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I love Google Alerts, they help me find stuff I’d never find on my own making it easy for us non-surfing, lazy folks. That’s how I happened to see the post on CEO Jim Estill’s blog. You need to read it (it doesn’t take that long) for the rest of my post to make sense.

Following Jim’s lead, block out at least an hour a week (more is better) to stop being busy—no email, no texting, no phone, no surfing, no ipod, no Television, no nothing—and just let your mind roam. Don’t push it, let it mull. Advocate subjects, but don’t force them if your mind wants to go elsewhere.

It will take some practice and don’t be surprised if you hear your mental mulling gears creaking in their effort to turn, but persevere. The results will be well worth the effort.

And if you’re working to increase innovation in your company you’ll find integrating an uncharted hour into your corporate culture will go a long way to making that happen.

Busy is not conducive to creative thinking!

Consider which gives the highest ROI then print it and tape it on your monitor, the mirror’s in the restrooms and wherever else you choose.

Then DO it.

When do you do your most creative thinking?

Your comments—priceless

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The old adage “praise in public and criticize in private” should be the guiding light for bosses looking to provide a year-end wrap-up of how the company (or any organization) did along with a rallying cry for the coming year.I’d like to share a superb example of this in the form of an email sent by the CEO of a small company with which I work that’s coming off a bit of a rocky year. Only the names (company and people) were changed for confidentiality.

From: Chuck Lorkin
Date: December 28, 2007 11:23:08 AM PST
To: All@QuikTap.com
Subject: What to expect in 2008

Hello Team QuikTap,

I’m very proud of the effort you have all put in to ensure us moving forward during the past year. Every area of the company has experienced major improvements, but what stands out most are the accomplishments of the product development team (especially Jim with help from Geoff & Roger) in launching QuikTap Query Version 5. Through their work we’ve become one of the top three vendors in our market in look & feel and we are #1 in ease-of-use coupled with breadth of functionality and transaction processing power.

Several of you are asking how QuikTap will do in the worsening general economic climate. We’re well positioned due to several factors, most of them resulting from our strategic decision to build the business without significant outside investment:

- QuikTap has a very low cost base and higher productivity per dollar than comparable software firms. Part of this is due to making our operations very efficient during our lean years of low sales.

- QuikTap’s products are positioned to have high functionality at a relatively low price – we are more affordable than our competitors. In an environment where corporations are spending less on IT, they will be more inclined to buy software that delivers 80% of the functionality at 20% of the cost.

- QuikTap has a more efficient marketing infrastructure than our competitors. Each dollar used on marketing has a significantly higher return. According to our calculations, we have an advantage to our competitors of a factor of 10.

During this quarter we’ve augmented the sales team by hiring a Sales Manager (Sharon) and a new rep (Jerry). As a result, we anticipate 2008 to be a much stronger year in sales – both have previous experience with product marketing and sales of information capture products. Another noteworthy point, from a sales perspective, is that QuikTap is the best branded company in its field on the Internet. Craig has done exceptional work with on the web marketing, thinking innovatively and getting us to a first page position for all important search terms and with respect to social networking. This is bringing in leads and creates relationships that were previously outside our reach.

We also have an inchoate business development effort led by Tom who is collaborating with retailers and software vendors to increase our visibility and create partnerships.

Support response times are lower and greater satisfaction from customers is making it significantly easier for the sales team to interact with customers. The people in support keep on churning out solutions for our customers, in effect creating the basis for the company to leverage upon.

In 2008 I expect that the platform we have built during the past 18 months will begin to generate significant revenues. Having good marketing and sales teams, commencing business development and having good products to leverage in the market will move us into a leading position in our industry.

I’m grateful that I’ve the chance to work with the team we have now and look forward to QuikTap growing by leaps and bounds in 2008.

Chuck

How do you wrap up the year in your organization?

Your comments—priceless

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