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Monday, December 27, 2010
Previously I talked about playing to your strengths. This doesn’t mean being complacent and not growing yourself. Hardly, it says rather than focusing solely on being super humanoids, let’s look at what we do best and leverage the heck out of it.
Among all the self-help business books out there is one which focuses on this – helping you identify your strengths and how to use them to your advantage. StrengthsFinder 2.0 is from the Gallup Organization. It is the second edition of a book which came out from the poll people in 1998. This book was recommended to me by John R. Dallas, Jr., a good friend and renown business leader, and I bought my own copy of the book.
StrengthsFinder 2.0 comes with a single-use code for an accompanying Web site. The main feature of the site is the assessment. It is a survey which takes about a half hour to respond to all questions, and upon completion it gives you a list of your top 5 strengths, which come from a pre-defined list of 34. I took the assessment test first then read the book, upon John’s recommendation, rather than reading the book first. He recommends this approach so that the person who takes the assessment will have no preconceived notions of what the results will be.
After taking the Web-based assessment, here’s my top 5 strengths:
The above photo is of the cover of the book, where you can write your strengths after removing the dust jacket. If you don’t see the photo, my top 5 strengths are: Activator, Adaptability, Relator, Connectedness, and Responsibility.
Now What?
After I got my results from the assessment, I sat back and took a look at the 5 words given to me. At first glance, they were not a complete shock or surprise to me. I like to think I know myself pretty well, and coupled with what others have said to me about me, these were in line with what I would expect from such an assessment. That being said, I did not know specifically these would come up as my top 5 strengths, so it was a good use of my time.
I then went to the book, reading the opening then the write-ups on my top 5 strengths. For each, there is a brief discussion on it, quotes from a selected people who have the same strength, “ideas for action” on how to leverage this strength, and tips for working with someone else with the same strength. Following reading on my top strengths I read through the remaining 29 strengths defined in the book. After reviewing the entire list and reflecting on all of it, there certainly are others strengths defined which would apply to me, but I am not discounting the top 5 selected as it is a good list to work with.
My takeaway from StrengthsFinder 2.0 is the overall experience that is the book, from the assessment to the discussion on all strengths identified. Although I don’t consider myself an expert at assessing people, I do consider myself a decent judge of character and how to get the most out of people whom I work with. As Gallup is the expert at surveying, this was a great process to see how the questions in the assessment derived this list. The Web site has other tools, including one which allows you to make a poster of your strengths. I have this posted in my office, and glance at as a reminder on occasion.
I recommend StrengthsFinder 2.0 to anyone who is interested in playing to their strengths. It was not a complete life-changing experience for me, rather a good reaffirmation of who I am and what I can do. I do recommend getting a new copy of the book so you can get the code to take the assessment and get the full effect of the book.
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Posted by Mike Maddaloni on 12/27/10 at 04:45 PM
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Wednesday, December 01, 2010
 “Play to your strengths” is a phrase I use a lot. I feel most of the time I say it to myself, in observation of something I or others do. All in all, it is great advice and something I may tattoo on my forehead backwards as a reminder for whenever I decide to take on something I really shouldn’t, as it isn’t in my “strengths zone” (I made up that term, feel free to use it!).
You may have just read that and thought, :”what a wimp, he’ll never go anywhere as he is not a risk taker.” No, that’s not what I said. I am all for taking on something new, stretching boundaries, expanding knowledge and awareness and recognizing and taking risks. There’s a big difference between taking on a new role or project, parachuting out of an airplane and, say, plumbing.
When evaluating a new move, there is always that “butterflies in the belly” feeling, and it maybe as much euphoria as anxiety. In breaking down the components of a move, maybe it may not as much of a stretch as you had thought. For example, when I moved to Chicago several years ago after I broke it down, it wasn’t as big of a deal for me as I had originally thought, not to mention what others thought as they did not know my thought process.
In playing to your strengths, you are not being weak. Rather, you are using and exploiting what you can do and analyzing anything new to see if you even want to do it yourself at all. Learning new, complicated software may be a challenge you want to do with little downside, other than the time you are spending on it that could be spent on something else. Expanding a business to a new city or country may be more logistical and cultural than you could have anticipated. Deciding not to do these as planned but instead hiring someone with the skill or partnering with someone in the new location could achieve the same goal. If the end result achieved, you may have just played to your strength to facilitate and manage the relationships.
Earlier I mentioned plumbing. This is something where I should have played to my strengths and just hired a plumber out of the gate to fix my toilet. I did assess the issue, went to the mega hardware store and was told all I needed was a US$5.00 flapper to fix it. What I didn’t assess was the potential downsides, namely I would do damage I couldn’t fix like breaking the overfill pipe in the toilet tank trying to replace the flapper, and as a result would have to use my daughter’s beach pail to flush the toilet until the plumber came to fix everything, which in the end was much less than the value of my time and the aggravation on my family. Thus the accompanying photo.
Strengths have been on my mind a lot recently as I just read the book StrengthsFinder 2.0 and took the accompanying strengths assessment survey. I will write about this book separately. In the meantime, my strengths will always come into play, even as I am expanding into unchartered or simply greater waters.
What say you – do you play to your strengths or just go with your gut and take on a task? Or something else? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
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Posted by Mike Maddaloni on 12/01/10 at 07:23 AM
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Tuesday, November 09, 2010
 The next likemind will be Friday, December 3, 2010 in dozens of cities around the world.
Note this is not the usual 3rd Friday of the month, as there is a combined November/December likemind each year due to the holidays.
In Chicago, it will be at Argo Tea, 140 S Dearborn St. at the corner of Adams and Dearborn Streets in the Loop from 8:00 am to 10:00 am.
I call likemind a gathering of creative-minded people, from various disciplines including Internet, advertising, art, social media, et. al. For more on likemind, read this great article on likemind Chicago from the Newcity and likemind from the New York Times. Follow @likemindchicago on Twitter.
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Posted by Mike Maddaloni on 11/09/10 at 01:09 AM
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Tuesday, October 19, 2010
This past Friday was likemind Chicago. This monthly meetup (with the exception of 1 date for November & December) brings together an eclectic mix of people. Where typically people work in and around the Web, media, advertising and marketing, it also brings out a number of people who work in different fields who have interests in these areas. We meet at Argo Tea on Adams and Dearborn Streets at 8 am, where their great teas and coffee compliment what’s happening.
Myself and Bruno Pieroni “host” the meetup – we greet everyone, but we are by no means the pivot point of the gathering. Over the past couple of years we have been proud to host the local meetup of what is a global networking meetup. We have had people from around the world – literally – come by as they attend a likemind gathering in their home city. We also have many people who come by each month, and some who come once and we never see them again.
Where Were You?
On average a dozen people come to likemind, and I have always wondered why more don’t. Where we meet at 8 am, surely people are up at this hour. Maybe people indicate on Facebook they are coming but don’t really plan to. Rather than overanalyze this, I thought instead I would share some of the topics of conversation at last Friday’s likemind, and leave it to you to determine if you are missing out on anything!
Here goes, as many as I could write down, in a somewhat chronological order:
- Pek gave a demo of his “Amazon instant” Web app called ShelfLuv and iPad app BizTome
- Erin talked about SteepandCheap.com where she got her 66 North jacket, and we talked about how it was an Icelandic brand, and told the story about an employer who bought a coffee pot for a late-night project
- BookBook is an iPad case that looks like a vintage book binding
- Ryan showed us his Droid X, which he bought to “fit in” with everyone else’s smartphones
- There is a likemind Chicago location in Foursquare, and Mike took the mayorship from Bruno
- Kate said the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum is more than butterflies
- Talk about various marathons around the US
- How Foursquare’s School Night badge is awarded for checking in anywhere after 3 am, even at work
- Bruno referred to a colleague as, “my other Pek” and talked about an app he created called GeoPollster which integrates with Foursquare and you can tag a location with a political party
- Interhoods is a location-based designer and developer showcase, now in Chicago, New York and San Francisco
- Sortfolio is another location-based showcase, which presents project price ranges
- A lot of discussion around passive, recurring revenue
- Victoria is working on a Web site for the Girl Scouts
- Mike inserted QR codes into conversations whenever and wherever possible
- Discussion on examples of augmented reality
- Comparing TEDx Windy City vs. TEDx Midwest vs. TEDx Naperville
- Mike brought up the Nokia Qt mobile development platform and some wondered why they hadn’t heard about it
- Discussion around where people worked and some asked Mike about OfficePort Chicago
- The Windows 7 Phone compares with Android and the iPhone
As well, a few things were talked about which some felt were private conversations and shouldn’t have been mentioned here!
All this, in just under 2 hours. Would you have learned something being there? Could you have contributed? Watch for the announcement of the next likemind Chicgao on our Facebook group.
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Posted by Mike Maddaloni on 10/19/10 at 04:00 AM
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Monday, October 04, 2010
The next likemind will be Friday, October 15, 2010 in dozens of cities around the world.
In Chicago, it will be at Argo Tea, 140 S Dearborn St. at the corner of Adams and Dearborn Streets in the Loop from 8:00 am to 10:00 am.
I call likemind a gathering of creative-minded people, from various disciplines including Internet, advertising, art, social media, et. al. For more on likemind, read this great article on likemind Chicago from the Newcity and likemind from the New York Times.
Posted by Mike Maddaloni on 10/04/10 at 11:08 AM
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Thursday, September 30, 2010
Editor’s Note – This post is in follow-up and support of The State of Your Web Site, a checklist from Dunkirk Systems, LLC which helps guide Web site owners to objectivity on the current state of their Web site. You can download a free, no obligation PDF copy at TheStateOfYourWebSite.com.
Do you have goals for your Web site? Did you ever think of setting goals for your Web site?! As a Web site is a living, breathing 24/7 representative of your business, you should have goals – even just one goal – set in writing for your Web site. This fact is why it is near the top of the list on The State of Your Web Site checklist.
Yes, “goal” is a 4-letter word. Whenever people talk about goals, they often cringes or get defensive or have some adverse reaction to it. Even if they have goals for their life or their business in general, when it comes to their Web site, they will wonder why they are needed. With the expense and exposure that comes with a Web site, there is the reason right there to do so.
Where To Start
What your goals should be depend on your business and the Web site itself. If you have a store but do not sell products and services online, your goals would be much different from someone selling online with an eCommerce Web site. A “brochure” Web site is also much different than one with an extensive support forum.
Like anything in business, start someplace with goals, and review and refine as necessary. Write down statements such as “drive more traffic into my store” and “10% of overall sales made online.” Then you will want to ensure your Web site has the content or functionality to accommodate these – a printable in-store coupon and an eCommerce are part of this. Then measure – review your Web site analytics and ask new customers who come into your store how they heard about you. This is a simple example, but a point to start from.
If you are still unclear about your Web site’s goals, talk to your Web consultant. At Dunkirk Systems, LLC we work with our clients, both those with established Web sites or new ones, to set such goals, and integrate their measurement into their overall business analytics and review.
Do you have goals for your Web site? How has the goal-setting and review process worked for you? And if you do not have goals, why? Please share your thoughts in the comments for this post.
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Wednesday, September 29, 2010
As a full-service Web consulting firm, we at Dunkirk Systems, LLC offer social media consulting services to clients. For many of our clients, social media is a new area for themselves and their business. Where they may be familiar with Facebook or Twitter, they may be unsure how this would relate to their business or where to start. This opinion has come from the many conversations I have had with clients as well as colleagues.
To help gain some understanding with social media, I have created a presentation titled “Social Media Primer - Using the Tools of Social Media to Extend Your Reach” which I am offering to everyone using the service SlideShare. The presentation is embedded in this post below, or follow this link to view the Social Media Primer presentation.
Please share any comments or questions you may have on this presentation in the comments of this post. Where this is geared towards those who are new to social media, I welcome thoughts from anyone on this.
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Posted by Mike Maddaloni on 09/29/10 at 04:00 AM
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Tuesday, September 28, 2010
In the September/October 2010 edition of NFIB MyBusiness magazine there is an article called “Click Here for Profits” which is geared towards new, moderate and experienced Web site owners. The magazine is published by the National Federation of Independent Business and is geared towards its members, all business owners. In the section titled “Getting Online for the Moderately Experienced” by Christina Galoozis, I was proud to have been able to contribute to this part of the overall article. You can read the article here at the NFIB Web site.
In the article, I shared several points, including offering a variety of content in your company’s blog, planning and writing a blog consistently, and on local search. I had a great conversation with Christina who asked me very insightful questions, and related my thoughts very well in the article.
Thanks to Christina for the opportunity to be in this article, and if you are visiting The Hot Iron as a result of the article, welcome! I also welcome your thoughts and opinions on the article here in the comments to this blog post.
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Posted by Mike Maddaloni on 09/28/10 at 04:00 AM
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Monday, September 27, 2010
Recently I heard from a friend who had questions about starting a blog. As their questions were not personal in nature, and could benefit others as well as them, I have decided to respond in an appropriate manner, in an open blog post. Here are the questions and my responses.
Q – How did you come up with the name of your blog?
A – The name “The Hot Iron” is a play on the term “strike while the iron is hot” and is something I had thought of a few years before I actually started the blog. The idea for the name being I would write about not only topical items but would write while something was fresh in my mind.
I registered the domain name thehotiron.com right away, and it was ready for me to use when I decided to start blogging.
Q – What are the top 3 things I need to think about as a new blogger?
A – Audience, promotion and time.
Where you could be simply writing a personal journal out in the open, ideally you are writing for the benefit of others as well. Keeping in mind your audience, not only as you start but on-going, will help you focus on what topics to write and how to present the information.
If you write it, people may not necessarily come and read it. You will need to spend time to promote your blog. Whether it’s emailing all your friends, getting links to other sites or any other method, you will need to spend some time to do so.
And as you can guess, writing for and managing a blog take some time. However much you decide to spend on it is up to you, but keep this in mind with everything else you have going on.
Q – Are there any mistakes you made that you learned from when you were just starting out that you would pass on to a new blogger?
A – Are you asking about mistakes I made in the past, or continue to make?!
Whenever you start a blog, you have energy and excitement. Over time, this can change, and usually will decrease. You will need to motivate yourself to maintain a consistent blogging schedule.
You may also write something that will tick off someone, as I have done before. They may contact you offline to make a change to what you wrote. Don’t do it. I have made a couple of small tweaks to posts over time, showing goodwill to these people and in return asked them to comment on my posts, but they never did. A cease and desist letter form a lawyer is one thing, but in general your blog is your opinion, and you should be true to your convictions.
Q – Do you think there is a life span to a blog?
A – As someone said to me moments before he got married, “nothing is forever!” Everything has a lifecycle, and a blog could as well. When you get to the point where you think it’s over, you may have options to either shut it down or transfer or sell to someone else. But you’re just getting started now, so nothing to worry about regarding this now. Oh, and that guy has been married for almost 20 years now.
Q – What are your suggestions for evaluating hosts?
A – As I build blogs for a living, I recommend hiring my Web consulting firm Dunkirk Systems, LLC to build your, including offering and managing your hosting! However, there are many options out there. You could have your own hosting and then manage your own installation of a blog platform, like WordPress or ExpressionEngine. Or you could go with a hosted platform, like WordPress.com or Blogger.com.
However you go, I strongly recommend you do 2 things. The first is use your own domain name for the blog, and not use the default URL that may come with the host or hosted solution. Also, use Google Feedburner to manage your blog feed and not the default feed URLs that come with either. By doing these, you have flexibility to move to a new platform or host and not lose users or feed subscribers with a new URL for each.
Q – What blogs do you read regularly and would send me to view as I begin this process?
A – I subscribe to the feeds of over 200 blogs. This does not mean I read all of them, in some cases I simply skim the headlines or titles. I recommend setting up a Google Reader account, and then begin subscribing to the RSS feeds of various blogs, from ones in the same vertical of which you are planning for your own blog, to news services or blogs in different categories. Some blogs do all things well, many do some a few things well, and some do most everything poorly.
One blog I will recommend is ProBlogger – it is a tremendous resource for blogging, whether for someone new like yourself or a seasoned blogger like myself.
Good Luck
Good luck with the launch of your blog! As I wrote these questions out in the open, I welcome anyone to comment on these, and make any recommendations they may have for getting started with blogging.
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Posted by Mike Maddaloni on 09/27/10 at 04:00 AM
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Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Were you affected by last week’s outage of Chase Bank’s online banking? I was, and so were all of the bank’s customers in the US. Though the money in your account was still accessible via ATM or a branch, you could not access your balances, statements or bill pay over the Web. To add to the over 24-hour outage, there was no announcement from the bank about the problem and no reason given for it either.
Through the outage the login form on the Web site was replaced with a graphic saying online banking was unavailable. Once it was restored, small banner ads on the site linked to an apology Web page for both the outage and lack of communications for a few days. This past Monday morning I received an email from the bank – the only one through this ordeal – apologizing for the outage, and the following is a screen shot of that message.
The text of the message is as follows:
We recently experienced a service interruption that affected the chase.com website and mobile services, and we apologize if this created any difficulties for you. We have resolved the problem, and want to assure you that your account information was not compromised as a result of this outage.
We know that our customers rely upon the 24 hour access to their account information provided by Chase.com. This was not the level of service we know you expect, and we will work hard to better serve and communicate with you.
Your accounts and confidential information remain secure and we want to remind you that Chase will never ask for your personal information or login credentials via email.
Please accept our apology for any inconvenience this may have caused. We're continuing to work hard to maintain your trust and confidence.
We're always here to assist you.
After reading this, there was something glaring at me – no person signed the message.
Where Does The Buck Stop?
You don’t have to look any further than the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to see a poor example of corporate communications. Once the global oil giant realized the severity of the issue, it put its CEO Tony Hayward out front as the human face of the mechanical disaster. Over the weeks following BP commercials featured employees who were responsible for various aspects of the cleanup. These people didn’t necessarily make the problem any better, but they showed there were people behind the problem.
Even a few months back when Intuit’s QuickBooks Online had several days of outages, emails and blog posts were signed by management. Once again, it didn’t change the situation, but it showed someone was responsible; it showed where the bucked stopped.
This was not the case with Chase Bank. No person – not the CEO, or any Vice President – signed their name or came forward. This impersonal approach was certainly not for lack of staff or resources, so why did nobody own up to the problem?
As a former customer of Washington Mutual, which was taken over by the FDIC and sold to Chase Bank overnight a few years ago, the change to Chase was a huge contrast to me in the approach to serving its customers. WaMu’s free-standing kiosks where you could actually talk to and shake hands with a teller were replaced by tellers behind bullet-proof glass. I could only imagine there would be a person owning up to the issues with their online banking platform if it happened under WaMu’s umbrage. This removal of personal connections with customers is what, as a Chase customer, one has to deal with.
Interestingly, it was during this outage that I moved my business banking to PNC Bank. The decision to do so was not related to the outage, rather it was due to a PNC manager asking me for my business. Also interestingly, this manager was formerly with WaMu and then Chase, and left there for PNC. He knew my business, what I needed, and showed me how much better PNC can accommodate it. Yes, a personal connection was the reason for my change.
What did you think of the bank’s handling of communication? Does it matter to you if there’s personal accountability to such a problem? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
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Posted by Mike Maddaloni on 09/22/10 at 05:59 AM
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