As my year-end consumption of ‘top ten lists‘ continues, I came across one on Chicago Now called “The Top 10 Small Business Trends of the Decade” by Barry Moltz.  In the list he mentions several things that have all dovetailed together to define the changing nature of work — most centered around the pros and cons of mobility.

While I certainly wouldn’t argue that his list is wrong, it is very similar to several others I have seen, and I continue to think these lists are only peeling back the first layer of the onion.  Barry’s list includes items in three basic, separate categories:

Mobility:

• The internet allows geographic independent sales and marketing.
• The movement to reduce costs and commuting by working at home.
• Mashing of work and home spaces.

Social web:

• We are more easily able to network and keep in touch with people from our past.
• Size no longer matters.
• Customer Service makes a comeback.
• You are your own brand.

New economy:

• Less credit, more cash is king.
• Less benefits, higher deductibles.
• A new class of employee appears.

The details that Barry highlights in each of his bullets just grazes the surface of these bigger buckets.  And, even more significantly, these are revolutionary social changes that effect all business, not just small business.  What I find more interesting is their unique influence on small business versus their broader social impact.

Mobility
Obviously there is no one who has to be convinced that the second generation of the internet, with it’s capacity for permanent mobility, has changed everything.  Socially it means that states and municipalities have to pass new laws about using cell phones while driving; large business has to implement both policies and infrastructure to support workforces that are increasingly likely to be conducting work outside the corporate firewall; and small businesses can get up and running without having to see their opportunities limited by where they prefer to live.

But the bigger implication about mobility for small business is, I would argue, “the cloud.” Cloud computing (in its broadest definition), and specifically Softward as a Service (such as WorkingPoint, VerticalResponse and Business Online Payroll), is a double-edged sword in the world of small business.  Not only has it made tools and resources that used to only be available to big companies financially accessible to small businesses, but many of these companies are themselves small businesses.

The fact that a couple of developers with a great idea and some solid experience, can now leverage enormous outsourced technology infrastructure to build, host, manage and ultimately distribute their product to anyone in the world is revolutionary.  The cloud has extended everyone’s reach and has eliminated several of the biggest barriers to entry that existed when I started working on the technology space back in 1996.

The Social Web
This, of course, is this year’s hottest topic.  The social web went from being an outlier, specifically and uniquely for either early adopter tech geeks or Gen Y young’ins, to being super hip mainstream, ‘cutting edge’ mass media.  As Barry notes in his list, this has made a huge impact on how brands need to function in order to maintain their integrity — both on a personal and a business level (re: his points about customer service and company size).  But what’s the real seismic shift here?

The true impact of the social web is privacy.  Or, more accurately, the line between private and public.  Never before has it been more blurred, and it’s going to get more confusing before it gets less so.  Therapists will often point out that it only takes one person in a relationship to change the entire relationship dynamic: if you change your behavior, then it forces the other person’s behavior to change as well.  This principle is seen daily on the social web.

When customers change their behavior, it forces business to change.  Hence changes we see in the realm of customer service: a person can complain about a brand experience they had on Twitter, and see anything from immediate resolution to a lawsuit, depending on how the brand in question decides to handle things.

When employees change their behavior, it forces employers to change.  Businesses cannot reasonably ask their employees not to participate in the social web.  So how do they handle react when one of their employees becomes a bit of a social media celebrity, whose personal brand radically out-shines the company brand?

When citizens change their behavior, it forces the government to change.  “Transparent government” and “Gov2.0″ are two other key watchwords from 2009 that were nearly unheard of a year ago.  But now that individuals have come to expect to know things about the companies they deal with by virtue of online information, that expectation has transfered to government activities as well. Two years ago, who would have thought that Congress would have it’s own YouTube channel?  Or that a presidential candidate’s success could have been largely impacted by the use of Twitter?

Where is the line between private and public?  Tools that started out as personal use tools (e.g. Facebook and Twitter) are now platforms for business innovation.  The line between the two is different for everyone, and that creates a challenge, because the choices that one person makes will impact other people, whether those other people like it or not.  How many times have you seen someone post a picture to Facebook or Flickr that includes other people who may not have wanted the picture posted?

There is a certain amount of privacy that a social web automatically steals from us.  The questions are how much is necessary, and then how much is comfortable.  The tricky part is that depending on the application and the person, those answsers change.  And only being in the first generation of the social web, we are a long way from sorting out those pesky little details.

New Economy
My favorite topic of all, is the new economy (which I would define as the economic realities inherent to our modern lives as a result of, among others, the two factors above: mobility and social web).  But this is also the one that is routinely most difficult for people to get their heads around, because the ripple effect is pervasive, throughout every facet of our lives.

Old definitions no longer apply: “conservative” versus “liberal” are ill-fitting labels in a world of updated economic and social conditions that re-draw the political lines without even trying.  Words like “stability” and “security” are no longer applicable to the job market, after three decades of being considered the corporate Holy Grail.  And in a nation that was spurred to global dominance on the back of an Industrial Age economic engine, a nation of “knowledge workers” now routinely offshores work to less expensive parts of the world on a daily basis.

There are some pretty enormous downsides to the new economy — no more pensions, no more covered healthcare, no more job security.  But there are also some amazing opportunities in it — no more being stuck having to live someplace you don’t want simply because of its proximity to your job, no more expectation of having to let someone else define your rise up the corporate ladder on their terms and timelines, no more wistfully dreaming of being your own boss because it costs too much to start your own business.  Think of it like sky-diving: for some people it represents the most terrifying nightmare imaginable; for other people it is the single biggest thrill they could ask for.

As with most change, the pros can be just as compelling as the cons, depending on your point of view.  Socially speaking, the new economy means that goods and services that used to be out of reach for the average person are now vastly more affordable — everything from international travel to high tech toys.  For large enterprises, the ability to offshore entire divisions of your business means huge cost savings, and leaner in-house talent able to focus on the most high-value added functions.  For small business, the ability to dynamically pull together freelance, geographically distributed teams to execute on projects as needed, means being able to compete with larger firms without having to take on the overhead of formal staff.

So, yes, Barry’s list of small business trends is technically accurate.  But the reality is that the changes his list represents are even bigger.  And the reason they have such an enormous impact on small business is that these factors have already fundamentally shifted the social foundations on which small business is built.

This post originally appeared as part of my Entrepreneur Evangelist series on WorkingPoint‘s Small Business Blog.

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CNN recently reported that researchers from Harvard Business School, Insead and Brigham Young University have just completed a six-year study of more than 3,000 executives and 500 innovative entrepreneurs, and say they have identified five skills that drive innovation:

Associating: The ability to connect seemingly unrelated questions, problems or ideas from different fields.

Questioning: Innovators constantly ask questions that challenge the common wisdom. They ask “why?”, “why not?” and “what if?”

Observing: Discovery-driven executives scrutinize common phenomena, particularly the behavior of potential customers.

Experimenting: Innovative entrepreneurs actively try out new ideas by creating prototypes and launching pilots.

Networking: innovators go out of their way to meet people with different ideas and perspectives.

I find the results of this study interesting, if not earth-shatteringly shocking.  What’s even more interesting, however, is that CNN’s article also comes with some recommendations about how to develop those skills, even for those of us who don’t consider ourselves tremendous ‘innovators’ to begin with.

Recommendations:

• Teach yourself to think differently by deliberately taking opportunities to act differently
• Identify a problem and writing nothing but questions about it for 10 minutes a day for 30 days
• Identify a business, customer, supplier, or client, and spend a day or two watching how they work so you can better understand their issues
• Build a diverse network, and understand people’s backgrounds, interests and strengths; and then make sure to remain in touch with them regularly

Since most of us are creatures of habit (to one extent or another), taking opportunities to break behavioral patterns and act differently can be hard.  But it is the corollary to the old saying, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

So, sane or not, if you want different results, then make sure you do something different.

(This post is part of my Entrepreneur Evangelist series and was originally published on WorkingPoint‘s Small Business Blog.)

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Entrepreneur-turned-VC, Mark Suster, recently posted an article on his blog, Both Sides of the Table, highlighting what he considers to be the essential qualities of entrepreneurship.  At the heart of his post is a very, very simple philosophy: entrepreneurs just do it.

For some people, this is easy.  Moving ahead, pulling the trigger, motivating people into action, moving at light speed — categorize it however you like, but how comfortable you are with this type of thing often starts out as being a very basic part of your personality.

For other people, however, this is much, much harder.  Whether it’s a fear of being wrong, a need to collect input from numerous different sources, or just a methodical decision-making process, some people are very uncomfortable churning through a couple of dozen decisions per day, and tap-dancing their way around obstacles in real time.

So what do you do if you want to own your own business, but rapid-fire decision-making did not come baked into your DNA?  Here are a few tips and tricks I use when working with new entrepreneurs, to start getting them comfortable with what the role demands of them:

Define and document your process
Everyone has a different process for making decisions.  But for most of us, it’s intuitive and has evolved over time.  We often don’t think about it, or even recognize all the steps.  The benefit of sitting down and writing it out (I often either recommend a flow chart or a bullet list) is that it helps us be aware of places we are likely to get stuck or where we become repetitious.

Focus on what your process actually is, not what you’d like it to be.  (You can work on changing it later.  Start off by understanding it.)

Even more valuable, however, is having this on hand when it comes to working with others.  Because if you can show your partner or your staff what your decision-making process looks like, it helps manage their expectations.  It also identifies at what point you need input, and at what point they need to be prepared for action.  It sounds amazingly simple, but it’s invariably far more powerful an exercise to go through than most people expect.

Once you’ve documented your process, the next step is to identify the part of the process with which you are least comfortable (generally speaking), and at which point in the process you most frequently find yourself getting stuck.  Sometimes it’s the same step, sometimes it’s not.  But again, breaking it down and really thinking about something that you do instinctively is critical if you are going to start changing your habits at all.

Partner up
For as nice an idea as it is that we are all always going to keep our promises to ourselves, the truth is, our promises to ourselves are often the first ones that we break.  So for most of us, accountability is most successful if it is to someone else entirely.  So find a parter, coach or collaborator.  It’s like having a workout partner for the gym: sometimes knowing that someone else is expecting you is the only way you’re going to make it.

Whether you go to an organization like SCORE for a mentor, or you hire a business coach, or even a part-time project manager to help you with planning and organization, sometimes the best thing you can do for your progress is to put yourself — and your money — on the line.  Putting some skin in the game is almost always good for the end results.

Break it into bite-sized pieces
Some projects and efforts are just huge, and until you dice and slice them, they are simply too overwhelming to make any real progress.  So break it down.  Again, this may require some outside help, but once you have your efforts broken down into logical chunks, it’s much easier to define tactical next steps for each piece, and then to show — and see — progress.

The best rule of thumb is to keep every piece to 8 hours (or a day’s) worth of work or less.  Don’t let anything get too big, and it’ll be much easier to stay focused.  If you’ve parsed out your steps into day-by-day sized pieces, then you will also often find that the difficult decisions that seem huge in their original state are also broken down into more readily managable sizes, making them easier and faster to resolve.

Not everyone is a natural born entrepreneur.  But there are tons of people who are willing to do the work to make the transition, including being ready to push themselves out of their comfort zone to get there.  There is nothing wrong with wanting to analyze details in more depth; just be aware of the fact that being wrong is ok, and that there are very few decisions that can’t be reversed if they really need to be later.

Often times it’s not possible to know for sure that an answer is right until you’ve explored the wrong one a bit.  But if it doesn’t come naturally to you, find some help.  There are lots of people who have been there and figured it out already.  Take advantage of their expertise and get their assistance building a system to help you make the transition you need.

(This post is part of my Entrepreneur Evangelist series and was originally published on WorkingPoint‘s Small Business Blog.)

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CNNMoney.com published an article on this week’s government report that states, over the past six months, the “22 banks that got the most help from the Treasury’s bailout programs cut their small business loan balances by a collective $10.5 billion.”

The report goes on to highlight that over the past six months that TARP recipients have been required to report their lending activity, “the banks have cut their collective small business lending by 4%.”

It’s impossible not to recall WorkingPoint CEO Tate Holt’s recent blog articles entitled, “Main Street vs. Wall Street,” in which he asked the question, “Rather than making it easier for banks to access funds, why not make it easier for small business owners to access funds?”

It sounds a lot like the “too big to fail” argument, doesn’t it? At best, it’s extreme and reckless hubris. Small business employs 52% of the American workforce, and is routinely responsible for providing the majority of new jobs generated in this country. And yet 3 of the 22 financial institutions that got TARP money do not provide loans to small businesses at all, while the other 19 continue to cut back.

Entrepreneurs are a profoundly important element to our economic recovery. While the large financial institutions continue to try to mitigate their risk by denying small business loans, there are a few things that small businesses can do to help ride out the credit crunch:

1. Use a community bank. (Kelli recently discussed this in her WorkingPoint blog post titled, Managing Your Cash (Pt. 3).) Just like in your small business, a community bank is owned and operated by local people who understand local needs, trends and conditions. Building a relationship with your community banker is the best way to help build in some insurance for yourself, because local banks make decisions locally, instead of across the country where no one knows you, your business or your reputation. If you need an idea of where to start, CNNMoney.com has a list of banks by metro area that have recently made SBA loans.
2. Find (or form) a local entrepreneur or small business network. Networks of entrepreneurs can often help share resources, collectively negotiate rates for goods or services, and offer creative problem solving solutions that you’ve never previously considered. Think of it as local, small-scale crowdsourcing of ideas and services.

Other possibilities to consider:

• Do you have a local college through which you can bring on interns to help supplement your staff or work on special projects? College interns can often help with a lot of the areas outside of your core business functions, such as marketing, advertising, website design and development, etc.
• Have you considered the myraid of online crowdsourcing opportunities? Crowdsourcing is a powerful way to parse out discreet tasks, especially those that you need to get done quickly, but for which you do not have the in-house talent to manage yourself.
• Do you need to rent your own office space, or do you have local co-working facilities or sublet spaces that might be more affordable? Obviously not all businesses can share space, but far more can than do. Is yours one of them?
• Do you have a network of other entrepreneurs with whom you can partner to bid on larger opportunities than you would normally be able to support alone? A couple of bigger clients can make the difference during a downtime; and businesses that do not have the contacts or the requisite formal relationships to get a foot in the door can still partner with someone else to have access to some great opportunities.
• Have you gone back to your existing vendors and attempted to renegotiate your current rates? Everything from your cell phone provider, to the interest rates on your credit card are potentially re-negotiable if you continue to be persistent.
• Do you have a local adult or community education program through which you can teach a course? Often times, this is not only a great opportunity to help supplement your income (a little bit, anyway), but it’s a great marketing opportunity, since community education providers see an increase in attendees when the economy is down.

Finally, get creative. Obviously there are some things for which cash is essential, and there is simply no way around that. But there are a lot of things that may come with more options than you’ve previously considered.

(This post is part of my Entrepreneur Evangelist series and was originally published on WorkingPoint‘s Small Business Blog.)

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In the American Express OPEN Forum article, Effective Word-of-Mouth is Made Not Born by Yvonne DiVita of Windsor Media Enterprises, the author discusses some tips to cultivating what is called “word of mouth marketing.”

Aside from just being a reasonably trendy buzzphrase, word-of-mouth marketing is a marketing tactic designed to maximize the marketing leverage possible by having your customers talk about you and help be evangelists for your goods and services.

Statistically speaking, there is tremendous value to this, since most professional networks are most valuable at their fringes: it’s not your direct connections that offer the most opportunities, it’s actually your connections’ connections that offer the most.  Word-of-mouth marketing is meant to capitalize on that fact.

Yvonne’s post covers some standard practices, particularly when it comes to the social media world.  But her focus is on word-of-mouth value in the online space, and I would argue that in order to be effective, you need much more than just a plan for social media strategy.  In order for word-of-mouth marketing to work as a part of your business development efforts, it needs to be part of the normal process you develop with your clients.

Here are a couple of items that I would add to her original list:

• Make recommendations part of the process

• Include references as part of agreements

• Offer incentives to referral business

These are tactics I use with clients all of the time; and even more importantly, they are approaches that my clients respect and which are highly valuable, particularly in smaller or more tight-knit communities, where personal references are particularly important.

Make recommendations part of the process
When I teach a class or offer a workshop, one of the first slides in my presentation is my word-of-mouth proposition: if, at the end of the class, the participants felt that what I provided them was a valuable use of their time and money, I would like a publishable quote from them to that effect.  In exchange, I offer them an additional or enhanced service as a thank you.  Since I often offer a free half hour of consulting service with the purchase of a workshop, my normal incentive is to add an additional half hour to their follow-up session.

Since the only reason for them to come back to me for one-on-one services is if they feel that what I am providing is of value in the first place, this is a reasonable offer that in no way fosters dishonesty or disingenuous feedback.

And by leaving the format up to the client, they can submit the quote to me on a 3×5 card that I include in their course materials, via email, or post it directly to my Facebook Fan page or my LinkedIn profile.  Either way, this helps to ensure that I am capturing usable feedback from clients, and their expectations are clearly set from the beginning.  Most of my clients are also entrepreneurs, so they are always very aware of why this trade is worthwhile to me, and genuinely supportive of my request.

Include references as part of agreements
While a quote from a client is valuable, there are some clients who are the jackpot.  And for those clients — as good as a quote may be — a direct reference is even better.  And, depending on the brand of the person or firm, this can sometimes be the key that gets you into other doors.  If you have a client who falls into this category, write into the agreement that as long as you hit your deliverables on time and to satisfaction, that they will be willing to provide direct references for you to other potential clients.

Again, this is not a request that business people will typically object to.  It’s just a request that most people forget to make.  Put it out there as part of the normal exchange of goods and services, deliver your end, and then most people are all too happy to deliver their end of the bargain.

Offer incentives to referral business
Again, this is something I always include in the opening remarks of any meeting I have with a client: if they refer a paying client to me, I will offer them something in return.  Depending on my portfolio of work at the time, it could be a free one-on-one consulting session, it could be a new class or workshop I’m teaching, or it could be some other special need that they have.

Whatever it is, the key is in giving them a reason to discuss what you can do with other prospective clients outside of you direct network.  If a client is coming to you for you services to begin with, then that is only because they consider what you have to offer as valuable.  Therefore it is reasonable to expect that discounted access to your expertise is a potentially worthwhile trade off for them.

So, while Yvonne’s list had some good points, keep in mind that the principles behind word-of-mouth marketing are all based on people building relationships and then talking about them with others.  There is nothing about that process that has to happen online, so incorporate some basic practices into your normal client interactions, and see how they take to it.

More often than not, your customers want to see you be successful — if for no other reason, than so that you can stay in business and continue helping them.  Reminding them that you need their help reaching new customers and giving them specifics ways to do that, and then rewarding them for it, is something that most of them will respond to very well.  All it takes to get started is to ask.

(This post is part of my Entrepreneur Evangelist series and was originally published on WorkingPoint‘s Small Business Blog.)

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There is nothing harder for a non-salesperson than building a sales pipeline. In Bagging the Elephant I highlight a post about a recent event in NYC, in which entrepreneurs discussed how to build strong enough relationships with larger businesses in order to be taken seriously enough to close deals with them.

This is part of a much broader issue, though, and it’s one that is a constant struggle for most small businesses: how do we keep new sales coming in the door, when that’s not our background?

I find this to be a particularly big issue in the web space. So many of the entrepreneurs that I meet come from a development background, and they have started their venture with the Field of Dreams theory: “If I build it, they will come.”

And more often than not, nothing could be further from the truth. And even worse, is that all too often, a new entrepreneur will build a product with no thought to marketing or sales strategy until they are done building, and then they will shift their attention to client acquisition, as an after thought.

Often times this doesn’t happen until the entrepreneur is out of money, so hiring the right help is almost never affordable, and the entrepreneur is running so low on their savings that they are watching the clock tick down before they have to give up and go get a J-O-B from someone else.

The horrible reality is that marketing and sales is where most entrepreneurs drop the ball — and that is true whether your business is a product or services business. People have taken the democratization of data (the “Google effect”) to mean that, as long as they offer something good, that means they’ll be able to find customers. But that’s not true at all. The democratization of data means that you’re now competing with thousands of competitors doing something similar enough to what you are doing, that you not only need to be better, but you also need to find all new ways to get customers’ attention.

The rule of thumb for a new business owner is simple: your first year marketing and sales budget should be the same as your first year development budget.

Where technical entrepreneurs get into trouble is in thinking that since they didn’t have to pay anyone else to build their product, that means that their marketing budget can be small, too. Wrong. Do the match as if you had to pay someone, by the hour, to do the work. And then you’ve got a start.

But even more important than cost is timing: don’t wait until you’re at the end of the line to start marketing your business. By then you can’t afford experts, experimentation or the time it takes to really see progress.

The bottom line: building a marketing strategy with a solid sales pipeline won’t happen over night. If you wait until the week before you run out of money, you’re never going to get there. Start early, and put the same degree and quality of resources into the revenue generating aspects of your business as you do into your product.

After all, isn’t making money with your product critical to your business? Don’t make the mistake of treating it like an unworthy afterthought.

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Last week I wrote an opening rant about “strategists.” In the comments that ensued, I am now inspired to clarify what I mean while I continue to write this series. I am not talking about consultants who are hired to help hone and build out a strategic vision for an organization; nor am I talking about internal specialists who are dedicated to researching and advising on strategic direction. What I am talking about are managers or department heads who identify as “strategic visionaries” and who consider the banalities of “management” to be less important than defining an over-arching strategy.

The single biggest issue I find when I come into an organization to help get things back on-track, is that when leaders are entirely pre-occupied with a strategic vision, there is a tendency to ignore employee development and management activities.

The irony, of course, is that a good strategist understands that employees are the key to making their strategic vision come to life. Yet time and time again, I have found that groups with the most strategically-focused leaders are the ones where the employees are the most neglected.

The problem, I believe, is in the misalignment of how a leader identifies — and what they actually like to do — versus what is part of the responsibility of the role. How many people who consider themselves innovators, visionaries and strategists are placed in the role of manager? And, honestly, much about managing people is terribly “innovative”? Very little of it. Managing people is down-n-dirty work.

Someone who manages people has to deal with messy details like:

• team members who don’t get along
• people who are not living up to expectations
• talented people who are bored thanks to being under utilized
• political entanglements with other departments
• hiring freezes that prevent backfilling vacated positions
• low morale among teams
• budgetary constraints that prevent a manager from paying an employee what they are truly worth
• helping form a career development plan so team members don’t stagnate
• being honest with a staff member when there is no future for them with the organization

Face it, none of that is sexy. But someone who can’t or won’t do those things is not someone who should be managing people. And yet it happens all the time: a strategically oriented leader is put in the role of a manager, because leadership likes the idea of having a strong strategic direction developed for the department.

Nothing wrong with that. Of course the best departments are marching towards a strategic vision. But if you don’t take care of your team in the process, who exactly is doing the marching?

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Strategy is sexy. Operations is not.

This is often a problem in the modern business world: everyone wants to be a strategist. Aside from being seen as the best place to get to experiment with the new, fun stuff, it’s also usually seen as the side of the business with all the perks — travel, schmoozing, client dinners, etc.

In reality — whether it’s true or not — being a strategist is seen as where you want to be if you want to make more money, work less and have more fun. I know plenty of strategists who would disagree with that, but whether it’s true or not, over the years, that’s what has evolved as the image that goes along with the role — especially when it comes to the web.

And now, thanks to the social media celebrity status of strategists like Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, Charlene Li, Jeremiah Owyang, etc. it’s easy to see the addition of a minor ‘fame’ element fueling the flame of appeal that goes with the “strategist” label.

One of the most unfortunate side effects of this is that the ranks of “strategists” are often filled with snake oil salesmen who make a bigger mess than they solve, and frequently leave an organization scrambling for solutions to problems they don’t understand how to fix.

The main issue I routinely see is neglecting tactical, revenue-generating, business execution in favor of high-minded strategic vision — and, I suppose, as someone who’s made a bit of a career cleaning up after this type of mess, I suppose I shouldn’t complain about it.

But there are five critical, tactical considerations that routinely haunt organizations that find themselves in this trap:

1. Teams Are Not Actively Managed
2. Debates Occur, Decisions Do Not
3. Projects Are Not Being Delivered
4. Expectations Are Not Being Managed
5. “Strategists” Are Seen as Frustrating Obstacles to Results

Over the next several days, I’ll be posting these details, how to spot them and then how to fix them, in order to keep the strategy sirens from luring hapless business sailors onto the rocks of doom.

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Job hunting is rough for oh-so-many reasons. One of the things that is hardest about it, though, is managing your own attitude and spirits. If there is one thing that is liable to get you into trouble during a job hunt, it is unmanaged anxiety.

I’ve written before about some of the things that I discovered were helpful during a job hunt, but in talking to other people, some more questions have come up that I want to offer suggestions about.

Time is Like Money: You Can Only Spend it Once
This is one of those things that is really obvious, but that most of us need the occassional reminder about. Time is precious, and you have to consider when you are spending it wisely, versus when you are just blowing through it on the temperal equivelant of Twinkies.

A really, really great thing to do while you’re hunting for a job is finding local organizations to get involved with. It might be a non-profit, it might be a Meetup group, it might be an internship at a local company. Whatever it is, consider that volunteering your time gives you the following:

• you are (theoretically) doing something that can go on your resume to help fill in an employment gap
• you are networking with people you wouldn’t normally have access to
• you showcasing your skills to a new assortment of people who might have entirely different ideas that might be helpful for you
• you are working on things that can give you a sense of accomplishment and pride, which come across in your attitude when speaking to prospective recruiters/employers

The first thing that people say when you talk about volunteering their time during a job hunt is to counter with the ultra-important point: but I need to make money. Of course you do. No one is disputing that. But the point is that you cannot spend every possible second of the day job hunting. Aside from your mental health requiring a break, look at volunteering your time as time spent networking. If necessary, do it instead of something else (like watching TV).

You Are What You Eat
This one is hard, because when you are looking for a job, it’s often more comfortable to socialize with people who are either in the same boat or with people we know and with whom we feel safe. But there is no more important time to work on expanding your social networking than when you are job hunting. And, even more importantly, it’ll help keep you sharp.

Just like the food we consume helps determine our physical help, the information — including the attitudes, personalities, data and social cues — we consume will determine our mental health. People look like their friends and associates more often than not. If your friends and regular social circle are not providing you with the support and motivation you need, then start expanding your horizons to include some new influences.

Is your mother a downer who depresses you for days every time you talk? Then pick up a couple of cards at the dollar store so that you can write her quick “Thinking of You” cards for a while instead of calling her and letting her bring you down.

Is your best friend miserable in their life and only ever want to complain over drinks about how lousy a day they’ve had? Then shake things up a bit. Use being unemployed as an excuse to avoid going out for drinks (too expensive!), and drag them out to do something else instead. A game of bowling often costs the same as a single drink and lasts longer. It’s also a physical activity that will get you both moving a bit, provide some good people watching, and give you other things to talk about.

There is no need to “dump” the people you care about. Just don’t let them bring you down. And if some of the most important people in your life are not being helpful when it comes to keeping your spirits up, then it’s also fair game to tell them that you need their support and help in staying positive. Most people don’t realize when they start becoming a downer to be around. Often times, just pointing out that you are counting on them to keep your spirits up is enough to help them become more aware of their own habits.

I had some other valuable tips I learned that you may want to check out, too. But the keys I’ve found are not slipping into old habits, because no matter how comfortable they may be, they are often the embodiment of that old saying: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” If you need a new outcome, don’t rely on doing the same old same old to get there.

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I’ve had an interesting few weeks. My husband and I have been dealing with a lot of things at home, hence my absence from blogging for much of the past month, and I have started a new project with the New Media (a.k.a. “web”) team at KXAN-TV here in Austin.

Between getting settled into the new project and speaking to old friends at former companies (some of whom are now unemployed, while others only wished they were), I’ve been thinking about a number of things that seem to have dovetailed together in a way I wasn’t expecting.

First and foremost is career management. Long a favorite topic of mine, what I’ve been thinking of recently is how sadly common it is for a boss to be totally useless when it comes to helping their employees with career management plans. More than a few of them don’t think it’s part of their responsibility (which I find inexcusably lazy), but even more of them seem to simply not think of it.

This got me thinking of the series I wrote at Christmas, “A Christmas Card to My Bosses: Thanks to Three Very Wise Men.” While I wrote blog posts on the great lessons I learned from each John, Robert and Dave, the thing that I didn’t state explicitly (but which was implicit) was that each of them cared about and was focused on making sure the people on their staff were getting the career development support, encouragement and pushing that they needed. They were all acutely aware of the role they played in developing their people; they took that responsibility seriously and they executed against that.

I see so many talented people who do not have that. And when they finally have someone actually demonstrate some interest and some focus on helping them define and reach their career objectives, they are often so stunned they can hardly believe it.

Why is it so hard? Most people who have been successful enough to be the boss have accomplished that because they know how to manage their own career, so why is it so hard for them to help give guidance and advice to someone else on how to do the same? It shouldn’t be — and I don’t buy that it usually is. I think the reason most people don’t do it is because they don’t make time to do it.

An important thing to keep in mind: statistically speaking, most people do not leave their job, they leave their boss. So are you doing what you need to do to keep your employees engaged and supported so that they stick around? If not, why not?

So that’s my challenge to bosses everywhere: have you worked with each of your direct reports to make sure you understand their career goals (at least as much as they do)? Have you worked on a plan for them that will help them make progress towards those goals? Are you checking in with them regularly to make sure that they are staying focused on at least some of the accomplishments they need in order to stay on track?

Part of being a leader is helping make sure the people you are leading are getting where they need to go. If you aren’t doing that, then where are you leading them?

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