, matching their skills to the work required, and recruiting and hiring internally first. I knew many people could, with the right leadership and direction, help lead the change we wanted and were hungry for the chance! They just weren’t empowered to lead or in the right positions to do so. Change agents must grant these people permission and cheer them on; remember: it takes a lot of strength to run this gauntlet.

In other words, get people in the right seats on the “bus,” adapting the lesson so many change agents learned about driving change from Jim Collins’ still-outstanding Good to Great. Leaders are able to do this because they are seam operators — literally they operate across the seams of the company. We don’t get involved in day-to-day processes outside of setting the operating principles.  We don’t need to know too many details; we’ve already been through a lot of this before and don’t need it explained again. I tell my teams all the time, “I don’t want to know or hear about how sausage is made unless someone died. I get it. It’s sausage. Tell me what I need to know to get things moving.”

What I want to find out is what is breaking down between the seams of my company, between people and groups and from process to process. That’s what you listen to and why listening is probably the best skill a change agent can have — they listen throughout the organization and hear snippets from everyone and everywhere. That’s how they find out what they don’t know.

Change agents identify problems and then find ways to fix them or bring in people who can. This takes perseverance in any sized company, even small ones, where the same excuses always pop up. “That’s not my job…. That person or group does not report to me so I have no authority…. That’s not they way we do it…. That’s not within my budget….”

Change agents don’t care about excuses or worry about offending the “authorities” when attacked. They can’t. Like my approach with change at Kodak, they must act and go until someone tells you differently and then deal with that obstacle. Here’s why: The worst thing that happens is not that you make a mistake or piss someone off. Mistakes are inevitable and it’s our job to cause tension, which will occasionally piss people off. No, the worst thing is that you see something and don’t bring it up — you become seduced by the process and become part of the problem by failing to change it.
Change agents are already facing a herd mentality. Easier to blend and go with the flow than stand up and say wait a second. Most animals survive by blending with the herd. Who wants to be the white buffalo? That’s the one the wolf targets.

Change agents are white buffaloes.

This is especially true internally. Making things happen requires change agents to live in those seams of the company, work across its silos, and stick our noses into everything. We cause tension as much as we cheer people on. We push as much as we praise. We are going to get more than our share of abuse from c-suite executives, managers, legal, HR as we are those twentysomething employees with attitudes as big as busses and senses of entitlement to match who think — no, they know — they can do it better than you and then quits. Or how about that person who tells everyone he heard how “they” said you were awful to work for? And that person who….

Sometimes you think you can fix the problem, sometimes you just see how hard the change is going to be, and sometimes you are just exhausted. Leaders cannot back down and must remember this lesson from the trail: “If you’re ridin’ ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it’s still with ya.” If you lose touch with the herd, things can turn bad fast, but if you are too close to the herd, you’re eating dust. Whether you are leading thousands or just one, you need to find the right distance between the changes you seek with your company (employees, vendors, customers) and far enough ahead so you can actually lead them and not get caught up in how the sausage is made.

What are the world’s leading brands and how do they achieve that leadership? Are there lessons that we mere mortals can learn from the titans of global commerce?

Each year, publications like Forbes, Barron’s, and Money, and organizations like Interbrand and BrandZ, compile rankings of the most admired, respected, and popular brands in the world. Looking back over the various 2011 rankings, I started to think about what goes into brand leadership and what we can learn from it.

For starters, I noticed that a few companies turned up on every list even though each ranking uses a different methodology. For example, Barron’s polls investors while Money surveys businesspeople and Interbrand, like BrandZ, measures brand value to consumers. Of course, it makes sense that investors would value a brand that’s attractive to consumers. But the lists are not identical, so there’s more to it than that.

What are the real “uber-brands”? Well, the list probably won’t surprise you – top brands are always and obviously familiar names. Apple, Google, Coca-Cola, and McDonald’s turned up on every top-10 list I reviewed. Apple was ranked number one on most lists and Google was in everyone’s top 5. Microsoft and IBM were included on every list but one. Amazon ranked highly, too, and was the fastest riser on most lists.

So, a current master list of top brands looks like this:

1. Apple
2. Google
3. Coca-Cola
4. McDonald’s
5. Microsoft
6. IBM
7. Amazon

One temptation would be to notice the prevalence of tech companies. However, a successful tech company doesn’t automatically create a top brand. Remember Atari, Compaq, and Wang? Moreover, companies like Apple, Amazon, and Google are not merely tech companies, they are among the world’s leading entertainment and content brands. On the flip side, McDonald’s is now one of the leading Wi-Fi hotspot providers in the world.

For me, what ties these brand leaders together are the common threads of continuous innovation and an astute feel for consumer sensibilities.  These companies are continually changing, growing, and improving – that’s the innovation part. And they always seem to grow in a direction that appeals to consumers. Specifically, consumers today increasingly want to see “passion before profits.” By that I mean that while consumers surely appreciate value and success in a brand, they also prefer responsible corporate citizens with sustainable and healthy products and practices; they respond to sleek design and ease of use; and they will line up for excellence in quality and customer service.

Believe it or not, even investors rank some of these qualities ahead of profits. In the Barron’s survey, investors ranked business strategy, ethics, competitive distinction, and quality of management over revenue and profits when sizing up top brands.

In the case of Apple, Google, and Amazon, success has been meteoric following some bold innovations. In the case McDonald’s and Coke, the story has been more about maintaining brand status by continuously adapting to changing consumer needs.

In Part Two of What Leaders Can Learn from the World’s Best Brands, we’ll look at some the specific innovative strategies and “passion before profits” principles that have guided these brands to the top. In Part Three, we’ll look at the leadership of these companies and their stewardship of the world’s best brands.

You can’t open a magazine or newspaper without seeing a recap of 2011. It is hard not to be reminded of the major events–as determined by the media–that have occurred in the past 12 months.

I’m not sure how truly useful these recaps are but I quickly conclude two things: there was nothing I had to do with these major events and there’s nothing I can do about them now.

The best I can hope to do is learn vicariously from those people and events and find some ways to apply the lessons in my own life.

A better use of time is to recap and review your own life in the past year. You were directly involved and there are probably things you can do about at least some of what happened.

Look first at the successes. Did you fully appreciate the good things that happened, and the significant things you achieved? High achievers are too quickly on to the next goal. They often miss the pleasure and increase in optimism that comes from reflecting on success.

Next look at the setbacks. What were the lessons you learned? Have you made changes in your behavior to lessen or mitigate future setbacks? Is there anything you can do know to address whatever difficulties have occurred? If not FIDO (as my Marine friends say): Forge it, Drive On.

Now consider those important relationships in your life. Focus not on the many acquaintances we casually call friends, but on those significant few who truly are. Recap the good memories and look for opportunities to deepen those relationships.

Finally, project into the year ahead to form ideas, goals and plans for how you’d like your life to be. Use the lessons of the past to create the successes of the future.

Recapping the year we’ve finished can bolster our positive feelings, increase our optimism and steady our resolve to make the best of the New Year ahead.

What do YOU have planned for the New Year? Share in the comment box below or connect with me on  Facebook and Twitter.