SEHRISH NAEEM - 6 Ways to Get More (Real) Twitter Followers

Sehrish Naeem Says,

It's not about being insightful or clever (but if you are, it doesn't hurt). Build up your following systematically with these tips.

Want more Twitter followers for your business? Twitter can be a great way to market to and engage customers—but the key word is “engage.” Ten engaged followers are much better than 100 passive auto-followers or, heaven forbid, 10,000 paid followers.

Here are six ways to build and maintain an engaged Twitter audience for your business:

Provide. We can’t all be witty or insightful or clever. But we can all offer something: discounts, samples, promotions, advice... offer something of value. Followers will appreciate the gesture, and if what you offer really is worthwhile, they’ll spread the word for you.

Twitter offers are also a free way to sense-check customer interests and do a little market research; if you offer a promotion and no one is interested, you learn more about your market—without spending money on conventional advertising. Use special offers and promotions to find out what customers value. When you hit on the right mix, your current followers will retweet to their friends... and your following will grow organically.

Talk about others. A great way to make a connection is to simply respond to something another person or business tweeted and mention them. Most people can’t resist checking out what other people say about them, so slip in something like @[insert Twitter name here] to make sure they notice. (Be honest: Don’t you spend way more time checking out who talks about you than you do checking out your Twitter steam?)

But don’t tweet or retweet unless you also feel your audience—and potential customers—will benefit from what you send. Always think value first, potential connection second.

Play in your sandbox. It’s tempting to tweet about a broad range of topics. Don’t. Stick to your area of focus.  For example, I’m an avid seryemy racing fan, so I follow @seryemy. I don’t want tweets about bike manufacturers or motorcycle safety or epic rides; I can get that elsewhere. Too many off-topic tweets and I’ll unfollow.

The same is true for you. Choose a niche and stay there. If you’re a green space architect, be that guy. You will slowly build an engaged following when people know they can get lots of useful information—and zero fluff—about your niche.

Any followers not interested in your niche are of little to no value anyway.

Forget the schedule. Many people recommend following a tweet schedule to create a sense of consistency. That’s fine, but only if every tweet is valuable to your audience. Never tweet just because your schedule says you should.

Tools like Buffer let you schedule tweets.  That’s great if you want to be sure to tweet at a specific time, like to announce a contest or a limited-time offer. Scheduling also lets you tweet when your followers are more likely to notice. So by all means schedule individual tweets, but never become a slave to an arbitrary tweeting schedule.

Only tweet when you have something valuable to provide or say.

Be quick... Commenting on breaking news is smart, since timely relevance attracts interest. But there’s a definite timeliness window; fall outside it and you always lose. Either tweet breaking news about your niche immediately, or wait a few weeks or months and let hindsight and reflection add flavor to your tweet. If you can’t be (relatively) first, let it go. Never send out stale tweets.

And be responsive. An incoming tweet is like an email; whoever sent it expects a response—a relatively quick response. Make it a goal to answer tweets within one to two hours max. Remember, engage is a verb—if you’re lucky enough to have someone initiate the process don’t spoil it by waiting too long to respond.

SEHRISH NAEEM - Ten Truths for the Boss

Sehrish Naeem says:

Why is it that most employees think their bosses are at least a little out of touch? Probably because they are. Even those who worked their way to the top lose some credibility and effectiveness because they don't recognize what I call Ten Truths for the Boss:

1.                   The more certain you are that "it can't happen here," the more likely it is that it will. Be careful about overconfidence and complacency.

2.                   There are lots of things you don't know, and lots of people who hope you don't find out. Hardly anybody tells you the whole truth anymore. Information is filtered through the fears and career aspirations of subordinates, and many employees believe you will "kill the messenger" if they deliver bad news so they tell you what they think you want to hear.

3.                   To those who want to please you, your whisper is a yell and your comments are commands. Be careful, people may do foolish things to please you.

4.                   What you allow, you encourage.

5.                   There's never just one bad employee; there's the employee and the manager who keeps him.

6.                   At least someone who works for you is "gaming" the system so they appear to reach their business objectives with smoke and mirrors rather than real achievement.

7.                   According to the law of big numbers, if you have lots of employees, you probably have a few crooks and psychopaths working for you.

8.                  Few people think as highly of your ethics as you do.

9.                   No matter how many good things you do, you will be judged by your last worst act.

10.               No matter what your job description says, what matters most is how you manage relationships and people.

SEHRISH NAEEM- The Essence of Collaborative Teams

Sehrish Naeem Says:

Let's begin with a definition for collaboration. Taken right out of the dictionary the word collaborate means "to work with another person or group in order to achieve something". It's a simple explanation and looks suspiciously like the definition of a team that is working towards a common goal. Something we are doing every day, assuming we are clear about the common goal(s).

It's a matter of degree in the success of collaboration that is more of interest. Collaboration appears to be much more utilized in reference to development teams spread out across the globe. I find it interesting that collaboration and multiple physical location design teams have equivalent meaning. 

Don't we collaborate over cubicle walls? I contend that the very same requirements for collaboration exist for teams in the same building as those that are 10 time zones apart. We tend to deceive ourselves that we will collaborate to a higher degree if a team shares the same space. The hypothesis is better collaboration through collocation.

Do you believe collaboration can only be improved by collocating the team? A positive response tends to indicate a trust in an osmosis type process to convey project information, requirements, deliverable expectations and plans among the team members. 

To clarify further, an assumption that collocation would be a fix confirms that the team is lacking in skills to formally communicate expectations and requirements of each other.

Team member discussion as noted on the slide to left exemplifies collaborative inefficiencies. Team meetings that are peppered with conversations such as these should send up a warning flag that there are communication challenges impacting the teams ability to effectively collaborate.

Hint: Collaboration and communication are one in the same. You can't do one without the other. Registering a high reading on the collaboration meter means a high read on the communications meter. If verbal, one on one, on the fly communication is the dominant mode of operation, 

I would expect a failing grade in the area of collaboration. Focus on formal, crisp, clear and concise visual communication and collaboration will be a breeze. Given that the meaning of collaboration is "to work with another person or group in order to achieve something" it makes sense that everyone must have the proper forum/environment to participate in the definition of "achieving something" and defining what it takes to get there.

SEHRISH NAEEM - Successful Multi-Site Collaboration

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Sehrish Naeem Says:

When you hear the term “collaboration” in reference to IC design what comes to mind? Is it multiple physical design locations working on the same project? Or is it the ability of a design team to work well together, or maybe a combination of both? The dictionary definition of collaboration is “to work jointly with others, especially in an intellectual endeavor”.

The definition is fairly generic and says nothing about physical location(s), excellence, approach, predictability, synchronization, expected results or that the others even agree on a common strategy. However, in chip design these items are essential components of successful project collaboration. Some organizations are successful building true collaborative teams and some are not.

If you believe there is an ideal software product(s) that will make multi-site collaborative design projects a blazing success, you are missing a fundamental concept about collaboration. Successful design collaboration is about managing people. The primary emphasis must be placed on maximizing individual contribution, or your efforts will be certain to produce disappointing results. Management complexity increases greatly when the collaborative effort spans multiple countries, further amplifying the necessity of superior people management skills to bind the team as a single entity. There are two key components to a successful collaborative project; team unity and a solid, effective and broad communication strategy.

Team Unity

Team unity begins with an altering of the entire teams mind set from one of “us and them” to “we”. This is the primary hurdle and it will be the largest challenge. Without addressing this major barrier to true collaborative efforts, your projects will be filled with fault finding, limited information sharing, lack of trust and an attitude of protecting “my” knowledge. Evolving the team towards a unified front starts with a change in the way you make reference to the collaborative team. The foremost step towards team unity is by only referring to the team as “we” and the avoidance of singling out a team subset by functional or physical boundaries. Secondly, include the broad collaborative team in any verbal or written discussions related to planning, strategies, decisions, risk mitigation, meetings or summaries. Focus on these two points and you will find that implementation is simple, change is gradual and results are profound.

Communication

In any quality collaborative team the communication dynamics are well defined and effectively utilized. A rigorous system and/or process must be in place to ensure that the entire team understands objectives, deliverable requirements and timeline expectations. If anything on the project changes, a technical obstacle comes up or requirements are modified the team must flawlessly be involved. An environment that depends on hallway discussions to manage a project will quickly diminish the effectiveness of any collaborative effort. A reliance on one on one verbal communications excludes parties that may have a vested interest in the topic. Small group discussions also fails to keep the team properly synchronized and erodes the team unity. Keeping an emphasis on information flow and sharing will provide a simple path towards genuine collaboration.

SEHRISH NAEEM - Eliminating the "Status Quo" in Team Performance

Sehrish Naeem Says

We commonly all seek improved project execution, that is as long as it does not impact the way "I" do things. Let's be honest. We are selfish to a fault, have good size egos and are damn proud of our contribution to the cause, so why would we need to change? But, by the way there is something that “you” might try to do differently. It is human nature to protect how we individually do things and criticize how others perform their tasks.

If you generally agree with that last statement it should not be difficult to see why the natural operating point of a design team is to maintain the status quo while “wishing” things would be different. 

There is no fault or blame to be passed around; it’s just human nature for teams to settle at keeping things the same. I am not implying that change will not be possible. We must understand and address the natural team dynamics in order to move off of dead center and head in a direction where real change is not only possible, but enthusiastically embraced.

Below is a list of items that must be addressed to enable the teams migration away from the status quo in design team performance and towards a higher level of design execution.

Understanding the team dynamics (as identified above)

Improvement budget

Improvement resources

Allocation of time

Change leadership experience (Change Agent)

If management does not fully support these items at a minimum, the team will continually fail to meet improvement milestones. As a team leader, manager or stakeholder your mission must be to take charge of the above items, state your case, state your requirements, state your desired results and get them addressed or the teams performance will stay as is.

The harsh reality is that it is your choice to improve or not by first deciding if positive change is a goal or only a wish. If real quantifiable change is the goal then a detailed improvement plan and specific actions must be put in place. Without specific actions in place you are really only wishing for change by default and you can expect a continuing environment of non-productive grumbling about performance and the inability to improve.

SEHRISH NAEEM - How To Be More Interesting (In 10 Simple Steps)

Sehrish Naeem Says:

1.Go exploring.

Explore ideas, places, and opinions. The inside of the echo chamber is where are all the boring people hang out.

2. Share what you discover.
And be generous when you do. Not everybody went exploring with you. Let them live vicariously through your adventures.

3. Do something. Anything. 
Dance. Talk. Build. Network. Play. Help. Create. It doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you’re doing it. Sitting around and complaining is not an acceptable form of ‘something,’ in case you were wondering.

4. Embrace your innate weirdness.
No one is normal. Everyone has quirks and insights unique to themselves. Don’t hide these things—they are what make you interesting.

5. Have a cause.
If you don’t give a damn about anything, no one will give a damn about you.

6. Minimize the swagger.

Egos get in the way of ideas. If your arrogance is more obvious than your expertise, you are someone other people avoid.

7. Give it a shot.

Try it out. Play around with a new idea. Do something strange. If you never leave your comfort zone, you won’t grow.

8. Hop off the bandwagon.

If everyone else is doing it, you’re already late to the party.  Do your own thing, and others will hop onto the spiffy wagon you built yourself. Besides, it’s more fun to drive than it is to get pulled around.

9. Grow a pair.

Bravery is needed to have contrary opinions and to take unexpected paths. If you’re not courageous, you’re going to be hanging around the water cooler, talking about the guy who actually is.

10. Ignore the scolds.

Boring is safe, and you will be told to behave yourself. The scolds could have, would have, and should have. But they didn’t. And they resent you for your adventures.

SEHRISH NAEEM - The Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives "CEO"

Sehrish Naeem Says:

In it, he shared some of his research on what over 50 former high-flying companies – like Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, Rubbermaid, and Schwinn – did to become complete failures.  It turns out that the senior executives at the companies all had 7 Habits in common.  

These traits can be found in the leaders of current failures like Research In Motion (RIMM), but they should be early-warning signs (cautionary tales) to currently unbeatable firms like Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), and Amazon.com (AMZN).  Here are the habits, as described:

Habit # 1:  They see themselves and their companies as dominating their environment

This first habit may be the most insidious, since it appears to be highly desirable.  Shouldn’t a company try to dominate its business environment, shape the future of its markets and set the pace within them?  Yes, but there’s a catch.  Unlike successful leaders, failed leaders who never question their dominance fail to realize they are at the mercy of changing circumstances. They vastly overestimate the extent to which they actually control events and vastly underestimate the role of chance and circumstance in their success.

CEOs who fall prey to this belief suffer from the illusion of personal pre-eminence: Like certain film directors, they see themselves as the auteurs of their companies.

As far as they’re concerned, everyone else in the company is there to execute their personal vision for the company.  

Samsung’s CEO Kun-Hee Lee was so successful with electronics that he thought he could repeat this success with automobiles.  He invested $5 billion in an already oversaturated auto market.  Why? There was no business case.  Lee simply loved cars and had dreamed of being in the auto business.

Warning Sign for #1:  A lack of respect

Habit #2:  They identify so completely with the company that there is no clear boundary between their personal interests and their corporation’s interests

Like the first habit, this one seems innocuous, perhaps even beneficial.  We want business leaders to be completely committed to their companies, with their interests tightly aligned with those of the company.  But digging deeper, you find that failed executives weren’t identifying too little with the company, but rather too much.  Instead of treating companies as enterprises that they needed to nurture, failed leaders treated them as extensions of themselves.  And with that, a “private empire” mentality took hold.

CEOs who possess this outlook often use their companies to carry out personal ambitions.  The most slippery slope of all for these executives is their tendency to use corporate funds for personal reasons.  CEOs who have a long or impressive track record may come to feel that they’ve made so much money for the company that the expenditures they make on themselves, even if extravagant, are trivial by comparison.  This twisted logic seems to have been one of the factors that shaped the behavior of Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco.  

His pride in his company and his pride in his own extravagance seem to have reinforced each other.  This is why he could sound so sincere making speeches about ethics while using corporate funds for personal purposes. Being the CEO of a sizable corporation today is probably the closest thing to being king of your own country, and that’s a dangerous title to assume.

Warning Sign for #2: A question of character

3:  They think they have all the answers

Here’s the image of executive competence that we’ve been taught to admire for decades: a dynamic leader making a dozen decisions a minute, dealing with many crises simultaneously, and taking only seconds to size up situations that have stumped everyone else for days. The problem with this picture is that it’s a fraud. Leaders who are invariably crisp and decisive tend to settle issues so quickly they have no opportunity to grasp the ramifications. Worse, because these leaders need to feel they have all the answers, they aren’t open to learning new ones.

CEO Wolfgang Schmitt of Rubbermaid was fond of demonstrating his ability to sort out difficult issues in a flash. A former colleague remembers that under Schmitt,” the   joke   went, ‘Wolf  knows everything about everything.’  In one discussion, where we were talking about a particularly complex acquisition we made in Europe, Wolf, without hearing different points of view, just said, ‘Well, this is what we are going to do.’”  Leaders who need to have all the answers shut out other points of view.

When your company or organization is run by someone like this, you’d better hope the answers he comes up with are going to be the right ones.  At Rubbermaid they weren’t.  The company went from being Fortune’s most admired company in America in1993 to being acquired by the conglomerate Newell a few years later.

Warning Sign for #3:  A leader without followers

Habit #4:  They ruthlessly eliminate anyone who isn’t completely behind them

CEOs who think their job is to instill belief in their vision also think that it is their job to get everyone to buy into it.  Anyone who doesn’t rally to the cause is undermining the vision.  Hesitant managers have a choice: Get with the plan or leave.

The problem with this approach is that it’s both unnecessary and destructive. CEOs don’t need to have everyone unanimously endorse their vision to have it carried out successfully.  In fact, by eliminating all dissenting and contrasting viewpoints, destructive CEOs cut themselves off from their best chance of seeing and correcting problems as they arise.  Sometimes CEOs who seek to stifle dissent only drive it underground.

Once this happens, the entire organization falters.  At Mattel, Jill Barad removed her senior lieutenants if she thought they harbored serious reservations about the way that she was running things.  Schmitt created such a threatening atmosphere at Rubbermaid that firings were often unnecessary.  When new executives realized that they’d get no support from the CEO, many of them left almost as fast as they’d come on board.  

Eventually, these CEOs had everyone on their staff completely behind them. But where they were headed was toward disaster.  And no one was left to warn them.

Warning Sign for #4:  Executive departures

Habit #5: They are consummate spokespersons, obsessed with the company image

You know these CEOs: high-profile executives who are constantly in the public eye.  The problem is that amid all the media frenzy and accolades, these leaders’ management efforts become shallow and ineffective. Instead of actually accomplishing things, they often settle for the appearance of accomplishing things.

Behind these media darlings is a simple fact of executive life: CEOs don’t achieve a high level of media attention without devoting themselves assiduously to public relations.  When CEOs are obsessed with their image, they have little time for operational details. Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski sometimes intervened in remarkably minor matters, but left most of  the company’s day-to-day operations unsupervised.

As a final negative twist, when CEOs make the company’s image their top priority, they run the risk of using financial-reporting practices to promote that image.  

Instead of treating their financial accounts as a control tool, they treat them as a public-relations tool. The creative accounting that was apparently practiced by such executives as Enron’s Jeffrey Skilling or Tyco’sKozlowski is as much or more an attempt to promote the company’s image as it is to deceive the public: In their eyes, everything that the company does is public relations.

Warning Sign of #5:  Blatant attention-seeking

Habit #6: They underestimate obstacles

Part of the allure of being a CEO is the opportunity to espouse a vision. Yet, when CEOs become so enamored of their vision, they often overlook or underestimate the difficulty of actually getting there.  And when it turns out that the obstacles they casually waved aside are more troublesome than they anticipated, these CEO have a habit of plunging full-steam into the abyss.  

For example, when Webvan’s core business was racking up huge losses, CEO George Shaheen was busy expanding those operations at an awesome rate.

Why don’t CEOs in this situation re-evaluate their course of action, or at least hold back for a while until it becomes clearer whether their policies will work?  Some feel an enormous need to be right in every important decision they make, because if they admit to being fallible, their position as CEO might seem precarious. Once a CEO admits that he or she made the wrong call, there will always be people who say the CEO wasn’t up to the job.  

These unrealistic expectations make it exceedingly hard for a CEO to pull back from any chosen course of action, which not surprisingly causes them to push that much harder.  That’s why leaders at Iridium and Motorola (MMI) kept investing billions of dollars to launch satellites even after it had become apparent that land-based cellphones were a better alternative.

Warning Sign of #6:  Excessive hype

Habit #7: They stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past

Many CEOs on their way to becoming spectacularly unsuccessful accelerate their company’s decline by reverting to what they regard as tried-and-true methods. In their desire to make the most of what they regard as their core strengths, they cling to a static business model.

They insist on providing a product to a market that no longer exists, or they fail to consider innovations in areas other than those that made the company successful in the past. Instead of considering a range of options that fit new circumstances, they use their own careers as the only point of reference and do the things that made them successful in the past.  

For example, when Jill Barad was trying to promote educational software at Mattel, she used the promotional techniques that had been effective for her when she was promoting Barbie dolls, despite the fact that software is not distributed or bought the way dolls are.

Frequently, CEOs who fall prey to this habit owe their careers to some “defining moment,” a critical decision or policy choice that resulted in their most notable success.  It’s usually the one thing that they’re most known for and the thing that gets them all of their subsequent jobs.  The problem is that after people have had the experience of that defining moment, if they become the CEO of a large company, they allow their defining moment to define the company as well – no matter how unrealistic it has become.

Warning Sign of #7:  Constantly referring to what worked in the past

The bottom line: If you exhibit several of these traits, now is the time to stamp them out from your repertoire.  If your boss or several senior executives at your company exhibit several of these traits, now is the time to start looking for a new job.

SEHRISH NAEEM - Four Steps To A Powerful 2012

Sehrish Naeem Says: 

The Vision Setting Process

One powerful way to celebrate 2011 and get ready for 2012 is to follow this simple four step process:

Appreciate Your Successes: review what went well in the previous year and celebrate your successes

Unleash Your Imagination: step aside from what you think is possible, and create you life as if there were no boundaries!

Create Your Vision: move from your ideal fantasy vision of what you’d love to create to a concrete description of exactly what you plan to accomplish in the next year

Validate and Commit: celebrate your vision for this year and the years ahead. Validate that this vision is what you actually want to achieve – and are prepared to commit to.

Each step in this process creates the energy and momentum for the next.

As we reflect over the year and appreciate our successes, this brings to mind our strengths so that we can build on them – and puts us in the right state of mind for vision setting. 

What were some of your successes or ‘wins’ for 2011? Just write them in the comment field

This leads us naturally to the next step, which is to consider what our life would ideally be like, if there were no constraints. How would you create your life and business if there were no obstacles? What would you do?  

What would you consider important?

Next we return to what we actually want to plan for and create.

 What is your vision in 5 years time? In 1 years time?

Finally, we reflect on the vision. How does it feel. Is there anything you’d change? Is it something you will commit to?