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Know Thy Entrepreneurial Self, Build On Your Strengths

Here is a 5-minute excerpt from our recent WebCast for entrepreneurs, The Entrepreneurial Profile: Building On Your Talents. Professor Mona Anita Olsen, from the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell, walks us through the Gallup Entrepreneurial Profile 10 (EP10), a new talents-based assessment that helps entrepreneurs discover and develop their entrepreneurial talents.

If this excerpt has piqued your interest, I recommend you sign up for your free 30-day trial subscription here and enroll through the Entrepreneurship Channel. For best results, try the EP10 yourself ($12 cost) before viewing the WebCast.

After you complete the assessment, you’ll receive a personalized report that includes your unique talent profile. Prof. Olsen provides her contact info at the end of the session, so feel free to connect with her for advice as you prepare to build on your talents as an entrepreneur.

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Strategies For Moving Your Startup Into a Bricks-and-Mortar Space

On April 6 we’ll be hosting a WebCast for startups called “Build Your Business: Real Estate Challenges for Startups” with Cornell alum T.J. Hochanadel.

As host, I needed to learn a few things about real estate strategies for startups, so T.J. and I had a conversation earlier this week.

What should a startup be thinking about when readying for the big move into a bricks-and-mortar address? 

T.J.: Every company has its own unique set of criteria that drive real estate decisions. Startups should look closely at a number of things, like price, geography, image, scalability, talent attraction/retention, commutability, life cycle of business — we’ll take a close look at all of these during our WebCast.

T.J., Can you recommend any tools or resources here that may help guide the startup toward an informed decision about real estate?

T.J.: Business execs tasked with the assignment of securing an office space should really consult with a commercial real estate professional who can represent tenants’ interests. The best commercial real estate advisors/brokers spend time understanding the business to help you formulate a strategy around your office choice.

Here at JLL, we have a really cool interactive tool called the Square, which is meant to help business executives grasp an initial understanding of a real estate strategy that best meets their current/future business needs. It really helps to guide the conversation going forward.

What if my company is focused on acquisition? Should that change my game plan?

T.J.: Each situation is unique, and it mostly depends on how the acquiring company underwrites the real estate obligation of the company being acquired. I think the argument could be that a company focused on acquisition would want to maintain high flexibility in its lease. However, I can recall several examples where a company was acquired shortly after signing a long-term lease.

What if I live and work in an area where the startup culture is not very dense or developed yet? Should I go where there is a culture and supportive infrastructure around startups?

T.J.: Again, each business requirement is unique. Generally, I believe successful companies tend to locate in geographies that will foster their growth. Tech hubs like NYC, Palo Alto, Los Angeles, etc. offer many advantages over less-developed hubs.

A business owner will want to consider the effects a geography has on access to capital, talent, and other unique business resources, and weigh those against cost of operating in those geographies.

How does company brand figure into real estate considerations?

T.J.: An office is a place that most of us “live in” every day, so it is inherently going to be a reflection of the brand. For the startup out there who is in the process of raising a large round of funding that will enable them to grow their employee headcount, they’ll want a home that will help them attract and retain talent. Or for the fashion designer who is looking to open a showroom, a client’s optical view of the brand image will be significantly influenced by the showroom. As discussed above, each situation is unique, and it is important to undertake the heuristic process to determine the best strategy for reach business. We’ll cover all this and more next week in our 1-hour WebCast.

 

Go here to register and to take advantage of our free 30-day trial subscription to the Entrepreneurship Channel.

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Driving Organizational Success Through Workforce Analytics

The use of analytics is changing the way HR professionals assess performance and position their organizations to succeed. Interest has grown considerably in recent years, as workforce analytics can reveal deep insights that help improve retention, efficiency, and productivity.

Cornell University’s John Hausknecht, HR Studies Professor at the ILR School, discusses the latest developments in this space, highlighting what leading companies are doing to strengthen the impact and reach of workforce analytics, including how “big data” will shape the field in years to come. The Q&A section is especially informative in this webinar.

In this webinar, you’ll learn:

  • How organizations are using HR data and measurement systems to influence overall strategy.
  • Which HR metrics are helping companies achieve strategic goals.
  • How to take results of data collection to develop a data-driven action plan.

Learn to think strategically about workforce analytics and capture the attention of senior leadership by making more informed, evidence-based decisions—decisions that have lasting impact beyond the HR department and throughout your organization.

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Introducing eCornell WebSeries

Cornell University has launched a subscription-based webinar series that offers monthly online live webinars led by Cornell University faculty. The WebSeries consists of lectures, driven by Cornell University faculty, Q&A and interactive audience exercises on topics that are immediately applicable to your life. If you can’t attend the live event or want to re-watch something you’ve seen, the lectures are archived for viewing at a later date. You can earn Continuing Education Units (CEUs) by attending each event. We are launching with two channels: Women in Leadership and Entrepreneurship.

The Women in Leadership Channel features Cornell University faculty who bring academic expertise and real-world experience to help organizations overcome imbalanced power and influence in the workplace. In these one-hour interactive sessions you’ll learn how to:

  • Identify gender bias and stereotypes in the workplace.
  • Execute on individual and organizational strategies for overcoming bias, allowing for women to succeed in leadership positions.
  • Communicate, strategize and direct from a leadership position as a woman.

The Entrepreneurship Channel brings together Cornell University faculty, leading entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and financiers to help you turn your brilliant idea into a successful startup business. In these one-hour interactive sessions you’ll learn how to:

  • Present and validate your startup business idea.
  • Manage the financial, legal and ethical aspects of your venture.
  • Introduce entrepreneurial principles and best practices to your business, whether it be a tiny startup, a global enterprise, a nonprofit, even a government agency.
  • Assess the competition and optimize your product or service for market success.

You can sign up for a free 30-day WebSeries trial! Learn more here: eCornell.com/StartWebSeries

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Why Branding is Dead, and Why Mindset Is Your Only Hope In the Future

There was more content created online in the last two years than was created in all of the prior 2000 years. Every conversation, tweet, and piece of content is a part of your brand image, and impacts a prospect’s experience with your brand.

The future success of your brand relies on you being able to provide and manage a positive experience across over 60+ marketing channels, 24 hours a day. Simple branding no longer works; the only sustainable way to consistently provide a positive experience to your prospects is by understanding Mindset.

Salesforce.com’s Mathew Sweezey explains why the modern digital landscape has killed the traditional concept of branding, and why Mindset is your only hope for building a consistent brand in the future.

Mathew Sweezey is the Head of B2B Marketing Thought Leadership for Salesforce.com. A consummate writer, he authors a column for Clickz.com on marketing automation, has been featured in publications such as Marketing Automation Times, DemandGen Report, Marketing Sherpa, ZDNet, and is the author of Marketing Automation for Dummies. Mathew speaks more than 50 times per year around the world at events such as Conversion Conference, Dreamforce, SugarCon, and to companies including Microsoft, Investec, NetJets, and Restaurants.com, to name a few.

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Inspiration Isn’t Enough: The Mindset of a Social Leader

In this one-hour webinar and panel discussion, Switch & Shift’s Mark Babbitt and Shawn Murphy detail what makes social leaders and people-centric organizations successful.

Since the early days of the Industrial Age, employers have attempted to elevate the hearts and minds of their employees. Their primary goal: to positively affect business results.

Decades later, we see that most of these attempts failed. Even today, 74% of our workforce is disengaged. Perhaps that is because our leaders, while relentlessly trained to marshal resources and improve efficiency, profit margins and market share, largely ignored the needs of the employee.

This short-sighted effort left employees depleted and disillusioned. And ultimately, those less-than-inspiring leaders – and in some cases, entire industries – learned that business growth is tied directly to the ability to tap into the collective wisdom of their people.

To overcome this modern organizational malaise, today’s leaders must infuse two essential human-centered elements into their business model:

  •      Adoption of a social leadership style
  •      Creation of an optimistic workplace

In this webinar, you learn how to leverage social leadership to build and maintain mutually-beneficial relationships with your customers, champions, vendors – and especially your employees. You discover how to create a workplace environment that inspires employees to bring their hearts and minds – and even their souls – to work.

Most important, in the 60 minutes you invest in this webinar, you gain an understanding of how to remove the barriers that limit your organization’s performance – and, working together with your employees, realize your full potential.

Learning Objectives

  1.     Describe the 5 social leadership mindsets
  2.     Explain how the 5 social leadership mindsets benefit business
  3.     Develop a plan to increase social leadership practices in your immediate team
  4.     Articulate the 6 beliefs essential to create an optimistic workplace
  5.     Integrate into your leadership practices an adaptive one-on-one format that transforms relationships and performance
  6.     Learn the signs that your leadership mindsets and practices are having a positive influence on your team

Mark Babbitt serves as President of Switch & Shift, is CEO and Founder of YouTern and is a founder of ForwardHeroes.org. A serial mentor and social leader, Mark has contributed to Huffington Post, Inc. and Harvard Business Review.

Mark is also the co-author of A World Gone Social: How Companies Must Adapt to Survive and an in-demand speaker. Recently, he was named a Top 100 Leadership Speaker by Inc.com.

He and his family call Seattle home.

Shawn Murphy is CEO and co-founder of Switch & Shift, an organization dedicated to the advancement of human-centered organizational practices and leadership.

Often found in the classroom teaching, on the stage speaking, or alongside clients consulting, Shawn is passionate about helping people become the best version of themselves.

UPDATE: Watch the archived event here, and download the slide deck here.

 

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Finally! How To Close the Sales-Marketing Gap With Social Media

User-generated and brand-generated content on social media are great for bringing value to the customer relationship, but ultimately you’ll want to encourage a transaction. If your audience is engaged but you’ve failed to produce a desired result or a transaction, then it’s time to revisit your social media marketing strategy.

According to Forrester Research, US marketers are projected to spend $16.2 billion in social media advertising by 2019, which can inadvertently drive customers away from the point of transaction if done incorrectly.

You don’t own your customer on social media. You are only renting your space on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, and Pinterest. It’s time to reclaim ownership of your content and see true ROI from your marketing efforts.

In this informative session, Hashtagio’s Alicia Whalen explores how the marketing mix has shifted in the age of social media, and we’ll look at how a poorly executed social media plan can inadvertently direct a customer away from the path to purchase. You’ll learn how to close the gap between social media and sales and enjoy true ROI from social media marketing.

UPDATE: It was a great session > Watch it here.

 

 

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Lead Your Remote Workforce To Success

After Yahoo and BestBuy dissolved their remote work programs in 2013, many business leaders and HR professionals started looking at their own flexible work programs with a keener eye and a greater degree of skepticism and scrutiny.

But remote work as a business practice is not inherently problematic; it’s that most organizations don’t know how to make it work to their advantage. When structured properly, a remote workforce can be as effective as any on-site organization.

In this one-hour webinar, David Lewis, President and CEO of OperationsInc, shows you how to organize a remote-work culture that gets results and develop a leadership strategy that drives success.

In this session, David looks at:

  • How to establish rules and guidelines, and decide when remote work is appropriate and feasible.
  • Best practices in measuring performance and tracking a remote team’s activities and accomplishments.
  • Common pitfalls and issues, and how to anticipate and avoid them.

 

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Mastering the Hotel Marketing Ecosystem at the Property Level

Today’s hotel visitors have never been more connected. With multiple devices and countless online resources to consult during each phase of the guest lifecycle – from the point they make their booking decisions to well after they check-out – travelers’ hotel expectations have shifted.

Long gone are the days when the hotel marketing tactics were all deployed pre-stay and offline. Today, easier access to guest preference data, past purchase behavior and social media profiles has made the hotel marketing discipline a multi-phase and multi-channel practice that requires involvement from many different key stakeholders at the brand and hotel-property level.

In this webinar, Greg Bodenlos, social media and digital marketing hospitality consultant, walks us through this complex hotel marketing ecosystem. In the process, Greg reveals strategies and tactics for mastering the innumerable amount of hotel marketing priorities. The following are just a few of the questions that will be addressed:

  • What are the most important marketing focus areas at the property level?
  • How has the definition of hotel marketing evolved in the hospitality industry?
  • Where should hotel marketing live in the overall hotel operation ecosystem?
  • Who are the various key stakeholders to involve in hotel marketing initiatives?
  • What new hotel marketing challenges are on the horizon?

Greg Bodenlos is a passionate hospitality marketing consultant and HSMAI leader based in Boston, Massachusetts. With a passion for digital trends, social media and innovation – and over five years of hotel and technology work experience – Greg possesses a unique perspective on the hospitality digital marketing landscape. Playing digitally-focused marketing roles at the destination resort, luxury independent property, and now city center hotel has allowed Greg to play an active role in shaping hotel marketing best practices at the property-level as well as help bring hoteliers closer to creating more meaningful, personalized travel experiences for their guests. It was in his marketing role at Revinate – a SaaS start-up in Silicon Valley that designs and develops technology to improve the guest experience – where Greg was able to help hoteliers and academics better understand the power of leveraging consumer intelligence to drive better service and maximize revenue streams across the entire guest lifecycle.

Greg is a proud graduate of Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration and has been featured as a hotel marketing expert on National Public Radio. Greg has been featured as a contributor in Crowdcentric Media’s Social Media Week New York blog, eCornell’s Blog and HotelMarketing.com, as well as played a co-authored role in an award-winning piece for Cornell University’s Center for Hospitality Research with Chris Anderson entitled Best Practices in Search Engine Marketing and Optimization.

Greg can be reached by phone at +1 781 686 2177, email at gregbodenlos@gmail.com, on Twitter @gregbodenlos or LinkedIn.

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Transcending Generational Differences in the Workplace

We’re at a unique moment in history; we now have three generations working side by side in the workforce.
Companies are facing challenges managing different work ethics, communication styles, values, approaches to teamwork, work-life balance expectations and relationships to authority.

In this fast-paced session, Carrie Shearer, eCornell faculty instructor and veteran HR strategist, demonstrates how HR professionals can transcend generational differences in the workplace:

  • Bridge the gaps among employees and help them avoid conflict.
  • Understand why each generation thinks and acts the way it does and then develop strategies to resolve the conflicts between generations.
  • Increase productivity in a generationally diverse workplace.

Carrie Shearer’s career has spanned nearly forty years and covered all areas of HR, with particular focus in compensation and global strategic issues. During her twenty years with Caltex Petroleum Company, she oversaw HR operations in 97 countries, developing HR curricula and course materials for developing HR practitioners.

At her consulting firm, Carrie Shearer & Associates, she offers expertise on strategic HR, international HR and leveraging a cross-cultural workforce. Carrie is a novelist, a frequent contributor to the HR track of Expatica.com, was on the advisory board of Woman Abroad Magazine, and is a sought-after speaker at international HR conferences.

eCornell offers four online certificate programs for human resources professionals, with the Advanced Certificate in Strategic HR being perhaps most relevant to today’s presentation. Whether you are new to HR, an accomplished HR practitioner, or an HR leader or business partner, there is sure to be a Cornell professional certificate that fits your career objectives.